Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia where she experienced the oppression of Muslim women first hand. When her father attempted to force her into an arranged marriage, she fled to Holland in 1992. Later, she renounced the Muslim religion. The Dutch politician who was forced to go into hiding […]

I drove my son to the store last night to fill up his larder with food. At the market I almost ran right into a woman pushing a full cart, with a baby in a carseat on top of the groceries. She wore a sweatshirt with a sassy design, it […]

Why did the Danish newspaper publish the Muhammed cartoons? BBC News explained. “The Danish newspaper that originally published the cartoons commissioned them after the author of a book about Islam said he was unable to find a single person willing to provide images of the Prophet. The newspaper’s culture editor, […]

Today I picked up our Gazette to find a nice story that included this photo. They also ran this box with a set of ‘local business owner’ type questions: Business: GoNomad.com; Computer Cleaners; GoNOMAD CAFE Why open now: Addressing a gap in town: ‘People love coffee and they love the […]

Mikael Wood savages the Piano Man’s latest CD box set in the Village Voice. “Yet Joel’s performance here—onstage before an adoring crowd that includes one guy with a sign reading, “YOU ARE THE BEST”—has to be one of the most dispassionate things I’ve ever seen: Joel stares into space, as […]

Reading the February issue of Wired on this rainy night in Holyoke.Josh McHugh wrote a story about venture capitalist Allen Morgan who is taking a second look at the flame-outs of five years ago that may be viable today. He cites four factors to back up his claim, he calls […]

Random musings on a Friday in February: I got email for a new service that will mail a paper valentine’s day card out for you–complete with hand stuck stamp–and your own personalization. You can choose from a range of fonts/handwriting such as “Amandine” and “Philling” both looking like a sixth […]

Duncan Ferguson has put up our giant outside signs and even painted the door. So we’re on our way…when we get our sinks installed and finish our painting, we’re ready to rock!

Christine O’Toole is a fine writer who traveled to Belfast with me in December. She sent me an essay by one of my favorite authors, Robert D. Kaplan, on travel writing vs. reporting, that ran in the Columbia Journalism review. Just listening to people, to their stories — rather than […]

Reading the February issue of Wired and came across this item in their “infoporn” section, by Joanna Perlstein. “It’s hard to find a silver lining in natural disasters. But the cataclysms of the past year or so–starting with the Asian Tsunami–have been a boon to online fundraising. Half of the […]

Om Malik wrote in Business 2.0 about the other “Next Big Thing,” next to Nicholas Negroponte’s famous $100 laptop. “Three floors up in one of the city’s numerous office towers, 38-year-old Rajesh Jain points to a table that holds, he’ll tell you repeatedly, personal computing’s next big thing. The silver-and-black […]

Carol E. Lee writes in last Sunday’s NY Times Style section about siblings who live together. “Matt and Frank Goldberg, 28-year-old twins, share many of the same friends, have dated in similar circles and moved in together three months ago. So far, life in their Upper East Side apartment is […]