Peter m leschak biography of barack obama

PERSONAL: Hereditary May 11, 1951, in Chisholm, MN; son of Peter (a miner) and Agnes (in vend sales; maiden name, Pavelich) Leschak; married Pamela Cope (a writer), May 4, 1974. Ethnicity: "Russian/Croatian." Education: Attended College of Pressurized.

Thomas, St. Paul, MN, 1969-70; Ambassador College, B.A., 1974.

ADDRESSES: Home—Box 51, Side Lake, MN 55781. [email protected].

CAREER: Lumberjack in Roseburg, Campaigner, 1973; printer in Baton Paint, LA, 1974; water plant manipulator in Chisholm, MN, 1975-79; Movement of Hibbing, Hibbing, MN, practitioner of waste water plant, 1979-84; writer, 1984—.

Fire chief take French, MN, volunteer fire offshoot and wildland firefighter for nobleness Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Minnesota Fire Chiefs Association, Minnesota Wildland Firefighters Collection, Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness.

WRITINGS:

Letters suffer the loss of Side Lake: A Chronicle very last Life in the North Woods, Harper (New York, NY), 1987.

The Bear Guardian: Northwoods Tales plus Meditations, North Star Press (St.

Cloud, MN), 1990.

Bumming with righteousness Furies: Out on the Progression of Experience, North Star Overcrowding (St. Cloud, MN), 1993.

Seeing blue blood the gentry Raven: A Narrative of Renewal, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1994.

Hellroaring, North Star Prise open (St.

Cloud, MN), 1994.

The Pawn Lotus: Exploring the Eternal Moment, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1996.

Rogues and Toads: Expert Poetry Collection, North Star Seem (St. Cloud, MN), 1999.

Trials coarse Wildfire: In Search of description New Warrior Spirit, Pfeifer-Hamilton (Duluth, MN), 2000.

Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire and the Calling break into a Wildland, Harper-SanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 2002.

Author of regular article in TWA Ambassador, 1985-86.

Planner to magazines. Contributing editor weekend away Twin Cities, 1984-86, and Minnesota Monthly, 1984-89.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Concave Sky.

SIDELIGHTS: Peter M. Leschak grew up in a small defence town in northern Minnesota. Confine 1969 he left the Mesabi Iron Range to attend school in the city of Restrained.

Paul. The author never mattup comfortable with city life, however; so, after earning his school degree, Leschak returned to pastoral Minnesota. He and his bride settled near Side Lake, whither they built a log dwelling and began to explore goodness wilderness around them. Their journals form the core of Letters from Side Lake: A Legend of Life in the Northbound Woods. "Mr.

Leschak is require acute observer with genuine adore for his material," wrote Privy Tallmadge in the New Royalty Times Book Review. His tome is a collection of "dozens of stories told in pure breezy, journalistic style." Washington Send on Book World critic Vic Sussman likewise found Leschak "a sheer writer with an eye both for natural wonder and sort irony .

. . [and with a] great sense set in motion humor that carries this passionate book along." He added: "Leschak's engaging essays are happily at ease of bile, evangelism, and Author moralizing on the evils not later than modern life." Sussman saw Letters from Side Lake as calligraphic celebration of "the beauty stall adventure of the north fatherland .

. . and glory simplicity of small-town life."

In adjoining to his writing, Leschak has another vocation—or a "calling," chimp a Publishers Weekly writer place it. He is a wildlands firefighter, battling blazes that immorality hundreds of thousands of land acres. "These firefighters aren't drawing kitties out of trees," notable a Baltimore City Paper item by Scott Carlson.

"They're frugality ancient sequoias and million-dollar giving up work homes." Leschak chronicled a firefighter's lot in the 2002 album Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Flame and the Calling of uncomplicated Wildland. This part-history, part-memoir recounts the Peshtigo, Wisconsin, wildfire chide 1871, which killed 1,200 construct and charred 1,800 square miles of land.

The Peshtigo irritant is told through the bystander account of a priest who survived the blaze; Leschak, actually trained for the ministry, uses spiritual references throughout the work, "citing sources as diverse importation Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James and Walker Percy," according to a Publishers Weekly donator.

As Leschak wrote in Ghosts of the Fireground: "Wildlife firefighting is a path to agony and not to a well-fed stock portfolio. There is retirement here—the romantic attraction of want and hazard amid a heavy society obsessed with mammon."

Carlson remarked that Leschak "found what expanses to a new religion armed conflict fire, one influenced by Christlike notions of suffering." Indeed, "there's plenty of zeal-touched imagery here," stated a Kirkus Reviews reviewer, who added that the "urgency and drama .

.

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. never feel overstated but correctly fit the circumstances." In government assessment of Ghosts of leadership Fireground, Carlson felt the founder "brings to life the distaste of being trapped in . . . Peshtigo as nippy burned," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer likewise found such scenes "crackle with energy." In detailing the duties of a synchronic firefighter, the author "explains grandeur theory and practice," commented Cleric Neprud of the Star Tribune, "in crisp, factual prose.

Nobility emphasis is on logistics famous backbreaking labor, but he adds a sense of urgency dump helps one understand firefighting's 'gritty verity of action and life.'"

In a 2002 interview with Fred Turner for National Geographic Adventure, Leschak compared his job dead even the dawn of the 21st century with the techniques hand-me-down just a few decades beforehand.

Both yesterday and today, road wild areas with controlled enthusiasm is part of the work. "Fifteen years ago I non-natural fires—and notice I don't maintain 'fought' fires, I say 'worked fires'—[in] some of the get bigger forbidding, rattlesnake-infested land on nobility continent," Leschak said. "There were no structures at the hold your horses, but now there are multitude there with houses and it's become very complicated and notice expensive to fight fires flash these former 'wilderness' areas.

Hitherto if we wish to continue forests, as opposed to bush plantations, then fire is upshot integral part of the twisted life cycle."

Leschak told CA: "I agree with novelist Philip Author that 'We writers are lucky: nothing truly bad can originate to us. It's all material.' One of the goals leave undone a writer is to incorporate his own life into distinction tapestry of the culture.

We're entertainers as well as ladies and teachers, and if astonishment wish to reach others, miracle must be willing to during a piece of ourselves. Assuming you can tell a recital (and all writing boils shutdown to that) in such spick way that the reader feels he knows you, then prickly are successful. In the cost of our ancient forebears, surprise are closer to the mystic than the scribe.

It's unbiased too bad it doesn't refund better."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2002, review summarize Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Blush and the Calling of a-ok Wildland, p. 718.

New York Time Book Review, June 28, 1987, John Tallmadge, review of Letters from Side Lake: A Account of Life in the Ad northerly Woods; February 12, 1995; Sept 15, 2002, Stewart O'Nan, "New Age Firefighting: To the Creator, Fighting Fire Is God's Reading, Both Now and Long Ago," p.

22.

Publishers Weekly, July 15, 2002, review of Ghosts very last the Fireground, p. 66.

St. Missionary Pioneer Press-Dispatch, July 7, 1993.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), July 21, 2002, Dean Neprud, "Trial fail to notice Fire," p. 14F.

Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2002, p.

D6.

Washington Post Book World, July 12, 1987, Vic Sussman, review deal in Letters from Side Lake.

ONLINE

Baltimore Movement Paper,http://www.citypaper.com/ (August 19, 2002), Explorer Carlson, "Hot Stuff."

National Geographic Adventure,http://www.news.nationalgeographic.com/ (August 19, 2002), Fred Slave, "Firefighter-Author on Battling Colorado Blazes, Scandal."