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The Invasion of Marcia Lake
De Victor Valla
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Commencer à lireLongueur: 312 pages4 heures
- Éditeur:
- AuthorHouse
- Sortie:
- Feb 11, 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781477298688
- Format:
- Livre
Description
The Invasion of Marcia Lake purports to be a fable that is told to a Naturalist from the United Kingdom who, nearly at the same time, chances upon two life-altering discoveries.
The first is finding the whereabouts of the definitive ancient Volume on Taxonomy, The Taxonomic Compendium of Eighteen Thirty-five, a huge tome, illustrated with hundreds of line engravings, and containing the most complete listings of all known Science pertaining to Nature from that time period. The second is that he soon meets and is able to speak with a group representing Nature and its many dozens of different species.
The T.C. of 1835 is in the hands of a Naturalist living on a houseboat in Florida, who has contacted our narrator-translator in the Scilly Isles, a man who is himself a famous Scientist/ Naturalist/ Linguist named Dr. Carlton Lyme, of Cornwall, England. He is related to both Charles Darwin and Carl Linneaus, and he arrives in the States to review the authenticity of the T.C. of 1835. While there, he explores the wildlife in the nearby swampy marshland by rowboat, (he is at heart a Naturalist), and makes the startling discovery that his linguistic research specialty, that of the ancient Cornish language is spoken by a Community of Inhabitants, as he refers to them.
The first is finding the whereabouts of the definitive ancient Volume on Taxonomy, The Taxonomic Compendium of Eighteen Thirty-five, a huge tome, illustrated with hundreds of line engravings, and containing the most complete listings of all known Science pertaining to Nature from that time period. The second is that he soon meets and is able to speak with a group representing Nature and its many dozens of different species.
The T.C. of 1835 is in the hands of a Naturalist living on a houseboat in Florida, who has contacted our narrator-translator in the Scilly Isles, a man who is himself a famous Scientist/ Naturalist/ Linguist named Dr. Carlton Lyme, of Cornwall, England. He is related to both Charles Darwin and Carl Linneaus, and he arrives in the States to review the authenticity of the T.C. of 1835. While there, he explores the wildlife in the nearby swampy marshland by rowboat, (he is at heart a Naturalist), and makes the startling discovery that his linguistic research specialty, that of the ancient Cornish language is spoken by a Community of Inhabitants, as he refers to them.
Informations sur le livre
The Invasion of Marcia Lake
De Victor Valla
Longueur: 312 pages4 heures
Description
The Invasion of Marcia Lake purports to be a fable that is told to a Naturalist from the United Kingdom who, nearly at the same time, chances upon two life-altering discoveries.
The first is finding the whereabouts of the definitive ancient Volume on Taxonomy, The Taxonomic Compendium of Eighteen Thirty-five, a huge tome, illustrated with hundreds of line engravings, and containing the most complete listings of all known Science pertaining to Nature from that time period. The second is that he soon meets and is able to speak with a group representing Nature and its many dozens of different species.
The T.C. of 1835 is in the hands of a Naturalist living on a houseboat in Florida, who has contacted our narrator-translator in the Scilly Isles, a man who is himself a famous Scientist/ Naturalist/ Linguist named Dr. Carlton Lyme, of Cornwall, England. He is related to both Charles Darwin and Carl Linneaus, and he arrives in the States to review the authenticity of the T.C. of 1835. While there, he explores the wildlife in the nearby swampy marshland by rowboat, (he is at heart a Naturalist), and makes the startling discovery that his linguistic research specialty, that of the ancient Cornish language is spoken by a Community of Inhabitants, as he refers to them.
The first is finding the whereabouts of the definitive ancient Volume on Taxonomy, The Taxonomic Compendium of Eighteen Thirty-five, a huge tome, illustrated with hundreds of line engravings, and containing the most complete listings of all known Science pertaining to Nature from that time period. The second is that he soon meets and is able to speak with a group representing Nature and its many dozens of different species.
The T.C. of 1835 is in the hands of a Naturalist living on a houseboat in Florida, who has contacted our narrator-translator in the Scilly Isles, a man who is himself a famous Scientist/ Naturalist/ Linguist named Dr. Carlton Lyme, of Cornwall, England. He is related to both Charles Darwin and Carl Linneaus, and he arrives in the States to review the authenticity of the T.C. of 1835. While there, he explores the wildlife in the nearby swampy marshland by rowboat, (he is at heart a Naturalist), and makes the startling discovery that his linguistic research specialty, that of the ancient Cornish language is spoken by a Community of Inhabitants, as he refers to them.
- Éditeur:
- AuthorHouse
- Sortie:
- Feb 11, 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781477298688
- Format:
- Livre
À propos de l'auteur
Victor Valla is an artist-educator who has been involved in publishing for over 30 years. His experience illustrating stories and book covers for many different genres and ages has included providing accompanying artwork for almost all of the major Hardcover and Paperback Book Publishers as well as many Magazine Publishers, mostly based in the New York area.
His initial chosen vocation, that of combining the written and illustrated word, together with a lifelong love of writing itself, has finally and logically resulted in his present concentration on the equally fascinating career of creating his own written material. That step reached an important turning point when he was commissioned by the Postal Commemorative Society to research and help write the text for a collection of one-hundred of his own original historical paintings entitled: Milestones of the American West: A Pictorial History.
He has also been a professor of Art, Art History and Graphic Design, and has taught full-time at many Art Schools and Universities, including the Rochester Institute of Technology, (where he also graduated with his BFA), and Syracuse University, Kean University in New Jersey, and the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia.
His Masters of Fine Arts degree was earned at the University of Illinois, in Champaign-Urbana. He was then awarded a Tiffany Foundation Grant to live and work as a post graduate in Paris, where he studied Printmaking at the famed Atelier 57. While living abroad, he travelled widely, and further developed his early career in Fine Art, Illustration and Graphic Design. He is of French and Danish heritage and is married to Justine Armanini Valla, a Textile Print Designer and Craftsperson.
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The Invasion of Marcia Lake - Victor Valla
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: 1-800-839-8640
© Victor Valla. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
Published by AuthorHouse 03/09/13
ISBN: 978-1-4772-9869-5 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4772-9870-1 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4772-9868-8 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012923832
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,
and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Contents
Acknowledgements by the Narrator-Translator
Regarding the Taxonomic Compendium of 1835
Narrator & Translator Biography
Narrator-Translator’s Forward to the Text
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
About the Author-Illustrator
"Hilarious & Heart-rending. A very compelling Fable—one written on many levels. The Taxonomic Compendium is a hoot . . . it reads as if it is the definitively authoritative book in the field . . . and it easily fooled most of us for a time."
International Society of the Royal Order of the Leek
Sir Carlton has done it again. Cornwall is justly proud of their almost-native son, the Penzance Pirate, Professor Lyme. We ardently await his return to the nearby Institute for Advanced Communication of an Extraordinary Nature, (in Cornwall at Scilly), and will offer him a basket of pasties and scones when he does so.
Cornwall Tasty Comestibles Board
Marcia Lake is set in a Southern region of our very watery state, although we have yet to come across it. The Taxonomic Compendium of 1835 reads like a British Naturalist’s version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams would surely have been thrilled to find it. (We sincerely hope that he has finally done so.)
Miami Record-Examiner
An important Instant Classic!
The Invasion of Marcia Lake is a philosophic treatise on Peace and War, Terrorism and Diplomacy, Anger and Revenge and much more. It is comprised of part spiritual enlightenment, part irreverent metaphoric fable, part accepted or unquestioned gibberish, and altogether entertaining fictional truths.
New York Review of Significant Tomes
Who amongst us, eminent Scientists and Naturalists, and the occasional Linguist, would not do well to absorb the larger meaning of such a vital resource as this one. Our lives are ever richer through the avid contemplation and gained knowledge provided by an entity such as the Community of Inhabitants.
Friends of the Earthly Realm
This marshy lake region must be found at once and then secured and protected from any further exploitation—such as that often instigated by tourism. We suggest a high fence with gates and the designation as a National Park.
Worldwide Wilderness Places
Acknowledgements by the Narrator-Translator
T he aforementioned individual wishes to thank the many Inhabitant members of the Community who have so generously allowed the use of their names in the telling of their collective experience. It has been a privilege for him to meet such a wonderful assortment of personalities and to have them openly and wholeheartedly share their fascinating tale. A nearly complete glossary listing of all those who still inhabit their small area of marsh and wood on Marcia Lake follows the text of the Tale.
This dictionary, as it were, also makes mention of the specific character traits exemplified by many of the Inhabitants he has come to know and love through his research. It is his thought that such attributes may well be the very same ones that can easily be found to attach to such species in both historical and in mythological lore. These wondrous entities have made it possible for the most accurate interpretation of their narrative to be offered to the present reader, and also to be conveyed widely to the greater audience it now enjoys. Neither the means by which all of this information was convincingly relayed to the narrator, nor the rather laborious methods of its translation can be fully revealed at this time, due to previously agreed-upon conditions. As a Communications Linguistics Research Professor, and in the interest of relating a tale that would otherwise have been impossible to share, he has reluctantly accepted these modest limitations.
In addition, the astute reader may accurately surmise that the name Marcia Lake is not the actual name of the lake upon whose cove the Community dwells, as the members of the Community hardly wish their location to become the widespread focus of attention from throngs of interested tourists. By the very nature and location of their habitat, they are not accustomed to intruders, as this book clearly indicates. While they have recently learned much about such invasions, it is understandable that they might yet remain somewhat wary.
It may be sufficiently comforting for the reader to know most assuredly that the Community continues to thrive. Surely, in the future, it will only be with the fullest cooperation by all enlightened Humans who come into contact with these Inhabitants that such exemplary news may continue to be the case. The narrator sincerely desires that result for this tiny Community of widely varied creatures as for all other such Communities, large and small, throughout this world and any others.
Regarding the Taxonomic Compendium of 1835
F urther acknowledgements are to be made regarding The Taxonomic Compendium of 1835 from which many asides are noted and indicated by a distinct typeface within the textual passages and chapters of this narrative. By the inclusion of these many referenced paragraphs, otherwise footnoted passages pertaining to the main body of the book are thus meant to be read sequentially and in situ
as relevant additional amplifications. Almost all such insights have been taken directly from the Taxonomic Compendium of 1835, with a few additional narrator’s notes also included in like manner and form. A brief description of that weighty tome and more about its provenance follows the Taxonomic Compendium Cover Page. The astute reader will find such materials to be absolutely vital in understanding the Community of Inhabitants, perhaps to thus more fully appreciate the intent of the narrator-translator in imparting their harrowing, yet uplifting Anthropomorphic Fable.
Narrator & Translator Biography
T he distinguished narrator of this volume, a Naturalist-Scientist-Linguist of international repute, is none other than The Right Honorable Sir Carlton Erasmus Lyme, PhD, Royally Knighted Member of The Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Leek. His luminous background, here greatly condensed, may be briefly described as follows:
Dr. Lyme was born in Leeds, a part of the lush West York Moors of Yorkshire County, a somewhat Northerly Historic English County of the United Kingdom, often referred to as Gods Own Country
. His family lineage was favored, of course, to have been that of the most eminent Naturalist, Biologist and Scientist, Carolus von Linné, referenced more often today as Carl Linneaus, having, many years later, been anglicized to Lyme
, as it is herein. His Christian name was also meant to honor that of the other great Scientist-Naturalist of his day, Charles Darwin. His seldom used middle name, Erasmus, is that of the elder brother of Charles Darwin and also the same as the name given to their Fraternal Grandfather, but it quickly and often sadly led to his humorous, though little known nickname "Ersatz". (By sheer coincidence, the name Carlton House Terrace is now the premises of the famed Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. The Royal Society, for that is how it is known, is headquartered in the four buildings numbered 6-9.)
From the sublime and greenest of regions in the North, where he spent his childhood and young adult years, Professor Lyme found his way to the Firth of Forth, in Northern Scotland, where he entered the University of Edinburgh, as had both Charles and Erasmus Darwin themselves many decades earlier, then as now known as the Athens of the North
. There he quickly became a superior student and then a gifted Teaching Fellow in their renowned School of Biological Sciences, which unsurprisingly presently boasts a World Class Institute in genetic research.
Sir Carlton is best known for his breakthrough theories into the field of Communication and Linguistic Sciences as Applied to the Two Kingdoms of the Animal and Flora Classifications
. This text is the latest one of his many fine exemplars, all of which demonstrate the results of his endless investigations into that highly technical, yet somewhat arcane research subject. Others include the recently acclaimed Mycology, Your Collegy: Semiotics of the Fungi Kingdom
, the best-selling classic Spencerology: Noah’s Linguistical Secret
, (the word spencerology
being, of course, a reference to communication between animals and distinguishable from anthroposemiotics, the study of human communication), and the rather more famous Aesop, Perhaps, But It’s All Greek to Me
.
Since 1988, he has been the principal force behind the Institute for Advanced Communications of an Extraordinary Nature, a preeminent think tank within the purview of the University of Exeter, but whose research is largely carried out in both Cornwall and on the Isle of Scilly at their fledgling Colleges of Cornish Language Studies. Though Cornish is a strange and mystifying language by all accounts, in its defense, the narrator would no doubt agree with the words of the eminent Nobel prize-winning scholar, Elias Canetti, who is thought to have once opined: "There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth."
Dr. Erasmus Lyme makes his present home, at least for several months of every year, in the Gulf Coast region of North America, not at all greatly distant to the wondrous Florida Everglades. He continues to travel widely, speaking before highly appreciative audiences, in countless oratorial engagements throughout the English-speaking world, and offering avid listeners the valuable results of his many decades of scientific inquiry. He remains, as yet, unmarried, but he reluctantly admits to having now and again wished that he might have sired a son or daughter to carry on his exemplary and multifaceted Scientific and Linguistic Missions. All those who best know this eminent man of science, including those fortunate enough to consider ourselves either friend or acquaintance, wholeheartedly concur.
Narrator-Translator’s Forward to the Text
I t was by a chance encounter with many of the distinctly eminent members of the Community of Inhabitants, on the first of his many forays into the marsh and woods area on Marcia Lake, that the Naturalist-Scientist and Narrator of this volume unearthed this most compelling story. While it is an important one to relate, to be sure, because the tale offers within its verifiable facts so many universal truths and relevancies to the present, this well-documented tale none-the-less also completely contradicts much of the previously gathered knowledge as to our revered Gaia figure, Mother Nature herself. Furthermore, the wisdom therein also questions the previous Taxonomically reported capabilities of her many Classified Orders within the Kingdoms of both Flora and Fauna, as well as many other Entities, such as those of the Mineral Kingdom that are scarcely even included in any such tome.
In this volume, this individual cites, by annotation and other asides, a Reference Treatise that was compiled as long ago as the Year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Thirty-Five. The Taxonomic Compendium was magnificently famous for its time and any other time. (There is much more to be found on that subject in the introduction to the Taxonomic Compendium section.) Such an ancient tome as this one was thus utilized, despite some unsupportable and often dubious information contained between its heavy and ornate leather covers, for a larger and therefore quite defensible purpose. There are two principal reasons given for an otherwise scrupulously precise Naturalist/ Scientist/ Linguist narrator, together with the fulsome acquiescence of his fastidious editor, in taking this somewhat controversial decision:
The First of these is this: The Taxonomic Compendium of 1835 is thought to be the most complete volume of collected information regarding the Kingdom of Animals ever compiled. This is due to the fact, as mentioned above, and in spite of the often questionable conclusions to be found therein, of its astonishing depth of investigation into all aspects of the Animal Kingdom, and for authentic information pertaining to that Kingdom as well as peripheral information regarding the Kingdom of the Flora as habitat for the many Inhabitant Species. As such, more recent texts, printed since that long-ago time period, have utilized this very volume as their seminal source for countless bits of widely accepted esoteric data regarding species from almost every region of known (and sometimes only partially explored) geographical terrain.
The Second reason is as follows: The entire Review Board and the main body of Scientists, Naturalists, Botanists and varied other disciplines who compiled the astonishing volume of information suddenly disbanded shortly after the printing of the Taxonomic Compendium sometime after 1835 and before the next quadrennial volume was to be published. Thus, there is no more recent updating of the Compendium for one to reliably turn. The reasons for such a tragic eventuality have never been made public and may only be surmised. We have but this very early text to remind ourselves of the heights to which serious Scientific Inquiry had arisen by that date. It is with this in mind, and having been afforded unheard of access to the most classic of such volumes, the narrator has used it as his bible in his quest to explain the compelling true story of the Community and its beleaguered Inhabitants to the lay public.
Thus, in spite of many often diametrically-opposite meanings as offered by the footnoted references to the actual events as they transpire within the tales told by the Inhabitants, it was felt that there is much to be gained by the reader in sorting out (on his or her own) the truth from the myth as the book unfolds. The present reader, as all others to follow, are hereby invited to do so, and to approach this task as that of the true scientifically oriented Inquiring Mind, with a consciousness open to challenge.
Introduction
T he Taxonomic Compendium was an early treatise widely now believed, if hardly yet proven, to have been published quadrennially for several decades, and only in the United Kingdom, although its distribution was widely accepted to include much if not all of the British Empire. It was begun as a Chartered Society, (read White-haired Men’s Club
), and is known to have met for many of its early decades in the University Goodfellows Library, of the College of St Martin, at Wye, England, and it was initially run by a group of mostly eccentric Scientists, Botanists, and Naturalists. These nonetheless highly gifted souls made it their mission to collect all known biological data, principally from the Old World, which might be useful in providing enlightening information on each and every Animal, Plant, Fungus, Monera, and Protozoa known to certain (mostly male) Humans at that time. The specific members of the Community whose story is related within the pages of this book are all found to be mentioned further in the Glossary to the Compendium, (located at the back of this book), though not by their given names, of course.
The only known extant copy of the 1835 Taxonomic Compendium has been on loan
for many decades from the London Institute of Interesting Ephemera (Worth Holding in High Regard) to a Biologist, Evolutionist, and Sociologist from Wales. That distinguished gentleman, who has asked to remain anonymous, has since moved across the pond
, as it were, to live as he has done for many years now, in a houseboat on a small lake in the Gulf Coast region of North America - not too distant from the present writing quarters and home office of the narrator. That site is also very close to the marshy cove whose Inhabitants and their transforming experiences have recently become the subject of this well-regarded and much researched book. It is with profound thanks to this Welsh individual for his many shared hours, together spent in poring over his exhaustive tome, that the narrator herein acknowledges his debt to both the Compendium and, of course, the Borrower
.
The Taxonomic Compendium was originally published by the most well-respected firm of its time, Wm. Claxon and Sons Press, founded in Cambridge, England in the year 1670. That firm eventually closed their massive doors not long after the publication of the Taxonomic Compendium of 1835, and they did so without publicly discussing the reasons for their having disbanded the many dozens of Review Boards which had comprised the membership of the Taxonomic Compendium Society. Whether the dissolution of that highly respected institution as well as its prestigious publication was the primary reason for the apparent ruin of the venerable Claxon Press or not, the equal of such exhaustive taxonomy has never since been undertaken by any known publisher.
What has not heretofore been mentioned is that there is another aspect to the weighty tome that has been so valuable in our understanding of this Community of Inhabitants who dwelled on Marcia Lake. This is the astonishing array of thousands of black and white line engravings depicting, in amazing detail, almost all members of both Kingdoms. Whom the artists may have been, or what has become of the original copper metal plates upon which these creations were incised remains a mystery. Perhaps they are deposited in the attic or basement of some University Library in the United Kingdom, or perhaps they have been spirited out by one or more of the honored members of the many dozens of Review Boards when the Taxonomic Compendium entity folded. If that is the case, we hope that the heirs to this enormous and valuable collection of artifacts will value them and take measures to preserve each as the most complete, historically accurate, and irreplaceable images of their kind ever attempted.
The Chapter heading pages in this book contain small reproductions of some dozens of these engravings, yet they are but a small representative group of those Species that inhabit the region of the Community we have come to know. To see the thousands of other Species so faithfully depicted in their many aspects, and from such a distant time, as this narrator was privileged to have been allowed to do, is to appreciate ever more such a treasured visual and factual data resource as the Taxonomic Compendium of Eighteen Hundred and Thirty-Five.
The oldest and strongest emotion of Mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the Unknown.
Howard Philips Lovecraft
I discovered the secret of the sea in meditation upon a dewdrop.
Kahlil Gibran
Everything that lives, Lives not alone, nor for itself.
William Blake
PROLOGUE
Narrator/ Translator’s Tale
I t is my distinct and unaccustomed pleasure to describe for you, Dear Reader, and in some considerable detail, how it happened that I became the most fortunate of Naturalist-Scientist Researchers and how I did so in separate but quite amazingly related ways. One of these involved sheer happenstance, and the other was a product of meticulous effort on my part, although I must ascribe both to some non-scientific form of Celestial Intervention, (which I am most delighted to do).
The first of these most fortuitous of discoveries was to unearth finally the location of the most treasured of historical volumes entirely and enthrallingly related to one of the fields to which I have dedicated much of my professorial life - that of Taxonomy, the study and classification of all Living Things, (as well as the Kingdom of Minerals - an area in which I have barely had time to dabble). That this volume should become available to me, at a moment and in a manner that I will relate in due course, is one exceedingly fascinating event.
That I should also be enabled to refer to it just when I had chanced upon a Community of Living Things that was remarkably positioned for my Communication Linguistics Evaluation Research Studies is quite another. Yet, as I was quickly to conclude, both events - the discovery of the taxonomic volume as well as that of encountering the willing subjects for study - did transpire almost simultaneously and both were found to be within a very compressed and one might say intricately small environmental region, geographically speaking.
Cited notations within the text will often be devoted to bits of information culled from the Taxonomic Compendium of 1835 and especially from its authoritative appendix. (see the introduction to that seminal volume). These specific passages have been chosen for their relevancy to the Community or to an Inhabitant specie’s issue as these arise during the telling of our tale. These carefully chosen inserts have been tethered to their specific chapter in a straightforwardly linear manner, and they occur several times within each of the various chapters of the treatise. Sometimes they are offered here as interesting amplification or reflect a broader base of information about specific creatures that populate the area of Marcia Lake. Perhaps the reader will wonder at the seeming disparity between what is taking place amongst the Inhabitants and the scientific knowledge from the Compendium, purportedly covering the same point.
It is not the narrator’s intent to offer judgement on any of the scientists who compiled the Taxonomic Compendium, but rather to suggest to the readers that they should come to their own conclusions as to which views to take concerning any referenced topic. It may be somewhat enlightening to observe the daily concerns of the Community from the inside, as this book surely attempts to do, if only to appreciate the divergence that still exists between
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