A fascinating video report charting the history of the Jews of Mexico City. The reporter, Ben Harris, is at the beginning of a months-long journey across North America and Europe documenting tales of Jewish life for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. You can follow him on his JTA blog The Wandering Jew and on Twitter.

An incredible chain of events:

WASHINGTON — In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.

In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.

In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.

Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the first lady.

In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery NYT

Canada or the USA without European immigrants would look somewhat like Africa.

It’s no coincidence that the best countries in the world are either European or founded by Europeans. Everywhere they go, European immigrants make things better – until they’re asked to leave, at which point everything usually descends back into chaos. Not that they ever get any thanks for it.

Nope, not the rantings of a KKK website or the National Front, but a blog on The Telegraph’s website. Scanning through the rest of Rachel Marsden’s posts it seems a healthy mix of condescension and xenophobia is par for the course. She has an interesting history too.

Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics are peddling a politically correct fantasy The Telegraph

I felt more than a twinge of sympathy this weekend when I read about the plight of Liam Daniel Pierce, a writer with the misfortune to start out in journalism just as the recession began.

Pierce recounts, in the Metropolitan section of the New York Times, how he went from a confirmed internship at The New Yorker to singing “O Sole Mio” aboard a gondola in Central Park.

Perhaps every freelancer needs an additional skill or two up their sleeve. There has certainly been more than one occasion during the past six years when I have wished I could supplement my writing income. And in recent months I have heard at least a couple of journalists talk wistfully about a career change–lawyer, farmer, store owner, consultant.

But Pierce’s story isn’t about writing. It’s a delicious tale about the goings on in a 37-foot-long microcosm of New York:

Some proposals go immaculately, like the one on a Tuesday night in July that coincided with the New York Philharmonic’s concert in the park. Beethoven was filtering through the Ramble, and shortly after the night’s young hero got down on one knee beneath the Bow Bridge, fireworks exploded over the lake. The timing was not planned, but as his new fiancée was bawling out, “This is too perfect!” I could not help but feel that this couple was meant to be.

On the other end of the spectrum was the Casanova who showed up 15 minutes late to his own proposal. Halfway through the 30-minute, $30 cruise, he asked, “Hey, how long is this thing, anyway?” Incredulous to learn that it was about time to head back, he blurted: “Ah, forget it! Uh, will you marry me?” Then, while his bride-to-be called her mother with the news, Mr. Romantic turned and asked, “Hey, boss, know any cheap restaurants around here?”

Then there are those that never quite get off the water. In the middle of a cruise with a lovely South African couple, a rowboat approached carrying members of the pop band Chester French. They circled us, declared their fame then jumped on the gondola, crying out, “This is a pirate takeover!” (only with an unprintable modifier starting with “f” between “pirate” and “takeover”). Apparently they were shooting a music video. The situation struck me as slightly uncomfortable, until a week later, when a YouTube search of “Central Park gondola” brought up a hit titled “Chester French Postpones My Marriage Proposal.”

The story gets even better and is very well written, which means, I hope, that Pierce won’t be rowing that gondola for long.

Oh, How Romantic (Until the Pirate Attack) NYT