Yes, I’ve been pretty darn quiet lately. What can I say? It’s that time of year again. Some day, perhaps, I’ll post about the strange and unpleasant phenomenon that seems to occur in my work life every April and May, when my usual hectic schedule spins completely out of control. But that’s some day. Today, I’ve got other things to tell you about.

While I haven’t been posting, I haven’t been neglecting the site completely. For starters, I created a little Amazon bookstore. It’s not finished yet. The front page is fine; it contains some of my current recommendations. The interior pages are another matter. Right now, they’re just generic listings of books and music, sorted by category and keyword. Eventually, I’ll pair those listings down so that they’re a bit more personal, containing items I’ve hand-selected instead of every single item Amazon sells with the keyword “horror” or “bagpipes” or what have you.

If you’d like to check it out, you can find the link toward the bottom of the sidebar, right below the Amazon search box. Or, even easier, you can just click here:

My Amazon Store

The other, more important project is the “badge” I added to the sidebar to let visitors make donations to some very worthwhile charities related to literacy, the arts and education — for example, Chely Wright’s Reading, Writing and Rhythm Foundation. You don’t like country music? That’s okay, neither do I. But I love the things that Chely’s organization does to promote arts in the schools, and to help schools that might not have a music program without outside support.

The badge comes from Kevin Bacon’s amazing SixDegrees.org, a project that shows something good can come out of a silly game, and that social networking can be about something other than geeky buzzwords and self-obsessed Myspace pages full of bad grammar and spelling.

You can find the badge at the bottom of the sidebar. Take a look. Who knows? You might even feel moved to click one or two of the “donate” buttons.