Smart Communities: How Citizens and Local Leaders Can Use Strategic Thinking to Build a Brighter Future

Book Description

Based on the results of more than a decade of research by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, Smart Communities provides directions for strategic decision-making and outlines the key strategies used by thousands of leaders who have worked to create successful communities. Smart Communities offers leaders from both the public and private sectors the tools they need to create a better future for all the community's citizens. Using illustrative examples from communities around the country, Smart Communities shows how these change agents' well-structured decision-making processes can be traced to their effective use of seven key leverage points:

Investing right the first time
Working together
Building on community strengths
Practicing democracy
Preserving the past
Growing leaders
Inventing a brighter future

Customer Reviews:

Smart Communities is a Smart Book.......2007-01-22

I got this book because it is being used as a textbook for a college course I am taking, but once I got into the book, I started enjoying it. Morse is a real excellent writer and she makes the subject matter of creating good communities interesting. Normally, I would dread reading a book for class, but this one is a good read especially for those who wnat to be more involved in making a smart community.

What Other People, Other Towns Have Done.......2005-04-19

I'm sure that you are busy. I've got a lot of things to do myself, more than I can get done today. And then the time comes when you have to stop being busy, some times you just have to sit and let the batteries recharge. As the old saying goes, sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.

And the question has to come up of what can one person, you or me do to make the community we live in a better place. Suzanne Morse's book can't tell you what you can do. But it can tell you what other people like you have done. Will her ideas work in New York City, no. Will they work on the block you live in within New York City, in the neighborhood you live in, yes.

Meanwhile I've got to quit writing about this book. I'm going help the local community theater try to get started. I don't know anything about theater, but I can find some way to help, even if it's just sweeping the floor.

Smart Commununities.......2004-06-11

This book is an antidote for the cynicism and sense of helplessness that pervades too many of our communities. We are given actual examples of communities builing on their strengths, talents, histories and values to create new energy and optimism. As an amatuer historian, my favorite chapter was the one on preserving the past as a way to begin building the new. Now I have the language to encourage renewal by honoring the past.

Strategic Thinking and Acting.......2004-04-23

I was attracted to this book while looking for insights into strategic thinking for work in another arena. I was not disappointed.

Smart Communities offers many very useable ideas for anyone with responsibilities for thinking and acting strategically to enhance our lives together. And that probably includes most everyone.

Along with very practical help, the accounts and interpretations of real experiences also offer inspiration and hope.

A Bonanza For Anyone Working to Bring about Change.......2004-04-12

Finally, an exceedingly hopeful book about how to effect meaningful change in a community, large or small. Here, Dr. Suzanne Morse, in her characteristic lively and to-the-point style, has given us a guide, repleat with documented examples of how to move the needle on those issues we're all too familiar with: poverty, lack of a board base of leadership, chidren's welfare. Armed with more than 10 years of hands on experience working with groups in communities all across the country, Dr. Morse's book, as well as many of her other supportive pieces such as What Works, guarantees us all that we no longer have to start at square one. If you were depressed by Robert Putnam's novel a few years back, Bowling Alone, which bemoaned the lack of citizen involvement in communities today, this book and the work of Dr. Morse will give you not only hope but the tools to join forces with others where you live to make a difference.
Read it for the cheer joy of finding out how this is done, and done well.Each chapter ends with, How to Get Started in Your Community, a virtual workbook for action. Her reference section will also help guide you in fruitful directions.Putnam's latest book, Better Together: Restoring the American Community, speaks of a hint that citizens are beginning to "bowl together". Dr. Morse's book is proof that they are and have been doing so effectively for the past decade.Enjoy--an exhilerating read.

Book Description

Twelve innovative step-by-step projects illustrate clearly Mandy Southan's fresh and original approach to silk painting—perfect for the complete beginner as well as experienced crafters who want to learn new techniques.

Customer Reviews:

Love this book.......2007-05-10

An excellent addition to your silk painting reference books. Colorful pictures. Simple directions and traceable patterns. Simple steam fixing directions too.

Disappointing details.......2005-08-02

This book is beautifully presented. Unfortunately, the information inside is scant. I learned more surfing the web than I did from this book.

Great!.......2003-11-20

This is a great book for beginers. Lots of great photos and explanations. Very happy with this purchase!

great for beginners.......2003-08-26

The author teaches various silk painting techniques step-by-step. For each project she provides a picture of the finished piece, a drawing of the design that can be photocopied, a materials list and pictures for each painting step. The instructions are clear, the projects appealing. The book also has one of the clearest instructions how to make your own steam-fixing device and how to steam fix. It's a great book that will get you started.

If your just getting into silk painting this book is a must........1999-12-18

This book clearly sends the novice silk painter through the basic techniques of this exciting craft. The colour photographers are brilliant, showing step by step ways to acquire the skills needed for silk painting and so complete the various projects within the book. Add this to the shopping basket now it's a must!

Average customer rating:

Beginner's Guide to Silk Painting
Caroline Earl
Manufacturer: Sterling
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Dye | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Painting | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1402708793

Book Description

These gorgeous jewel-tone photographs offer all the inspiration you need to start. Find out which silk fabrics are most suitable for painting, and learn basic techniques, including tensioning silk, drawing outlines, applying color, painting-in backgrounds, watermark patterning, and more. Hone your skills with 20 projects, from scarves and beaded necklaces to sarongs and evening bags, which use a variety of effects.

Average customer rating:

Beginner's Guide to Silk Painting
Mandy Southan
Manufacturer: Unknown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000K3RQ22

Book Description

When photographer Rob Amberg first met Dellie Norton and her adopted son, Junior, in 1975, Norton was seventy-six years old and had lived most of her life in the small mountain community of Sodom Laurel, North Carolina, surrounded by close kin, tobacco fields, and the rugged wilderness of the southern Appalachians. Sodom Laurel Album traces the growing relationship between Norton and Amberg across the next two decades, years marked by the seasons of raising and harvesting food and tobacco and by the gatherings of family and friends for conversation, storytelling, and music.

Richly evocative images are interlaced with stories of the people of Sodom Laurel and with Amberg's own candid journals, which reveal his gradually growing understanding of this world he entered as a stranger. The book also includes a CD featuring Dellie Norton, Doug Wallin, and other singers of traditional Appalachian music. Through words, photographs, oral histories, and songs, Sodom Laurel Album tells the moving story of a once-isolated community on the brink of change, the people who live there, and the music that binds them together.

Sodom Laurel Album is the companion publication to a traveling exhibition that will open at the Asheville Art Museum in 2002.

Customer Reviews:

A vanishing way of life........2006-04-19

I first became aware of Dellie Norton because of the movie "Songcatcher" (available on Amazon). A friend suggested I see it. I really liked the music, and something seemed really familiar about it. Then, I heard my aunt talking about it being based on real life people and I start doing some research.

Back in the early part of the 20th century, an English music researcher and lecturer named Cecil Sharp traveled to the U.S. to track down old songs. He got more songs in Madison county than any other place in the country. Songcatcher is loosely based on those events. It was while I was researching that I happened across some articles about Rob Amberg, and I went looking for his book.

When I first ran across the Sodom Laurel Album, I ended up buying copies for all my close family members and friends. Like the other 2 reviewers, Debra and David, I am related to most of the people in the book and on the CD. In fact, my own father, Warren, was born right down the road from Dellie's house.

After reading their words and studying the pictures, I have an even greater respect for my kin than before, and I can't help but feel that we've really lost something important from our lives. Not just my family, but our entire nation.

If you want a really good look at the way life was for most of the nation less than a hundred years ago, the stark images of Rob Amberg have really captured it.

For even more detail about mountain life, you may want to read a couple of books by Sheila Kay Adams (she is in Sodom Laurel Album): Come Go With Me and My Old True Love. They are based on life in and around Sodom (Revere) and are available from Amazon.

Sheila also carries on Dellie's legacy; she is a traditional ballad singer (she was taught by Dellie Norton) and sells CDs on her web site, and performs in festivals around the country. Details on the web since Amazon doesn't seem to carry her CDs.

SODOM LAUREL ALBUM.......2003-01-01

I received this book as a Christmas gift and have loved every page. The stories and the photographs are great. I believe that anyone who is fascinated with mountain living as I am will love this book.

Junior,s great nephew.......2002-11-11

I'm David Norton Junior is my uncle. This is a great book if your intrested in the way we live in the mountains you should get this book full of great photos of my uncle and aunt Dellie and one great picture of my grandpa Willard.

Book Description

Sweaterweather is about a turtle, a rabbit, and other sweet creatures on a snowy journey. It contains short comics and lots of other delightful things, such as paper dolls, postcards, and stamps. This book will dazzle your senses with its Seuss-ian cast of characters and lush cartoony brushwork.

Customer Reviews:

Reporter Down!.......2006-01-25

Marda Liggett Woodbury has done a first class job in researching and describing the life and death of her father, a leftist newspaper publisher who was murdered in front of her in 1935. But she does not simply write a sentimental account of her relationship with him, but delves deep into the history of a time and place. In addition, it tells the story of one man's decision to expose a deeply corrupt instituion, one whose faults he could no longer ignore. Attacking the very political party he had long supported, he exposed candidates ties to the Twin Cities's Irish and Jewish Mobs and vowed to bring down their most powerful Political Boss, Minnesota Governor Floyd Olsen. It was a crusade that would cost him his life. When he couldn't be intimidated, framed, or bribed, he was machine gunned to death before the terrified eyes of his wife and children. The shooter was identified as Isadore Blumenfield, alias "Kid Cann" the boss of Minneapolis's Jewish Mafia. I will leave you to find out the result of the trial by reading the book. In closing, as a religious conservative, I agree with virtually none of Walter Liggett's political stances, but in one regard I admire him. When the Liberal Party he supported became just another crooked political machine, he turned on them with a vengeance. For that, I wish there were more like him today.

A good historical re-examination.......2003-08-04

Marda Woodbury's look at her own father's death is a gripping and well-researched look back at a tragedy and possibly a government cover-up. Woodbury does an excellent job of re-evaluating her father, Walter Liggett, and his death. Her father was an old-school muckraker in Minnesota and one of the most vocal opponents of then-governor Floyd Olson.

Not being familiar with this particular case before I read the book, I was concerned that this would be some sort of apologistic, revisionist history. However, the more I researched the case, the more I found that Woodbury had given a fair assessment of the murder and of her father's career.

The book is a case study in how political machines worked, a good look at the rise of gangland in the heart of the Midwest, and a really interesting history of Minnesota journalism in the 1930s. Liggett argues that her father was too good of an advesary, knew too much and couldn't be bribed - all fatal ingredients which spelled his demise.

I wish Liggett would have explored her father's reputation as a blackmailer. While she makes several references to it, and while that was many the gripe of many of Liggett's contemporaries, she doesn't seem to do as thorough of a job in researching the claims of blackmailing as she does in other parts of the book. While that particular area isn't exhaustively explored, the book still seems to have objectivity and balance.

Woodbury should be complimented for her well-documented research and her crafty ability to present this case in a new light, some half-a-century after it happened. She has done not only an admirable job in her role as a historian, but we also are given a first-hand account of what happened to the family and a look into the private dealings of Walter Liggett.

Another side of Minneapolis.......1998-11-24

As a former Minnesotan, I was interested in this generally untold side of Minnesota history. I have lived in Minneapolis and loved it, but was shaken by these horrors that long preceeded my time there. I would have appreciated more specific addresses and names of businesses where events took place as it would have put the story in a more real context, but only for those familiar with the city. It is almost unbelievable to imagine the kind of opposition that existed to those publishing information which went contrary to the public image desired by those in power-both "legitimate" and underworld people. I'm glad Ms. Woodbury used her research skills to write this work. It does indeed exonerate her family, and her respect for her parents is well deserved, especially her telling of her mother's grace and dignity in coping with this tragedy.

Customer Reviews:

What Iraqis Were Like BEFORE Saddam!.......2003-10-08

Excellent read. If you have been wondering, like I have, will the Iraqi people have the ability to trancend Saddam and go forward, then this book is your bedside companion. It's 1966, the author and his wife, Texans, fresh from UT Austin on a Fullbright scholarship, journey to Bagdad. Along the way we are treated to visions of the time before Saddam and get to know the people as this not-too-worldly couple surround you with their impressions of the culture, the daily life, and the ordinary Iraqi's whom they encounter at every turn. Numerous incidents from this book lift it from the relm of mere travel tales into the distinct encounter of suspense. As you read, knowing what is going to happen, when the teacher chats so easily with his students, makes you wonder if they surivived, how they survived, and how Saddam has marked their lives. I only wish we could see these people today on their way to a better life. I couldn't put it down till I finished. I'm buying copies for Christmas presents.Impressive.

Average customer rating:

Perspective from a smoker's child.

Healing Wisdom Series: Stop Smoking Naturally
Martha Work Ashelman
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Alternative Medicine | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Smoking | Recovery | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Substance Abuse | Recovery | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
General | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Holistic Medicine | Alternative & Holistic | Medicine | Subjects | Books
General | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
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Recovery from Smoking: Quitting with the 12 Step Process

1,440 Reasons To Quit Smoking: One for Every Minute of the Day...and Night

Out of the Ashes: Help for People Who Have Stopped Smoking

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Accessories:

Airborne Effervescent Health Formula, Original Orange, 10 Tablets (Pack of 3)

RESPeRATE Blood Pressure Lowering Device

Braun IRT 4020 ThermoScan Ear Thermometer

ASIN: 0658003844

Book Description

This unique and groundbreaking work provides a step-by-step holistic approach and shows people how to assess their present smoking patterns, how to plan for permanent freedom from smoking, and how they can set out on a path toward healing to increase the quality of their lives.

Customer Reviews:

Perspective from a smoker's child........2000-12-20

God, I whish my mother and father had this book. For their sakes and for mine.

Simple, clear and direct to the point on how to reverse this lethal curse.

I recomend it highly to anyone that smokes, has the desire to quit and particularly if you have or are planning to have children. PLEASE, JUST DO IT... if not for you then for them. It just is NOT worth it. All the bronchitis, pneumonia (took my father), asthma and emphysema not to mention the hart disease and cancers (took my mother).

Of course, the psychological aspects of this addiction/illness are also horrific... Why do mommy and daddy want to kill themselves? Don't they love me?

If you are dead set on suicide please consider another more rapid way. This has to be one of the slowest most painful and worst ways to do it.

Lovingly, honestly and respectfully submitted.

Book Description

The first official German stormtroop unit was authorized on 2 March 1915 when the Supreme Command of the field army ordered the VIII Corps to form a detachment for the testing of experimental weapons and the development of approximate tactics that could break the deadlock on the Western Front. By the summer of 1915, stormtroop units were springing up throughout the German armies in the west, and by the end of 1916 official stormtroop battalions were established throughout the western armies, providing a deadly new threat for the Allies. This book examines the uniform, equipment and tactics of Germany's feared elites.

Customer Reviews:

A Gem of a Book!.......2006-11-10

I was very favorably impressed with this book. It was thoroughly researched and well put together. I found the information enlightening and revelatory in many aspects. In accordance with some of the other reviews I have read with regard to this book, some of the art work could be regarded as sub-standard in quality but that could be a matter of subjectivity. I regard this book as a valuable addition to my World War One library and I plan to acquire other volumes from this series and author.

Recommended for modellers.......2006-02-12

Although few Osprey "Warrior" series books deal with soldier's uniforms and equipment, "German Stormtropper" gives all comprehensive information on German assault units' specialist equipment and weapons, as well as uniforms alterations. Furthermore, the book is packed with interesting facts on combat on the Western front and is interesting to read.

Full of facts but below average drawings.......2005-10-10

The subject of the German stormtroopers in World War I and the German innovative tactics is extremely interesting and Ian Drury achieves his target presenting a wide variety of facts in a very readable manner. The photographs are very good also and well chosen and the text analyzes every aspect of the stormtroops, like uniforms, weapons, organization and battle tactics. The drawings section is a great disappointment though, because its quality is below average for the Osprey standards. Buy it if you are a student of tactics and military theory and skip it if you are a modeller.

Quite good for modellers.......2000-10-14

I'm a modeller, and the kind of information you find in this book is just what you need for finishing WW1 German Assault troops.

The book is filled with pictures of about every used item, and you also find the usual Osprey center color drawings.

I'd recommend getting this book, along with Brassey's book on german uniforms, and Osprey's book on the german army from 1914 to 1918, so as to get the widest possible coverage of the subject.

Book Description

Prominent experts explain the pharmacology and metabolism of benzodiazepines (LDB) and g-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) and offer powerful and effective methodologies that will enable better detection of these drugs in various body fluids, as well as in hair. The techniques include highly sensitive immunoassay detection of LDBs, the detection of Rohypnol® and other LDBs by mass spectrometry, and the ultrasensitive detection of GHB. State-of-the-art and highly practical, Benzodiazepines and GHB: Detection and Pharmacology offers toxicologists, forensic scientists, and clinical chemists today's most effective methods for detecting these widely abused drugs that are sometimes found associated with criminal acts.

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