The first I heard was a text message from my son. Then another text message from my other son. Simple words. Osama bin Laden is dead. In the morning, while I scoured the newspaper, young people were posting their reactions on Facebook. Some were celebratory, others somber, most were somewhere in between.

Each time the price of gas climbs, a predictable political dance takes place. You don’t even have to wait for the newspaper to arrive to know what’s going to happen. First the New York state attorney general announces that there will be an investigation of price gouging.

Everywhere you look, it seems that the way to shill products ranging from Budweiser to Subarus is by sticking a cute dog in the ad. Dogs have replaced that great American standby—the female body—as the go-to image for pimping a product to the public..

President Obama’s violent reaction to the Libyan uprising is doomed to fail

Unlike hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis do not have names. And for the most part, the tragic double or triple whammy to hit Japan does not even have a face. Most of the victims have been buried or cremated, and the survivors we see have their faces covered with masks.

With all due respect to our beloved neighbors on Tipp Hill, I’ve never been much for green beer. Ditto the green bagels that become ever more popular year by year, or the green scrambled eggs some diners like to serve.

Like the lost mitten, now that the snow and ice are finally melting away, you may soon find that the debate on hydrofracking hasn’t gone away—it was just out of sight. This spring, gas industry proponents of this controversial method for getting the gas under our feet into our homes and workplaces are counting on a new ally in the White House.

Look at the faces standing outside the Capitol in Madison, Wis. Whether you believe it or not, those folks are carrying on a struggle on behalf of all of us. Those workers and their families are me and you.

A lot of people around town have been dissecting what many perceive as the lackluster campaign run by Dan Maffei, who lost his congressional seat to Ann Marie Buerkle in last November’s voting for the right to represent the 25th District in Washington.

Imagine all the people, filling up the square, chanting for freedom, insisting with their lives on the line that the dictator must go. We don’t have to imagine it in Egypt, where the hatred for Hosni Mubarak and the desire for change have brought a sleepy populace to that place no one had predicted, a place where they are willing to risk their lives for a better future. We can watch it live.