I’d expected dancing in the streets in the People’s Republic but perhaps because of deep snow and freezing cold, instead found a friendly breakfast gathering at Upstairs on the Square (photos and video to follow, if people send them to me).

Watched Obama’s eloquent speech with Harvard students at Quincy House–most listened with rapt attention, even standing for the national anthem, hands over hearts.

I was most impressed with Obama’s suggestion to those who blame the West for the state of their own nations that populations care about what governments can build, not what they can destroy–and distressed when, after the address, viewed enthusiastically by millions, the stock market took a 300 point drop.

In the evening, went back to Upstairs for drinks with Mark Hoffman, of Burlington, and Marc Kessler, of Cambridge, whose photo (above) I took with a larger-than-life cardboard Obama cutout.

We were sorry to miss free skating and hot chocolate at the Charles Hotel, readings of various inaugural addresses at the American Repertory’s Arrow Street Theater, the Harvard Bookstore’s “winedown,” and numerous house parties but, unlike the Obamas, who attended ten inaugural balls, we couldn’t be everywhere!

The New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.

With the ever increasing fall of bookstores and impending newspaper layoffs, I’d like to echo Alex Beam’s call for readers to reach for their wallets.

In case you missed his January 9 column, “Closing Costs,” in the Boston Globe, it opens: “Here is a dispatch from the Land of No Suprises: Bookstores–buffed by the recession, by Amazon, by electronic reading devices–are closing their doors”. He points out that, easy as it is to go to Amazon for books and read newspapers online for free, by behaving normally, “you kill the things you love.”

In Boston, after several waves of reporter buyouts, people keep telling me that they’ve dropped their subscriptions to the Globe because it’s gone downhill, and, anyway, they can get it on line, for free. Duh.

My apologies for stating the obvious, but many of my friends don’t seem to get that, in  a vicious financial cycle,  with fewer paying customers,   the paper can get fewer advertisers, revenues go down, and, as a result, the Globe and many other papers have had to  “encourage”  their most senior,  talented reporters to leave.  The Globe announced  a new round of editorial layoffs just last week.

I’ll be writing more about this–but for the time being, please support the  free press–by paying for it.

The New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, of Cambridge, MA.

Cambridge consulting firm Scientia Advisors says that big pharma could begin to reap profits from personalized medicine much sooner than predicted by marketing new diagnostics tools along with drugs that are already on the market. (Most pharma companies are currently using personalized medicine tools only in developing new drugs–which won’t bring any profits for years down the road).  Based on quantitative and qualitative research, Scientia’s study, published in the January, 2009 Pharmaceutical Executive describes how  three companies grew their profits and improved their relationships with prescribing physicians using the new model.  According to Scientia Managing Partner Harry Glorikian, the method will also improve patient care, lower costs and lead to health system reforms.  More info is available at www.scientiaadv.org.

Scientia Advisors is a client of the Harris Communications Group.

Anita Harris