Neil Fein's Blog

Craig Ostroff's dad died last night. The funeral is going to be Thursday
down in Vineland, NJ at 2:30 2:00 pm. He's going to stay with his mom for a while, but they're going to be having at least one and possibly two days of shiva at their home -- Wednesday and possibly Thursday. (We're unclear on whether there will be a minyan on Thursday.) Will update further.

Update, Friday 30 Jan 2004: Shiva minyan is 8pm, Saturday and Sunday in Vineland.

Form & Void is indeed part of the Going Home storyline in Cerebus, the last half. Much more of an improvement, and it does pay off the first half, but there's a disconnect between the two books. How is it, exactly, do Cerebus and Jaka end up travelling with Ham Ernestway and his wife/lover? At what point do they realize they're starving? What's going on between Cerebus and his parent's neighbor?

I've known our PSE&G bills are high, but really haven't had any basis for comparison. Recently, when I was helping Craig clean out the house after a flood, he was chatting with the contractor; apparently he pays one-third what I'm paying a month.

This says to me that our house is insulated not much if at all. Well, Martha and I thought about it, and decided that we're losing heat through 1) the large picture window in the front of the living room, 2) the wall-mounted air conditioning unit, and 3) everywhere else, particularly windows.

Caulking and foam will take care of much of this -- and it's cheap. However, the picture window needs more drastic action. We could either cover the whole thing in insulating plastic for the winter, or we could finally, finally throw curtains up. Curtains would also block sunlight, keeping the place cooler and saving on electric bills in the summer. Curtains can also go with us to our next place, so curtains it is!

We went to A Home Repair Store^[1], and settled on a particular curtain rod system, also thinking it could go on other windows if we liked it. Then we stopped into a fabric store and bought fabric, batting^[2] and backing. So far we've spent $60 for the hardware and $40 on the fabric. I think we could have done a little better. But if this saves us even a little on the energy bills, it'll pay for itself in a few months. ^[3]

I got the curtain rods up, not a big project. And Martha pinned the fabric of the first curtain, also not a big deal^[4]. She started sewing, and the machine wasn't working. I tried, it still didn't work. A call to her Mom didn't help, but somehow by trying many different things we were able to get the machine to work. I was merrily sewing along, and suddenly I sewed on top of a pin and broke the needle. ^[5]

To be continued...

^[1] I have nothing against Home Depot per se, but their customer service is pretty abysmal.

^[2] Batting is a cotton-like substance you put between two layers of fabric to make blankets and such. We got pretty thin batting, as we are talking about curtains here.

^[3] Well, that's the theory. If not saving on our energy bills, we've at least done some decorating.

^[4] Not a big deal for her, pins and I don't communicate well.

^[5] I called Judith to share the irony of the situation, and she mentioned that this was a demo sewing machine, sent to her by a manufacturer, which she reviewed in an article.

Appearance at Cleo's on 24 January is cancelled. Will be there 14 February.

Just finished Going Home, a book from the Cerebus series. This is half of a story of the same name -- I think, the author, Dave Sim, is a bit confusing on that score -- to be continued in Form & Void. Confusing. But judging from Martha's hysterical laughter in reading the book that follows, it gets better. But I can't help but think that this is a lot of filler; it's not even cinematic like Guys or Church and State were.

We've had Craig and Paula over for the last few days, as they wait for their house to dry out. On Friday evening, they got home to a kitchen with a self-contained rainstorm; a pipe had frozen and burst upstairs. They looked downstairs and there were a few inches of water down there as well. ^[1] They called us up Saturday and we drove over^[2] to help in the cleanup, mostly unpacking wet corrugated cardboard boxes and hauling them out of the basement.

The contractors installed high-velocity^[3] fans and two large dehumidifiers. They're meant to run for three days at minimum and suck all the water out of the air and walls. They also gouged out the wettest sheetrock, which means half of the kitchen ceiling and assorted bits of walls here and there. ^[4]

They've moved in for these few days, and when they go home is subject to revision. I have to say I'm enjoying their company immensely, but I wish it were for a better reason.

^[1] Apparently they got off easy. The flood cleanup contractor said he was in a house where he opened the door leading to the basement steps, and the water was just below the level of the floor he was standing on.

^[2] Yes, on shabbes. Personal emergencies take precedence, although some might disagree. They honestly didn't need our help... but it's Craig and Paula, of course we're gonna be there for them.

^[3] i.e., LOUD ones.

^[4] The fact that such a thing as a home flooding contractor exists -- someone who does exactly this kind of job, over and over, when a pipe bursts or a foundation starts leaking -- says to me that modern homes are, as a whole, designed appallingly badly. I don't have a solution, though. (Maybe we should live in our cars?)

Watched the first half of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries last night. Will report back when I've seen the rest, but so far I'm disappointed. Bleh.

But so far, I think the acting was better in the original series. And that's not saying much, really.

Recorded percussion last night with Graz and Bruce, for The Bile Song. We started out by doing a take of me playing the jembe^[1] with the intent of adding a hi-hat afterwards; that didn't work, so we tried Bruce playing a cymbal and a small drum. That didn't work, so we tried recording Grazina slapping her thighs. While that didn't work either, watching her miked for that made it worth sitting through two takes.

At the end of the evening, we had no usable percussion tracks, and we came to the conclusion that this was a song that just didn't want percussion.

^[1] It's sort of a small, skinny conga drum you play with both hands. There's an enormous West African tradition associated with playing the instrument with which I am quite unfamiliar. Martha gave it to me for my birthday.

After Martha picked me up at work in Union, we parked the car here and took the train into NYC to see Judy and Elan, intending to get there well before shabbes started. This sounds relatively simple, but in reality our train was delayed by a "suspicious van".

Yes, that's right. A van parked by the side of the tracks that doesn't belong there will now cause a NJ Transit train to stop entirely. Keep in mind, the van wasn't doing anything but being there and therefore being suspicious. The word amongst the passengers^[1] was that we had to wait for the police and, lo! the police they did arrive and the van was ticketed.

Sorry if I'm being snappy, but it was pretty irritating. NJ Transit also has posters that tell passengers to report suspicious activity; don't eat on the train, because leaving crumbs could result in a hazmat team being called in; don't leave your luggage unattended; et cetera. Mass transit is becoming more Orwellian. ^[2]

All was much fun. We had Friday shabbes dinner with them, went to Saturday morning shul, met a dozen or so of their friends. All was well; they have good friends and we were comfortable.

Our friends, who are theatre junkies, then changed out of their bat-clothes and we hopped onto the downtown bat-subway to the alien planet of Greenwich Village to enjoy a piano bar. Yes, we heard showtunes and Sinatra and Cole Porter tunes. And yes, the crowd was predominantly gay -- and glorying in their gayness. I had a great time, but the continent of Christopher Street is a far, far way from Washington Heights. ^[4]

All in all, lots of schmoozing, lots of singing. A very good weekend. <sup>[5]

[1]</sup> We were in the very front car, right next to the van, so I think this is reliable. But then again, you're reading this on the internet.

^[2] There are similar signs on the NYC subway, but a bit toned down.

^[3] The Rabbi gave an excellent sermon (sorry, a talk not a sermon) expanded right out of Hirsch's commentary on the Torah. I liked the service and the people, but this rebbe's orating style reminded me of some Baptist preachers I've met. To be even-handed, this shul looks to be very progressive for an orthodox shul. Although I did get some wonderful looks when, asked where I went to shul and my rabbi, what's his name? -- answered, "Rutgers Hullel, "Rabbi Esther Reed."

^[4] From the rumor mill: Washington Heights has been partially renamed by the local realty board, and the area we stayed in is now known as "Hudson Heights". Keep in mind, this is the same real estate board that, in apartment-speak, refers to their smallest kitchen as a "chef's kitchen" (i.e., there's room for the chef and not much else).

^[5] Washington heights is on the uptown (i.e., northern) tip of Manhattan island. Surrounded by water, if you think it was cold that weekend in New Jersey or Brooklyn or wherever, Hudson River wind chill really shows you the meaning of the word "Brrr".

Krakatoa : The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883
by Simon Winchester
(non-fiction)

When I first opened this book, the first thing I saw was the List of Illustrations and Maps. Most everybody who is going to read this knows what Krakatoa is -- or was -- but glancing through the titles on this page it's apparent that Winchester has followed his MO even more than one might expect. The use of inexplicably disparate elements that somehow manage to come together in the end. Somehow.

Krakatoa is the story of a volcano that (in case you didn't read the title of this book)^[1] exploded in 1883, taking most of an island with it, and nearly wiping out the nearby islands of Java and Sumatra in the process. But the eruption had planet-wide effects, and this was apparent through the relatively new technologies of the telegraph and undersea cabling.

If you've read Winchester's previous books like The Professor and the Madman,^[2] you won't be disappointed in this book. In some ways, Krakatoa is the superior book, in that it is far more global, and even though it takes place further back in history, the weaving together of history and personal experience in this book is, I think, of a flavor unique to Simon Winchester. Highly recommended. <sup>[3]

[1]</sup> in which case, why are you reading this? Please stop.

^[2]I'm also looking forward to reading the intervening books, The Meaning of Everything and The Map That Changed the World. I strongly suspect the latter book will cover areas in common with Krakatoa.

^[3]Winchester also doesn't shy away from using footnotes -- in this book in particular. Another reason his prose resonates with me.

Craig and Paula took us out for Indian food last night, to celebrate the day-before-my-35th-birthday.^[1] This morning, I see that India and Pakistan are to hold peace talks. In acknowledgement of this, perhaps tonight's dinner^[2] should be Pakistani ^[3] food...?

^[1] They also bought us a very good trivia board game. Well, it's a game with very good questions; we haven't played the actual game just yet.

^[2] Grazina and Bruce were over, and we read (and tried to answer) many of the questions from Craig and Paula's trivia game (see [1]).

^[3] This being the actual birthday dinner, of course we ended up having pasta, a sorta-Italian dinner. What this has to do with the peace talks, I've no idea.

The Depths of Time

The Ocean of Years

The Shores of Tomorrow

by Roger Macbride Allen

The latest saga from the author of The Ring of Charon and The Shattered Sphere, two genuinely inventive books of hard-SF/space opera, includes many the hallmarks of the genre such as interstellar travel, time travel, paramillitary groups, terraforming, and immortality. The society featured is also well-worked out, with a history of its own consistent with current customs and taboos. Worth a mention of its own, the Timeshaft Wormhole system of interstellar travel is particularly clever. Slower-than-light starships use wormholes through time to cut the elapsed time of their journeys, using suspended animation for the crews and a clever system of computer security and an interstellar police force to guard the integrity of time.

Our protagonist is, at first glance, Admiral Anton Koffield. Through military necessity, and in the middle of an enemy attack, the good Admiral had to destroy a vitally placed interstellar wormhole, cutting off the colony world of Glister from all interstellar travel. As the planet died, Koffield became a bogeyman, the devil incarnate, never mind that he (perhaps) saved humanity by his actions. Koffield is a lonely figure, and he and the crew he picks up over the course of these three books do little to mitigate this image.

The exception to this would be Oskar deSilvo, a legendary figure in terraforming science, who in reality turns out to be just another fallible human being. While these books are very good, all the characters -- with one exception -- are missing the human dimension that deSilvo has.

And in fact deSilvo could have been an excellent way to humanize the characters. The backdrop Allen works against is so vast, so dramatic, that the reader often misses this, but the books seemed to be leading toward a change in Koffield and deSilvo that never pans out. The true protagonist of these stories, really an anti-hero, is deSilvo himself. Allen's ideas are excellent, his plots labrynthe and fascinating, but the best characters in these books are the bit players only on stage for a scene or two.

I thoroughly enjoyed these books for the hard SF elements: The hardware, the world-building, the time traveling -- all were competently executed into a vast framework. But the third installment fell subtly short.

We'll be staying with friends who live in Washington Heights (that's waay uptown in Manhattan). Does anyone know of an open mic held on Saturdays in Manhattan? Google is only showing me poetry open mikes.

Heard about this after landing in NYC: ^[1]

Man's Body Found in Plane's Wheel Well

^[1] The flight leaving London was apparently the Heathrow to JFK flight immediately before ours.