11/18/2006

Seeking a change of scenery from the hipster coffee shops in the Mission, I went downtown and hung out on a comfy couch in the rotunda of the lavish, new, Westfield shopping center.





I bonded with my laptop, got some writing done and interviewed a couple of people for my blog....I may be the only person to have visited without setting foot in Bloomingdales.






Enough with the rotunda, here are the readers:



Reading Babilonia Renace, by Charles H. Dyer and translated by Priscila M. Patacsil, edited by Moises N. Ramos. The English title--The Rise of Babylon: Sign of the End Times. When she finishes it, she will send it home to her family in Nicaragua. She sends them books regularly and they send her books back, mostly history books. She is an avid reader of history, in both Spanish and English. Sometimes when she's reading she looks up and wonders "what language am I reading in?"

If she could do it again, she'd get her masters in history. When I told her she still could she laughed, took out her drivers license and showed me how old she is (76!!!) Can you believe it? This isn't a close up, but believe me when I say she doesn't look a day over 45, and that's without the courtesy 7 years.

Other books she recommends--Mere Christianity, by CS Lewis; The Hope of Israel, by Fernando Savari; Hawaii, by James Michener; Exodous, by Leon Uris; and everything by Michel Zevaco, the French writer and anarchist. Her mother had his books growing up and she's been wanting to buy and reread her favorites, but they're out of print. Together we tried to find the books online (there is free wireless in the mall rotunda!!!), but came up with nada.



And, another age-defying reader. I'm not even going to tell you how old he is for fear of a stampede on Westfield Center to find the fountain of youth.



An avid music lover, he is reading What to Listen for in Music, by Aaron Copland. What he loves: everything by the Austrian composer, Gustav Mahler. He goes to the symphony everytime they perform his work. The San Francisco Symphony, he informed me, has become, under the leadership of director Michael Tilson Thomas, one of the greatest in the world. What he's read recently: books about the terrible situation this country is in.