River and Estuary

Top photo: Tappan Zee Bridge from marina in Tarrytown
Bottom: photo: Pocantico River in Rockefeller State Park Preserve
Both photos taken December 19, 2006

Holiday Shopping Help

This weekend's Financial Times has a fabulous year-end summary of recommended books, CDs and DVDs on pages 6-9 entitled Key Words of the Year. This list covers all bases. My hardcopy has about 20 entries circled in red. Tops is Richard Ford's The Lay of the Land which concludes the three books on sports writer Frank Bascombe (I loved The Sportswriter and Independence Day). Lucknow: City of Illusion is surely worth a look and perhaps should grace my coffee table. Also on India is In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce. And then there's Sean O'Brien's Dante's Inferno: A Free Verse Translation. And on and on and on - it's all here. Finally, since I'm recommending other people's recommendations, let's go back to Andy Ihnatko at the Chicago Sun Times for his A Holiday Basket of High-Tech Books.
Photo
Where: Hudson River and Catskill Mountains from Clermont State Historic Site, Germantown, NY
When: Today
PS: Why Powells for books? Because Joan and I went in there one chilly night with the Pacific wind blasting over the Coast Ranges and up the Columbia Gorge. And because Portland put light rail back on the map.

Apple Plus and Minus

For an entertaining read, here's Andy Ihnatko's review of Microsoft's Zune in the Chicago Sun Times. And, to bring us down to earth, read about the downside of our obsession with this really cool, well designed stuff from Apple (from Greenpeace).