September 2013

Trips: Yoni and Daci in Minneapolis:

A fantastic long weekend in which we ate out a lot; We kicked off the first night at the 112 eatery downtown., an interesting menu and refreshing beer in a newly gentrified area. Gil was amused at the trendy shops cheek by jowl with the strip joints. Ice cream later at Izzy's , where I had a licorice flavor, a little strange but good. We later walked over the stone bridge as the weather was so pleasant. The next day started with a brisk run around lake Minnehaha, Yoni, Judy and myself about three miles easy without the heat of home and then on to the state fair for the rest of the day. That evening we ate at  Pizzeria Lola where we waited an hour for a table. The wait seemingly shorter as we met a friend of Daci's from Louisiana who is now a fellow in Florida, amazingly a student of my friend Marc Kahn from Tulane. Pizza was tremendous the beer refreshing and, surprisingly, it was not too noisy. The number of trendy places to eat in Minneapolis is amazing, I wonder what these are like in the winter? On Sunday we rode on rented bikes for the best part of the day about 15 miles mostly on bike paths and breakfast at Tilia . We managed to keep it down to the allotted 30 mins between stations most of the time. In the evening, Jewish food at Cecil's a real kosher style place, without Bloom's rude waiters. 

Home on Monday driving from DFW. 

Concerts: Saturday 9/21 at the Shreveport symphony:

Starting the season off with the National Anthem: I have never heard the Star Spangled Banner played by a full orchestra before, it was very moving and everyone sang along.

Followed by Finlandia, another national anthem also very strong and inspiring. Then another SIbelius, the violin concerto played by Jennifer Koh. I did like her playing which was very spirited and lively but I can't say I enjoyed the music very much. The second half was Brahms symphony No. 1 which was excellent.

Reading

Alan Furst: Kingdom of Shadows, an excellent noir thriller about the intrigues in central Europe  immediately prior to world war II. The characters are fallible and believable and the plot interesting and current. The moral dilemma shown as the members of the Hungarian delegation try to do the "right thing" which means that even they sometimes have to work with the Germans lends an interesting dimension to this thriller. I will be getting some more of his work in the near future:

David Mitchell: Black Swan Green. A bildungsroman set in rural England at a time shortly after my own childhood. I enjoyed this immensely. A year  seen through the eyes of a troubled thirteen year old. Thatcher's attack on the Falkland, the jingoism it initiated set against the almost Adrian Mole like school days of Jason and his friends. The turmoil caused in an otherwise confused enough life by his Father's odd behavior and the normality of his existence. I had read the thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet and this was as good, different of course but a wonderfully entertaining read.

Coleen McCullouch: Caesar. A fairly predictable novelization of the life of one of those great men we cannot seem to stop reading about. All now feature Lucius Verenus and Titus Pullo, because they are mentioned in the Gallic wars, I have enjoyed her historical fiction in the past. This one seemed a dramatization of Caesar's own Gallic wars. I actually delved into a translation along with the novel and, for the most part, it follows the plot fairly closely. 

Jhumpa Lahiri: The Lowland. Again she never fails to write engaging intelligent fiction. Perhaps it is due to her book's themes of immigrants and angst, success and failure but they always appeal to me. THis one follows a brothers attempts to help his brother's widow and child by moving them to New England. A novel of loss and longing, despair and academic success and failure. Not a simple tale rich with some more modern history of the Naxalite movement, a wonderful read.

Listening:

(added to itunes in the last month)

Fritz Reiner- Magorsky, Pictures at an exhibition
Shostakovich - 13th symphony Babi-Yar

Exercising:

Picking up the jogging, getting back to every other day now the weather is starting to cool in the evenings, trying to bike on alternate running days. Only 25 miles run this month, not really good enough.

Watching:

The Good Wife:Newsroom:Last Tango in Halifax:Boardwalk Empire

Major Purchases:

A Specialized, Sirrus bicycle ($520) and all the gear that goes with that.