Hello! I hear you're over the flu and like your job a lot -- great news. We had a very fun Thanksgiving vacation here in S.F. Mom made a great Thanksgiving dinner for our family, Ron Migdal, Marsha Fine and our best friends, the Bibliowicz family from Columbia, whose son Gabriel is Noah's constant companion from Hebrew School and Claire Lilienthal. The pumpkin pie and stuffing were especially good.
On Friday I got up at 4 a.m. (my usual time to wake up) and went to Best Buy and Office Depot where the old Sears used to be to buy things for Black Friday. I got the new laptop I saw advertised, a video game for Noah, and a camera. The person I was standing in line next to had purchased a "netbook" (small laptop) and some earbuds that were 70% off, so afterwards I went back and bought those too. The netbook -- earbud combination is wonderful. I read the lives of composers in the evening, and when the author speaks about a great piece I don't know I go to Youtube and listen to it on the netbook; the music sounds terrific with good earbuds. So we're continuing to mount up to cyber heaven.
Friday night was a reunion and Friday night service for Camp Tawonga, and Rivka saw the boy she likes, Ben, for the first time since camp. Unfortunately she didn't go up and say hello to him; he was talking with a friend. Maybe she's a little shy.
On Saturday we went to the Scandia Family Fun Fair in Fairfield with the Bibliowiczes, and had a fine time. They have gocarts to race with, lazer tag, miniature golf, and boats with squirt guns attached. Naturally the kids enjoyed it, and I liked racing the carts that go pretty fast -- you have to turn your whole body around to make the sharp turns on the course.
Yesterday we went to the annual Dickens Fair for the first time. The people who had the original idea for the Renaissance Faire many years ago (remember it?) have been putting on this one every Christmas time, and since Noah loves the Renaissance Faire (under new management), we thought he'd like this and learn some history about Victorian times in London. Many people walk around in Victorian costumes -- quite elaborate, as soldiers, drunks, fine ladies -- and there are many stages with plays of all kinds. The best were dancing demonstrations of cotillions, waltzes, etc. by dancers in costume, and my favorite an opera house with a performance of the Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan and other opera arias. I just love opera singing, so I was in heaven. It's happening to Neal Bertram too -- he's completely given himself over to music, like me. Must have to do with aging.
I heard it was 70 degrees last week in N.Y. Enjoy the nice weather, and take care! Sidney

Ben Stiegler

Hello Ben!  It certainly is remarkable, our parallel lives.  I met my wife Carolyn Glaser in the Jewish Singles Hiking Club as well.  My children are in a Korean immersion program in a public school in S.F., Claire Lilienthal, which has given me license to indulge in my favorite pastime, learning languages.  When my children were in preschool at Beth Sholom I started relearning Hebrew from my childhood.   I read an Israeli magazine, Laisha, cover to cover for a year until my Hebrew got good enough to read novels and histories -- a great time.  Then I switched to Korean for several years, and now I'm reading mostly in Russian (except for science books which I read in English) -- there's a large Russian population among the users of the JCC  I enjoy interacting with, and Russian literature is of course tremendous.  Being a librarian is a good match for someone whose interests are all over the map like me.  Nothing beats fatherhood, though!  I always admired and envied your technical insights and ability.  Take care, Sidney

The Mating Mind

My favorite line from Geoffrey Miller's The Mating Mind -- It was bad enough to replace an omniscient creator with Nature, but to replace Him with the pebble-sized brains of invertebrates lusting after one another, that was scandalous! (On why Darwin's favorite theory of Sexual Selection did not catch on after his death.)

Troyat and Stendhal

Good to hear from you.  I know what it's like to get lost in an author -- I was too in Stendhal for about a year soon after college.  I read his two great novels, but my favorite book of his was his Life of Rossini.  It is great fun and quite wise about music.  The people who fascinate Stendhal -- young up-and-comers full of ambition -- are so different from me that while I admire his writing and insights, they don't touch me very directly.  You can't beat him for an understanding of a time and place.
Yes, I'm reading Troyat in Russian -- they don't have him in French in our library here.  The translations are very good, the Russians here agree, so I'm quite happy with them.  He's the best introduction to Russian history I've come across -- a light touch and no heavy axes to grind.  He's interested in the personalities of the individual Czars, which makes it interesting and easy to follow.  The Russians have an enormous number of biographies of literary figures like Pushkin for young readers (to inculcate them with a love for literature), which I enjoy a lot.  I seem to like simple, straightforward writing with a focus on an individual hero, his or her choices and destiny.  I loved the Harry Potter books.
Someone recommended the history Niall Ferguson to me, and I've started his works.  Since I loved the conservative historian Paul Johnson I thought I would like Ferguson too.  He's very interesting but doesn't write as well as Johnson.  I'm halfway into Fukuyama's latest book on the Origins of Political Order, but have found it rather heavy going.  So that's it!  Take care, Sidney