Nan Goldin Photography

The entry titled "Singer, celebrities party like it's 1980," and any of the comments about it.

We need tech-savvy leaders — no joke

The problem goes far beyond McCain, who's usually rather tech-friendly. Search for Sen. Ted Stevens on Google, and one of the first results you get about the man who until this year was third in line for the presidency is his famously clueless characterization of the Internet as a series of tubes. President Bush's similarly addled descriptions of the Web (he has referred to the Google) have been pure gold for Saturday Night Live.

In fact, technology shouldn't be such a laughing matter.

As a nation, we wouldn't tolerate such ignorance about any other area of policy-making. Would we be amused if it came out that Joe Biden, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wasn't clear about the difference between Shiites and Sunnis or couldn't find Sudan on a map? How about if Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate banking committee, wasn't entirely sure what the term subprime mortgage meant? You can be sure that if Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on .

Peter Hujar's love for the lonely

According to Peter Hujar, New York City is one of the loneliest places in the world. People live there by the million, but those in Hujar’s photographs, at least – friends and acquaintances from the 1970s intelligentsia and gay bohemian sub-cultures – look mentally and emotionally alone, alert to the delicate sorrows of the human condition.

Hujar, who died in 1987, was an important American photographer of the 1970s and early 1980s, whose work describes New York at a time when the city was financially impoverished but artistically rich. In this first British retrospective, the ICA has selected approximately 50 works, mainly portraits, many of them little known but others that will be recognised even by those who go blank at the name Hujar. Alongside them is a handful of quietly powerful nocturnal city landscapes and five of his 1960s photographs of the catacombs in Palermo, where skeletons were displayed fully clothed, their sad, hollow faces peering out into the gloom.

Grades 5 & Up

If readers are able to look past the rather youthful cover art, they will find inspiring, entertaining, and well-written stories. First Times could inspire students to write about happenings in their lives that were particularly memorable or life-altering.—Robyn Zaneski, New York Public Library

Gr 4–7—Ben Arnold, his father, and his older sister Ellie must bid farewell to their mother and baby sister, Alice, who are making their way back to Eidolon, the magical land described in The Secret Country (S & S, 2006). Saddened by their departure, Ben and his father are horrified to discover that Ellie has mistakenly crossed into Eidolon, too.

What Thanksgiving means to me, part 2

Homemade apple (we had our own apple, pear, peach and cherry trees) and mince pies were her dessert specialty. She also made the cranberry sauce.

On Thanksgiving Day, Grandma would arrive via train from Paterson and we would pick her up at the DL&W railroad station in Dover. Gasoline was still in short supply then.

We all sat down to a beautifully set table, said a prayer led by my father, and enjoyed this feast. The best part was that everything on the table came from our garden or what we secured from hunting.

The sad part is that in today's busy atmosphere, this holiday seems to lose much of the meaning. We were very thankful for what we had and did not complain about what we didn't have. I enjoyed joining my dad on many hunting and fishing trips, and received an education from him that cannot be duplicated or replaced.

American Sports

His sophomore year, Mickey was my teammate, the ace of a club that not only won the NCS championship but also was voted "mythical" national champions of prep baseball by Collegiate Baseball magazine and the Easton Bat Co. You can look it up. The Tamalpais Union High School District office still displays a giant photo of that "number one team in the nation." Mick was 11-1, first team All-MCAL. As a junior he was 14-0, a high school All-American. Redwood won the NCS title again and finished number two in the nation. As a senior, Mick again made All-American, was named by Cal-Hi Sports the state's best baseball player, and another organization even went so far as to award him the title "National Athlete of the Year."

Mick turned down the Boston Red Sox to accept a full ride to play for Rod Dedeaux at USC.

The day the City of Allegheny disappeared

As a postscript in one installment, an unsigned essay reads, in part, "It is almost impossible to make a separate chapter out of Allegheny when writing a history of Pittsburg. Many of the men who have made Pittsburg famous as an industrial center have their homes in Allegheny and no one who lives on the north side is independent of the thriving, bustling city across the river. "

"I think a lot of folks felt like we were a step-child," said former city councilwoman Barbara Burns, a native of East Allegheny.