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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 www.amazon.com.

This attractive, light-to-middle-weight stationery features colors in the beige range. As the product name suggests, light map-and-globe graphics create a watermark-like effect at a very good price. Continue Reading »

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

As a frequent note-writer, I recently made the leap to the fountain pen by buying two Cross pens, a couple of sets of the ink refills here under review, and a Mont Blanc ink fountain. Continue Reading »

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

Don’t skimp on quality when it comes to socks, ties, and ink.

As a recent immigrant to the world of fountain pens, I’ve enjoyed learning to write with two new Cross instruments. I started off with Cross ink refills that fit inside the pen, but have since discovered the joy of dipping. Continue Reading »

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

R.E.M’s fans love the fact that the threesome does not tinker overmuch with their successful recipe. Reveal is vintage R.E.M.: spare orchestration, Michael Stipe’s incessantly cool voice providing virtually the only vocals, stream-of-conscious lyrics that seem to say something deep even when—just maybe—they don’t. Continue Reading »

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

I tried to stay off the Norah Jones bandwagon, honest I did.

Down in Costa Rica, trying to live a humble honest-man’s life, feeling deeply for the Latin musicians who were so very, very good but never had a chance to be heard by the big-spending millions because they were three yards off the marketing juggernaut’s path … Continue Reading »

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

My sons will enter separate universities this Autumn. Each will enter as an Army ROTC cadet and—by plan at least—emerge four years later as a college graduate and a commissioned officer in the United States Army. Continue Reading »

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

This brilliant series of interviews with Robert McNamara should be required viewing for anyone before he or she is authorized to venture an opinion regarding what America should or should not do with its power. I do not begin my review because of any clear sense of the virtue or villainy of Bob McNamara’s legacy as president of the Ford Motor Company, Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and long-time president of the World Bank. Continue Reading »

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

Truth be told, classical music–like most other kinds–is best heard in the program context for which it was written. Yet any time you can get Neville Marriner, the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and Mozart in the same place at the same time, you can hardly not go for it. Continue Reading »

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

Creed was still getting over the need to be profound when this 1999 release came out, but the results were promising. The band has its best moments when it relaxes. It manages to achieve depth better than than when darkness-cum-wisdom overshadows higher goals. Continue Reading »

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

I am unable to review a Jars of Clay album without being positively influenced by the memory of hauling my two sons, their teenage youth group friends, and our dogs and cat around in my enormous Toyota Landcruiser in Costa Rica in the late 90s and early years of the new millennium with this music blaring. There, I got that off my chest. Continue Reading »