Phosphorescence by Julia Baird

Phosphorescence by Julia Baird

Both timeless and timely, this is a book of wisdom and wonder.
--Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March

A deeply personal exploration of what can sustain us through our darkest moments.

After surviving a difficult heartbreak and battle with cancer, acclaimed author and columnist Julia Baird began thinking deeply about how we, as people, persevere through the most challenging circumstances. She started to wonder, when we are overwhelmed by illness, loss or pain, or a tragedy outside our control: How can we keep putting one foot in front of the other? Baird went in search of the magic that fuels the light within--our own phosphorescence. In this stunning book, she reflects on the things that lit her way through the darkness, especially the surprising strength found in connecting with nature and not just experiencing awe and wonder about the world around her, but deliberately hunting it, daily.

Baird also writes about crossbeams of resilience: nurturing friendships and a quiet faith, pursuing silence, fighting for what she believes in, the importance of feeling small, learning from her mother's example of stoic grace. She also explores how others nurture their inner light, interviewing the founder of the modern forest therapy movement in Tokyo, a jellyfish scientist in Tasmania, and a tattooed priest from Colorado, among others.

Weaving together candid and moving memoir with deep research and reflections on nature and the world around her, Baird inspires readers to embrace new habits and to adopt a phosphorescent outlook on life, to illuminate ourselves and our days--even in the darkest times.

Julia Baird's research interests centre around water. She agrees with the notion that water issues are ultimately issues of governance, and so her research focuses on human dimensions of water resources. Within this broad area, she is particularly interested in:

• building an understanding of how (and why) people engage in water management and governance, and how the qualities of these processes relate to social and ecological outcomes;
  
• how the concept of resilience relates to water governance, and how it is operationalized and applied in practice; and,
  
• applying the notion of social-ecological systems to agriculture, how these kinds of systems can be modeled, and how those models can be used to improve decision making about practices that influence water resources on agricultural landscapes.
  

Julia's research is situated within the field of sustainability science. She collaborates with researchers from diverse disciplines to pursue research questions. Her research is influenced by her many years on the family farm, her educational background in the natural sciences, and her keen interest in how people make decisions and take action to impact the sustainability of our water resources. She uses mixed methods - with a quantitative bent - and has a particular affinity for social network analysis. Her research tends to have both scholarly and applied outcomes.

Ryan Plummer's multi-faceted program of research broadly concerns the governance of social-ecological systems. In striving to advance knowledge of collaboration and adaptation within complex systems, he has focused on the exploring their theoretical underpinnings and ethical implications, modeling their processes, examining the roles of social capital, and investigating the influences of social learning. Water resources are the context in which his research mainly occurs and he is a Faculty Investigator in the Water Policy and Governance Group.

Findings from his research have been published in leading international journals such as Ecological Economics, Ecology and Society, Environmental Management, Frontiers in Ecology and Society, Global Environmental Change, Journal of Environmental Management, Society and Natural Resources and the UN journal, Natural Resources Forum. In addition, he is the author of Outdoor Recreation (Routledge, 2010), and co-editor of Adaptive Capacity and the Making of Environmental Governance (with D. Armitage, Springer, 2010) and Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems: the Role of Learning and Education (with M.E. Krasny and C. Lundholm, Routledge, 2011). He serves as a Subject Editor for Ecology and Society.

The scholarly quality of his research program was formally recognized in 2008 with the awarding of a Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence. In 2004 he received the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences Award for Teaching Excellence and in 2008 he was selected as one of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Excellence in Education Award winners for Promotion of Sustainable Practices.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780593236918
ISBN 10	0593236912
Title	Phosphorescence
Author	Julia Baird
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2021-07-06
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable