MagSampler

FAMILY MOTOR COACHING: On the Road

2007-04-02T00:34:00.000-04:00

You've seen them on the interstate highways, those big colorful buses with odd window configurations and without bus company markings. If you glance at the driver, you see he's no harried Ralph Kramden, but a carefree-looking middle-aged guy in a golf shirt. He's probably a reader of Family Motor Coaching, a monthly for people seeking the good life on the road.

The publication is put out by the Family Motor Coach Association, an organization based in Cincinnati with 120,000 member families.

Those private buses represent the high end of the industry, and their cost can run into the upper six figures. Some of the interiors of those motor coaches are truly spectacular, and in the pages of the magazine you'll find ads for luxury housing developments that feature gigantic carports for the family bus.

But the bulk of the membership and readership rides in more modest recreational vehicles. They tend to be retired, they seek warmth in the winter, and they apparently love to congregate together.

The tone of the magazine is practical, with articles on vehicle maintenance and recipes that take into account the limited storage and access to cooking ingredients when on the road.

A good deal of the March issue of Family Motor Coaching is devoted to the Association's 77th International Convention later that month at the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry. With thousands of motor homes converging on Perry, the magazine contains a slew of articles about nearby attractions.

The list of companies exhibiting their products and services at the convention provides insight into the concerns of motorhome owners: on-board air conditioning and sanitation systems, RV insurance and financing, hot water heaters, awnings, kitchen appliances, towing systems, low-maintenance travel clothing, massage units, and, of course, RV-friendly resorts and motorhome manufacturers.

The issue contains a dozen pages of small-type listings of gatherings of RV enthusiasts around the country over the next few months.

There's an interesting column in each issue called "Full-Timer's Primer." A full-timer is someone who has bravely cut off ties to a stationary home and lives only on the road. This month's column warns readers that it's getting harder to register vehicles and make financial transactions if your only address is a post office box. A couple reports that they've found some RV parks where they can work for a few hours a week and get to stay for free.

Each issue carries a column by the Association's executive director, Don Eversmann. His March column reports that membership growth has slowed recently, and he attributes it to the dip in the birth rate during World War II. This makes sense, for the average age of members is 62 to 66 years.

Eversmann dismisses "one notion that is being circulated," the idea that baby boomers are not joiners of organizations, unlike the "silent generation" that preceded it.

Family Motor Coaching is sent to members of the organization. Membership benefits are wide-ranging, and include access to numerous conventions and other gatherings, mail forwarding and group-rate emergency road service and motorhome insurance. Subscriptions are also available to non-members.

The magazine is a bit staid and old-fashioned in design, but executive director Eversmann promises "a more modern, lighter format starting in May."

An annual family membership in the Family Motor Coach Association is $45.00 and includes a subscription to the magazine (12 issues). A subscription alone is $30.00 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy of Family Motor Coaching for $2.59, even if your address is a P.O. box!

BEAR HUNTING: Sometimes the Bear Wins

2007-03-21T01:05:00.000-04:00

I've read somewhere that Bear Hunting is the only magazine in its field. If so, it disproves the notion that monopolies lose enthusiasm and grow careless. This well-done bimonthly, published in Clear Lake, Minnesota, does a good job for its small but ardent readership.

The March/April issue, like all hunting magazines, is filled with accounts of hunting trips. But bears are special: they're big, they're most abundant in remote places, they're smart, and there are serious restrictions on hunting them―when they can be taken at all. So going on a bear hunt is a big and expensive deal, and it's the lucky bear hunter who can afford the money and time to hunt even once a year, usually at a hunting lodge specializing in the animal.

I learned a lot about the sport from this one issue. Bears are hunted in one of three ways: with hounds that sniff out and hopefully tree a bear; "spot and stalk," where the hunter uses field glasses to spot a bear from afar and then stalks his prey; and―most popular, from the reports in Bear Hunting―using bait to attract the bear and waiting in an elevated stand for it to approach.

The weapons of choice are a rifle, shotgun or bow. The hunters who write in these pages stress how important it is to fire only when the bear is close enough and at a proper angle to provide the best chance of a fatal shot. A lot of these hunt stories are about the agony of waiting, often fruitlessly, for the bear to turn in the right direction for that shot.

One hunter uses bait consisting of licorice, doughnuts, sunflower seeds, dog food and meat scraps, all soaked in used cooking oil. This mixture is placed in five-gallon buckets. The oil serves the purpose of soaking a bear's paws and fur, so that when it departs the area it will leave a trail that will attract other bears to the site. I was surprised at the number of bears viewed from hunting stands that were allowed to go in peace, either because they were sows with cubs or not big enough for the hunter's ambitions. Since you're permitted only one kill if you have a legal "tag" or license, the hunter has to wonder whether a bigger bear will come along later. In bear hunting, size is everything.

Bear hunting has gone high-tech. Hunters use special suits that mask their scent from the bears. Hounds carry radio transmitters so the guide can track them after they disappear over a hill and into the woods. You can screw a camera that senses movement and body heat to a tree over your hunting stand, and get photos of visitors to your bait area for a week or two before you commit to putting yourself into the stand to wait like a statue for hours. Just be careful to use an infrared flash on the camera, for a bright flash will scare bears away from the baited trail for a long time into the future. You can even buy a rifle with a video camera attached, so you can record your hunt.

But experience counts for more than technology. Bears may not have electronics, but they do have good noses. Bill Vaznis writes of how morning hunters learn that air rises, so that "if you want to stalk a morning bear in mountainous regions, you must start out above the bruin." The opposite is true in the evening, when you must stay below your prey.

My favorite story in the issue is by Larry Lightner, a 61-year-old field editor for Bear Hunting. Despite a couple of heart attacks and surgery just two and a half months earlier, he went on an early morning hunt with a guide and hounds in the wilds of New Mexico. Within an hour he finds that "the two bony points at the base of my butt-cheeks are screaming in pain every time they come in contact with the saddle."

By noon two of the hounds tree a bobcat, but the other dogs have scented a bear. The guide tells the suffering Lightner what he doesn't need to hear: that it's probably a juniper berry-eating bear, which are leaner than nut and acorn-eaters and "tend to run farther, faster and harder."

It's now late afternoon, and the pair have been leading their horses up and down steep hillsides, aware of how close they are to the baying hounds and the bear. Lightner reports that "for the last 20 minutes my heart has felt like it is being squeezed into a huge vice but I do not take my nitro pills for fear that I will be too dizzy to continue." The guide sees his plight and orders him to rest. The hounds themselves give up the chase, and the day is over.

He closes the report with the old adage, "Some days you eat the bear and other days the bear eats you."

An annual subscription to Bear Hunting (six issues) is $20.00 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

TWO FOR THE GARDEN

2007-03-18T01:56:00.000-04:00

Shoveling out from a nasty St. Patrick's Day snowstorm here in New Jersey, my thoughts naturally wandered to warm, sunny days―and to the Spring issue of GreenPrints, a unique gardening quarterly in the MagSampler.com newsstand.

There are a couple of endearing qualities to GreenPrints, which is published in Fairview, North Carolina. One is its priceless tag line: "The Weeder's Digest." The other is that it isn't about gardening in the usual sense: no articles on techniques for pruning roses, the right fertilizer for evergreens, ten tips for a successful vegetable garden. GreenPrints is about gardening as a state of mind, a refuge, a happy part of life.

I found a quote in the issue, actually from the introduction to a book by psychotherapist Alice G. Miller, that nicely sums up the light and leisurely philosophy of GreenPrints: "This book ended up being less about horticulture and more about sanctuary. So, if you want a book about horticulture, close the cover very carefully, avoid getting any fingerprints on the pages and hurry back to the bookstore. You may still be able to get a refund."

In her book, To Everything There Is a Season, Dr. Miller writes about her garden as a "Green Cathedral," a crucial component of her spiritual and emotional life.

Susan B. Johnson includes a short essay in GreenPrints about how she became nervous after her Savannah garden was included in an upcoming historic garden tour. Would the mites and beetles make a shambles of her plants before the big day? A friend gave her advice that calmed her fears: "The committee chose your garden because it's charming. Not because it's exotic or perfect, but because it's a nice place to be."

There's an article about the little town of Carbondale, Colorado. The town council had passed an ordinance against using pesticides on athletic fields, but the high school football field was awash with dandelions. What to do? The answer was a community weed-the-dandelions day, which someone enlivened by passing around homemade dandelion wine. That was in 1999, and Dandelion Day has become an annual festival in Carbondale, with featured dishes at the affair including dandelion quiche, dandelion lasagna and tangy, golden dandelion cream pie.

Becky Rupp contributes a rumination on Democritus, a philosopher "born around 460 B.C.E. in Abdera in Thrace, an uncultured backwoodsy chunk of Greece, the sort of place the other Greeks told redneck jokes about." But Democritus went on to formulate the first coherent version of atomic theory, describing everything in the universe as being made up of tiny indivisible particles that are continually reassembling into new things.

The old philosopher's theory of the universe is Rupp's theory of her garden: "Every vegetable is a way station, a check in the cosmic action, a holding pen for atoms passing through. Those atoms have been stars, starfish, and squirrels; they're pausing now, back behind our barn, as butterbeans, before moving on to walnut trees or woodchucks, players in a vast dance to the music of time."

Since GreenPrints comes from North Carolina, I should also mention another gardening magazine from that state that does get into the nitty-gritty of soil testing, growing the perfect green bean and planting a successful shade garden.

It's Carolina Gardener, published seven times a year in Greensboro. The drawback to most of us is that its coverage of plants, vegetables and trees is edited with a close eye on the soils and climatic conditions of North and South Carolina, from the seacoast to the mountains. Carolinians are fortunate to have such a valuable horticultural resource. It's been thriving since 1988, so there should be a market for similar regional magazines in other parts of the country.

There's an interesting report in the March/April issue about a controversial climate zone change. The country is divided into a bunch of different zones by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most of North and South Carolina is in Zone 7, which indicates that certain plants will thrive there and others won't. But the Arbor Day Foundation has put out a climate map that revises the zones because of global warming, putting almost all of South Carolina and most of North Carolina into Zone 8, indicating it now has a more tropical climate.

An annual subscription to GreenPrints (four issues) is $22.97 from the publisher, and a year's subscription to Carolina Gardener (seven issues) is $21.95. We'll send you a sample copy of either publication for $2.59.

SCRIPT: Words That Become Movies

2007-03-11T15:42:00.000-04:00

Script magazine is a bimonthly for writers of motion picture and television screenplays, which should guarantee its publisher, Final Draft of Calabasas, California, a circulation of millions in the Los Angeles area alone. It's also an eye-opening read for plain old movie fans.

The main way of telling a story to many people at the same time used to be writing a novel. A lonely business, but the novelist was God at the Creation until his editor showed up with a blue pencil.

Today the motion picture has overtaken the novel as the mode by which stories are told in this country, and hundreds of people are involved in its construction―you've seen how lengthy the credits can be at the end of a film. But most motion pictures at least begin with a solitary man or woman pecking at a computer keyboard, inventing and populating a world.

That's the art, craft and business celebrated in the January/February issue of Script, and I've let a couple of interesting Netflix movies―and a favorite old novel―gather dust as I've perused its pages these past couple of nights.

The prototypical article in the magazine might be the account of the making of Notes on a Scandal, a movie that came out late in December. It's based on Zoe Heller's 2003 novel. The timely plot, set in London, is about an affair between a high school student and his teacher, played by Cate Blanchett. An older teacher (Judi Dench) finds out about the affair. Will she tell?

The device used by screenwriter Patrick Marber to propel the story is famously difficult to steer: The Unreliable Narrator. The moviegoer naturally tends to accept a narrator's words as true. In this movie Dench's character is the narrator. It gradually dawns on the viewer that what she's describing doesn't match what her character is doing. In fact, she's psychotic, and is motivated by a jealous yearning for the Blanchett character. Among his many decisions, screenwriter Marber fashioned Dench's interest in Blanchett to be more overtly lesbian than in the novel.

Another story in the issue is about Michael Arndt's long road to his first screenwriting success, Little Miss Sunshine, which won the Academy Award for best original screenplay a couple of weeks ago.

Interviewer Zack Gutin asked Arndt if he had any advice for the young screenwriter. Arndt's reply was depressingly scientific and deterministic. It's worth quoting because he claims it applies to just about any endeavor:

Studies have been done of people who are experts in their field to determine what separates the great people from the mediocre. They've found that the key variable is the amount of time spent alone in deliberate practice―intense focused concentration, in this case toward trying to write a story. What was interesting was that it applied across any field―no matter what the profession. The amount of time spent in deliberate practice was the number one indicator of how successful you would eventually be.

The study put a number on it and said if you spent 10,000 hours alone in deliberate practice, you will get up to a professional level. You may not be the best of the best, but you will be at a professional level. Ten thousand hours, which is roughly four hours a day, five days a week for 10 years.

Arndt calculates that 10,000 hours are what he spent learning and honing his craft until his great success. He got paid for about half of those hours, toiling as a freelance script reader, what he describes as "the salt mines of the industry."

A nice feature in each issue of Script is a column that details what screenplays and books have been purchased by movie studios. I learned that Irene Nemirovsky's novel Suite Française, about the German occupation of France, has been acquired by Universal and will be adapted to the screen by Ronald Harwood, who wrote The Pianist. Borat co-writer Dan Mazer has been hired to script the comedy New Year's Steve, about "outrageous, life-changing resolutions made over New Year's Eve." See, you have a year or two lead on your friends on what to watch for.

There's more advice for writers from some "literary managers" at Benderspink, a new kind of Hollywood literary agency that gets a producer credit when it sells a screenplay. They urge writers to find their voice, tell their own story, not "chase the marketplace." After Benderspink's first big success, American Pie, the agency was inundated by a mountain of American Pie-inspired scripts. These were not tasty pies.

They also suggest you move to Los Angeles, work in those movie industry "salt mines," make many contacts, then try to sell your screenplay.

Script recently underwent an ownership change and a facelift, and management got rid of those pesky parentheses―the magazine used to be called Scr(i)pt. I like the changes, but the type's too small!

An annual subscription to Script (six issues) is $24.95 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

DISSENT: Promoting the Left

2007-03-04T21:49:00.000-05:00

With the presidential election season off to an early start, it's useful to get some background information from serious political journals like Dissent. This venerable leftist quarterly was founded in the tumultuous early 1950s, and was edited by Irving Howe until his death in 1993.

Dissent is published by the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, located on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the Vatican City of the intellectual American left.

The table of contents of the Winter issue reflects the current preoccupations of Washington and the presidential candidates. Foreign policy problems dominate the journal's meticulously edited 144 pages, and the Middle East is the focus of many of the articles.

Iran gets the main cover headline, as Dissent presents a brave speech given at the Iranian Center for Strategic Research in Tehran last year by Joschka Fischer, the former foreign minister of Germany. It's the first time the speech has been published in English.

The topic he addresses is the European community's take on the Iranian government's apparent efforts to develop nuclear weapons. He also cites its leader's call for the annihilation of Israel and what are perceived as rampant violations of human rights and women's rights within that strongly Muslim country.

Fischer's warning to the Iranians to cool their military ambitions and rhetoric in the region is unequivocal. He recalls the German experience trying to challenge the European balance of power system twice during the first half of the twentieth century. Both attempts ended disastrously. "What was our strategic mistake?" he asks. "We followed hegemonial aspirations that relied on military might and prestige, and we miscalculated the anti-hegemonial instincts of Europe. And twice we underestimated the strategic potential, the power, and the political will and decisiveness of the United States."

The health and future of the left in American politics is very much on the minds of the editors of Dissent. The burning question is whether the precipitous fall in popularity of the Bush administration over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other issues, means a resurgence of the left wing of the Democratic party.

Dissent's co-editor, Michael Walzer, doesn't think so. He writes that the Democratic left wing "is doing the best it can, I guess, given poll data that strongly suggest that if it prevails, the party will lose the next presidential election." He continues, "My views about the Democratic Party are simple: I want it to win, because any Democratic victory would be a setback for the far right."

Sociologist Frances Fox Pliven contributes an interesting short history of the traditional American left, an amalgam of labor unions and a powerful Democratic party that dominated urban America and the South. She calls it the "New Deal Left." That's pretty much gone now, she writes, as business elements have combined with "the populist right"―read Christian fundamentalists and those unhappy with gains made by African-Americans and women―to control a resurgent Republican party and the American South. Pliven sees the best hope for a new left movement in the antiwar movement, coupled with the unmet social and economic aspirations of racial minorities and women.

Political scientist Sheila Croucher writes about the town of San Miguel Allende, nestled in the mountains of central Mexico. In recent years this beautiful community has been largely taken over by as many as 12,000 foreigners, mostly retired Americans, who have moved there because dollars go a long way in Mexico. Americans with even modest resources can buy a nice house and employ a maid. Everybody in San Miguel speaks English. The Mexicans have mostly sold their houses to the rich foreigners and now live outside the town.

Croucher contrasts this with the opposite movement of younger Mexicans over the American border, and wonders if an American crackdown on Mexican immigrants will have repercussions on the Americans in San Miguel, many of whom work illegally within the town as architects, psychotherapists, financial advisers and the like.

They're not all senior citizens. Croucher says an increasing number are young professionals whose high-tech skills enable them to provide services to American companies from very well-equipped offices in their homes. No one has to know where they live. They use Voice Over Internet Phone services from companies like Vonage that allow them to choose an American area code when they dial out.

She adds that most Americans maintain post office boxes in Laredo, Texas, and have companies forward mail to their San Miguel homes. That way they can continue to get Medicare benefits, Netflix videos, eBay shipments and American magazines without postal and bureaucratic hassles.

I was surprised to read that "Pinche Bush" buttons are popular in San Miguel Allende. The polite translation given is "Screw Bush."

An annual subscription to Dissent (four issues) is $20.00 from the publisher. We'll be happy to send you a sample copy for $2.59.

YRB: City Vibes and Threads

2007-03-02T01:08:00.000-05:00

YRB is an exceptionally well put-together bimonthly aimed squarely at the street-smart urban sophisticate who's into rock music and clubs and worries about the right threads to wear to those clubs. It's edited in the basement of 480 Broadway in Manhattan's trendy SoHo district.

YRB's origins are at Yellow Rat Bastard, a clothing store at the same Broadway address. That curious name comes from a particularly slimy character in Sin City, the graphic novel by Frank Miller later made into a memorable motion picture with Mickey Rourke, Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba. As YellowRatBastard.com explains, "the parent store spawned baby rats and the YRB store catalogue, magazine and website were born." Don't worry, it's several blocks away from the infamous rat-infested Taco Bell.

Issue No. 72 of YRB, identified as the "Spring Preview" issue, has just arrived at the MagSampler.com newsstand. From my grazing through Issue 72, I've saved the best for first. It's the opening Jump Off section, which identifies trends, products and technology of interest to young urbanites.

That's where I learned about the "nap helmet," a fascinating Japanese invention perfect for the weary subway rider. It's a hard hat with a suction cup on a stick projecting from behind. If you're lucky enough to find a window seat on the train, you suction yourself to the window, and can then nod off without fear of knocking your noggin against the window or falling onto the shoulder of your neighbor. There's a placard on the front of the nap helmet for you to write your stop, so if you believe in the kindness of strangers, you'll be awakened in time to get off.

The other technological marvel that intrigued me comes from Germany. You've probably heard of spray-on hair for that bald spot. This is a spray-on condom. As YRB instructs, "insert the given organ into the aerosol can, push the button, and presto chango, you're covered. Literally." The magazine notes that the product is still in development, and warns that the aerosol can won't fit into your wallet.

Once you get past the Jump Off section, YRB is mostly clothes and music, with attention also paid to television, movies, video games and other entertainment.

The clothing is casual and colorful, with a strong hip-hop influence. Design inspirations include graffiti, Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. There are jumpsuits from Holland, a skateboard-influenced line from England, and some very short skirts.

The featured bands in the issue are My Chemical Romance (the cover story) and Good Charlotte. I learned from Tim Brodhagan's profile of My Chemical Romance that the group enjoyed early respect and got gigs just because it was from New Jersey, which "has had a near 30-year lock on the American musical scene" because of rock icons like Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi.

The article describes Gerald Way, the punk group's lead singer, as "one of the world's most intriguing rock figures of the moment." Way is certainly quotable. For instance, he explains that "a lot of the reason that the lyrics are about death is because being in your early twenties in New Jersey is a lot like feeling dead."

The Jersey theme carries over to a story about rap artist Aliaune "Akon" Thiam, born in Senegal and raised in the mean streets and housing projects of Jersey City. After a three-year prison term for grand theft auto, Akon has become a star at 25, and gave his interview to YRB's George Hagan in his chauffeur-driven black Escalade as it whispered down Eighth Avenue.

There's a feature on the 10 fastest cars on the planet, such as the 1,001-horsepower Bugatti Veyron that will gulp its entire gas tank in 12 minutes when you're driving it at 250 mph, which means you're not on Eighth Avenue.

YRB is a treat just for the photography and art design. The cover has an interesting matte (non-glossy) finish that makes it stand out on a crowded news rack.

An annual subscription (six issues) to YRB is an amazing $9.00 from the publisher. You can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

THE GLITTERING WEST

2007-02-28T00:11:00.000-05:00

As I steel myself to review Tahoe Quarterly and Desert Living, two luxury regional magazines from the West, my mantra is not "No Fear," but "No Envy." Both magazines celebrate living the very good life in some of the most beautiful parts of our country. What's to envy?

Tahoe Quarterly, published in Incline Village, Nevada, is new to the MagSampler.com newsstand. Its Winter issue focuses on three elements: gorgeous Lake Tahoe, the ski resorts off to the northwest, and Reno to the northeast.

The issue contains a couple of articles about Alex Cushing, who died recently at age 93. Apparently a Robert Moses-type master builder, he turned nearby Squaw Valley into a major ski resort, making the area's reputation and fortune when he convinced the Winter Olympics to come there in 1960. He stepped on a few toes in the process, and some environmentalists claim he stepped on a few mountains as well.

Lake Tahoe is the centerpiece of the area and of the magazine. Leo Poppoff writes of what goes on in the famously blue water during the winter, as marine life moves around, nutrients are brought up to the surface after settling to the bottom during the summer, and oxygen in turn moves down into the depths.

The clarity of the water is measured by dropping a dinner plate-sized "Secchi disk" into the water and watching it until it disappears. Right now it disappears at 65 feet, and the goal of environmentalists is to get Lake Tahoe so clear you'll be able to see it 100 feet down. Poppoff explains that the lake remains ice-free in winter because of its depth and because of the heat stored in its 40 million gallons.

That's good news for Scott Gaffney, a ski cinematographer who provides a short essay on one of his favorite recreations: surfing the north shore of Lake Tahoe during old-fashioned blizzards. Snug in his wetsuit and gloves, he notes how tourists stop their cars and gawk at him from the shore, until the raging wind and snow drive them back into their vehicles.

There's a sweet article about John "Snowshoe" Thompson, born in Norway, who saw an employment ad in a Sacramento newspaper in 1855 for a mail carrier. This was no ordinary route, but a 90-mile trek in the Sierra Nevada Mountains starting at Placerville, California. In the winter, of course, the snow made the route all but impassable.

But not to Snowshoe Thompson, who from his Norwegian childhood remembered the long boards used to glide across snow-covered ground. He carved skis from green oak planks, and carried more than 80 pounds of mail on his back on the route for 20 years. Old-timers said he reached 60 miles per hour going downhill and could ski-jump 100 feet.

Of course, Tahoe Quarterly has a lot of articles about fine restaurants, glorious spas, places to ski, chalets to buy. Real estate rules the ad pages. But its heart is in the land and lake.

We move south to Phoenix, Arizona, home base to the monthly Desert Living. It covers a fairly broad territory, from Arizona through New Mexico.

The spine of the January issue describes it as the "2007 Luxury Issue," so maybe the editors do go a bit overboard this one month a year.

Take the opening section, about "what's new, what's hot, what's now." We learn that something called the Rocket Racing League is forming, with ex-Air Force jet jockeys to race thunderous rocket-propelled airplanes on a two-mile course over the desert. Also in the works is a high-tech personal watercraft that resembles a porpoise. It's powered by a 425-horsepower Corvette engine, will reach 55 mph on the surface, can roll 360 degrees and, yes, will even work underwater.

I read about the restaurateur in Scottsdale who also caters meals on private jets, such as "Kobe beef with a side of foie gras layered with black truffles and 24-karat gold." Then there's a new eau de toilette for canines, part of Fruit & Passion's HOTdog collection, "with notes of fruit, fig leaves and cedar." We're assured that the ingredients are all hypoallergenic.

Some mighty fancy cars are reviewed in the issue, including a Bentley Arnage (MSRP: $242,000) and a Rolls-Royce Phantom (MSRP: "If you have to ask…").

But there are well-written, serious articles in the issue, such as an analysis of Phoenix's new "skewed halo" 9-11 memorial, which includes a piece of mangled steel from the World Trade Center, rubble from the Pentagon and earth from Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

You'll also find a detailed look at the Beaulieu house in North Scottsdale, powered by hydrogen and designed to capture rainwater and sunlight. It's an environmentally friendly 6,900 square-foot mansion built into a mountainside. It has garden roofs, swimming pools and fantastic views of the desert.

What's to envy?

An annual subscription to Tahoe Quarterly (six issues—that's what the magazine says) is $29.95, but a bind-in card in the issue promises two years for the same price. An annual subscription to Desert Living (10 issues) is $12.00 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy of either magazine for $2.59.

MONITORING TIMES: For Those Who Like To Listen In

2007-02-25T22:55:00.000-05:00

This morning I've been reading the 25th anniversary issue of Monitoring Times, a neat monthly devoted to scanners, shortwave radio, ham radio, computers and antique radios. It's published by Grove Enterprises in Brasstown, North Carolina.

Publisher and founder Bob Grove starts off the anniversary issue with a couple of columns recounting his early interest in radio as well as the history of the magazine. I was impressed to learn that his was the first publication to confirm existence of the "Stealth" aircraft. Readers of Monitoring Times had been listening in on transmissions from its test flights!

My own roots in shortwave radio are old but shallow. Back in the late 1950s, as a Long Island teenager, I loved to check out the high end of the AM radio dial at night to pull in stations from exotic places like Cleveland and Montreal. Then I ordered a simple Heathkit vacuum-tube shortwave receiver, soldered it together, and listened excitedly to "The Internationale," the theme song of Radio Moscow, the ponderous chimes of Big Ben announcing the hour on the BBC, and even the chatter of pilots coming into nearby Idlewild Airport.

I took up an on-air offer from Radio Sofia and wrote to the station requesting a Bulgarian pen pal, a heady activity for a Catholic school student during the Eisenhower era. I corresponded for several years with a girl of my age in Sofia. In 1968 I got the chance to knock on her door. Unshaven and grungy, I was on my leisurely way back to New York from a two-year stint teaching English in South Vietnam and dodging the draft. It turned out that her daddy was a barrel-chested major in the Bulgarian Army, his uniform heavy with medals and ribbons. An awkward Cold War encounter.

Monitoring Times devotes 13 pages to a guide to shortwave broadcasts in English, giving time, frequency and radio station. There are also pages of reports from readers on what they've been hearing on the shortwave bands. Did you know that the Voice of Croatia plays jazz, funk and pop tune oldies in the afternoon?

My own somewhat belated shortwave report from my days in Vietnam: I remember listening to Radio Australia on the day that country's prime minister disappeared while swimming. Apparently the sharks got him. In between reports of the fruitless search they played music, including―I kid you not—"A Good Man Is Hard to Find."

This issue of Monitoring Times includes a fascinating history of the early use of shortwave radio in Arctic exploration in the 1920s. A sidebar explains how authors Harold Cones and John Bryant were researching early Zenith Radio Corporation products and were appalled at the lack of relevant material in the company's archives. But in 1993 they were exploring a soon-to-be-closed television assembly plant and discovered, up in the rafters, 138 file drawers covered with pigeon droppings. They were the personal files of Zenith's founder. The files became the basis for the article, which includes schematics of the radios used in the Arctic expeditions.

You'll find an extensive scanning column, full of inquiries from readers about how they can eavesdrop on their local police and fire departments. Other columns deal with monitoring military communications, developments in domestic commercial radio, and listening in on boat, airplane and train frequencies.

There are also several articles devoted to ham radio, a hobby that's probably taking it on the chin from the growth of the Internet. But it's not an area that the publisher of Monitoring Times is going to neglect. His byline includes his ham radio call letters: "by Bob Grove W8JHD."

An annual subscription (12 issues) to Monitoring Times is $28.95 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

FIERY FOODS & BBQ: One Spicy Magazine

2007-02-22T23:10:00.000-05:00

Am I glad that I don't hold down a boring job like photo editor of Playboy! I'd never have the time to review magazines like Fiery Foods & BBQ, which qualifies for the "died and gone to heaven" award for lovers of spicy foods.

Fiery Foods & BBQ is published bimonthly by Pioneer Communications in Des Moines, Iowa, an area more traditionally known for tuna casserole. But the magazine's heart is in the South and Southwest, as well as the Caribbean. Africa, Asia and anywhere hot chiles are lovingly grown, cut up and consumed.

The January/February issue, just into the MagSampler.com newsstand, opens up with Nancy Gerlach's column, "Nancy's Fiery Fare." She devotes it to "sizzling sandwiches," and sandwiches are something that a low-level chef like me can appreciate.

She starts the column off with a history lesson. Although combinations of bread, meat and cheese can be traced back to Biblical times and the Middle Ages, the main credit should go to John Montague, the fourth Earl of Sandwich. This 18th century fop had what would today be called a "gambling problem" at his London gentleman's club, refusing to leave the gaming tables for lunch or dinner. Gerlach writes, "His valet would bring him snacks of meat and cheese between two pieces of bread so he could continue to play cards with one hand while eating with the other." Other dissolute types at the tables started asking for "Sandwiches," and the name stuck.

Gerlach gives us several pages of sandwich recipes that almost made me drool on the pages, potentially ruining a saleable sample magazine. I liked a grilled cheddar cheese and chile-marinated onion sandwich, to be cooked (carefully) on a barbecue grill. I loved a recipe for a muffuletta, a sandwich invented by a Sicilian grocer in New Orleans in 1906. Gerlach notes that "Muffulettas are hard to find outside of New Orleans, and everyone there closely guards their recipes." Her spicy version involves a pimiento-stuffed green olive salad containing such ingredients as celery, red bell peppers, wine vinegar, mashed anchovies, crushed red chiles and lemon juice, to be slathered on a sandwich with such main ingredients as Genoa salami, smoked ham and mozzarella cheese.

Next in the issue is the announcement of the winners of the 2007 Scovie awards, Fiery Foods & BBQ's annual hot foods competition. To start off this 12-page article, the magazine reports there were 742 entries in such categories as Barbecue Sauce American Style, Barbecue Sauce World Beat, Bloody Mary Beverages, Mustard Condiments, Salad Dressing Condiments, Meat-Required Marinades, Meat-Required Wing Sauce, Salsa Hot, Prepared Pasta Sauce and Prepared Stir-Fry Sauce. The entries are from tiny companies all over the country, some from abroad, and virtually all the winners have Internet addresses, obligingly supplied by the magazine, where their products can be ordered.

My favorite category was "Most Outrageous Label," which was won by Tijuana Flats Hot Foods in Longwood, Florida for a hot sauce named "Smack My Sweet Ass & Call Me Sally," although to my deep disappointment no photo of the label is supplied. The "Grand Prize Tasting" winner was the "Byron Bay Chilli Company Fiery Coconut Chilli with Curry & Ginger" from Australia, which the magazine calls "one of the world's truly unique sauces" for your barbecued chicken or salad.

There's an interesting profile of Jack Aronson, who founded his Garden Fresh Gourmet company at his struggling Detroit restaurant a decade ago. Garden Fresh now is one of the country's renowned makers of salsa, dips, chips and salad dressings, and is looking to go national through retailers like Costco and Kroger. Its entries won 13 of the 24 salsa categories in this year's Scovie awards.

An article examines the various festival foods of the nations in the Caribbean, noting that they're all subtly different and have been influenced by African, Indian, Chinese and European cuisines. The biggest influence, author Jessica McCurdy Crooks notes, is from Africa, so many dishes involve cassava, yam, bananas and jerk. Curry came from Indian laborers on the islands, and of course the environment furnishes lots of seafood and fruits.

There is trouble in paradise, however. Crooks reports that "One Trinidadian friend, when asked what Trinis eat during carnival, shouted out, 'KFC!'" She adds that Trinidad is indeed the Caribbean island with the distinction of consuming the most Kentucky Fried Chicken. But she then soothes our pain with recipes for such delicacies as Crab Callaloo, Jamaican Curry Goat and Trindadian Chicken Pelau.

In this issue of Fiery Foods & BBQ you'll also find an informative article on the intricacies of smoking meats (you can even use an ordinary Weber charcoal grill if you're especially vigilant) and another on Mexican mole sauces, which don't necessarily involve chocolate.

An annual subscription (six issues) to Fiery Foods & BBQ is for a limited time only $14.95 from the publisher through its Web site, www.fiery-foods.com. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGGINGS: Finds in the Middle East

2007-02-20T23:23:00.000-05:00

A colorful, interesting, but much too little-known magazine in the MagSampler.com newsstand is Archaeological Diggings, a bimonthly from Australia that reports on recent archaeological finds in the Middle East.

We've been looking through the new January/February issue, which carries well-illustrated accounts of digs from across that region, as well as descriptions of relevant museum exhibitions from around the world.

In the latter category is a report from an exhibition of Egyptian antiquities from the Louvre now open in Canberra, Australia. Assistant editor Marie Carter fills the reader in on a lot of the history of the artifacts on display.

For instance, we learn that some of the rituals of the Egyptians―they were into ritual as much as we are―turned a bit empty over time. When an Egyptian of note was buried, his embalmed corpse was initially accompanied by canopic jars, filled with the deceased's also embalmed lungs, liver, stomach and intestines. For some reason, later on in Egyptian history the viscera were returned to the body before burial. But the canopic jars remained part of the ritual, and continued to be interred with the deceased, even though they were now made of solid wood! The magazine shows some of these gorgeously painted "dummy" canopic jars from the Louvre.

There's a report from the magazine's Jerusalem correspondent, Daniel Herman, about an ongoing excavation at Ramat Rachel, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem and in the vicinity of the Biblical tomb of Rachel. It's an Iron Age palatial complex first discovered by Dr. Y. Aharoni in 1954. Recent work at the site has uncovered a Persian-style garden, and the archaeologist now running the site has issued an international call for volunteers during the summer of 2007.

Herman adds a bit of color to the story, or, in the current archaeological vernacular, "dishes some dirt." Dr. Aharoni engaged in a long and vociferous dispute with another leading Israeli archaeologist, Yigael Yadin, about the dating of the site. They were a couple of hundred years apart in their estimates. Ramat Rachel was just one of many arguments between the two, who "were known for being in perpetual academic rivalry." Herman puts a nice coda on the story: "After Aharoni passed away Yadin turned to politics and became a member of parliament and head of a political party. The rumor was that he did so because with the death of Aharoni, Yadin had no one to fight with in academia."

A story from Cairo describes a recent project in Alexandria that involved drilling a core out of the mud in the sea bottom. The core contained a lot of sea shells, which were analyzed for carbon-dating purposes as well as for lead content. The lead content of the shells was high for Egypt's Old Kingdom period, for the years from 1000 to 800 BC, and again about 300 BC, when Alexander the Great founded his city there. The theory is that the lead originated in the weights used by fishermen as well as in onshore building projects, and that lead content of sea shells is a good index to the economic life of the area over time.

The issue contains the bittersweet story of early 19th century German-born explorer Johann Ludwig Burkhardt, who loved to roam a very dangerous Middle East. In 1812, dressed as a local, he traveled overland from Damascus to Egypt. The high point of his life was the one day in August, 1812 that he spent in the fabulous lost city of Petra, carved out of rocky cliffs near the Dead Sea in present-day Jordan. He was the first modern European to see the city. His guide, fearing that Burkhardt would be identified as an infidel and killed, urged him to leave. He did, but continued his eccentric explorations and journal-keeping, treasured today by historians. He died in Cairo in 1817 at age 33 of dysentery. The article is illustrated with several breathtaking photos from Petra.

Archaeological Diggings editor David Down contributes an entertaining review of the book Ancient and Medieval Siege Weapons by Konstantin Nossov. Battering rams, catapults and siege towers were part of a fascinating arms race in the ancient world. For instance, when one side used elephants to attack a walled city, the ingenious defenders tied a piglet to a rope and lowered it down over the wall. The squeals from the piglet spooked the elephants, who turned on their masters and stampeded.

My favorite story is how King Cyrus of Persia solved the problem of javelins and arrows frightening his bullocks while they were pulling a siege tower on a rope toward a city's wall. He had pulleys staked into the ground along the wall, so the bullocks could happily pull away from the wall while the siege tower went in the opposite direction!

Archaeological Diggings is distributed in the United States by the Review and Herald Publishing Co. in Hagerstown, Maryland. An annual subscription (six issues) from them is $19.90. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

TWO MAGS FOR WOMEN WITH CAREERS

2007-02-18T23:00:00.000-05:00

Women with strong career interests can turn to a couple of magazines for solace and advice: Pink and Working Mother. We've received new issues of each in the MagSampler.com newsstand, and have found that they are as different as boardroom and family room.

The more buttoned-down of the pair is Pink, a nicely designed and edited business bimonthly with oversize pages. You can tell a publication is for women when the letters section is titled "Femail." The magazine, now in its second year, is published in Atlanta, Georgia.

Pink is clearly for an executive audience, for women who are making high incomes or hope to get there soon. What high-finance story ideas do the editors come up for such a readership?

You'll find advice in the February/March issue of Pink that could be in any magazine for business managers and entrepreneurs: how to keep your employees from idle surfing on the Internet, ways to get your product or service talked about on television, ideas for diversifying your portfolio. But what other business publication has a profile of Gloria Steinem, an article extolling the virtues of meditation for busy executives, or a look at how women are advancing (slowly) to positions of prominence in a number of American churches?

I slammed on the brakes at an article titled "Alimony Blues," warning readers to get pre-nuptial agreements lest they wind up paying substantial alimony to their ex-husbands. The first example cited by writer Betsy Schiffman is 47-year-old businesswoman Kim Shamsky, who "is outraged at having to pay thousands of dollars a month to her ex." That this a magazine for women is obvious when that lucky ex-husband is identified simply as "a 65-year-old retired major league baseball player." I think he can only be Art Shamsky (I looked it up and he is indeed 65), beloved to New York Mets fans for his role in the team's 1969 world championship. To a baseball fan, omitting his name in the article is like writing that "Senator Clinton is having problems with her husband, a retired politician who declined to be interviewed for this article."

There are plenty of case histories of successful women, as well as ideas (and ads) on the stuff to buy with those big bucks. A feature in this issue focuses on the autos that such women are driving, and what their car choices say about them.

And yes, there is an astrology column! February 14 through March 8 are "challenging days for business," so hunker down.

Working Mother is a magazine with a decidedly different orientation: it describes itself as "the only magazine for balance seekers." Achieving that delicate balance of family and working life is the theme of this New York-based magazine, which gets a lot of press for its lists of the best companies to work for if you're a mother. Working Mother is published nine times a year.

A read of the February/March issue shows that Working Mother is more along the lines of a traditional women's and parenting magazine, with the difference that its articles assume the reader is a bit more tired and harried, and perhaps guilt-ridden for unavoidable neglect of children and hubby. She's also assumed to have substantially more disposable income.

The sex article in the issue is the classic tale of the working mother who compiles a list of things to do that day, including "have sex." But it's on the bottom of her list, probably never to be checked off as completed. If her husband were to keep such a list, writer Lisa Armstrong says, "have sex" would probably be close to the top. She offers a sad statistic from Working Mother's survey of 800 working moms: 22% report they have sex fewer than 12 times a year. Armstrong explores some of the reasons that working mothers avoid sex, and suggests a few ways to get back in the swing.

There's a nice feature in each issue called "Learning Curve," with separate pages dealing with problems of children of different ages. For children under 2, the topic in this issue is an unhappy child in day care. In the 3-5 years section, it's how to deal with a child's intense attachment to one parent. For those with children 6 to 10 years old, you'll get tips on how to be at your best for a parent-teacher conference. And if your child is 11 or older, you'll be gently prodded to play more with the kid.

You'll also find recipes (length of cooking time is an important factor), descriptions of family-oriented resorts and profiles of interesting working mothers, such as actress Marlee Matlin.

An annual subscription to Pink (seven issues) is $19.95 from the publisher. You'll get an annual subscription (nine issues) to Working Mother for a bargain $9.97 from the publisher. We'll be happy to send you a sample copy of either magazine for $2.59.

AMERICAN ROAD: Two-lane Blacktop

2007-02-16T00:44:00.000-05:00

The great American interstate highway system is anathema to the editors of American Road, a quarterly that's dedicated to "celebrating the two-lane highways of yesteryear. . .and the joys of driving them today." It's published in Mt. Clemons, Michigan by the Mock Turtle Press.

American Road is geared to the recreational vehicle driver, motorcyclist and automotive tourist with the time to travel the byways instead of the highways, and, of course, to the armchair tourist. Its holy grails often have numbers: Route 66, Route 1, Route 101, plus the Lincoln Highway, America's first great cross-country road.

A typical story from the Winter 2006 issue is about the "Bigfoot Scenic Byway," a stretch of Route 96 in northern California near the Oregon border that stretches from Happy Camp to Willow Creek. One of my peeves about the magazine is that while it often shows some sort of map of the area in question, I still have no idea where that area is, and am forced to get out my tattered Rand-McNally road atlas to place a burg like "Happy Camp" relative to entities I can readily identify, like Los Angeles or the Pacific Ocean. A small state outline with a shaded area showing the spot under discussion would be appreciated.

Back to Bigfoot. This 89-mile ribbon of highway is hard by the Siskiyou Mountains, the Klamath Mountains and the Klamath River, and is the area where many of the "sightings" of Bigfoot and castings of his pawprints have originated. The scenery is fantastic, and so is the devotion of local shopowners to the legend, since it brings in the tourists.

The next story is about Route 6, the poor cousin to Route 66. Route 6, known as the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, stretched from Cape Cod to California in the old days, passing through 14 states on its way. Back in the 1960s California did the unforgivable: it lopped off 300 miles of the road, giving it other names and numbers.

Writer Joe Hurley recounts efforts by a few diehards to get the state to at least place historic markers along the old route, and describes some of its attractions today, such as the Owens Valley, the Mojave Desert and the 200 jetliners in storage at the Mojave Airport. He writes of the many Western films shot in the surrounding countryside. The old route continues through Burbank and Los Angeles into Long Beach.

Roadside diners were an important part of the pre-Interstate American road system, at least in the East, and they're important to American Road as well. The issue contains a diner-by-diner count of the cross-country Lincoln Highway today, although a number of them are closed, in decay or have been turned into barbecue joints. There are great stretches without a diner at all, such as from mid-Indiana through Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, all the way to Wyoming. Clearly a diner freak, author Brian Butko identifies each diner by factory and year of manufacture.

Living in New Jersey, I especially enjoyed Peter Genovese's account of his record-setting 50-revolution drive around one of the state's infamous traffic circles. He reports it took 23 minutes, covered 12 miles, and involved only a few near-accidents. I was reminded of a visit I made to Ireland a few years ago, renting a car with the steering wheel on the right and driving (white-knuckled) on the left side of the road. All went surprisingly well until I encountered a "roundabout."

An annual subscription (four issues) to American Road is $16.95 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

A BARNYARD QUARTET

2007-02-13T23:49:00.000-05:00

I like to think of them as our "barnyard quartet." They are four endlessly interesting bimonthly magazines from Countryside Publications in Medford, Wisconsin: Countryside & Small Stock Journal, Backyard Poultry, Dairy Goat Journal and Sheep! Reflecting the neighborly sharing ethos of rural America, they're filled with communications from readers asking and offering advice on all things from dealing with varmints to canning techniques. All are popular sellers in the MagSampler.com newsstand, reminding us urban and suburban types that it's a big country out there!

Countryside & Small Stock Journal is subtitled "the magazine of modern homesteading." The new March/April issue is heavy with articles about the promise of spring: "The Secrets to Growing Delectable Sweet Corn," "Growing Fruit on Your Homestead" and the cover story, "Getting Started with Bees."

I enjoyed a fellow's story about building his dream log cabin for his family on a 14-acre spread in New York State. There's a roadblock in his path: the mortgage on the property is owner-financed, and under its terms the seller forbade our hero from cutting any trees on the land. So he cut the pine logs on a small plot he owned in North Carolina, and schlepped them 600 miles in rental trucks. He figures the cabin, completed pretty much single-handed over a couple of years, cost him less than $3,000. The article is illustrated with the anonymous author's drawings of the log sled and log hauler he made, as well as the layout of the cabin's foundation pillars and a cross-section of the chinking process, which included mortar and fiberglass strips.

I've been pecking my way through the February/March issue of Backyard Poultry, designed for the farmer with a few dozen chickens or other fowl. The magazine starts off with a sobering report on avian influenza warnings from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Chickens have to live somewhere, and the issue provides well-illustrated articles about several types of movable chicken coops, as well as one designed to be built in a pasture for grass-fed range birds. Actually, the issue contains a raft of articles about raising pastured fowl, which apparently benefit mightily from a "salad bar" diet. Not only do free range chickens taste better, so do their eggs, the yolks of which are a much darker orange than those of their henhouse cousins. So farmers can charge more for these products, but they have to worry about predators of both the four-footed and winged varieties, as well as parasites and winter weather.

What I don't know about goats would fill a good-size magazine, and that would be Dairy Goat Journal. The January/February issue contains an account of a cattle, hog and crop farm run by a family in Iowa. They also have a herd of 30 registered Toggenburg dairy goats, basically raised as a hobby for showing purposes. What to do with all that goat milk, especially since the farm is far from any market for the stuff? Of course, the (goat) kids come first, but they feed the surplus milk to calves on the farm, who grow nice and fat and bring more money when they're sold.

I was a little confused when I started reading an article titled "How to Make a Customized Goat Coat," until I understood that author Maxine Kinne was relating how she had been caring for her sick mini-goat and realized that the shivering Chloe would benefit from a layer of clothing. "Human clothing doesn't fit goats," she explains, "and if you manage to get it on a goat, it won't stay put." The article describes her design for a very simple, low-cost polar fleece goat coat, complete with webbing and quick-release snap rings.

The January/February issue of Sheep! features a nice article by John Kirchhoff, who runs a 150-ewe operation in Missouri. He frequently has to vaccinate, worm and select his flock. "I dreaded those sheep working days," he remembers. "I knew at the end of the day every stitch of my clothing was going to be soaked with sweat. I'd be covered in sheep manure, mud and hair from the waist down. I would be physically exhausted and my kids wouldn't speak to me for a week." So, being of an organizing disposition, Kirchhoff sat down and designed an ideal barn-working system.

His plan involved lighting, windows, air movement, gates and chutes, among other factors. A working knowledge of animal psychology is essential for such a task. For instance, sheep and other animals are attracted to light. "Many years ago," he writes, "I learned something the hard way: install windows higher than your animal's MLA (maximum leaping altitude)." Want to get your sheep to go through a chute with purpose and joy? Put a bright window at the end, and that's the direction they'll want to go. After a couple of years of designing, redesigning and building, Kirchhoff now has a near-perfect barn system, and offers the flow diagrams to prove it.

An annual subscription (six issues) to any of these publications is $21.00 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

SKEPTICAL INQUIRER: Don't Believe Everything You Read

2007-02-11T22:56:00.000-05:00

Always ready to throw a pail of cold water on the public's―and the mass media's―pet beliefs, the Skeptical Inquirer is into its 31st year and going strong. The bimonthly is published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a loose organization of science types based in Amherst, New York, close by the University of Buffalo.

The organization recently changed its name, and therein lies a tale.

Until last fall, it was the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, CSICOP for short. Editor Kendrick Frazier devotes a long editorial in the new January-February issue to the reasons for the change, which have a bit to do with publicity but also with a subtle reorientation of the Committee and its publication.

Back in the mid 1970s when CSICOP was started, psychics, astrologers, faith healers and UFOlogists were getting a lot of attention. Frazier writes that "our original core focus on the 'paranormal' was partly because that was where a lot of misinformation and intentional disinformation existed. Also, paranormal topics had broad appeal to the public and the media, and the scientific community was basically ignoring them, allowing promoters of the paranormal to go unchallenged."

But the organization's main mission, as it sees it now―to promote the application of rational thought to public discourse―was being hindered by its awkward moniker. Scientists were reluctant to have anything to do with an organization with "paranormal" in its name, even if that organization was dedicated to its debunking. And, as Frazier points out, respectable publications see the need to spell out an organization's full name at least once in any article, and who has space (and patient readers) for a name that long?

It's interesting to note that this past weekend Princeton University announced the closing of its laboratory devoted to the study of extrasensory perception and telekinesis since 1978. The development is apparently being greeted with relief by scientists at the university. It looks like the paranormal is fading from public consciousness.

There's a little bit of the good old stuff in this issue, such as a roundup and pooh-poohing of Sasquatch and Cadborosaurus sightings. The latter is a Loch Ness-type sea serpent supposedly spotted at various times since 1933 in Cadboro Bay, on the southeast coast of British Columbia's Victoria Island.

But the new meat-and-potatoes for the Skeptical Inquirer is investigating phenomena that the mass media swallow and regurgitate without even a burp of indigestion. An example is the belief that those who worked and lived in the dust of the collapsed World Trade Center suffer from a variety of serious respiratory and other illnesses.

Michael Fumento writes that the origin of the story, a report from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, has a faulty premise: it is based on health statistics from people who came forward voluntarily to have their health checked, not on a random sample. He argues that such people come forward because they're worried about their health, and thus are more likely to exhibit symptoms based on stress-caused psychogenic illness.

A major modern enemy of rational thinking, according to the Skeptical Inquirer, is "intelligent design," the theory of creationism that denies evolution. It's a core belief of many millions of Americans, and is becoming an ideological battleground in school districts around the country. This issue features a long report from one such conflict in Dover, Pennsylvania.

The cover story is an interesting appreciation of the life of Carl Sagan, one of the founders of CSICOP. It's been ten years since the vastly popular scientist died, and colleague David Morrison recounts his successes in science and in the media. Sagan was the guest of television talk show host Johnny Carson show 26 times. He called The Tonight Show "the biggest classroom in history."

I was surprised to read that Sagan had been in a bit of an eclipse during the 1990s, caused in part by the near-stoppage in the NASA space program after the 1986 Challenger accident. Morrison writes that the main problem was Sagan's scientific blunder in 1990, when he predicted that the threatened burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields by Iraq could cause a mini "nuclear winter" in the region and possibly on a worldwide scale. The oil fields burned with no discernable effect on the weather anywhere.

Massimo Polidoro, head of an Italian skeptics organization, writes a witty column about "The Devious Art of Improvising." Imagine you're on Barbara Walter's television show and you foolishly tell her that you can reproduce a drawing never seen by you that lies concealed in an envelope on her desk. . .

An annual subscription to the Skeptical Inquirer (six issues) is $35.00 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

THREE REGIONAL TREASURES

2007-02-08T00:03:00.000-05:00

This morning we'll take a look at some regional magazines that have just sent new issues to the MagSampler.com newsstand. They're from diverse points of the eastern United States: Vermont Life, Georgia Backroads and Delaware Beach Life. These are all treasured regional publications that are more interested in what makes their home areas unique than in what can make your kitchen or bathroom yet more ornate and luxurious.

It's nice on a frigid February morning to get our first magazine dated Spring 2007. This issue of Vermont Life focuses on music in the Green Mountain State: the surprisingly many places to hear it played live, famous and up-and-coming musicians who live there, and a list of the "14 essential Vermont CDs," including the 50th Anniversary Album of the Marlboro Music Festival and Phish's A Picture of Nectar.

There's a glorious photo spread showing spring coming to the Vermont countryside, as well as an interesting study of Vermont's biggest trees and the team of volunteers that finds and catalogues them. I was sad to read that Vermont Life editor-in-chief Tom Slayton is leaving his post after 22 years, but I think we can assume his successor will continue the magazine's fine record.

I concur with a letter to the editor in the Winter issue of Georgia Backroads that begins, "Wow, what a great magazine! For the first time in my life, I was disappointed that my wait at the local veterinarian's was short." The magazine shows an intense interest in the state's fascinating history, especially that of its rural areas.

Daniel Roper has fashioned a a dramatic story in the issue about unrequited love. Back in the 1830s, George Tecumseh Sherman was a West Point cadet from Ohio. His roommate, Marcellus Stovall, was from Georgia. One day Stovall's younger sister Louisa came visiting the military academy, and Sherman was smitten by the Southern belle to the point of proposing marriage. Louisa declined, explaining, "Your eyes are so cold and cruel. I pity the man who would ever become your antagonist. Ah, how you would crush an enemy!"

The obviously dashing Cadet Sherman replied, "Even though you were my enemy, my dear, I would love and protect you."

Fast forward three decades, and we find Marcellus is a general in the Confederate Army, his old roommate the leader of the North's pitiless March Through Georgia.

The story goes that as his troops planned to burn the abandoned Shelman House, a mansion near Cartersville, Georgia, General Sherman learned from slaves that Louisa Stovall Shelman was mistress of the house. Sherman ordered his plundering soldiers to return everything they had taken, and left a card which read, "You once said that I would crush an enemy, and you pitied my foe. Do you recall my reply? Although many years have passed, my answer is the same now as then, 'I would ever shield and protect you.' That I have done. Forgive me all else. I am only a soldier."

We now scoot back up north to check out a recent issue of Delaware Beach Life, a bimonthly that always serves up an entertaining blend of fine photography, good writing and interesting themes.

The Delaware coast is one of those pleasant places to live that struggles to maintain its small-town ways in the face of surging real estate prices and an influx of moneyed full- and part-time residents from the big cities of the East. The magazine sees part of its mission as educating its readership with entertaining studies of the coast's history.

An example is the article in this issue about the old Rehoboth Ice House, which used to supply Rehoboth Beach with ice year-round until the 1950s, when everybody finally got their own refrigerator. The big brick building is now being transformed into a museum for the Rehoboth Beach Historical Society.

The artistry of such a story is in the details. Author Lynn Parks writes of how home delivery of ice was made: "Customers would place a small black-and-white placard in their windows to indicate how many pounds of ice they wanted on a given day. Ice delivery was a thrill for neighborhood children, who would collect the chips and shavings that fell off as the iceman cut the correct size from the large chunk in the truck."

Forgive me for this, but I watched the Warren Beatty movie Reds the other night, with Jack Nicholson playing Eugene O'Neill, and I can hear the children of Rehoboth Beach joyfully screaming, "The Iceman Cometh!"

An elderly resident remembers that for a small charge families could store their watermelons in the cool of the icehouse. The melons would be carved with the family's initials, and a couple of the kids would be dispatched in the heat of a summer's afternoon to collect one.

You can get a sample copy of any of these magazines from us for $2.59, no matter where in this great country you live.

THE GLORY DAYS OF THE AMERICAN AUTOMOBILE

2007-02-06T00:43:00.000-05:00

The American automotive industry has a clouded future, but a very bright past. That glorious history is evident in several magazines that have just arrived in the MagSampler.com newsstand.

We carry three titles from Auto Round-Up Publications in Jane Lew, West Virginia (be careful, this can get confusing): the biweekly Auto Round-Up Magazine and its companion monthlies, Truck Round-Up Magazine and Auto/Truck Round-Up Monthly. We'll get to the fourth magazine, Antique Automobile, a little later.

All three Round-Up magazines use newsprint stock. They are filled with ads for cars, trucks, motorcycles and a great miscellany of automotive paraphernalia. These are national magazines, so the ads are not for people looking for an old Honda Civic to use to drive to the train station every morning. The cars being offered (and being sought) are classics, antiques, muscle cars and street rods, or at least the shells that can be turned into something very special. Almost all the ads are illustrated, some in color.

Looking through the recent issue of Auto/Truck Round-Up that's come into the newsstand, I find a 1940 Chevy coupe in Mankato, Kansas, "barn fresh" (I love that!), needs restoration, $5,000 or best offer. A few pages later, an ad from Mountain Home, Arkansas offers my very first car, a 1976 AMC Pacer. As expected, it's described as "not running," but for just $995 you can get it―and another Pacer thrown in for free!

On page 23 there's an ultra-cool 1931 Ford Model A street rod, gussied up with automatic transmission, rack and pinion steering, disc brakes, tilt steering wheel and CD player, just $34,800. Maybe that's what Ford should be making today.

You'll find all sorts of great stuff for sale in these magazines: collections of state license plates covering many decades, old gas station signs, even old gas pumps. There are also listings for hundreds of automotive events throughout the country.

We've also received the January/February issue of Antique Automobile, the classy bimonthly published by the Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA). These are serious people writing about their collections of serious autos. In this issue alone you'll find articles about a 1904 Oldsmobile, 1961 Ford Starliner, 1956 Divco Model 13 (that's your classic milk delivery truck from "Leave It to Beaver" days), 1972 Triumph TR-6 and 1940 Nash Ambassador Eight, among others. All the articles are nicely illustrated in color, and many discuss the finer points of restoration and maintenance.

What blew me away was the cover of the issue, which we've placed in our Web site's gallery of covers that have caught my eye for one reason or another. This automotive mastiff is one of a dozen General Motors Futurliners, streamlined trucks created in 1940 and refurbished in 1952 to tote around the latest technological marvels for exhibit at GM's "Parade of Progress" in various cities throughout the country. The company continued the exhibitions into the mid-1950s, but interest in them gradually died out—the victim, ironically, of one of those futuristic marvels the Futurliners had been carrying around for a decade: television!

In the cover article, AACA member and long-time GM employee Don Mayton writes of how he discovered one of the nine surviving Futurliners in 1998, at an automotive museum in Indiana. It was in a sad state of decay, but Mayton was able to borrow it with the promise of restoring it to glory.

The article is about how members of the organization—with significant help from General Motors—accomplished that restoration.

In the news notes column early in the issue, you'll find a reprint of a delightful 1907 ad for dog goggles. Remember, they didn't have windshields in those days!

You can get sample copies of any of these publications from us for $2.59. Add $2.00 per order for postage.

KNUCKLEBONES: For Board Game Enthusiasts

2007-02-05T00:15:00.000-05:00

Board games, old and new, are the subject of Knucklebones, a bright bimonthly magazine from Jones Publishing in Iola, Wisconsin that debuted just over a year ago. A look through the new March issue shows that this baby has its act together.

The magazine takes its name from an old Greco-Roman board game that was played with sheep's knucklebones, as well as with more civilized bronze, ivory and silver pieces.

What I like about Knucklebones is its inventiveness, an essential quality if it is to appeal to serious game enthusiasts.

For instance, there's a regular column called "Quick Fixes," where readers share game tips and offer their own suggestions as to how to change a game's rules to make it faster, slower or just more interesting. I confess that I've tinkered with the sacred rules of Scrabble and Monopoly during my misspent past.

This issue reviews 19 new games for children and adults, and the reviews are enhanced with a helpful side bar of publisher name and Web site, designer's name, type of game (board, strategy, party, chess variant, etc.), number of players, length of play, age range, price, learning curve and degree of challenge.

That the designer's name is included with each new game review is significant, for Knucklebones is aimed at the game maker as well as the game player. The March issue carries a couple of stories about what it takes to create and test a game, as well as to successfully seek a publisher.

Ethan Goffman, designer of a word-play game to be published in mid-2007 called AmuseAmaze, writes of the many fanciful games he's invented in his head, such as "cheating the giant corporation you helped to build" and "being the most successful wino in a run-down city." He's only had one game previously published, "by a tiny Internet-only company." Goffman stresses that you have to have extraordinarily patient friends willing to test-play your game ideas, adding that "my first recommendation to a wannabe game designer is to find a faithful game-playing spouse."

I was interested to learn there's a Web site for game designers at www.bgdf.com, where you'll find the Board Game Designers Forum.

The issue contains a fabulous five-page introduction to chess by Bruce Whitehill, who summarizes the international origins and variants of the ancient game, its basic moves, a list of books on the subject, and a sidebar on live chess, in which real people act as the chess pieces. You may have seen live chess at a medieval fair.

According to Whitehill, the traditional beginnings of live chess go back to Marostica, Italy, which was part of the Venetian Republic. In 1454 two noblemen sought the hand of the daughter of the Lord of Marostica, and were about to fight a duel. The girl's father forbade the duel and decided the rivals should play a public chess game with live pieces to decide his daughter's mate. The town still holds that traditional chess game every two years, with more than 500 townspeople participating with lavish costumes, pageantry and parades.

I was fascinated by the lone book review in the issue. The book, titled The Turk, by Tom Standage, is about the famous chess-playing automaton developed in the mid-18th century, which, ludicrous as it sounds, is said to have impressed such notable figures as Ben Franklin, Napoleon, Poe and Charles Babbage. That less-familiar last fellow―perhaps inspired by the concept of The Turk―was to become known to history as "the father of computer science."

In keeping with that theme, the issue also contains an interview with Murray Campbell, one of the lead scientists in IBM's Deep Blue project, the chess-playing computer that defeated reigning world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

This issue contains a nice account of Spiel, the annual game fair in Essen, Germany. During four somewhat chaotic days in October the public is invited by manufacturers to learn about, play, rate and buy their new games, as well as to enjoy beer and wurst. Knucklebones notes that one of the most successful games from the 2006 Spiel is based on Ken Follett's novel, The Pillars of the Earth. The game will be published in English later in 2007.

An annual subscription (six issues) to Knucklebones is $27.95 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

DIE CAST DIGEST: Racing Car Replicas

2007-02-01T23:25:00.000-05:00

NASCAR auto racing has become a major sport in the United States, spreading from its deep roots in the South to national attention through the magic of television. And with it has arisen the collecting and trading of die cast metal race cars models, chronicled in the pages of Die Cast Digest.

Published monthly in Knoxville, Tennessee, Die Cast Digest consists of two sections: a bunch of columns on the sport and on the collecting aspect, and a massive price guide giving current market values for thousands of brightly painted tiny metal cars.

I've been looking through the February issue, recently arrived at the MagSampler.com newsstand. In it you'll find a helpful schedule of the year's Nextel Cup series and the lesser Busch series, as well as a current roster of the Nextel Cup cars: their numbers, drivers, sponsors, owners and crew chiefs.

One column examines the changes in the NASCAR races this year, such as the entrance of Toyota cars into the fray and the gradual introduction of the "car of tomorrow," apparently a change in the spoiler and in some mechanical aspects of the vehicles.

I was intrigued by special packages being offered to the public by Direct TV and by Sirius Satellite Radio. At the Daytona 500 later this month the satellite television company will unveil "NASCAR Hotpass," which gives viewers access to five special channels. Each channel will have up to six cameras and two announcers focusing solely on one driver for the entire race, as well as access to in-car audio communications. Hotpass will cost $99 for races throughout the year, with no advance guarantee as to which drivers will be featured.

Sirius offers 10 driver channels that will combine the overall race radio broadcast with driver-to-pit crew chatter.

Only two columns in the issue dealt with collecting. One was a brightly written description of some models of European race cars now on the market, accompanied by postage stamp-sized photos. The other offered analysis of a couple of die cast vehicles―a race car and a car transporter―with the writer in his text comparing the models against some photos of the actual vehicles. Die Cast Digest illustrated the column with a few miserable photos of the models, still encased in their plastic packaging!

Were I asked for advice by the publishers, I'd tell them to focus more on the collectibles than on the sport, and to provide more and better photographs of models. And to work on the writing, editing and proofreading, which are substandard for a magazine today.

The price guide takes up 62 of the issue's 82 pages, covers excluded. I'd estimate that some 13,000 car models are listed, by manufacturer, car number, driver and on-car advertiser. There's another number in each row, never explained, which I take to be the number of copies of that model produced. The cars seem to range in size from 1:24 scale to 1:64.

There's nothing in this issue to indicate why a particular model becomes more or less valuable over time, a subject that I think every issue of a collectible magazine should deal with in some fashion. From my brief study of the price guide, I suspect that price has a lot to do with the driver, as Dale Earnhardt models have a high relative value, as do those of Jimmie Johnson, who won the Nextel Cup in 2006. I'm sure the number of copies made of a model is important, as is the quality of the product and the detail of its paint job. I'm intrigued by whether the sponsor name on the hood of a model is a significant factor, and if so, why.

Prices for die cast cars in the price guide range from the low teens to the thousands. Picked at random, a 1:24 1997 Elite #3 Dale Earnhardt car with “Goodwrench” on the hood is valued at $603, a #21 Mike Skinner with “Lowes” on the hood is valued at $57.

An annual subscription to Die Cast Digest (12 issues) is $29.95 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

NEW IN THE NEWSSTAND: Dolls, Doll Crafter & Costuming, Fired Arts & Crafts, Teddy Bear Review

2007-01-31T23:26:00.000-05:00

Just into the MagSampler.com newsstand are a quartet of popular doll and craft magazines from Jones Publishing, Inc. They cover a lot of ground, from Alabama Indestructible Dolls to the eternal moral question: should teddy bears wear clothes?

Dolls features a doll from Charisma Brands on its February cover (love that topknot!). Back in 1991 Charisma approached Marie Osmond to endorse a line of dolls for the QVC shopping network. She wound up designing the line instead, and eventually became one of the owners of the company! While it has since changed ownership, Marie continues to design dolls for Charisma. I liked the issue's "Talking About Antiques" column, which is full of facts about and pictures of antique Valentines cards. All doll lovers will want to join the magazine in celebrating the 20th anniversary of De Poppenstee, the Dutch gallery and studio famous for its realistic dolls of children from around the world.

The March issue of Doll Crafter & Costuming has a nice feature about reproducing an Alabama Indestructible Doll, a brand made in Roanoke, Alabama from 1905 to 1932. Ella Smith was inspired to start the line after her dolls won first place at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904. They featured plaster face masks covered by knit fabrics and finished with oil paints, so they were washable. The eyes were painted. As Ella wrote in her catalogue, "when the dear little girl drops one of these dolls she don't have to cry her little heart out because dolly has a broken head. She can just pick her up and go on happy and gay because these dolls do not break from being dropped." In the cover story, Susan Parris describes the painstaking work that goes into creating a fashionably dressed Queen Anne Doll.

I was fascinated by an article in the February issue of Fired Arts & Crafts titled "Framing Porcelain in Silver." It's about a new product developed in Japan called metal clay, which uses the sintering process to turn organic binders mixed with silver powder into 99.9% pure silver after firing. In clay form it can be molded and rolled; when dried, it can be filed, sanded and sculpted. After firing, it can be polished to a brilliant shine. The cover article focuses on a crucial ingredient in pottery: lowly clay. "Selecting the wrong clay could make your creative process more difficult, it could affect the durability of the finished ware or compromise safety," the article warns, before giving you ten useful tips on selecting clay for your project. Fired Arts & Crafts is the official magazine of The American Fired Arts Alliance. Jones Publishing merged its Popular Ceramics title into the magazine several months ago.

Just about everybody's favorite doll publication is the Teddy Bear Review. We've got the February issue in the newsstand, the one with the Pirate Teddy on the cover. As the cover article explains, he's part of designer R. John Wright's "Bears at Sea" collection, and should give Johnny Depp a run for his money in the Pirate of the Year competition. Christine Pike examines the weighty issue of whether your teddy bear should be clothed or not, something I've never thought much about, but then, I'm not a teddy bear. You are also alerted to the fact that The Teddy Bear Museum in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, will soon be offered for sale at Christie's in London. Get your bid in quickly!

You can purchase sample copies of any of these issues from MagSampler.com for $2.59, plus $2.00 per order for shipping costs.

SKYDIVING: Ups and Downs of the Sport

2007-01-31T00:15:00.000-05:00

Skydiving is a monthly from DeLand, Florida that describes itself as "parachuting's newsmagazine." It's all of that and a fascinating read, even for stay-solidly-on-the-ground types.

Sports parachuting provides many opportunities for great photographs, and Skydiving often utilizes striking cover graphics very effectively. An example is the new February issue, which shows jumpers tumbling from the open tail hatch of a DC-9 jetliner under the very blue sky of Southern California. The camera was positioned just underneath the open hatch.

The accompanying story is about how the 88-passenger jet, 37 years old, finally received FAA approval to be used for mass jumps. Said the co-owner of the plane, "It takes 30 minutes to do it [remove the tail hatch]―and three and a half years of paperwork to allow it."

Skydiving is a big and growing business, and the magazine serves both the individual sports jumper and the industry.

The most profitable part of the parachuting industry seems to be tandem jumping, in which a novice jumps with an experienced instructor who wears and controls the parachute. Usually another staff jumper, equipped with a video camera, records the jump as a memento for the newbie. This operation can bring in hundreds of dollars per jump, much more profitable that the $50 or $60 per jump that parachute centers charge for taking solo parachutists up.

After many years of fatality-free tandem jumping, the industry suffered two student deaths, one in October 2005 in Georgia and another in May 2006 in Ohio. To the horror of their instructors, both students fell out of their harnesses and plummeted to earth. The two fatalities have caused much soul-searching in the parachuting industry. It's important to note that both deceased students were "special situations": one was a wheelchair-bound man with little leg strength, the other a 230-pound woman.

This issue of Skydiving contains a long and thoughtful essay by tandem instructor Tom Noonan about the two incidents and a number of "near misses" that have been reported―and the many more incidents that were never reported and maybe even covered up. Noonan blames a new generation of blasé, sometimes bored tandem instructors trying more exciting maneuvers for their own entertainment or ignoring established procedures. A touch of drama is added when an instructor involved in one of the fatal accidents responds to Noonan's arguments.

Death and danger are ever-present subtexts in any article about sport parachuting. The issue contains a report about the "Holiday Boogie," a gathering of enthusiasts in Eloy, Arizona during the last week in December that drew more than 500 jumpers who made 9,524 jumps. The story details a variety of injuries and two fatalities during the week.

There's also a long article about a jumper-friendly bridge over the Snake River in Twin Falls, Idaho. Launching yourself into the air from land-attached objects is called "BASE jumping," an acronym for the four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: Building, Antenna, Span (such as a bridge or arch) and Earth (cliff, etc.).

I enjoyed the article's advice not to linger on the bridge railing, which might upset passing motorists. Also, you should advise the cops that you'll be jumping that afternoon so that when motorists excitedly call from their cell phones about the suicide they just witnessed, the authorities can relax.

We'll end this review with a sweet quotation about the sport from jumper Bill Leonard of Dallas, as reported in Skydiving: "Once you jump, you never look at the sky the same way again. After all, to be touched by a cloud is to be kissed by an angel."

An annual subscription to Skydiving (12 issues) is $16.00 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

NEW IN THE NEWSSTAND: CYH, Cineaste, Black Woman and Child, Aperture

2007-01-30T00:24:00.000-05:00

We're working hard to make sure our inventory of sample copies is fresh. We receive shipments of magazines into the MagSampler.com newsstand every day, and plan to give you short takes on these new issues in this column on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You can get sample copies of any of these publications from us for $2.59 each.

CYH is a general interest quarterly magazine edited for African-Americans. The cover story of the Spring 2007 issue is about LisaRaye McCoy Misick, star of the UPN network's long-running comedy All of Us. In a Grace Kelly-style twist, she is now first lady of Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean. In "Cry Freedom: The Menace of Modern Slavery," CYH editor Ene Taylor explores modern slavery in various parts of the world, an ongoing million-dollar business. You'll also find plenty of practical information in this issue, including tips on picking a college, buying a house and mending your finances. CYH means "Celebrates Your Heritage."

The Fall 2006 issue of the film quarterly Cineaste features the fetching Gretchen Mol on the cover in a scene from The Notorious Bettie Page. Billed as "our biggest issue ever," the magazine contains lengthy interviews with actors Willem Dafoe and Joan Allen. In Christopher Sharrett's essay "Through a Door Darkly" you'll encounter a less-than-reverent reappraisal of John Ford's The Searchers. There's also a detailed study of Val Lewton's RKO films, including I Walked With a Zombie and The Ghost Ship (curiously, I've watched both over the past month). As usual, there are also dozens of cogent film, DVD and book reviews in the issue.

Black Woman and Child is a magazine for women who are pregnant, plan to become pregnant and/or have a child or children aged seven and under. The Winter 2006 issue contains an interesting article on the benefits of yoga. Faduma Mohammed, born in Somalia and later a student in Germany, compares what it means to be a mother in her native country and in Europe. You'll find an article about what to look for if you're planning to send a child to day care. Marlo David-Azikwe complains that hip-hop music and culture ignore the life and concerns of a mother.

Aperture is a lush, oversized quarterly devoted to fine photography. We've received a recent issue that features a cover story about Lynn Davis, who has focused on the architecture of space programs from Kazakhstan to Cape Canaveral. The issue also takes you to Louisiana's fearsome Angola Prison, to the revolutionary magazine design of the Harper's Bazaar spinoff Junior Bazaar in the late 1940s, and to photographer Jen Davis's arresting self-photographs.

Copies of any of these magazines are available from us for $2.59, plus $2.00 per order for shipping.

ANTIQUES AND THE ARTS WEEKLY: Huge, Eclectic

2007-01-29T11:12:00.000-05:00

We've received a supply at the MagSampler.com newsstand of last week's Antiques And The Arts Weekly, a very impressive publication from The Bee Publishing Company in Newtown, Connecticut. It's a large tabloid newspaper of 160 pages, each 11 by 16 inches, and crammed with articles, pictures and advertisements about art, antiques and collectibles of all kinds. It's a prodigious ongoing publishing achievement!

A lengthy article starting on the front page of that January 19 issue provides an appropriate introduction to the world of serious collecting. It's about a new book, Expressions of Innocence and Elegance: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana. Jane Katcher is a Florida-based radiologist who's been collecting American paintings, weathervanes and other folk art for years. The book explains how she got interested in the subject, where and how she accumulated her impressive collection, and of course offers lavish illustrations of the objects themselves.

I can imagine Dr. Katcher and other collectors spending happy hours devouring the contents of Antiques And The Arts Weekly, scanning its articles and ads for news of upcoming auctions and gallery exhibitions, reading reports of prices gained at completed auctions, and exploring all sorts of tangents leading from their main interests to other areas.

While the editorial content and advertising in the publication focus on the Northeastern United States―from New England down through New York―there's substantial national and international coverage as well. For instance, there are a couple of articles, and more than 20 photos, from a huge antiques fair held in December at a former RAF base in Newark, England.

The variety of objects discussed or advertised in the pages of Antiques And The Arts Weekly is wide indeed. In this issue I found Marilyn Monroe's autograph on a letter accepting the terms of her first radio appearance in 1947; a circa 1765 Philadelphia Chippendale chair that was given by Benjamin Franklin to his daughter; a monumental four-piece bedroom set that measures 10.5 feet in height; a collection of old patent medicine bottles from the 19th century (contents included); an on-line auction of artifacts from Harry Houdini and other classic magicians; and autographed palm prints from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Babe Ruth. Great Men just don't do that anymore.

While some of the wares on sale in the publication are eclectic, they're never cheesy, and many major art galleries advertise in its pages.

The large-size pages make for hefty postage bills for the publisher, but they permit many illustrations in both editorial and advertising. The quality of the pictures is, of course, limited by the use of newsprint.

An annual subscription to Antiques And The Arts Weekly (52 issues) is a bargain $74.00 from the publisher. We'll be happy to send you a sample copy for $2.59.

BARTENDER: Useful Info for Mixologists

2007-01-22T00:04:00.000-05:00

Bartenders have to be chemists, artists, psychologists, entertainers, cops and business people, all at the same time. It's good to know that there's a support group that furnishes advice, training and general information for this demanding profession. Bartender Magazine is part of that network.

Issued quarterly by the Foley Publishing Corporation in Livingston, New Jersey, the magazine is one of a number of services for the bartending and on-premise industry offered by Ray and Jackie Foley. They also operate bartender.com, a Web site with still more drink recipes, bartending job ads and instruction (for a fee) on all sorts of matters of interest, such as "Recognizing Club Drugs," "Improving Your Tips" and securing a seller/server license in each of the states.

Ray is the author of several books, including Bartending for Dummies, Running a Bar for Dummies and The Ultimate Little Martini Book. That last title features more than 1,000 martini recipes!

Bartender Magazine, which has been around since 1978, is surprisingly light reading. I was expecting articles on how to manage a bar, tips on maximizing profits, explorations of how smoking bans have been impacting the tavern business. But the magazine seems to be designed for weary bartenders to leaf through during quiet moments behind the bar: dozens of recipes for cocktails, shooters and martinis, a page on obscure facts that I suppose the bartender could use in conversations with customers (7% of American women dyed their hair in 1950; 75% dye their hair today), and a centerfold listing 100 Web sites of interest to bartenders, most of which are beer and spirits companies. You'll also find several pages of bar-oriented jokes and cartoons.

The recent issue I've been reading had three short but informative feature articles about spirits, on bourbon, vodka and pink champagne, as well as a "Bartender of the Month" feature. Shouldn't that be "Bartender of the Quarter"?

The ads in Bartender make for interesting reading. The spirits industry has gone way beyond your basic bourbon, vodka and gin; I found ads for pomegranate-flavored vodka and Teton Glacier Potato Vodka ("made in America from selected Idaho potatoes").

There's also an eye-catching poster for sale called "The Urinals of Ireland." The ad announces that it was "created by Buddy Doyle, urinist and photographer, whilst traveling throughout The Emerald Isle." The poster has 45 photos of urinals, several shown in actual use.

An annual subscription to Bartender Magazine (four issues, one of which is the annual calendar issue with a different cocktail recipe for each day of the year) is $30.00 from the publisher. With a subscription you get a number of goodies, including a T-shirt, cocktail book and special access to bartender.com. We'll send you a sample copy of Bartender for $2.59.

BLUES REVUE: As Vibrant as the Music

2007-01-17T00:05:00.000-05:00

I've spent an interesting afternoon reading the new issue of Blues Revue, a bimonthly magazine about that vibrant musical genre published in Salem, West Virginia. It's the ideal niche magazine: vastly knowledgeable about its subject, but well-written, entertaining and non-oppressively informative even for the casual fan.

I confess I'm at a loss as to where the blues begins or ends. The entry for it in Wikipedia talks about blue notes and 12-bar structures, and makes reference to a call-and-response pattern for music and lyrics that has an African origin. I do know that when you're talking about music, the blues aren't necessarily sad, but they do reflect life, and that is often at least a little melancholy.

Every other issue of Blues Revue contains a CD of new blues recordings, a nice bonus.

The magazine starts out with a number of very well-written profiles of blues performers, many of them getting on in years.

The cover story of this issue is about Ike Turner, whose contribution to the music world goes far beyond his notorious marriage to Tina. For instance, as a teenager he played the piano on B. B. King's first hit record, "Three O'Clock Blues," back in the late 1940s. In the early 1950s he sneaked a young white gravel truck driver who wanted to hear Turner play into the backdoor of a blacks-only club in West Memphis. Yes, Elvis Presley hid behind the piano! Ike Turner remembers his next meeting with Elvis even more vividly. It was years after in a Las Vegas casino, and later that day Turner won a $470,000 jackpot.

Fruteland Jackson seems typical of many blues performers, in that he's had many jobs―private investigator, shrimp wholesaler, worker in a McDonnell Douglas missile factory―but has ultimately come back to music. At 53, he believes that experience does count in the blues: "What happens with a lot of young players is that they don't have the life experience for older people to believe. You're 24 years old. How are you going to talk to me about my 'woman'? You just left your mother's house."

In his new CD album Jackson has what some call a protest song, titled "Blues Over Baghdad." He explains, "What caused it was watching public television every night and seeing these silent moments with these young men, with their ears sticking out from their heads and looking green―18, 19 years old. I said, Who's going to speak for them? They're young enough to buy into a lot of things, and there they are."

The issue contains a couple of technical features on blues playing, one on using the bottleneck slide on the guitar, the other on minor playing on the chromatic harmonica.

There are pages and pages of CD and show reviews, and that's where you'll get a sense of the many young blues performers at work, several with prior experience in well-known pop and rock groups.
In the back of the magazine are fascinating full-page obituaries of blues performers, again up to the fine writing standards evident throughout Blues Revue.

I liked one about Robert Lockwood, Jr., a Robert Johnson protégé who died at age 91 in November. A truly cantankerous fellow, he became a featured performer on the legendary regional King Biscuit Time radio show in the early 1940s. Like many blues performers, he was in and out of the business. "I done quit the music business six times," he once said in an interview. "I tried my best to live with the squares, but the motherfuckers run me back to music."

The editors of Blues Revue have also come up with a nice last-page feature. It's called "Cover Stories," and discusses the background of a legendary blues album cover.

An annual subscription (six issues) to Blues Revue is $25.95 from the publisher, and includes those three CDs. You can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

PILGRIMAGE: Tales of Man and Nature

2007-01-03T00:26:00.000-05:00

This morning I've been browsing through an issue of Pilgrimage, a unique literary journal from Crestone, Colorado that's published three times a year. Reading it is akin to having your disk drive defragmented.

That's because its editor and publisher, Peter Anderson, fills it with autobiographical tales and poetry that, in his words, "invite reflection, help to illuminate the world's great wisdom traditions, encourage a deeper sense of home and place, and speak out for peace and justice."

The short and spare stories in the issue I've been reading take you to many unexpected places and situations.

In "On the Road to the Cofradia," by Teresa A. Kendrick, an American woman driving in rural Mexico encounters the body of a teenager lying on the road outside a village. She goes into the village to seek help, and finds the few stores deserted. She finally spies movement in one storefront, that of the local photographer. He explains that the villagers have all "gone to tell the patron." She notices that he is assembling a worn black suit and polished shoes, getting ready for the traditional funeral portrait. "Don't worry, senorita," the old man assures her, "an angel is passing today."

Fred Bahnson describes the loneliness of a young Montana boy who arrives at a school for the children of missionaries in Nigeria while his parents are off in the bush several hundred miles away. It's not a pleasant place: there's a tall wall covered with glass fragments to keep the white children in and the Nigerians out. Worst of all, it's to be his home for the next few years. His misery comes to center on the glass of milk he's forced to drink with each meal, a powdered concoction called Friesan Flag that to him has strong overtones of formaldehyde.

Bill Sharwonit writes of hiking down a favorite trail outside Anchorage, Alaska. On this particular day he goes off the trail to inspect a large and venerable paper birch tree that has several dead branches, cracks in others and folds of papery bark that have peeled away from the trunk. He muses,

All these aging marks give the birch what we humans call "character." But they give it beauty, too. Now middle-aged, I hope I'll be able to equally appreciate my own sagging, wrinkling, graying body―and that of my spouse and friends―as the years take their toll on us. Contrasted with the birch's bark are its shining green leaves, adding brightness to the tree, as a sparkling pair of eyes or a rich smile might do for a human elder.

Explorer, mountain climber, mathematician and Asian scholar Edwin Bernbaum writes of his perilous trek to a hidden valley east of Mount Everest perhaps never before visited by outsiders. Tibetans told him it was a place sacred to ancient Buddhism; you'll recognize it as the origin of the "Shangri-La" myth.

To me, the best thing in this issue of Pilgrimage is a short quotation attributed to Philo of Alexandria (a real old dude) that starts off the "Friesan Flag" story: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is engaged in a mighty struggle."

Pilgrimage is published three times a year. An annual subscription is $22 a year; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

RADIUS: Medical Advice from Physicians

2006-12-05T12:06:00.000-05:00

Today we're performing a head-to-toe examination of Radius, a new quarterly magazine on medical and health topics written for the layman. The authors are almost all physicians. Radius is from Nightingale Publishing in Carmel, Indiana.

Publisher Dr. Dev Brar explains the magazine's doctor-knows-best concept: "When it comes to health, you should receive accurate information," adding, "You should read what is best for you from physicians in a non-sensational but truthful way."

Articles from medical doctors may be factual, but are they readable? A perusal of a recent issue indicates that the editors have done a pretty good job in either selecting their authors or turning their submissions into interesting prose.

An example is an article by dentist Richard Goldman, who claims that a lot of cases of migraine headache are actually due to the contraction of muscles of the head and neck, a condition called Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction Syndrome or TMJ. Dr. Goldman says that migraine sufferers often travel from doctor to doctor vainly seeking relief from pain so great that it can lead to depression and even suicide. He writes that TMJ, once diagnosed, can often be successfully treated by a dentist without pain-killing drugs or surgery.

Several articles in the issue I've been looking at are about the heart: how it works, what's involved in the condition called congestive heart failure, how to tell if you're having (or not having) a heart attack. All this with lots of advice on how to keep your heart healthy.

There are a couple of "heart friendly recipes" offered by the magazine, but don't look too closely. One, for egg, spinach and bacon sandwiches, uses egg substitutes and imitation bacon bits. What's the point of living forever when that's what you're eating?

Another piece is about the merits of fish oil, specifically the omega-3 fatty acids that are present in fish such as salmon, swordfish, cod and tuna. The very enthusiastic writer, Alan Clark, M.D., makes omega-3 sound like a cure-all, claiming it's been shown to alleviate depression, lessen the risk of heart disease and Alzheimer's, and treat rheumatoid arthritis.

One article seemed a little out of place in a magazine for medical consumers. It's about a computer simulation that lets medical and nursing students practice drawing blood and inserting intravenous lines before approaching their first live patients. But I did like author Dr. Arthur Kaufman's old Chinese proverb: "Tell me, I will forget; show me, I may remember; involve me, I will understand."

The issue also contains a scary article about the risks patrons and workers are exposed to in nail salons. For the workers, it's constant exposure to dangerous chemicals and vapors; for the customers, it's soaking their feet in poorly cleaned throne footbaths and having their cuticles or calluses cut with unsanitary razors and nail clippers.

A digression, but still on things medical. For the last few nights I've been reading a wonderful history of the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919, The Great Influenza, by John M. Barry. It was published in 2004. While I'm only about a third of the way through it, I very much recommend the early chapters for a succinct history of medical education in the United States, which was truly primitive until German-educated physicians started clinically oriented medical schools at The Johns Hopkins University and a few other institutions at the start of the 20th century.

That influenza pandemic, which apparently originated in western Kansas, killed 100 million people around the world in just a few months. It first hit home for me when it claimed red-haired Hazel Bellamy in one of the later episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs.

Back to my diagnosis of Radius: it's is a good read for the layman, and probably a great read for the hypochondriac. An annual subscription (four issues) is $14.95 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

HER SPORTS + FITNESS: For Sporting Women

2006-11-20T00:20:00.000-05:00

Her Sports + Fitness is a magazine for the woman actively interested in sports activities such as 5k runs, triathlons, long bike rides, surfing, skiing, climbing and marathons, and in what it takes to prepare for these often grueling events. It's published six times a year by Wet Dog Media in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The focus of the magazine is primarily on "average" women who participate in these activities, with a few side glances at star women athletes and their lifestyles.

A typical article in a recent issue is about getting yourself ready for your first five-kilometer run. A 5k race is 3.1 miles. It's appealing because it's relatively short, you can find a local race at that distance almost every weekend, and training for one doesn't eat up all your free time. Her Sports + Fitness proposes a detailed eight-week training program for your first 5k, including stretching, three 20- or 60-minute running sessions each week, cross training and diet tips.

The issue I've been reading also has an interesting article on muscles and how they work. Skeletal muscle, the kind connected to bones, accounts for roughly 40 percent of body weight. These muscles are made up of three different kinds of fibers―slow-twitch, fast-twitch A and fast-twitch B―and what kind of fibers predominate in an individual, the result of genetic inheritance, apparently determines whether he or she is going to be a better sprinter or marathon runner. (Note to self: analyze local nags at Aqueduct and Belmont for slow-twitch and fast-twitch fibers.)

A report on hydration says recent research indicates that you should drink according to your thirst rather then ahead of your thirst, and that a sports drink with sodium and other electrolytes is preferable to water because the former is absorbed faster into the bloodstream. The electrolytes and other nutrients make it easier for fluid to enter muscle cells and fibers quickly.

Another article is about waterboarding, described by author Barrett Perlman as the "lovechild of surfing and waterskiing." In addition to some brief tips on how to get started, there's a sidebar on gear, which is not cheap: board ($200-$600), bindings ($100-$400), rope & handle ($130-$240), life vests ($20-$130) and board shorts ($60).

About those shorts, Perlman warns, "You risk losing more than just your pride in a wipeout. Even if you're wearing the most high-performance sport-specific swimsuit there is, if you hit the water just so, your bottoms will ride up, or worse, get pulled off. A good pair of board shorts will keep you covered in style."

The issue's star athlete feature is on Summer Sanders, double gold medal-winning swimmer in the 1992 Olympics and a subsequent TV sportscaster. What does it mean to be world-class athlete? She got a call in New York City one fall day in 1999 from a girlfriend who was entered in the New York City Marathon the following morning. The friend was injured; did Summer want her race number? She jumped at the chance to enter her first marathon, and finished the race in 3 hours and 35 minutes, without any special preparation.

Her Sports + Fitness is filled with little news notes about products and relevant news developments. But the proofreading could be a little bit better. One story, about a Swedish study of cell phone use and brain tumors, says that researchers "tracked 4,400 mobile phone users between the ages of 20 and 80 for 10 years. Of the 905 who were diagnosed with malignant brain tumors, 85 were 'heavy users'." If that's the rate for such malignancies in Sweden, the country will be empty in a few years.

Each issue also contains news on sports-related travel, recipes that are healthy and easy to prepare, athletic fashions and skin care.

An annual subscription to Her Sports + Fitness (six issues) is $15.95 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

AMERICAN THEATRE: The Non-profit Theatre Scene

2006-11-14T16:24:00.000-05:00

American Theatre is a high-energy guide to the world of non-profit theatre in the United States and abroad. Published 10 times a year by the Theatre Communications Group in Manhattan, it's a thoughtful report from the front row and backstage about innovative ways that community theatre groups are trying to grow audiences in often challenging economic and political circumstances.

A recent issue provides a fascinating guide to the awesome diversity of theatrical experience away from Broadway musicals and their ubiquitous touring companies.

The cover article in the issue is about the staging of Grendel, a new opera by Elliot Goldenthal based on John Gardner's celebrated 1971 novel of the same name, a reinterpretation of the old Beowulf saga from the monster's point of view. Juliet Taymor (of Lion King, Titus and Frida fame) directed a cast of 18 soloists, 48 adult chorus members, 10 child chorus singers, 20 dancers and two dozen puppets. The opera was presented this year at the Los Angeles Opera and at New York's Lincoln Center.

This Grendel is a thinking monster's monster, musing that humanity desperately needs a totally evil enemy to provide it with a sense of community and morality. He's also practical, realizing that if he kills all the men, women and children, he'd have absolutely nothing left to do.

The main setting for Grendel is what designer George Tsypin calls "a cosmic rock floating in the void." It's a rocky shelf, 48 feet wide, 24 feet deep and 9 feet high, that rotates on stage from an ice side to an earth side. The rock is powered by 26 separate motors. American Theatre describes the chaotic and tension-filled last days before the premiere in Los Angeles as the opera's creators struggle with the balky set and other problems, including the tendency for performers to fall off as it rotated.

The magazine is full of interesting tidbits, such as DePaul University's new Wigs and Hair Chicago, where you can get some sort of degree in designing, creating and maintaining stage hair, and an exhibition of playwright Clifford Odets' expressionist paintings.

I loved an article about "standardized patients," actors who are paid by the hour to simulate patients and their family members for medical students. A pediatrics resident recalled her training: "The best standardized patient encounter I had was one where we had to tell the patient's wife her husband had Alzheimer's. She started to cry―she wasn't ready to accept that fact. I had to get her to bring him in to start treatment. It was very real."

For me, the high point of the issue was a report of a gathering of theatre professionals to discuss the issues that concern them. Chief among them is competition for attention from a resurgent Broadway touring system, the Internet and mass market sports. The level of local theatre reporting and criticism in newspapers is very low, and the financially pressed newspapers are cutting back on local coverage even more these days.

Panel members reported that audience members were growing increasingly intolerant of works that questioned their values. They noted the "tyranny of the known title," the tendency of people to be drawn to a familiar name, whether the title of the play or a name actor. They also spoke of the plight of the struggling actor, writer or other artists involved in non-profit theatre, poorly paid and without health insurance. One commented, "It's great to be an artist in America when you're young. But nobody wants to take responsibility for artists when they grow up."

But the panel's comments were not all negative. They reported on innovative ways of raising funds for new productions, such as approaching corporate types with a sales pitch for "research and development" in a theatre, language that makes sense to the potential donor. And they spoke of "concierge theatre," involving the audience member in non-passive discussions and activities before the event, after the event and even during the event. Some added that many young people are turned off by the concept of a traditional theatre, but will throng a bar for theatre in the guise of a cabaret show.

A subscription to American Theatre (10 issues a year) is included in the annual membership fee of $39.95 ($20.00 for students) from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

TRACE: Trendy Transculturalism

2006-10-02T14:26:00.000-04:00

Multicultural glam and glitz are the spicy main ingredients in Trace, an ambitious glossy published eight times a year from an address on Broome Street in lower Manhattan.

In a recent issue editor-in-chief Claude Grunitsky noted that "the last time Mary J. Blige was on our cover, back in the spring of 1997, the magazine was being published out of a dark, underheated basement below my bedroom, on London's Clerkenwall Road."

Trace has come a long way from those humble beginnings, and seems to have found a happy headquarters in the USA, land of hip-hop, celebrity worship and pots of money to be found in unlikely places, although it still publishes a UK edition. And Trace pointedly eschews the term "multicultural," preferring "transcultural."

A typical Trace portrait is that of Rachel Roy―no, not the cooking queen, that's Rachael Ray―who attained celeb status because of her marriage to Roc-A-Fella Records CEO Damon Dash, and who has become a fashion designer with hubby's Rocawear line. That she's gorgeous and grew up in modest circumstances in northern California of mixed Dutch-Asian Indian parentage all count for points with Trace, which is clearly impressed with her loyalty to her hip-hop mogul husband despite his numerous well-publicized affairs, including one with the late singer Aaliyah.

Most of the articles in Trace seem to be written by the music editor, Omar "Calabash" Dubois, a master of murky language with attitude. A random example from the cover story: "Mary J. Blige has always lived a movie―she's never lived by rules. (Go do the research.)" I always thought it was up to the writer, not the reader, to do the research.

Despite my own attitude regarding "Calabash," he did write a piece in the issue that I enjoyed. Titled "Booster's Redemption," it tells of how back in late 1980s Brooklyn the Brownsville-based Polo USA (United Shoplifters Association) joined forces with the Ralphie Kids from Crown Heights to form The Lo-Lifes, who made the shoplifting of trendy clothing items an art form. Simultaneously, current rap singer/producer Taz Arnold began doing the same thing in Los Angeles, and he had a similar fixation on Polo wear:

"…you had a lotta cats who were into the Polo game but really weren't boosters," says Taz, rolling his eyes. "They bought their way into being fly. You had people spending thousands of dollars―breaking their neck at a FedEx spot!―just to be dressed head to toe in Polo. We looked at them as suckers, like: 'You paid for that?? I would never have paid for that! You're a clown! You're breaking your neck trying to be me when I'm being me for free! You're doing this shit just to get some pussy, I'm doing this shit because I'm passionate about it!' I was the number one Polo Booster: God of Polo from '88-'98."

The photos of fashionable young transculturals in Trace are frequent, large and well-crafted, and you'll also encounter a number of short items about pricey products such as Jhung Yuro's $300-plus walking shoes and rapper 50 Cent's line of G-Unit watches that includes the world's first MP3 timepiece, with a capacity of 240 songs.

Is there an undercurrent of satire in this rich and tasty stew of ritz and Ritz crackers? My surviving brain cells were scrambled by a very short essay called "Luxe for Life" that I encountered on page 79. It's by the magazine's editor at large, Stephen Greco, and I'll give you all of it:

Is there any concept evolving faster than luxury? Old definitions of prestige, comfort and extravagance are fast eroding, along with a host of outmoded notions about class and value. New personal agendas in the realm of aspiration, fantasy and desire―and fresh individual strategies meant to transform them into reality―have made today's luxury more self-referential than ever before. It's not so much about being "better" than other people, but surpassing (and surprising!) yourself.

In fact, as we wanted to show in this issue, luxury now is more spiritual than ever―whether it's about reclaiming the standards of life that have diminished since the Industrial Revolution (privacy, harmony with the planet, etc.) or setting new standards for the future, as Grace Jones and the others in this issue are doing, with bad-ass, go-for-it, luxe-for-life optimism…

While Trace publishes eight issues a year, I can't find any info in the magazine about whether you can subscribe (if you can find a copy at a newsstand, you'll pay $5.99). Of course, we'll be happy to send you a sample copy for $2.59.

GREEN ANARCHY: Fighting Techno-civilization

2006-06-05T02:05:00.000-04:00

Today we welcome Green Anarchy to the newsstand. Describing itself as "an anti-civilization journal of theory and action," the magazine is produced on a quarterly basis by a collective in Eugene, OR.

Totally devoid of ads, Green Anarchy's Spring issue contains 80 densely packed black and white pages. You know you're in for an interesting read when the inside front cover presents the introduction from Industrial Society and Its Future by Ted Kaczynski, a work more famously known as The Unabomber Manifesto.

This issue is focused on technology. Green Anarchy's editors write that "the speed at which society is becoming completely technified is nothing short of astonishing. We now live in a technoculture in which social existence is ever more flattened, isolated, mediated, homogenized, and unreal."
Some of the imagery in the articles exploring technology is vivid. Ran Prieur writes, "A hundred years ago, when techno-futurists imagined an automobile for everyone, nobody saw vast cities of parking lots and strip malls, or traffic jams where ten thousand obese drivers move much slower than a man on horseback while burning more energy."

An article by Helena—no surname supplied—explores the dream of some feminists to equalize the genders by using technology to create artificial womb environments, freeing women from the “burden” of child-bearing.

Green Anarchy co-editor John Zerzan offers a lengthy essay on what Karl Jaspers called "The Axial Age," the period from 800 to 200 B.C. when civilizations around the globe, including Greece and the Near East, India and China, all consolidated. Governments became stronger and more centralized, and―no accident―so did religions. Advances in technology were an important part of the process, as the Bronze Age was supplanted by the Iron Age and specialists (in metallurgy, bread-making, the arts of war and just about everything else) became important and powerful.

One of the more interesting essays, by an organization called the "terran hacker corps," is an exploration of the term "sustainable technology," used first by environmentalists and now by the likes of Exxon-Mobil. The article points out that man used only muscle power for millions of years, then turned to wood and whale oil for energy. These were replaced by coal, and, a little later, by oil as well. In a surprising statement, the authors note that "the oil industry's claims of saving whales and forests are worthy of far more than mere scorn."

The terran hacker writers then explore one of the most heralded "sustainable" energy technologies, the use of photovoltaic cells to capture energy from sunlight. They describe how sand is refined to pure silicon, and how that is processed into solar collection cells and computer chips (though they skip a number of steps which they explain "bored our friends/editors when we included them"). Their conclusion: solar energy is one of the more attractive forms of energy from an ecological point of view, but it can never supply more than a small fraction of civilization's massive demand.

About a quarter of the issue's pages are devoted to short news reports from around the world about (1) attacks on authority by anarchists and (2) repression of anarchists by authorities, usually for (1). The U.S. news items, generally tamer than those from Europe, deal largely with the activities of the Earth Liberation Front (destroying large construction sites and SUVs at car dealerships) and the Animal Liberation Front (freeing incarcerated animals). There are also extensive reviews of anarchism-friendly books and magazines.

An annual subscription to Green Anarchy (four issues) is $18.00 from the publishers. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

y'all: The Magazine of Southern People

2006-05-25T02:06:00.000-04:00

I've spent an enjoyable hour reading the May-June issue of y'all, a bimonthly that calls itself "The Magazine of Southern People." It's published in Oxford, MS, a town rich in literary history as the home of both the University of Mississippi and William Faulkner.

Now in its fourth year, y'all is light in tone, filled with celebrity news and humor columns. It covers a good deal of the country—15 states—and celebrates the region's cultural heritage.

The issue currently in the MagSampler.com newsstand features an extensive section on Mississippi's amazing musical contribution to the country and the world. The list of that state's great musicians is long and rich, and includes Elvis Presley, Leontyne Price, Tammy Wynette, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmy Buffett, Faith Hill, Sam Cooke and B.B. King. A fold-out map included with the issue shows the birthplace of more than 100 Mississippi musicians, and is followed by two dozen pages of stories about them.

I liked the tale of how blues master B.B. King came to name all his guitars "Lucille." Back in the winter of 1949, he was playing in a dance hall in Twist, AR. The hall was heated by a burning barrel half-filled with kerosene, and during a performance two men began fighting and knocked the barrel over. Everybody evacuated the blazing building, but King realized he'd left his Gibson acoustic guitar inside and foolishly dashed back to retrieve it. Two people died in the fire, and it turned out that the fight had started over a woman named Lucille. King says he named that guitar Lucille "to remind me never to do a thing like that again."

Other articles in the issue are about stand-up comic Wanda Sykes, cable TV "Flip This House" host Richard Davis, Chicago Tribune and PBS Supreme Court reporter Jan Crawford Greenburg and Outdoor Life Network fishing guru Bill Dance. The magazine reports that Dance has always appeared on camera wearing a University of Tennessee orange baseball cap. There was one exception: at the end of a show in which he had gone dove hunting with Ole Miss football coach John Vaught, Vaught grabbed the cap, threw it on the ground, and shot it three times. Dance was left with nothing to pick up but the cap's bill. Football is a serious thing down there.

On the subject of sports, columnist Ronda Rich bemoans the sale of the Turner South cable channel, which covers all sorts of Southern cultural stories and events, to Fox Sports, which will convert it to some sort of sports channel. While Rich acknowledges the importance of sports—she admits that "knowing about sex gets a man but knowing about sports keeps him"—she sees the loss of a cable channel devoted to things Southern as one more defeat in the battle to preserve the region's distinctiveness.

An annual subscription to y'all (six issues) is $19.95 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

JUNIOR BASEBALL: Learning the Game

2006-05-19T01:00:00.000-04:00

This morning I'm looking through the pages of a magazine I can viscerally relate to, at least through the foggy lens of memory. It's Junior Baseball, a bimonthly published in Canoga Park, CA that should appeal to young persons who play the game, and to their parents and coaches as well.

My baseball-playing days were in Little League on Long Island in the mid-1950s. You could participate in the village's system from ages 8 to 12. I remember fondly the incredible excitement of putting on a real uniform (scratchy wool at the time) and playing at night under lights. And there are the traumatic memories, such as the night I was out in left field. The fence was just over four feet high, and that was probably the height of the batter. I still remember his name: Castoldi. He hit a high fly ball to left, and I went back, back, back, right up against the fence. I reached up with both hands, caught the ball, and suddenly it wasn't there any more. I had dropped it over the fence!

I also remember my last time at bat in my final season of Little League. I had been a fairly successful left-handed spray hitter, specializing in line drives to the opposite field. As I was up at bat, the umpire―an old family friend―broke every rule of impartial officiating and gave me advice on where to plant my feet. And darned if I didn't pull a deep fly ball to right field, probably the best-struck ball I had ever hit. As I've watched baseball in stadiums and on television over the years, I've often wondered whether that kind of knowledgeable advice a couple of years earlier would have led to a more prolonged baseball career.

Which brings us back to Junior Baseball, which is filled with good fundamental advice. A recent issue now in our newsstand has a column (for players aged 5-8) on various techniques for making stronger throws from the outfield, another (for players 9-13) on coping with pitching in cold weather, and yet another (for players 14-17) on exercises for preparing for the start of the season.

There's an article on the dangers of steroids, a profile of a successful traveling team of kids from Wayne County, MI, and an interview with Seattle pitcher Jamie Moyers. I found interesting an article on eye protection for baseball players, not only from traumatic injury, but also from ultraviolet light in dry climates such as Southern California, which can cause a dangerous eye condition called pterygium. Goggles with UV protection are recommended. There's also a useful column for coaches suggesting that selection or election of team captains can bring an added level of peer leadership to a team.

The game for kids has changed dramatically from what I knew: the magazine is filled with ads for aluminum bats (some for more than $300!), radar guns to tell you how fast you are pitching, and all sorts of instructional videos. There are expensive instructional camps, often run by former pro players, and traveling leagues made up of elite teams that play other good teams in a wide geographic region and that are apparently cutting into the player pool for regular junior baseball activities.

But baseball is still fundamentally about hitting and throwing the ball, and it's often the first organized sports activity that children encounter. As Junior Baseball editor and publisher Dave Destler writes in the issue, "The experience a kid has at the most basic, beginning levels of baseball determines whether he will want to go on and continue playing next season. . .or if he will exchange his baseball cleats for soccer cleats. Or a Game Box."

An annual subscription (six issues) to Junior Baseball is $17.70 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

SHAMBHALA SUN: A Buddhist Take on Life

2006-05-16T00:07:00.000-04:00

This morning we officially welcome Shambhala Sun to the newsstand. This very attractive bimonthly is filled with articles explaining Buddhist practice and philosophy to a sophisticated Western readership.

Articles in the May issue, now in the MagSampler.com newsstand, cover subjects of interest both to practitioners of Buddhism and to readers who are interested in a different take on life. You'll find essays on a variety of Buddhist teachings, including the value of meditation, the art of awareness, the proper care of sacred objects from any religious tradition and vegetarianism.

I was surprised to learn that Buddhists are not necessarily vegetarians. Noa Jones writes wryly, "Even the highest Tibetan lamas are not above reproach. In his classic, Words of My Perfect Teacher, the great eighteenth-century Tibetan yogi and sage Patrul Rinpoche chastened carnivorous lamas who accept offerings of meat and devour 'piles of the still quivering ribs of yak until their mouths gleam with grease and their whiskers turn red.' He warns that they will be reborn in the ephemeral hells where they will have to pay back with their own bodies. Yet some of the most learned, authentic lamas I know eat meat."

Jones reports that some of her Buddhist friends argue that "it is better to eat little parts of big animals than lots of little animals." Their reasoning: a plate of shrimp requires a dozen lives, but the single life of a cow can satisfy dozens of diners.

I really liked a shimmering essay on the central Buddhist concept of emptiness by poet Norman Fischer, a Zen practitioner. To Buddhists, emptiness means that everything is transitory and without a solid identity or essence, that nothing is "real" in the usual sense. He explains, "We are, according to the emptiness pundits of Buddhism, deeply ignorant of the one thing we should not be ignorant of: the real nature of ourselves and the world we live in. 'Ignorance,' unfortunately, doesn't mean we don't know. It would be better if we didn't know. Ignorance means we know something very firmly, but it is the wrong thing: we know that things are solid and independent and intrinsically existent. But they actually are not. So ignorance is not not-knowing; ignorance is a form of knowing, but it is a mis-knowing. And spiritual practice is the process of coming to see our mis-knowledge and letting it go: to begin to experience, accept, and live the truth about how we and the world actually are. When we begin to understand and live in this way, there is a great decrease in the fear and dread, so common in human experience, caused by the huge gap between our expectations and the way things actually are. With an appreciation of the empty nature of things, there are no more foiled expectations. There is a lot more joy, peace, and love."

The ads in Shambhala Sun are also interesting. Most are for gatherings at retreat houses located across North America, some rather posh, and quite a few are for upscale items like art works, silk sleeping bags, large domed tents ("live in sacred geometry"), Japanese bedroom furniture ("harmony in the bedroom") and ergonomically designed meditation stools.

We've also received a supply of Shambhala Sun's sister publication, Buddhadharma. Subtitled "The Practitioner's Quarterly," it too contains a raft of well-crafted articles on Buddhist practice and philosophy. Both magazines are beautifully designed and are filled with colorful reproductions of traditional Buddhist art as well as imaginative contemporary illustrations. The magazines are published in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

An annual subscription to Shambhala Sun (six issues) is $28.00 from the publisher, although a postcard in the May issue offers a special deal: a two-year subscription for $28.00. An annual subscription to Buddhadharma (four issues) is $19.95 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy of either magazine for $2.59.

RESTAURANT STARTUP & GROWTH: On Becoming a Restaurateur

2006-05-08T01:34:00.000-04:00

Today we'll look at Restaurant Startup & Growth, a no-nonsense trade magazine about starting restaurants and making them run profitably. The MagSampler.com newsstand generally doesn't carry trade publications, but we made an exception in this case. A great many people love to think about, read about and watch television shows about food, and it's my guess that a lot of them fantasize about opening a restaurant of their own. So, our reasoning went, we should stock a magazine that will tell them what's involved in making such a dream come true.

We've received a supply of the April issue of Restaurant Startup & Growth, which is published monthly in Parkville, MO. It's nicely edited, with colorful graphics and serious attention paid to thinking up articles useful to those in the business or contemplating joining it. The articles are usually long and detailed.

The articles in this particular issue are all aimed at existing restaurant operators. There's "Look Before You Leap," a lengthy examination of what to consider before you decide to open a second restaurant because your first has been so successful. A piece of trenchant advice applicable to any business contemplating such an expansion: have enough capital set aside to keep the new operation running for a while, avoiding at all costs having to cut back on the successful restaurant to keep the new one going.

I liked "Rise & Shine," a study of the factors involved in adding a breakfast operation to an existing restaurant. Authors Chris Tripoli and Emily Durham catalogue the different kinds of breakfast services available, from "breakfast on the go" operations where you buy a bagel or some other item and consume it after you leave, to sit-down settings catering to business and networking groups. They also note geographic breakfast specialties, such as rancheros in the Southwest and ham and red-eye gravy (or liver and grits!) in the South. I was surprised to learn that IHOP only does 35% of its business between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m., but that 70% of its total sales are "breakfast" items. And that Papa John's pizza chain is testing breakfast pizzas, scrambled eggs and cheese baked on pizza dough.

There are several nitty-gritty articles in the issue, such as one on preventing and managing roof leaks, a common problem for restaurants because they often have flat roofs with many ducts and pipes penetrating that roof. There's another on hand-washing hygiene, which the author feels is sometimes neglected when restaurants focus on having their kitchen staff wear disposable gloves. This issue also investigates the rash of suits against national chains by minority patrons claiming discriminatory treatment.

A nice feature of Restaurant Startup & Growth is a companion Web site that offers all sorts of guidance to restaurant operators. Some of it is free, while other services require membership.

An annual subscription (12 issues) to Restaurant Startup & Growth is $39.95 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

TRUE CONFESSIONS: Tales of Woe with Happy Endings

2006-05-03T00:05:00.000-04:00

My mission today is to journey where few men have gone before: deep into the pages of a recent issue of True Confessions, a legendary monthly that has chronicled the perilous lives of attractive young American women for generations. I'm pleased and relieved to report that they continue to find happiness in the end.

This morning I've been sitting in the MagSampler.com newsstand with a copy of the April True Confessions discreetly tucked into an issue of Bear Hunting, and no one seems to have discovered my guilty secret.

Each issue of the magazine centers on a dozen six-page stories. While I can't say there's a formula to them, the young woman who tells the story always seems to find a stern-jawed, twinkly-eyed guy in the last couple of pages.

My favorite story in this issue, hands down, is "Lights, Camera, Action: My Oscar Dreams Turned Into a Hollywood Nightmare!" It has our heroine getting off the bus in Hollywood from her Kansas high school where, of course, she acted in the school play. A bit naive, she answers an ad in a movie trade paper and shows up for a screen test. Before she knows it, sleazy producer Vince has her in a porn film! In her own words, "It finally dawned on me that there was no way to deny the truth. I had lost my virginity on film!" But there's a quick and happy denouement: Her handsome and gentle co-star, Andre, is just as outraged at her fate and decks Vince. The happy pair go off to San Francisco, where Andre resumes his real career as a stand-up comic and she learns the biz as well. She also comes up with a fake ID that shows she's underage, and convinces Vince to burn the incendiary footage or face going to jail on a child-abuse charge.

Another story is curiously non-sex-oriented. A happy young wife is driving alone from rural Mississippi to her high-school reunion in Memphis. She makes the mistake of passing a pick-up truck on a two-lane highway. The road rage-prone hayseed in the truck makes the drive hell for her, and even calls a friend in his truck to join him in making her the filling in a high-speed sandwich. Amid all this bumping and braking, the woman makes it to a local police station. The cop listens to her story and says, "Sounds like the Chandler boys. Cousins you know. Like to scare pretty women. Don't mean any harm." She runs off in tears, but finally turns to the state highway patrol, which arrests the miscreants and put them in jail. This story is accompanied by a public-service box about how to deal with road rage.

This issue hit the newsstands in March. Curiously, a third of the stories have Irish themes, presumably to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Either True Confessions has a large Irish-American audience or, as is the case with many magazines for women, the editorial department likes to give issues holiday themes.

One such story has the enticing title "Undercover Irish: Why I Couldn't Let Anyone Know My True Heritage." The lass who tells the story emigrated as a girl from Ireland to a small town in Utah (don't ask me why) and found that the Irish were too exotic for the locals to tolerate. So she hid her roots, even those in her Maureen O'Hara red hair, which she dyed blonde. But into her local bar on St. Patrick's Day walks an old childhood chum from Ireland, now grown into Adonis-like manhood, and she fears he will tell the world that she's Irish! The existence of a bar in Utah is pretty far-fetched, but on top of that our Irishman now works for the same company as she does, and they're both soon selected to run the new Chicago sales office. Naturally, in Chicago she's exposed to all races and creeds, including the Irish, and learns to properly appreciate her heritage and her old chum.

This holiday theme business has me wondering how True Confessions celebrates other holidays. Labor Day: Have the cute assistant to the stern Donald Rumsfeld-like vice president for labor relations fall in love with the factory's brave and handsome strike leader. Halloween: The young widow taking her son trick or treating rings the bell of a sad-eyed (but handsome) young fellow who just lost his wife in a hit-and-run accident. Take Your Daughter to Work Day: Another young widow's daughter wanders off into the mail room, and the frantic mother searches for hours only to find her daughter being entertained by the jut-jawed but sweet mail room manager, who's very available…

Cynical people—the kind who think pro wrestling matches or reality television shows are scripted—probably suspect that the stories in True Confessions are written by cigar-chomping newspaper rewrite men during slow periods in the newsroom. I think such people underestimate the literary abilities of America's legion of beleaguered but ultimately triumphant young ladies.

An annual subscription to True Confessions (12 issues) is $19.94 from the publisher, Dorchester Media in New York City. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

ARTnews: Covering the Contemporary Art Scene

2006-05-01T00:54:00.000-04:00

This first day of the new month we're pleased to introduce patrons of the newsstand to ARTnews, a major publication in the contemporary art scene. Published monthly in New York City, ARTnews is an energetic explorer of the sometimes bizarre collage that is today's art world.

Money makes the world go round, and the art world is no exception. A lot of the news in the art world is about disputes over big money, and so you'll find a number of stories in ARTnews about these fights.

I've been leafing through the April issue, and find reports on accusations of fiscal mismanagement and trafficking in stolen antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, operator of the Getty Museum, the controversy over authentication of a number of supposed Jackson Pollock canvases that surfaced four years ago, and a couple of stories dealing with the return of art works confiscated from Jewish collectors by the Nazis before and during World War II.

Amid all this depressing stuff are a couple of nice pieces about small museums with rich collections that are expanding their exhibition spaces despite being in fairly restrictive physical locations. One is New York City's Morgan Library, filled with treasures amassed by the legendary J.P. Morgan; the other is the 85-year-old Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, the country's first modern art museum.

This issue of ARTnews has a fairly long feature on Berlin's recent development as a center of contemporary art, lured by the availability of large spaces at low cost, something that has appealed to artists over the ages. Reporter J.S. Marcus notes that there's a "near total lack of local collectors" of contemporary art in Berlin, but adds that the Internet as a vehicle for displaying art has solved that problem for the artists and gallery owners in the city.

Other articles examine contentious issues in contemporary art, such as the use of photography and software like Photoshop to help create paintings, and the increasing tendency of artists to work in a number of genres at the same time, including video, presenting found objects and using of all sorts of materials (one artist recently exhibited works employing batik, oil paint, thread and KY Jelly).

I liked a profile of Tom Otterness, a whimsical artist who even designed a Humpty Dumpty float for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade last year. It's nice to see that good whimsy can make money: the magazine reports that his bronzes sell for up to $200,000, and his monumental sculptures for up to $1 million.

The back of the magazine contains some of the most interesting material, reviews from gallery shows in New York, elsewhere in the country and overseas. The first New York review, from the China Institute, has nothing to do with contemporary art. It's about an exhibition of Ming Dynasty porcelain from the first part of the 17th century that was created explicitly for the Japanese market, using simple rustic motifs then popular in Japan and very different from traditional Chinese designs. Oddly, this "rustic movement" in the Japanese art world of the time was caused by intense dislike of what were considered considered "ostentatious" Chinese porcelains imported in previous centuries!

Some of today's gallery shows are truly weird. In one from New York, reviewer Sean Kelly reports that performance artist Marina Abramovic used a video to explain what she claims are Serbian peasant sexual rituals to ward off evil spirits or attract a mate. An example of the latter: "A small fish stuffed into the vagina overnight and then ground up into the intended's coffee apparently works wonders."

As with virtually all art publications, a main attraction is the advertising, where you can see what's being featured in galleries today. The range of imagery is vastly entertaining.

An annual subscription to ARTnews (11 issues) is $39.95 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

TRANSITIONS ABROAD: Living and Learning in Other Countries

2006-04-28T00:12:00.000-04:00

Today's newcomer to the newsstand is Transitions Abroad, a bimonthly that's dedicated to providing its readers with information on how to travel overseas with a purpose: as a student, a volunteer at some sort of nonprofit activity, or a wage-earning expatriate, most often as a teacher of English.

This is, of course, the antithesis of the standard travel magazine. You won't find any ads for posh resorts or cruise lines in Transitions Abroad, which has been around for almost three decades and is published in Bennington, VT. Instead, you'll find articles on getting work permits in Germany, dealing with culture shock in rural Japan and studying Italian during the day in Milan while the kids you are nannying are off at school.

About a third of the recent issue of Transitions Abroad that's come into the MagSampler.com newsstand is devoted to scatter-shot one-page quickies about some aspect of life in a particular foreign city or country from expatriate freelance writers. The magazine would do better, in my opinion, to have longer in-depth pieces about the realities of a foreigner trying to get by in those environments. But some of these shorties are informative and amusing. For instance, a woman who signed up for a five-day cooking class in Chiang Mai, Thailand relays some of the off-the-cuff advice of her cooking teacher, including "Wash your hands directly after chopping chili peppers and before you go to the bathroom; if you get chili juice on your special places, no one can help you."

In the middle of the magazine are 18 pages of listings of all sorts of short-term volunteer opportunities around the world. You have to pay your way to most of them, and then will probably have to pay at least a modest sum to participate, although a few will trade your labor for room and board. One of the more exotic listings: "Volunteers needed at chimpanzee sanctuary in Yaounde, Cameroon, for minimum six months. Should be able to communicate in French and be prepared for harsh living conditions."

The last one-third of the magazine, largely devoted to an array of articles about teaching English abroad for fun, profit and intercultural experience, was of the greatest interest to me. In part, this is because I spent most of two years just after college doing just that, but in a bizarre environment: a high school in South Vietnam during the height of the war in the late 1960s. What people would do in those days to avoid the draft!

People all over the world are anxious to learn English from native speakers, and apparently an American can at least survive just about anywhere on the planet if he or she is willing to teach English, either at a private or public school, to the employees of corporations or even as one-on-one tutors. "The joke in China," according to one article, "is you just need to be breathing to get a job teaching English." In this issue you'll find well-informed articles about teaching English in such countries as China, Russia, Chile, Taiwan and Germany. There are plenty of pitfalls to avoid, especially when you sign up to work for a private language school. If you're not careful, you could wind up a virtual indentured servant, with most of your pay and your airfare home withheld for a variety of nefarious reasons. These articles in Transitions Abroad contain lots of good advice on how to negotiate the best deal.

I also liked a conventional travel article in the issue about going around the world cheaply and intelligently. Author Tim Leffel identifies five geographical clusters that are inexpensive and endlessly interesting: (1) Southeast Asia, (2) Eastern Europe and Turkey, (3) Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, (4) Latin America, and (5) India and Nepal. He suggests buying a bare-bones round-the-world air ticket through a consolidator that touches on two or three or these clusters, then spending several months in each, staying in inexpensive lodging and being flexible and open to all that you experience. And, of course, staying far away from the resorts that cater to foreign tourists. Sounds good to me!

An annual subscription to Transitions Abroad (six issues) is $28.00 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

HIGHROLLER: High Stakes and High-Priced Steaks

2006-04-25T14:15:00.000-04:00

Today we welcome HighRoller to the newsstand. This colorful bimonthly, in its second year, is for those who enjoy gambling and the glitzy world of the modern American casino. Surprisingly, it's published in Alpharetta, GA, not to my knowledge anywhere near a gambling mecca.

My approach to gambling is a tad too conservative for HighRoller. I journey to Atlantic City a few times a year with a couple of hundred bucks in my pocket and a comped (free) room reservation at the casino's hotel. My gambling is confined to quarter video slot machines and dinner is usually at the hotel buffet, hopefully with a half-price coupon in my pocket. My expectations of winning are low, especially since they took out my favorite five-deck poker slots last year. These old machines paid out in real quarters, and virtually all the slot machines in Atlantic City now pay out in paper vouchers, eliminating the need for refilling slot machines with quarters and reducing maintenance costs.

HighRoller, on the other hand, celebrates a lifestyle of playing big-time poker, eating at the casino's best restaurants and seeing some pricy shows in your spare time. A lot of people do that. If everyone was me, the casinos would be shacks.

The typical article in HighRoller is breezy and short, and pretty much adoring of whatever casino, restaurant, showbiz personality or resort its editors choose to feature. There are a couple of articles on gambling strategies in the recent issue I've been looking through. One I found of interest was a dismissive piece on the low-strategy 3-card poker table game that's become popular in casinos, and it contains just about the only critical words in the issue: "If you are going to play 3-card poker, then you might as well play the lotto."

A lot of the ads in HighRoller are for Internet betting operations, and one of the potentially interesting articles in the issue is about "reduced juice" online sports books that take a smaller commission on bets (the "juice") than casino books and neighborhood bookies. But the opening paragraph of the (unsigned) article blew me away with some truly stultifying and pretentious prose, stuff that I hadn't seen since the required reading list at college: "When it comes to business, the Zeitgeist of our epoch has been defined by templates for a postindustrial knowledge economy." Tough to digest when you're just looking for a place to bet on the Pistons. The article goes on to say that the online operations can offer cheaper commissions because they don't have all that brick-and-mortar overhead, but it does warn bettors that the point spread they are offered online might not be as good as that provided by the traditional sports book.

One of the longer feature articles, obviously written before the Winter Olympics, is a worshipful look at American skier Jeremy Bloom, who bombed. A bad bet by the editors!

An annual subscription to HighRoller (six issues) is $29.95 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

New Issues in the Newsstand

2006-04-21T00:32:00.000-04:00

Today we'll take a quick look at issues of five publications that have come into the newsstand recently: Practical Homeschooling, Lighthouse Digest, The Crapshooter, The Beat and NJ Savvy Living. We'll send you sample copies of any of these titles for just $2.59.

Practical Homeschooling addresses the problems and potentials of schooling children at home from a Christian perspective. One of the featured articles in the April issue is the announcement of winners of the magazine's 2006 Software Awards. The article accompanying the list includes a thoughtful discussion of the evolution of educational software programs. Practical Homeschooling says that a lot of popular programs from what it calls the "golden age" of educational software (1985 to 1998) were produced by small innovative companies. But then the big guys took over, insisting on Hollywood-style production values in their products while at the same time vastly reducing opportunities for creative input from the children for whom the software was designed. Worse, says the article, the big companies effectively pushed the smaller companies off the store shelves and even out of business by making it too expensive for them to compete. Practical Homeschooling hopes the Internet will level the playing field again, noting, "There are no shelf space charges on the Internet."

Lovers of lighthouses delight in Lighthouse Digest. The April issue takes you to dozens of landmarks, such as Canada's Point Abino Lighthouse, a classic built in 1917 on the northeast shore of Lake Erie, and the Cape Santiago Lighthouse on the approach to Manila Bay in the Philippines, built in 1890. I loved a classic photo of the very cozy Elbow of Cross Ledge Lighthouse, which stood in Delaware Bay off the coast of New Jersey until a freighter crashed into it in a 1953 fog, leading to its demolition. In the issue you'll also find the winners of the magazine's annual photo contest.

The Crapshooter is a little four-page newsletter with a wealth of information for folks who take their gambling seriously. I've been looking through a recent issue in which publisher Larry Edell takes you through the complexities of the odds at the craps table, and comes up with a fairly easy way to always calculate the true odds in just about any situation. Gaming author Frank Scoblete says the right preparation is crucial to approaching the table for a winning session: you must master the necessary skills and have confidence in those skills. He notes that "many shooters practice meditation to center themselves within."

Reggae, African, Caribbean and World music are the province of The Beat, published five times a year by Bongo Productions in Los Angeles. In the issue that's recently come into the newsstand, columnist Dave Hucker from London describes all the music he heard on a recent trip to Cuba, which of course is pretty much off limits to Americans by fiat of the current crop of freedom-lovers in Washington. You'll find a big feature on The Mighty Diamonds, a reggae trio from the impoverished Trench Town district of Kingston, Jamaica who have been making music for 37 years. Another article discusses the great popularity of reggae in New Zealand. Martin Sinnock writes about Congotronics, an album by Konono No. 1, a raucous street band from Kinshasa in the Congo that uses homemade instruments.

Back on my home turf, the April issue of NJ Savvy Living tells its readers the secrets to getting their kids into the best prep schools. The other big topic of discussion in New Jersey these days is the real estate market, and the magazine asks the local experts whether it's a bubble about to burst―after all, house prices have risen 76% since 2000! No, they say, it's just a slowdown, particularly at the high end. The tag line on the cover of NJ Savvy Living is "Affluent Lifestyles," and that's what you'll find described and photographed in its pages: elegant kitchens, luxurious "outdoor rooms" and bathrooms the size of my old Manhattan rent-controlled apartment.

BELLEVUE LITERARY REVIEW: Living with Pain

2006-04-20T00:19:00.000-04:00

The dirty little secret about literary journals is that they're all pretty much the same. The editors pledge to "find the best writing we can," and the result is a pleasant volume of short stories and poetry, some of which turns you on. The newest literary publication in the MagSampler.com newsstand is a little bit different. It's the Bellevue Literary Review, from New York's famous Bellevue Hospital, and its stories, essays and poetry usually deal in some fashion with mental or physical trauma or disease.

We've received the Spring 2006 issue of the Bellevue Literary Review, which carries the tagline, "a journal of humanity and human experience." This is not E.R. or General Hospital brought to print; in fact, there's hardly a scene set in a hospital within its 160 pages. It contains stories of people living with pain of various kinds, accommodating their lives to its presence with varying degrees of success. Sort of like real life.

This issue features the winners of the 2006 Bellevue Literary Review Prizes. The blue ribbon short story, by accomplished poet but first-time fiction writer Joan Malerba-Foran, is about a white woman from a suburban background who teaches in an urban high school. An alcoholic, she's inured herself to the pain of having to get through the school day without a drink, in her way as stoic as the students who regularly miss school because they're in trouble with the police or have to attend the funeral of a friend shot in a street robbery. The author captures the survival tricks of the alcoholic well: "Even an empty liquor bottle is usable; swish a quarter of a cup of warm water around in it for a minute and in a pinch―like on Sunday―the residue will hold off the shakes."

The story "Mitenka," by recent Russian émigré to the United States Mikhail Sadovsky, takes the reader to a present-day Russian orphanage, now full of Barbie dolls and color televisions provided by well-heeled foreign couples who regularly visit to select their new children. The angelic five-year-old boy whose name gives the story its title, taken away at birth from his alcoholic mother, is perfectly behaved, but occasionally goes off into a trance-like state of reverie. The day comes when a rich foreign couple is about to choose him, but the wife catches Mitenka in a trance and turns away in horror. The next day Mitenka finds that one of his friends is no longer at the communal dinner table.

"The Crush," by Adam Tamashasky, is about a teenage girl who's been in a wheelchair for several years after an automobile accident. Her relationship with long-time best friend Jimmy, a neighborhood boy, is escalating to heavy petting and beyond. But at the moment of truth, confronting her damaged naked body, he can't go through with it, and their relationship ends. She feels stronger for the experience, and "she thought of weakness, and how easily Jimmy could be broken. How easily it seemed anyone might break when they realized they were powerless."

I liked a short poem by Helen Klein Ross. It has a real downer of a title, "To a Child Contemplating Suicide," but it conveys great strength:

Your grandfather outlined
Ghosts of awl, hammer,

Wrench on a pegboard
In permanent ink―

So certain was he that
What was essential to him

Could not be improved upon,
Lost or replaced. Would that

I could make vivid
The void

You'd make upon leaving
The place you belong.

Bellevue Literary Review is published by the Department of Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. An annual subscription (two issues) is $12 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

ART TIMES: Art and the Arts in the Hudson Valley

2006-04-18T01:22:00.000-04:00

This morning we officially welcome Art Times to the newsstand. It's a chatty tabloid newspaper devoted to art and the arts in what it calls the "Northeast Corridor," but its focus is on the Hudson Valley, from Albany south to Manhattan. Art Times is published monthly in Mt. Marion, NY.

It's nice that such a localized art and culture publication exists, and I hope that there are many others serving the same purpose around the country. It seems to have no particular artistic axes to grind and no movements to promote, though its columns in the recent issue I've been reading do take a few sharp jabs at what their authors feel are the pretensions of (1) youthful artists and (2) minimalist art. Art Times is not a production of the hotheaded young.

The cover article is about a massive exhibition at SUNY-New Paltz of 116 landscapes of the Hudson River Valley and Catskill Mountains by 71 different artists of what has become known as the "Hudson River School." Amazingly, these are all from the collection of one anonymous landscape lover, and Art Times reports that the exhibition, "Different Views in Hudson River School Painting," represents only half of the total collection.

The columns in the issue involve dance, film, theatre and music. In one, Frank Behrens, writing of the history of Shakespeare's works on Broadway, reports that the original Leonard Bernstein conception of Romeo and Juliet as a musical involved a Jewish boy falling in love with a Catholic girl, and its tentative name was East Side Story.

I went on a wild goose chase (or rather, wild Google chase) to find more info on Mr. Behrens. I was truly excited to learn that Frank Behrens was the actor who played "Bert Wedemeyer" in the classic Honeymooners skit that aired in June, 1956 called "Alice and the Blonde." It's the one where Ralph is entranced by his friend Burt's sexy wife, sporting a very tight dress and a cigarette holder, who continually refers to her husband as "my treasure" (pronounced "tre-zuhr"). Alice lets Ralph know that he will soon be a "buried treasure" if he keeps fawning over the blonde. But the Internet Movie Database squashed my hopes when it told me that the actor Frank Behrens died 20 years ago. Further Googling undercovered the Frank Behrens who writes for Art Times: he's a retired junior high school teacher in Keene, NH who lectures and writes on musical history and―get this―has 571 film and music reviews currently posted on Amazon.com.

I liked columnist Robert W. Bethune's analysis of the three stages of an actor's development. Youth is charged with emotion; adulthood with reason; and maturity―well, let him speak: "The mature actor―who may be quite young; some gifted people become mature quickly―acquires the gift of aesthesis, of sensory awareness and responsiveness. The mature actor is a bundle of antennae, sparked into life by the quick, sensitive response of the whole organism to everything around it, especially people, and most particularly one's partner in the scene."

A big draw of Art Times is an exhaustive calendar of art shows, theatre and other events throughout the Hudson Valley, with some happenings in New Jersey and Connecticut thrown in.

There's a half-page ad in the issue for a new brick-and-glass high-rise in Hoboken called "Waldo Lofts." The ad proclaims that it's "ideal for artists" and the units are priced from $390,000 to $1 million plus. Loft living ain't what it used to be!

An annual subscription (12 issues) to Art Times is $15.00 a year; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

New Issues in the Newsstand

2006-04-15T12:10:00.000-04:00

Some notes on publications that have sent new issues to the newsstand in recent days…

The March/April issue of Psychology Today features a cover story on happiness, a goal sought by all but achieved by few. Author Kathleen McGowan suggests that a simple search for pleasure doesn't usually result in happiness; a more rewarding path to happiness is to embrace adversity and overcome it. She writes that evidence supporting this thesis has been coming out of "the new science of post traumatic growth." Speaking of trauma, this issue also spends a little time in gambling halls, as Dr. Nando Pelusi wonders whether our caveman ancestors' reliance on risk-taking for survival has led to modern man's penchant for bucking the odds with lottery tickets and slot machines. Dr. Pelusi points out that when the caveman took a risk, at least he probably learned something from the outcome. Can a gambler say the same thing?

The April issue of Vegetarian Times has collected 25 "light recipes," each one under 300 calories. Several involve lasagna: asparagus-pesto lasagna, polenta lasagna with creamy mushroom sauce, butternut squash lasagna and herbed tofu lasagna with zucchini. Writer Shelley Levitt claims in another article that Americans throw out an astounding 25% of the produce they buy because it's gone bad. She offers a number of suggestions to improve the survival rate of your greens and other vegetables, including using some new-fangled storage containers in the refrigerator, buying your veggies last when you're shopping, and putting a cooler in your car to keep them from aging on the way home from the store.

Ocean Navigator is a pleasure for armchair travelers and a must for anyone who owns a serious boat. It's about marine navigator and ocean voyaging. The May/June issue features a fascinating first-person story about a voyage from Long Island to St. Maarten in the West Indies on a Swan 48 in which absolutely everything went wrong: a water leak wiped out the vessel's electronics, the trade winds disappeared and the fuel tanks ran dry. Other articles in the issue are about night vision systems, coating technologies and fire-fighting systems. You'll also find an engaging account of a transatlantic voyage on the five-masted Royal Clipper, the world's largest sailing vessel. By the way, until supplies run out, when you order a sample copy of Ocean Navigator from MagSampler.com you'll also receive a copy of the 2006 Ocean Voyager, the annual handbook of offshore sailing from the magazine's publisher.

We've received the April/May issue of Beckett Baseball Card Plus, a thick (264-page) compendium of baseball card prices. For the heck of it, I looked up some prices on 1953 Topps cards, just the ones that I spent my parochial school recess times flipping into barred ground-floor windows with the other kids (the one with a "leaner" against the glass itself was the clear winner and picked up all the cards). Here are a sample: Johnny Podres: $175-$300; Mickey Mantle: $2500-$3500; Ted Kluzewski: $200-$350. I must have been carrying around $25,000 in 2006 dollars in my ragged corduroy pockets in those days! The cover is a nice tribute to Kirby Puckett, the Minnesota Twins great who died earlier this year.

Publisher Christianity Today International has changed the name of Campus Life to Campus Life's Ignite Your Faith. As you may have surmised, this Christian publication is aimed at college students. We've received the March-April issue, designated as "the music issue." A highlight is the announcement of the Golden Ear Awards for the best Christian music of 2005. The winners include best band Hawk Nelson, best male vocalist Jason Dunn of Hawk Nelson, and best female vocalist Alyssa Barlow of BarlowGirl. In the centerfold the magazine lists Christian bands as alternatives to the secular kind. Scanning the hard rock category, I see that the editors suggest Flyleaf as an alternative to Evanescence, Kittie, Auf der Maur and Garbage, and describe the music of Flyleaf as "female-led rock with touches of Goth, metal, and growling that points to Christ as the answer to struggles with anger, self-hatred and regret."

Sample copies of any of these titles are available from us for $2.59 each.

JOURNAL OF ASIAN MARTIAL ARTS: A Scholarly Approach

2006-04-14T00:11:00.000-04:00

Today's newcomer to the newsstand is the Journal of Asian Martial Arts, a very serious publication that examines the history, culture and techniques of a variety of traditional Asian fighting arts.

Published by Via Media in Erie, PA, this quarterly (which also calls itself JAMA, risking confusing some doctors) is in the style of an academic journal, and indeed is a member of the snooty-sounding Council of Editors of Learned Journals. Its large (8.5 x 11 inch) pages leave ample room for illustrations, an essential element of many articles. Aside from the cover, JAMA is printed in black and white.

The issue currently in our newsstand is #1 for 2006, which also happens to be JAMA's 15th anniversary issue. Editor-in-chief Michael A. DeMarco notes in his celebratory editorial that "out of thirty article submissions, only two or three are accepted for publication." He also points out with pride that JAMA will soon be published in Spanish and Greek language editions for European distribution.

The best summation of the journal's content and purpose can be found in its statement of editorial policy: "The Journal of Asian Martial Arts publishes three types of materials: (1) scholarly articles based on primary research in recognized scholarly disciplines, e.g., cultural anthropology, comparative religions, psychology, film theory, and criticism, etc.; (2) more informal, but nevertheless substantial interviews (with scholars, master practitioners, etc.) and reports on particular genres, techniques, etc.; and (3) reviews of books and audiovisual materials on the martial arts."

Like almost all academic journals, JAMA practices peer review, with each article submitted to a couple of editorial board members before it is accepted for publication.

Turning to the anniversary issue itself, the opening article is a very scholarly analysis of why people take up martial arts training in New Zealand. The author posits that it's because they perceive that they are in what she calls a "risk society," and are seeking personal safety, personal health and fitness, more social solidarity and a meaning and purpose in life. She concludes that those who persist in their study do it for more abstract reasons than simple self-defense and fitness.

The next article, utilizing 34 of the issue's 112 pages, is a truly comprehensive introduction to Shuai Jiao, a traditional Chinese form of wrestling that confines itself to throwing the opponent off-balance and to the ground. As soon as any part of him but his feet touches the ground, you've won. The trick is to clutch his sleeve, his shoulder, his waist (but never, never his pants!) and unbalance him, perhaps feinting one way and quickly reversing direction. You can use your legs, but only to nudge, not to kick. Of course, for every offensive move, a countering defensive move has been invented over the centuries. Author Zhang Yun provides a fascinating account of how Shuai Jiao came into favor with the emperors starting early in the Qing Dynasty in the 17th century. With the fall of that dynasty in 1911, its practitioners had to take to the streets as entertainers and as teachers to the common people. A staggering blow to the sport in China was the decision by the government a few years ago to support Olympic wrestling in the Greco-Roman tradition. In the article you'll find exhaustive discussions of proper footwork, hand techniques and body movement, illustrated by dozens of photographs and other graphics.

The issue concludes with tributes to the lives and teachings of a couple of recently deceased masters of the martial arts, and by several pages of thoughtful book reviews. A couple of the book titles: Shinsengumi: The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps and The Art of Chinese Swordsmanship: A Manual of Taiji Jian.

JAMA will be of the most interest to serious students of the martial arts, but anyone with a passion for things Asian will find it absorbing for the historical and cultural insights it provides.

An annual subscription (four issues) to the Journal of Asian Martial Arts is $32.00 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

DECOY MAGAZINE: The Art of Deception as Art

2006-04-12T00:12:00.000-04:00

Politicians, lovers and merchants have practiced the arts of deception for centuries. But one of the purest forms of the art perhaps originated and certainly blossomed in North America over the past couple of centuries. It's celebrated in Decoy Magazine, a recent addition to the MagSampler.com newsstand.

Carved waterfowl decoys were once purely utilitarian, created to be placed in water and to bob up and down, luring live fowl to join them under the guns of waiting vice presidents and other hunters. Apparently mallards, geese and the like are not stupid, and the more realistic the decoys, the more success the hunter can expect. Many a hunter in America's past was also good with his hands, and the happy result has been a significant number of hand-carved and painted decoys. Our mania for collecting has taken many of these old ersatz birds out of the water and onto mantels or inside display cases.

Decoy Magazine, published bimonthly in Lewes, DE, chronicles the stories of these decoys and monitors the many shows and auctions where they pass from hand to hand, often at what seem to be outrageous prices. In a recent issue editor and publisher Joe Engers notes that the biggest decoy auction house, which runs three sales a year, has reported gross sales in excess of $2 million for each auction over the past two years, with at least one decoy in every sale going for more than $100,000.

Stories of these decoys, their carvers and their collectors fill the pages of the magazine. The cover article of a recent issue is about Alfred Moes, a strong, silent Minnesotan, son of an expert woodcarver, who ran a gas station and garage in the little town of Lakeville. For some reason, the 44-year-old Moes, an avid hunter, decided in the winter of 1938 to carve a group of mallard decoys, the first he is believed to have made. The 15 decoys he created are now legendary for their craftsmanship and artistic appeal. He never made any more. Some are sleeping, some upright, and some are headless. Can't figure out why they have no heads? Because they're supposed to be feeding, with their heads in the water. It took me a while to get it too. A real mallard sure has to think fast to avoid becoming a dead duck.

A fascinating bit of detective work is reported in the issue. It's about a pair of pintail duck decoys that Bart Woloson, author of the article, picked up at a Milwaukee decoy show. Made from composite ground cork, they feature unusual swinging weights that are supposed to hang from the bottom of the decoy when it's in the water. His only clue as to the origin of the decoys was a patent number embossed on the weights. Research in the patent records led him to discover that a fellow named Anthony A. Oeding, living near St. Louis, patented the swing weight system in 1939. The weights are designed to oscillate in the water and propel the decoy. Google and phone book searches turned up nothing on Oeding, until Woloson found a 1961 newspaper picture that showed the inventor shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy! It turns out that Oeding had just turned 65 and was the 15 millionth recipient of Social Security benefits in the nation's history. The accompanying article provided Woloson with a few facts about the inventor―he was born in 1896 and had worked in an airplane factory―but the frustrated collector still doesn't know if the two pintail ducks in his possession are the only ones that Oeding made.

It's my sad duty to report that one of the articles in the magazine mentions that many modern waterfowl decoys are made of plastic.

An annual subscription to Decoy Magazine (six issues) is $40.00 from the publisher. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

THE FLORIDA REVIEW: Includes a Jealous Stew

2006-04-05T00:25:00.000-04:00

Today we welcome another university literary journal to the newsstand. The Florida Review is published twice a year by the English Department at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, and just celebrated its 30th anniversary. It's a solid publication, featuring short fiction, poetry and an interesting comic lit section.

Unless you're some sort of lit expert, there's not a lot you can write about a literary journal to separate it from all the other journals, and I doubt if anyone but another expert would find such distinctions of interest. Almost all publish a mix of short fiction and poetry, and you like what you like. Not many magazines on newsstands today carry serious fiction and poetry, but we're very pleased that the MagSampler.com newsstand is a place where you can find dozens of literary journals, some independent and others from university presses.

Back to The Florida Review. I've just finished the Fall 2005 issue, and I must tell you about one short story that I really enjoyed. It's by William Jablonsky, who published his first collection of short fiction in 2005. Called "Tandoori Chicken and Chinese Lanterns," this story is about a fellow who desperately loves his bride of two years and hopes to keep her affections by cooking her sublime meals. It starts out:

"Lie next to her in bed, lift up her old T-shirt, and gently press your ear to her abdomen, listening to the happy gurgling of her stomach as she digests the dinners you prepare so painstakingly, just for her. Catalog the sounds, match her response to each meal: the sparse plunking of chicken tikka masala, like water dripping into a bucket; the sustained, low moan of lamb and eggplant tagine; the quiet chirping of Egyptian veal stew, echoing just beneath her ribcage. This is what you have to offer; you are not gifted with good looks, cannot sing a love song respectably or write love poems in her honor, are not particularly romantic, are certainly not the best lover she has ever had. At your wedding, your own brother, in a moment of drunken insight, confirmed your fears: she was marrying beneath her, you were lucky she did not know it. But your three semesters of culinary school are not the expensive, impractical blunder they seemed at first, and each time she smiles and rubs her belly, you gain a small victory."

But our insecure husband fears the worst when she arrives home very late from work, ruining the chicken Malai that's been simmering on the stove. She explains that a meeting went overtime and that she and her coworkers shared pizzas at the conference table. But that evening his worst fears are confirmed:

"Wait until bedtime to forgive her completely. Lie with your arm over her chest until you hear her light, airy snore. Listen to her stomach, your ear not quite touching her skin. An alternating trickling and bubbling: Thai basil and fish sauce―a red beef curry, perhaps Pud Thai. Though you have not eaten there in months, remember that the Thai restaurant in town neither delivers nor accepts takeout orders. Creep quietly out of bed, drink a shot of the sake you use for marinades, lie awake until five in the morning wondering why she lied."

This jealous stew bubbles on furiously for several more pages of The Florida Review, and I was sorry that the meal had to end. Jablonsky writes as well as his hero with the extraordinarily talented ear can cook.

An annual subscription to The Florida Review (two issues) is $15.00 a year from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

ANARCHY: A Journal of Desire Armed

2006-03-31T15:20:00.000-05:00

A caveat: I fell in love with the title of this publication before I ever saw a copy or knew what it was about. It's Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, a twice-a-year magazine from the C.A.L. Press, a collective in Berkeley, CA, about the social and political philosophy called "anarchism" or "anarchy" (more about that distinction later). This is issue #60 of the publication, which had its beginnings in Columbia, MO about 1980, moved to New York briefly and disastrously in 1995, then back to Missouri, and just recently was transferred to the West Coast.

I have no idea where the "desire armed" tag comes from―Prince Kropotkin's writings in the late 19th century would be my guess if it was a question on Jeopardy—but I have learned something about this interesting movement from scanning the Fall-Winter issue that's arrived in the MagSampler.com newsstand.

A lifesaver in the issue is a three-page column by Bob Black titled "Anarchy 101." He starts it off with a definition: "Anarchism is the idea that government (the state) is unnecessary and harmful. Anarchy is society without government. Anarchists are people who believe in anarchism and desire to live in anarchy as all our ancestors once did. People who believe in government (such as liberals, conservatives, socialists and fascists) are known as 'statists.'"

Black then poses the question that's probably on your mind: "Aren't anarchists bomb-throwers?" I liked his snappy reply: "No―at least not compared to, say the United States Government, which drops more bombs every day on Iraq than anarchists have thrown in the almost 150 years they have been a political movement. Why do we never hear of 'bomb-throwing Presidents'? Does it matter if bombs are delivered horizontally by anarchists rather than vertically by the US Government?"

Black goes on to admit that unalloyed anarchy is not an achievable goal today, but its basic principles―such as voluntary cooperation among people, observable in early human society―can be implemented in many ways at many levels. One last quote from his column, this one in answer to the question, "How can you trust people not to victimize each other without the state to control crime?" The answer, also mind-bendingly logical: "If you can't trust ordinary people not to victimize each other, how can you trust the state not to victimize us all? Are the people who get into power so unselfish, so dedicated, so superior to the ones they rule? The more you distrust your fellow man, the more reason there is to become an anarchist. Under anarchy, power is reduced and spread around. Everybody has some, but nobody has very much. Under the state, power is concentrated, and most people have none, really. What kind of power would you like to go up against?"

This issue of Anarchy, 82 pages plus cover, is ad-free and full of well-reasoned essays on evolving anarchist thought, reports on anarchist organizations in Europe (they tend to be better organized (!!) and active than their American counterparts, and as a result seem to be in courtrooms and prisons a lot), book reviews and contentious letters to the editor. The anarchist community in the United States seems a lively and erudite bunch, not tied down to any party line and energetic in applying anarchist ideas to questions of feminism, culture, education, ecology and everything else. The community is a small one: the magazine proclaims in its masthead that the press run for the issue is a mere 6,200.

A note on the distinction between the terms "anarchy" and "anarchism." In a corner of the magazine's Web site is this interesting snippet, reflective of the preoccupation of many of the publication's writers with terminology with getting away from traditional ideologies: "Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that seeks to distance itself from the traditional Left (communism, social liberalism, social democracy etc.) and to escape the confines of ideology in general. It has rapidly developed since the fall of the Soviet Union, which many view as the death of authoritarian leftism; however, its roots are clearly visible in the ideas of the 1960s Situationists. It is not an independent 'movement' as such but rather a critical way of thinking about anarchist ideas. Post-leftists frequently use the word 'anarchy' instead of 'anarchism' to avoid the '-ism' suffix's connotation of a doctrine."

Whatever your own political leanings, I think you'll find Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed a good wash and rinse for the head. You'll come away from it with a new perspective on humanity's organizational principles and problems. A two-year subscription (four issues) is $16.00 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

TODAY'S DIET & NUTRITION: From Trapezes to Meatloaf

2006-03-24T14:04:00.000-05:00

This morning we'll nibble through Today's Diet & Nutrition, a quarterly from Great Valley Publishing Co. in Spring City, PA. The company also publishes Today's Dietitian Magazine, a trade publication.

Today's Diet & Nutrition is edited and written very much for women, and about half of the editorial is non-food-related. The cover lists the major departments: health, nutrition, fitness, lifestyle and cuisine. The magazine is a bit of a nagger about eating right, exercising right and living right. It's to the editors' credit that they make the nagging interesting and even fun.

I've been looking through the Winter 2006 issue, and found some of the non-food stuff quite entertaining. Under "Fitness," there's a fascinating article called "The Trapeze Workout." Apparently a bunch of trapeze workout establishments have opened up in major metropolitan areas like New York, Baltimore, Boston and (of course!) Los Angeles, fueled by a 2003 episode of Sex in the City in which a character from the show did a workout at Trapeze School New York. At these places you do trapeze stunts under the supervision of an instructor a couple of dozen feet off the ground, but protected by harnesses and nets. The article contains an understatement by the owner of a California trapeze facility: "Working out in the gym is boring. Flying on the trapeze is not boring." Benefits of a trapeze workout are supposed to include improvements in muscular strength, flexibility, posture and coordination.

You'll also find an article in this issue about the health and psychological benefits of friendship. The article suggests that having close friends to kvetch with can even help you conquer cancer! Commenting on a study of cancer patients, author Carol Patton makes the interesting observation, "Friendships outside an individual's own family seem to have more power. The same study revealed that the relationships participants had with their children or other relatives didn't have a significant impact on their life span."

Today's Diet & Nutrition can drive you crazy with all the studies its authors cite about whether a particular foodstuff (tea, alcohol, dried beans—you name it) is good or bad for you. But it does do a good job when its focus is on food alone. This issue has a nice cover article on several "comfort food" dishes, including chicken pot pie, baked macaroni and cheese and that old comfort standby, meatloaf. You get a history lesson on each as well as clear and fairly simple recipes.

My favorite ad in the issue is for a line of sprouted whole grain pastas under the brand name "Ezekiel 4:9." Naturally, I had to look it up: "Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof."

I think after just a couple of days of eating thereof I'd be ready for a burger and fries or at least a pastrami sandwich.

An annual subscription to Today's Diet & Nutrition (four issues) is $9.99 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

THE GREENSBORO REVIEW: Literary Journal Turns 40

2006-03-20T00:55:00.000-05:00

On this first day of Spring we welcome The Greensboro Review to the MagSampler.com newsstand. It's a twice-a-year production of the English Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, which has been putting it out for close to 40 years.

The publishing of poetry and short fiction is, in this country, a generally unremunerative and therefore fly-by-night occupation. I think of all the literary titles I've recently tried to chase down on the Internet only to find the desired Web site either unavailable or teasingly displaying the table of contents for the "soon-to-be-published Spring 2002 issue." But college and university literary journals are stalwarts of survival, for they can tap their institutional and departmental budgets to make up the shortfall between the costs of production and the income from sales. Of course, the publication of a classy literary journal also brings in the department's main source of income: tuition from students who want to learn their lit. It also helps recruit faculty.

The Greensboro Review, definitely classy, is also of interest because just last week we noted the arrival on our Literary shelf of Backwards City Review, a new literary journal from Greensboro that is put out by five self-styled "refugees" from UNC-Greensboro's MFA Writing Program. That program produces The Greensboro Review. Not that relations between the two publications are bad, for each has an ad in the other's pages. The Greensboro Review has a fairly staid look, with a text-only-cover and zero graphics in its pages, which carry traditional poetry and short fiction. The upstart Backwards City Review, on the other hand, is filled with comics, weirdly structured poetry and other trendy things of the day.

The Greensboro Review has a distinguished history, and boasts of having published Joyce Carol Oates, Ezra Pound, May Swenson and James Tate. Its Web site adds, "Even so, the GR has always taken the most joy in publishing work by new writers at the beginnings of their careers, and we are proud to include in this group such writers as Lewis Nordan, Yusef Komunyakaa, William Matthews, Alan Shapiro, Charles Simic and Dave Smith."

I've enjoyed my tour of The Greensboro Review #78 (Fall 2005), one of several issues we have in stock. A couple of short stories remain in the memory bank. One, "Birds in the House" by Kevin Wilson, is set in a decaying Tennessee mansion. Four tobacco-chewing middle-aged brothers are busily folding hundreds of paper cranes on the dining room table. The brothers, who don't get along at all, are carrying out the bizarre will of their recently deceased mother: They must each place 250 signed cranes on the table, at which point powerful fans on four sides of the table will be turned on. The last crane left on the table after the resulting windstorm will be examined for its signature, and that brother will inherit the house. Some understanding comes to the reader as you learn deep into the story that the mother was a Japanese war bride and the redneck brothers are indeed half-Japanese. Another story, "Gorilla Mother" by Lyn Stevens, is a touching account of the bond between a keeper at the Bronx Zoo's Ape House and the six-year-old gorilla she has tended since birth.

An annual subscription (two issues) to The Greensboro Review is at the bargain rate of $10.00 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

REUNIONS: Getting the Old Gang Back Together

2006-03-16T00:18:00.000-05:00

Reunions is one of those niche magazines that amazes you with all the stuff that goes in its world. As you might suspect, this glossy magazine, published bimonthly in Milwaukee, is solely dedicated to reunions―of families, school classes, military units and whatever other group finds that its bonds of old need renewing. We've just received the April/May issue, and it's filled with a blizzard of advice about planning, publicizing and carrying out successful reunions.

By far the most affecting article in the issue was written by the father of a severely disabled, blind and largely uncommunicative son who's approaching 50 years of age. The author and his wife have several other children and a host of grandchildren, and are worried that when they pass on, the grandchildren―cautious of and perhaps intimidated by their uncle, who they know only from brief holiday dinners―will no longer include him in family gatherings. So they arranged a 10-day cruise for all of them, and used the opportunity for the grandchildren to spend some quality time with their son, even screening a "day in the life of" video for them to see how he copes with life. It's a good read, not mawkish, and describes some effective techniques for dealing with a difficult problem that affects a great many families.

You'll also find a short report about a four-day reunion in Shelby, NC of 500 people from 22 states, all descendants of slaves who toiled on three plantations owned by the same family. It was the 100th annual reunion of this group, organized in 1906 by three former slaves. The article reports that the "extended family includes renowned artists, a best-selling writer, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and a parade of educators, business people and preachers." One interesting note: the cooking at this reunion has traditionally been done by the womenfolk, but "too much of the cooking burden was put on a new generation of women with both families and jobs, so the picnic is catered now."

A couple of pages in each issue are devoted to military reunions. One such reunion, to be hosted by the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in August 2007, is for crewmembers of the 28 submarines built in Manitowic, WI during World War II and for the shipyard workers who built them.

Reunions has a prosperous look: its colorful pages are bursting with ads from hotel chains, resorts, and city and state convention and tourist bureaus anxious to garner as many reunions as possible.

An annual subscription to Reunions (six issues) is $9.99 a year from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

BACK HOME: Eco-Friendly Low-Cost Projects

2006-03-14T00:13:00.000-05:00

New to the newsstand this morning is Back Home, which describes itself as "your hands-on guide to sustainable living." It's a colorful bimonthly that's filled with eco-friendly ideas on recycling, home maintenance, gardening, homesteading and workshop projects. We've just received a supply of the March/April issue, and it's a wonderful read for anyone looking for simple, low-cost projects to undertake or just contemplate and admire.

This issue focuses on the coming of warmer weather and the world of growing things. There's an article about "living roofs," topping off a building with several inches of soil and planting it with grass, wildflowers or ground cover. The aesthetic benefits are obvious, but there's also natural cooling in summer and longevity of the roof if it's properly constructed (the slope is particularly important). Another article is about building ultra-low-cost "hoophouses," Quonset-type greenhouses constructed of materials such as PVC pipe and polyethylene sheeting that can significantly extend the growing season for plants and vegetables. The author explains how they can be built in hours for as little as 50 cents a square foot.

I liked a short piece about some kids in rural Texas who noted that their fathers traditionally dumped used motor oil around fence posts to kill weeds. Having learned that just one quart of oil can pollute 250,000 gallons of drinking water, in 1997 they organized a 4-H project called "Don't Be Crude" to educate their parents and the wider community. The result to date: more than 300,000 gallons of used motor fluids have been collected and recycled. Urban living isn't totally neglected in the issue, as a very successful food co-op in Brooklyn's Park Slope is profiled.

There are a couple of articles about the benefits of raised gardening beds, with special attention paid to the dangers of using certain kinds of pressure-treated lumber as building materials. You'll come across a fascinating description of what you're in for when you buy your first cow, either for milk for home consumption or as a business proposition.

There's much more in the issue: plenty of recipes, tips on growing tomatoes, advice on finding cheap or free used furniture and making it pretty again, and an old design for a unusual homemade sawhorse. Back Home is published in East Flat Rock, NC and proudly proclaims that it's printed with agricultural-based soy inks. An annual subscription (six issues) is $21.97; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

BACKWARDS CITY REVIEW: New from Greensboro

2006-03-13T00:12:00.000-05:00

This morning MagSampler celebrates the arrival of Backwards City Review in the newsstand. It's a literary journal started in 2004 by five self-styled "refugees" from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro's Creative Writing Program and is published in that city. Lest you misunderstand that these gentlemen think badly of the town and are getting back at it through the name of their publication, note this statement of purpose on their Web site: "Cities are built upon need. In the physical world, they collect around resources: a spring, a bay, fertile soil. Imaginary cities collect around ideas: a style of art, a search for information, a game, a movie, a band, a book, a political ideal. It is these cities, these backwards cities, that nourish us and make it possible for us to live richly. In our Backwards City, there is no mayor, and we eat all our meals at one long table. Come sample our dishes."

I've been sampling the second issue of Backwards City Review, which has received a number of laudatory reviews in its short life, and it's quite a tasty stew of comic lit, poetry and short fiction. I found I was in the mood for tragic yet comic fiction, and a couple of pieces in the issue turned out to be especially to my liking. One is a story by Chris Bachelder in the form of a sports page account of a high school basketball game in which the Perlis Blue Knights trail by a point with a minute to go, but―apparently stricken by either fear or a moment of collective Existential anguish―pass the ball innumerable times and fail to take a shot before time expires. The sportswriter's story is full of wonderful asides, such as "'Winning is boring,' said Clarence Brown, my first editor, before he died alone at age 54 from a heart attack. 'You want the story, go to the losers' locker room.'"

Another short story, by Dave Housley, is about the coming apart of a small-town freelance clown. In addition to giving us the text of the actual "Clown Code of Ethics," the narrator provides us with all sorts of clown detail as he gets into makeup and costume for what turns out to be a disastrous performance at a small-town Pennsylvania restaurant: "Shoopy is a happy clown, what we in the trade call an Auguste. He is the kind of multipurpose clown who can fashion a balloon elephant, pull rabbits from his hat, perform an athletic yet comedic pratfall, and maybe give that shy, fat little kid enough wonder to keep going another year. The kind of clown I could have used when I was a kid."

An annual subscription (two issues) to Backwards City Review is $12 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

MILITARY: Wars of the Past and the Present

2006-03-09T15:22:00.000-05:00

Today we welcome Military to the newsstand. It's a monthly based in Sacramento, CA that is written by and for veterans of the American armed services. Military is not a fancy publication: it's black and white throughout its 60 pages, with a self-cover, but its pages are cleanly laid out and well-edited. I think it's fair to describe this magazine as having two distinct personalities. More than half of its 60 pages are filled with reminiscences by veterans of their service, mostly in the wars we've fought from World War II through Vietnam. The rest of the magazine is devoted to very, very conservative commentary on current political affairs.

The tales of the old soldiers in the February 2006 issue are fascinating, and made especially poignant by the accompanying photos of the authors as young men at war. They're dying off rapidly now, and some of the reminiscences in Military are published posthumously.

The cover story is about Cat Girl, a B-29 bomber mothballed right after she was built at the end of World War II and hastily brought into service to bomb Communist forces in Korea in 1950. The author, a tail gunner on Cat Girl (he's pictured with the plane on the cover), details her missions and reveals that she was named after stripper Lili St. Cyr, famous in some circles for her "cat girl" routine. He remembers one scene that is cinematically surreal: a MiG-15 jet fighter flying with its landing lights on through a night flight of B-29s, trying to draw fire so that his comrades waiting at a higher altitude could spot the bombers. Cat Girl was to crash later in the war, killing all but one of the crew.

A World War II radioman recalls when his unarmed supply plane, flying low over a German field of alfalfa, encountered a farmer mowing the field with a team of horses. Incredibly, the farmer jumped off the mower and started throwing rocks at the enemy American airplane! The pilot circled around to "buzz" the farmer, causing the horses to bolt and leaving a very angry farmer shaking his fist at the departing plane. In another article a pilot in the Pacific theater writes of a day spent bombing a Japanese destroyer and strafing landing boats heading to the island of Kolabangara. He reports that an Australian "coast watcher" hiding on the island eventually confirmed that he had indeed sunk the destroyer, and mentions in passing that this coast watcher―who may not have survived if those landing craft he strafed had made it to shore―was later to rescue John F. Kennedy and the crew of PT-109. So history turns.

On the political side, the issue's first words on page 2 are: "It is increasingly clear that the leaders of the American leftist political movement have one agenda: to topple the American government and seize power by whatever means possible, including outright treason." I think the author is talking about the Democrats. You'll also find regular columns by such conservative pundits as Oliver North, Thomas Sowell and Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media. A subscription to Military (12 issues) is $17.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

THE DECORATIVE PAINTER: Cheaper Than Therapy!

2006-03-06T00:05:00.000-05:00

Today's addition to the MagSampler.com newsstand is The Decorative Painter, a thick (128 pages plus cover) and colorful bimonthly that instructs its readers on how to paint flowers, folk designs, holiday motifs and the like on surfaces such as ceramic plates, furniture, canvas and paper. It's the official publication of the Society of Decorative Painters, which is based in Wichita, KS and offers the wonderful slogan, "It's cheaper than therapy!" Its members―throughout the United States and overseas (the bound-in application form is English on one side, Japanese on the other)―are mainly hobbyists, but some have become teachers of decorative painting within their communities and others are making a living with the crafts they produce and market. Membership seems to be overwhelmingly female, though I don't understand why. The spirit of the magazine is exemplified by an anecdote related in the November-December 2005 issue by self-taught (and now professional) artist and illustrator Nanette Hilton, who painted a rose and hummingbird design on a stool for her six-year-old daughter. On the underside of the chair she wrote, "For Diana, painted by your loving mother." Hilton tells the reader, "Diana knows she'll someday get this stool for her very own… It's amazing how well a child will take care of something if they know they're going to inherit it!" The articles in The Decorative Painter go into great detail on the materials needed for each project. One such project is to paint a wooden mantel clock green and add red poinsettias and green leaves around the clock face. Author Bobbie Campbell starts the article by telling you where to buy the basic unpainted clock by mail, lists the 11 acrylic paints required by name and palette code number, suggests a series of brushes, and adds the other basic elements, including wood sealer, sandpaper, steel wool and tracing paper. For every project in the magazine, a drawn-to-scale black and white outline is supplied for tracing and transfer. Campbell then gives specific instructions on painting the design, telling you what colors to apply where. In many of the articles, the authors give added advice on the various brushstrokes necessary to complete the painting. It's far more sophisticated work than "paint-by-the-numbers," but it's a skill that people without art experience should be able to master with practice and some appropriate face-to-face lessons. You have to be a member of the Society of Decorative Painters to get the magazine. An annual membership is $40.00 for individuals; check out their Web site at www.decorativepainters.org for details. We'll be happy to send you a sample copy of The Decorative Painter for $2.59.

HANGING LOOSE: A Literary Magazine from Brooklyn

2006-03-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

After brushing more than a little snow and ice off the newsstand, I settled down this morning for an enjoyable hour with a copy of Hanging Loose, a recent addition to our Literary & Writing shelf. This Brooklyn-based literary magazine has been around for years, publishing the work of emerging poets and writers as well as established authors whom the editors believe deserve a larger audience. I'll take you to the Hanging Loose Web site for a short but instructive history lesson, starting back when the publication was solely devoted to poetry. "The first issue of Hanging Loose magazine was published in 1966. The name was inspired by the format―mimeographed loose pages in a cover envelope―and that, in turn, was inspired by a very low budget. But the format was also meant to get across a point of view: that poetry is for now, not for the Ages. If you liked a poem, you could pin it to the wall. If you didn't like a poem, you could use it as a napkin." Hanging Loose has evolved mightily since those early days, and now is cleanly printed and bound in a curious but satisfying squarish format with a colorful glossy cover. It runs very short fiction as well as poetry, and each issue includes a portfolio by an artist or photographer. There's also a section devoted to works by talented high school writers. These people know what they're doing: the parent Hanging Loose Press has published 135 books in addition to 87 issues of the magazine. Writers published by Hanging Loose include Denise Levertov, John Gill, Sherman Alexie, Kimiko Hahn, Joanna Fuhrman and Indran Amirthanayagam. To quote a recent review of the magazine at the excellent Web site newpages.com, "The work here is refreshingly unpretentious, playful, and altogether untouched by the cerebral rarefaction of academia or clumsy experimentalism." In other words, it's fun to read. Hanging Loose is published twice a year. A subscription (three issues) is $22.00; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

BLUE & GRAY: For Those Who Still Hear the Guns

2006-03-02T00:02:00.000-05:00

This morning we revisit the most traumatic years of American history as we welcome Blue & Gray to the newsstand. It's a magazine with the dramatic tagline, "for those who still hear the guns." The concept of this bimonthly, published in Columbus, OH, is to devote most of each issue to one campaign, battle or region of the Civil War, supplying copious historical detail as well as providing present-day students of the war with the information, maps and color photos to find surviving landmarks of the period while traveling on modern roads through towns with new names. It works! I've been reading the Winter 2006 issue, and about 60 percent of the pages are about the interesting and confusing campaigns that centered on the little West Virginia town of Romney, a few miles west of Winchester, VA. Historian Richard A. Sauers estimates that Romney changed hands some 60 times during the five years of war, as Union forces tried to protect the nearby Baltimore & Ohio Railroad from efforts by the Confederates to disrupt and destroy it. Dr. Sauers writes of nervous Union forces fearful of being "bushwhacked" by Confederate sympathizers if they wandered out of their fortified camps; at other times the Union and Confederate forces seemed to have an unspoken agreement to leave each other alone for months at a stretch. His account includes prominent generals such as Stonewall Jackson, Lew Wallace and John C. Fremont, as well as local people who figured in the struggle. A nice feature in each issue of Blue & Gray is an article examining letters written by soldiers during the war. The one in this issue is from a sergeant in the 1st Arkansas unlucky enough to endure four bloody Union charges against his lines at the "Hornet's Nest" in the Battle of Shiloh. "Miss Bettie," he wrote his sweetheart a week later, "I have often thought that I would like to get into a fight, but this battle has satisfied me. I am willing to play quit with them." Another article examines the legend of Union sympathizers captured in the mountains of North Carolina by Southern troops at the very end of the war. One of them, a fiddler, was asked to play a tune just before he was executed. It's a story reprised in both the novel and film Cold Mountain. There are plenty of ads for Civil War books, tours, re-enactments and memorabilia in Blue & Gray. A couple of the ads stood out for me: one for type fonts reproducing 19th century penmanship, another for a new book called The Confederate Book of Arguments, which insists that you "never attend a 'Lincoln Worship Service' without it." The Civil War is definitely not over for everybody. An annual subscription (six issues) to Blue & Gray is $21.95 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

WOMAN INTERNATIONAL: For Women of Asian Ancestry

2006-03-01T10:48:00.000-05:00

We start what promises to be a busy month of welcoming publications to the newsstand―they're backed up like planes on a foggy night at LaGuardia Airport―with Woman International, a new glossy magazine from the San Francisco area. Its target audience: American women of Asian background, from East Asia through the Indian subcontinent. We've received a supply of Woman International's second issue, and it's got all the elements of a traditional women's magazine: celebrity profiles, recipes, spreads on jewelry, a horoscope, medical questions answered by a physician and advice on relationships, many with a decidedly Asian orientation. One profile is of Kalpana Chawla, born in northern India and Punjab Engineering College's first women aeronautical engineer when she graduated in 1982. She came to the United States for postgraduate studies, married and earned a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering. The story has an unhappy ending: Kalpana became a NASA astronaut and perished in the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003. Other profiles include actress Minae Noja, featured in the movie Memoirs of a Geisha (and on the cover of this issue) and Carrie Ann Inaba, of Japanese, Chinese and Irish descent, who is one of the judges on the television series "Dancing With the Stars." You'll find a two-page spread on Indian appetizer recipes, including tofu kabobs and an Indian variant of hummus. There's a short article about Twelve Girls Band, the interesting Chinese all-girl musical group from Beijing that plays pop Western music on traditional Chinese stringed instruments. For some reason their music is called "folk-techno fusion" and, to add to the oddity, there are 13 young ladies in the group (apparently 12 is a lucky number in the People's Republic, but the article doesn't discuss how the Chinese feel about 13). Women International has its editorial faults: the layouts can be confusing, and there are a number of painful typos—Dean Martin never appeared with "Gerry Lewis"; a women complaining to the relationship guru that she lusts after her guy's best friend is inexplicably offered advice on various ways to deal with the death of a loved one. Hopefully these are just the usual teething pains of a new publication. An annual subscription to Woman International (four issues) is $19.99 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

HORSES IN ART: Equines at Work and Play

2006-02-27T00:42:00.000-05:00

I'm starting this frosty morning looking through the Winter 2005 issue of Horses in Art, a magazine published in Jamul, CA that is devoted to images of the horse in contemporary art. There are no traditional thoroughbred race horse images in this magazine, but colorful and imaginative depictions of all sorts of horse breeds at work and at play. Most of the articles are by or about the artists, and they have interesting stories to tell. For instance, Dan Stivers comments on his oil painting, commissioned by the 2nd U.S. Cavalry, showing some of the famed Lipizzaners of Vienna's Spanish Riding School being "liberated" in 1945 by American soldiers on horseback from the Czechoslovakian farm where they had been sent by the occupying Germans. The Americans were fearful they would fall into the hands of the advancing Russian Army. Interestingly, as the painting illustrates and the article explains, young Lippizzan horses are brown or black, and don't turn white until they get past the age of six. Another artist specializes in the striking Stonewall Sporthorse, with black speckles on a white coat, resulting from a cross of the Appaloosa and Percheron breeds. The artist who created the cover of this issue, Lynn Thomas, had worked for many years running a pack outfitting business in Wyoming and loves to paint sturdy working horses. In the cover article, Horses in Art editor Sarah Crampton quotes Thomas, "I feel sad that this kind of scene is slowly disappearing and large tractors with automatic feeders are taking the place of the big draft teams." I have three pictures from the issue to show you before I get back to work in the newsstand. Two are from an article about the artwork of a horse named Romeo, who paints greeting cards and such with a brush held firmly in his teeth. The third, from an ad in the issue, is a bronze in the Remington style by Sandy Wisecup that I dedicate to the late Betty Friedan, who gallantly let me buy her a Coke while I interviewed her for my college newspaper quite a few years ago. An annual subscription (four issues) to Horses in Art is $19.95 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

CHILDREN'S BOOK INSIDER: Find That Inner Child

2006-02-16T00:21:00.000-05:00

New to the newsstand today is Children's Book Insider, a monthly newsletter for writers of children's books, a highly competitive and potentially lucrative occupation. I've got the January issue here in the newsstand. The first couple of pages of this eight-page publication are devoted to news of publishers looking for manuscripts and announcements of writing workshops and conferences in various parts of the country. The rest of the Children's Book Insider, which is published in Ft. Collins, CO, contains short articles of advice from experts on getting your book written and sold. One example is a nifty article on writing dialogue, in which author Gail Martini-Peterson bluntly warns that "actual dialogue bores the reader," being filled with hems, haws and idle, irrelevant chatter. She shows how dialogue should always advance the plot, should be broken up with action and scene description, and, interestingly, "should never be an information drop." The centerfold of the January issue is a good discussion of the benefits of becoming a book reviewer (besides possibly getting free books), and it's applicable advice for all sorts of writers. Author Mary Bowman-Kruhm notes that opportunities to review books for children are much greater now with the advent of the Internet, and argues persuasively that the effort and discipline of critically analyzing a newly published book can help you better understand how to structure and write your own saleable manuscripts in that field. Another winner in the issue is an article that suggests you search for your own "inner child" when working on your children's book. Think back to what it felt like to arrive at a big test completely unprepared (still the subject of nightmares umpteen years later!), make a visit to your old childhood playground to summon up long-ago joys and fears, try to remember how you felt when your icky new brother became the center of your parents' world when you were six. Such emotions, properly worked into a setting that reflects the world of your readers (popular movies, cartoons, music, electronic gear and so on), will make your words live for a new generation. An annual subscription to Children's Book Insider (12 issues) is $34.00 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

BYLINE: A Comfortable Home for Writers

2006-02-14T00:14:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day! Today we welcome ByLine to the MagSampler.com newsstand. This monthly magazine provides a warm, comfy home for beginning and working writers, offering them practical advice, a host of writing contests and the opportunity to publish in its own pages. It's a tough world out there for freelance writers; very few make it big, and not many even do well enough to support themselves without a day job. But it can be fun, and getting that first article or poem into print with a check coming back to you is a psychological kick akin to winning a jackpot at a slot machine. I've been looking through the January issue of ByLine, which was founded in 1981 and is published in Edmond, OK. It starts with editor and publisher Marcia Preston examining what she calls "old chestnuts" of advice for writers. The first she cites is "When you get a rejection, put that manuscript right back in the mail." Whoa, she cautions, first consider the new publication to which you're sending the manuscript and revise it to meet that market's unique needs (and, I guess, be thankful that word processing and computers have replaced the typewriter and made revisions much, much easier). In the next article, Patricia Fry warns self-published authors that the big chain bookstores don't want their books. She suggests all sorts of strategies for promoting your own book, from approaching local independent bookstores to locating special interest groups that will find the subject of your book right up their alley for a lecture or presentation. You'll encounter another article about publicity of a slightly different kind: Setting up a simple Web site that will have a search engine like Google send someone typing in your name right to that site, which can contain your picture, biography, list of writing credits and maybe a couple of your articles. Then add your Web site address to your business card. That way, writes author Joan Upton Hall, "a business card becomes your portfolio in the pocket of an agent or editor." The article I liked the best, by Al Peck, is titled "Double-Dip to Sell More Articles." It's traditional advice to a freelancer, but it can't be repeated enough: Take the same research and interviews and create different articles for a variety of markets. He also stresses keeping your eyes open, and in a delightful sidebar writes of seeing a large concrete penny, a monument of some kind outside a hospital. He made inquiries and found that it was erected to honor a long-ago drive to start the hospital that brought in millions of pennies from around the country. "This heartwarming story was appealing to coin-collecting magazines, medical magazines and a state history magazine," Peck writes. "But I wouldn't have known if I hadn't asked." Each issue also contains some poetry and short fiction. An annual subscription to ByLine (11 issues) is $24.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

THE INTERNATIONAL RAILWAY TRAVELER: All Aboard for Exotic Destinations

2006-02-13T00:17:00.000-05:00

After shoveling the blizzard of '06 off of the newsstand, I've settled down with coffee and a bagel to leaf through the Winter issue of The International Railway Traveler, cutely abbreviated as IRT (also the name of one of the New York City subway lines), a MagSampler newsstand veteran that's recently undergone a facelift. It used to look like a newsletter, but now has a pretty cover and attractive four-color photos throughout each quarterly issue. The magazine is published by The Society of International Railway Travelers from its base in Louisville, KY. It's an organization for people who like to travel by rail, especially to exotic international destinations, but its magazine has an undeniable appeal to armchair travelers and railroad buffs as well. The opening article in the Winter issue of IRT is about riding the train from Lima, Peru to Machu Picchu, the "Lost City of the Incas" that was rediscovered by American explorer Hiram Bingham in 1913. There's no road to Machu Picchu; you have to either hoof it for miles or take the train from the city of Cusco, a 58-mile adventure over narrow-gauge track on a train named the "Hiram Bingham." The next story is about the fabulous Moscow Metro, built in the 1930s by a young Nikita Khrushchev and filled with statuary, stained glass, chandeliers and marble walls and floors. Things have apparently loosened up in Moscow in recent years. Writer Samuel L. Scheib reports he was stopped from taking photos in a Metro station by a young militiaman with an assault rifle dangling from his neck.
"Are you a terrorist?" he was asked.
"Worse," Scheib replied, "I'm an American writer."
"Well, you can't take pictures."
"Why?"
"Because it is forbidden."
"But it's art!" Scheib protested.
"Oh! Take your picture then."
In the issue you'll also find an article about a $5 weekend pass on Chicago's Metra Electric, a commuter railroad that will take you to a number of interesting places in Chicagoland such as a riverboat casino, a minor league ballpark, the Botanic Gardens, the Oak Park haunts of Ernest Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright, Arlington Park racetrack and the Brookfield Zoo. I also liked a piece about a peculiar train that travels once a day between coastal Anchorage, Alaska and interior Fairbanks (a 12-hour trip). It's composed of a variety of domed cars, some of historic interest to railroad buffs. Several of the observation cars are operated by cruise lines (Royal Caribbean, Princess) taking cruise passengers off their ships for inland excursions. A $69.00 annual membership in The Society of International Railway Travelers gets you four issues of the magazine as well as discounts on a variety of railroad tours organized by the organization and a number of other travel deals. You can get a sample copy of The International Railway Traveler from us for $2.59.

DOLL CRAFTER & COSTUMING: A Merger in the Doll World

2006-02-10T01:08:00.000-05:00

This morning we report a merger in the magazine business that involves two publications in our newsstand. Doll Crafter and Doll Costuming, both from Jones Publishing in Iola, WI, have been combined into Doll Crafter & Costuming. We've received a supply of the new April 2006 issue in the newsstand (how time flies in the magazine world!), and have been taking a tour through the issue. It starts with a wonderfully illustrated article that shows how doll crafter Annie Wahl sculpts very expressive faces out of clay, using only a stick to poke the clay and glass beads for the eyes. She offers all sorts of advice that makes me want to look in the mirror, such as, "Eyes placed close together is cute. Set eyes far apart for 'beautiful' faces." and "Ears placed high on the head are cute but lower is funnier." Another article discusses detailing the hands on a doll, from applying paint to nails to adding subtle veins to the arms. This is followed by a nicely illustrated piece about making incredibly detailed doll cowboy boots, again out of clay. I found out that the length of the shoe equals the length of the head, and the width of the shoe equals the width of the palm of the hand. The issue also has several articles on dressing French dolls, from outerwear to underwear (oh-la-la!), as well as one about creating an automaton doll that's based on a French design from 1890: when a key in her back is wound, a music box plays and a large egg in her Easter basket opens to reveal a smaller doll inside. Doll crafters who want to sell their creations on the Internet and elsewhere will find a useful discussion of how to photograph their dolls using the right lighting, clothing and backgrounds. There is some dissension in the doll world, as evidenced by a letter to the editor decrying both the end of Doll Costuming as a separate publication and what the writer, Heather Smith, describes as the tendency in doll magazines to write about clothes for what she calls a "figurine," which she defines as "a fixed-pose thing with clothes that are impossible to remove." She adds, "Since I was a very small girl, to me a doll was a humanlike figure that could have many outfits that are easy to change, just like a real person." An annual subscription to Doll Crafter & Costuming (12 issues) is $39.95 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

DOGGONE: Roving with Rover

2006-02-09T00:03:00.000-05:00

Today's new arrival in the newsstand is no puppy: DogGone just completed its 13th year with the November/December issue. DogGone is a 16-page bimonthly newsletter from Estes Park, CO that offers information crucial to anyone traveling with a dog. It tells you where you can stay, pet-friendly outings to plan, and endearing sidenotes, such as suggestions as to what booties would be perfect when Fido goes skiing with you―or what protective lotions are available should Fido be boot-resistant. The cover article in this issue discusses cross-country skiing and snowshoe expeditions in the Western states (California, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona and Oregon), and specifies what ski areas permit dogs to accompany you. It's often for an additional fee, apparently—at the Kirkwood Cross-County Ski Center in Colorado, according to the newsletter, "doggie passes are hefty." The one irritation I have with DogGone is that specific prices for lodging or for such things as dog ski passes are never offered. But DogGone does go out of its way to warn readers that any information about the dog-friendliness of a hotel, restaurant or park from a book, a friend or a Web site should be checked out before you arrive with your pooch, since policies can change. Publisher Robyn Peters writes in this issue, "The keyword is Check, Check, Check, regardless of the source (even DogGone), and even if you've stayed somewhere in the past. And confirm, with the name of the person you spoke with and get it in writing. I do." The newsletter does a good job in covering the country, and in this issue alone are articles about lodgings in Colorado, Florida, New York State, Oregon, New Jersey, California and New Hampshire, as well as Quebec, Alberta and New Brunswick in Canada. I was intrigued by the doggie-friendliness of the Loews Hotel Vogue in Montreal, a five-star boutique hotel that reserves two of its nine floors for guests with pets (no carpets on those floors). DogGone writes that "the pet room service menu at every Loews Hotel is prepared and approved by licensed vets and includes gourmet dinner options such as Beef Tenderloin and vegetarian entrees… Your pet's meal will be hand-delivered on a silver platter complete with two large stainless steel dog dishes, one for the entrée and the other for your pooch's bottled Evian spring water." Just don't try to tip the waiter with dog biscuits. An annual subscription (six issues) to DogGone is $25.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

www.newpages.com: Home of Wondrous Crannies

2006-02-08T00:47:00.000-05:00

In my constant search for interesting magazines to add to the newsstand, I've stumbled on a treasure trove of info that I have to share with you. It's www.newpages.com, a Web site that promises―and delivers―"news, information and guides to independent bookstores, independent publishers, literary periodicals, alternative periodicals, independent record labels, alternative newsweeklies and more." It's a place where readers can find all sorts of wondrous things, including hundreds of thoughtful reviews of books and literary journals. There are up-to-date lists of literary and alternative magazines, independent bookstores, even e-zines (those friends of trees and enemies of newsstands). You'll also find a blog about things literary and a directory of alternative music labels, with links to their Web sites. It's hard to keep to a plan of action when visiting this Web site; too many crannies and nooks to explore. I was reminded of my student days, on a mission from my political history professor to research some early 1950s topic in the library's microfilmed New York Times (do they still have microfilm?). I'd inevitably spend happy hours gaping at the prices of shirts and apartments in July 1955, and worriedly checking the standings of the Brooklyn Dodgers (even though I knew they would finally win it all), ignoring my initial purpose of finding out who said what in the U.N. Security Council that long-ago Cold War week. MagSampler.com is working hard to recruit more literary journals and alternative magazines into our catalogue, since our purpose is to let our visitors discover the new, the good, the passionate, the not-widely-known and the strange in periodicals. This Web site will be a big help in finding candidates. Casey and Denise Hill run www.newpages.com out of Bay City, MI. May they endure and prosper.

FINE ART CONNOISSEUR: Celebrating the Traditional

2006-02-07T00:21:00.000-05:00

This morning the newsstand welcomes our newest publication, Fine Art Connoisseur. The magazine's Web site proclaims that it "educates affluent buyers about art, artists and art movements, giving them tools to make and execute major purchase decisions." Fine Art Connoisseur, a monthly published in West Palm Beach, FL, is also a good read, filled with articles about the work of rising contemporary painters and what makes them tick (and paint). It's an art magazine with a strong point of view, as you can easily see from the editorial in the January issue by publisher B. Eric Rhoads: "Fine Art Connoisseur believes millions of people like you love premium-quality, traditional realism, and are disturbed by the direction art has taken at the hands of a very few who are in defiance of most art-loving people. In spite of the dominance of contemporary art and the avant garde, significant evidence shows that the greater body of art enthusiasts is taking a U-turn back toward the classics that focus on truth and magnificence instead of anger, disgust and shock. This magazine is for those who seek this finery and crave to expand or refresh their edification. It's for the informed, new-generation collectors and enthusiasts who are rediscovering art works considered by the modernists as passé." Leafing through the issue, my ears ringing from the publisher's fusillade, I encountered a series of gentle, informative and well-illustrated articles on a number of diverse subjects. One was a thoughtful meditation on how Dutch landscape painting of the past 300 years was influenced by such factors as economic development, the influx of immigrants attracted by religious and political tolerance, and the Dutch age-old struggle to reclaim land from the sea. I found a fascinating history of how the European academic tradition took hold in the People's Republic of China in the 1950s (it came with all those Russian advisors), only to be stomped down during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s. But it created a group of Chinese painters who have since found their way to North America, where they have settled and developed their own individualistic styles, diverging from the Socialist Realism as well as the traditional Chinese painting techniques they absorbed when young. I also enjoyed the issue's "hidden collections" feature, this one about how former U.S. ambassador to Denmark John L. Loeb Jr. has become an avid collector of late 19th century Danish art. An annual subscription (12 issues) to Fine Art Connoisseur is $39.99 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

ARTFUL DODGE: A Pride of Literary Lions

2006-02-03T21:44:00.000-05:00

Today marks the debut in the MagSampler.com newsstand of the jauntily named Artful Dodge, a hefty literary journal published from the College of Wooster in Wooster, OH. Founding and current editor Daniel Bourne started Artful Dodge in 1979 in Bloomington, IN. The journal's Web site furnishes this little history: "During the 20-plus years of the journal's existence, we have pretty much lived up to our name, dodging our way along with the help of grants from the Ohio Arts Council and support from the College of Wooster; keeping our head above water and somehow managing to publish work from such writers as Nobel Laureate for Literature Czeslaw Milosz, William S. Burroughs, Charles Simic, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tim Seibles, Stuart Friebert, Elizabeth Bartlett, Ronald Wallace and others. There have also been the Artful Dodge interviews, which Library Review reviewed as 'much more perceptive than most,' with such writers as Jorge Luis Borges, Czeslaw Milosz, W.S. Merwin, Nathalie Sarraute, Gwendolyn Brooks, William Least Heat-Moon, Michael Dorris, Tim O'Brien, Stuart Dybek, William Matthews and Stanislaw Baranczak. We've left the years of xeroxing and stapling journals and have arrived at our present production of one perfect bound, four-color double issue a year, annually receiving more than 3,000 works, and keeping up with a subscription list of 1,100 and growing." I've been looking through combined issue 46-47 here in the newsstand, which features quite a bit of translated poetry as well as new prose and poetry (200 pages in all). I liked one poem by Tess Gallagher titled "Lady Betty" which carries this intro: "Given the death sentence for murder, she saved her life by becoming executioner at Roscommon Jail, Ireland, 1740." I've already started my screenplay; I envision Bill-killer Uma Thurman as Lady Betty, a weary smile on her face and a murderous glint in her eye. A two-year subscription to Artful Dodge (one double issue each year) is $14.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

BLACK WOMAN AND CHILD: Advice on Pregnancy and Parenting

2006-02-02T00:07:00.000-05:00

We start February with an interesting addition to the newsstand. Black Woman and Child is a new quarterly magazine about pregnancy and parenting in the black community. Publisher Nicole Osbourne James begins a recent issue with an editorial decrying media depiction of black mothers as either victimized or irresponsible, and makes it clear that her magazine has the purpose of promoting "the capable and positive parenting from which African families benefit." The first few articles in the issue are about pregnancy and giving birth, and the emphasis is strongly on natural birth, at home if possible. One is a vivid but very matter-of-fact account by a mother of four of her most recent experience of giving birth at home, assisted only sporadically by her husband―he kept leaving the room to get the kids ready for school, etc.―while she found herself unexpectedly having her second set of twins. This section is followed by practical advice on purchasing maternity clothes that make a pregnant woman feel both comfortable and proud of how she looks. You'll also find an interesting article about youth sports, which stresses that the reasons kids should play are because they want to and because in a team environment "your children see themselves as important to someone other than family," not because you expect them to become a Shaq, Venus or Michael. This is followed by two pages of readers' comments about the decisions they came to on circumcision of their male children. I liked an article titled "When Discipline Becomes Destructive." Author Akilah Haneef-Jabari, a mother of four, admits that she and her husband were both "raised with the strap," and adds, "Historically I do know that it is a definite part of our culture. It is not solely familiar to Africans in the Diaspora. Unfortunately, because of our heritage of whippings and slavery, we have the idea that we have to beat our children and discipline them into being the best that they can be for them to thrive in a society that sees them as less." She perceptively notes that physical discipline is the result of "the parents' lack of resources on how to deal with misbehavior," and suggests solutions like letting a child make his or her own decisions based on good or bad consequences, e.g., "you can invite your friend over to play once your room is clean." Black Woman and Child is published by NuBeing International in Toronto, Canada. An annual subscription (four issues) is $25.00 from the publisher, but I encountered a blow-in card that ups the offer to six issues for that price. We'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION: A Proud Heritage

2006-01-31T00:05:00.000-05:00

We leave the first month of the year―peppered, surprisingly, by several spring-like days―by noting the arrival in the newsstand of the March issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. F&SF, as it's known to those who like to save space, is published monthly in Hoboken, NJ. The magazine is the bearer of a proud heritage, having been founded way back in 1949, when the dawning of the Atomic Age also created what many call the golden age of science fiction literature. The multitude of sci-fi books and magazines published in that era, themselves the progeny of the "pulp fiction" of the 1930s and 1940s, were inspired by all the excited talk of impending space travel and the possibilities of science combined with general gloom about the character of humankind in the wake of the barbarity of two world wars. In my teen years (the late 1950s and early 1960s) I fell in love with the books and short stories from masters of science fiction such as Ray Bradbury, Frederick Pohl and Robert Sheckley (who died just last month), especially in the many anthologies of short stories edited by John W. Campbell. The great appeal of science fiction and fantasy writing is that the author is free to invent entire new worlds where even what we consider the laws of science can be ignored, twisted or improved. What better way to comment on human behavior than to create new races of intelligent beings with entirely different sets of behaviors and moral codes? Many of the great names in the genre have published their work in F&SF over the years, including Bradbury, Stephen King and Ursula K. Le Guin. Walter M. Miller's classic A Canticle for Leibowitz first appeared in its pages. Current stars of F&SF include John Morressy and Terry Bisson, and the magazine welcomes new writers. A good place for a reader or writer of science fiction (or of anything else) to visit is the message board on the magazine's Web site. One thread on the message board asks the question that every writer is desperate to learn the answer to: "When do you stop reading something?" The responses are worthy of a semester at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, ranging from clumsy exposition, factual mistakes and ineptly used profanity to pasteboard characters enlisted to promote a "big idea." An annual subscription to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (11 issues) is $32.97 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

IMAGINE: Helping Talented Kids Discover the World

2006-01-26T16:15:00.000-05:00

Oh, to be young again! That's my reaction to reading a recent issue of Imagine, our newest magazine in the newsstand. Its purpose is to inform talented and imaginative kids―middle schoolers and high schoolers―of the many, many possibilities open to them for academic study and growth. Imagine is published five times a year by the Center for Talented Youth at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University. The issue I've been perusing, November/December 2005, consists largely of accounts by young people of recent projects they've been engaged in, such as helping at a Chacoan Anasazi archaeological dig in Colorado, at a dinosaur hunt in Montana, researching ancient textile design in Peru to develop a method of dating archaeological finds based on twining techniques and studying Latin during a summer program in Rome. Imagine also writes about a variety of academic competitions―in math, geography, science, even classic mythology―that can result in substantial scholarship awards, as well as the joy of meeting like-minded peers at state, national and international levels. Each issue also contains a fascinating review of a college by its own students. This one focuses on Oberlin College, a progressive liberal arts college amid the cornfields of Ohio that justifiably earns praise for its involved faculty and a curriculum that encourages intellectual exploration. I was intrigued by this criticism: "Despite the justifiably vaunted diversity of the student body, there is an underlying sameness to many of them. The typical student comes to Oberlin as the most interesting person he/she knows, and isn't very happy to surrender that position. He/She is also usually in the awkward position of being alienated from society in some way yet simultaneously privileged (a $25,000-a-year education is undeniably a great privilege)." Imagine is a great resource for young persons seeking encouragement to learn about the world—and fighting peer pressure to just blend in. An annual subscription (five issues) is $30.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

FLYING ADVENTURES: Travels in a Private Plane

2006-01-23T00:26:00.000-05:00

Our rarely used wind socks darned and aloft, this morning we're watching Flying Adventures land near the MagSampler.com newsstand, our first aviation magazine! This travel publication is for people who do what most people can only dream of: Drop out of the clouds in their own airplanes to spend a day, weekend or week at whatever area interests them. We're paging through a recent issue, and many intriguing destinations are described in its pages. The first is the Santa Barbara wine country, celebrated in the recent movie Sideways. The destination articles in this magazine are unique in that they tend to advise you of the amenities (and landing strip lengths) at local airports before they put you in a rental car and suggest the best spots at which to sightsee, stay, eat and recreate. Publisher Michael Higgins, known in these pages as "Pilot Michael," is an omnipresent figure in the articles, many of which he writes from his publishing base at El Monte Airport in Pasadena, CA. Here he gives you his recommendations on the best wines to purchase on your visit to Santa Barbara County's wineries, including the establishment run by Fess Parker, ol' Davy Crockett himself. He next takes you on a visit up north to the Cascade Range, which stretches from British Columbia to Mount Shasta in California, and again wineries are a focus of attention. Then we leave the West Coast for Glenview, IL, just a few miles south of Chicago. Much of this area along the Des Plaines River is a nature preserve, and Glenview itself is a gem of a prairie village, with enough big-city amenities to keep you comfortable. And if flying into one small airport after another isn't enough of a kick, Pilot Michael explains how easy it is to qualify for flying seaplanes: just a three-day course will do it, and then you're free to fly a float plane into places where ordinary planes should never land. After all this flying around, the issue does get down to the nitty-gritty of buying a new basic "air car," which is described as a four-seat single-engine propeller plane. The magazine lists eight candidates, ranging in price from $236,000 to $399,000. Flying Adventures is clearly for people with good-sized wallets or big dreams. An annual subscription (three issues) is $25.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

FIELD: Of Poetry and Poetics

2006-01-20T00:43:00.000-05:00

Today the newsstand welcomes Field, a twice-a-year journal of poetry and poetics from the Oberlin College Press in Oberlin, OH. Contemporary poetry is what you get with Field―no fiction and no graphics (except the cover). You also get "poetics," which I surmise is writing about poetry. The way the magazine is organized, the Fall issue each year includes a symposium about the work of a major contemporary poet. I have in hand the Fall 2005 issue, and the poet under study is Jean Valentine, who won the National Book Award in 2004 and has been a contributor to Field since 1972, just three years after it was founded. The opening (unsigned) editorial says of Jean Valentine, "No poet has examined so fully the landscape of dream, but it's the space where dream meets waking life that her poems so hauntingly inhabit." The symposium, in this case, involves presenting nine previous poems by Valentine, each followed by an analysis and commentary by a different scholar and/or poet. This is an interesting and rewarding approach, for each poem tells us something new about the poet and each commentary something newer yet. It's akin to walking around a diamond in a display case and seeing its many facets from new angles and with different lighting. The symposium is followed by a couple of recent poems by Valentine, as well as dozens of other poems from established and emerging poets. As with just about every literary journal I've seen, I have nothing but praise for the clean layout, good-sized type, and perfection of proofreading. An annual subscription to Field (two issues) is $14.00 a year from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59. And do take a look at our many other literary journals―you'll find them on our Literary and Writing shelf.

scr(i)pt: Inside the Sausage Factory

2006-01-19T00:21:00.000-05:00

This morning we're producing a full-tuxedoed Hollywood-style premiere extravaganza, searchlights and all, for scr(i)pt magazine, the newest title in the MagSampler.com newsstand. Subtitled "Where Film Begins," scr(i)pt is about the craft and business of writing scripts for movies and television. The magazine is full of stories about how scripts come to be written, the travails in getting them made into films, and, of course, tips on writing, completing and selling your own screenplay. Not to digress, but I remember reading some years ago of a successful, aging screenwriter counseling young writers at a cocktail party. "The secret to a good script," he whispered, "is to get a guy up a tree, throw rocks at him for an hour or two, then get him down at the end." I have the current issue of scr(i)pt in my hands, and one of the several interesting articles is about basic plot types: the "Fish Out of Water," where a character is taken out of his normal environment and placed somewhere else (e.g., Crocodile Dundee, or the ultimate, Splash); "Information No One Else Knows," like the existence of a special airline just for federal prisoners (Con Air); "Going to Extreme Measures," such as Dustin Hoffman's efforts to land a soap opera job in Tootsie; and "Fatal Character Flaws," for instance making a lawyer―of all people―into someone who cannot tell a lie (Liar, Liar). This issue has stories about the creation of scripts for movies such as Breaking Away, the new King Kong and Good Night, and Good Luck. They say that visiting a sausage factory tends to kill one's appetite for sausage, but reading scr(i)pt is likely to increase your appetite for and appreciation of good films. If you have aspirations to write great film scripts, it will probably bring those millions of dollars in a little faster. And in what other magazine can you find an ad for an honest-to-goodness movie chalk clap board? scr(i)pt is published in an unlikely location, Baldwin, MD, but its writers are firmly based in Hollywood. An annual subscription (six issues) is $29.95 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

PRIMITIVE ARCHER: Making Your Own

2006-01-18T02:13:00.000-05:00

Today's new arrival in the MagSampler.com newsstand is Primitive Archer, a magazine that on one level is about making your own archery equipment. On another, deeper level, it's about learning how to get very close to nature―in understanding its ways and learning some very basic skills of living―and passing that appreciation on to younger generations. You get the sense from reading the magazine, which bears the cover slogan "Passing On the Traditions of Classical Archery," that the growth of technology and the mass media's success in capturing the attention of the young is making this mentoring a more difficult but also more important task. Primitive Archer readers look upon fancy commercial bows made of composite materials with the disdain that sailboat lovers have for cabin cruisers. Yet even within the community the magazine serves, there's apparently a division between those who use power tools to fashion their bows and those who employ only hand-powered tools. One guy (people who make bows are called "bowyers") even writes in the current issue about what he calls his "devolution" from using modern tools like sandpaper and hammers to replicating what he believes are techniques used by American Indians centuries ago. His fascinating article describes how he begins with a log, splits it by pounding moose antler tips into it with a rock, roughs out the bow with flint, finishes it with sandstone and gives it a bear grease finish. He uses rabbit skins to make the string and branches for the arrow shafts. A theme of this issue is passing skills and interests to the young, and you'll find several articles by teachers and students about their experiences. I enjoyed an article by master tracker Ty Cunningham about how to begin teaching a kid about observing the ground in the wild for all the stories it tells about its inhabitants. He even supplies lesson plans and exercises! Primitive Archer is published by the nicely named Bigger Than That Productions in Houston, TX. An annual subscription (five issues) is $24.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

HIATUS TRAVEL MAGAZINE: All About Timeshares

2006-01-17T01:22:00.000-05:00

With a choice of looking out the newsstand window at bleak, snow-covered suburban New Jersey or at the pages of Hiatus Travel Magazine, it's no contest. Those shimmering beaches and emerald golf greens win every time. Hiatus, subtitled the "Travel Magazine for Vacation & Timeshare Enthusiasts," is filled with information essential to anyone who owns or is contemplating buying a vacation timeshare. I've been reading the magazine's 2005 "Buyer's Guide to Vacation Ownership," a 130-page issue that is divided, like Gaul, into three parts. The first part is a series of very informative and clearly written articles on the basics of timesharing, discussing the different kinds of timeshare arrangements, such as flex time and point systems, as well as describing what the legendary "90-minute presentation" by a salesperson at such a resort is like. The second part is an extensive directory of hundreds of timeshare properties by geographic region, with tables listing their amenities, types of accommodations, nearby facilities and distance from airports, as well as Web sites and phone numbers for more information. The last part of the issue contains typical travel magazine articles: a visit to Mexico in general and Cozumel in particular, tips on acquiring and spending airline miles, and a discussion of the different features to look for in a digital camera. While the magazine is understandably biased in favor of the concept of timeshares, publishers David and Karen Wood state that "none of the resorts appearing in Hiatus paid any fees for favorable editorial consideration or placement." I'm not sure how many issues Hiatus is planning to put out in 2006 from its headquarters in Scottsdale, AZ; the only subscription info in the issue I have is for the 2006 "Buyer's Guide." That issue will be available later in the year for $7.50 from the publisher. You can get a copy of the 2005 "Buyer's Guide" from us for $2.59.

NEW HAMPSHIRE WILDLIFE JOURNAL: Nature in the North

2006-01-12T16:59:00.000-05:00

Today we welcome the New Hampshire Wildlife Journal to the newsstand. Published by the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department in Concord, it's a wonderful guide to nature in the state. We're leafing through the new January-February issue, which has a suitably wintry theme. You'll find an enjoyable article on ice fishing (cleverly titled "Walking on Water") that offers all sorts of pointers on how to make a day on the ice safe and fun for the whole family. There's a profile of the industrious beaver, with a nice description in words and pictures of the animal's advanced engineering skills. You'll also get stuck on an article about the porcupine, a basically solitary night creature that you don't want to get too friendly with. Author Judy Silverberg explains that the porcupine doesn't throw its quills, which are actually strong, hollow hairs covered with tiny barbules. The quills are quite loose, and the animal uses its tail like a club to hammer them into the victim. The porcupine's mating rituals are pretty kinky—and I'll bet you didn't know that a baby porcupine is called a "porcupette"! This issue also provides advice on picking the right kind of snowshoe: the heavier you are, the bigger snowshoe you'll need. The New Hampshire Wildlife Journal is one of quite a number of ad-free state wildlife publications that are available at low cost because they're subsidized by taxpayers. You don't have to live in a state to subscribe to its wildlife journal. Take advantage! An annual subscription to the New Hampshire Wildlife Journal (six issues) is $12.00 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

THE WINE REPORT: A View from the Southeast

2006-01-11T17:31:00.000-05:00

We'll pop a bottle of Champagne tonight in honor of The Wine Report, today's debutante in the MagSampler.com newsstand. This big-sized bimonthly, published in Atlanta, is an interesting publishing concept. The magazine is a regional publication, with ads and local features that reflect that orientation, but it's filled with well-written articles about California and foreign wines that will interest wine lovers in Oshkosh and Phoenix too. The Wine Report is distributed gratis in selected wine stores in the Atlanta, Birmingham and Charlotte markets, but is also available by subscription and now boasts having subscribers in more than 40 states. My guess is that with its obvious editorial strengths it will become much more of a national publication in the years to come. I've been looking through the November/December issue, and was interested to learn that the United States and the European Union have finally made some progress―after more than 20 years―in developing a trade agreement over the sale of wine. One big stumbling block, the magazine reports, has been the carefree use by American wine producers of European regional names like "Champagne" and "Burgundy." Now it's been agreed that U.S. companies can continue to use these names on existing brands of their products, but not on new brands. This issue also has an illuminating article on a marketing success by Pommery and other French Champagne makers. They're packaging a sweeter and less fizzy version of their pricy product in individual-portion bottles, often with their own straws, and sales have been rocketing, especially in trendy American clubs. The Wine Report found a perfect subject for a profile in Terry Hoage, a star for the University of Georgia Bulldogs in the early 1980s (along with Herschel Walker) and a 13-year NFL defensive back. He's been putting his University of Georgia degree in genetics to good use in developing his own commercial winemaking operation in California's Sierra region. Additional regional features in the issue include a review of a resort on Lake Lanier, near Atlanta, and several pages of listings of wine tastings, cooking classes and the like in the Southeast. Wine fans will enjoy the magazine's reviews and rankings of hundreds of vintages in the back of the book. This issue covers California Cabernet Sauvignons over $40, Cava (Spain) and Prosecco (Italy) sparkling wines, and California Carneros Chardonnays vs. French white Burgundies. The ratings, the result of blind tastings, are based on appearance, aroma, general taste, body, finish and food friendliness, and the reviewers also deliver an illuminating descriptive paragraph about each wine and a price value rating (from "exceptional value" to "overpriced"). You can get a subscription to The Wine Report (six issues) for $18.00 from the publisher; we'll send you a sample copy for $2.59.

NORTH & SOUTH: Still Fighting the Civil War

2006-01-10T03:44:00.000-05:00

This morning we welcome North & South to the newsstand. It proclaims itself as "the official magazine of the Civil War Society," though I'm not sure what the Society is or does. But no matter, for North & South is a literate, very well edited presentation of interesting aspects of a cataclysmic war that has reverberated loudly through American life in the 141 years since hostilities officially ended. The magazine, which is produced in Auberry, CA in seven issues each year, consists mainly of a half-dozen fairly lengthy articles by historians, each illustrated with period prints, contemporary photos of battlefields and surviving landmarks and clearly drawn maps. I've been reading the November issue, which does a nice job with a couple of relatively obscure battles. One is the battle for the Sabine Pass, an inlet from the Gulf of Mexico that separates Texas from Louisiana. The Union forces attacked the pass from the Gulf as a way to get to Houston and then overland to the heavily defended port of Galveston, but their force of gunboats and thousands of troops was repulsed by a handful of Texas artillerymen (aided by some good shooting and a dash of Yankee ineptitude). While battles are important to North & South, the magazine also explores the politics of the Civil War. This issue carries a fascinating article about a radical idea voiced by a Tennessee general at the end of 1863. Seeing that the North could commit more soldiers to battle than the South, Major General Patrick Cleburne proposed that the Confederacy train some of its slaves as a reserve force, and that those who fought be awarded their freedom. His proposal was met with scorn by most Southern leaders, but within a year, as times got truly desperate, they were seriously entertaining similar ideas. Historian Bruce Levine examines how their thinking changed. On its face the concept of "Southern Emancipation" seems to negate the very reason why the South went to war, but in reality it was an attempt by Confederate leaders to at least maintain their independence, even if it meant the destruction of the "peculiar institution" that was a bedrock of the economy. Levine goes further, saying the Southern concept of emancipation was to hold a "free" black population in social and economic servitude, which indeed came to pass in the decades after the Civil War ended and the North abandoned Reconstruction. The issue also contains a piece about successful propaganda campaigns by each side. After the first Battle of Manassas, for example, the Northern press was full of reports of battlefield atrocities by Southerners, such as using the skulls of fallen Union soldiers as goblets and giving their womenfolk necklaces of Yankee teeth to wear. Naturally, Congress in Washington investigated the charges and declared them all true. An annual subscription to North & South (seven issues) is $39.99 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

FERVOR: Food, Spirits, Travel and More

2006-01-09T13:28:00.000-05:00

I took some time off from watching the football playoffs this past weekend (the Giants were awful, the Steelers were great) to leaf through the December issue of Fervor, a bimonthly that's primarily a food magazine, but which separates itself from the pack by including a number of non-food articles about travel and other subjects. I'd estimate that 70% of the editorial content is about food and spirits. This particular issue has quite a few holiday-oriented articles, such as an informative piece about favorite Christmas spices (cinnamon, nutmeg and mace) and entertaining features about Champagne (the real stuff from France) and a traditional American drink that goes way back to the American Revolution and before, the alcoholic apple cider known as applejack. I found a story about the mushroom industry in and around Kennett Square, Pennsylvania of interest: these year-round indoor farms, established by Italian immigrants at the turn of the century, now produce more mushrooms than anywhere else in the world. You'll find out how to make a variety of traditional holiday punches (Wassail, Fish House Punch, Poinsettia Punch, etc.), as well as very nicely illustrated step-by-step directions how to prepare what looks like a delicious beef roast dinner. Non-food articles include tips for holiday travel, advice from a physician about getting regular check-ups and information about getting your credit report. Fervor is published in Medford, NJ and its roots in the area are obvious, as most of the writers and a majority of the ads come from southern New Jersey and Philadelphia. But the magazine clearly intends to try to become a national player. An annual subscription (six issues) to Fervor is $19.95 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

CINEASTE: A World-Class Movie Magazine

2006-01-05T01:55:00.000-05:00

Today's new MagSampler.com premiere is no B-feature: it's Cineaste, a world-class quarterly movie magazine published in New York. It bills itself as "America's leading magazine on the art and politics of the cinema." Cineaste is not for the denizen of the local multiplex, but for film aficionados who are interested in classic motion pictures and the best and most interesting films from around the world. I was startled to hear on National Public Radio the other day that while foreign films were represented by 10-15% of the movies shown in U.S. theaters only a decade or two in the past, today that figure is down to perhaps 1%. Sadly, people seeking movies from sources other than the big five studios in Hollywood have to live in a very big city or have access to some good cable television stations and video rental stores. And they'd also be well served to subscribe to Cineaste. Typical of the articles in Cineaste is the one that starts off the recent issue we've just received. By Tullio Kezich, the film critic of the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, it's a captivating account of the genesis and production of Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," set in Rome's very hot Via Veneto of the early 1960s. Early in the article you find that the death of the very strait-laced Pope Pius XII in 1958 was a liberating event for hip Romans, leading to the street party that the Via Veneto became in subsequent years. This also was a formative time for the paparazzi who learned to form useful alliances: Photographer A would take an intrusive picture of, say, Anita Ekberg. When she or her escort would lash out at the offending photographer, Photographers B & C would be standing ready to take that much more interesting and lucrative shot. All this great stuff is just in the opening paragraphs of a seven-page story about the making of the movie. This is followed by a profile of Russ Meyer, king of the big-boobed movies of the 1950s and 1960s. This issue of Cineaste also features a symposium of film critics from around the world, who write of their problems with readers who, like Americans, increasingly prefer a dumbed-down "thumbs-up and thumbs-down" approach in their movie reviews. You'll also find thoughtful reviews of new releases as well as provocative features such as "Gay-Themed Films of the German Silent Era." And where else can you find reports of the Toronto Film Festival and the Karlovy Vary (Czechoslovakia) Film Festival? Not to be cinenasty, but the type in this magazine tends to be very small―after a while you feel like you're trying to read the subtitles on a French film broadcast to your cellphone screen. But that's a small flaw in an overall superior production. An annual subscription (four issues) to Cineaste is $20.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

SIERRA HERITAGE: California's Golden Interior

2006-01-04T00:57:00.000-05:00

Today we welcome Sierra Heritage to the MagSampler.com newsstand. It's a gorgeous magazine about California's golden interior, a region rich in scenery, history and civilized things to do. I've been fortunate to travel through the area a couple of times—most recently in a rented convertible, driving from Reno to a relative's wedding by the sea—and I treasure the memories of every day spent on the road, sorry only that they were so few (can't be late for a wedding!). Sierra Heritage is a bimonthly published in Auburn, CA, that focuses on the region's scenic beauty, its history and its fabled parks, skiing and wineries. It's designed both for residents and for the many people who visit the region throughout the year. I've got a recent issue in hand, and am impressed with the imaginative range of articles it presents. I liked a profile of wilderness photographer Peter Scott, well illustrated with a portfolio of his photos from Tahoe and Yosemite. You'll find a guide to funky places to get a good breakfast in the Sierras; it's paired with another on great places to paddle your canoe or kayak. There's a multipage section on where to go and what to do in El Dorado County, an historic gold mining area west of Lake Tahoe centered on Placerville (I prefer its old name, Hangtown). On the subject of gold mining, this issue contains an interesting essay on the democratic nature of the Gold Rush—at least everyone went into it pretty equal. Nonresidents may not know it, but the eastern Sierras have fall foliage that's in the same league as New England's, and this issue of Sierra Heritage has the pictures to prove it. Railroad and engineering buffs will appreciate an article, well illustrated with period photographs, about the construction and operation of hair-raising inclined railways that were built in the Sierras in the early part of the 20th century to bring logs down the mountains. Author Jack Burgess notes that one had an incline that reached 78%! Each issue of Sierra Heritage also contains articles about places to stay in the region, as well as a guide to activities in its many communities. An annual subscription to Sierra Heritage (six issues) is $25.00; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

NEW LETTERS: A Venerable Literary Journal

2006-01-03T00:03:00.000-05:00

The newsstand has been dark for a few days as our New Year's Revels have boisterously run their course elsewhere. But now we've removed the padlocks and opened up to face 2006, with a special welcome to New Letters, a venerable literary journal from smack dab in the middle of the American Heartland that's just joined the MagSampler.com collection. New Letters focuses on the Midwest and the world at the same time, quite an accomplishment. The journal traces its heritage back to 1934, when the private University of Kansas City began publishing The University Review. Over the years it printed the words of Kenneth Rexroth, Thomas Hart Benton, Diego Rivera, Edgar Lee Masters, Pearl Buck, J.D. Salinger, e.e. cummings, James T. Farrell and many, many others. Change happened: the University of Kansas City became part of the massive University of Missouri system, and in 1971 the journal was renamed New Letters. It has continued to publish the works of great as well as developing writers and artists, and has created―starting in 1977―an interesting annex: a half-hour radio program called "New Letters on the Air," featuring writers reading from and talking about their work. The program is now aired on 50 public radio stations around the country. I've been leafing through a recent issue of New Letters, Vol. 71, No. 4, that editor Robert Stewart has subtitled "The Way of Ignorance, The Way of Knowing: Literature and Spiritual Sense." Just a dabble of the contents: Poet Mia Leonin writes a horror-filled essay about the wretched lives of the homeless on the streets of Bogota, Colombia. You'll find a short story by novelist Bharati Mukherjee, followed by an extensive interview with the author. Photographs of the sometimes bizarre works of Missouri folk artist Jesse Howard and Chicago artist Roger Brown are interspersed throughout the issue, accompanied by essays on the pair by Andrei Codrescu and Margaret Brommelsiek. The journal features an exceptionally clean layout and nice, big (11-point!) type, a relief in an age of magazines with tiny words. New Letters is published quarterly by the University of Missouri-Kansas City. An annual subscription is $22.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

THE UPLAND ALMANAC: Hunting the Game Bird

2005-12-30T00:08:00.000-05:00

This morning, with the old year winding down, I've been taking a look at the new issue of The Upland Almanac, a substantial and well-designed quarterly magazine from Fairfax, VT about the joys of hunting upland game birds. My understanding is that upland game birds―grouse, pheasant, quail, doves and the like―are to be distinguished from waterfowl such as ducks and geese, and The Upland Almanac is about hunting the former. The atmosphere of the magazine is akin to a men's club or a country study, with a roaring fire, a hunting dog at your feet, lots of burnished wood, valuable old hunting prints on the walls and an elegant gun case by the window. A quick read through the pages of the new Winter 2005 issue shows that the trinity of concerns for the upland bird hunter are the birds and their habitats, the hunting dog and the proper shotgun. When all three come together and perform as they should, the upland hunter becomes a happy man indeed. (And I emphasize "man"; there's nary a woman in sight in the whole 96-page issue.) In its pages you'll find accounts of hunts for grouse, prairie chickens, quail, woodcock and band-tailed pigeons in a number of states. The hunting dog is a star of each of these articles, either for its prowess or ineptitude; these guys write about their deceased dogs with an affection that most fellows only have for old girlfriends or cars. There are several articles in the issue about training dogs and keeping them healthy, for a good hunting dog can represent an investment of several thousand dollars. Of great concern to upland hunters are declines in the populations of birds, due largely to the spread of housing, the destruction of habitats and the use of pesticides and herbicides. The decline in the numbers of pheasants bagged in Eastern states is startling: 1.3 million in Pennsylvania in 1972, 200,000 each year in the 1990s; 750,000 in Ohio in the 1950s, 235,000 each year now. The Upland Almanac also has a few articles on shooting clay pigeons, which is both a practice for the real thing and a sport in itself. The ads are for dog kennels, fancy shotguns, hunting lodges, artists who'll render your dog in oils, watercolors or acrylic, electronic training collars for the pooches and books on hunting. An annual subscription (four issues) to The Upland Almanac is $19.95; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.

TRICYCLE: The Buddhist Review

2005-12-28T00:45:00.000-05:00

Today we note the arrival in the newsstand of a magazine whose name fascinated me when I first came across it some months ago. It's Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, published by The Tricycle Foundation in New York City. While the name continues to mystify, I can now report that I've skimmed an issue of this handsome quarterly and have found its contents equally fascinating. The magazine is about being a Buddhist in contemporary America, or at least trying to apply Buddhist teachings and wisdom to the challenges of life in a frenetic and materialistic culture. This can get almost surreal. One article in the new Winter 2005 issue is about Andrew Black, a world-class poker player from Northern Ireland who left the game for five years to join a Buddhist organization in the United Kingdom, only to roar back to finish in the top five in the 2005 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. He claims his Buddhist mindset helps him at the green felt table, though he acknowledges there are unresolved conflicts and contradictions in the situation. Politically, the magazine lists gently to the left. You'll find a report on the first Spiritual Activism Conference, held in Berkeley, CA last summer, in which various religious and spiritual figures tried to figure out a way to break "the monopoly on politico-religious discourse enjoyed by Christian fundamentalists in recent decades." While author Phil Catalfo complains that non-Judeo-Christian spiritual traditions didn't get enough exposure at the conference, he offers interesting suggestions on how Buddhist principles―conflict resolution, anger management, avoidance of demonization of opponents―can help those on the religious left organize and struggle more effectively. Helen Tworkov, the founding editor of Tricycle, contributes an interesting essay on the feminist movement and Buddhism. She starts it off with elements of a traditional "guide to good behavior":

* Put on an ever-smiling countenance.
* Do not move furniture and chairs noisily.
* Do not open doors with violence.
* Take pleasure in the practice of humility.
* Always strive to learn from everyone.
* Speak with moderation, gently.
* Express yourself with modesty.

Though Ms. Tworkov notes that these sound like "a set of guidelines for prim boarding-school girls of the 1940s," she reports that they are advice from the Buddhist sage Shantideva to his fellow monastics in eighth-century India. The obvious conflict for female Buddhists in 2005 America is that these imperatives represent―at least at one level―much that modern feminism seeks to overcome. Lastly, I must mention an interview with Buddhist scholar Mo Soeng, long-time co-director of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Massachusetts, who rails (thoughtfully) against some trends in American Buddhism, such as the establishment of posh retreat centers run by celebrity monks who court media attention. "A lot of what goes on in Buddhism in America is about creating a personal story and an identity," he reports. "Dharma centers can become social clubs that allow people to process an identity, allowing them to feel good about themselves for a short period of time. I meet people who tell me, 'I am a Theraveda person' or 'I am a Zen person.' But this is just another process of commodification, of packaging oneself… Yes, there is some connection to Buddhist practice, but underneath it all people don't really want to displace their personal and social identities or their inherited Judeo-Christian worldview." If you're interested in Buddhist philosophy and how it applies to contemporary Western life, Tricycle is a must-read. By the way, we've added a great cover from a prior issue of Tricycle to our little gallery of favorite magazine covers: Take a look! An annual subscription (four issues) is $24.00 from the publisher; you can get a sample copy from us for $2.59.