My New Thralls

Please note two new links I've added to the bottom of my list over there at the right.

For Christmas, my mom gave me the book, Killing the Buddha: The Heretic's Bible, which I just started reading yesterday. I had just finished John Berger's new-ish quasi-fiction piece Here is Where We Meet, which is a soft reverie, a reminiscence about the way the dead remain in our lives. And it's also an interesting cognitive lead-in to this curious hybrid of a book that riffs on and off the state of American spirituality. This link is to the online magazine--fascinating work, all! And, for the record, I had a hard time wrenching this book out of my mom's hands. And so, Mom, I recommend you buy your own copy and then buy one for Rosemary. It's a whole new Good Word, well deserving of being spread.

And Plenty is a real paper magazine about practical environmental activism. It totally jumped into my shopping basket during a recent excursion to Whole Foods because of the current cover article. This cover features a cartoon of a woman ordering a "double-shot, fair-trade, organic soy latte" and then poses the question, "Is this activism?" Yes! Of course it's activism! If they added "shade-grown" to that order, I'd throw that cartoon girl a hero's parade! Well, not quite, but this is just to say that it's important to me to be conscious about the companies that I support as a consumer. I'm an American and I can't get around being a consumer in the first place, so the very very very least I can do is put my money towards companies that have chosen, often against the best interest of their own bottom lines, to fight the good fight, whether it be socially or environmentally. And so, I supported this magazine by paying full cover price. And now I invite any and all readers to go visit their website. That's also the least I can do.