recent faves

Movies:
Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, Rachel Getting Married, Doubt, Benjamin Button, The Reader (soundtrack by Nico Muhly), Frozen River (guitar played by Sam's colleague Shazhad Ismaily), Miss Pettigrew.
Also we are watching the series Madmen on Netflix.
books:
The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (fun to listen to in the car, read by the author) how famous people (Bill Gates, the Beatles, etc.) rise to success in part because of the circumstances and timing of their age, culture, family and confluence of factors including the incredible number of hours put in leading to their competency.
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin (incredible story and interesting to see Greg speaking on Youtube). He got lost in a failed attempt to climb K2 and ended up in a village in the Baltistan and decided to do everything in his power to build a school and did; has built around 60 schools in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and about one third of all the students are attended by girls. The Taliban has been destroying many of them but Greg perserveres as he believes this is the way to make real change.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Anne Shaffer and Annie Burrows : a correspondence on the island of Guernsey post WWII; light and a fun read.

best quote: At Rowe Conference center in Rowe, MA, Bread and Puppet Theater is leading a worskhop March 6-8 called The First World Insurrection: The institute for Subversive Paper Mache
"You can learn 1. How to launch precision attacks on war and capitalist megalomania
2. How to get the quickest, cheapest response to horrifically expensive dilemmas
3.How to make cardboard politicians, picture stories, hand puppets, giants and noisy garbage for rallies, parades and the like"

best bumper sticker: Buy Wool: Support the No Sheep Left Behind Act