Reignited ire buffets Muslim students  – Despite tensions, many hold to their belief in America
By Lisa Wangsness – Globe Staff / September 6, 2010

WELLESLEY — Laila Alawa fiddled with her cellphone, pretending she hadn’t heard what an apparently intoxicated man near her on the MBTA had said about “her people’’ wanting to build the “ground zero mosque.’’

Growing up in a large Muslim family in upstate New York and New Hampshire, Alawa had often drawn stares because of her headscarf, and sometimes endured harassment from neighborhood children. But this summer, as she shuttled between research jobs at Wellesley College and MIT, the looks and questions from strangers about where she was from seemed to come more often, and with a sharper edge.

“Every day I wake up, I just really want to put it out there — like, we’re not going to hurt you,’’ Alawa, a 19-year-old Wellesley student, said in an interview last week. “We are normal people, with fears and aspirations.’’

Seiji Ozawa’s Return to the Stage
By JAMES R. OESTREICH/NYT – September 5, 2010

MATSUMOTO, Japan — It was not exactly the return he had hoped for, but the conductor Seiji Ozawa scored a triumph of a limited sort here at the Saito Kinen Festival on Sunday afternoon as he returned to the public stage for the first time since surgery for esophageal cancer in January.

He opened a program of the festival orchestra (he was supposed to have led all of it), conducting the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. Then, because he was experiencing sciatic problems that recurred as a byproduct of the surgery, he stepped aside to let a younger conductor, Tatsuya Shimono, take over.

A progressive voter guide for JP and surrounding neighborhoods
By adamg / UniversalHub – 9/5/10 – 10:44 pm
The Jamaica Plain Progressives posts answers to questionnaires sent to candidates in the 2nd Suffolk state senate race (Sonia Chang-Diaz and Hassan Williams), the 15th Suffolk state rep’s race (Jeff Sanchez and Jeff Herman) and the 6th Suffolk state rep’s race (Russell Holmes and Divo Rodrigues Monteiro; other candidates did not reply).

Best brunch on Mission Hill
By adamg / UniversalHub – 9/5/10 – 10:31 am
Meesh says give it up for the Mission on Huntington Avenue.

1847 – Henry David Thoreau leaves Walden Pond and moves in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord, Massachusetts.  More anniversaries.