Nicolas Welty Welty itibaren Wilków, Polonya itibaren Wilków, Polonya

This is a diverse and imformative, book on how to make our homes and offices more aesthetically pleasing as well as more environmentally friendly so that they will nurture and encourage our personal productivity and peace of mind. "Light candles, burn incense, sprinkle holy water, and offer flowers and prayers to the guardian spirit of the house and the spirits of earth, air fire, and water. Call in the angels and your own personal guides and helpers (whatever feels appropriate to you"(93). How could our imaginations not run wild with inspiration like that? Although reading this book did not really turn me into a feng shui expert--for example, I still do not diligently check on whether my furnishings and the placement thereof are in proper sync regarding their relation to the elements of air, water, metal, fire, and earth--I still learned a lot about how to make small, but positive, environmental changes at home and at work. For example, for years I had been guilty of placing a big mirror on top of a bedroom dresser and leaning it back against a wall (because I was too afraid to try to hang it up because of its girth). This book taught me that a mirror should never be leaned against a wall, and spurred me to stop being such a wimp and get out the hammer and strong screws to hang the thing up. Other advice is obvious, but so needful of repetition, such as the need to work on a clear, uncluttered desk. Kingston gives pointers on the placement and use of home applicances, televisions, computers, celluar phones, beepers and pagers, microwave ovens, etc., so they do not create negative magnetic fields in our daily lives. She also spurred me to move my digital clock-radio/CD player 10 feet away from my head when I sleep. (This might well have saved me a brain tumor!) On Kingston's advice, I bought several sets of "harmony balls" (but look for the term "meditation balls" if you wish to buy them on-line or in stores) with the sweet chiming sounds that help clear out "stale energies" in our homes and offices, and allow more positive energies in. (Can you imagine all the stale energies that had been hiding for years behind my big mirror?) This book is filled with so much more advice about letting more sacredness enter our homes that I cannot begin to describe it all, but it is such a fascinating point of departure for home and spiritual improvement!

loved it but am sorry to see Harry & friends leave

This fourth and final hard cover volume collects issues #32–40 of Gotham Central, DC's eminent comic about the Gotham City Police Department's Major Crime Unit (mostly dealing with the kinds of crime that inevitably tends to involve "the Bat"). This volume, like the last one, is dominated by Greg Rucka's writing, and it still certainly delivers (even though I would not have minded more Ed Brubaker material). It opens with a single-issue story, "Nature," written by Rucka and drawn by Steve Lieber. In some way, this may be the oddest GC story out of the forty issues, simply because its narrator (while a cop) is in no way connected to the MCU. Instead we get some insight into the other side of the coin, one of Gotham's finest examples of corruption, with some twists and turn to match. This is followed by the excellent four-parter "Dead Robin," written by Rucka and Brubaker, and drawn by Kano & Stefano Gaudiano. Here the MCU discovers the body of what appears to be Robin, i.e. Batman's sidekick. The heavily media covered investigation becomes a desperate race against the clock and it is all about establishing the facts: is it Robin? What does it mean if it is? What does it mean if it isn't? The collection's weakest part (and possibly the weakest part of the whole series) is the single-issue story "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by Rucka and Lieber. It is a tie-in to one of DC's mega events, Infinite Crisis, and while not a bad story, its attempt to match the perspective of people on the street with the über-cosmic stuff does not really work that well within the frame of the series itself. It simply becomes too over the top, and next to series successfully dealing with this (like Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' Marvels or Busiek and Brent Anderson's Astro City) it just feels as if it misses the mark somewhat. Infinite Crisis The volume (and the series) ends with the three-parter "Corrigan II" by Rucka, Kano and Gaudiano. This picks up the story about corrupt crime scene investigator Jim Corrigan that started in the previous volume (in the two-parter "Corrigan"). While "Dead Robin" is easily the main event of this volume, this is a very good finale to the series. All in all, I would have to say that the entire series – all four hard cover volumes – have been a delight to read, and I cannot recommend them enough.