fauxklore

I like writing letters. I also like sending greeting cards. I know I have holiday cards left over from past years, but I couldn’t find them in a quick look, so I bought a couple of boxes of cards. Normally, that would mean that the leftover cards would immediately show up right on top of other piles of stuff, but that hasn’t actually happened yet.

At any rate, I am intending to write holiday cards in the next few days. If you would like to receive one from me, please message me your address. Don’t assume I have it from a past year.

Legibility is never guaranteed, though I will try. However, I did get C's in penmanship in elementary school.

Also, in the unlikely event that I do run out of cards, you may get one of my famous February letters instead.

I didn’t get around to writing yesterday because I was too exhausted when I got home from going out to dinner with people from Flyertalk. We went to Bluejacket, which is in the Navy Yard area. There were 8 of us and we were at a high top table, with wooden stools. Unfortunately, the lack of padding on the seats and the absence of chair backs got to me after a couple of hours. On the plus side, the food was better than I expected. I had fish and chips. There was tartar sauce for the fish, and ketchup and another unidentified condiment for the fries, which may have been their idea of barbecue sauce, but wasn’t really to my taste. Most people got beer, but I opted for a delicious cocktail called strawberry gingin, which had gin, lime, ginger beer, and fresh strawberry and ginger syrup.

More importantly, the conversation was lively and, of course, focused on travel. I had met everyone who was there before, but knew some better than others. The organizer was someone who I hadn’t seen in over ten years, as she recently retired and moved back to the D.C. area after several State Department overseas assignments. (The actual instigator was one of the out-of-towners, however.)

By the way, there was a large group there in one of the private areas. We learned later on that they were from a Brown University alumni group. I’m sure it was hard for them to be celebrating given that this was just a few days after the shootings there.

I was just too exhausted last night to write anything.

I’d had a pretty social day. I did do a bunch of household stuff in the morning. Then I went into the city to go to brunch and the theatre with a few Losers. (Losers are devotees of what had been the Washington Post Style Invitational, a humor contest that continues its afterlife on Gene Weingarten’s page.) We’d gotten about an inch of snow overnight but, other than crossing the street to the metro station which was a bit icy in spots, it was reasonably clear. It was, however, very cold and windy out. Normally, I would walk from Metro Center to Penn Quarter, but not with that wind. I had a long wait at Metro Center for the Red Line, but I’d left myself a lot of time, so I was still a little early for our reservation. We had a lovely meal - huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs) with salsa, tortilla chips, and avocado plus cafe de olla (spiced with cloves, cinnamon, and canela) - in my case. By the way, I am fairly sure that canela refers to true cinnamon, while what they refer to on the menu as cinnamon (and almost everything sold in supermarkets as cinnamon) is actually cassia. The food was all very good and the conversation was lively and far ranging.

We met up with the rest of the Loser group at the Shakespeare Theatre (Sidney Harmon Hall) where we were seeing Guys and Dolls, one of my all-time favorite musicals. I know every word and every note of every song from it and like most of them. I think the lyrics of “Adelaide’s Lament” are among the most brilliant comedy lyrics in any musical ever. (And Stephen Sondheim agreed with me on that.) While there are some rhymes I am not crazy about (e.g. in the title song, Biloxi doesn’t rhyme with Roxy, but hey, I’m pretty sure Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Benny Southstreet wouldn’t know that) and I’m fairly sure Frank Loesser never met anyone from Rhode Island given the accent he (and Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows) had Miss Adelaide use, the whole show works. My favorite song is “Luck Be a Lady Tonight,” but I also have a soft spot for “More I Cannot Wish You.” The combination of the book, music, lyrics, and choreography epitomizes everything I love about Broadway musicals.

This production had excellent performances. Julie Benko was note perfect as Sarah Brown and played well against Jacob Dickey as Sky Masterson. Hayley Podschun was spot on as Miss Adelaide. The whole show just worked for me. It isn’t the absolutely best cast I’ve ever seen for it - that would be Steven Pasquale as Sky Masterson and Phillipa Soo as Sarah Brown at the Kennedy Center Broadway Center Stage production a few years ago. (I’ve also seen the show on Broadway at least twice.) But it was still excellent and all of us enjoyed it.

By the way, I also ran into a storytelling friend who was seeing the show with a group of her friends. This sort of coincidence happens to me a lot. And I like that aspect of living in the D.C. area.

I said that my feelings about religion deserve their own entry, so here goes. In short, it’s complicated.

To start with my maternal grandfather had a rabbinic degree though he made his living as a watchmaker / jeweler. He was definitely a scholarly type and wore a yarmulke at home, though I don’t remember him wearing it in his store or on excursions to the zoo or the like. My uncle was sent to a Jewish day school but my mother went to public school and she just barely knew even the Hebrew alphabet. I believe that this sexism affected her interest (or lack thereof) in religious observance.

My paternal grandfather had a cantorial degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary. My father’s religious education was pretty much entirely in Lithuania as a child. Both dad and grandpa were survivors of the Kovno ghetto and Dachau.

The key thing is that my parents were more concerned with community than with religion per se. That is, Mom went to shul (Yiddish for synagogue) pretty much only on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, though she was active in Sisterhood. Dad, however, went regularly, largely to make sure they would have a minyan (the quorum of ten men required to perform certain parts of Jewish services. Back in those days, even Conservative synagogues only counted men, though nowadays most Conservative synagogues also count women.) Dad was also one of the key members of the building committee when our synagogue built an addition. And he edited the congregation’s newsletter for at least a few years. (There is a hereditary illness in my family that leads us to edit newsletters, but that’s a separate subject.)

But in strictly religious, versus cultural, terms, I grew up in the house of the holy dishes. That is, my parents kept a nominally kosher home but would go out to eat shrimp wrapped in bacon at a local Chinese restaurant. All of the summer camps I went to had some Jewish content. One of them had brief Friday night services for example. The most influential of those camps was Camp Ein Harod, the socialist Zionist camp I went to for two summers and the source of a couple of my most popular stories. And, well, let’s just say that the first Broadway musical I ever saw was Fiddler on the Roof and my cousin David sang “Sunrise, Sunset” at every family occasion. (And, by the way, every Jew has a cousin named David.)

Which pretty much meant that I was all set to follow in the tracks of my parents and be a typical American cultural (but not especially religious) Jew. Until I got very friendly with Debby in 10th grade. She had gone to the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County up to that point and was modern Orthodox. And, at some point, she persuaded me to go to a Shabbaton (basically, a weekend retreat, including Shabbat services and learning sessions and lots of singing) that was affiliated with Torah Leadership Seminar. Debby sold this to me as a good way to meet boys. (Hey, we were teenage girls. As my father once said, I had a one-track mind, but a lot of trains ran on that track.)

Anyway, I had a great time and went to other events, including Seminar itself (a weeklong retreat) a couple of times. And by the time I started college, I considered myself modern Orthodox. I kept kosher and kept shabbat fairly strictly, though I did eat vegetarian food and fish in non-kosher restaurants, which was not uncommon among Orthodox Jews in the late 1970’s but is more or less unheard of nowadays. I continued being pretty much observant for several years, through graduate school at least, though I did sometimes relax my shabbat observance somewhat when traveling.

So what changed? I can’t pinpoint one thing, but my relationship situation (aka the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling) was a factor, since he is not at all religious. But, more to the point, most Orthodox synagogues only interest in single women is getting them married off. (And not just Orthodox shuls for that matter. After my father died, my mother felt out of place at the shul she’d gone to for 20-something years.) Basically, once I was in a non-academic environment, I had a hard time finding a community that worked for me.

Now, I’m not entirely non-observant. I’m not about to start eating pork and shellfish. I pay attention to the Jewish holidays in planning travel and so on, though I don’t really go to shul regularly. I’ve found some other sources of community, largely via the storytelling world. And I have some Jewish connections, though more cultural than religious. I’m not really satisfied with that state of things, but I need to find a way to clarify what I really want so I can look for the right fit.

One thing I should clarify because people make assumptions, is that I am not an atheist. I have a definite personal vision of G-d. In short, I am not sure whether or not I believe in G-d, but I definitely believe in godliness, the power of people to behave in ways that do good in the world.

As I said to start with, it’s complicated.

I had a fairly busy day today. I needed to go to Trader Joe’s since I used the last of my vitamin tablets this morning. (TJ’s is the only place around here that sells chewable multivitamins that aren’t gummies.) I leveraged off that errand to see the movie Rental Family. Wednesday is senior citizen discount day, with $7 tickets all day. I knew very little about the movie beforehand, but found it quite enjoyable. The essential story has to do with an American actor in Japan (played by Brendan Fraser) who takes a job playing stand-in roles for strangers, e.g. acting as the groom at a wedding for a bride whose actual relationship is with another woman. It’s very funny at times, but it also raises interesting questions about the ethics of this business.

The evening involved a committee meeting for the Women’s Storytelling Festival, which will be in March. I stepped up to be the volunteer coordinator again, a job I did a couple of times, but had stepped back from the past two years. Expect to hear some shameless self-promotion over the next few months.

Getting back to normal life, here are my replies to the November blog prompts.

1. What was your high school's mascot or motto? Team colours? Our mascot was the ram. And our team colors were black and gold.

2. If your life was a reality TV show, what would be the hook that would draw viewers in? I think it would be a cross between Game of Wool and Hoarders.

3. What book setting would you like to visit, if you could? May I please move into a flat at 77 Scotland Street?

4. If you had to sacrifice one of your senses (taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing), which would you choose and why? I think losing any of them would be horrible. I could probably survive best without a sense of taste, since smell contributes a lot to what we experience as taste.

5. What are you saving up for? I’m always saving up for the next trip.

6. What's your favorite place to escape from life temporarily? A park? A mall? Ideally, I’d be somewhere alongside an ocean. But that’s a long drive from where I live. Closer to home, we have some very nice botanical gardens.

7. Would you rather be rich and famous or just rich? Why? I’d rather just be rich. If one is also famous, they are inevitably surrounded by people who want something from them.

8. If you found treasure worth millions in your backyard, would you keep it a secret or would you tell the world? It depends on what the treasure is. If it were something of cultural / archeological significance (e.g. Sutton Hoo), I would tell the world. Or, more accurately, tell experts who could tell the world.

9. Have you ever been in a car wreck? How many? Whose fault was it? I’ve been in a few (fortunately minor) car accidents. When I was in high school, I was hit by a car while crossing the street on my way home from the school bus. That was obviously not my fault. I was lucky to be only bruised. Later on, I totaled my first car by skidding into a guard rail on a rainy day. That was obviously my fault.

10. Who is your all-time favorite sports player? It’s so hard to choose one. For sheer character and eccentricity, I’ll have to go with Bill “Spaceman” Lee. His love for baseball was (still is?) almost tangible.

11. Describe your best childhood friend. Kathy was my best friend starting about 4th grade. I knew her in school and her family moved down the block from me about then. We spent countless hours playing hopscotch, listening to music, and just hanging out.

12. Has religion played a role in your life? How? This is very complicated and probably deserves its own blog post.

13. What is something you are pessimistic about? The future of the United States given the current administration and, especially, the Supreme Court’s lack of respect for precedent.

14. What did you postpone that needs your immediate attention? Answering a bunch of emails.

15. How much water do you drink in a day? Probably on the order of 6 to 8 cups, depending on how much other stuff I drink.

16. What do you think is the least important body part or feature, and why? I can’t think of any body part I’d really want to do without, frankly.

17. If everyone in the world were vegan, would that persuade you to change your diet? Why? Why not? I suppose that would lead to a lack of availability of non-vegan food, so I’d more or less have to. But I wouldn’t be happy about that. While a lot of what I do eat is vegan (or, at least, vegetarian), I do also think of tuna as one of the key elements of what I consider Purina Miriam chow.

18. Describe a favourite piece of clothing - and why it is special to you I have a particularly spectacular little black dress. with elaborate folds. It goes perfectly with my feathered hat and feather boa for a very 1920’s look

19. Which decade of fashion was your favourite and least favourite? I remember liking the late 1980’s when we all wore shoulder pads, which did wonders for making me look like I had a waistline. As for least favorite, there was a different part of the 1980’s when I dressed a lot in very bright colors so I could be seen across a crowded room.

20. What’s something important that you’ve never forgotten? My father used to say that you should always try to do your best and nobody can ask more than that of you.

21. What made you smile today? There were some funny lines in a book I just started reading.

22. What is something you loved to do as a child but stopped doing? Would you like to pick it up again? I loved making music and really haven’t done that in a long time.

23. Waves are those things we face that cause movement to our inner balance. How do you approach waves? I approach those things the same way I approach ocean waves - jump straight into them.

24. What different hobbies and interests have you had throughout your life? There are various categories of hobbies and interests I’ve had. In terms of general categories, I’ve always been an avid reader. I’ve always loved music - both playing and listening - and, except for various injuries in more recent years, have done a lot of different types of dancing. Crafting (mostly with yarn and paper) has always been a big part of my life, too. I’ve also collected various things over the years, with dolls probably being the biggest category. (I am particularly fond of paper dolls, by the way.) And, of course, I always wanted to travel and have been fortunate to have been able to do so.

25. In light of the Internet, do we even need schools any more? The Internet is useful for looking up facts, though one needs to be careful about the reliability of sources. But it doesn’t take the place of mentorship in how to learn things.

26. Look out the door or window - what do you see? When I look out the sliding door in my living room, I see the courtyard of my condo complex. There are often birds or squirrels there, among the trees.

27. Who controls the TV remote control in your family? I live alone so it had better be me. But, frankly, I don’t really watch TV very much.

28. What were the top three lessons you had to learn the hard way? 1) I’m human, 2) Therefore, I make mistakes, and 3) Most mistakes can be remedied.

29. What is on your to-do list? Changing the linens, catching up on my book journal, buying tickets to various events.

30. What is stressing you out right now? What is the root cause of this stress? Trying to get control of my calendar.

You may recall that I had booked the Queen Mary 2 transatlantic crossing from Hamburg to New York City. About a week before departure, I got an email that there was an issue with the ship and it couldn’t dock in Hamburg. Instead, they would bus the passengers from Hamburg to Bremerhaven instead. This was a minor inconvenience, but I certainly would have liked more notice. And it was a bit annoying that they didn’t confirm the bus time until late afternoon on Friday when we were departing on Monday.

I had chosen the first bus time in the morning and took a taxi to the Central Bus Terminal. Several people were waiting around and there were two people from Cunard checking off passengers. There was a bit of a wait before we left and the ride was about 2 1/2 hours. We did have a brief comfort stop and I have to say that the facilities where we stopped didn’t reflect well on German infrastructure. We did, eventually, get to the Columbus terminal in Bremerhaven, where we had to go through assorted checks of our documents (for Americans, this meant passport, boarding pass for the ship, and UK ETA). Then we got on another bus to the ship itself. It turned out that they were supposed to have given me the ship ID card, but had failed to. There were two German men who had the same problem and they made us wait outside in the cold and windy weather before they made new cards and let us on. Apparently the people on the afternoon buses had even worse issues and some of them had to wait as long as three hours before their buses left Hamburg.

Fortunately, the actual voyage went more smoothly for the most part. I had booked an inside stateroom on the grounds that there would be plenty of places other than my cabin to hang out in. That was pretty much true, but I did get in an afternoon nap most days. While I had time for reading and doing puzzles and crocheting, there were enough activities that I didn’t have time for everything I wanted to do. Because I was traveling alone, I made a point of going to many of the twice daily solo travelers’ get-togethers, which were a great way to meet people. In fact, one of the first people I talked with turned out to be someone with whom I have a mutual friend. They have several lectures during the day and I went to some about nuclear energy (e.g. the Manhattan Project), cinema (one on Alfred Hitchcock and Daphne du Maurier and one on Busby Berkeley and Carmen Miranda), a couple of art talks (one on Banksy and one on art as an investment), and (a particular highlight) two by Marcel Theroux (son of travel writer Paul), who talked about making documentaries in Russia and North Korea and about his true crime books. Of course, I played trivia and, in fact, the team I was on for progressive trivia came in second and we won some Cunard-branded tchotchkes. There was also plenty of other entertainment available, especially all sorts of music. For example, I went to the afternoon tea one day, which had a harp player. I also listened to an Irish folk duo a couple of times and to a cocktail pianist who played a lot of show tunes. A couple of people I met sang in the passenger chorus and I went to their concert, too. I didn’t find time to work on the jigsaw puzzles that were set out among the game tables where a few people played board games. I also enjoyed the library which is claimed to be the largest one on any cruise ship.

The food was, in general, reasonably good. There was a wide enough variety to satisfy most tastes. I always ate dinner in the Britannia Restaurant. They had given me open seating, which meant I could show up any time from 6 to 9 p.m. If you want to sit alone, you can, but I always asked to share a table and, except for one night where there 7 people at a table for 12, making it hard to talk to anyone except whoever was right next to you, that worked out well. I met some very interesting people, including one of the lecturers (whose talk on police malfeasance I had missed) and a woman who had worked as a crystallographer. I sometimes ate breakfast or lunch in the restaurant, but more often went either to the Kings Court Buffet or to the Corinthia Lounge, which served “light fare,” e.g. fruit plates and pastries for breakfast or salads for lunch.

I was a little surprised by the demographics, by the way. Yes, there were plenty of older people. In my mid-60’s, I was probably close to the average age. But there also several younger passengers, e.g. a young man who had been studying in London for a couple of years who was returning to New Jersey. The largest number of passengers were (not surprisingly) British, followed by Americans and Germans. On Friday night, they offered a Jewish religious service and the attendees were from several countries, including the Netherlands, Spain, and Canada as well. (By the way, the guy from Germany who volunteered to lead the service had an excellent voice. And Cunard supplied kosher wine, challah, and gefilte fish.)

One other thing I should mention is that I have some friends who told me they would never take a trip on Cunard because they don’t want to dress up. During the day, you can wear pretty much anything. The general dress code for most evenings is “smart attire.” I generally wore one of two dresses I’d brought with me or a nice set of slacks with a twin set, i.e. pretty much what I used to wear to work. There were two gala nights and they tell you the theme long before sailing. I absolutely love getting dressed up, so for the Black and White Gala Night, I wore a full length black dress with an elaborate white neckline. I also had on my grandmother’s amethyst necklace and earrings.



The other gala night’s theme was Masquerade and a bit over half the people wore masks. I opted to wear my longish purple dress and my Mardi Gras themed Lunch at the Ritz earrings.



I got plenty of compliments on both outfits. And I enjoyed seeing what other people were wearing. (There were even a few men in kilts. Drool!)

But there are some people who never dress up and they were free to eat in the pub or the buffet on those evenings.

There was always a show (performed twice to accommodate both early and late diners). My favorite of the performers was a woman named Lorraine Brown who had an amazing voice. For one show, she did a Motown medley and a series of Shirley Bassey songs. Her other show was focused on Dionne Warwick. As far as the other shows, I was disappointed in the Broadway show, which started out fine with songs from West Side Story and South Pacific but ended up with several numbers from jukebox musicals. I don’t go to Broadway-themed shows to hear songs by Carole King, Tina Turner, Abba, and The Temptations. Nice dancing, however.

Overall, I enjoyed the transatlantic crossing much more than I’d expected to. I even got this iconic photo as we approached New York at the end of the trip.




Cunard offered bus service to the airports and to the train stations. I decided that, given my large suitcase, it was worth the 60 bucks to Penn Station (roughly what an Uber would cost) instead of coping with the subway. Marriott status proved useful again as I was able to get early check-in (without a fee) and take a nap. Overall, I would take the QM2 again, though I still prefer small ship expedition cruises.

The one flight I paid for with actual money (vs. frequent flyer miles) was from Washington Dulles to San Francisco. Because I had gotten compensation for a couple of flight delays over the summer, this cost me next to nothing. The catch was that the flight was at 6:30 in the morning, which meant taking a Lyft to IAD at oh-dark-thirty. As is all too typical when I have early flights like that, going to bed early didn’t really work and I got much too little sleep.

I first flew into SFO in August 1980, when I moved to the Bay Area to go to grad school at Berkeley. The airport was under construction. It has been under construction for the 45 years since. This time it was a particularly long walk to baggage claim and, from there, to the air train. I had decided that staying at the Grand Hyatt was a good use of Hyatt points and this proved to have been a good decision. They charged me $30 for early check-in, but that was a good deal since I’d gotten a $600 room for free. So, instead of going into the city and going to a museum or the like, I took a nap and spent some time reading and doing puzzles. You can avoid the high prices at the hotel restaurant if you realize that there’s a food court outside of security in the international terminal. I did splurge on breakfast in the morning, however.

The flight from SFO to TPE is nearly 14 hours, so it was a good thing that I’d had enough miles to do it in business class. I decided to splurge on a taxi when I arrived instead of trying to figure out the public transportation. That was a smart decision because, as I learned in the morning, Taipei Main Station is a bit of a maze and, while my hotel was a very short walk from the station, finding the entrance would have been challenging on my own. I stayed for three nights at White Space Design Hotel which was okay, but the room was very small and the bathroom was the sort that floods completely when you take a shower.

As for what to see, I had read the relevant sections of both the Fodor’s and Frommer’s guidebooks. I also found Nick Kembel’s Taiwan Obsessed website to be very helpful.

My first sightseeing excursion was to the National Palace Museum. I’d bought a three day pass for the transit system, which was convenient, but not really a great deal. Getting to the museum was easy enough (via metro and bus). The museum itself was completely overwhelming. I’m a big fan of calligraphy and manuscripts, so spent a lot of time looking at their book and scroll collection. Most of the displays had to do with books from the Song dynasty (roughly 1100’s through 1200’s) so I kept making mental jokes about there being a lot of songbooks.



I also looked at other things, e.g. clay and jade and bronze. I particularly liked several of the jade pieces.





I spent several hours at the museum (with a break to have lunch in their cafe) and found it completely overwhelming. I’d have liked to see their textile collection (which is in another building) but, at that point, I didn’t think I could absorb anything else.

I started Sunday morning with the Flower and Jade Markets, which are near Daan Park, which was a pleasant place to walk around. The jade market didn’t really engage me, alas. But the flower market was overwhelming and was one of the highlights of my time in Taipei.



There were several things I was interested in doing, but I decided it was important to take advantage of the weather being clear, as rain was predicted for the rest of my time there. That made it a good afternoon to go to Taipei 101, which had once been the tallest building in the world. There’s a huge food court there, which is a good (albeit crowded) place to get lunch. There’s also an upscale shopping mall. But the real reason to go there is to go up to the observation deck. I chose to go to the 89th floor enclosed area, instead of paying a lot more to go to the outdoor skydeck on the 101st floor. You get views over the whole area, including both the city, with a lot of tall modern building, and the surrounding mountains. By the way, you can also go down to the 88th floor and see the large damper that protects the building from earthquakes.



Overall, the experience is quite similar to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is what is currently the tallest building in the world.

The other site in Taipei that I considered essential was the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Fortunately, that is one of the few things in Taipei that is open on Mondays. It is also free to visit. It was a rainy day, which was annoying, particularly because it meant they weren’t doing the famous changing of the guard. But there was still plenty to see.



Note that you can enter at one of the sides and take the elevator up, instead of climbing all of those stairs. The main thing to see inside is the bronze statue of Chiang Kai-Shek on the 4th floor.



There are also several exhibit halls with various art exhibitions. The parks surrounding the monument are lovely and, had it not been windy and rainy, I could have spent much of the day walking around them. Instead, I took the metro to some outlying areas, where I walked around a couple of malls without finding anything (other than a late lunch) that I wanted to buy.

Eventually, I went back to Taipei Main, walked back to the hotel, and retrieved my bag, before taking the commuter train to the Airport MRT Station in Taiyuan, which was a short walk through the Gloria Outlets to Hotel Cozzi Blu, where I’d spend that night and the next. This was a much fancier (and, hence, pricier) hotel, but the price was still fairly reasonable. The room I got was huge and the bathroom was equipped with a Japanese washlet toilet (as well as a shower that drained in the actual shower enclosure, rather than the middle of the floor.) They also provide free snacks, e.g. a packet of potato chips and a small can of coke.

The main reason for staying there is that it’s right next to XPark, which is the aquarium that had triggered this part of the trip. It was also conveniently close to the airport for my early flight on Wednesday.

Xpark did prove to be worth going to, especially if you like jellyfish. (And, yes, I know you are supposed to call them jellies, but old habits die hard.)



They do have a fairly wide assortment of other things, e.g. fish of all sizes (including sharks and rays, but none of my beloved sea dragons). They put the penguins near their cafe, with a tunnel for them to walk over the cafe, which is pretty cute. They also have an outdoor area (with umbrellas to borrow, if you didn’t have your own), but the weather was pretty unpleasant.

My intention had been to use a couple of hours that afternoon to shop. There was, however, a catch. The typhoon that had done some serious damage to the Phillippines was heading towards Taiwan which was why there was so much heavy rain. The city of Taoyuan had pretty much shut down, so both the Gloria Outlets and the nearby Landmark Plaza Mall were closed. There was allegedly a yarn store a short walk away, but it was closed. I retreated to my hotel room to do puzzles and read instead. I was also concerned about my flight the next day. So it was not exactly the best travel day ever. However, the nearby convenience store was open and provided food for supper. (Convenience stores in most Asian countries are, in general, far superior to any American 7-11 or, even, Wawa.)

In the end, my flight did go out in the morning. It was, however, a little over an hour late. Since I had only a two hour layover at BKK, I was concerned about my connection. You can only imagine my relief when I got off the plane and there was a woman standing there with a sign with my connecting flight info and my name. Yes, Thai Air had sent an escort to get me to the flight to Frankfurt. It was a long walk - and a bit confusing since it was going out from the satellite terminal. I got to the gate about 15 minutes before boarding started and collapsed for the next 11 1/2 hours. I’ll pick up the story in the next post.

I started writing this before I left on my trip. I suspect I have more things that I intended to include, but I have no idea where they are. I did add a couple of recent items at the end.

I clip interesting things from magazines planning to comment on them later on. Here is an attempt to catch up on them a little bit.

From MIT Spectrum - Spring 2024: This was from an article about the problem of sustainability in the textile industry. There was the astonishing (to me, at least) information that the textile manufacturing industry produces more carbon dioxide equivalent per year than the aviation and maritime industries combined. The other astonishing tidbit was that “the average garment is worn just seven times before it ends up in a landfill.” I, for one, have been known to wear the same garment seven times in the same month. And don’t get me started on how old some of my clothing is. The other day, I was wearing a shirt that I know I bought in 1998. It is getting a bit raggedy at the cuffs, but it’s still usable for travel.

From Technology Review Reader Mailbag: I am not sure what issue this was from. Someone sent in a question asking if it’s true that if everybody just avoided words like “please,” “hello,” and so on when querying AI models, we could save a considerable amount of energy. The response from a climate reporter who had coauthored a story about the energy consumption of large language models said that, essentially, it’s more important for companies to disclose how much energy AI uses “rather than telling us we should be rude to robots.” Personally. I enjoy being rude to robots. Fuck off, ChatGPT!

In Her Footsteps: I didn’t note which issue of MIT Alumni News had this blurb from the class of 1987. The Association of MIT Alumnae (AMITA) created a series of walking tours called In Her Footsteps. Each tour has 9 or 10 stops relating in some way to MIT women’s history. You can find an example on the website of the clio.com. The clio.com site looks like it has a lot of interesting tours and it would be worth some time exploring it.

By the way, when I was looking up an article about this, I ran across the statement that today “43% of MIT first year students identify as women, 44% as men.” That implies that 13% identify as something else (or, presumably, no gender) which is higher than I would have guessed. I usually see figures under 5%. Those are suspect since they come from studies by sources known to be biased, but I haven’t seen estimates higher than 10% before.

Pneumatic Tubes: An article in the July / August 2024 issue of Technology Review discussed the return of pneumatic tube systems. They are particularly common in hospitals, used for transporting samples and medications. But they are also used in factories and warehouses. There are also a handful of places that use pneumatic tubes for garbage disposal, including Roosevelt Island in New York City and Stockholm. I would never have guessed this.

Mennonites: The most recent issue of MIT Alumni News had a story about Madonna Yoder ’17 who is an origami artist, specializing in tessellations. The part of this that intrigued me is that she grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia “where professors from Virginia Tech filled the pews of her Mennonite church.” I don’t know about you, but my mental image of Mennonites is as farmers, not as college professors and certainly not at a well-respected engineering school. Not only did she go to MIT (where she got a degree in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences), but her brother got a Ph.D. in materials engineering at Virginia Tech.

The Moon: That same recent issue of MIT Alumni News (November / December 2025) had a note from a member of the class of 1976 who wrote “But what I share with my cohort is that any of us, celebrated and unsung alike, can sit with a child and look up at the brilliant full moon together and tell them, ‘Yes, it’s lovely, but you should have seen it before it was walked on.’” I literally laughed out loud at that.

I got home from my round the world trip on Thursday. Aside from eating the most pathetic Thanksgiving dinner ever (a bowl of Count Chocula cereal), my time has been filled with a few errands.

I hope to write a real entry here in the next couple of days.