Story in Spiegel Online profiling Duong Van Ngo, a 77-year old trilingual resident of Saigon (excuse me, Ho Chi Minh City) who claims to be the last of the city’s public letter writers. In the old days, these fixtures outside post offices and ports would draft and sometimes translate letters and documents and even scribble off a few lines of poetry for the besotted but illiterate romantic. The author describes Mr. Ngo as “a mediator between worlds — a professional letter writer of the sort that used to exist in the old days. He chooses each word carefully, formulates cautiously, polishes the style of the letter. He knows how important words are and what harm they can do. Ngo doesn’t just translate. He bridges the distance between people, advises and comforts them, discreetly and with perfect attention to form.” Check it out. (Via Arts & Letters Daily) American Historical Association president Barbara Weinstein in the latest issue of the AHA newsletter, Perspectives, walks the “thin, wavy line between justified complaint and unwarranted whining, I can testify that, even now, historians of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East often feel like outliers in their own profession.” While acceptance