ZIGGY
Counts among his ancestors a family of Jews who emigrated to America in the 17th Century. One of this family's descendants was the first trader to set up at the particular outpost that, in part as a result of this trader's decision to so set up and his fortitude in remaining, evolved into the settlement that eventually became Fairvale. Ziggy is the only of this trader's descendants still residing there.Ziggy was born the last of seven children. All but Ziggy have moved away from Fairvale. The combination of his siblings' strong desire to put their lives in Fairvale firmly behind them with Ziggy's strong distaste for travel created an all but unbridgeable gulf between Ziggy and the rest of his family. This gulf was only widened by the fact that Ziggy was alone among the siblings in strongly adhering to the faith of their ancestors. This latter fact is due in large part to their parents not beginning to actively practice their religion until late in life. As a result of this late introduction of religion into their lives, all but the still young and impressionable Ziggy had been inoculated against the faith of their ancestors by their largely unprotected exposure to the dominant culture, into which they all, with the exception of Ziggy, eagerly assimilated.
One after another his brothers and sisters left Fairvale, until finally Ziggy was left alone with his aged and ailing parents. One and then the other of his parents passed away. Drained and exhausted from the travails of caring for them in their last days, Ziggy asked himself if he should now follow the rest of his family and leave town. Several of his siblings did, in fact, at that time offer him the opportunity to stay with them for as long as it took him to get a new start. He knew that this was going to be the decision that would determine the course of the remainder of his life. Try as he might, he could not escape the feeling of nameless anxiety that the thought of life away from all he knew filled him with. Yet there were options available to him outside of Fairvale that offered him the possibility of spiritual and material fulfillment beyond what he could expect to find if he stayed put. And so, he knew he had to ask himself: what constituted a fulfilled life? On the one hand there was the spiritual realm, of being at one with G-d. On the other there was the material realm, of realizing G-d here on earth. But there was another realm, that everyone always seemed to forget about, there was also the communal realm, of just being with people, who are, after all, created in G-d's image. Ziggy felt that if there was an answer it was this; that by prioritizing the communal realm he was devoting himself equally to the spiritual realm and the material realm, for people existed in the material realm, yet were of G-d. But what sort of decision, what sort of activity would clearly embody this priority?
Agonizing over this decision, Ziggy prayed to G-d for a sign. When, out walking one twilit evening, trying to figure a way out of his dilemma, he saw the "For Sale" sign slapped on the side of the Old Hotel, he suddenly felt a cool breeze waft over him, although everything around him was still, and he thought, "this is the answer that I've been looking for." The Old Hotel had always been Ziggy's favorite building in Fairvale, and, although he had never admitted this to anyone, he had often fantasized about owning it; about all the people he would meet and stories he could hear, not to mention tell, for Ziggy liked to talk and to tell stories, and had mourned his lack of opportunity to do so. Although he did not know exactly what his contribution would be or how he would make it, he felt sure that his agency would be most effective in the place to which he was most connected. His conviction growing with every step, he saw with ever increasing clarity that what would provide him with just the balance he needed to live out the remainder of his days in peace and harmony was running the Old Hotel .