May days

Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1988. 1st Edition, Hardbound, 8vo (about 8'' to 9.5'' tall), 198 pages. In this collection of eleven wry essays, Samuel Pickering illuminates the ordinary, making what is common in life stand out with gemlike brilliance. An amateur naturalist and devoted father, Pickering offers his reflections on family lore, curious artifacts, the endearing absurdities of everyday life, and his attempts to understand and appreciate the rich world of nature. With a self-ironic, unpretentious voice, Pickering takes us to the bucolic settings of rural Nova Scotia and small-town Tennessee, as well as a New England academic environment. There we witness his balancing act between suburban and rural life, between the pressures of the workaday world and the temptation of nature, the call to explore what is so often ignored, the need to remember the roots of our past. Whether writing about Miss Kitty and Miss Jo Sewall, E. W. Childers and the fish he caught in Difficult Creek, or the naming and renaming of flowers—Purple Orchis, Skullcap, Riverwater Pink—Pickering reveals an inquiring, gentle regard for nature and humanity. His anecdotes present the history and folklore of his own family as well as Everyman's history and lore as he uncovers some of the subtle truths that lie unnoticed in the common events and realities of life. Reaching into the past for anecdotes that live on and ranging in his personal experience from rural Nova Scotia to a New England college to small-town Tennessee, Sam Pickering finds his lessons in suburban and rural life, in the pressures of the workaday world, and in the temptations of nature. In his quest to further understand and appreciate our rich natural world and our roots in the past, he examines the many ways in which we are all kind and callous, loving and faithless, foolish and wise. Whether writing about Miss Kitty and Miss Jo Sewall, E. W. Childers and the fish he caught in Difficult Creek, or the naming and renaming of flowers, Pickering reveals an inquiring, gentle regard for nature and humanity. These eleven wry essays illuminate the ordinary, uncovering some of the subtle truths that lie unnoticed in the common events and realities of life.