There was an article on the front page of the Register Star recently with this headline: "Pizza Man 'terrorist' might walk" and the article that followed was the story of Ansar Mahmood, a Hudson man who is being illegally detained after being cleared of any terrorist connections. I thought the headline was alarmist, misleading and irresponsible and thought I should write a letter. I have these kinds of thoughts all the time but the letter never gets written. I sat on it for a week or so and then felt inspired one night when my laptop was open upstairs and I was supposed to be getting Aidan ready for bed. I e-mailed it that night and went to bed feeling like the whole thing was much too easy and my letter was probably just jettisoned out into the ether. Even if they did publish it, would I ever know since I don't have a subscription and only buy the paper sporadically?

Last Sunday Ansar Mahmood was on the front page of the paper again - I bought it and my letter was there. A few days later I got a phone call from someone asking if I was the person who had written the letter. I admitted that I was, a little afraid that I was about to get threatened - but it was someone thanking me - he said he wanted to write that letter himself but couldn't since he knows the person who wrote the headline. We spoke for a few minutes, it seems that the editor who wrote the headline is actually sympathetic to Mahmood's predicament and just wrote a stupid headline. Hmmm, stupid editor. He described himself as an old radical who is at the peace vigils in Hudson every weekend. We are regrettably not going to Washington this Saturday so I am going to head down to the vigil in Hudson and see if I can meet him. It was so great that he called me, it makes me feel a little more plugged into the community here.