The other evening, after the paid book festival event with Harlan Steinbaum and other business personalities, in the “beautiful new building” of the Jewish Community Center, we went home real crabby.

The event was not held in the theater with the graduated seating and we had to strain to see.

The sound system and technology which are part of the facility, weren’t working right. The speakers and moderator had not been prepped on how to use the microphones. We confess, we’re getting older and our hearing is not as sharp. But looking around, most audience members were seniors, too. We all had to strain to hear.

Who were all those people up there with Harlan Steinbaum? A printed program with a brief biography for each of the four guests seated on those chairs placed far away at the back of the stage would have helped.

Weekly, the event’s moderator, Larry Levin, as Publisher/CEO of the Jewish Light, has a ready platform in the form of an editorial, additional opinion pieces, plus video talks online. That should be enough opportunity for any one person to speak his mind.

For the book festival event, Levin overstepped his boundaries as moderator when he started answering questions addressed to the invited guests.

B’shalom,

Levi and Rose McCullough Schreiber

Tucson and Chesterfield