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    A Sense of Place
    A Sense of Place
    A Sense of Place
    Ebook94 pages36 minutes

    A Sense of Place

    By Grant J Venables

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    About this ebook

    From Bangkok to Barcelona, from London to Laos, from Singapore to Switzerland, this global perspective of ideas inspired by places is as broad in form as it is in content: A grasshopper in the Peloponnese reminds the speaker of a sweltering summer in the Okanagan region of British Columbia, Canada. Paris inspires a ditty about brief love affair, and nothing more. The confines of Singapore make the speaker reminisce about the lack of confines in Bangkok. A lonely Canadian working at a resort in Verbier, Switzerland, brings forth a locals’ view of the expat worker.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrant J Venables
    Release dateSep 23, 2012
    ISBN9781301987559
    A Sense of Place
    Author

    Grant J Venables

    I am a Canadian who lives and writes in Southeast Asia. Presently I work in Kuala Lumpur, teaching English Literature. I was born and raised in and around Shuswap Lake in south-central British Columbia, but I have also lived in northern Alberta. I went to school at Grande Prairie Regional College, then I moved to Edmonton Alberta, and attended the University of Alberta. From there I moved to Bangkok, Thailand and furthered my studies with Michigan State University. I am married to a wonderful woman, Kaeo (who is on the cover of Bangkok—Just Under the Skin). I have three sons, Kritsana, Heathcliff-Manx, and Keats J. We keep a small farm in Thailand where we raise organic fruit and produce, and ducks...a great number of ducks.When not reading, writing, or teaching, I spend time with my family, my friends, my ducks, and my trees. Trees provide a certain sanity and calm in a world so often too concerned with the insane rush to destroy itself.

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      Book preview

      A Sense of Place - Grant J Venables

      A Sense of Place

      Grant J. Venables

      Published by

      Grant J. Venables

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2012 Grant J. Venables

      Also available at Smashwords by Venables:

      BOLD

      A Few Lines on…

      Bangkok--Just Under the Skin

      Coming soon, by Venables,

      the difference? (another new novel)

      the meaning (longer novel)

      Table of Contents

      Alberta

      Bangkok

      British Columbia

      England

      France

      Greece

      Holland

      India

      Japan

      Kuala Lumpur

      Laos

      Singapore

      Spain

      Switzerland

      Thailand

      United Arab Emirates

      United States of America

      Beyond Borders

      Author

      Notes and Thanks

      Alberta

      84

      The summer of 84

      Was hot,

      Hot enough for fires,

      Hot enough to turn a man,

      Hot enough for rampant flame, and we,

      Well north of Edmonton,

      North of Whitecourt,

      North of Moscow, Russia,

      We had fire eating away

      At the tough northern green

      That takes such slow years to grow.

      Rick and Gerald and I

      Worked those fires in 84

      And we were young, too,

      And the money was good,

      And we liked the work,

      And we were strong, and it was

      Tough work, man’s work;

      Three weeks in, one out.

      We were stationed, through part of 84,

      Midway up Bald Mountain—

      About 18 guys, two cooks,

      Two choppers: the big bird, a Sikorsky,

      The other one like a fly, like a dart;

      Every day was up, up, and away—

      And the money was good,

      And the work was hard.

      My brother, Doug, was 12 years older than me,

      And he moved beyond the great work

      We were satisfied with.

      He was twice our breadth

      And twice our width

      And his raw strength stifled—

      He was fair and righteous and carried

      A laugh like a

      Mountain.

      And that summer, in 84,

      I was prouder, even than I usually was,

      To be blood-tied to my broad and bearded brother,

      For that year he moved to Tower Man,

      And Rick and Gerald and I

      All held that in gap-jawed awe.

      Doug was a Tower Man,

      The noblest thing we thought a man

      Could be when we were strong and young and

      Worked hard and had muscle. Doug

      Was a Tower Man in the

      Rugged north

      With the arc of the earth under

      His wing and that quilt of green at

      His feet for as far as there was sky.

      And then and there in 84,

      Doug was, and we were near the

      Crown of Bald Mountain, but he,

      Splendid and knightly

      At the top of the silver turret,

      So clean and broad and sharp-eyed,

      So wise to watch the world

      With maps and compass points

      And calculations and binoculars like telescopes,

      And callipers,

      And that metal braced ladder going straight up, up, up

      And away into the middle of all

      That blue, blue summer sky day.

      And Doug, there, in 84, would

      Pierce the day with eyes like fins to slice the lines,

      Of forest’s green,

      And see a hint

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