Hello,

My name is Danny, and I currently live in St Pete, Florida. Before that I was in New York, and before that in Israel. I am really glad to have found this site, particularly in what often seems like a cultural desert compared to what I am used to.

I am an avid reader and an avid book collector, so I look forward to participating.

Danny

Hello Danny

It is good to hear from you. Welcome.

Why did you move from Israel to New York to Florida? Did you experience life on a Kibbutz?

I hope you will join in with any of the threads which may interest you. Just join in won't you? Don't wait to be invited.

But I would be interested to hear about your life in Israel.

Welcome Danny! BookTalk is my cultural oasis as well! I hope you enjoy it here!

Welcome to the community. I look forward to getting to know you better.

What brought you to Israel?

Thanks all for the welcomes. People asked a bunch of questions, so I guess I should give some answers.

I moved to Israel on my own shortly before I turned 18. I guess I was looking for something, and I know that I found more than I can ever express. It was one strange, exciting, frustrating, exhilarating experience after another, and I ended up learning that I neither needed nor wanted what I was looking for.

At 37, I moved back to the US and began getting settled in New York. I worked at a museum, and was quite happy, but I was also involved in the very early days of Wikipedia, which provided an online community that ran parallel to my real life community. In 2005 I moved to Florida because I was hired as Wikipedia's first employee. I stuck it out for a year and a half, but walked away disappointed at the direction the site was taking.

Since then I've been living in downtown St. Pete, looking (desperately) for work, and keeping my nose above water with a series of freelance writing and translating gigs, mostly in film.

For me, reading is the great escape, and if you're ever in St. Pete and see someone walking down the street with their nose in a book, chances are it is me.

Danny:

and I ended up learning that I neither needed nor wanted what I was looking for.

Well, that is certainly something worth learning. Some of us never learn it!

Twenty years is a long time to be in a place. What did you do there?

What didn't you like about where Wiki was going?

Do you have a particular kind of employment in mind? I am thinking journalism, but this is just about the worst time to be a journalist, in this part of the world anyway. Hundreds have been thrown out of work recently and many, many of our small local newspapers, which have been running for decades, are now ceasing to exist.

I did a lot of things in Israel: study, army, etc. Workwise, I was the senior editor of a publishing house, and I worked very extensively in film and television (childrens, docs, and features). I also did quite a bit of museum work there.

I've never worked directly in journalism, but I am pretty aware of the problems that the industry faces. One of the things I have been working on now is helping a motivational speaker who specializes in selling media advertising. I think that everyone in the business is caught up with the uncertainty surrounding the newspaper industry's fate (maybe a good classic book to read here would be Gissing's New Grub Street).

As for Wikipedia, it is pretty complicated. I do write about it in my blog, but I can get pretty nasty there at times. In brief, I wasn't happy with the way it was managed or the direction it was going. It's too bad, because there was so much potential there. Perhaps that is the fate of all digital societies, as macrocosms of our own societies. I once compared what Wikipedia is going through to the various features characteristic of the decline of empires (based on Kevin Phillip's American Theocracy).

Danny:

(maybe a good classic book to read here would be Gissing's New Grub Street).

Ooooh, I'd be up for that one. Put it as a Fiction suggestion. You sound as though you'd make a good discussion leader too. Is it fiction? (This is why I wouldn't make an even adequate discussion leader.)

When I hear its title I think about Citizen Kane, you see. That's why I ask if it's fiction.

You were in the army in Israel? Well, I have to say that I'm not on their side, but I also have to say, when we see them in newsclips, they are best looking men I've ever seen. They all look like film stars.

New Grub Street is a Victorian novel by Edmund Gissing

You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Grub_Street. I've always felt an affinity to Reardon in the novel.

To be honest, I am not a fan of what is happening in Israel either, having seen it from many different angles. It genuinely hurts to watch. From a literary standpoint, I guess you can say I would like to emulate Thomas Mann, though I feel more like Heinrich Mann (whose Man of Straw is another great novel, especially for today).

Danny:

To be honest, I am not a fan of what is happening in Israel either, having seen it from many different angles.

I've read quite a lot of Jewish journalist's take on Israel, it is very hard for them, some are obviously quite torn.

I have looked at the Wiki description of Grub Street. I would like to read it. Only last week, we had a day in London, and walked down Fleet Street, where there are still many of the Victorian and Edwardian pubs where the journalists from all the newspapers would meet up. It is great that they don't look as though they have changed or been modernised. We peeped into a couple and they are full of character and atmosphere still.