Reading, running, and reunion-ing

I was reading about early Zionist Max Nordau, he of "Jewry of muscle," and decided to go for a run. In all honesty, I was inspired more by the gorgeous weather than by Nordau, but, as Herzl retroactively attributed his Zionism to the Dreyfus Affair, I shall retroactively attribute my exercise to Herzl's second-in-command. While I may once have been emblematic of Nordau's ideal "Jew of muscle"--referring literally to Jews working out, not to some kind of political arm-twisting power or metaphorical "muscle"--back in my days of six-mile runs this summer, today I did a solid two, at which point I lost interest and went for an iced cappuccino, eager to get back to this most excellent book. The book being Michael Stanislawski's Zionism and the Fin de Siecle, which I'd been meaning to read and ended up finding randomly at the Strand months after meaning to check it out. Once I've finished it, I may post about it, but I'm not sure how to fit my response to even the first couple chapters into one blog post. Yet another book that would have been good to see before writing the BA paper, but life moves on...

And, filed under "various"... would a Spence School "Sherry Reception" for alumnae, held at 11:45 am, be worth going to, as Seinfeld would say, "for the material"? Or would any event that involved alcohol stronger than beer, consumed before noon, be one I'd be able to remember? The Stuyvesant reunion, which will be amusing but presumably sherry-free, is not until next fall, so this could count as pre-gaming, a dress rehearsal, or something like that.