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notes  THE VISITOR - "In a sense, "The Visitor" is about the global econ professor bonding with the illegals, but the movie's not a tract. It's really about how people can come into our lives, change them, and leave. This is a film of our times - paranoid, heartbroken, disillusioned - and the rare recent American movie whose characters react the way actual people might." - Wesley Morris, Boston Globe CATHERINE RUSSELL: "After listening to a continuous stream of releases by purported rising jazz singers - who couldn't have lasted through a chorus in a contest with Ella Fitzgerald or Betty Carter - it's a delight to hear the real thing in Catherine Russell. . at the center of gravity that has always kept the music alive is 'the groove' that Cat Russell embodies." - Nat Hentoff     WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A FARMER [Your editor recently uncovered in a forgotten file this wonderful description of what the disappearing craft of being a farmer is about. I was blessed as a young man to have worked on a farm and with farmers and as I reread this I was reminded where some of my sense of the possible comes from. I was also reminded that when I wrote the "Great American Political Manual," my editor at WW Norton apologetically told me that one of her colleagues had expressed fear that "repair" sounded too much like work. "Oh, that's right," I replied. "You folks in Manhattan don't repair anything; you just call the super."] KW CARTER, MAINE TIMES 1974 - It will take a third of a lifetime for a man to learn the many and diverse skills necessary to enable him to survive while producing beef, potatoes, milk or what have you. He will, when he has attained competence as a farmer become expert in all of the following fields plus a great many others which I have not mentioned. He will have a working knowledge of plant and animal nutrition. He will be an efficient rough carpenter, He will be a competent lumberman and woodsman. He will be a veterinarian of sorts. , He will have the skills of a mediocre housepainter and electrician. He will .have a working knowledge of many kinds of machinery and be a more or less skillful mechanic. He will know how to dig a well, wall up a spring, lay a .waterpipe and do some rough plumbing, He will ,learn how to predict the weather with greater accuracy than the U.S. [Weather] Bureau or he will be in deep trouble. He must have some knowledge of accounting or the government will nail him to the cross the first time he makes any money He must know how to build a barbed wire fence, corduroy a road through the swamp, butcher a hog, salt his sowbelly and raise his beans; how to deliver a cow of her calf, how deep to plant his beet and spinach seed, build a scarecrow to keep the crows out of the com, and shoot the foxes, racoons and squirrels that eat his poultry and raid his garden; he will learn to hang an axe, file a saw, shingle the barn, install lightning rods, repair the mowing machine, cure cannibalism among the chickens, and make a brine to cure his ham and bacon. He must learn to handle a dangerous bull or get gored in the process. He must be capable of conning his banker out of a loan when things are taught, which they certainly will be; and he will learn [guile] when dealing with those who buy his produce or they will skin him alive and nail his hide on his own barn door. This is perhaps ten percent of the skills he must learn to survive, None of them require any enormous intellectual capacity, but he will be years learning them the hard way |
   NEARLY TWO-THIRDS OF TEENS NEVER WEAR A WATCH MARTHA IRVINE, AP - Market researchers say more people are carrying electronic devices that also tell time, whether a phone, an Ipod or a Blackberry. They're also finding that young people, in particular, are more interested in spending their money on other kinds of accessories, such as shoes and hand bags. In a survey last fall, investment bank Piper Jaffray & Co. found that nearly two-thirds of teens never wear a watch - and only about one in 10 wears one every day. Experian Simmons Research also discovered that, while Americans spent more than $5.9 billion on watches in 2006, that figure was down 17 percent when compared with five years earlier. PEOPLE - INCLUDING CHILDREN - TOO BUSY TO USE THEIR BACKYARDS JANET EASTMAN, LA TIMES - A new study by UCLA. . . show that neither parents nor their kids are enjoying much time of any sort, much less leisure, in their yards. Anthropology professor Jeanne E. Arnold, lead author of the study that will be published in the March Journal of Family and Economic Issues, says that Angelenos put a lot of money into making their yards attractive and entertaining. "They are a buffer of green" from the outside world, she says, but "backyards might as well be blocks away considering how often the families go in them." Of the families with working parents and school-age children monitored for the study, more than half of the children didn't spend any playtime in their backyards and most parents only wandered briefly there to perform chores: take out the trash, feed dogs or wash off chairs. "Occasionally a kid would kick a soccer ball but it wasn't for too long," says Arnold. "We admire backyards from inside the house or in our mind's eye, while we're busy doing other things.". . TEEN TEXT MESSAGES 6,800 TIMES IN ONE MONTH MARGARET WEBB PRESSLER, WASHINGTON POST - Last month, Sofia Rubenstein, 17, used 6,807 text messages, which pushed her family's wireless bill to more than $1,100 for the month. She couldn't believe the Last month, Sofia Rubenstein, 17, used 6,807 text messages, which pushed her family's wireless bill to more than $1,100 for the month. She couldn't believe the "incredible" number she hit. "It's whatever pops into my head. There's no stopping it," she said. "Sometimes I'll be on the phone with someone and I get texted, and then I'm having two conversations at once." Sofia will be working in her parents' retail
store this summer to pay off her debt -- but she definitely won't
be the only teenager paying for text abuse. . .  GALLERY OF PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE NOTES FROM ROOMMATES AND CO-WORKERS    ABOUT
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 THE BOSTON MOB IN REAL TIME ALMOST KILLED POPULAR TALK SHOW HOST |
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