Losing Moses on the Freeway

Here's a shorter version of my original blog about this book.

• Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, "All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do." —Exodus 24:3

• Now behold, one came and said to Jesus, "Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?" So Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments." —Matthew 19:16-17

• The way we know we've been transferred from death to life is that we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who doesn't love is as good as dead. —1 John 3:14

• Blessed are those who do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. Revelation 22:14

from the baptismal liturgy:

"In Christian love you have presented these children for Holy Baptism. You should, therefore, faithfully bring them to the services of God's house, and teach them the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. As they grow in years, you should place in their hand the Holy Scriptures…"

Serendipitously I happened to buy a book by former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges; it's Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America.

In the author's story I recognize major parts of my own journey. At the beginning, the author explains God gave us the Sinai Covenant, the ten words – decalogue or commandments – to enable and sustain community—:

"They [the commandments] were for the ancients, and are for us, the rules that, when honored, hold us together and when dishonored lead to alienation, discord and violence."

Chris Hedges opens the first chapter, Mystery, with his experience as a young seminarian serving a people and a church in the inner-city Boston neighborhood of Roxbury. Its normative violence and human degradation, crumpling, decaying physical infrastructure, pervasive aura of wastedness and death amounted to a setting he'd not previously known (and probably hadn't imagined).

On page 18 Hedges, son of a pastor, admits in words identical to what I've said and written dozens of times over the past few years, "The church was part of my daily rhythm. I look at the world through the eyes it gave me." Also parallel to my experience he says, "But I also knew the church's dark side, its self-righteous smugness, its crushing piety, the way it used religion to exalt itself and how it often masked human cruelty behind the quest for virtue and piety." [page 19] To that I'll add the petty viciousness, self-centeredness, and destructiveness of both local and judicatorial church politics.

I relate to the author's anger as he chronicles [page 11] smashing a glass bottle against the front door of the church building as "…an ending, a final conclusion to a life spent in the powerful and claustrophobic embrace of the church. It is meant to be a break from God. But you trade one god for another. This is how life works. We all have gods."

For myself, the unanticipated separation from full participation in the church to which I'd devoted years of my life and that had played a central role in shaping my goals, lifestyle, and worldview is like experiencing my own death.

On page 11 Hedges says we circle back to the origins of our lives, "if not to embrace it, then to understand how it shaped us, to examine with less heat and anger our marks and scars."

I'm still examining the mosaic in order to find my place, just as I try to discern ways I've helped create it as it has created and recreated me.

On page 175 the author wisely reminds us "They [the commandments] do not call us to practice total self-abnegation, empowering others, as I did at first in Roxbury, to abuse us. They call us rather toward mutual respect and mutual self-sacrifice." In words from a pastor with whom I worked alongside, "God calls us to serve, but not to be walked all over."

To illustrate his advice of setting (physical, in this case) boundaries so you won't be broken and violated, Hedges gives the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. walking from Montgomery to Memphis with a detachment from the National Guard. [pages 29-30]

From the Holy Communion liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer:

God spake these words, and said:

I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods but me.

Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.

Examine your lives and conduct by the rule of God's commandments, that you may perceive wherein you have offended in what you have done or left undone, whether in thought, word, or deed. …

Like Israel formed in the searing heat and God's minimal yet faithful supply of the exodus desert, we are a people, a nation. In Lord's Day worship we retell, re-enact in baptism and the Eucharist the meta-narrative of our deliverance from death into life, of Jesus' death and resurrection. Although sometimes I think I loved the Church more than I loved Jesus, after beginning really to hear my story, someone asked me why on earth I'd remained in the church at all and I replied, "This is where I find the sacraments!"

In the Love chapter: "But by giving up parts of ourselves for others, by accepting that we must be willing to lose life to create and preserve life, we honor the core of the commandments. The commandments hold out to us the possibility of love." [page 173] Chris Hedges [page 174]: "The covenant offered by the commandments, the covenant of life, is the covenant of love. It is a covenant that recognizes that all life is sacred and love is the force that makes life together possible. … But it is never too late to turn back. Atonement permits a new way of being. It calls us to life." [pages 173-175]

We people of Maundy Thursday have received Jesus' New Commandment, the mandate of love faithful unto death; by faith and in the Spirit we have infinite access to Jesus Christ's atonement for the buying back, the redemption, for the life of all creation.

Then Moses took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient." —Exodus 24:7

Here we will take the wine and the water;
here we will take the bread of new birth,
here you shall call your sons and your daughters,
call us anew to be salt for the earth.

Give us to drink the wine of compassion;
give us to eat the bread that is you;
nourish us well, and teach us to fashion
lives that are holy and hearts that are true.

Marty Haugen, Here in This Place/Gather Us In, © 1982 GIA Publications, Inc.
• my Amazon review: law that binds; commands that free

Your Mercies Are New Today

Contemporary Christian Rock & Praise & Worship since 1982.

Christian musician Louis Tata from the town of Mashpee, along the south shore of upper Cape Cod, offered some copies of his CD on Facebook; happily, he sent me one! You can find the CD and individual MP3s on amazon.

• Your Mercies Are New Today compact disc on amazon

The entire CD features a rich, open, resonant, full, acoustic sound that literally could not be better! I hardly can overemphasize the importance of sound quality. I've given away (as in donated to charity) too many CDs where the performances themselves were fine, but the sound didn't measure up―to such an extreme extent I didn't want to listen.

Music, lyrics, and arrangements on Your Mercies Are New Today all are fairly simple "rock & praise & worship," yet in a surprising variety of musical styles. Needless to say, I prefer some tracks; after a few listenings, the slower, more somber songs (2, 6, and 9) still didn't appeal to me as much as the others did.

CD info: original music and lyrics by Louis Tata; released July 17, 2012 on the CD Baby label.

Other production credits include:

• Paul Frederickson – background vocals
• Art Leather – harmonica
• Keith Tata – rhythm Guitar
• Don Spaulding – acoustic guitar
• Keri Tata – graphics

• Louis Tata Music on Facebook

• Louis on ReverbNation

• my amazon review: Contemporary Christian Rock, Praise, Worship

Red Hot Christmas Blues

Sounds like… community Christmas at the cathedral!

Released in August 2007 and featuring producer Mark Baldwin's guitar that often sears, sometimes sings and at times laments, Red Hot Christmas Blues reminds us of the frequent messiness of life, the apocalyptic hope of Advent and the surprise of God's Nativitytide appearance in the Bethlehem manger. Except for the introductory "Christmas Blues" vocal bewailing wintry conditions of broken life and broken bank account, playlist titles are Christmas carols you get to sing in church and listen to on radio and MP3 throughout the season.

However, in liturgically logical order:

1. Christmas Blues
2. What Child Is This?
3. Silent Night
4. Go Tell It On The Mountain
5. I Wonder As I Wander
6. O Holy Night
7. Angel Shuffle
8. The First Noel

…jazz illuminations carry a revelatory twist and provocative style you don't often get on the radio or at church. I cannot help but imagine Christmas Eve at the downtown cathedral or tall steeple, or just as easily these offerings could be from a smaller nearby parish with wide-open doors that invite and include all comers.

In 4 minutes and 47 seconds "Angel Shuffle," a wildly improvised version of "Angels we Have Heard on High" probably is my favorite among favorites on this CD. I won't try describing it but can assure you it's worth the price and the storage space—from someone (me!) who doesn't buy many CDs these days and gave away quite a few quite a while ago. Walter Bruggemann says only grief enables newness (something about getting out of denial, maybe?) and "Angel Shuffles" brings together sorrow, regret, loss and anger with the surprise of God's renewing presence in our very midst.

And would you believe, bible specialists Thomas Nelson published this music CD?! Not surprisingly, I love the artwork and package design by Christie Knubel. Finally, you easily can find Red Hot Christmas Blues on eBay and Amazon, so go for it!

• my amazon review: sounds like… Community Christmas at the Cathedral!

Cool Jazz Christmas

Eric Darken and company bring an enjoyable Christmas music collection with another project from Nashville, Tennessee in

• Cool Jazz Christmas, Refreshing Holiday Instrumentals.

For the most part the music conveys a sort of New-Agey, cool, casual and offhand sensibility that passes time pleasantly with an occasional sequence or riff that makes you want to listen again because it was unusual, unique and... repeatable. The sound is excellent and over all Cool Jazz Christmas is well-produced, but it's more the kind of performance you have playing in the background instead of sitting down with to savor every sound. However, "O Come, All ye Faithful" with Mark Baldwin on keyboards and sax by Mark Douthit is worth the price of the CD--I wanted to say there was a best out of all of tracks, and happily there is. The playlist is church, mall and radio standards, but even with quite a few newer songs and carols, what would the season be without these?

1. Winter Wonderland
2. Joy to the World
3. Deck the Halls
4. We Three Kings
5. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
6. Here We Come a Caroling
7. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
8. O Little Town of Bethlehem
9. O Come, All Ye Faithful
10. Pat-a-Pan

Front and back cover designs are beautiful enough (almost) to make me want them in LP-album cover size—remember when we used to leave our currently best and favorite ones out for show? The credits conclude with, "Above all, thanks to the Creator of such wonderful and meaningful music. Merry Christmas!" Amen!

• my amazon review: For a Cool Jazz Christmas

Christmas on the Border

• Christmas on the Border on Amazon

...A Spicy Holiday Recipe of Texas Blues, Hot Country, and Mexican Salsa as well as a project and production from the town of Nashville, Tennessee, a place doesn't exactly border Mexico (or Canada, for that matter). "O Holy Night" and "What Child is This" are rocked-up essential classics; I could listen endlessly to a memorably haunting "The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy" or "I Wonder as I Wander." The style of "Joy to the World" and "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentleman," both just enough different from what you're used to that you listen more carefully all make for a CD to play over and over and recommend, too. Except for the definitely secular "Up On the Rooftop" the songs are classic North American (USA and Canada) Christmas worship, church pageant and radio top-40 favorites.

Since I included playlists from my other two Christmas CD reviews, here are the songs on this one:

1. Children Go Where I Send Thee
2. Joy to the World
3. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
4. Go Tell It on the Mountain
5. The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy
6. O Holy Night
7. I Wonder as I Wander
8. What Child Is This?

How apt and how fun this is as an example of contextualizing the Gospel and incarnating Christianity with cross-cultural musical styles, a little of this and a little of that, each still in its original idiom yet woven into the other idiom. It reminds me of the C.S. Lewis Dawn Treader quote on my Facebook page: "...said the Lamb, "For you the door into Aslan's country is from your own world." ... "There is a way into my country from all the worlds," said the Lamb...and he was Aslan himself..."

I have the impression the CD title is supposed to reference Tex-Mex style and culture, but cross-culture border styles of Southern California/ Northern Mexico and Southern Arizona/ Northern Mexico I'm familiar with aren't exactly like this CD. "Christmas on the Border" and chili pepper art both suggest songs sung in Spanish or at least partly so--in these here parts we've been known to have macaronic English/Spanish liturgies and many of us speak passable Spanglish. That's simply a passing comment, though, and I predict you'll enjoy the energy, twang, and harmonic color of Christmas on the Border (the CD).

• my amazon review: A Christmas Keeper!

Pop Rock Christmas

• Pop Rock Christmas CD on Amazon.

These days I buy very few CDs and even have given away quite a few, but I got this CD after Christmas for a great price and I'm glad I did. "The First Noel" alone is worth far more than the price I paid and well worthy of many, many listenings; "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing" isn't far behind. In 1998 Tom Wanca produced and arranged as well as playing keyboards and organ and singing background vocals for Sheer Panic. With a touch of rock and more than a hint of classic country, the designation "Pop Rock" fits well as the arrangements basically rock the rhythm and skew the harmonizations most people are used to.

Liner notes provide performance and production details and in the interest of accommodating anyone who may have turned off browser images and/or are relying on an app to read the screen to them, here's the playlist that you can see contains non-exotic secular and more sacred songs for Christmas:

1. Angels We Have Heard On High
2. Up On The Housetop
3. Over The River And Through The Woods
4. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
5. The First Noel
6. I Saw Three Ships
7. Jolly Old St. Nicholas / Jingle Bells
8. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
9. Silent Night! Holy Night!
10. What Child Is This?

• my amazon review: country, rock, and pop for Christmas

JSB :: Orchestral Suites

The four Overtures or Orchestral Suites, BWV 1066-1069, by Johann Sebastian Bach are some of my all-time favorites. I love this recording by Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert, the orchestra he founded and led for thirty years.

I frequently find myself amazed at how well some older analog recordings have been digitally remastered, and at other times distressed at the poor quality of others. This CD of a recording made in 1979 was released in 2007; the performances approach essence of perfection and the recording sounds clear and bright and rich.


• my amazon review: clear perfection!

Soul Picnic

• Soul Picnic CD on Amazon

Would you believe I bought another CD majorly on sale? And it's another major winner! ... btw, this is news since it's been a few years since I've routinely brought new CDs into my living space. The playlist includes tracks with fun, casual titles:

1. Down to It
2. Soul Picnic
3. Made in the Shade
4. Some Like It Hot
5. Wanna Be There
6. Barbeque
7. Cool 'N Easy
8. Sweet Love

"Made in the Shade," "Wanna Be There," and "Sweet Love" all are so very joyful and forever listenable! The music and performances are way far too smooth to describe as funky, but the contained energy and clear recorded sound makes up for that and besides, who says all the music on Soul Picnic needs to be funky even when that's my mood? Highly recommend!

• My Amazon review: forever listenable

Santa Fe Trail

• Santa Fe Trail on Amazon

1. The Santa Fe Trail (Theme)

2. Independence Missouri (Trailhead)

3. Human Beings (Osage, Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Apache)

4. Incident at Council Grove

5. Vengeance on the Plains

6. Sorrow

7. Race Across the Colorado Desert (Timberwolves and Coyotes)

8. Taos

9. Sangre de Cristos

10. Americana Santa Fe (Terminus)

I've been enjoying the Natural Encounters CD series very much; I especially love the historical narrative in the liner notes for this Santa Fe Trail album! Ten instrumentals describe a journey along the Santa Fe trail from Independence, Missouri ("edge of the frontier"), finally into Santa Fe New Mexico ("wilderness of the American West"), appropriately riding the last phase of the trek alongside the Pecos River.

The notes tell us the music celebrates "all that is American Indian, Anglo, Latino" coming together to share the fruit. Musical style and scoring are bright, colorful, reflective, and evocative, without becoming wildly dissonant. You might want to stop for a while to listen, or play Santa Fe Trail in the background as you work through other tasks. This CD is © 1998.

• my amazon review: journey into a wilderness

Song of the Mississippi

• Song of the Mississippi by "various artists" on Amazon.

I chose this CD (because it was on sale) and because the title included "Mississippi." A song is music a river, a person, or an idea breathes and its surroundings hear; this song collection includes lovely, sometimes lively music with a classic "Americana" sound that easily helps you imagine river scenes, literature, and art along the vast range of the Mighty Mississipp, a river that carries legend, myth, individual stories and family histories along its lengthy course and upon its banks.

I was born in the deep South of the USA – in many ways born a child of the river – but left before I started forming memories. However, I clearly recall my first adult encounter with the River Mississippi in front of the hotel where I was staying for a conference in St Paul, Minnesota. I walked across the street, stood beside the river, and wept at its beauty.

The Natural Encounters playlist includes a lot of "Only in America" titles:

1. As the River Runs
2. Slow Water Blues
3. Madame Rosie's Poker Parlour
4. Harmonica Hoe-Down
5. Catfish Tales
6. River Fiddlin'
7. Sweet Prospect
8. Reverend White's Get Right Revival
9. Mighty Like a Rose
10. Piano Jive
11. Riverboat Rag
12. Mississippi Moon
13. Jaw Harp Jam
14. Snag Boat Blues
15. As the River Runs (Reprise)

The sound is open and clear, with enough presence to fill the room. This is the kind of music you can leave playing in the background or stop a while for some careful listening. There are several additional CDs in the Natural Encounters series that I hope to find at an affordable price, trusting they'll be as listenable and re-listenable as "Song of the Mississippi."

• my Amazon review: Song of the Mississippi

Chopin Piano Concertos :: Classically Elegant

• Chopin: The Piano Concertos—Lang Lang, pianist; Zubin Mehta conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

Given that Frédéric François Chopin lived during the 1^st half of the 19^th century and generally is considered a romantic compositor, "romantically elegant" might be a better review title, but pianist, orchestra and conductor all perform with more polished reserve and measured restraint then with passionate ardor and fiery abandon, so I'm going with classical.

Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 is my own favorite of the pair, and listening to both in a row is enjoyable, though both performances have a sense of sameness about them that's not necessarily a negative thing at all. Not surprisingly, Lang Lang's keyboard technique approaches perfection, the orchestra plays extremely well and the recording itself has an almost ideal level of brightness and presence.

As an aside, to all the non-pianists reading this, despite stereotypes to the contrary, Chopin's music is well-suited to the human hand and not technically difficult in the way Liszt's (for example) is, but it does take many hours of practice to get all but his simplest, shortest pieces to high-end performance-readiness. If you like piano music and if you like Chopin, I'd strongly recommend this released-in-2008 recording.

• my amazon review: classically elegant

A Cat Is Watching

• A Cat Is Watching: A Look at the Way Cats See Us by Roger A Caras on Amazon


A Cat Is Watching was the earlier of Roger Caras' pair of books about most people's most familiar companion animals, domestic felines and canines. He writes from lifelong knowledge—sometimes specifically about the Cats of Thistle Hill Farm. Caras' stories and observations are engaging, and even as someone who has lived with cats and known cats for a long time, I learned some new information.

Black and White photographs and drawings enhance the book and I love the chapter headings that each feature a line drawing of part of a cat's anatomy! Including an extensive index also was a smart move. This is the kind of book you might enjoy on a rainy afternoon or evening or carry to the beach for some pleasure reading. A Cat Is Watching definitely is worth finding at the book shop or yard sale, or borrowing from the library more than once.

• my amazon review: felines and friendships

A Dog Is Listening

• A Dog Is Listening: The Way Some of Our Closest Friends View Us by Roger A Caras on Amazon

This is the second of Caras' pair of books about most people's most familiar household companions, domestic felines and canines. For the title, the author picks up on the very very well-known phenomenal acuity and range of dogs' hearing. The book design is identical to that of A Cat Is Watching, and in this book also, I love the line drawings featuring snippets of dog anatomy for each chapter heading. Chapter 12 describes and lists members of each (at the time of writing and publication, 1992) American Kennel Club-recognized groups of dogs: Terrier; Non-Sporting; Herding; Sporting; Hound; and Working.

As someone who loves dogs but doesn't know them the way I almost instinctively "get" cats, I especially enjoyed and appreciated the history, anecdotes, and stories in the book. Similar to A Cat Is Watching, this book give the reader a sense of what's it's like to live with dogs who adore you rather than with cats who demand to be worshiped. A Dog Is Listening fully is worth any animal lover's acquiring, reading, and re-reading.

• my amazon review: dogs in the household

Designing B2B Brands

• Designing B2B Brands on Amazon


This beautifully planned, strikingly designed, and solidly produced book of a couple hundred pages amounts to a seminar in the highly integrated development and presentation of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a global brand I'd previously not known about. The Google short version of their mission tells us, "Deloitte services include audit, consulting, financial advisory, risk management and tax."

Indeed there are some differences between Business-To-Business and Business-To-Consumer branding; a comprehensive, up-to-date, panorama of a single firm is just that, and won't approach or touch upon every imaginable identity communication concern you may have about your own service or consumer product. Nonetheless, whether you're an MBA, an MFA, or work with branding in another capacity, these "lessons" the subtitle describes can be appropriated well and applied to good effect in many other cases. Following contemporary design trends, the book's open layout, excellent typography, and use of [literal] "white space" conveys a sense of leisurely opulence and purpose. Designing B2B Brands has found a place alongside the books I consult for inspiration and return to for advice.

• my amazon review: design seminar

Zoë's Cats

• Zoë's Cats on Amazon




Cats from her rural setting in Cornwall illustrate and provide narrative in Zoë Stokes' book of exquisitely detailed, full-colour, mostly realistic felines. You can leave Zoë's Cats on a table or nearby shelf, pick it up, read a paragraph or two, enjoy a cat view, and find yourself ready to return to mundane tasks. You might want to buy this book as a gift for yourself or a cat lover; the recipient will not be disappointed in the least!

• my amazon review: lovely gift

Desert Dance

• Desert Dance by Charlotte Armajo and Teri Sloat on Amazon

This is early October (when I first blogged and reviewed this on Preservation Project), and we recently experienced another full Harvest Moon like the one in Desert Dance. In colorfully subtle tertiary hues, Teri Sloat illustrates lizards, wild hares, rattlesnakes, sage hens, wolves, and roadrunners dancing under a bright moon as it illuminates the Southwestern USA desert. This mostly is a picture book of seven 2-page spreads, a title page and a closing page—the enchanting art totally makes the book sing! Not that Charlotte Armajo's simple text that includes a lot of repeated words almost any preschooler or early-grader would understand isn't well-done and appropriate, it just doesn't contain a whole lot of substance or imagination, so 4 stars total.

• my amazon review: desert dancing

Drawing and Reinventing Landscape

• Drawing and Reinventing Landscape, AD Primer on Amazon

It's wonderful having a multitude of full-colour illustrations of mostly non-computerized graphic landscape representations of many types – photographs, pencil drawings, ink and watercolour renderings, charts – in this book; details regarding history and current status of landscape architecture and garden design are interesting and illuminating, as well.

I chose Drawing and Reinventing Landscape because of my lifelong interest in cities and in the process of urbanization, and because of my current work as a graphic artist and designer. Author Diana Balmori has worked in the field of landscape architecture most of her life; her well-deserved degree of renown makes her expertise and perspective especially insightful and valuable.

However, I've removed a star because the text is too tiny for comfort, and its size adds an unattractive sense of miniaturization to the book. In natural light or with reading glasses I can read it easily enough, but a little less information – or the same information expressed more succinctly – would greatly increase the visual appeal. I assume all books in this AD Primer series carry the same general format, but related to my remarks about point size of text, if the publishers were not going to produce this book or the series in a larger format (not necessarily coffee-table size), I'd recommend increasing the font size. But happily, there's still enough literal "white space" on each page for create an altogether pleasing presentation.

• My Amazon review: landscape representation and history

The Tumbleweed Society

• Allison Pugh, The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity on Amazon

When I originally blogged and reviewed this book almost ten years ago in December 2014 on Preservation Project, I concluded:

I'd love to read a similar report about a similar population cohort about ten years from now. I also wonder where I'll be working, where you'll be working, if housing and employment will have settled down and stabilized? Or not?

Is that crazy, prophetic, prescient, or what?

Needless to say, the plant-people tumbleweed analogy won't parallel perfectly, but it's a colorfully useful image. Living in the southwest, I've seen lots of tumbleweeds, but still needed to learn a little about them. Via wikipedia, here are a few facts:

"A tumbleweed is a structural part of the above-ground anatomy of any of a number of species of plants, a diaspore that, once it is mature and dry, detaches from its root or stem, and tumbles away in the wind. ... Tumbleweed species occur most commonly in steppe and arid ecologies, where frequent wind and the open environment permit rolling without prohibitive obstruction ... Many tumbleweeds are ruderal species, opportunistic agricultural weeds."

Sociology sometimes is a quantifiable soft-scientific discipline that studies, analyzes, charts, and plots. At other times sociologists report in a more essayistic manner, using prose to describe their findings, as Allison Pugh does in The Tumbleweed Society. Our lives are about story, our lives becomes stories, and sometimes a narrative approach like this book uses lines out the truth a lot more clearly than charts, graphs, stats, and percentages do. Given the true employment insecurities many of us already have experienced, and every single one of us knows is out there, no wonder I found this book so interesting! Allison Pugh's writing flows well, without any annoying mannerisms, though I need to comment on what feels like her frequent use of "eschew" and its variants. Who on earth says "eschew"?

Pugh's and her colleagues' one-on-one interviews of and observations about eighty individuals demonstrate that these days job retention and change is mostly related to socioeconomic class, rather than being as ethnicity- or gender-driven as job and career opps were in times past. So we find high employment mobility and high residential relocation rates amongst those with high-end, elite level skills who tend to be sought out, sought after, and routinely draw high income levels. We also find high employment mobility and high residential relocation rates amongst those with approximately high school level schooling and skills.

But The Tumbleweed Society experiences not only "Working," but also "Caring in an Age of Insecurity," as the subtitle describes. Briefly, it seems as if a lot of people are okay with companies they work for having only nominal commitment to their workers' lives while the workers do their best by the company. On the other hand, we find truly dramatic, impressive instances of individuals maintaining "no matter what" commitments to family (parents, offspring, sibling) and significant others.

I'd love to read a similar report about a similar population cohort about ten years from now. I also wonder where I'll be working, where you'll be working, if housing and employment will have settled down and stabilized? Or not?

• my Amazon review: a book almost everyone can relate to

Daily Greens

• On Amazon, Daily Greens 4-Day Cleanse: Jump Start Your Health, Reset Your Energy, and Look and Feel Better than Ever! by Shauna Martin, with foreword by Mayim Hoya Bialik

I'm delighted I decided to read the book description and a couple of reviews before deciding this book wasn't for me, which almost happened because of the "Daily Greens 4-Day Cleanse" title. I've heard of various fasts and cleansings, but never undertaken either, but then when I realized author Shauna Martin included recipes for smoothies, salads, and a few other dishes, I figured Daily Greens would be useful and helpful in any case. I especially appreciate the first part of the book where Shauna (whose diet is completely plant-based) explains some of the rationale behind cleansings and fasts. Interesting stuff, as are her lively descriptions of various mostly green super-foods such as the currently super-popular kale, the eternally green fave spinach, (not really green) ginger root, watercress, dandelion greens, cilantro, etc.

This is about wisely eating seasonally, which means expending fewer $$$ while enjoying better tasting, more local, frequently organic, healthier fruits and veggies. All the recipes are simple, which adds to the book's appeal and utility. There also are several categorized shopping lists and an index.

A lot of the full-color photography, the text, and page design conveys a verdant, green, growing, and alive sensibility! Besides greens of differing hues and intensities in the layout and design, some of the backgrounds are a lovely, appealing cantaloupe color. Gorgeous full-page photos, lovely smaller pics, too. As a graphic artist-designer and as a reader, I appreciate the open layout of the pages with lots of literal "white space" so it's not cluttered like a pennysaver ad. I also like that the hardbound book stays open on its own. However, as interesting and almost essential as the descriptions and commentary are, given that recipes are the main thing, why not format ingredients and how-to instructions in a larger font that's easy for anyone to read? Even the introductory text to each recipe is in larger type than the recipes themselves!

Despite those reservations, I'm happy to own a copy of Daily Greens, with so many literally good enough to eat photographs, and especially knowing the recipes and ideas will entice me to shop and try some of Shauna Martin's smoothies and other creations.

• My Amazon review: greens & other earthly goodies

The New Shingled House

• The New Shingled House: Ike Kligerman Barkley on Amazon

Architects John Ike, Thomas A. Kligerman, and Joel Barkley have been partners for twenty-five years.

I'm a graphic designer with an interest in houses, and a theologian with a passion for their homemaking implications, so I ordered The New Shingled House―thanks, Amazon Vine! I've long majorly been about The City and Cities, too, and this book enhances my collection of quality printed urban books and city literature. However, the fourteen dwelling places in The New Shingled House are all around everywhere across the vast expanse of the continental USA, and not exclusively in cities. To cite the book description, "the shingled house can suggest the beach, the countryside, the mountains, and even the city."

The 10.3" x 12.3" format, (physically very) heavyweight book is packed full of full-color, mostly full page photographs of interiors and exteriors. It also provides descriptions, commentary, and floor plans. The grand scale of these places impresses me, but possibly part of that impression comes from the perspective of the photographer's camera? The often subtle, usually understated natural colors, materials and textures in every design and production detail of these houses is my idea of elegance! These are models I'd love to draw on and change around to the needs of my own environment.

From any viewpoint, what a wonderfully inspiring resource for designing your own rooms, offices, studios, or almost any work place or living space. Summing up this book and the houses in the book? Fabulous, simply fabulous!

• my amazon review: stunning, opulent, brilliant