New York's Freerange Nonfiction to Move to Maine

Freerange Nonfiction logo
(from Freerange's Facebook site)

Freerange Nonfiction, a publication featuring emerging writers, those with some sort of commercial or reputational beachhead, or "established" writers, will be moving from its New York digs to Portland, Maine. That means Freerange's founder and executive director, Mira Ptacin, is leaving Gotham for the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

My close friend Bob introduced me to Freerange last year. The poet Christi Shannon Kline had tipped him off about Freerange's monthly live readings, conducted on the second floor of a Lower East Side bar. At that time, I had just resumed a lukewarm interest in readings. For decades, I would not attend a prose reading. Since most serious prose is not intended for oratorical declamation, I concluded these "honor the writer" sessions just smelled like literary bullshit. However, I uneasily came around to the notion that authors reading their works, especially works in progress, might be interesting.

I went to a couple of Freerange readings, and I must admit I enjoyed them. Some writers were clearly better than others, but that expectation came with the territory. Some speakers took advantage of the venue to showcase new work. I liked that. Some writers pulled out some reliable, safe material. I wondered why they bothered, unless they were doing Ptacin a favor by showing up or they wanted a way to fluff up their resumes.

The Lower East Side bar where Freerange Nonfiction held
monthly readings (photo from NYC Magazine and travelpod.com)

Ironically, I won a book in a Freerange raffle. (I blogged about this event in early February.) It was Baratunde Thurston's How to Be Black. I had listened to him read that evening. He's a polished performer, and he demonstrated his skill during his reading. After the event, the raffle winners were announced, my name was called, I picked up my prize, and the author signed it. I can safely say I don't fit the profile of a likely Baratunde Thurston fan. Honestly, if he had not autographed the book, I would have given it to someone who was familiar with Thurston's work and wanted to read it.

No one I knew filled that bill. Dutifully, I began to read the book, convinced it wasn't my cup of tea at all. Slowly, I came around to giving the book a chance. It turned out to be filled with surprises, sharp observations, and humor. At the end of How to Be Black, I felt a great sense of gratitude. I had been introduced to an aware, strong, comic voice that managed to have insight about his past as well as where he is now.

I'll have to find other opportunities in New York for readings. Hopefully, they'll be as rewarding as Freerange's were.

PS. Earlier this year, Freerange published a story written by my friend Robert Kline. It's a good, well-written story, and worth checking out.

Google+Local Hungers for Advertisers, Offers Zagat Ratings for Free

In an attempt to drive local advertising, Google+Local is now offering Zagat ratings for free. It seemed inevitable that the crowdsourced dining guide would be used as an advertising sweetener. The story appears in today's siliconvalley.com.

Now, if you can believe that the opinions of a more or less random sample of diners is worth more than the cultivated, knowledgeable advice of a worldly restaurant reviewer, then Zagat is right up your alley.

Sotheby's To Auction Original, Working Apple 1 Computer

Apple-1 computer

My wife owns a Mac 512K, complete with a cassette tutorial that includes musical background by Bill Evans. Now, my bride is a deeply committed Apple user, but she's not an engineer. And she's anything but a nerd. She's also not a collector of vintage computers. However, there is a growing crowd that's interested in original issue computers. Will they pay top dollar for scarce, historic items? They're starting to do so.

In the coming days, Sotheby's will auction off a rare, bootable original Apple-1 computer. According to a Mercury News article about the event, the auction is expected to draw some deep pocketed collectors. Their entry into the realm of computer collection is a relatively new, expensive development.

Mechanical devices always seem to find a following. When I was in high school, my best friend collected phonographs, old recordings, and musical instruments. All three categories didn't simply sit on a shelf: he actively played and used what he bartered for or bought outright. To have witnessed my friend's delight on obtaining a rare phonograph remains a sweet memory.

Hopefully, the Apple-1 will find a new home and an appreciative owner who won't purchase the computer simply, and coarsely, for its supposed "investment value."

PS. Sotheby's auctioned the Apple-1 for the "hammer price" of $310,000; the actual payment price was higher, as the auction house's fee and taxes needed to be added to the purchase price. According to the Mercury News feature on the sale, one computer collector asserted the auction price "'takes us across a boundary line to where you have to start looking at these things as art pieces, like Monets.'"

Curt Schllling Firm Lays Off Entire Staff, Stiffs Rhode Island Loan Repayment

The very visible, retired baseball star Curt Schilling has publicly embraced right-wing, Republican politics in recent years. He declared himself a so-called "pro-growth," "pro-business" advocate, and decried government programs as masquerades for socialism.

Meanwhile, Schilling began a video game enterprise called 38 Studios. The firm's original domicile was Massachusetts, where coincidentally Schilling once played major league baseball. Not one to miss an opportunity to cash in, Schilling received a sweetheart loan deal from the state of Rhode Island and its Republican governor to move the former Boston Red Sox star's firm to Providence. The essence of the arrangement was a state-guaranteed $75 million loan. The commercial marriage lasted two years: 38 Studios laid off its entire Rhode Island and Maryland staffs this past week, as reported The Boston Globe and elsewhere.

Schilling, at one point, put in over four million dollars of his own funds to save the failing firm. However, he repaid himself in full with some of the state's loan money before bidding adieu to 38 Studios. Entrepreneurial risk, a perspective Schilling loudly touted as essential to economic vigor and personal virtue, turned out to be less appealing when the pitching ace's company couldn't find the business equivalent of the strike zone. Suddenly, government money, which Schilling had characterized in pernicious terms, became very desirable.

Curt Schilling dodging reporters
in Providence, Rhode Island

What became quite clear in this episode is Schilling's complete indifference toward his employees and toward taxpayers. It's an interesting cautionary tale, with an upcoming presidential election focusing on how a corporate raider's business acumen will somehow translate into Lincolnesque leadership. When it comes to financial risk, one can cite far too many examples, such as Schilling and selected Wall Street investment bankers, who talk the talk, but rarely walk the walk. It's so much easier and profitable to simply fleece governmental agencies and programs after a business rolls snake eyes.

Butler Charged in Vatican "Pope and Dagger" Scandal

Paolo Gabriele (circled) in the Popemobile
(photo from the Roman newspaper Il Messaggero)

The Vatican's transactions with the secular world has its checkered aspects. A new chapter has recently been added to this occasionally tawdry history, with this week's arrest of the Pope's valet by Vatican police. The servant, according to reports in the BBC and the Associated Press, is charged with stealing private papal and other confidential Vatican documents. The authorities have alleged the valet, Paolo Gabriele, with leaking sensitive, highly embarrassing information to Italian journalists.

Issues in this caper include the Vatican's legacy of shady payments and complicity in criminal or otherwise corrupt activities. The Catholic Church's hierarchy has desperately attempted to maintain as much opacity in its financial activities as is possible for a worldwide religious organization. Rumors of Vatican financiers' involvement with organized crime figures, which have bubbled up in cases such as the Sindona affair,  have never been put to rest. For an institution dedicated to its flock's spiritual well-being, association with and assistance to the underworld seems at variance with the church's divine mission.

Part of the Vatican's appeal to darker forces is its status as a tax haven. It's not difficult to imagine favors being traded in a realpolitik environment. However, the Vatican always positions itself as above censure from Caesar, so to speak, when the light of reason and evidence points to its illegal activities. Meanwhile, the Vatican's local arms have continued to aggressively meddle in the world of politics. We're seeing that currently in the United States, with the Church's anti-abortion legal endeavors, support of right-wing political candidates, and intent to undermine rigorous separation of church and state in education.

For now, it's hard to take a corrput, reactionary bureaucracy seriously as a positive moral force. Time for the Vatican to clean up its act.

Do You Know "Pinger"?

Greg Woock (left) and Joe Sipher,
Pinger's co-founders
(photo from Forbes)

Until this evening, I had no idea what "Pinger" was. It's still a little fuzzy to me, but millions of people are familiar with the firm and grateful for its eponymous product. As I understand it, Pinger essentially enables iPod users to text for free. The company makes money from mobile advertising displayed to its customers. The enterprise is not exactly small potatoes. According to Forbes, Pinger is the seventh largest phone carrier in the United States.

The brains behind the operation is Greg Woock. His background is a little different from the characteristic Silicon Valley profile, in that he's not an engineer nor does he have an MBA. If you're unfamiliar with Woock and with Pinger, take time to read the brief interview the interesting San Jose Mercury News reporter Peter Delevett recently conducted with Woock. You'll find, as I did, Woock is a breath of fresh air in the Valley's hothouse environment.

Search Volume on Google for "Bank Run" Hits Record High

Run on American financial institution
Indymac Bank in 2008. At the time, it was the
second largest bank failure in US history.

What's on people's minds? Well, if your answer is "bank run," you're on to something. According to a post in the financial blog zerohedge.com, Google's search engine results for "bank run" has surpassed its historic high. The searchers appear to have some reading and writing knowledge of English, with northern Europeans in the vanguard. Close behind in this grim horse race are the Chinese and those who call Singapore home.

Then again, according to most American mainstream media outlets, the recession ended years ago and everything is getting better. Those annoying foreclosures, workplace dropouts, student loan disasters, ongoing war in Afghanistan, and the widening gap between the have-a-lots and everyone else, are just mirages. Bank runs? Hey, don't you feel confident about Morgan Stanley (Facebook fiasco), JP Morgan Chase (risk management mess), Bank of America (broke), Citicorp (ditto), and Goldman Sachs (they're creepy and they're spooky, mysterious and ooky....)

Dan Rather's Autobiography

Dan Rather
(photo from Wikipedia)

In the days when TV was watched on a TV set, Dan Rather worked for CBS News as a journalist. He did his work the old-fashioned way: Rather built a story on a solid foundation of facts, he checked his facts, he really interviewed people, he went to the site of an incident, he told the story in a way that nearly any viewer could grasp. He understood how to put together a television news segment. The Texas-born Rather's career began in radio, which influenced his succinct delivery and ability to ad-lib. He also grew up the hard way, in a wrong-side-of-the-tracks Houston neighborhood. He was as far away from big-time internships and Ivy League pedigree as one could get.

Throughout his career, as Rather plainly states in his newly released autobiography Rather Outspoken, he remained dedicated to the public's need for the "truth." That concept can be a slippery one to embrace, as "truth" can often rely upon individual interpretation. Indeed, the conundrum of "interpretation" is at the heart of the current crisis in American journalism. Rather fought the good fight for high journalistic standards. He continues to do so today, via Mark Cuban's HDNet. However, even Rather concedes that HDNet is a long way from Black Rock.

I'm on the road a bit these days. While I wait for a flight, I sometimes watch TV at an airport gate. The news, or what passes for it, is inevitably on a screen. Almost everything I see, regardless of network, is dreadful. The experience makes me long for the time when CBS News was a worthy standard bearer of excellence. Those days have vanished, partly due, as Rather bitterly points out in his autobiography, to Viacom (and CBS) owner Sumner Redstone's greed and insensitivity to public service.

At least the 80-year-old, still vigorous Rather is trying to pass the torch via HDNet. His journalistic neighborhood, however, is a tough one. Conservatives have rolled over and played dead for a lurid amalgamation of fact and propaganda, of which Fox News is their soiled standard bearer. Many liberals have, to their shame, embraced the exploitative information plantation known as the Huffington Post or to preaching-to-the-choir talking heads. Major newspapers are in obvious decline, though their "brands" retain journalistic pedigree largely linked to their glorious past. Where will the next Dan Rather come from?

Eugene Polley, Inventor of First TV Remote Control -- RIP

The first TV remote control,
created by Eugene Polley

Yesterday, only a handful of people knew who Eugene Polley was and what his significance was to television. What a difference a day makes! According to Polley's obit in The New York Times, he died on Sunday in a Chicago suburb. His obit pointed out Polley was the inventor of the first legit TV remote control device.

Polley did manage to display an occasional sense of humor about his invention and the credit for it. Here's one that is great fun: "The flush toilet may have been the most civilized invention ever devised, but the remote control is the next most important. It's almost as important as sex."

Two Political Episodes During a Chicago Political Weekend

It was an odd weekend in Chicago. The city's police force understandably focused on demonstrations inspired by the NATO conference. The cops and the crowd more or less managed to keep a lid on possible conflict.

Things were a bit different in Tinley Park, a Windy City suburb. Over the weekend, a Tinley Park restaurant became the scene of a wild, hammer-wielding fight between an alleged white supremacist group and an alleged anti-racist group. The story is noted in today's online edition of the Chicago Tribune.

It's an odd story. One would think a white supremacist group would be especially unwelcome in Barack Obama's Chicago. Why a self-defined "anti-racist" group travelled from Bloomington, Indiana to disrupt and assault a collection of bigots, as the Tribune story noted, is a curious question. How the group obtained information about the gathering is even more intriguing. Perhaps the white supremacists were using the NATO conference as a smoke screen for activities that could only be characterized as "dark."

Judge Strikes Down "Indefinite Detention" Provision of National Defense Authorization Act

Judge Katherine Forrest

Last week, Obama appointee Judge Katherine Forrest struck down a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which would have permitted a president to order the indefinite detention of people "suspected" of contact with "terrorists." The story about the judge's ruling, and the deeply disturbing genesis and nature of NDAA, is noted in commentary appearing in the Guardian.

Thanks to the financial blog zerohedge.com for picking up the story. 

NY Gov Cuomo Pushes NYC to End Fingerprinting Requirement for Food Stamp Applicants

New York governor Andrew Cuomo

According to a story in today's online editions of The New York Times, only one state in the Union requires the fingerprinting of food stamp applicants. That's Arizona. The newspaper also noted that New York City mandates fingerprinting before a poverty-slammed individual can apply for food stamps. Gotham government officials have defended the quasi-criminal treatment of food stamp applicants as "necessary" to prevent fraud.

Ironically, it has taken a New Yorker to challenge New York City's stance on fingerprinting. The state's governor, Andrew Cuomo, has proposed regulations that would end the City's practice.

I hope Cuomo's push gets results. It is absurd to lump food stamp recipients into the same style of governmental scrutiny as accused criminals. As Bishop Howard J. Hubbard said at a news conference announcing the proposed regulations, "Poverty and hunger are not crimes."

Chuck Brown, DC Music Icon -- RIP

Chuck Brown

Chuck Brown, who was the heart of Washington's soul music, passed away today at age 75. His obit appeared in today's online editions of The Washington Post.

He was a man who cared about others. I was just talking with a close friend who relayed a story about Brown's selfless outreach for someone enduring a very tough time. I wasn't close to Brown's world, but my sense was that Brown touched people in ways few can.

Sometimes, music has a power that defies algorithmic manipulation and commercial calculation. Only those with compassion and understanding, such as Chuck Brown, can bring that feeling home. He'll be missed, both within DC and to those who knew him and his music outside the nation's capital.

Mexican Novelist Carlos Fuentes -- RIP

Carlos Fuentes

The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes died in Mexico City at age 83. The Washington Post offers a useful obit on this well-regarded writer.

His passing occurred just days after a rumor about Gabriel Garcia Marquez's death swept the world. As it turned out, the Nobel Prize-winning Marquez is still alive, while his Mexican literary peer has passed on.

While Fuentes is best known for his fiction writing, he was something of a polymath. He was equally at home in diplomatic circles as well as the theatre. He considered himself a "transopolitan," meaning he was comfortable in the refined worlds of high culture, high social class, and high income. However, unlike many of the New Age's transopolitans, Fuentes actually cared about social issues and the fate of humanity.

I once briefly saw Fuentes. He visited a New York bookstore where I worked after graduating from college. He had a distinguished air, without arrogance or demanding sense of entitlement.

The Paris Review's interview of Fuentes is a useful introduction to his personality and work.

Ex-AIG Boss Hank Greenberg Fights Fraud Rap

Hank Greenberg
(photo from Time)

AIG's former chief executive Hank Greenberg continues his legal war against New York State. The war began when Eliot Spitzer bravely went after Greenberg and AIG, a stance history has ultimately vindicated. It took guts, as Greenberg was one of New York's most connected and feared power brokers.

Currently, New York governor Andrew Cuomo and New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman are pursuing a fraud case against Greenberg and an AIG associate. Of course, AIG remains at the heart of the American financial disaster. Greenberg bitterly watched AIG collapse. In a way, it was a shame. Greenberg had -- and has -- profound flaws and is "challenging" to deal with. Even so, he had -- and has -- more brains than the fools who fecklessly and arrogantly led the nation into financial catastrophe.

The story of Greenberg's trial was reported in the online edition of the Chicago Tribune and other publications.

Final note: Greenberg has always been a pugnacious individual. He's achieved his toughness honestly: he was among the Rangers who climbed Pointe du Hoc during D-Day.

A Single Mom Alone on Mother's Day

Mother duck with ducklings

Not every mother gets to celebrate or feel good about Mother's Day. I saw a mother with her two daughters today (Mother's Day 2012) and Mom was definitely not being feted. The three sat on the grass, with the kids reading books. The mother was working on a laptop computer. The trio stayed in these psychologically locked and upright positions for most of the afternoon. They left the grassy area around dinner time. During the afternoon, my thoughts returned to the seemingly unwanted mother. This must have been an emotionally tough day for her, and quite possibly for her two daughters.

I've never liked the concept of Mother's Day. When I taught English to recently arrived immigrants, students celebrated International Women's Day. My female colleagues received flowers and a certain extra respect that was touching. The day seemed more humane to me, and made much more sense than the greeting card monster Mother's Day has become in the States.

Americans don't really acknowledge International Women's Day. Instead, our country's women get acknowledgment on Mother's Day. And there's the rub. American women have to be maternal adults to earn a day of respect; otherwise, it's tough luck. Americans go through all sorts of painful hoops to celebrate Mother's Day. When I lived in Italy, Mother's Day simply did not exist, even though Italian moms have legendary familial pull. Well, like it or not, Mother's Day is an American institution. I just wonder how the left-out moms felt today.

Yahoo CEO Blames Exec Search Firm for His False Credientials

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson
(photo from CNN)

The Yahoo CEO story is a gift that keeps on giving. I noted in a blog post earlier this week how a Yahoo board member has significant ties to Las Vegas gaming interests. The latest Yahoo installment involves Scott Thompson, the embattled Yahoo boss, and his false academic credentials. Thompson's background information, filed with the SEC and signed by Thompson, stated he had earned a computer science degree. In fact, Thompson does not, and never had had, a computer science degree.

This story has overtones of Tom Cruise's character in the movie Magnolia (Frank T.J. Mackey) portraying his dodgy academic background. However, Scott Thompson's tale gets even better than anything movie director P.T. Anderson dreamed up. The San Jose Mercury News' Pete Carey reported that Thompson is now claiming an executive search firm "wrongly included a computer science degree in his background data years ago." (The executive search firm's stance on Thompson's assertion was not noted in Carey's article.)

One can infer that either Thompson did not read material the search firm prepared or he is prevaricating. Also, noboby, including former employers such as Pay Pal, took time to fully vett Thompson's credentials. At least Pay Pal apparently asked for a resume. According to Carey's story, Yahoo didn't even bother to do that. Given these facts, do you wonder what other skeletons are in the closets of America's supposedly best and brightest?

Yahoo Board Member Patti Hart's Las Vegas Connections

Patti Hart
(photo from IGT)

Yahoo board members and parade of senior management have seemingly worked overtime to ruin a once proud firm's reputation. Their troubles began when founder Jerry Yang, with the strong backing of Google, thumbed his nose to Microsoft's friendly buyout proposal. That misjudgment cost Yahoo shareholders a bonanza. However, Yang maintained Yahoo's purity for a time. Meanwhile, Yahoo's performance continued to melt as Google cynically turned up its competitive heat. A new CEO, Carol Bartz, was brought in to change Yahoo's decline. The foul-mouthed (by all accounts) Bartz lasted awhile, until Yahoo's downward spin began to dangerously accelerate. A new CEO, Scott Thompson, was found and duly sworn in, partly to begin the mass layoffs everyone knew Yahoo needed to start. His major Yahoo board backer was Patti Hart, CEO of International Game Technology (IGT).

This week, the tech world tuned into the latest edition of the Yahoo soap opera. It appears Thompson misstated his academic credentials. He appeared to claim, and Yahoo asserted in documentation to the SEC, that he had obtained a computer science degree from an obscure Massachusetts college. A hostile Yahoo board member bothered to perform due diligence and discovered Thompson did not earn a computer science degree anyplace. As Thompson's de facto sponsor, Hall took the very public fall.

Si Redd (photo from Las Vegas Sun)

What's much more curious to me than Thompson's possible duplicity is Hall's background. IGT is a major player in the slot machine business. Its founder, Si Redd, is associated with the invention of video poker. Neither business is one for the faint of heart.

Inquiring minds wonder what Ms. Hart and her Nevada cohorts found so appealing about Yahoo. Clearly, Yahoo's international reach would have been a tempting target for a street-smart enterprise keen on international, Internet-based growth. Having a "family member," so to speak, on the board gave these sharp wits a tremendous, insider advantage. If any group understands the value of "early information," it's Las Vegas investors.

For a wickedly fascinating profile of Ms. Hart, read Sarah Klaphake Cords' piece in the December 2010 issue of Gaming Enterprise Management. For a mostly critical perspective on Hart's stacking IGT senior management with "her people," click to Las Vegas Review-Journal staffer Howard Stutz' column on Hart's hiring of IGT's chief financial officer.

Reclaimed Jersey Creek Becomes Competitive Rowers' Sanctuary

Columbia University rowing team on Overpeck Creek.
(Photo from The New York Times.)

At first glance, northern New Jersey's Overpeck Creek seems an unlikely destination for competitive rowers. The waterway is a long stone's throw from an endlessly busy stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike. For years, the creek and its adjoining banks were a dreadful, polluted dump where toxic substances were an everyday occurrence. As with much of the Meadowlands, humans over the decades have worked hard to destroy or "develop" the creek, which happens to be part of a major North American flyway.

In recent years, Overpeck Creek slowly returned from its biological zombie state to the land of the somewhat living. That evolution, along with the stream's excellent rowing conditions, led local high schools to use it for training. Now Overpeck Creek has been discovered by Columbia University's rowing squad, and perhaps coincidentally, by The New York Times.

The newspaper ran an excellent article in today's online editions about Overpeck Creek, the rowing squads using it, and the mostly dreadful alternatives for rowers in the New York metropolitan area. The story is worth reading and thinking about. After that, check out a northjersey.com story on the same topic. It's remarkably similar to the Times article. However, northjersey.com's version was published over two months ago.

Is Google Continuing to Move Its Offices Into Big-Time City Centers?

Chicago's Merchandise Mart,
one of the locations Google is reportedly
considering for Motorola Mobility offices.

A story in Crain's chicagobusiness.com reported that Google plans to move Motorola Mobility from suburban Chicago to the heart of the Windy City. The move, which Google did not confirm, follows a pattern new, and newly powerful, companies are following. Essentially, their young, ambitious, talented employees want and demand the vitality and excitement of big city life. It's more important to be closer to dance clubs than golf clubs. I noted this Google trend in a 2010 post addressing Google's acquisition of an office building that occupies a square block of New York's Chelsea neighborhood.

Now, if you were a business owner, would you locate in the suburbs or the city? You're welcome to reply, and note the size of your hypothetical or legit firm in your comments. I happen to think the city and the suburbs have business game; it's a matter of which one fits your firm's needs.

Judge Turns Thumbs Down On Facebook "Like" As Free Speech

Bad news and Saturdays are historic dance partners. Today's hidden headline comes from Tidewater Virginia, where a US district judge ruled in a case involving Facebook "like" usage and free speech.

The case involved a sheriff who fired six workers for what the law enforcement official claimed was cause. Those fired claimed they were let go because they publicly supported the sheriff's opponent in an election. Some made their political preference known by using Facebook's "like" button.

The judge in the case, Clinton appointee Robert Jackson, ruled against the fired employees. According to an Associated Press report picked up in the San Jose Mercury News, the jurist did not view the "like" button as "expressive speech. In other words, it's not the same as actually writing out a message and posting it on the site."

If the plaintiffs can afford the appeal, one would expect them to pursue this matter in a higher court. It's a fascinating case with profound implications for free speech.

Did IKEA Use Cuban Prison Labor For Furniture Manufacturing?

IKEA was, no pun intended, an American household name in the previous decade. This was an era of tremendous housing expansion, cheap credit, and "don't ask, don't tell" residential mortgages. IKEA was seen an an inexpensive option for those who had a new space and needed furniture to fill it. Few asked hard questions about the provenance of IKEA items. They were inexpensive, and that was enough.

Well, the furniture came from someplace. One of those venues, as it turned out, was Cuba. Today's online edition of The Miami Herald notes allegations, originally reported in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, that Cuban prison labor produced dining tables, children's tables, and sofas for the Scandinavian firm.

IKEA said it was investigating this unique form of outsourcing.

Richard Torres' "The Hoodie"

New England Patriots' coach
Bill Belichick in his hoodie.

My close friend Richard Torres recently published a piece in firstofthemonth.org called The Hoodie. It's a well crafted, thoughtful article about what's going on in today's Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. By all means read Torres' story as soon as possible: reality is always worth your time. (A companion text could be Baratunde Thurston's How to Be Black.)

To provide a sense of Torres' piece, I've included a photo of NFL coach Bill Belichick to establish context for the following question: how would you feel if you were walking down a dimly lit street and saw approaching Belichick approaching?