Family

Currently, I live in Canton MA with my wife, Nancy Weil, and our four cats. We have a daughter, Isobel, from my first marriage.

Nancy grew up in southern Illinois and is a journalist. She has worked at a number of newspapers, most recently, the St. Petersburg Times, where she specialized in education reporting. She now works for IDG News Service, which provides content to well over hundreds of print and online publications around the world. Nancy is an avid reader, and a wonderful human being. She is also a life-long St. Louis Cardinals fan.

Isobel is my daughter, born in August 1994. She is a beautiful, intelligent, and sweet person. Isobel loves to read, to draw and paint, to garden, to play with the cats, to play Guitar Hero, and, like everyone else her age, to spend time on Facebook. She was a member of the swim team at Canton High School this year and is a huge Red Sox fan.

I'm pleased to say that Isobel is musically adventurous, both in her playing and in her listening. She's become a fairly accomplished flutist, and she's recently been learning to play guitar. As for listening, her current preference is for Coldplay and similar material, though she's also interested in jazz and classical music.

We have four cats, Bob, Joe, Snarfy, and Lily.

Bob J Weil is the Felyne J. Purski Professor of Digging at Brown. Given his worldwide renown and importance, he rarely has time to teach classes, but his recent publications include Digging: The Why and the How, Digging at the Millenium: A Re-examination, and Digging Picasso, an inquiry into the role of excavation in the aesthetics of cubism. (Bob is especially expert as regards the artistic aspects of digging.) Bob's other areas of academic interest include the music of the Carribean, especially reggae, the wonders of sleep, and the peculiar properties of rubber when it is shaped like small lizards.

Bob ran for President in 2004, with Aretha Franklin as his running mate. (Their motto: "It's time to put some soul in the White House".) They won handily, but the election was, as is well known, stolen by George W Bush. Some other guy named Kerry was apparently involved as well, but Bob hasn't yet figured out who he was. "Cats", he says, "don't see things very well if they're not moving". Bob is presently the Secretary of Digging in the Obama administration.

Joe arrived at our house in 2002. He's a very, very large cat, in all relevant respects. He's very friendly, but still quite shy. When we first saw him at the Northeast Animal Shelter, he crouched in the back of his cage, apparently terrified of us, and it took him some time before he would let any of us near him. He's still frightened of people he doesn't know, but he's cuddly and sweet with those he does.

Our newest kittens, Lily and Snarfy, also came from the Northeast Animal Shelter, arriving in December 2008. Lily is a female, and Snarfy is a male, though we originally thought he was a female and had named him "Gracie". Oh well. Snarfy and Lily were rescue kittens, and they were littermates. For the first several weeks, they always slept together, and always in what we called the "kitten pile". They still hang out and play with each other most of the day, though now that Bob and Joe aren't afraid of them any more, they all play together, too. Snarfy is the one on the left, with the white markings.

Cosmo died in October 2008 at the age of 18. She is twice a member of Baseball's Hall of Fame. Most recently, she was Casey Stengel. Before that, she was Ty Cobb.