The Power of Stories — Whether in print or on the screen, whether real or imagined, stories that entrance also wield influence.
Ours is a culture where videos like “Girls Gone Wild” inspire campus copycats and even serious dramas like “CSI” inspire students to sign up for forensic-science courses in droves. It would not be so bad if “Commander” prompted some young viewers to study foreign affairs or even just buy a map. — From today’s The New York Times Arts section is a tv review of the new series Commander In Chief by Alessandra Stanley
The Power of Reputation — Tracy Kidder has written a memoir of his time in the military during the Vietnam War. I am a huge Kidder fan, having read and loved The Soul of a New Machine, House, Among Schoolchildren” and Mountains Beyond Mountains. I also read alot of memoirs, so of course I plan to read My Detachment — despite the largely negative review by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times Book Review. Here’s a snippet fro Kakutani:
The format of this volume is similar in some respects to Mr. Kidder’s earlier nonfiction books…This time, however, the product is a lot more disappointing.
In those previous volumes, Mr. Kidder assumed the role of reporter and demonstrated a wonderful ability to capture the vicissitudes of his subjects’ day-to-day lives, doing so with large heapings of carefully observed details and a quiet, nonjudgmental respect for the stresses and strains of his subjects’ vocations. In this case, his memory for events more than three and a half decades ago proves a lot blurrier than his reportorial eye, and his sympathy for others has been replaced by a sour, mocking distaste for his own younger self. The result is a grudging and brittle little book that provides an unsatisfying portrait of the author as a narcissistic, self-dramatizing and oddly passive young man.
For me, the power of Kidder’s reputation outweighs th review. Read the whle thing here.
I haven’t been inside a Tower store in many years, and I don’t know when they created their online presence. I had no “relationship” with them, so it never occurred to me to check back, to investigate other locations or possibilities. So what has changed? I met some wonderful PEOPLE who work for Tower, and they were so kind and supportive, not only to me and John, and our client 
I can’t thank these people enough. Sure it was good for business — they said Clairdee’s 
Last night we stayed here. Look quaint, doesn’t it? It’s billed as a “first-class resort located halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.” They say that their “Imaginitive interior design and architecture” make them “unique.” Each one of their 108 rooms is “uniquely decorated with a special theme and color scheme, no two alike!”
Our room was the Mountain Cabin, “a hand-painted mural depicting an Early American scene.” They’ve rearranged the furniture since this photo, now the desk is on the left and the couch is under the window, facing the foot of the bed. The boulders that run along the lower portion of the mural are not painted, they’re real. The room is comfortable, but I have to close my eyes when I go into the bathroom. The window has four colored panes of glass, two Christmas green, two deep sky blue. The lower portion of the walls are painted bright lime green, and above is covered with a clashing gold/olive patina-like wall paper. The sink/counter is faux salmon-colored marble and the toilet and shower tiles are tourquise. What have I left out? Oh, the floor has brown and white quasi fleur-de-lis patterned tiles.