After a year off, it’s back: The Summer Reading List. Here’s hoping you were able to get through last summer without us. Contributors this time around include veterans like Cynthia Connolly and Gary Baddeley, as well as newcomers like Tim Mitchell and Val Renegar. Many thanks to all who sent me their suggestions. Enjoy!

In some circles, Gram Parsons is a certified legend. In others, he is virtually unknown. Gandulf Hennig’s Fallen Angel documentary will enlighten the latter to the opinion of the former. Even if you know his basic story, love his music, or know nothing about him, this DVD offers plenty of revelations about his short but prolific existence.

Though Gutenberg’s printing press represents what Marshall McLuhan referred to as the first assembly line — one of repeatable, linear text — and is what made large-volume printed information a personal, portable phenomenon, the advent of the telegraph brought forth the initial singularity in the evolution of information technology. The telegraph enabled the bifurcation of communication and transportation, and information became a commodity. As Neil Postman put it, “…telegraphy created the idea of context-free information — that is, the idea that the value of information need not be tied to …

I am finding more and more of my thinking gets worked out in notebooks and journals. Recently having access to a scanner, I thought I’d share some pages.