Kronos Released, 1985-1995

Posted by admin on November 30, 2011 Comments Off

Kronos Released, 1985-1995
For all its wide stylistic span and just plain good listening, Kronos’s Released 1985-1995 is problematic in that it doesn’t acknowledge the group’s decade-long pre-Nonesuch history with so much as a footnote. That aside, Released, which celebrates the first ten years of the group’s association with Nonesuch, is like a great mix tape, stringing pop-song-length selections from 11 albums to wonderful effect. It opens with a joyous Zimbabwean cross-cultural composition; segues into a brief tango by Astor Piazzolla; and goes on to comprise classic minimalism (Steve Reich, Terry Reilly, Philip Glass), a broader palette of 20th-century classical (Samuel Barber, Henryk Gorecki, George Crumb, Arvo Part), and work truly unique to the Kronos repertoire (Ben Johnston’s arrangement of “Amazing Grace”). A second CD includes a live recording of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” a catchy rendering of a wacky Raymond Scott hodgepodge, a novelty homage to Elvis Presley, and a selection from Scott Johnson’s extraordinary musical setting of readings by historian I.F. Stone. A great starter kit for Kronos newcomers. –Marc Weidenbaum
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Second Grace: The Music of Nick Drake

Posted by admin on November 15, 2011 Comments Off


Pianist Christopher O’Riley again dances with the possibility of cliché and instead pirouettes into art. Second Grace: The Music of Nick Drake marks his fourth album of covers, joining his two CDs of Radiohead tunes (Hold Me to This and True Love Waits) and one exploring singer-songwriter Elliott Smith (Home to Oblivion). O’Riley is attracted to quirky composers and tragic writers, and Nick Drake, who died of an overdose at 26 after only three albums, fits both bills. Although Drake had a fondness for jazz voicings and odd chord changes, he was ultimately a more direct and simpler composer than Radiohead’s Thom Yorke or Elliott Smith. O’Riley respects that in his interpretations. Whereas his previous albums often ventured into flights of unalloyed atonality, Second Grace feeds on the autumnal melodic lyricism that Drake pursued over the course of his three albums, Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, and, of course, Pink Moon, the title piece from which helped reignite interest in Drake’s music when Volkswagen unearthed it for a TV spot in 2000. O’Riley doesn’t attain that fragile, on-the-edge-of-disappearing voice that Drake had. Instead, he replaces it with the quiet reserve heard in the minimalist feel of “Riverman” and the breathy rhapsody on “One of These Things First.” The lounge-jazz break in the middle of that tune seems like last call at Joe’s Pub. A concert pianist, O’Riley often cites classical sources for inspiration in his arrangements, including Baroque composer Couperin in the lyrical treatment of “Introduction: Bryter Layter.” As with his previous interpretations, I’m not sure that Second Grace would actually appeal to Nick Drake fans. Instead, it stands on its own ground, a passionate and obsessive hymn to a lost voice. –John Diliberto
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If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World (Gulley, Philip)

Posted by admin on November 14, 2011 Comments Off


If God is love . . . Why are so many Christians fearful? Why do so many Church leaders sound hateful? Why does religion often create more pain than healing? What would it take for our world to become more gracious? In If Grace Is True, pastors Philip Gulley and James Mulholland revealed their belief that God will save every person.

They now explore the implications of this belief and its power to change every area of our lives. They attempt to answer one question: If we took God’s love seriously, what would our world look like? Gulley and Mulholland argue that what we believe is crucial and dramatically affects the way we live and interact in the world.

Beliefs have power. The belief in a literal hell, where people suffer eternally, has often been used by the Church to justify hate and violence, which contradict what Jesus taught about love and grace. The authors present a new vision for our personal, religious, and corporate lives, exploring what our world would be like if we based our existence on the foundational truth that God loves every person. Gulley and Mulholland boldly address many controversial issues people in the pews have wondered about but churches have been unwilling to tackle. For too long, the Christian tradition has been steeped in negativity, exclusion, and judgment. Gulley and Mulholland usher us into a new era — an age where grace and love are allowed to reign.
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Is God Fair? What About Gandhi? The Gospel’s Answer: Grace and Peace “For I Came not to Judge the World, But to Save The World”. -John 12:47

Posted by admin on November 12, 2011 Comments Off

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By Grit and Grace: Eleven Women Who Shaped the American West (Notable Westerners)

Posted by admin on November 10, 2011 Comments Off

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Grace . . . Within and Without: A Novel

Posted by admin on November 8, 2011 Comments Off


In 1949, Grace Murphree is three years old when she first remembers thinking about God. Growing up in the sleepy community of Ocean Shores, Florida, Grace finds that life presents her with many challenges and that she often needs to seek God’s guidance. Grace struggles through a turbulent childhood in a dysfunctional family as her parents divorce. She experiences a teenage pregnancy that leaves her heartbroken. She suffers the tragic loss of her beloved sister who commits suicide. She raises her children as a single mother. But she also reaps the joys of motherhood, home ownership, and a fulfilling life. Though her trials and tribulations have often had her living in a pervasive state of ongoing disruption to her psyche, the steadfast and tenacious Grace doesn’t let life keep her downtrodden for long. In addition to her reliance on faith, she lives by the motto, “Where there is a will, there is a way.”
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Quality Function Deployment and Lean-Six Sigma Applications in Public Health

Posted by admin on November 6, 2011 Comments Off


The purpose of this book is to introduce the concepts embedded in quality function deployment (QFD) and Lean-Six Sigma to help Public Health professionals implement quality improvement within their agencies. The tools and techniques of QFD and Lean-Six Sigma are designed to augment a robust PDCA or PDSA problem-solving process, not replace it. The tools and techniques of QFD and Lean-Six Sigma can help problem-solving teams by providing insight into customer needs and wants, design and development of customer-centric processes, and mapping value streams. Both QFD and Lean-Six Sigma focus on doing the most with the resources we have. Each of these megatools supports efforts to expand our community support programs and to increase the effectiveness of internal capacities. This dual external/internal focus offers an excellent partnership of quality improvement tools for Public Health. In this book the authors have modified the QFD process and Lean-Six Sigma methodology so they are aligned with the needs and differences in Public Health design and delivery of products and services. Where these modifications are present, they are explained so readers will understand the change from what might be seen in an industrial or healthcare application of the same
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Treatise on Nature and Grace

Posted by admin on November 4, 2011 Comments Off


Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) was the most important French philosopher between Descartes and Rousseau. His Treatise on Nature and Grace, first published in 1680, is one of the most celebrated and controversial works of seventeenth-century philosophical theology. This major text, last translated into English in 1695, is here made available to a new generation of readers in an entirely new translation, with a substantial scholarly introduction. The central argument, that God governs the realms of nature and of grace by simple, constant, and uniform “general wills,” not through “particular providence,” had fundamental repercussions within the contemporary debates on the nature of divine grace and of salvation, contradicting the claims of the Calvinists and Jansenists that God wills the individual salvation of an elected few. Hailed as a work of genius by Bayle and Leibniz, the Treatise was to have a profound and far-reaching influence on the development of eighteenth-century thought.
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