Thanksgiving Weekend

Well, Thanksgiving weekend is over, but we had a really nice time.  We did nothing on Thursday, but on Friday, Lisa and I went in to London while Adam and Meyer were at school.  We took a walking tour of the radical Jewish East End by author and tour-guide David Rosenberg.  Lisa's colleague from her fellowship, Arie Dubnov arranged it, and we went with him and his two kids and another fellow fellow, Michal.  David did an amazing job showing us the remnants of Jewish radical past in the East End, including the site of the first English-language Jewish daily newspaper, a hall that hosted Emma Goldman, among many others, the biggest synagogue of 1890s London (formerly a Hugenot church, currently a mosque), and the site of the terrible Yom Kippur riot of can't-remember-the-year (a riot between Jewish anarchists and Jewish non-anarchists, not between Jews and nonjews), which also happens to be the street that he lived on as a small Jewish child in the sixties.  We planned to have lunch at a nearby Ottolengi restaurant (Ottolenghi is the author of my favorite cookbook), but ran out of time.

The next day, Saturday, we were back in London, but this time with Adam and Meyer to see a play at the National Theatre.  The play is called The Red Barn, and it stars Hope Davis, who happens to be the wife of my childhood friend Jon Walker.  Adam and Meyer absolutely loved the play, which was fantastically staged and acted.  Then Hope was able to give us a short tour of the backstage area after the play.  The Theatre is amazing, and we got to see the vast backstage area, and the ways that complete sets (even for the next production) are all assembled on trucks that run along tracks to move in and out of the stage area. Again, we hoped to eat at Ottolenghi (dinner this time), but Adam left his phone on the train, and we had to race back after the play to recover it (which we did), after which we ate sandwiches from the station.

Finally, yesterday (Sunday) we had the equivalent of our Thanksgiving meal with our friends Steve and Sarah (and Posy and Lila), and some of their friends.  But instead of Turkey, we had a South Indian feast cooked by Sarah (who is an historian who studies South India).  But it had all of the essential elements of a Thanksgiving meal, which I have come to recognize as (1) a warm cosy room, (2) friends, (3) food, (4) drink, and (5) complaining loudly about Donald Trump.

Hurt My Back

Things have been thrown a little off kilter, but everything's back on track now.  Two weeks ago, I did something extremely painful to my back while reaching down to pick my pyjamas up off the floor.  I spent the next two days lying on the floor where I initially collapsed (nice bonus that it happened in my bedroom).  By the end of last week, I was up and walking gingerly around the house, and even going on short walks out of the house, but still couldn't sit in a chair for more than ten minutes or so.  This past week, I've been making really good progress, and am basically back to work.  I saw a physical therapist who has given me some new exercises and stretches, and I even went running yesterday.  And, I've been sitting at my desk working, so that's good too.  It's alarming to think my body is falling apart, but I guess the kinds of exercise and stretching one does just has to evolve over time, so I'm working on my new regime to take me through to my fifties. 

Adam and Meyer seem to be really happy at school, which is a huge relief.  Today was "no uniform" day (pay a pound to charity, wear your regular clothes for a day), so they got to wear their own clothes to school for the first time, which they seemed happy with, rather than choked with anxiety about, so that seemed like a good sign.  Adam is going on a day trip to France with his class next Friday.  They leave before dawn and return long after dark.  I'm not sure if he's quite as excited as I am about it, but he's pretty excited.  They're going to practice their French at a winter market buying stuff.  I do not envy the venders, even if the profits are high.

Obviously, the election was disappointing, and the general confusion about what a Trump presidency could possibly mean might be even more pronounced since we're not in the US.  But, I actually think it would probably be just as confusing, and maybe even more so, if such a thing is possible.

Tomorrow we're going on a tour of the Cotswolds with some of Lisa's colleagues from her program.  Adam and Meyer are not enthusiastic, but I'm looking forward to it a lot.

My Work Blog

It just occurred to me that readers of this blog might be interested in what I've been writing in my "professional" life.  I have been making occasional posts to a blog written by a group of tax professors.  If you haven't seen them already, here are links to all of them, listed in chronological order (most recent last):

introduction,
marijuana I,
marijuana II,
basic income I,
basic income II,
charities endorsing candidates I,
charities endorsing candidates II,
charities endorsing candidates III,
charities endorsing candidates IV.

They're supposed to be pitched at a general audience, so if you read them, let me know what you think (and whether I'm writing them clearly enough for an educated general reader to follow).