The most requested beverage in my household. My family and I live on this stuff.

The movie is great fun, but watch it widescreen!

Decent, but not as good as the original.

This was a good movie when it came out. Now it’s story looks silly and dated.

It’s the perfect beverage, for that matter it’s the perfect meal!

Certain songs, certain albums, certain groups define an era. I can’t speaking for everyone else in my generation who survived the 80’s as to the impact the Talking Heads had on their own existence, but I know that this album meant something to me. The Talking Heads barely made an impact on FM radio back then, but they found their way to my tape player some how, some way I can’t quite recall how. Once they did, I wore out more than one of their tapes in my car and songs like “And She Was” and “Road to Nowhere” always managed to make it on my road trip mix tapes.

Times have changed. I don’t make road trip mix tapes any more, it’s all about MP3 playlists now… but whenever I stumble across “And She Was” listening to whatever my truck or on my computer I always stop, listen, and remember very fondly 1985 and a certain someone who was very integral to my scattered life back then.

And whenever I hear…

The world was moving and she was right there with it

and she was)

The world was moving she was floating above it

(and she was) and she was

I will always wonder whatever became of…

Building a home is truly an organic process. By “building” I am not speaking of paying some one or some company to put up a house for you, I am speaking of constructing a house, a home from the ground up to the rafters and beyond with your own two hands.

Being an organic process, house building is by extension, if not definition, messy. It’s messy in terms in terms of the mud and materials, the dust and the destruction so necessary a part of construction. It is messy because of the muck that comes from creating a home out of a dizzying whirl of creative, financial, and family dynamics. It’s messy because to truly build one’s own home piece by piece means getting one’s hands dirty.

Thomas Glynn’s book “Hammer. Nail. Wood: The Compulsion to Build“ is not really it about the “nuts and bolts” of the building process, there is very little how-to knowledge imparted here. Glynn focuses instead on the nuts of a different sort required to build one’s own home. What doesn’t scare you about Glynn’s unusual book just might serve to inspire you.

Growing up in New Mexico in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s three things were extremely evident: the historical confluence of the Mexican and native cultures about the place and the layered influence of the Catholic Church on top of it all. Not growing up Catholic, much of this culture was a mystery to me at the time. Now being older, much more mindful of historical influences and a convert to Catholicism, the influence of the Catholic Church in my native state of New Mexico is of great interest to me personally.

Imagine my feeling of good fortune then when I discover a copy of Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History in the bargain bin at the college bookstore of my neighboring university. Much better than the implied dust covered status of my find, Horgan wrote brings to life in biographical form the historical life of Bishop Lamy. Lamy was not only the first Bishop of Santa Fe, he was one of the most important, influential, and civilizing figures of late 19th Century western expansion of our country. Adding to his significance is that fact that his presence can still be felt all over historical and modern day New Mexico.

This well written book isn’t just for people interested in the historical influence of the Catholic Church; it has something to say to anyone interested in the history of the United States in general and the Southwest in particular. Mr. Horgan did a sympathetic and masterful job of bring this man’s life into focus for his readers.

Have you ever found a book just laying about, free for the taking, and actually read it? Such was the circumstance in which I stumbled across this book. Now I am beginning to wonder if my finding the book wasn’t as much an accident as some sort of experiment in postmodernism in itself. After all, ”Reality isn’t what it used to be.” My priest left this book in a box, in the tent where we hold Mass. On the box, with a handful of other books in it was a sign that said “free to take.” Was it really?

That is the question.

This was the last lonely book in the box when I found it. Was my priest trying to tell his flock something, something about the state of the world or did he really just want to make room on his bookshelf?

It’s an open question.

Aptly titled, the book Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be by Walter Truet Anderson, is very much like I suspect the circumstance in which I obtained my now dog-eared copy an exercise in social constructed reality. If you are open to the ideas it presents you will enjoy the read, as did I. If you aren’t into its premise you might find the ideas presented disturbing — Disturbing enough to contemplate using the book’s pages as a less than satisfying substitute for two-ply.

Because life is just that sad!