All Beautiful, a Journey Through the Year
52 Short Sweet Tales Written and Read on Public Radio
All Beautiful, a Journey Through the Year is an audio-CD collection of 52 stories written and read on public radio by Terry Marotta, each one a brief celebrations of our lives. Because they go week by week through the year, she decided to name the audio book after her favorite season-celebrating hymn, “All Beautiful the March of Days,” with its vivid imagery about ‘the Hand that shaped the rose’ having also ‘wrought the crystal of the snow.’
As you begin with CD One, called Shiver and Thaw, you will hear about some funny bits of winter misery, including ancient hair-raising cold remedies (“take the scraggy part of a neck of mutton”) and a Valentine gift gone badly awry, and more - until slowly, as the sun grows stronger, people start having adventures outside the house again. At that point, CD Two, dubbed Yawn and Stretch, covers those weeks of billowing warmth with its recitals and weddings and the general breaking-free that comes with the last day of school; with talk of heat waves and Rest Hours at summer camp. Finally, CD Three, Learn and Remember, covers the September-through-December interval that brings squirrels and school rules, college tours and the sweeping-clean that Nature enacts to help us see more clearly, enjoy the approach of the holidays and gear up for the new year coming.
Terry’s thanks go out to all who made this book possible, from award-winning composer, musician and sound engineer Roger Baker of Albuquerque to the crews at the Public Radio stations who first granted her access to their microphones. As for her hopes, they go out to you that these mini-tales help you realize we are more closely bound to Nature than we thought, and sensitive to each of her brief and lovely seasons.
