saki online!

If you're looking for an online source to order the Japanese drink called sake, you're likely in the wrong place. Otherwise a brief biography, for the curious: I'm a Beatles fan and have been since December 1963. I've written about them and about sixties music in general (some might say to excess) in online forums and in music magazines and journals. My online name was borrowed from my late cat, a Burmese-Siamese mix called Saki, named after the early-19th-century writer of ironically-toned short fiction. We have another cat called Anna, a fourteen year old tabby with a passion for toys, dairy products, and David Attenborough documentaries on birds, not necessarily in that order.

I studied Egyptology at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago and at UCLA with a specialization in Hellenistic-era religious texts (particularly animal cults). To earn my keep I work at UCLA doing web design, editing scientific publications and managing conferences. I'm married to another fan of sixties music, Bruce Dumes, a musician and software engineer. I have two children (Malcolm, age twenty, and Corran, seventeen) as well as three stepchildren (Nicole, thirty; Jeff, twenty-six; Greg, twenty-five).

I'm an radio enthusiast. My husband and I like to collect tube radios, particularly those with shortwave capability. My favorite is our Zenith 10S690, made in 1942. We also have a nice mid-fifties Grundig and Blaupunkt, both of which sound terrific (I like to listen to A Prairie Home Companion on the Grundig). Solid-state can be useful too, of course, but nothing beats a good warm set of tubes.

Genealogy is another passion, a personal archaeology, more or less. If you have Danish, German, French, or Russian ancestry please feel free to check out the photos and documents at the Familypage Home website and let me know if there are any connections to your own family. I'm always happy to share research with others.

I'm also an Anglophile, an ailurophile, an avid gardener, a Unix aficionado, a fan of Japanese, Italian and Indian cuisine, and I won't say no to an evening of British sixties cinema or to an early morning of Tour de France coverage (Allez, allez, Cav!). I like reading. Currently I'm rereading a book I revisit every now and then by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix, "The Quest for the Rose," a lovely history and taxonomy of ancient and modern roses.

Sometimes I listen to music other than the Beatles (Renaissance dances, baroque, and jazz from the 1920s to the 1960s). My other favorite musicians are Guadalcanal Diary (late-eighties cowboy punk from Marietta, Georgia), The White Stripes (presumably no comment needed), The Detroit Cobras (best R&B cover band I've ever heard), and Brendan Benson (a wonderful contemporary songwriter, also part of The Raconteurs with Jack White).

My favorite color is purple.