Forest Family

Free enterprise is not dead! It still lives in the hearts and souls of those who dare to dream and believe in their dreams. An inspiring story, The Enchanted Forest and Its Family, gives the history of Oregon's oldest family owned theme park and of the family that made it possible. The pitfalls of starting a business from scratch are sometimes overwhelming to a young person or family trying to make their mark in the world. This book tells of the struggles of such a family with meager resources who relied on their love of family, many talents, desire, and hard work. Roger Tofte spearheaded the drive to fulfill his dream. He had a vision and with his artistic skills nothing seemed impossible. The young family, including four children, struggled and did without in order to overcome adversities. it was often a bag of cement at a time. But it could be done! From humble beginnings, the theme park flourished to become one of Oregon's leading attractions. The author, Mavis Tofte, knows her subject well. As the wife of Roger Tofte, she ran the business during the early years and helped where needed. When cancer threatened her life in 1978, it only meant another challenge to overcome. Responsibilities were delegated to the children who assumed more than their share of duties to help the family. After retirement, the author turned to writing with a passion.

From a peaceful existence deep in the forest, the lure of adventure leads Bernardo into a foreign war. Years later, he returns as an unrecognizable stranger. Using the lore of generations, his wife and two daughters set out to heal him. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Forest Family highlights the importance of the old-growth forests of Southwest Australia to art, culture, history, politics, and community identity. The volume weaves together the natural and cultural histories of Southwest eucalypt forests, spanning pre-settlement, colonial, and contemporary periods. The contributors critique a range of content including historical documents, music, novels, paintings, performances, photography, poetry, and sculpture representing ancient Australian forests. Forest Family centers on the relationship between old-growth nature and human culture through the narrative strand of the Giblett family of Western Australia and the forests in which they settled during the nineteenth century. The volume will be of interest to general readers of environmental history, as well as scholars in critical plant studies and the environmental humanities.

Families come in all shapes and sizes. Half-sisters, big brothers, step-parents. While some kids have a family tree, others have a family forest!

Text copyright 1939 by The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

A little tree, guided by her family circle and forest friends, can’t wait to grow tall and strong Little Sap can’t wait to grow tall and strong just like her mother and touch the sky. But growing takes time. Luckily for Little Sap, she has her family circle close by and a forest of friends, above and below ground, to help guide her up.

The idea of a family level society, discussed and disputed by anthropologists for nearly half a century, assumes moving, breathing form in Families of the Forest. According to Allen Johnson’s deft ethnography, the Matsigenka people of southeastern Peru cannot be understood or appreciated except as a family level society; the family level of sociocultural integration is for them a lived reality. Under ordinary circumstances, the largest social units are individual households or small extended-family hamlets. In the absence of such "tribal" features as villages, territorial defense and warfare, local or regional leaders, and public ceremonials, these people put a premium on economic self-reliance, control of aggression within intimate family settings, and freedom to believe and act in their own perceived self-interest. Johnson shows how the Matsigenka, whose home is the Amazon rainforest, are able to meet virtually all their material needs with the skills and labor available to the individual household. They try to raise their children to be independent and self-reliant, yet in control of their emotional, impulsive natures, so that they can get along in intimate, cooperative living groups. Their belief that self-centered impulsiveness is dangerous and self-control is fulfilling anchors their moral framework, which is expressed in abundant stories and myths. Although, as Johnson points out, such people are often described in negative terms as lacking in features of social and cultural complexity, he finds their small-community lifestyle efficient, rewarding, and very well adapted to their environment.

A 2021 National Jewish Book Award Finalist One of Smithsonian Magazine's Best History Books of 2021 "An uplifting tale, suffused with a karmic righteousness that is, at times, exhilarating." —Wall Street Journal "A gripping narrative that reads like a page turning thriller novel." —NPR In the summer of 1942, the Rabinowitz family narrowly escaped the Nazi ghetto in their Polish town by fleeing to the forbidding Bialowieza Forest. They miraculously survived two years in the woods—through brutal winters, Typhus outbreaks, and merciless Nazi raids—until they were liberated by the Red Army in 1944. After the war they trekked across the Alps into Italy where they settled as refugees before eventually immigrating to the United States. During the first ghetto massacre, Miriam Rabinowitz rescued a young boy named Philip by pretending he was her son. Nearly a decade later, a chance encounter at a wedding in Brooklyn would lead Philip to find the woman who saved him. And to discover her daughter Ruth was the love of his life. From a little-known chapter of Holocaust history, one family’s inspiring true story.

This "stunning journey through a country that is home to exhilarating natural wonders, and a scarring colonial past . . . makes breathtakingly clear the connection between nature and humanity, and offers a singular portrait of the complexities inherent to our ideas of identity, family, and love" (Refinery29). A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities. Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre–shattering book encompassing history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.