Sealssong

In a world no longer blessed with virtue, there remains a place among the moving icebergs, cradled between the twilight of dreams, yet hidden from the nightmare of man. It is a sanctuary that has miraculously clung to its innocence, a faraway place, a place called SEALSSONG. A dying girl is about to find out that there are more things in life to fear than death itself. Born with gifts beyond that of natural reasoning, young Emma finds herself spirited away by an evil relative desperately seeking out her angelic powers in order to fulfill a most diabolical prophecy. Her aunt Decara, a tear-stealing villainess on a dastardly quest to find a sacred teardrop housed inside a purple stone, possessing enormous powers, will first have to find one orphaned baby seal named Miracle, who must learn to survive in a fantastic world confronting deadly seal hunters and the bloodshed they bring. For it is he who now inherits the powerful, tear, and it is he whom Emma soon comes to realize—that she must kill!

Finn loves to swim with the seals in a secret cove. He arrives at the cove one day and rescues a young seal tangled in netting. Finn wishes the seal could live on land. That night the seals sing. "No good comes from seal songs," says Finn's father. When Sheila, a mysterious girl no one has ever seen before, appears on the cannery docks, the fisher folk are uneasy. They believe the newcomer is a magical selkie, a shape changer.

Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France offers a new perspective on how medieval song expressed relationships between people and their environments. Informed by environmental history and harnessing musicological and ecocritical approaches, author Jennifer Saltzstein draws connections between the nature imagery that pervades songs written by the trouvères of northern France to the physical terrain and climate of the lands on which their authors lived. In doing so, she analyzes the different ways in which composers' lived environments related to their songs and categorizes their use of nature imagery as realistic, aspirational, or nostalgic. Demonstrating a cycle of mutual impact between nature and culture, Saltzstein argues that trouvère songs influenced the ways particular groups of medieval people defined their identities, encouraging them to view themselves as belonging to specific landscapes. The book offers close readings of love songs, pastourelles, motets, and rondets from the likes of Gace Brulé, Adam de la Halle, Guillaume de Machaut, and many others. Saltzstein shows how their music-text relationships illuminate the ways in which song helped to foster identities tied to specific landscapes among the knightly classes, the clergy, aristocratic women, and peasants. By connecting social types to topographies, trouvère songs and the manuscripts in which they were preserved presented models of identity for later generations of songwriters, performers, listeners, patrons, and readers to emulate, thereby projecting into the future specific ways of being on the land. Written in the long thirteenth century during the last major era of climate change, trouvère songs, as Saltzstein demonstrates, shape our understanding of how identity formation has rested on relationships between nature, culture, and change.

Holly O'Brien began her fitness career in her early 20's in several fitness clubs, worked with pro ball players then gave it up for stunt work in film. She later migrated her entertainment career into behind the scenes technical operations in television broadcasting, post production and animation. That was until one day while managing a video-on-demand control room arguing or the picture quality of a movie she had an epiphany; why was she doing that which would only keep people on the couch? She wanted people to get off the couch and go exercise and she realized her own career certainly wasn't helping.After careful review of the challenges involved she gave up her 23 year entertainment career and re-certified her pedigrees with International Sports Sciences Association, teamed up as a coach for a Fitness Boot Camp and took on a roster of private clients only to discovery what seemed to be a unilateral problem. Folks were stuck, really stuck and she was more stunned by why.She decided to approach a fix from a very different angle; one that folks could do on their own. A Fitness Guide written with a light hearted spirit to assist folks who wish to train themselves. A guide that covers free weights, aerobics, understanding your own metabolic rate, utilizing food for fitness and tackles the continually frustrating mission of how to loose stored body fat.It's fun, fast with plenty of tools to create your own program, loose stored body fat and pursue a sport or two. As a labor of love she hopes you'll drag this book around with you and use it often to assist with clearing up the confusion, inspire new activities where they may not be any, bury old frustrations forever and have some fun along the way.

A seal becomes a Navy SEAL in this children's adaptation of the #1 New York Times bestselling Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World by Admiral William H. McRaven. As Skipper the seal embarks on Navy SEAL training, he and his hardworking friends learn much more than how to pass a swimming test or how to dive off a ship. To be a great SEAL, you also have to take risks, deal with failure, and persevere through tough times—just as you do in life. (And always remember to make your bed!) In this entertaining children's adaptation of his #1 New York Times bestseller, Admiral William H. McRaven shares life lessons from Navy SEAL training and encourages young readers to become their best selves.