OAK BROOK, Ill. -- Several new books have joined CSP's growing "bookshelf." Local architect Bill Mackey has translated Tucson's automobile and convenience store culture into a limited-edition book available from the Museum of Contemporary Art, said The Tucson Citizen. People who attend the cocktail reception and Mackey's talk on Thursday will get a free copy of his new "Field Guide to Tucson Convenience Stores."
The field guide is combined with Mackey's "A Checklist of the Commercials During a NCAA Men's Division Tournament Game" and "Automobiles of Midtown Tucson" into a book called Field [image-nocss] Guides & Checklists, which will be packaged with a pencil and notepad.
"It's saying what a part of our culture the automobile is and we take it for granted," said Mackey, who works at Rob Paulus Architect. "It's part of our landscape but we don't think about it. We just accept it.
Only 75 copies of the book were printed and each is signed and numbered. People attending Mackey's talk will get the first chance to buy the book. The book launches the MOCA Press: Monographs & Multiples, which will offer original art, words or images, in limited editions.
Mackey got started on the theme while watching a University of Arizona NCAA tournament basketball game at a bar in San Francisco a couple years ago. Right at the start, he noticed a series of car commercials and started keeping a tally. He found that car commercials made up 25% of the ads. He then took a look at the cars and c-stores in Tucson.
"Convenience stores are part of our culture, both positive and negative," Mackey said. "The negative is most don't act like a corner store any more. They don't care who the customer base is. The good is you can learn to be part of consumer society, and obviously, the convenience."
Meanwhile, to offer his take on the current "energy crisis," Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, has authored Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less. "Politicians want scapegoats, while the American people want solutions."
Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less is Gingrich's comprehensive plan forimmediately reducing prices at the pump, while adopting real solutions for America's energy future. The answer to helping Americans who are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet because of higher energy prices is not choosing between drilling for more oil and developing alternative fuels, but doing both, he says.
Gingrich and co-author Vince Haley offer a way they say can ease the pain for taxpayers quickly and set the stage for a new energy policy that focuses on alternative fuels, protects our environment, creates jobs andimproves our national security.
They say that if the United States could create a vast infrastructure of factories, pipelines, and even build entire cities in deserts to defeat Nazi Germany, Facist Italy and Imperial Japan in less than four years, it can:
Increase American oil production now to drive down today's cost of gasoline. Create and invest in technology to produce safe, clean and cheap fuels, more efficient hybrid cars, clean coal, hydrogen, solar, wind and safe nuclear power Protect national security by reducing our need to buy oil from foreign countries where oil profits sponsor terrorism. Award prizes to citizens and companies to create breakthroughs in electric cars, clean coal plants and to develop next-generation biofuels like ethanol and switchgrass. And Linda McKenna, principle of Employee Performance Strategies Inc. (EPS), said EPS has formed a new entity,Convenience Store Coaches Inc. (CSC). Like EPS, its goal is to help c-store retailers "improve their bottom line through their front line." CSC has a single focus and customizes its work for the c-store industry. Services include keynotes, seminars, consulting, and individual coaching.CSC has just published its first book, entitled Hire the Best C-Store Employees. This is Book 1 in the Convenience Store Operators Success Series. Books to follow include Hire the Best C-Store Manager, Recruit the Best C-Store Employees, Retain the Best C-Store Employees, Coach the Best C-Store Employees and Train the Best C-Store Employees.
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