Studios Books

I recently received this book and I've been working on it for more than a week. It's somehow surprising that this book is not widely known in the drumming community (at least here in Italy).
I find this book excellent. It contains many coordination exercises on 1, 2 and 3 voices (all combinations of snare drum, bass drum and hi-hat), both on swung eighths and triplets, against the jazz ride pattern. The exercises are of gradually increasing difficulty so the book would be perfect both for the beginner or the advanced jazz drummer. The review solos at the end of each chapter are musically pleasant.

An easy to follow progression of fundamentals leading to solos, this is a great book for staring your jazz studies. It does follow the one primary basic ride sound, but by the end I would think one would be able to improvise fairly well around that pattern.

Ernest Withers possessed an artist's eye. In this great volume of oversized black and white photos Withers captures much more than the Memphis Blues. Many of the photos are of acts that played the chitlin' circuit of the 40's, 50's and 60's.

Acts such as Ike and Tina Turner at the Paradise capture the full power of those early, energetic and soulful performances.

aretha,elvis,bb king,jerry lee lewis,duke ellington sam cooke, al green,ray charles,helen humes,james brown, tina turner,the snearly ranch boys.. they all lived in or came to memphis to perform and record. this collection of images which spans four decades provides rare insight into the talent that was atrracted to and lived in this city which was the gateway from the oppression of mississippi.withers' photographs seem alive with the youth and exuberance of these young, legends in the making. the subjects seem oblivious to the camera and withers must have had carte blanche to capture the enegy and private moments of these american icons. any serious student of this country and the roots of its traditions should have this volume.daniel wolff has done all of us a favor in publishing the work of withers. it appears he has just scratched the surface

I got my first Moleskine journal because my daughter recommended them to me. She's been using them for a couple of years and absolutely adores them. And now I see why. These are a great size: small enough to carry in a purse or pocket and large enough to actually see what you write. I always buy the lined versions, but there are unlined ones that would make great sketchbooks, too. The journals come with little pockets inside for keeping receipts, tickets, or anything else you want to keep handy, and there's a rubber band that slips around the book to keep it closed and everything inside. I write down a lot of stuff during my days and probably couldn't live without my Moleskines now.

The planner is a really nice version of the regular journal. I used to carry a much larger planner but I find this one does everything I need it to. Great products for readers, writers, and just about everybody.

I love these date books. I especially like the soft cover. It's butter soft to the touch. The paper is acid free so you can use a fountain pen or, for that matter, any writing instrument and it will feel and look great.

On the left hand side is the place for appointments and to-dos. On the right you can put notes or more to-dos, anything you want.

I use mine to schedule my projects and keep appointments. It's just the right size for my desk. But it could just as easily go into a bag of some sort for either a man or woman.

These are exceptionally well made. They'll last forever. You'll be proud to own and use one.

Highly recommended. Get one every year.

A welcome contrast to the overly studied and glamourized coffee-table porn books of late, this book contains images from the notorious seventies underground erotic quaterly.
edited from a unique series of magazines that featured the Mythic sex appeal of seemingly ordinary black men. Produced during the height of the black exploitation period, these images may be hard to look at during our current P.C. times. However, as a historical artifact of seventies pop culture and sexual liberation, it's an interesting item. The complete lack of sophisticated art direction is precisely it's strength. The garish interiors and un-polished men are period perfect. This work did not share mr. mapplethorpe's ultra refined visual taste and obsessive eye for artistic details. Museums and galleries were not the intended targets......it was all about arousal. Direct and immediate....for anyone who had a particular fondness for a specific type of ebony brother.

Images are arranged by color rendition, instead of by model: Black & white (b&w) to page 64, then color through the end at page 128. Ron, also known as (aka) "Outlaw," for example, is on pp. (pages) 12-13 in b&w and in color on pp. 65-67 & 100-101. There is no text after the Introduction and no captions identifying the models. In case you are wondering if any of your favorite models are included, I also recognized Angelo, Barry, Clayton or "Clay," Francoise, Mack, Mario Albert, Mark, Mickey (cover), 'Rone, "Sputnik," "Taurus," Ty aka Jack, Vic and Warren. A lot of others are shown, but I do not know their names. Many of the photo's have been circulating for years on the Internet, which is where I associated their names/aliases, but the 'net pictures have usually been degraded as cropped, thumbnailed, low resolution, etc. I was glad to see the picture of Clay(ton) in the book, although in black & white, because the color image that has circulated on the 'net is stretched sideways and the book's image is the first time that I have seen the picture without distortion. On the other hand, some of the photo's I have never seen before; to me, I think the book would still be worthwhile even if I had seen all the photo's before. Overall, the photo's are usually not cropped, often showing too much background, but better too much than not enough. The emphasis is on full, frontal nudity. Some rear views are shown, but are usually given lesser importance as one of two or more photo's on a page, instead of a full page. Likewise, there are only a few portraits without full nudity, front or rear; I did not add any portraits as Customer Images (being suitable without nudity) because they are not as representative of the book's content as much as the cover. The publisher's website already shows "sold out" for this title, so do not wait any longer if you want a new copy, as stock at the U.S. distributor in New Jersey may be all that remains. The South Africa (.za) Janssen website also shows a "2006 Preview" thumbnail of a sequel, "Mr. Long," with Francoise on the cover, calling it "...the final continuation," but ISBN "to follow."

This book is not going to get dusty on the shelf. It is a real resource--for art teachers, social studies teachers, home schoolers and anyone else who wants to use art to teach world culture (or conversely world culture to teach art). The lessons makes sense. The art projects are doable. This book had been well thought out. It's also been tested with real students. It is ideal for teachers who want to do multi-cultural education and not just talk about it.

Susan Hogan's book is a fascinating exploration of several different cultures through their art, their customs, geography and history. Her insight into the nature of the different societies brings a deep understanding of how art has been interwoven with the needs and rituals of that society. It also points out the need for us to use our hands, our minds and emotions - expecially in this electronic age. It brings us back to ourselves, to make these things with our hands. I have worked with children of different ages for more than a decade. I find the students really enjoy the easy to do projects that help them produce beautiful articles they can actually use. What a wonderful way of teaching. Bravo!

Diaries are diaries. They're often of not much interest to anyone but the author. Muriel Foster kept a diary of her fishing expenditions beginning in 1913. She recorded her catches with infinite detail; her ones-that-got-away with unashamed blank lined pages. And she painted. Tiny, perfect little watercolours that embellish each page - you can get lost in them. Some paintings are entire scenes of buildings near her favourite fishing spots, some are of the spots themselves. Some are just of fish - detailed, eloquent paintings. A perfect diary is one the author thinks no one but themselves will ever read - for it is the diary that is true to itself. Little did Muriel Foster know that long after he demise her diary would be found - it's contents deemed suitable for other eyes to see. A charming, poignant treasure.

I never tire of reading her entries and admiring her ability to capture great vistas and small details in a few pen strokes. A wonderful book that should be back in print.

My 14 month old loves this book. Young children are starting to learn their body parts and clothing and this helps makes SHOES fun instead of a chore!

The Mom's Choice Awards® honors excellence in family-friendly media, products and services. An esteemed panel of judges includes education, media and other experts as well as parents, children, librarians, performing artists, producers, medical and business professionals, authors, scientists and others. A sampling of the panel members includes: Dr. Twila C. Liggett, Ten-time Emmy-winner, professor and founder of Reading Rainbow; Julie Aigner-Clark, Creator of Baby Einstein and The Safe Side Project; Jodee Blanco, New York Times Best-Selling Author; LeAnn Thieman, Motivational speaker and coauthor of seven Chicken Soup For The Soul books; Florrie Binford-Kichler, Founder of Patria Press, Inc.- an award-winning independent publisher and Member of The Children's Book Council; Tara Paterson, Certified Parent Coach, and founder of The Just For Mom Foundation(tm) and the Mom's Choice Awards®. Parents and educators look for the Mom's Choice Awards® seal in selecting quality materials and products for children and families. This book has been honored by this distinguished award.

Charles Potts is an experienced poet with more several published works to his credit. Nature Lovers is the latest of his collections and continues to document him as having a unique style and gift for language, images, and speaking to the mind and heart of his reader. The Code Of The Olde West: Get a load of Charlie Coyote,/Hauled before the magistrate by the grammar police/For hunting verbs without a license.//The judge demands to know:/How did you learn the vernacular?/There are correct ways to say the same thing,//Cheap talk from fatigued Sierra Clubbers/Cannot change my mind, your honor./I'm outside the purview of Standard American Englishizers.//Like the taxidermist he will be/If he ever catches anything Stoic,/Sniff this poem and make it snappy naturally./Fill it with linguistic drift.

I met Charles Potts in 1970. I was living in Minneapolis and was starting a writing workshop, so I took the unusual tack of tacking postcard notices around in the West Bank neighborhood. No one locally ever contacted me about the postcards. But a visitor to Minneapolis, in the visage of a bona fide bearded beat poet from the west, who was passing through Minnesota in his microbus on a poetry tour of America, found himself, as poets do, standing and copying a stranger's phone number from a telephone pole. Charles Potts called and asked to visit me. We huddled as equals, drank iced tea, sized up one another's poetics, and agreed to stay in touch.

We have been friends ever since. Good friends. I sometimes feel Charlie knows what is in my heart better, and respects it more, than I myself do.

Charles was vastly more advanced than I was. He, even in his twenties, knew who he was, knew how the world worked, and knew what he wanted to do. I'm still working on all three. Talking to him, and corresponding later, I felt I was communing directly with the wild prophetic side of American poetry.

Most poetry I read in the early 70s was elliptical as all get-out, dreamy, posey, and mainly about the self's deep interest in itself. Charlie was doing something nearly the opposite. You could feel the gravel under his poems -- they were roughcut, fearless, and unfailingly straight about what they wanted to say. You didn't wonder what psychic level Charlie was writing from (8? 13? lingerie and notions?) any more than you'd wonder what level a gun pointed at your darkest suspicions and prejudices was on. Even when his poems were funny they were dead-on serious, like Lenny Bruce on a good night. I had to be reminded he was a youngest, not an oldest child, because of that quality of gravitas.

Anyway, on to the poems in Nature Lovers. Charlie wrote these poems in 1989, under the influence of his study in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming, and readings in the microstructure of cognition. The title is a tip-off to Charlie's ragged irony -- because it is impossible for humans to truly love nature, because we are helplessly separated from it by language and consciousness -- the makings of poetry itself. "I go way back with writers who identify themselves with nature," he writes in an afterword. "Wordsworth, for the mystifying and mystical unity to be fond there; Menzu (Mencius) for his insistence that the entire state has to operate in obeisance to natural law; and Lucretius, who said poets should never lose the power to irritate."

Each poem is a meditation, or an editorial cartoon, about some aspect of nature. Listen to the fussy cadence and the caustic syllogistics, and tell me you don't hear the unmistakable ring of Menzu in the following:

Natural Causes

"He died of natural causes."

How many times have you relaxed while reading

That sanguine phrase and paused to wonder:

What causes would not be natural?

Car wrecks, overdoses, the fall of Flight DC 10?

Mechanical, pharmaceutical, aeronautical?

If everything is by definition natural,

What's left to experiment on?

Pig out on Haagen Dazs ice cream diet?

Fall down my one-time publisher's nomenclature,

The Empty Elevator Shaft?

Will you pass on a drug bust or a cardiac arrest?

You ask too many questions.

See death of a naturalist,
Watch Hermes put Argus to sleep

With an interminable story.

Bored him to death, naturally.

Maybe that is not a "great" poem, but it is great discourse, and poor, loathed poetry desperately needs this sense of engagement, this sense of mental acuity.

But Charlie Potts's poetry is. His oeuvre is immense and intelligent and so keen. Besides some twenty books of poems, he has written harrowing memoirs about going crazy in the 60s, plus a terrific polemic about U.S. politics, How the South Finally Won the Civil War. Plus, he is a noted publisher and editor. His own presses: Litmus, Inc. in the 60s and 70s, and Tsunami, publisher of the great multilingual magazine published on rag paper, The Temple¸ and Pacific Northwestern Spiritual Poetry, one of the most remarkable anthologies of recent decades.

This little book is one of his most striking collections. In it he achieves what every political poet should ache to do, yet so few try -- graft the confusion of the heart to the evidence of our senses. This is no-nonsense poetry from a visionary who long ago stripped the gears off common sense. His best work swirls the spirits of Ginsberg and Ken Kesey and Phil Ochs at their best, and more anciently, the poets Walt Whitman and William Blake, the pamphleteer Tom Paine, and the mountain man Jim Bridger.

Here's a poem which achieves the same kind of connection, with a more gripping lyricism:

The Stream of Consciousness

The stream of consciousness flows

Effortlessly forward like an unfed brain,
Given nothing new to think about,
Merely rotates in space, the same sounds,
Pictures, and sensations in predictable order.

Who will muddy up this stream,
Then purge and purify the cluttered tableau
Of the extraneous features preventing you
From actualizing your ideal self,
The way you always wanted to look and sound?

The quicksand of the collective unconsciousness
Will tempt you many times
With its lurid renditions of quackery images
Stories in the millennia of Christian denial,
Hallucinated forward at the speed of pain.

Down a lazy river to the polluted sea
The flotsam jettisons thoughtlessly along,
Contributory to a natural disaster.
Throw yourself onto the banks to stimulate
Your freeflowing sense of contrary motion.

Let it work on you. Here is a poem about nothing less than the significance and substance of thought -- everything that means meaning to us. He simultaneously reveres the gift and potential of consciousness, while despairing of our ability to leverage it into truth. Like eschatological Emmett Kellys, the best most of us manage is to sweep the spotlight of our own desire into the ashcan as we depart. The language is unflinchingly ambitious, but never pompous or "poetic." In fact, it's fun -- "flotsam jettisons," indeed. Here's a living, thinking head, giving you its best peek at the dynamic that makes us what we are. Hey, poetry isn't supposed to be important.

We think we love nature, says Charles Potts, but nature doesn't love us back. In fact, you'd be smart to keep a close eye on it, because one of these days, nature's going to get you.

I am a former student of Dr. Kirby's and I am now an Elementary School teacher. I had her for writing at Kennesaw State University where she incorporated the methods described in this book in her class. I was very scared and intimidated by writing when the course started, but by the end of the semester, I LOVED memoir and writing in general. The techniques she uses are very engaging, fun, and meaningful. I especially liked the "Snapshot" pieces of writing which allowed me to really explore my creativity and writing skills. Everyone likes to talk about themselves and memoir allows you to do this. This is an excellent book which has the potential of making mediocre writers good and good writers great!

When a friend recommended this book, I had no idea that the studio workshop approach would overshadow the memoir in its pedagogical attractiveness. The two authors detail how they studied visual artists in their studios and how they came to apply that practice to the teaching of reading and writing memoir. The studio approach that they present in this book is far richer than the usual writing workshop. Because of their years of experience and their extensive field testing of this model, the authors anticipate every pitfall. The book includes a complete package of reading and writing memoir activities, enough rubrics and worksheets to get started, an excellent booklist that spans the lower grades through college level and suggestions on how to develop one's own memoir booklist. In the school where I consult I plan to use this book with high school freshmen in English class and then to recommend that English and some content area teachers return to this model in a shorter form when the same students are juniors and seniors, so that they can benefit even more from the reflective elements of the model. Because of the nature of contemporary memoir, I can see the model as presented in this book as being effective at age levels from primary through higher education, and as being relevant to any area of the US.

The moment I recieved 'The Older Brother Returns' I had a very hard time putting it down. I laughed. I cried. It is very thought provoking. I want to send a copy to every one I know. This is the type book you just don't let out of sight. It is extremely inspiring, as I have said. I absolutely reccommend this to anyone down on themselves, down on life, down on the upcoming year, with all the hoopla you hear coming from the media. This book will turn your life around. It did mine.

What a timely gift for all who seek to express God's loving heart in our day! Author Neal Lozano has served as an instrument of the Great Physician in providing a healthy dose of medicine for the soul and spirit. It is a very fitting book to read as we prepare for the new millennium. As Pope John Paul II urged recently, "Let no one behave like the elder brother in the Gospel parable who refuses to enter the house to celebrate (cf. Lk. 15:25-30). May the joy of forgiveness be stronger and greater than any resentment." THE OLDER BROTHER RETURNS is an excellent means to apply that timely message -- and the classic story about the prodigal son and the older brother (in all of us!).