As a trained dancer I found this tape to be quite familiar. (I've studied Modern Dance and Ballet for over 15 years, and have a B.A. in Dance from the University of California, Irvine)

As of January 2003, I've decided that I need to get back in shape after 13 years of no dance or exercise routine, so I dragged my Metafitness tape out to see if I could add it to my weekly repertoire of beginning step, beginning aerobics, bellydancing and yoga.

The first section features a warm up and exercise section with voiced-over body affirmations by Louise Hay, of Hay House. Ms. Prudden also explains what your body shape means metaphysically and how your thoughts and inner dialogue with yourself shape your body. I found the explanations interesting, while some of the voice-over affirmations confused me while I was trying to pay attention to the exercises.

The warm ups and exercises on "Metafitness" were very familiar to me, since most of my modern dance classes started out with similar warm ups and combinations. However, if you are used to the instructor telegraphing the next move or combination ahead, as Kathy Smith does in her starting out videos, you will be surprised to be left behind in the sequence. I managed to catch on quickly enough to see what Ms. Prudden was up to, but I could imagine those folks unfamiliar with dancer-type combinations to be stumbling through, and most likely quitting in frustration.

All that aside, I enjoyed getting back to "old modern dance favorites" such as body swings, side stretches, abdominal work, etc. I felt energized at the end. Her stretching cool down is calm and thorough. I didn't feel as rushed as I have from other aerobic videos, probably since this exercise tape is from a dancer's viewpoint and slow, relaxed stretches are important at the end of a dance class, when your body is very warm and the chance you might injure yourself is low.

With all of the above in mind, I would say that this tape is valuable in that it's focused on mind-body integration, how your mind shapes your body. You may want to watch it through one or two times before you start doing the moves yourself.

The time between 476 AD and 1453 AD is called the Middle Ages, or "The Dark Ages." The label is most likely due to the fact that historians were not interested in this particular period of world history until the last century, other than as a foil for their projections. Historical understanding of the Middle Ages is essentially a 20th century phenomenon.

Being anything but dark, the Middle Ages were the time of two fascinating Chinese Dynasties, the Tang (618-907) and the Sung (960-1279) both remembered as "China's Golden Age;" the time of the rise and dominance of Islam in the Middle East (7th-10th century); the Mongol conquest of the largest empire in history (13th century); the blossoming of the Maya civilization (600-800); and the emergence of the first large trading system in the world connecting China, South East Asia, India, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean.

The Middle Ages are particularly fascinating because during this time the seeds of today's world system were laid. The answer to the question "Why did the civilization of the Western world become so powerful and dominant today?" is hidden somewhere in the (not-so) Dark Ages.

To paint the story in very broad strokes, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire Western Europe up to the 12th century was, in terms of culture and scientific know-how, a backwater to the civilizations of China and the Islamic Middle East. Beginning in the 12th century however, scientific know-how for commercial and practical purposes was gathered little by little, and trade helped to accumulate wealth in Southern Europe. Indian mathematics arrived in translation from the Arabic in Europe in the 13th century, and "Arabic" numbers began to replace Roman numerals. The crusades, which began in 1199, exposed Europe to Asian knowledge in papermaking, navigation and medicine. All in all, the transfer of know-how was so substantial that it is quite justified to say that Western Europe at the end of the Middle Ages was deeply in debt to the Islamic world - and not only as a conduit for Chinese and Indian know-how.

Commerce and curiosity appear to have driven Europe towards the Renaissance, whereas China's Confucian scholar-bureaucrats in their disdain for commerce ensured that invention and research did not translate into "baser" products than those needed for statecraft (military and administration).

Jeff Hay's "The Middle Ages" is a textbook with short excerpts from history books - popular and academic - as well as from primary sources like Boccacio, Marco Polo or the great Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta. The excerpts are preceded by a one-page summary of the main theses expounded in the excerpt - very useful for someone who just wishes to browse. Overall, this book gives a good overview and introduction.

"The Middle Ages" shares with other textbooks a primary focus on questions relating to Western Europe, but to a lesser degree than the textbooks that were in use when I studied history in the 1980s. A short and useful list of books for further reading complements the book. Another plus is that it touches upon the effects of large-scale events like global weather changes (the Little Ice Age from 1300-1700) and epidemics (the Plague from 1320-1360) on life in the Middle Ages. The price, however, is quite steep for an introductory text.

a great project, a necessary book to understand the Seventeens, not only in the architecture, not only for architects.

Hays and Kearney are well know for their edited readers. This text is a compilation of articles from leading writers in the field of public personnel management. As such, the book serves as a useful discussion text within the classroom environment. The subjects treated run the gamut of personnel issues, but most noteworthy are the articles on constitutional law, public ethics, and civil service reform.

In preparation for travels next year, my 4-year-old and I are attuning our ears to French. What's for Supper (along with other books in this Barron's series) is just our speed. Carol Thompson's appealing illustrations make it easy for a preschooler to "tell herself the story." Mary Risk's story of children buying groceries and preparing supper for their mother - a surprise! - keeps us turning pages, whether in English or French. The cassette is familiarizing us with the sounds, and the end-of-the-book phonetic spelling lists are polishing some of the rust off my encrusted college French. It will be possible to use these at developing levels, too. Right now we read the English, then the French on each page and listen to the tape doing the same. Later we can cover the English on the page and just read the French. And on the flip side of the cassette, we can hear the whole story in just English or in just French.

I found this book useful in my research of Helen Bannerman, and the controversy surrounding her first and most famous work, Little Black Sambo. The author gives a good glimps of Bannerman's life, and gives an excellent arguement that "Sambo" was not a racist work, but rather that the racial overtones where added in pirated copies. I recomend this work to anyone who has an interest in Bannermans life, or the topic of racism in childrens literature.

There are several ways to plumb the essence of boat cruising: go cruising, read about people who cruise, read books that tell you how to cruise. Anne M. Hays book, Through the Spyglass, gives the reader the intuitive insights that embody the spirit of cruising. This is the Zen of cruising; not an orderly list of things to do; not a progresssion of thought to prepare the prepare the boater, but rather the philosophy of cruising, the unexpressed desires and the most deep-seated search of pioneering minds. Some of cruising is euphoris ("The view we marveled at that evening -- sparkling water studded with rocky islands, mountains in the distance backlit by a rising full moon -- was indescribably beautiful..."); some of cruising is rough and life-threadening ("...we ate and drank little, hung on grimly, and wedged ourselves into our wet bunks to try to sleep when off-watch. No one aboard thought those three days were fun..."). At first the book appears to be disjointed, with real life experiences and fictional accounts scattered in a disparate and random telling, but when you finish you realize there is an awakening spirit, a middle journey under moonless nights when the single-handed sailor feels the spirit of the creator, and the closing of a (sailor's) life. Like the old man who was too feeble to safely cruise on his beloved boat, old sailors don't quit; they just go on sailing within the paradise of their memories. Hays introspects that cruising enhances the value of time -- time to linger, time to know friends, time to wait out a storm, time to value. Time is the currency of life. The writing is good, at times gripping, at times hard bridging reality and fiction. Boats are not work, Hays implores; boats are not holes in the water into which you throw money; boats are magic carpets, and if you want to understand cruising, you need to understand the love between a person and his boat, and the person and his dreams. This might be the primer of sailing, the first book. From these stories the reader ultimately understands sailors and sailing.

If you're unfamiliar with this naturalist's writings, then you're in luck. This sampler contains essays from nine of his books, from _The Run_ (1959) to _In the Company of Light_ (1998), as well as several of Hay's poems and his John Burroughs Medal acceptance address. Here you will follow and see along with him as if on the same trail, gleaning tidbits of natural science in the process. Shorelines and wetlands are the main areas featured -- mostly in New England, and often in Cape Cod -- though a few forays take us to Florida and to the rainforest of Costa Rica. Read Hay's insights into the intricacies of salt-water habitats, and you're apt to see more the next time you go beach-combing yourself -- from the smallest creatures in the water to the larger ones winging above you. Here you will also run across Hay's astute environmental observations and admonishments:


"Every life that touches on another, or becomes a part of another, keeps the earth's fluidity in being." ("Homing," from _The Undiscovered Country_)

"We ought to be tuning up to what is around us, but our own static is too loud." ("Listening," from _The Undiscovered Country_)

"At times I think that all the plants, birds, fish, and every other living organism are waiting for our departure so that they can resume timeless engagement with the earth." ("Fire in the Plants," from _A Beginner's Faith in Things Unseen_)

This smorgasbord is a nice addition to any nature-lover's bookshelf and could inspire the reader to search out one or more of the featured titles to delve deeper into John Hay's work.

The author of this book is my sister. However, the book is a delightful, imaginative romp on a poor sidehill farm in Vermont. It describes a farmer at his wit's end for lack of money for his family. A miraculous rolling hay "tumble" or drying pile gets him out of his tough times, believe it or not by helping with the chores, and the world suddenly looks better. It's a tale that youngsters all over Vermont have loved when my sister gives presentations at one-room and larger elementary schools around Vermont.