Renaissance

Hello Peter!  I'm impressed that you figured out what that passage means; I can't quite get my mind around it.  It's a good message in any case.  That meeting between us in Hendy Woods will go down in the annals of my family as a wondrous event -- what were the chances of your cousin taking you to Hendy Woods of all places, and of us choosing to look for blackberries so late in the day at exactly that place?  Did you suggest a trip to Hendy Woods because you knew that we would be there?  I assume that you didn't because the name wouldn't stick in your memory, it being so far away. 
Noah's enthusiasm for the Giants was red hot for a few days after the game -- he wore his Ross the Boss shirt everywhere, but by now it's waned.  His new love is Cesare Borgia and the Italian Renaissance, which he is studying at school, and a video game called "Assassin's Creed" in which Borgia and Machiavelli are prominent characters.  He wants to visit Rome now, which would be an excellent idea to foster his love for history.  We're trying to find ways to do that over Christmas or during the summer that won't break the bank.   We visited the local Renaissance Faire yesterday and had a great time.  They have real jousts with horsemen in armor and with lances; Noah and his friend took a fencing course on the longsword.
A car ran a stop sign and hit my bike today during a long bike ride through the city to visit the last remaining Borders store before it closes and buy some mangos at my favorite Mexican produce store.  I'm fine but the bike's wheel is a bit bent.  Take care, Sidney

Hello Peter!  I hope you had a pleasant trip back, and an easier time returning than coming out here.  That was amazing see you at Hendy Woods State Park; no one can believe it here.  My father tells that the Giants game after the one we saw together, when Lincecom was pitching, was miserable -- the Giants got only one run and were trounced; that's the kind of game that's no fun to watch, when your team is behind by a lot the whole time and has little chance of winning.  That should console Alex on not seeing Lincecum pitch! 
The next day after our meeting we went to a series of holiday fairs up and down the Mendocino coast.  At the last one, on the way back, the tiny town of Yorkville has a fair we go to every year to raise money for their volunteer fire department to buy a new fire truck.  After all this time, they're still raising money to buy the truck; I suppose it takes a lot of bake sales to buy a fire engine.  At this one on Labor Day we won a huge lemon cake at the cake walk -- Carolyn is taking the remainder if to work to put out for her fellow teachers, and I found Cross's Encyclopedia of Music in two volumes and an old British trot for Aristophanes' plays, by Frere I think.  I remember liking the trots used by British schoolboys to cheat during their Greek classes for their accuracy, so that was a great find.  I also love Milton Cross's writing on great composers -- do you know him?