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I love this book! I am in Jewish education, but these are stories that both traditions share. Younger kids watch fascinated as the story unfolds and the paper folds. Older kids can fold along with the storyteller. I will often give the directions to the older kids so they can tell the story again with the folding and teach others. Somehow the folding really adds a dimension to the children's listening and thinking about the story--it's not just a gimmick. But it is also a great gimmick! One can customize the foldings to other stories not given in this book, but I wish the author would come out with another book of folding stories. I am buying this book even as I write this review, because I don't like to depend on my kids' day school library for it--I must have it for my own. I'm also buying the holiday book, though I suspect it's for Christian holidays, but I might be able to customize the stories, and I learn a lot just from the techniques the author describes.

Coleridge is a writer/thinker whose own life and works, particularly the later ones, seem to defy the eye of future standard, especially in an age of slick convenience. He is looking for "the vast," does not ignore German idealism like so many other Brits, nor philology, and seeks the vast from the socio-political context of a well-booked, if ne'er-do-too-well, remote, clergy-trained, English townsman. Some chapters are almost unbearably (to our age) slow, but don't forget this was the era of the triple decker, and Coleridge's reading (as was his library) was varied and vast. In all it may serve best the reader who keeps STC's religious and political anachronisms in context without relinquishing their flavor. Although this is another one of those disappearing (if at times arcane) gems by dead, white, European males whom we are obliged to ignore these days, yet Coleridge's romanticism, honest pessimism, and philosophical searching will never be passe for the thoughtful. And inasmuch as this title includes some of his lesser known mature work, the rich surpise implicit in that description will happen, recurrently and rewardingly, on the thoughtful reader.

Dr. Debra Anne Susie was another editor for The Black Abolisionist Papers.

Her Ph.D. in the Humanities at the Florida State University was later published by the same title by the University of Georgia Press (1988): "In the Way of Our Grandmothers: A Cultural View of Twentieth-Century Midwifery in Florida" (244 pages). Her book is also available at amazon.com!

Paul D. Harvill
P.O. Box 38458
Tallahassee, FL 32315-8458

I was very happy with the design and quality of this journal. I have not seen anything like it before and would highly recommend it to anyone.

A strong voice in contemporary poetry. Though his early works deal primarily with factory life, this latest collection deals with life as a father and observer. He captures the situations that go on around us everyday that we are usually too busy to appreciate for what they are. a brilliant collection.

I stumbled upon Carla Vendries "Meditations in a Rubber Room" several years ago and was very impressed with the quality of poetry she had to offer.....I recently discovered her current collection of poetry "Blood of a Paper Doll" at iuniverse.com and was amazed at what a beautiful poet she has evolved into....Its poetry that makes you think and takes you on a ride through every level of emotion and reality.

Jaimy Gordon's fiction has always raced ahead on the power of her coruscating style--the nonstop humor (even in the midst of tragedy or horror) runs on her brilliant wordplay and her ability to create distinctive voices with whom the reader instantly feels familiar and, if not comfortable, at least engaged. In _Bogeywoman_, the teenaged Ursie immediately establishes the nervous rhythms of her narrative, filled with slang and neologisms, and leads us into the world of a young woman who knows herself so well that she knows first how little she understands of herself--but even more, she convinces us that none of the adults who presume to teach/treat/discipline her can know anything important about her--with the possible exception of Dr. Zuk, the best (or most mysterious) of the "dreambox mechanics" she encounters. While there are some other writers with whom Gordon's work could be compared, comparisons would be beside the point--read this book because you will be moved and amused and glad to have the chance to get to know Ursie.

This book is a great introduction to simple human anatomy that will be easily understood and enjoyed by preschool and primary school age children. Includes helpful, cartoon-like illustrations. It is full of information and also fun to read.

No doubt you have seen the recent ads for a cheap little cloth bracelet decorated only with the letters "WWBD." They stand for "What Would the Buddha Do?" It's really a good question. So good that for ages it has stalked me everywhere I go.

Haunted by missing answers, but skeptical of the huge number of recent (often Tibetan-derived) Buddha books which now crowd every bookstore, my impulse was to try resurrecting whatever could be known of Indian Buddhism, especially at the time the Buddha was still living and for the century or two thereafter. I flattered myself that I would be blazing a very cunning trail, guaranteed to detour neatly around all the mistakes and errors which would certainly have been grafted onto his "pure" doctrine in the two and a half millennia since the Buddha died.

As I saw it, the challenge was primarily to identify the best translations of the oldest texts. Everything else would surely follow. This led me crashing headlong into the Pali scriptures, and I tore at them with all the finesse and sophistication of a grave robber on his first big heist.

The remarkable treasures found preserved in the Pali canon dazzled me. Indeed they still do. However I have gradually come to understand the significance of such treasures quite differently than I once did. And I have been persuaded (sometimes rather painfully) of the futility, arrogance, and chauvinistic myopia implicit in any attempt to reconstruct a pure, uncontaminated Buddhism on the assumption that others (including whole nations full of traditional practitioners) either lacked the sensitivity required to attract one to "truth," or were intellectually too lazy to reject whatever fallacy they just happened to stumble over.

I blush to admit how short-sighted, even mean-spirited my initial game-plan was. The chagrin this insight caused me is mitigated slightly by a realization that many others have preceded me down the very same path. A fair number of them have left their sun-bleached bones littering the trail to prove it.

Of course these are not precisely the same "bones" Schopen had in mind when choosing the title for his book "Bones, Stones and Buddhist Monks." But his work, along with many of his colleagues (especially Donald S. Lopez, Jr.), is a major source of some of the most persuasive lessons imaginable about what really does constitute a religion, and how an outsider can ever hope to go about comprehending the nature of one. The fact that the intellectual roots of both these authors sink deep into the very Tibetan studies I once avoided chastens me, and has itself helped to redefine my own conceptual horizons.

Schopen argues in particular that it is virtually impossible to develop a comprehensive understanding of any complex human social practice, especially including religion, totally from canonical texts alone. One must, he urges, factor into one's awareness the totality of sources of information available, such as ancient inscriptions, archaeological finds, and even accounts of and about practitioners applying their faith and beliefs in their own daily lives.

To the unsuspecting student, much of what Schopen reveals strikes home with the force of a well-aimed karate chop. A great deal of it goes directly against the grain of what many of us were convinced by our early religious training, in which it tended to be regarded as an article of faith that scriptural evidence was paramount, and all other concepts had to conform to it -- or be summarily discarded.

In stark contrast to this tradition, Schopen demonstrates unequivocally that, compared to the actual practice of Indian Buddhism, much of what the early texts would have us accept as "Buddhist" is at least limited, likely misleading, and perhaps even intentionally distorted. His most fundamental premise is disarming in the actual evidence for what are taken to be established facts in the history of Indian Buddhism. If nothing else, such an exercise makes it painfully obvious that most of those established facts totter precariously on very fragile foundations."

Schopen carefully dissects one after another traditional Western notion about Buddhism. Once he has the bones and muscles laid completely bare, he scrupulously compares archaeological facts against canonical assertions (and later assumptions derived therefrom). He then surgically cuts through more diseased tissue than one would find in the worst inner-city hospital -- and fallacious canonical assertions and assumptions scatter all over the operating room floor, where they remain embarrassingly messy, but no longer so dangerous to the patient.

Schopen establishes that early Indian Buddhism was, for the most part, scattered into numerous doctrinally autonomous communities of Buddhists, in many of which the "orthodox" canon was either irrelevant, altogether unknown, or at last ignored by all but a tiny number of literate, conservative elite.

Schopen's evidence persuades us overwhelmingly that early Buddhism monks (and their numerous, often underestimated nun-counterparts) were far more human in conduct, and far more Indian in outlook, than anything portrayed by the canonical texts. These early clerics seem to have been marked more indelibly by the Hindu heritage in which they had been reared than has usually been conceded. They may all have left home in favor of monastic life, but they still appear to have retained strong emotional ties to their parents, homes and traditional cultural heritage. Schopen's evidence is that they were "concerned -- even preoccupied -- with ritually depositing and elaborately housing the remains of at least some of the local monastic dead," though this particular topic is one about which the Pali canon happens to be inexplicably mute.

Despite heavy scholarly focus on the various Vinayas, the actual lives and practices of these monks and nuns do not ever appear to have been governed very rigidly by any sort of monolithic central text or law, but were subject instead to widely varying mores and customs, dependent largely on the area in which they were located. Many monks seem to have come from well-to-do families, and despite their decision to take holy orders it is not clear that they ever totally renounced all worldly goods. Far from the scriptural portrayal of an "isolated and socially disengaged" clergy, many of them apparently owned (or had access to) property and at least handled money. They were routinely responsible for commissioning and donating impressive and expensive works of art, emphatically including Buddha images (whose evolving cult there is reason to believe the monastic community itself was largely responsible for fostering and encouraging).

In dramatic contrast to what the Pali Vinaya would lead us to believe -- and directly contrary to a central and most fundamental Buddhist principle regarding the illusory nature of any immortal ego, personality or soul -- Schopen shows that the early monks certainly acted as though the Buddha's personality or entity survived his death and that, in his relics, stupas (and eventually sculptures), he continued to be present among them as though he were still full of life and even in need of suitable living accomodations. Surviving legal documents prove that these relics were thought fit to receive and own property -- and in their own name.

Unless one has made a habit of reading in the most far-flung and highly specialized journals and books about philosophy and religion, it is unlikely he will ever before have encountered any of the twelve papers collected in "Bones, Stones & Buddhist Monks." Despite their scholarly origins, however, these works turn out for the most part to be readable and reasonably user-friendly. Schopen writes with vigor, conviction and passion, but still has a sense of humor and is willing to help the reader by choosing interesting and comprehensible illustrations and examples.

Schopen takes no prisoners, and the reader must be prepared to have his most cherished beliefs and suppositions challenged -- even assaulted. I guarantee that, though Schopen may not exactly smash -- he is at least likely to put a dent in -- nearly every icon in sight, even including poor old T.W. Rhys Davids, whom I used to regard as the father-of-it-all, but who now (along with this long-suffering wife Caroline) seems to have become the fall-guy for so much of what went wrong in Western Buddhist scholarship.

As hard-nosed as he may occasionally get, Schopen does not write to discourage. Of course he admonishes the reader to be critical of sources, to consider all relevant evidence, and to reject any idea for which a suitable factual rationale cannot be found. However his intention is to affirm the search for truth, and to obect to that would be inexcusably perverse.

Come to think of it, this is awfully close to a stance the Buddha himself was known to take -- and the standard of proof to which he thought a new idea ought to

This book is a gem if you are a teacher, elementary or secondary who is interested in using literature in the classroom. Often called literature circles, literature study and here, book clubs, this book provides the theoretical background as well as the in-class applications for use in any situation. Students become motivated, engaged lovers of reading.