Despite my comments earlier regarding Google and its actions supporting censorship in China, I’ve decided to include Google Adsense ads on Northern Letter. A friend whose opinion I respect suggested that doing so was unlikely to affect what I write. He pointed out that Harper’s magazine includes ads from oil companies and regularly criticizes those same companies.

I was convinced enough by his arguments that the ads are now there. Of such compromises life is made. We must beware too much compromise, however.

Martin Amis has been one of my favorite writers for almost twenty years now. This brilliant British writer and sympathetic observer of America has published an engaging story about September 11 terrorist leader Muhammad Atta in the April 24 edition of the The New Yorker. It’s an unsparing fictional portrait of Atta, but one that nevertheless attempt to understand his state of mind. Here is one important passage:

The core reason was of course all the killing–all the putting to death….He was thinking of the war, the wars, the war cycles that would flow from this day. He didn’t believe in the Devil, as an active force, but he did believe in death. Death, at certain times, stopped moving at its even pace and broke into a hungry, lumbering run.

I’ve been working hard on the issue of promoting bicycling and walking in my hometown of Northfield, Minnesota. Here’s an article on those efforts that I submitted to Northfield.org, our remarkable local web-based community, at the request of Northfield.org managing editor and fellow bike/ped activist Anne Bretts: Creating a Pedesrian- and Bicycle-Friendly Community. Read the rest of this entry »

A week ago, on Thursday, April 27, I attended justFair lobby day, a lobbying effort on behalf of the GLBT community organized by OutFront Minnesota. As a straight ally of gays and lesbians, I hadn’t been very active in the cause recently beyond contacting legislators via phone or mail. I felt I should go to this event. And so, forgoing paid employment for most of the day, I drove up to the cities. Read the rest of this entry »