NY Observer > Scranton http://www.observer.com/taxonomy/term/27074/feed Articles from Observer.com en The Question http://www.observer.com/node/30707 Guess what question Hillary Clinton got first in a Q&A this morning?

"Well," she said. "That's alright. You kind of threw me off a little talking about my grandfather coming here in 1881." Bill Rudin, the event's MC--who kissed Mrs. Clinton on the cheek three times in two different instances without freaking her out as Andrew Cuomo reportedly had last week--had mentioned that his family and Mrs. Clinton's had immigrated around the same time.

Mrs. Clinton said her grandfather, one of eight children, worked in the Scranton mills, made it to foreman, and retired with a gold watch that he always wore. She got a little choked up. Not too much, but it was striking.

And the answer of the day is: "I'm blessed. I am going to think about the future. I have no decision, I have made no plans. I haven't really even had a time to talk to people. I'm open to thoughts."

-- Choire Sicha]]> http://www.observer.com/node/30707#comments Politics Andrew Cuomo Bill Rudin Hillary Clinton Scranton Mon, 13 Nov 2006 05:20:39 -0500 Observer Staff 30707 at http://www.observer.com Tuesday: Everyone Always Blames the Brooklyn Jews http://www.observer.com/node/35077
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Hard out here for the Orthodox
  • NYU says Borough Park is the most crowded neighborhood in New York, on account of big Orthodox families squeezing into small houses. Meanwhile, prices are so high in Williamsburg that hundreds of local Hassidim are fleeing for the greener pastures of upstate Scranton (an area known eerily as The Hill). And, sadly: brokers do not like "tough customer" observant Jews. (New York Post)
  • Paul Goldberger disses architect Daniel Libeskind's plans for Ground Zero: "he cloaked his familiar angular shapes in patriotic rhetoric," the critic writes, before pointing out that anyway the plan "has been compromised almost out of existence." And then, for shame, he calls New York "supposedly sophisticated." (New Yorker)
  • Macy's goes high-tech, building a 35,000-square-foot J&R Express store within its Herald Square flagship. The Alliance for Downtown New York has sighted the expansion at the big J&R Music & Computer World (on Park Row north of Fulton) as evidence of Lower Manhattan's rebirth. Does that mean Herald Square is hot now too? (NY Post)
  • Andrew Rasiej aims to hook up New Yorkers with 25,000 free wireless routers, a campaign that took off last week with 25 gratis set-ups in the East Village. "This is a people-powered effort," he says--which means that free (or cheap) citywide Internet is a long, long way off. (Citi Limits)
  • Pulitzer Prize-winning Novelist Richard Ford on realty and fiction: "I was writing a paragraph about what it feels like to live in a town where housing prices are falling. And, in the process of thinking about that, I just expanded my frame of reference to include the larger human condition... We calculate our spiritual condition, in part, in terms of how and where we live. I don't think it's peculiarly American to feel that way, and yet it is American." (New Yorker)
    • - Max Abelson]]> http://www.observer.com/node/35077#comments Real Estate Daniel Libeskind Herald Square NYP Holdings Inc. Scranton Tue, 22 Aug 2006 04:30:00 -0400 Observer Staff 35077 at http://www.observer.com