saki online!

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 login name comes from my late cat Saki, who was named after the early-19th-century writer of ironically-toned short fiction. We have another cat called Anna, an eleven year old tabby with a passion for toys and dairy products, 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 sixteen, and Corran, fourteen) as well as three stepchildren (Nicole, twenty-eight; Jeff, twenty-four; Greg, twenty-three).

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, or any of the surnames listed to the left, please check out the photos and documents 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 very fond of decent red wines and good single malts. I won't say no to an evening of British sixties cinema or to an early morning of Tour de France coverage. I like reading. I'm almost finished with Philip Norman's new bio of John Lennon (and it's surprisingly good), plus a couple of oldies, Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and Fielding's "Tom Jones".

Sometimes I listen to music other than the Beatles (Renaissance dances, baroque and jazz from the 1920s to 1960s). My other favorite musicians are Guadalcanal Diary (late-eighties cowboy punk from Athens, 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.

Quick links

Genealogy: surnames Petersen, Mikkelsen, Müller, Laurent, Jungblut, Jatho, Keppel, MacLaughlan, Bruns, Gohr or Robers at my
Familypage home

Dumes family genealogy

Bellman family genealogy

Lisker family genealogy

The St. Matthew's German Lutheran Church searchable online database:
a selection of baptism, marriage, confirmation, and death records from St. Matthew's Church in Charleston, South Carolina

Garden photos Nov. 2008

Vintage radios

Beatles essays: from 1990-1995 and 1996-2001

"Let it r.m.b!" and "Butcher Covers": extras from the two r.m.b. musical tributes