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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Let’s hear it for the small inventions in the $5 – $50 price range that make life just a bit simpler with understated design and solid performance.

The Kamenstein Stainless Paper Towel Holder belongs to the genre.
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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

This sturdy ceramic kitchen compost holder has become an old friend, one of those dependable if inert gizmos that’s there waiting by the coffeemaker every morning, prepared to do its job without complaint. If I find myself experiencing the odd sensation of affection for a piece of mass-produced pottery, I find some justification in the countless late-night trips on which it’s accompanied me, summer and winter, dutifully bearing its load of fruit and veggie waste out into the backyard darkness to the compost unit.
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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

The actual events that led to the siege of the Alamo and the establishment of the short-lived country called Texas lie shrouded in the fog of contested legends. Like the Middle East today, two peoples necessarily tell the story of the same land in far different ways. It is often said by Texans today that Mexico is achieving through immigration and fecundity what Santa Ana could not.
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unforgiven: Romans 2

Grace is at once the most threatening and satisfying of human experiences.

In biblical terms, divine grace makes it impossible for us to earn our way into God’s favor. It is so lavish, so inscrutable, so powerfully invasive of lives that it pulls out from under us the tightly-woven carpet of credits and demerits upon which we have learned to gain traction, to stand tall. It deconstructs and reconstructs identity as potently as any other force. So, it threatens the construct in which we have learned to survive and, occasionally, to thrive.
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Male voices, when they work well together, are a marvel.

This is as true of England’s soccer stadiums as it is of a tightly knit gospel quartet. It’s hard to say whether the four men of Overtones have ever been near a soccer stadium, but the odds are long.

No matter. What they do, they do very, very well.
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There’s something just a bit rich about a middle-aged pencil-pusher like me choosing to open his junk mail and electric bill with a little sword.

But hey, we don’t get to do much hunting and gathering any more, so toss us a bone. A little bellicose letter-opening never turned anyone into a real-life axe-murderer.
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This 1994 matchup of Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock would not be the last pairing of this couple. This fortunate outcome for movie viewers makes it even more fascinating to watch the chemistry between the two back in 1994 when they did not trip off the tongue easily as a twinned male-female leads. Continue Reading »

Our HP 1012 printer occupies a shelf at the geographical center of our home, wirelessly networked to four computers spread across our three stories.

It never fails us.
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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

In the age of email and voice mail, a hand-written note is perhaps more powerful than ever.

Crane & Co. delivers a classy, silver-on-white, engraved medium for saying ‘thank you’ that is just the thing for somebody who has done more than opened a door for you twice but less than buying you a new car.
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Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

This finely produced University of Texas hardback is not your typical off-the-rack ‘What’s that bird?’ book.

What bird book do you know that begins with such picturesque scene-setting: ‘It is 6:30 a.m. in late April: a strange assortment of liquid chirps, chortles, and muffled yodels threads the dimness about to be burnished. In a nearby yaupon, a cardinal hammers bellow chinks into the still-black earth. Overhead, Purple Martins lance dawn—expressing their invisible presence through these baubles of sound that hang, as do the minstrels, in the dew-rich air.’
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