'Mulligan's Christmas Stew' served for the holidays

Originally posted on AP.org

Hugh Mulligan was the kind of guy you hope sits next to you on a long train ride – funny, smart, kind and with more stories than a lifetime should include. A collection of 44 holiday columns by the former special correspondent of The Associated Press has just been published under the title "Mulligan’s Christmas Stew."

It's available as an oversize paperback from Rosetta Books and as a Kindle e-book.  

"Mulligan’s Christmas Stew" includes the stories behind "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Silent Night," and explores the mystery of who Santa Claus is, noting that thousands of words have been written about him, "but he has never submitted to an interview." One column considers what it would be like if Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Mr. Pickwick and other famous characters from holiday fiction all came to Christmas dinner. 

Mulligan, a native New Yorker whose work appeared in newspapers across the country, recounted his adventures in nearly 150 countries. He covered popes, presidents and princesses. He retired in 2000 and died in 2008 at age 83. 

In The Wall Street Journal this week, columnist Ralph Gardner Jr. called Mulligan "a witty and erudite storyteller."

For those familiar with Mulligan’s work, the book will be a keepsake that gathers his holiday stories in one place. For younger readers, it will serve as an introduction to the popular storyteller. 

In a 1958 piece titled "Brainy Babes in Toyland," Mulligan wrote:

Like everyone else, I'd like to be a child again at Christmas, but frankly I just don't have the IQ for it anymore.

Toddlers today, as any department store toy catalogue plainly shows, are so far ahead of the rest of us intellectu­ally that parents need a cram course at the Institute for Advanced Study to set the toys out under the tree.

It was bad enough in the old days trying to assemble junior's scooter and sister's doll carriage on the night be­fore Christmas, when all that was needed was the brains of an Edison or Marconi. But how are you going to con­tend with the 266-piece, four-foot-long atomic cannon that actually fires and the alpha 1 ballistic missile with its rocket motor, remote control adjustable launcher and its nontoxic, nonflammable oxidizer and fuel load?

Actor and storyteller Malachy McCourt writes in a foreword:

This is a serene book that nudges its way into your heart. And speaking for myself, I don't believe I'll have a negative thought about Christmas again as these stories, an amazing gift all their own, would even put a smile on Ebenezer Scrooge's face!

"Mulligan's Christmas Stew" includes Christmas trivia and quizzes, and concludes with an oral history about the journalist’s life and career that he did for AP Corporate Archives in 2005. It is the latest in AP’s burgeoning book publishing program. 

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April 3rd, 2010 - A Date Which Will Live In (Tech) Infamy

Yes, it was a Saturday to remember, full of technological history in the making, but one which I could only watch from the sidelines :-(

As I mentioned in a previous Blog post a couple of weeks ago, I ordered Apple's iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G back in March and now I'm patiently waiting for it to arrive sometime in late April.

AND IT'S KILLING ME!!!!

Like most tech enthusiasts, I'd been following every bit of news I could about the April 3rd release of the iPad from any source I could devour. I confess, I couldn't get enough.

I was glad that gadget reviewers like David Pogue of the New York Times, Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal, and Ed Baig of USAToday gave the iPad good marks overall.

It was fun to read people's enthusiastic tweets like these by a few folks I follow:
@petermeyers - UPS just called: my iPad is about an hour away!
@pablod - Ok, looking at photos is every bit as amazing as advertised
@ranajune - My iPad is synched and ready to face the world. I couldn't be more excited.
@maureengg - Mesmerizing for media consumption. Fab and fun as novel work tool. Can real-life experiences be as compelling as this?

There were also a couple of Blog posts that really stood out for me and I'd like to share them here:
iPad Review: It Only Had One Flaw by Craig Kanalley, The Huffington Post
iPad: The First Real Family Computer by Sarah Perez, ReadWriteWeb

Plus these two videos featuring Dylan Tweney from Wired do a terrific job of demonstrating the striking difference between using an eInk device like the SonyReader VS. the iPad with its color display and functionality:
Sony Reader Demo
iPad Demo

(The Sony Daily Edition currently sells for $399, so it's hard for me to imagine NOT spending the extra $100 for the iPad to experience all it can do.)

So after all this you might appreciate how excited I was when a colleague of mine brought his new iPad to the office and generously let me play around with it for a while. I'm definitely planning to post a full review later this month, but for now here are my immediate impressions:
1. It has a little bit more heft then I expected.
2. Just like my iPhone, I wouldn't want to drop the iPad 'cos it feels like it would easily get damaged.
3. Reading a book was simply wonderful and it felt great to sit back to enjoy a good book.
4. The virtual typing initially feels a bit strange, just as it did on the iPhone, but in short order I was doing just fine.
5. I can see myself bringing it to every meeting, on every plane trip, and reading newspapers, magazines, and email on the train with a dumb-ass grin on my face ;-)

There's so much more to say and I'm looking forward to doing so in a few weeks after I've really had the chance to dive deeply into this amazing device.

Whether you love it, hate it, or can't make up your mind, one thing for sure is April 3rd, 2010, will be the day in personal computing when everything changed - And for the better!

Don't believe that? Then check this out.

If you've got an opinion about the iPad, I'd love to hear it.