We’re in week three of preparing the first issue of the Berkshire Savant, which began as a few articles to liven up our first catalog and soon morphed into a full-fledged magazine, complete with celebrity authors (Robert Bellah, Simon Winchester), how-to sidebars (“Protect Your Identity,” an article about identity theft by expert Anna Sabasteanski, editor of the forthcoming Patterns of Global Terrorism), and games. Richard Charkin told me about the sudoku craze in the UK so we’ve decided to introduce it to the library world. All the more appropriate then, to read this weekend’s article in the Financial Times, which explains that while sudoku doesn’t require special math skills, it is mathematics. What a relief! I like to think that we’re improving America’s technical literacy, too, even when we’re just having fun.

The FT gives you only a few paragraphs as a sampler, but I must say that this conservative financial newspaper is, like the Economist magazine, one of my favorite sources of global news. And I can get it delivered at home, even here in Great Barrington. FT article “Count Me In“