fauxklore

Moving on to April in my catch-up, let' start with the first weekend of the month.

I drove down to Williamsburg the first weekend in April for the Virginia Storytelling Alliance (VASA)annual gathering. The drive down was about what I expected for a Friday afternoon, with a few areas of heavy traffic (inevitably around Quantico and around Fredericksburg), but I didn’t have any trouble getting to the hotel where the event was being held. I had plenty of time to get dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant before the informal story swap that kicked off the Gathering. Since this was just before Passover, I told a story that essentially combines two of my father’s jokes about the crossing of the Red Sea.

Saturday was a very full day. The first event was a workshop by Jeanna Lee on Persuasive Storytelling. She focused on the rhetorical triangle, which includes ethos (appeal to credibility and authority), logos (appeal to logic and reasoning), and pathos (appeal to emotion). The handout talked about these in terms of neurotransmitters. But the real tie-in to storytelling was an exercise where we were divided into groups and each got one of these approaches to use in telling the story of the three little pigs. I was in the logos group and we pointed out to the big bad wolf that he was supposed to be avoiding high cholesterol foods like pork. And then there was the matter of his criminal record … Overall, we had a lot of fun with this.

After an intermission, Gwendolyn Poole presented a workshop title Attention Please which had to do with practical tools for capturing the audience’s attention. This included voice inflection, call and response, and physical movement. That was followed by the first of two story swaps with feedbacks.

Then came lunch, which also included the annual VASA business meeting. That includes the financial report, membership report, and board of directors (including filling any vacant positions). I served on the board for several years a while back, but I’m committed to too many other things now to consider doing it again.

Next up was a workshop on Storytelling Ethics, led by yours truly. This is a topic that I’m passionate about. My handouts covered how to define ethics, basics of copyright protection, and several case studies. For example, what is appropriate to tell for a given audience? Can you tell a story from a culture other than your own? How should you deal with organizers of storytelling programs, including financial considerations? The discussion was lively and I think it went very well.

The second story swap with feedback followed that. The day ended with filling out evaluations and some closing remarks.

I could have driven home that evening, but I had decided it would be more relaxing to stay another night. That was, indeed, a good decision. I got dinner at a barbecue place that had been recommended to me and my drive home on Sunday was noticeably faster than the drive down had been. All in all, I’d say it was a successful event, though the attendance was on the low side.

1. Do you have any piercings? When did you get them? I have no piercings. Nor do I have any interest in getting any.

2. What is the longest you've had a "borrowed" item but not been able to return it? Why not? No idea. I may have kept some item of jewelry I borrowed from my mother until after her death.

3. Consider some of the parents others had growing up. What type of person would you be if you had those situations? I think my parents were, in general, less strict than many of the other adults in our neighborhood. I think if I’d had some of our neighbors as parents, I wouldn’t have been able to go into the city alone as a teenager, for example. And I suspect I wouldn’t have been able to read some of the books that my parents had out openly on their shelves.

4. What about a goal makes you most likely to procrastinate? I’m most likely to procrastinate on things I’m not sure I can actually accomplish. There’s a thin line between fear of failure and fear or success.

5. What tempted me today? I don’t know what tempted you. But I was tempted to go back to sleep.

6. If you could learn any new language, which one would you choose and why? I’ve started doing Korean on Duolingo, with the aim of being able to read local signs in Hangul. Korean syntax is very confusing to me.

7. What’s one place that you would like to visit but never will? Why will you never go there? I wouldn’t say never, but I think it’s unlikely that I will ever make it to North Korea.

8. If you could be a color what would it be? Why? I am rather partial to teal.

9. Describe a babysitting experience you have had. I didn’t babysit frequently. There was one boy on our block who pretty much every girl babysat for once. Exactly once, because he was a total brat.

10. Have you actively changed your habits and behaviors to help the environment? What kinds of things do you do? The most obvious thing here is that I’ve gotten quite good about bringing my own bags when I go grocery shopping.

11. Who is a friend you haven't seen for a long time but would like to see. I just mentioned to another friend recently that it’s been ages since I’ve seen Frances.

12. What is your favorite month? Why? September, because that’s when my birthday is. And the weather is usually nice in most places.

13. What would happen if animals could talk? What are some of the questions you would like to ask animals? It depends on what kind of animal we’re considering. Cats are intelligent, but I doubt they’d converse about much other than food. I think that bears might have deep thoughts. The most tedious animals to talk with would obviously be elephants.

14. What does self-care mean to you? What are you fav ways to practice self care? How are these activities fulfilling to you? How can you prioritize self care more? Self-care means finding ways to find soothing and satisfaction without depending on other people for those. Reading and listening to music are high up on my self-care activities.

15. Do you have any food intolerances or allergies? I’m lactose intolerance, but not severely and, with the help of lact-aid, can handle reasonable amounts of gelato.

16. What in life gets you really excited? Traveling and crafts projects.

17. How would things change if you were okay disappointing others? I generally don’t really worry about disappointing other people. However, I try to avoid disappointing myself.

18. Whenever you order from a certain restaurant, do you have a specific thing you order each time? Do you always order something new? It’s somewhere in between. There’s a Thai restaurant I go to somewhat regularly and I tend to get the same appetizer all the time, but order different entrees.

19. What age would you consider the prime of life? Why? I have particularly good memories of my early 40’s.

20. Something new you’d like to try? I’ve seen a couple of interesting crochet stitches I’d like to try, e.g. cat stitch.

21. Milk chocolate or dark chocolate? Dark chocolate is my usual preference.

22. Have you ever played ice hockey? Do you know how to ice skate? I have no interest in playing ice hockey. Having had to play field hockey in elementary school was bad enough. I went ice skating a few times in elementary school, but I was never any good at it.

23. How did you meet your first boyfriend or girlfriend? It depends on how you define “first boyfriend.” The first boy who kissed me was someone I met at summer camp. But the person I consider my first real boyfriend, a categorization based largely on our level of sexual experimentation, I met as a teenager (10th grade if I recall correctly) at the Saturday science program I went to at Columbia University.

24. If you could build a car customized just for you, what would it contain? I am really boring when it comes to cars. I do admit that I like the idea of heated seats in the winter.

25. What was the first thing that you did when you got your driver's license? Rent a car on a trip to Los Angeles.

26. What is your strongest memory, as a child, of your parents and what were you all doing at the time? There are a lot of things I could choose, but I think the most interesting one was the family music nights we used to have. We’d all gather around Dad’s reel-to-reel tape recorder and sing and play instruments. Both my brother and I played the piano and I was the designated accompanist for my grandfather when he sang Yiddish songs. My mother was learning to play folk guitar from a program on PBS and we all sang along with her. Dad used to say that we had a very musical family and what he played was the hi-fi. Sadly, those old tapes were lost to eternity many years ago.

27. What music makes you want to get up and dance? Ther’s lots of music that falls into this category, but no single song encapsulates it as much as “Johnie Can’t Dance” by Wayne Toups and Zydecajun. Other possibilities include “L’Oranguta” by Pepe and the Bottle Blondes, “”Desi Girl” (from the Bollywood movie “Dostana,”), "La Bamba" by Richie Valens, and “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar” by Jonathan Richman. Oh, and let’s not forget “Rock Lobster” by the B-52’s.

28. How has your upbringing, education, and environment affected your beliefs about money and wealth? I always understood that what is important is how you use your money to support what is most important to you. For example, my father sat down with me to help me make a budget when I started college.

29. What gives you confidence and why? It’s hard to say this without sounding arrogant, but I love getting positive feedback. There’s nothing quite like being told I’m really good at something.

30. Tell about a cultural clash/experience you have had with a culture other than your own. There are a lot of these since I’m part of a minority culture. One recent example that comes to mind is that I had a discussion with somebody who was complaining about not having been invited to a wedding rehearsal, which is something completely alien to me because it isn’t something Jewish people do.

Continuing the catch-up posts, the only other thing I did in March was go to the Travel Show. I was thinking about not going this year, but Cindy had gotten free tickets, so why not?

As usual, we divided our time between listening to some of the speakers and going up and down the aisles to explore the offerings of the various vendors. The first talk I listened to was Travel, Connect, Transform with Andrew McCarthy. McCarthy is a former brat pack actor who has written a number of articles for travel magazines, as well as a few books, including one about walking the Camino de Santiago with his son. He showed some video clips and talked about travel in general. Unfortunately, he also didn’t really know how to use a microphone, and tended to wander away from the podium.

Tamara Mallin of a company called Fresh Tracks Canada gave a talk titled Canada is Calling! I was hoping she would answer my long-running question about what there might be to do in Saskatchewan, but she failed at that. She did, at least, mention the existence of the Maritimes, but she talked mostly about cross-Canada rail travel and had a little bit about Churchill, Manitoba (which I have been to).

I listened a little to What to Expect from your Antarctica Expedition, presented by a guy from Atlas Ocean Voyages, but it was basically a promo for the Antarctic peninsula and didn’t have anything much about South Georgia and the Falklands, nor did it mention the Ross Sea region or the sub-Antarctic islands of New Zealand.

The most useful talk was How to Save Money on Travel Insurance by Brandon Hughbanks from Travel Insurance Center. I may use his services at some point in the future.

As for the exhibitors, there were too many pitching time shares, mega cruise ships, and other things of little interest to me, but there were a few with info about places I would consider going to. I picked up a supply of brochures and replenished my swag supply (mostly tote bags). Cindy and I tried to get dinner afterwards, but I was wrong that we wouldn’t need a reservation at Unconventional Diner if we went early, so we failed at that. Next year’s travel show is in mid-January and whether or not I go depends on my ability to get free admission.

I’m finally home for long enough to do some catching up here. Let’s fire up the wayback machine to March and the Women’s Storytelling Festival.

The 2025 Women’s Storytelling Festival was held March 20th through 23rd. Thursday the 20th was the virtual showcase, emceed by Bonnie Gardner, which I didn’t watch until a few days after the festival. First up in that showcase was Shani Womack, whose story had to do with the importance of community and interconnections, including members of her family. She was followed by Sarah Brady telling the story of Cassandra who had been given the gift of prophecy from Apollo but cursed not to be believed when she refused him. Janel Woodland focused on mother-daughter relationships as she, who had never wanted children, married a man with three children from a previous marriage. Her story involved a mall trip with her step-daughter and her mother and a funny prank. Sarah Beth Nelson brought us back to mythology with the legend of Medea. Finally, Karin Amano talked about difficulties with pregnancy and seeing an infertility specialist after losing a baby at 30 weeks.

The in-person show(s) started Friday night. Laura Packer started things off with a story about telling at a venue with an unusual dress code. She was followed by Toby Ishii Anderson with a story about her family’s experience with a Japanese internment camp. Andrea Kamens was next with a Chassidic story about how a rebbetzin brought light to a man who had been called "good-for-nothing." Then, Ingrid Nixon told her version of Hansel and Gretel, followed by a personal story about the secret to being a perfect daughter. Linda Gorham had a very funny story about the chocolate-loving Behr (not bear!) family. Jessica Piscitelli Robinson’s story was about telling at the Exchange Place at the National Storytelling Festival. Laura Deal closed the evening with a story about family health struggles. She also threw in a little bit of laughing yoga. All of this was was ably emceed by Kristin Pedemonti.

Saturday started off with a showcase featuring Carol Moore and Ingrid Nixon, with emcee Jeanna Lee. Carol talked about four women who influenced her - her mother, her boxing coach,her life coach,and her (paternal) grandmother. Ingrid started with a story about wanting to be Daniel Boone as a child, including having a buckskin jacket. Next she told the Grimm story about Godmother Death, which is one of my personal favorites. Then she told about being on a Russian icebreaker in the Arctic and seeing a polar bear, which she combined with an Inuit story about an old woman who adopts a polar bear cub as her son. She finished with a short piece about shopping for a gift for her mother in a five and dime.

The first Saturday afternoon showcase, emceed by Jenn White, started with Laura Deal, who told two stories - one about her ability to find things in her childhood home, including a pet turtle with an affection for an old pump organ - and one about a missing wedding ring. Aimee Snow had a story about her dream role in a show, playing opposite a guy she had a crush on. Laura Packer told a lovely and complex story involving her recurring characters, Crazy Jane and Red-Haired Annie. Then came Andrea Kamens with a story about her aunts, with a fairy tale twist. Finally, Sarah Snyder told a story about her mother’s death.

By the way, I was originally supposed to be in that session, but things were behind schedule so Jessica asked me to start off the next session instead, which was emceed by Fairfax mayor Catherine Read. I told my story “Berel the Baker,” which blends a Chelm story with a story about taking my mother to Poland to see the towns her parents were from. Next up was Linda Gorham, with a story about the music she grew up with and her struggles with singing in public, which led into a version of Rumpelstiltskin using Beatles songs. Toby Ishii Anderson continued with two stories about water - one about fly fishing and one about a tsunami. Ingrid Nixon finished off the session with a story about moving from Alaska to a small town in Washington state and having to cope with having to mow a lawn.

Saturday night’s session was emceed by Lauren Stephens. It started with Carol Moore whose story had to do with learning about menopause. Next up was Andrea Kamens with a twist on Little Red Riding Hood, from the perspective of the wolf. She was followed by Swapna Deshpande with a story about getting a pet snail to alleviate her melancholy as an empty nester. Then came Jennifer Hillery with a story about dealing with her father’s health issues. She was followed by Amanda Lawrence with a story about her son’s premature birth.

I was very tired at that point so I went home. I watched the end of the Saturday night show on-line a couple of weeks later. Laura Packer had a short and relatable piece about what she wanted to do when she grew up, which included paleontologist, a fireman, and the President. Jessica Robinson closed out the evening with an original folktale about gender roles.

Sunday’s program started with the story swap, where I fulfilled my traditional role as M.C. (which, in case you didn’t know, stands for “Miriam of Ceremonies.”) We had a wide mix of stories and I didn’t have to drag anyone off the stage, which is pretty much how I count success on this.

After the lunch break, Sherry Grimes emceed a showcase which started with Laura Packer telling a complex story about her aunt and Baba Yaga and encounters in the woods. She was followed by Ingrid Nixon with a story about a 13 year old girl who was rescued from a shipwreck in the Torres Strait and had to choose which life to live several years later. Linda Gorham closed out that session with a story about her grandparents and all the plastic in their house, with details related to her father’s deployment to Vietnam. She also told a short poem about waiting at red lights.

The finale showcase of the festival was emceed by Jamie McElhatton. First up was Linda Gorham with the Greek myth of Atalanta, which she likes to tell to middle school children. She finished off with a folk tale from Eastern Africa about a king who struggled to make a happy marriage. Then came Andrea Kamens with a story about a princess who refused to become queen until she was cured of being lame in one leg. Tobey Ishii Anderson was next with a story about making chains out of gum wrappers - and what happened to the chewed up gum. Then came Jessica Robinson, with a political metaphor about what happens when people don’t listen to the storytellers in their midst. Carol Moore’s story had to do with a training in the corporate world, which leads her to learning about sign language interpreting and the deaf community. Ingrid Nixon was the final teller for the festival, with a story about her father’s voice on a cassette tape.

I couldn’t really capture what the festival was like in person. Just trust me that there was a mix of traditional and modern, every possible mood, told by a wide range of women. And the best part of all is that we’re doing it again next year. We’d love to see you in March 2026 in Fairfax, Virginia. Or on-line if you can’t make it in person.

Continuing the catch-up ...

1. Name three things in your fridge right now that you are looking forward to eating I have corn tortillas and Mexican cheese blend, which means I can make quesadillas. I also have surimi and ramen noodles (and there are frozen Asian vegetables in the freezer) which will make a nice stir fry with the addition of sesame oil and soy sauce. And there are a couple of containers of Trader Joe’s strawberry-vanilla Greek yogurt. Aside from that, except for some eggs and a jar of spaghetti sauce (which really doesn’t need to be refrigerated since it’s unopened), almost everything in the refrigerator is some sort of condiment or a beverage.

2. What is the price of a dozen eggs at the store near you? Is there a price at which you will choose to not buy eggs? I think I paid $4.29 at Trader Joe’s a couple of days ago.

3. What does "copy cat,” mean to you? Someone with the good taste to imitate me.

4. What was your first pet? Why did you choose this pet? My brother and I both had turtles when we were really little. I don’t think there was any choice involved, since my parents bought them for us. Later on, we had Rosie the mouse, who we got from my next-door-neighbor after her mother objected to having a mouse. (I think her name was officially Rose Petal. She was a very cute white mouse.)

5. What is my earliest or happiest memory? My earliest memory is of being at my grandparents’ bungalow in the Catskills. I may have been chased by a cow, so it wasn’t actually a happy memory. I do have happier memories there which involve all the women playing mahjongg.

6. How are you going to make tomorrow a joyful day? Maybe working my way through my to-do list.

7. What are a few qualities you dislike in other people, and why? At the top of the list of annoying qualities is interrupting people. Mansplaining is a particular example of this.

8. What was your favourite thing to collect as a child, and why? I collected foreign coins, which started with buying a packet of them. I know I bought some at Expo ’67 in Montreal, but I may have gotten some earlier than that at the New York World’s Fair in 1964.

9. What is your greatest fear and how often do you think about it? I am terrified of heights. I can’t say I think about that a lot, however, since it is easy to avoid high places in my day to day life.

10. Have you ever moved? Tell about one of your moves. I’ve moved several times. Probably the most interesting was driving from Los Angeles to northern Virginia in 2002. I stopped at the Meteor Crater in Arizona and went to both the Cadillac Ranch and the less famous Bug Ranch in Texas. I ate some very good Mexican food in Tucumcari, New Mexico. I did not stand on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, but I resented the sign suggesting I should do so since I was then earwormed by the song “Hotel California” all the way to Oklahoma, where there was a sign telling me that the land was grand. I was also surprised in Russell, Arkansas where overhearing a conversation between two guys and a motel desk clerk informed me that dry counties still exist in some places.

11. Tell about a time you were given, or gave, flowers. My mother was really thrilled with the bouquet of flowers I had sent for her 80th birthday.

12. What is something that made your mother happy. Aside from getting flowers, Mom loved going to the theatre and I took her to Broadway shows for Mothers’ Day for several years.

13. What did your family do on Sundays as a child? My brother and I rode our bikes to Rhodes (officially called a delicatessen, but really more or less a general store) to pick up the Sunday New York Times and a box of “mixed fancies” (i.e. Italian pastries). We ate pastries as well as things like bagels or pletzel for brunch. We had to wait for Mom to finish with the NYT Sunday crossword before we were allowed to even look at it to try to fill in the words she didn’t know.

14. As a whole, do you live for tomorrow or today? Explain. I do both. I have long to-do lists for today, but I am also always planning things for the future.

15. Which talent would you most like to have? I’d like to have actual musical talent.

16. Which holiday has the most meaning for you-—and why? Passover brings back a lot of family memories.

17. What’s something exciting you are looking forward to? My upcoming paper conservation workshop in Greece.

18. Who do you feel most connected to right now and why? Probably Cindy, because we talk on the phone or text almost every day.

19. How much money is enough for you? As much as it takes to pay for my condo fees, food and other necessities (e.g. housewares and drugstore purchases), books, and a couple of trips a year.

20. How have your views on friendship changed as you’ve gotten older? I recognize that some friendships will inevitably end, just because of people moving or changing interests.

21. Make a list of 10 fun things you could do this week. I’m going to Balticon this coming weekend, so that probably accounts for 10 in and of itself.

22. What author, book or series do you refuse to read? I have no interest in the Fifty Shades series.

23. What helps you feel grounded and centered? This is a tough question. I guess completing some home organizing chores would qualify.

24. How are you and your parents alike? I share my parents’ love of books, especially mysteries. I also share some of their musical tastes, especially Broadway show tunes and humorous songs, e.g. Tom Lehrer and Allan Sherman.

25. What did your parents do for fun? My parents liked to go to the theatre and to play board games. Those are also things I do for fun.

26. If you had the option of living forever, would you take it? Only if that included perfect health and if the people I’m close to would also live healthily ever after.

27. What is your favorite day of the week? I don’t think there is any particular day of the week that is always my favorite. For any given week, there may be some event I am looking forward to, however.

28. Who do you talk to when you have a problem? One of my friends, usually either Cindy or Kim, depending on what the problem is.

29. What did you see today that was beautiful? The fabric that one of the women in my crafts group dyed.

30. Did you have a good sleep last night? Pretty good.

31. What are some things you are proud of yourself - for accomplishing, for being, for surviving, for changing, for not changing? I’m proud of how many places I have managed to travel to.

I started off 2025 with a lot of routine activities, e.g. playing Code Names (our favorite board game) over zoom with friends, the Grimm folktales discussion group, and my needlework group.

There was a Travelers’ Century Club meeting in early January, at which I happened to be sitting next to someone who was from the town where I went to high school (My home town still doesn’t have its own high school.) In February, there was an excellent Virtual Explorations presentation on Cybersecurity for Travelers, preceded by the Book Club discussion on A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks.

I was only able to go to part of Paul Joskow’s talk on Climate Change Policy in MIT Hillel’s Leading Jewish Minds series. The talks are recorded, but it is hard finding time to go back and watch recordings.

I made it to the February Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington meeting (over zoom), which focused on the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This was basically preparation for the upcoming IAJGS conference in Fort Wayne in August.

American Opera Initiative: My first excursion to the Kennedy Center this year was to see the annual American Opera Initiative, which consists of three 20-minute operas. The first one was Tati by composer Kyle Brenn and Librettist Lex Brown. The plot had to do with three people - an activist running from a criminal charge, a pregnant marine biologist who is the activist’s partner, and the investor who was responsible for the bioengineered blue whale the three of them are living in. The problem is that the whale is dying. The premise kept my interest and the music seemed to fit the theme well, so I thought this was fairly successful.

The second opera was Cry, Wolf by composer JL Marlor and librettist Clare Fuyuko Bierman. The plot had to do with a college student who wants a girlfriend. His brother is visiting and the two of them are influenced by an incel to be lone wolves. This was effectively creepy, particularly when they ended with a chorus of howling.

The final opera was Mud Girl by composer Omar Jajimi and librettist Christine Evans. The story has to do with two homeless women - one middle-aged (Maude) and one much younger (River) - who live under a bridge in a post-apocalyptic world. River creates an AI creature (named Poly) out of plastic trash. The gimmick was that Poly was played by 2 singers. This got the best reviews of the three, but I liked it the least. All three of the operas were dystopian, but this one had the least subtlety to it.

Stupid Accident: Early in February, I was meeting a friend who was visiting from out of town. We were going to have lunch at Immigrant Foods and go to Planet Word, which is an excellent museum about language. On the way there, after a detour because I was wrong about what street the museum is on, I face planted after tripping on a curb. I wasn’t seriously injured, but I sure looked beaten up. We did have a nice lunch and an even nicer chat, but I skipped the museum part.

Schmigadoon: In February, the Kennedy Center had a live version of Schmigadoon, which had been a 6 part series on Apple TV+. Since I am a hopeless musical theatre geek, of course I loved the series. Which meant that I had to see this on stage. Overall, it was reasonably true to the TV series, although Josh was played by Alex Brightman who, unlike Keegan-Michael Key who played the part on TV, is white. That meant that the interracial aspect of Josh’s relationship with Melissa (played by Sara Chase) was missing. There were also a few added songs. There are inherent differences between watching the show all in one piece versus over several weeks, so it felt a bit exhausting. But it was still a fun evening.

1. Do you prefer more "yellow" coloured lightbulbs (like incandescent) or the "daylight" whiter light of new LED type bulbs? I like whiter lights, in general.

2. Do you subscribe to any magazines or newspapers? I get a few magazines via subscriptions that are tied to memberships. For example, my annual donation to MIT gets me Technology Review every month.

3. What is the earliest photograph of yourself that you have that you remember when it was taken? I have a photo of me at the piano that was taken at a birthday party when I was probably about 5 or 6 years old.

4. How do you feel about using humans in medical research? I think it’s great as long as the people involved have enough information to understand the risks they are taking.

5. If you won a million dollars but had to give it all away, who would you give it to and why? I would give it to various charities, focusing on education.

6. Who is the person that you feel has altered the course of your morals and values, and how did they effect you? Definitely my father. He prioritized building community and treating people fairly.

7. If you could tell your boss what you really want to do in your job, what would it be? I’m retired, so this is not relevant. But when I was working, I was often able to set my own priorities and work on interesting projects.

8. What are things that you wish people knew about you without your having to tell them? I wish people would just magically know when I am too tired to be around them. I love my friends, but some of them can spend a really long time complaining about things and, basically, taking advantage of my being a good listener.

9. If you had to move across the country what belongings would you get rid of? This is tough. I’ve moved across the country, but it was for work and I had a moving service, so I didn’t have any real incentive to get rid of things. I suppose the first priority would be to get rid of all the accumulated memorabilia, e.g. theatre programs dating back to elementary school.

10. Who do you trust the least and why? My brother, because he has a long history of financial irresponsibility.

11. Do any of your friends or relatives have strange occupations? I have lots of friends who are performers, artists, scientists, engineers, etc. But the strangest occupation among my various circles is probably creating puzzles.

12. Do you have pets? Tell a story about one of them. I travel too much to be able to have pets. We did have a cat when I was growing up, because my mother was a soft touch. Later on, she cared for every stray cat in the neighborhood and one even moved in. This was not a great idea because she was allergic to it, but so it goes.

13. How are you like one of your brothers or sisters? My brother and I have a certain physical resemblance, but I like to think we have pretty much nothing else in common.

14. Has anyone ever influenced your manners for the better? Who? Uh, my parents tried.

15. If you could change your name, what would you change it to? I could use my Hebrew name, Malka Khaya.

16. What is your greatest extravagance? Definitely travel.

17. How do you have the most fun—alone, with a large group, with a few friends—and why? It really depends on my mood. I am good at enjoying myself regardless of who I’m with.

18. What is something that you used to struggle with that now feels easier? I’m less sentimental than I used to be and I’ve stopped saving things like greeting cards forever. I’m still working on being able to get rid of other memorabilia.

19. How do you maintain a healthy work-life balance? Being retired takes the work side out of the picture in theory, but I do a lot of other things that probably count as work.

20. What does retirement mean to you? I get to take naps.

21. What meal did you hate as a kid and you haven’t eaten since you’ve grown up? I think the meal I dreaded the most when I was a child was stuffed cabbage. P’tcha (jellied calves foot) would have been worse, but my mother didn’t try to make me eat that.

22. Write about something you have that money cannot buy and how it adds value to your life? My sense of humor. Being able to see the funny aspects of a situation always helps me to cope with stress.

23. What is one word that just gets under your skin every time you hear it, and why? It’s two word but I bristle at “artificial intelligence,” which is rarely intelligent at all.

24. Do you believe there is life on other planets or other galaxies? I am in the minority on this, but I am skeptical.

25. What song or album do you have a visceral response to? This is a particularly tough question. I think I’ll go with Copleand’s Appalachian Spring which just feels so pleasantly evocative to me.

26. What are some of the changes that have occurred in your life recently? How are you feeling about those changes? How are you reacting to those changes? I’ve definitely been feeling the effects of age and I’m not happy about that.

27. Are you lonely? Or when have you been lonely? I’ve been lonely, but, in general, I’m pretty satisfied with my own company and I sometimes need time alone to recharge my batteries.

28. What is the most enjoyable part of your daily routine? There are few things in life I love more than leisurely sipping a cup of good coffee while doing my daily word puzzles.

Continuing my catching up, let me do a couple of entries answering prompts before I get to things I've actually done.

1.What is your interpretation of one of your recent dreams? Unless I write it down right when I get up, I rarely remember a dream. I know I had a dream not too long ago that involved not being sure how I ended up where I was, but, given my notoriously terrible sense of direction, I don’t think that needs a lot of interpretation.

2.Do you still listen to CDs or cassette tapes? Yes, but not as much as I used to. And going through the cassette tapes is one of my goals for this year.

3.What is the earliest memory you have of a sibling? Since my only sibling is older than I am, he was always there to make my life miserable. Later on, I had hopes of having a younger sibling to torture the way my brother tortured me, but Mom had a miscarriage, so it was not to be.

4. Who is the one relative that you miss the most? There is so much I wish I’d been able to ask my father about.

5. If you could change one thing about my spouse/lover, what would you change? The top thing I’d change about the gentleman with whom I’m conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling is getting him to actually use his hearing aids. I’ve given up on trying to get him to enjoy doing things he isn’t necessarily brilliant at.

6. Who has more power the government or the people? Theoretically, the people have more power since they elect the government. But we are in weird times right now.

7. How do you feel when you stare at the stars? I feel small, knowing I'm a minuscule part of the universe.

8. Has a friend ever broken something or yours? How did you react? I’m sure somebody must have broken something, most likely accidentally, but I can’t think of anything specific.

9. If you don't believe in reincarnation, forget about that for a minute. What would you like to be reincarnated as? What do you think you WOULD be reincarnated as, if karma had its way with you? I’d like to be reincarnated as a spoiled housecat. I have no idea what karma would have to say about it.

10. What's your favorite part of being you? My sense of humor.

11. How would you be different if you had never watched television? I’d miss even more popular cultural references than I already do. (I don’t watch a lot of television and there are many popular shows I know nothing about.)

12. Who do you trust the most and why? My friend, Kim, because she is level-headed and knows me well.

13. Do you belong/have you belonged to a club or an organization? I belong to several organizations, primarily associated with storytelling and with genealogy.

14. Tell about a time you slept outdoors. When I went to summer camp in the early 1970’s, we had a couple of overnight trips where we slept outside. But the more significant experience was the big overland trip in Africa I took in 1998. I’d never slept in a tent before, since at summer camp the overnights always got canceled if there was any chance of rain. But that doesn’t work if you are traveling for several weeks. I actually came to quite like the experience, though I have to admit to not being crazy about setting up and taking down a tent in the rain.

15. Tell about a habit that you picked up from a family member or friend. I think my bad habit of stacking mail on my kitchen table and not looking at it for weeks was inherited from my mother.

16. What was your favorite family dinner as a child? My mother was one of the world’s greatest bargain hunters and she once bought 12 cases of borscht (24 bottles per case) at a public television auction. There is no better meal in the summer than borscht with sour cream and potatoes. Mom usually also served tuna croquettes with this, but I think it is sufficient on its own.

17. Do you have a favorite time of day? Why? I have odd sleep habits and I really enjoy the early morning (say, about 3 a.m.) when I get up for a few hours and do puzzles and read before having breakfast and going back to sleep.

18. What is the worst thing parents can do to their children? Tell them what to do without really trying to understand what their interests are. I was a rebellious enough child not to be really hurt by this, but I think my brother suffered a lot from my parents pushing him towards certain college majors and not letting him take a semester off, which led to him just not going to classes and failing everything that term.

19. What makes you laugh? I love atrocious puns.

20. If you were lost in the woods and it got dark, what would you do? Try to find a reasonably protected place to spend the night.

21. How do you manage your tasks each day? I make lists of things I need to do. I then go and ignore much of what is on those lists, alas, and waste time on-line.

22. Do you feel obligated to reciprocate when someone gives you a gift or offers you a nice gesture? Why or why not? It depends on the circumstances. I do try to reciprocate when friends offer me things for particular occasions, but I also sometimes buy something for someone just because it made me think of them and I don’t expect reciprocation for that.

23. Do you like leftovers? It depends on what they are. In general, I feel obliged to use up leftovers unless they were terrible.

24. What does financial freedom mean to you? It mostly means not having to watch every penny, but still making sure I can comfortably live within my means.

25. How did you feel when you woke up this morning? A bit stressed about how many things I wanted to get done today.

26. If something is forbidden, do you want it less, or more? It really depends on what it is. There are some places I’d really like to go to but don’t feel I can for various reasons (either legal or safety), so that is something I may want more. But I also pride myself on being law-abiding, so that makes me want some things less.

27. What is one thing you would like to implement in your life? Why haven’t you done it yet? I’d like to have a more regular schedule, but the amount of time I spend traveling makes that challenging.

28. What major "plot twist" moment have you had in your life? I suppose that the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling is a good example of a plot twist. In my twenties, I expected I would live a more typical life of marriage and children and suburbia. Well, I do live in (inner) suburbia.

29. Do you believe in fate? Do you believe you’ve ever experienced fate? Do you think you have a destiny? I think we create our own fate to a large extent.

30. What do you do to stay focused? Staying focused is definitely not one of my strong points.

31. What are your 5 bucket list items? Just five? I have a life list of about 100 items (plus ones I have already achieved). Many of them involve travel to specific places. I really need to update the list and that’s one of my goals for this year.

Books:

I’ve been doing National Just Read More Novels Month in January for several years now. So there’s a heavy dose of novels for the 1st quarter of the year, during which I read 10 books.

Jasper Fforde, The Constant Rabbit. Fforde is one of my favorite writers because of the sheer wildness of his imagination. The premise of this novel is that there was an anthropomorphic event that turned some rabbits (and some other animals) into being human-sized. There’s a lot of political parody involved, including an anti-rabbit party and attempts to segregate the rabbits in their own community. There are lots of fun details, including several references to the movie The Court Jester, as well as a bi-weekly event called “Speed Librarianship” which compresses two weeks of library work into six minutes. This was a very enjoyable read, even if I did find myself singing the Allen Sherman song “You’re Getting to Be a Rabbit With Me” for the next couple of weeks.
David Lagercrantz, The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Lagercrantz wrote three sequels to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series, featuring Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomqvist. This was the first of those three, and had to do with Russian cybercrime, as well as attempts on the life of an autistic boy who Salander tries to protect. It is very violent, but the violence is not gratuitous and makes sense in context. I thought Lagercrantz did an excellent job of following Larsson’s style and I found this to be a real page-turner. Highly recommended.
Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited I first read Waugh in the late 1970’s when Vile Bodies was on the reading list for a class I took titled Evil and Decadence in Literature. I went on to read several other books by him and mostly enjoyed them. This is one of his best-known books, since it was turned into a TV miniseries and, sad to say, I found it extremely disappointing. My problem with it is that nothing really happens except lots of drunkenness and adultery. Even Aloysius (Sebastian Flyte's teddy bear, who is, frankly, the most likable character) vanished after maybe a third of the book. Don’t waste your time.
David Lagercrantz, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye. Lisbeth Salander encounters another woman in prison, who is being terrorized by a gang. That story is tied into experiments with twins, including Lisbeth and her fraternal twin sister. Again, there is a lot of suspense and violence (including the murder of Lisbeth’s former guardian) but, if you can handle that, it’s another page turner.
Bran Stoker, The Lair of the White Worm. Stoker is, of course, best known as the author of Dracula, which I consider an excellent treatise on feminism, largely because Mina Harker is such a strong character. This book, alas, was more predictable horror novel fare. A young man comes from Australia to meet his family and gets entangled in odd goings-on in a neighboring house. There’s a woman pursuing the wealthy next door neighbor, but is she really a large white snake? And why does every mongoose he buys meet a horrible death? Horror alone is just not sufficient for me.
David Lagercrantz, The Girl Who Lived Twice. This is the conclusion of Lagercrantz’s contributions to the Millennium series and is just as good as his other two novels in the series. There’s a mysterious death in Stockholm, which turns out to be tied to an Everest expedition. There’s some fascinating info about Sherpa DNA and a horrifying attempt to kill Mikael Blomqvist. I found this both thoroughly absorbing and completely frightening. Well done!
Marilynne Robinson, Home. I read this for my book club. I’d really liked Robinson’s 1980-ish book Housekeeping and the movie based on it. She went back to writing novels around 2005 and won a Pulitzer Prize for Gilead. This novel was a sequel to that and involves the attempt of the bad son of the Boughton family to return home after an absence of 20 years. Not a lot actually happens as he attempts to reconcile with his dying father and spinster sister, but I did think it was interesting and well-written.
David Gibbons, A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks. This was for my travel book club and provides an interesting approach to history. Gibbons is a maritime archaeologist and uses shipwrecks as an avenue into discussing what was going on in the world at the time that a given ship was destroyed. Unfortunately, his writing tends to be too technical for the general audience. And the lack of maps makes it hard to tie the different event together. But I did learn a fair amount, so I’m glad I persisted through it.
Piers Paul Read, Alive. This was another travel book club selection. I think I had read a Readers’ Digest Condensed Books version of this ages ago. And I’ve been to the museum in Montevideo, Uruguay which has to do with the plane wreck that killed several members of the Uruguayan rugby team in 1972. The author did a good job of capturing the stories of the people who died and the survivors, who had to resort to eating the bodies of some of the victims to keep themselves alive. It’s an absorbing and well-written book and made for good discussion.
Marilyn Wallace (editor), Sisters in Crime. This 1989 collection of short stories by several women was, frankly, disappointing. A few of the authors (especially Marcia Muller) were successful, but a lot of the stories left me wanting something more fully developed than the space limits allowed for.

Movies: I only saw one movie during this quarter, which I saw on an airplane.

Between the Temples: I’d thought of seeing this movie in a theatre and, frankly, I’m glad I didn’t because I hated it. The premise is that a cantor at a synagogue is suffering from a vocal block related to the death of his wife. He gets involved in a relationship with his elementary school music teacher who signs up to be an adult bat mitzvah student, despite not actually being Jewish. Some people apparently found Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane quirky and fun, but I found the characters they played cringy and completely off-putting.

Goals:

Since I really just wrote out my goals for 2025, the only one I can comment on is reading and I only made it about halfway where I should have to meet my reading goal. But I did also make a dent in clearing out household clutter. Goodbye to an Art League class catalogue from, um,2014! Goodbye to expired supermarket coupons dating as far back as 2011! (To be fair, that was buried under something else in my den, otherwise known as the Black Hole of Vienna.) Isn’t living room archaeology fun?

I am fairly sure this is the latest I have ever done a year in review. Let’s just say that I’ve been crazy busy. Anyway, here we go in the same format I’ve used for several years now.

The worst thing that happened in 2024 was the whole fiasco with the HVAC leak in late June / early July. Which turned out to be due to a blockage from a line in a unit above mine, so didn’t involve as much money as it might have, but it was still very stressful.

Beyond that, there was also some medical stuff. Having cataract surgery was actually a really good thing. It was quite miraculous the morning after the first eye was done when I could read titles of books across the bedroom without putting on my glasses. (The second eye also went well, but that was a less dramatic change.) The knee issues that I had later in the year were also a big deal. Let’s just say I have good days and I have bad days. Getting old sucks.

Books: I read only 36 books in 2024, which is pathetically few for me. That was 14 non-fiction books and 22 fiction books. Favorites were Sleeping With the Fishes by Mary Janice Davidson, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehotto Hindman, Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, and a couple of Dick Francis mysteries. The worst book I read during the year was The Naked Face by Sidney Sheldon, a suspense novel full of racism and homophobia.

I didn’t manage any used bookstore runs over the year, though I did give away 4 books. I have at least 60 waiting to go out.

I belonged to three book clubs, one of which has disbanded.

As for book-related events, I went to the Moby Dick Marathon in San Francisco in October and even read one chapter (Chapter 8, The Pulpit).

Ghoul Pool: I finished 6th out of 14 players with a final score of 117 points. People I scored on were Jimmy Carter, Daniel J. Evans (unique), Shannon Doherty, Janis Paige, Jean Malaurie (unique), Bud Harrelson (unique), and Faith Ringgold (unique).

Travel: My only international trip of the year was to Portugal (Porto and Lisbon) and the Azores in May / June. But I had plenty of domestic travel. I went to New York City in late January / early February. Then to Salt Lake City in late February / early March for Roots Tech. The total solar eclipse took me to Bruceville, Texas (near Dallas) in April, including an Israeli dance camp. Also in April, I had an overnight trip to Richmond for the Virginia Storytelling Alliance gathering. In May I went to Colorado for RhinoStock (a memorial for a friend) and also had a quick trip to Indianapolis to go to a baseball game, which unfortunately got rained out. I flew back to Dallas in July for the National Puzzlers League con, adding on a train trip to Oklahoma City to go to a baseball game. In August, I went to a Jewish genealogy convention in Philadelphia, and added in a couple of days in New York City for Lollapuzzoola (and theatre going, of course). And in October, I made a quick trip to San Francisco for their Moby Dick Marathon.

Genealogy: I’ve continued mentoring members of my local Jewish genealogy society on Lithuanian Jewish genealogy. As I’ve probably mentioned before, when I was starting to do genealogy research, other people helped me, so I feel happy to be able to help other people.

In February, I went to Roots Tech, which is a large genealogy conference held annually in Salt Lake City. The most interesting thing there was the presentation on using DNA from an old envelope - amazing, but not ready for the general public yet. I also went to the IAJGS convention in Philadelphia in August, at which I finally got to meet a cousin in person, as well as doing some volunteering.

Baseball: As I mentioned above, I had a failed attempt to go to a minor league game in Indianapolis (damn rain!) but a more successful game experience in Oklahoma City in July.

Culture: I went to 10 musicals and one non-musical play. My favorites for the year were Tick … Tick .. Boom at the Kennedy Center, Harmony on Broadway, Soft Power at Signature Theatre, and Suffs on Broadway.

I saw 7 movies in theaters and two on airplanes. Favorites were Next Goal Wins, Shari and Lamb Chop, and My Penguin Friend.

Storytelling: I performed in a Better Said Than Done show in February and emceed at the Women’s Storytelling Festival in March. I told a story at the Artists Standing Strong Together New Year’s Eve storytelling show. I went to several local story swaps (some in person, some over zoom), as well as zoom story swaps in Los Angeles and in Ottawa, Canada. I saw a friend’s storytelling show as part of Artomatic. And I participated in several discussions of Grimm fairy tales.

Museums and Art: I went to an exhibit of Dorothea Lange’s photos at the National Gallery of Art with a friend (and looked at some other art in the museum afterwards). I saw a Judy Chicago retrospective at the New Museum in New York City. I went to much of Artomatic. And I went to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas and the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City.

During my trip to Portugal, I went to a stained glass museum in Porto, the Museo Nacional de Azulejo (National Tile Museum) and Oceanario (aquarium) in Lisbon, and the Museum of Myths and Legends in Sintra.

Other Stuff:

I participated in Lollapuzzoola (a crossword contest) in August. I played board games, sometimes with the National Puzzlers’ League, sometimes with people I know from the loser community. I also went to other loser events, including a few parties and a couple of brunches.

I went to Kochavim, an Israeli folk dance weekend (in association with the eclipse).

I did a tour of M&S Schmalburg’s fabric flower factory (via the New York Adventure Club).

I attended a few lectures in the Leading Jewish Minds at MIT series (over zoom). And I went to a reception for MIT president Sally Kornbluth.

I’ve probably forgotten something or other among this, but it was a weird and stressful year. And I think that compared to normal people, I still did a lot of things.

Goals: So how did I do on my 2024 goals? Frankly, not very well. I did not circumnavigate the globe going westward, though I did map out about half of a general plan for doing it, so I’ll give myself a 5% on that goal. I didn’t make it to any national parks. I also did nothing about cleaning out my saved files of genealogy emails. I read 37 books out of my goal of 80, so I get only 45% there. I did make some progress on organizing my bedroom, but I don’t have a good metric for that. I’ll estimate that I accomplished about 50%. I finished just about 2/3 of one afghan (out of a goal to finish 3 afghans) so I’ll give myself 22% on that goal. I still haven’t found my parents’ slides. I made it to one AAA ballpark (Oklahoma City), and had an attempt at going to a game in Indianapolis, which got rained out. So I’lll get 25% on my goal of 4 AAA ballparks. I did fairly well on exercise the first part of the year, but my knee injury meant that I did very little from August on, so I’ll give myself a 60%.

So, overall, I’ll give myself a rather pathetic 23% for the year.

Which brings me to goals for 2025:

Circumnavigate the globe going westward. I think I have a plan for somewhere in the October / November time frame.
Go to at least 4 minor league baseball games.
Finish 4 crafts projects.
Read 80 books, with a stretch goal of 100.
Finish going through my parents’ photographs and slides.
Revisit / update my life list.
Organize genealogy files.
Go to at least 3 national parks.
Learn to read Hangul (Korean writing system).
Sort through cassette tapes.

There’s a friends-locked entry just before this one. But, yes, I am far far behind.

Books:

Just 5 books this quarter, largely because I had spent a lot of time trying to go through saved magazines. I also went to the Moby Dick Marathon in San Francisco, but I’ve read that book several times before, so didn’t think I needed to write about it again.

Miriam Toews, Fight Night. This tells the story of a 9 year od girl, living in Toronto with her pregnant mother and her grandmother. On a trip to visit cousins in California, the grandmother falls while dancing and ends up in the same hospital where the mother is giving birth. I normally like quirky characters, but this book had nothing but quirks to it. The person who suggested it to the Crones and Tomes book club described it as humorous, butI didn’t find it particularly funny.
Amos Towles, The Lincoln Highway. Emmett Watson is released from a juvenile work farm in Nebraska when his father dies. He joins his younger brother, Billy, as they plan a trip to California to start a business and look for their mother who had left the family long ago. Two other boys from the work farm show up, steal their car, and set off to pursue their own goals. I liked the early parts of this book, especially because of a book of legends that Billy is hooked on. But the last 60 or so pages are a mess - unnecessarily violent and not really following the rest of the story.
Sarah Bewley, Burning Eden. The author is wpadmirer and this was her first mystery. On the plus side, the background (a small town in Central Florida) was interesting and I liked the main characters (a local sheriff who is also trying to deal with wildfires and a doctor who suffers from aphasia after being attacked at a previous job. However, I had some qualms about some characters having similar names, e.g. Bud and Buddy, which I found confusing. And the plot was a bit too convoluted at the end. I’ll still probably read more in the series, if I ever make it through enough of my backlog.
Janet Gleeson, The Arcanum. This book chronicles the development of European porcelain, starting from a German alchemist in Meissen and continuing to rivalries in other European cities. It started out rather slowly, but grew more interesting as it went on.
Jovial Bob Stine, 101 School Cafeteria Jokes. This is a collection of jokes for kids. I’m sure I would have found several of these hysterically funny when I was eight or nine, but they don’t work for me in my mid-60’s.

Movies:

Two movies this quarter.

Small Things Like These: I saw this because a friend wanted to. This movie has to do with the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, which were run by various orders of nuns, ostensibly to help “fallen women,” typically unwed mothers. This particular movie is focused on a coal dealer who discovers one of the girls from a laundry hiding in a shed and tries to help her, which leads to threats to keep his own daughters out of the Catholic school they run. It’s an interesting movie, but depressing. In addition, the ending is deliberately ambiguous. It is, however, well acted, particularly by Cillian Murphy.
A Real Pain: Two cousins, whose grandmother was a Shoah survivor, take a trip to Poland to honor her history. We quickly discover that their relationship is more complicated than it seems. Kieran Culkin won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar his role in this and I felt that was well deserved. In fact, the gentleman with whom I’m conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling predicted that when we saw it. It probably helped that some aspects of the movie mirrored some of my experiences from my trip to Poland with my mother several years ago. Recommended, particularly for 2G and 3G descendants of survivors.

Goals: Basically, I got pretty much nothing accomplished this quarter. There will be further details on that in my 2024 Year in Review, coming soonish.

I'm back to the oh so slow catch-up.

1. How Often Do You Leave Your ‘Comfort Zone’? I like to try to get out of my comfort zone, but I probably don’t stretch too far as often as I’d like to.

2. With Whom Would You Share Your Passwords? How About Your Debit Card and PIN? I don’t share passwords or PIN numbers with anyone.

3. What Would You Do if You Won the Lottery? My usual rule of thumb for windfalls is to divide them between charity, savings, and some sort of splurge, usually travel related.

4. When in Your Life Have You Been a Leader? I’ve coordinated planning and organized volunteers for several events - mostly storytelling related, but also involving work projects before I retired. I’m also the chief entertainment organizer for a group of my friends.

5. How Should You Handle the End of a Friendship? It depends on what caused the friendship to end. A lot of friendships end naturally because you no longer are involved in the same activities, in which case I don’t really need to do anything. If there was a serious falling out because of bad behavior (either yours or the friend's),it’s often worth assessing whether or not the situation is salvageable.

6. What’s the Best Advice You’ve Gotten? When I was in college, someone I knew who was a couple of years ahead of me told me I should study whatever I was interested in because there was no point studying something I didn’t like to prepare for a career doing something I didn’t like. Another friend around the same time told me that he always bought season tickets for things like the symphony because it helped him make sure things that he wanted to do got the highest priorities.

7. What Is Your All-Time Favorite Piece of Clothing? I bought a wonderful hand-painted long sleeve t-shirt from a project near Cape Town, which provided work training for women from rural areas. I wore it frequently for about 15 years and was deeply disappointed when it finally wore out.

8. What Small Things Have You Seen and Taken Note Of Today? Does trying to clean out old e-mail count?

9. How Should Parents Discipline Their Kids? My parents relied mostly on the “we’d be so disappointed in you” line to try to keep me from doing something they didn’t want me to.

10. How Do You Get Your Nature Fix? I walk in parks near where I live.

11. When Should You Compromise? I’m willing to compromise on things that are not particularly important to me, e.g. deciding what restaurant to go out to.

12. How Important Is Keeping a Clean House? I think it should be important, but I am very clearly not at all good at actually doing it.

13. Does Stress Affect Your Ability to Make Good Decisions? Stress definitely gets in the way of my getting things done. I think I can still make good decisions, but it really helps if I can talk those decisions over with other people.

14. What’s the Best Gift You’ve Ever Given or Received? I once bought a friend a small pillow made from a West African fabric. I saw it at a crafts fair and it immediately jumped out at me as something he would like. (And he was, indeed, enthusiastic about it.)

15. What Annoys You? It annoys me when somebody calls me and says they have a quick question and then goes on to talk for over an hour.

16. If the World Was Ending, What Would You Want to Do? Say goodbye to various people.

17. What Role Does Procrastination Play in Your Life? I am very good at procrastinating on doing things that end up taking surprisingly little time once I just buckle down and do them. Exhibit A: how long it took me to write this journal entry.

18. Have You Ever Changed Your Mind About a Hot-Button Issue? I’ve definitely changed my mind about things like whether or not I like a particular performer or how I feel about some type of food. I’m less likely to change my mind about political issues, though it can happen when I learn more about the impact of an issue on people’s lives.

19. What Are the Best Things You’ve Watched, Read, Heard or Played This Year? Assuming this actually refers to 2024, I saw a lot of really enjoyable theatre. I’ll write up my year in review real soon with details.

20. Was There a Toy You Wanted as a Child but Never Got? I really wanted a chemistry set, and my aunt bought me a “make your own perfume kit” as what she thought was a more suitable feminine alternative. However, I did get to play with my brother’s chemistry set.

21. Have You Ever Given, or Received, a Perfect Gift? I’m not sure how this differs from question 14.

22. When Is the Last Time You Did Something Nice for a Stranger? I often give directions to strangers, e.g. helping someone understand what metro stop they should get off the train at.

23. Do You Ever Eavesdrop? Before I retired, I had an office across the hall from someone who was much higher up the chain than I was and who tended to talk loudly with his door open. I couldn’t really avoid overhearing him. But I’ll admit I often got useful info from his conversations.

24. What Things Did You Create When You Were a Child? I made things like doll clothes (including drawing and cutting out clothes for Betsy McCall paper dolls, as well as sewing Barbie clothes). I also taught myself to crochet and made granny square afghans and shrink vests and so on.

25. What Are the Best Things in Life and Are They Free? Music, theatre, art, and storytelling are high up on my list. Some of them are free, but I have no objection to paying to support people who create things.

26. How Stoic Are You? I think I’m relatively stoic, largely because I have a higher pain threshold than is probably good for me.

27. As A Child/Teen - Where Did You Think You Would Live When You Were an Adult? Having grown up in a town with a population of under 5000 on a good day, I knew I wanted to live in a city. Boston was love at first sight for me. (And I’d still happily move back there if it weren’t so bloody expensive.)

28. What Role Will Robots Play in Our Future? I can see some utility to robots that assist people with chores, but it would have to be for specific applications.

29. If You Had Siblings - Did Your Parents Treat You Differently? If Not, Did You Wish You Had Siblings? I think my parents did treat my brother and me somewhat differently, but we were different enough people that it made sense for the most part.

30. Do You Look Forward to New Year’s Eve? I generally pay very little attention to New Year’s Eve, mostly because I feel no need to spend time with drunk people. Typically, I end up playing board games with friends.

31. Do You Make New Year’s Resolutions? I do set goals.

Apparently the second set of prompts I had for November and December 2024 has vanished. So I will just write about what I did in December and move on to December’s 1st set of prompts. There are also three other regular rundowns to write about - one on what I did in December (which will have a separate locked entry) and the usual quarterly update and the annual summary for 2024.

The exciting part of December was a visit from the Gentleman with Whom I am Conducting the World’s Longest Running Brief Meaningless Fling. (Hence, the locked entry to come.) Aside from that, I played board games (pretty much entirely CodeNames) a couple of times, had a routine dentist appointment, was lazy about making Chanukah latkes (in other words, I bought three different brands of frozen ones, of which the ones from Trader Joe’s were better than the ones from Golden which were better than Gabila’s. The Gabila’s ones were too oniony, which is really weird because I don’t normally think anything is too oniony. I also had a lot of storytelling things to do, including the monthly Voices in the Glen zoom swap, being interviewed for the upcoming Women’s Storytelling Festival, and performing a Chanukah in Chelm story for the Artists Standing Strong Together New Year’s Eve story blowout.

I got through writing a few proposals for conferences (both storytelling related and Jewish genealogy related) so I can get back to trying to do some catching up here.

1. Are You Hard or Easy on Yourself? I try to be fair to myself but probably lean a bit too much on the being hard side.

2. What Teacher Would You Like to Thank? There are a few possibilities. Maybe my elementary school music teacher, Mrs. Rowena Myers. Maybe Johanna, who was one of my better piano teachers. Maybe “Guru Hank” Paynter, who supervised my undergraduate thesis.

3. What Health Tips Have Worked for You? I think the most important is trying to get enough sleep.

4. How Do Male and Female Roles Differ in Your Family? When I was growing up, I think our family roles were pretty conventional for the 1960’s in many ways. Though my father did cook some of the time. Probably the most unusual thing was that my mother did all the driving. My father had a driver’s license but he didn’t like to drive. When my folks bought a new car in 1967, Dad backed it out of the driveway, drove around the block, pulled back into the driveway and never drove again in his life.

5. What Are Your Longtime Interests or Passions? I’ve always liked reading, music, needlework, languages, and science. I wanted to travel, but wasn’t really able to until I finished college, though I’ve certainly made up for that since.

6. Do You Have a Hard Time Making Decisions? No. Oh, wait, yes I do.

7. Were You Ever the ‘New Kid’? Since my home town didn’t have its own high school, all of us from there were the new kids when we started high school. And then, of course, I went away to college and to grad school.

8. How Much Freedom Did Your Parents Give You? My brother and I had a lot of freedom. By my early teens, I was allowed to go to New York City on my own, for example.

9. What Motivates You? I always like an interesting challenge. That’s why I do puzzles, for example.

10. Have You Ever Posted, Emailed or Texted Something You Wish You Could Take Back? I think everyone has done that at some time.

11. What Challenges Have You Overcome? Getting through grad school.

12. What Do You Wish You Could See, Hear, Read or Experience for the First Time All Over Again? The first time I heard Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” was pretty overwhelming.

13. Would You Quit if Your Values Did Not Match Your Employer’s? Definitely.

14. Are You More Or Less Religious Than Your Parents? Definitely more than my mother. Probably less than my father, though I think it was more about community involvement than religion per se for him.

15. Do You Recognize Yourself in Descriptions of ‘Generation Z’? I’m way too old to really pay attention to descriptions of Generation Z.

16. Do Machines Represent a Threat to Humans? Machines themselves don’t currently represent a threat to humans, but programmers do.

17. What Good Can Come from Disagreements? Polite disagreement is a good way to flesh out how people are thinking about controversial issues.

18. Is Modern Culture Ruining Childhood? I think some aspects of modern culture are less than ideal for having a happy childhood, but I’m fairly sure my parents would have felt similarly about things that were popular when I was a child.

19. What’s the Most Memorable Thing You Ever Got in the Mail? I once got a copy of a summer camp yearbook over a year from when it was mailed to me. It was stamped “accidentally missent to the Bahamas.”

20. How Did You Learn About Sex? From my parents’ copy of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, which was on plain view on their bookshelves.

21. How Often Do You Interact With People of Another Race or Ethnicity? I live in a fairly diverse neighborhood, so it’s pretty frequent.

22. Do You Suffer From Anxiety? Sometimes.

23. What Are Your Thanksgiving Traditions? We always had a pretty standard American Thanksgiving dinner. I think the most unique thing we did was having out little candles in the shapes of turkeys and pilgrims, And we always cleared off the dinner table and put out a jigsaw puzzle. I was well into my teens before I realized this was my mother’s trick for getting us to clear off the table and put away the leftovers.

24. Will Your Family Members Disagree With Each Other About Politics This Thanksgiving? I don’t think we ever discussed politics at all. We might have talked some about housing policy since that was my father’s career.

25. What Do You Look Forward to Most – and Least – During the Holiday Season? I like trying to find interesting Chanukah candles.

26. What Does Santa Claus Mean to You? Nothing really, since that isn’t my tradition.

27. What Is Your Most Prized Possession? I have a really beautiful necklace that had allegedly belonged to my great-grandmother. I also have my grandmother’s silver tray and wine carafe.

28. What Are You Grateful For? Books, good friends, cats

29. Did You Take Part in Any Post-Thanksgiving Shopping? No. I try to avoid shopping the last few months of the year.

30. Under What Conditions Do You Do Your Best Work? Complete quiet.

I’ll get back to the catch-up stuff soon, but there are a couple of newsy things I want to write about while they are still fresh.

Ceasefire: I was going to write a long treatise on this, but I think it is better to just say that I am skeptical of long-term success but trying to be cautiously optimistic.

Art versus the Artist: The scandal du jour is, of course, the sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman. I do think that he has taken advantage of vulnerable young women. The question is whether or not he should be “cancelled.” And, for me, this comes down to the long-standing issue of what to do when bad people produce great art.

I first encountered Neil Gaiman in the early 1990’s when I had a long flight delay in Saint Louis and had reached the end of the book I had with me. So I stopped in at the airport bookstore and, in the course of searching for something tolerable to read on the plane, saw Good Omens, which was co-written by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Not being a reader of graphic novels (with a few exceptions, that tend to be on specifically Jewish themes), I’d never read the Sandman series, but I had read a few of Pratchett’s books and mostly liked them, though I found them uneven. At any rate, I bought that book and ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Sometime after that, I was in Portland, Oregon and browsing in Powell’s Books and one of the people who worked there recommended Neverwhere to me. It had a combination of real life and folkloric themes that I found inherently appealing and it remains one of my favorites of his work. I have read only a handful of his books and I saw him speak at DAR Constitution Hall a while back. I thought he was good-looking and spoke well. Floppy hair and British accent - I could see young women falling for him in the same way they might have a crush on Hugh Grant.

I obviously don’t know exactly what did and didn’t happen, though it seems clear that he doesn’t really understand power dynamics between people and he doesn’t understand the concept of consent. But what does this imply about his books? It may not be fair for me to comment since relatively few of them are the sort of thing that really appeals to me, but the more general question is what should happen to the work produced by bad people? To cut to the chase, I have no intention of throwing out those of his books that I own nor would I necessarily refuse to buy something he wrote if it fell into the types of books he wrote that I’ve liked in the past.

Let me take another example. In May 2001, I took a trip to Malta, where I saw Caravaggio’s painting Beheading of Saint John the Baptist in St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. This is an astonishing painting, considered one of the 10 most important Western paintings of all time. I was blown away by the use of color as well as chiaroscuro. But Caravaggio himself was a sorry excuse for a human being. He had a number of problematic relationships (primarily with young boys), was arrested frequently for brawling, and even committed at least one murder. Nowadays, he would be a prime candidate for cancellation. But he was also the most brilliant painter of the 17th century.

Where I am going with this is I’ve seen the suggestion that it’s okay to tolerate the work of bad people who are dead for some length of time. But if we act quickly to get rid of the works of the living miscreants, how would we ever see the good art created by bad people? And I think the world is enhanced by good art no matter how bad a person the artist is.

November was another month in which I didn’t do much. We did have a book club meeting to talk about The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, which had some interesting things early on, mostly having to do with the 8-year-old brother, Billy, and the adventure book he admires. But it completely fell apart in the last 60 or so pages, with an ending that didn’t hold together. I also had my Litvak genealogy group and my needlework group.

Getting my water heater tune-up for winter proved to be extremely annoying because they sent me both a text and an email telling me I’d be notified of what time the technician would show up by 11 a.m., but I didn’t hear a word and when I called back, they told me that was an old message and I just needed to wait. He eventually showed up at almost 3 in the afternoon. Still, it’s one of those things that has to get done.

Of course, there was also the election. I did early voting at the community center near me. Both that and the elementary school where my normal polling place is are easy walking distance from where I live and I would normally walk, but not with my knee problems. At any rate, there was almost no wait to vote. There was really nothing contentious in my district since, as I have said before, VA-11 is so blue that it is practically indie. (Gerry Connolly got about 67% of the vote. Interestingly, I hadn’t gotten any mail or any phone calls from his Republican opponent.) There were also a couple of bits of good news. First, Eugene Vindman squeaked out a victory in VA-07. This is important because it suggests that Abigail Spanberger has a decent chance in her run for governor. (Note that Virginia has its gubernatorial and other state / local races in odd years. I am fairly sure that this is Thomas Jefferson’s fault as is everything I find weird about Virginia.) The other bit of good news was from NY-04, where Anthony D’Esposito lost. For those who don’t recognize the name, he replaced George Santos in the House of Representatives and had already gotten in trouble over hiring a woman he was having an affair with. Though, to be fair, the main reason I paid any attention to him at all was that he is from my home town.

The most annoying thing that happened in November was falling in my kitchen and being unable to get up. I called my friend, Kim, who rescued me and took me to urgent care, where I got examined and x-rayed. Bottom line was: 1) nothing broken, 2) a diagnosis of osteoarthritis, 3) advice re: painkillers (including an injection into my shoulder, 4) coming home with a knee sleeve, a cane, a sheet of exercises, and general advice. The doctor said I will eventually need knee replacement surgery but “not for a long time.” I am doing better and have been pretty much pain free for a while now. I do need to work on exercises more, however.

I am back to trying to get things done, so have the rest of my answers to prompts from last October.

1 OCT: World Vegetarian Day: What’s your favorite vegetarian meal? A hearty vegetable soup with homemade bread.

2 OCT: Audiophile Day: If you listen to audiobooks, who is/are your favorite narrator(s)? No idea. I don’t listen to audiobooks very often. Once in a while I listen to plays, but those don’t generally have a single narrator.

3 OCT: Techies Day: Are you a techie? I’m somewhat of a techie.

4 OCT: World Smile Day: Do you like your smile? How many different smiles do you have? I don’t really like my smile. There’s a long story of childhood trauma associated with this. The short version is that I had extra teeth in my upper jaw, which kept one of my front baby teeth from falling out and I had to have surgery to remove the extra teeth and then have the front tooth pulled into place. But it never really ended up straight.

5 OCT: Frugal Fun Day: What’s the best fun thing to do that’s free? Listening to music.

6 OCT: Mad Hatter Day: What’s your favorite Alice in Wonderland character? I’ll go with the white Rabbit.

7 OCT: Forgiveness Day: Who (including yourself) do you need to forgive most and why? I need to stop beating myself up for being lazy.

8 OCT: International Face your Fears Day: What fear do you need to face most? I’m somewhat afraid of confronting people who I’m angry with.

9 OCT: World Post Card Day: When’s the last time you sent or received a postcard? I’ve sent postcards advertising events to several friends within the past month or so. I need to do more this month.

10 OCT: Cake Decorating Day: What’s the prettiest or most interesting cake you’ve ever seen (or made)? I have no skill at cake decorating. I’ve admired some cakes I’ve seen, e.g. one shaped like a book.

11 OCT: World Egg Day: If you found a bird egg on the ground, what would you do? Probably just leave it there, since I have no idea what else to do.

12 OCT: International Migratory Bird Day: If you had to fly south for the winter, where would you go? Probably Uruguay. Although there are also some cool birds in South Africa.

13 OCT: Silly Sayings: What’s a common saying or axiom or proverb that you just don’t believe? What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

14 OCT: Indigenous Peoples’ Day: What book or film or series about or created by indigenous peoples do you enjoy? Greenlandic people count as indigenous, right? I really liked Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg.

15 OCT: Global Handwashing Day: How many times a day do you wash your hands? A lot. At least a dozen.

16 OCT: Dictionary Day: When’s the last time you looked up the definition of a word? I look up the definition of something at least weekly.

17 OCT: Pasta Day: What’s your favorite pasta shape and/or favorite way to eat pasta? I am partial to rotelli.

18 OCT: International Necktie Day: Do you know how to tie a Windsor knot? Yes.

19 OCT: International Gin and Tonic Day: What two things do you always associate together? Gin and tonic is a perfect answer to that. But if you want to cite me for lack of originality, strawberries and sour cream.

20 OCT: Croc Day: Do you own a pair of Crocs? I think I own two pairs of crocs.

21 OCT: Reptile Awareness Day: When’s the last time you saw a live snake? What was your reaction? I see snakes from time to time on the paths in our local park, but not often. So probably at least a year ago.

22 OCT: INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY: How often do you write/text in all caps? What emotion does it signify usually? I rarely write anything in all caps and, when I do, it’s usually by accident.

23 OCT: TV Talk Show Host Day: Who’s your favorite TV talk show host? I don’t generally watch talk shows. Do you count John Oliver? If not, I’d probably have to go back to Dick Cavett.

24 OCT: United Nations Day: If you had to represent your country at the United Nations, what would you include in your first speech/address? An apology to the rest of the world.

25 OCT: Global Champagne Day: Champagne. Yay or nay? It’s okay but I won’t go out of my way for it. I’m more likely to drink prosecco.

26 OCT: Howl at the Moon Night: Do you like werewolves? Well, I do like hairy guys.

27 OCT: Visit a Cemetery: When’s the last time you visited a cemetery? I’ve been known to visit historic cemeteries when traveling. I actually semi-visit a couple rather regularly, since there are a couple of family cemeteries I pass by on my regular walking routes. In fact, there is a tiny one in the corner of a nearby shopping center.

28 OCT: Saint Jude’s Day: What do you consider a lost cause? Getting my den (a.k.a. the Black Hole of Vienna) organized.

29 OCT: Hermit Day: Does the hermit lifestyle appeal to you, why or why not? There re definitely days when I want to be left alone.

30 OCT: Candy Corn Day: Candy Corn. Yay or nay? I like it but only once a year.

31 OCT: Halloween: What’s your favorite Halloween tradition? Telling scary stories.

1. What Rites of Passage Have You Participated In? The only thing that really came to mind was various graduations.

2. Will Humans Live on Mars In Our Lifetime? I doubt it.

3. Do/Did You Ever Hang Out at the Mall? We went to the mall primarily to shop for clothes.

4. Do You Unknowingly Submit to Peer Pressure? If it was unknowingly, I wouldn’t know, would I?

5. Is Breakfast Really the Most Important Meal of the Day? In general, I feel like I need to have something for breakfast, but it could be just coffee and a muffin or a cup of yogurt or some cereal. I really like Asian breakfasts, though. A bowl of pho for a dollar sitting at a plastic table on the street in Hanoi is amazing.

6. What Public Behavior Annoys You Most? People using their cellphones without earbuds.

7. What Superpower Do You Wish You Had? I’d like the ability to instantly understand any language.

8. What’s Special About Your Hometown? Island Park had this amazing nightclub called the Action House. I was too young to officially go there, but we used to go stand by the side door after school and listen to bands rehearse.

9. How Materialistic Are You? Not very. I prefer spending money on experiences, rather than things.

10. Should the Private Lives of Famous People Be Off Limits? Yes.

11. What Are Your Opinions on Cosmetic Surgery? I don’t have any particular objections to it. If somebody feels that it will improve their life and they can afford it, they should make an educated decision about whether or not it is worth it.

12. What Habits Do You Have, and Have You Ever Tried to Change Them? Everyone has habits. Some of them are good and some aren’t. My worst habit is putting things in “staging areas,” rather than putting them away right away. I haven’t really tried to do anything about that one.

13. Does Keeping a Messy Desk Make People More Creative? I have always believed that if a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, an empty desk must be a sign of an empty mind. But I don’t think the clutter actually makes me more creative.

14. Does Reading a Book Count More Than Listening to One? No. I prefer reading, but it is perfectly find if someone prefers listening.

15. Are You a Novelty-Seeker? For the most part, I am. I enjoy having new experiences and seeing places that I haven’t been to before.

16. How Strong Is Your Sense of Smell? Fairly strong. This can be annoying, since I am sensitive to a lot of fragrances.

17. Are There Topics That Should Be Off Limits to Comedy? I think this depends on intent. It is fair to make jokes about a group you belong to and (often) offensive to make jokes about groups you don’t belong to.

18. What Animal Are You Most Like? I’m cuddly like a cat.

19. What Magazines Do You Read, and How Do You Read Them? The only magazine I read regularly is Technology Review and, frankly, that is mostly because my subscription is free. I have read The Atlantic off and on. I read magazines primarily on paper.

20. Would You Like to Live in Another Country? I would, but not necessarily permanently. I have contemplated Israel, despite the dangers. I also think I could be very happy in Uruguay.

21. What’s the Coolest Thing You’ve Ever Seen in a Museum? The Great Animal Orchestra exhibition (which I saw at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts) was amazing. In short, Bernie Krause (who created it) recorded sounds in various natural settings, primarily to document the impact of climate change. I should also give an honorable mention to Artechouse, which I’ve been to a couple of times.

22. Are You a Good Listener? I think so.

23. Do We Still Need Libraries? We definitely do. Aside from the ability to borrow books, most libraries have numerous other programs. They also provide a place for people who may not have access to technology to take advantage of computers and other devices for digitizing media. And many libraries provide access to websites that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive, e.g. a lot of people use them to view genealogy websites like Ancestry.

24. How Do You Celebrate Your Birthday? Sometimes I travel somewhere interesting. Sometimes I just go out to dinner and/or the theatre or a concert.

25. When Have You Failed? What Did You Learn From It? My attempts to organize my life have been a massive failure. But I keep trying and sometimes make slow progress.

26. What Activities Make You Feel Most Alive? Travel, of course. Also, going to various sorts of performances.

27. Where, and How, Do You Watch Movies? I prefer watching movies in theatres. Specifically, I like my local indie movie theatre, Cinema Arts in Fairfax, Virginia. However, the majority of movies I watch, I see on airplanes.

28. What Is Your Favorite Street? Almost any of the major streets in New York City would qualify. Things are always changing and I inevitably see something I’ve never seen before.

29. When Do You Remember Learning a New Word? I can’t remember something specific, but I do look up unfamiliar words I see in books.

30. Is Amazon Becoming Too Powerful? Becoming? it already dominates American retail.

31. Will You Be Wearing a Halloween Costume This Year? We’re past Halloween, but I did not.

(via maju who gave me the letter W.

If you want to play, ask me for a letter.

Something I hate: Watermelon. I have had some that was okay, but usually it’s just too bland and spitting out seeds disgusts me.

Something I love: Warmth. There is nothing better than a roaring fireplace on a cold day.

Somewhere I have been: Wales.

Somewhere I would like to go: Wallis and Futuna (which is a fairly obscure French territory in the South Pacific. Since 2003, it has been a French overseas collectivity and I have to admit I’m not really sure exactly what that status means.)

Someone I know: If I may be permitted to use the past tense, Wanna Zinsmaster died just about 4 years ago, at the age of 96. She was a great storyteller and she offered up her home for workshops and classes. I am sorry she never finished her story about her Navy service during World War II.

Best Movie: Win Win was the first movie that came to mind. It was a 2011 comedy about a struggling lawyer who volunteers as a high school wrestling coach. The main thing to know is that it was written and directed by Tom McCarthy, which automatically makes it worth watching as far as I’m concerned. Runner-up: What We Do in the Shadows, because I have boundless love for both vampire movies and Taiko Waititi.

Why, yes, I am still having trouble with my attention span.

I must have done something in October, but most of it was not particularly memorable. There were the usual meetings involving storytelling and crafts and board games and such. And, of course, the Jewish holidays took up a lot of time. I think I saw the movie Small Things Like These, which Cindy was interested in because of her childhood Catholic school trauma. We might have seen it in November. Anyway, the movie is about the Magdalene Laundries and the control exerted by the nuns in a small town. It was well-acted, but depressing.

The biggest thing I did in October was take a quick trip to San Francisco to go to the Moby Dick Marathon at the Maritime Museum there. You may recall I had been to the New Bedford, Massachusetts Moby Dick Marathon previously. This is a much smaller event, but was still fun. It was reasonably well-organized, as they had people sign up for specific chapters in advance. (I chose Chapter 8, The Pulpit.) I would go to this again. (I’d also go to New Bedford again. And there is a Moby Dick Marathon in Mystic, Connecticut, too. And possibly one in Sag Harbor, New York. It’s a book well suited to marathon reading and not only because of its length.) If I do go again, I'll be able to plan better and spend more time actually exploring the museum.

The major problem I had was that my knee, which had been doing better, had started hurting badly again, probably because of the long walk through IAD. That also led to my sleeping badly, so I only lasted until about 6:30 at night, which was disappointing. But so it goes.

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