the city of voices

How relevant is your reading compared to the New York Times top 10 books list for 2007?
Here they are…5 fiction and 5 nonfiction. Enjoy.

FICTION…
MAN GONE DOWN
By Michael Thomas. Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic, paper, $14. This first novel explores the fragmented personal histories behind four desperate days in a black writer’s life.

OUT STEALING HORSES
By Per Petterson. Translated by Anne Born. Graywolf Press, $22. In this short yet spacious Norwegian novel, an Oslo professional hopes to cure his loneliness with a plunge into solitude.

THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES
By Roberto Bolaño. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27. A craftily autobiographical novel about a band of literary guerrillas.

THEN WE CAME TO THE END
By Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown & Company, $23.99. Layoff notices fly in Ferris’s acidly funny first novel, set in a white-collar office in the wake of the dot-com debacle.

TREE OF SMOKE
By Denis Johnson. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27. The author of “Jesus’ Son” offers a soulful novel about the travails of a large cast of characters during the Vietnam War.

NONFICTION…

IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone.
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95; Vintage, paper, $14.95. The author, a Washington Post journalist, catalogs the arrogance and ineptitude that marked America’s governance of Iraq.

LITTLE HEATHENS: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression.
By Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Bantam Books, $22. Kalish’s soaring love for her childhood memories saturates this memoir, which coaxes the reader into joy, wonder and even envy.

THE NINE: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.
By Jeffrey Toobin. Doubleday, $27.95. An erudite outsider’s account of the cloistered court’s inner workings.

THE ORDEAL OF ELIZABETH MARSH: A Woman in World History.
By Linda Colley. Pantheon Books, $27.50. Colley tracks the “compulsively itinerant” Marsh across the 18th century and several continents.

THE REST IS NOISE: Listening to the Twentieth Century.
By Alex Ross. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30. In his own feat of orchestration, The New Yorker’s music critic presents a history of the last century as refracted through its classical music.

Didn’t fare to well? Try the 100 notable books list. Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/review/notable-books-2007.html

Getting out of the Ghetto tip #1: One way to get out of the ghetto is to start picking up the books, music and films normal people –well ok, New York Times critics may not be normal — read.
Happy New Year.

The Proto-Voxtropolis® Culture Pubs™ were pulled off in style in both the Orlando and Winter Park locations.
Great turnouts, great networking, fantastic venues, cool music. Check out the video on voxtropolis.com (Orlando) and voxtropolis.com/cafe (Winter Park).

The next Orlando event will be on January 27 at Java Dave’s Push Play Cafe on Alafaya.
We’ll keep you posted on the Winter Park scene as well.

The Voxtropolis Culture Pub Network is an alternative to a traditional church planting network. One difference is that a traditional church planting network has the goal of sending out church planters to plant churches. The Culture Pub Network has the goal of helping Christ following people engage unreached people in spiritual conversation. The motivation behind both the traditional church planting network and of the Culture Pub network is the same: That Christ be made known in all the earth.

Right now we are working with two new Voxtropolis Culture Pub teams in the central Florida area. Both of them have their first engagements this month. Follow their stories right here.

Photo: First Culture Pub Team Meeting with the East Side Underground

Both Central Florida Culture Pubs will have the first meetings within the next two weeks. We’ll try to photo document and maybe even video a bit of the process and events. Stay tunes to the City of Voices.
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Register for HUMANA 2.08 (H2.08) now
3 Things you Gotta Know about H2.08
Invitation to H2.08

Register for H2.08 by Monday, December 17 for a discount on tuition.

The film, Journey from the Fall, which tells the story of Vietnamese refugee families that fled to America during the Vietnam War, received standing ovations at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. The sound track was composed by family friend Chris Wong. The music accompanying the video montage currently (Nov 20, 2007) playing on the Voxtropolis main page is a sample of Composer Chris Wong’s work on the film. Chris is a part of our M network and I suspect you’ll love his music. Check out Chris’ M here.

The first time I saw Chris he was playing electric guitar with the Mosaic band at the nightclub in downtown LA. Not long after, I discovered that Chris was a pianist and composer. Eventually, we came to know and love Chris and he became the musical mentor and instructor for my three kids. We all looked forward to his weekly visits to our home. He is one of the things we most miss about living in Los Angeles.

Chris at work in his Studio

Today, November 20th, Chris’ first soundtrack, to the film Journey from the Fall, is being commercially released. The soundtrack can be purchased at MoviescoreMedia.com, either as a download or as a CD. The DVD is available at Amazon.com, Virgin Megastore, Fry’s Electronics, Hollywood Video, Netflix, and Blockbuster Online. If you go to www.journeyfromthefall.com and click on “DVD”, you can link directly to the page of any of these retailers. We’re purchasing our copy today. I understand that Chris is in the “behind the scenes” extras on the DVD.

My son, Michael, and Chris in the Studio with Journey from the Fall poster on the back wall.

Congrats, Chris.

on behalf of the whole McManus clan,

Alex and Niza

Check out Chris’ “M”.
“M” is the official social network of the City of Voices, Voxtropolis.com.

Register today for HUMANA 2.08

Chris doing his thing.

Recent research suggests that the death penalyy has a deterrence effect.
H. Naci Mocan, an economist at Louisiana State University tells us:

“I am personally opposed to the death penalty. But my research shows that there is a deterrence effect.”

Those who oppose the death penalty based on the value of life may need to consider the possibility that
a failure to execute takes innocent lives, concludes the New York Times article, Does Death Penalty Save Lives? A New Debate

What do you think?

“I don’t have a problem. Seventeen hours a day online is fine.”
Lee Chang-Hoon, 15, at a camp for compulsive Internet users in South Korea.

Do you ever have trouble tearing yourself away from you computer screen? Do you find yourself incessantly checking your email? You may have a mental health issue. At least if you live in the USA or one of the other countries that have identified compulsive Internet use as an addiction and a mental health malady.

Read the rest of this entry »

Are you a church planter getting ready to launch your church? You need cheer leading, no doubt. But you also need to get real. Eric Sweiven, VoxSac promoter and IMN Mentor, gets real with you. Here’s an article Eric sent me this week. Enjoy.

Becoming a Friend to those we Seek to Reach…
My name is Eric Sweiven, I’m a church-planter. Over the last 16 months myself and a team of missional leaders have hosted art and music shows in Sacramento, called VOX Parties. These have been hosted at two places.
First as a traveling show where we loaded and unloaded a 23’ truck full of furniture, decorations, coffee bar and even walls (the venue would not let us hang art on the walls, so we created our own). Then, more recently (since Feb ’07), at a semi-permanent location that will soon be leveled for new development.

There have been many challenges, adventures and memories made as we planned, bought furniture, built walls and arches, made coffee and swept floors; then, ultimately hosted parties for artist and musicians to share their creative spirit and passion – but none of these compares to the relationships we’ve made and the lives that have been joined to ours. Read the rest of this entry »

You are my moment.
I was there standing with you on the cliffs overlooking the sea in Bahia when you were 20.
I was there when you wept for me because I didn’t know how to when you were 30.
I was there when you looked so elegantly bohemian in Beverly Hills when you were 40.
I’ll be there –Lord willing — when you turn 50 and 60 and 70.
I’m here. with you. now.
Exactly where I should be.
Everything has changed but nothing has moved.
You are my moment.

Alex

One of my favorite pics of you. From the days when we were recording our first CD.

Know someone in the Sacramento area? The Voxtropolis Cafe and Culture Pub crew in Sacramento are at it again. Check out the flyer below and forward this invite to someone you know.

A 45 year-old mother of three strangled herself with the handcuffs used to restrain her at the Phoenix airport.
Is this a tragedy or is there someone to blame?

Yes, some of you will combine these in conformity to the fashionable both/and formula that this is a tragedy and someone is to blame. But does tragedy happen or does our culture require that every mishap, accident, tragedy find someone at fault?

What do you think?

Check out HUMANA 2.08