The
year would be an odyssey. As the days passed, Richard Quinney kept
a close watch-keeping a journal and taking photographs of the passing
seasons on his family farm in Walworth County, Wisconsin. During
the year the author, recently retired from a lifetime of university
teaching, was being treated for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and
by year's end was moving from one place to another. The farm of
the author's birth and growing up years was settled by his great-grandparents
emigrating from Ireland during the famine. It is the place always
returned to in times of need and solace.
It would be easy to know the farm more in the past tense than in
the present. To think of it, as Shakespeare wrote in his sonnet,
as the place "where late the sweet birds sang." Although
there were the strong and constant reminders of the past-from the
rot and rust of decaying buildings to the aging artifacts found
in drawers and trunks-one is transported by the wonders of the present
in this much-loved place. Where Yet the Sweet Birds Sing is a chronicle
in the tradition of the nature essay and the spiritual journey.
Richard Quinney is the author of several books that combine autobiographical
writing and photography, including Journey to a Far Place, For the
Time Being, Borderland, and Once Again the Wonder. His other books
are in the academic field of sociology. He and his wife live in
Madison, Wisconsin and on the family farm in Walworth County.
The
year would be an odyssey. As the days passed, Richard Quinney kept
a close watch-keeping a journal and taking photographs of the passing
seasons on his family farm in Walworth County, Wisconsin. During
the year the author, recently retired from a lifetime of university
teaching, was being treated for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and
by year's end was moving from one place to another. The farm of
the author's birth and growing up years was settled by his great-grandparents
emigrating from Ireland during the famine. It is the place always
returned to in times of need and solace.