Persons celebrating an Anniversary in November 2008

This month I have partly to be more brief (due to other demands), so in the following some members will be mentioned only shortly.

The first greetings go to East Europe, our only member from Romania, Marian Stere celebrated his anniversary on November 8th: that day he looked back on half a century. Our Belgian study expert Ward Stoffelen is still active in his special field, he reached the "74" on November 16th. The Russian historian Isaak M. Linder turned 88, he celebrated his special day on November 20th. The only German member this month is Uwe Durst from Bad Pyrmont, he too turned "74" on November 25th.

Wladimir Neistadt from the Russian town of Barnaul makes his debut in our column as a new member, he celebrated his 58th birthday on November 29th. Naturally he is not to confuse with the well-known chess author Jakow Neistadt. We only know about Wladimir that he was (still is?) active as an author as well, though I am lacking further details which I could forward here.

The same day our Italian member Guiseppe Arabito celebrated his 52nd birthday, he too will be introduced here as a new member. As he has told quite a lot about himself, I am able to give a more detailed introduction in this case:
Born in Naples, he lives with his family in Manziana (near Rome). He works professionally at ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment) doing chemical research in "renewable energies", his field of interest is solid state physics and silicon solar cells.

In chess he has varied interests, he is active as a player (Elo 1930), organizer, chess teacher as well as a chess bibliophile and collector. Furthermore he is the founder and president of the chess circle of Manziana of 1991 and he is a member of Chess Collectors International (CCI).
As a collector his interest is concentrated on the Italian chess literature, particularly the combination chess and belles lettres appeals to him, in this context he has a preference for science fiction literature – so his web site Scacchibancarella (in Italian) is devoted to the subject chess & fiction, SF and SF collectors’ activities.
Some of his articles have been published in Italian chess magazines (Scacco! and Torre&Cavallo), and he has also translated several works from English for the publisher Prisma..

Guiseppe Arabito playing a simul against 30 children
Guiseppe Arabito playing a simul against 30 children

A few contributions from his pen are available via download from the web page http://www.csalvisezichichi..., among them a talk GLI SCACCHI NELLA LETTERATURA DI FANTASCIENZA he gave at the congress "Gli Scacchi tra agonismo e Cultura - da Sissa alle Olimpiadi di Torino 2006" in September, 2005. Guiseppe told us that additional information about him could be found at his club homepage Circolo Scacchistico Alvise Zichichi - for instance you will trace some of his games in the online archives / "Games and Tactics" (database).

Congratulations!

PS: You will find all previous birthday greetings in our archives!