Kenneth Shepsle
He always claimed that his family reproduced by re-Verbaration.
At the long-standing poker game of Harvard and Brandeis faculty, in which Sid was an essential member, we used to joke that he would, while Harvard Librarian, cover his losses by selling off pages from Harvard's copy of the Gutenberg bible. (At least we thought it was a joke. Someone should check the condition of the manuscript.)
The very last time I saw Sid was at a gathering of the poker group. Sid's mind and attention were limited, so Jeff Frieden and I helped him play his hands. Despite our best expert advice, Sid ended up winning quite a lot of money! (I think it was $20, which in our high-stakes game was a near fortune.) Born and raised in Brooklyn, Sid was a firm believer in the two-party system: the Trotskyites and the Stalinists.
Sid and Cynthia each year celebrated a Passover Seder with many of us in attendance. Sid – that well-known religious Jew – led the reading of the Haggadah, a narration of the Exodus story. But we never ever finished – too many hungry mouths demanding we move on to dinner – so Sid, every year without exception, left us stranded in the desert never quite making it to the Promised Land.
