Travel and Food

  By Danny Bloom CHIAYI CITY, TAIWAN — The things you learn when you aren’t even looking anything up. Here I was reading the newspaper the other day about some new movie called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter based on a novel by some American novelist named Seth Grahame-Smith, and I had no idea the dude was […]

By David Amos SAN DIEGO — I envisioned the ultimate inter-religious composition when Leonard Bernstein wrote his celebrated Mass. But I ran into a piece, newly composed which was offered as an orchestral set to be played during the end of year holidays. It is called “A Klezmer Christmas”. There are many books on the

By Danny Bloom CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Jews are sometimes referred to as “people of the book,” and from Jewish word mavens like William Safire and Leo Rosten to Jewish language sleuths like Ben Zimmer and Arnold Zwicky, it does seem that some “people of the book” enjoy not only playing with words, but also

By Rabbi Ben Kamin SAN DIEGO — For some time now, I have clandestinely carried a ball club in my memory—a club, a city and a patch of old ball yard. Time, faded careers and even the emergence of third-generation retro-ball fields named with corporate icons have failed to tarnish the image of Crosley Field

By David Brin ENCINITAS, California–Amid the media frenzy leading up to release of Existence (June 19), some interviewers posed questions that I found especially interesting. Here are a few fun examples. (Followed by some miscellany and science and humor!) The Amazon Book Blog  Like Earth, your new novel is set in the 30 to 50

The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman. Riverhead Books, New York. 626pp, 2012, ISBN 978-0571236848 By David Strom SAN DIEGO — Elliot Perlman wrote an engrossing novel about today and the “not so recent” past. He has beautifully integrated knowledge of the Holocaust with the American Civil Rights Movement of the fifties and sixties through characters

By David Amos SAN DIEGO — One of the most spectacular pianists of the Twentieth Century died in 1995. Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. To most people he is, and was, not a household word, although his reputation in Europe far exceeded his recognition in the United  States. Nevertheless, he was one of the legendary greats. Michelangeli

By David Amos SAN DIEGO — I find pleasure in planning concerts that have a particular theme. I feel that audiences also sense continuity and satisfaction when the entire program has a unifying element, as was the case in concerts of last April, when the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra presented Hebraic Voices. This time, the

By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel CHULA VISTA, California — When Johann Gutenberg (1394-1468) unsheathed his new invention in 1454, this great invention changed European civilization forever, because it led to the advancement of literacy in all areas of human interest.  It is interesting that the Catholic Church originally had some misgivings about Gutenberg’s new invention. 

By Ilene Lerner CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts –Fortunately or unfortunately, my daughter Emily recently separated from her husband of thirty years, Chris Messier, and when I called to speak with her one summer day, her new voice message said I had reached the home of Emily Graf Messier. Graf is the last name of my first husband,

By J.J. Surbeck SAN DIEGO — a new pro-Palestinian movie titled Tears of Gaza had its local premiere Thursday evening, May 25, at the World Beat Center (one of the buildings in Balboa Park along Park Boulevard). Described as “a powerful and emotionally devastating record of the impact of the 2008-2009 bombing of Gaza by