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The first of the two trips I took in September was to South Carolina for LoserFest Grand Strand. For those who are unfamiliar with the Loser community, it’s essentially people who are involved with what used to be the Washington Post Style Invitational, which now has its afterlife via Gene Weingarten’s substack page, as well as a couple of related Facebook groups. There’s a lot more information on The Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society website. There are a number of Loser social events, with brunches roughly monthly and a couple of big parties a year (a post-holiday party around January and the Flushies award ceremony around June). Every year or two, a group of Losers get together to go somewhere for what is called LoserFest. I first went to one in Pittsburgh and have since been to Frederick (Maryland), Niagara Falls, and Philadelphia. My schedule worked out to enable me to go to this year’s LoserFest in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area.

Why there? Well, a long time Loser, Kathleen, moved to Surfside Beach a while back and lobbied for it. The primary organizer (known as the LoserFest pope), Kyle, published a “Fungenda,” and people signed up for which events they wanted to go to, including various meals and sightseeing events. He’s very good at finding things to do and I also appreciate that everything is optional.

Anyway, I flew down on Wednesday, early in the afternoon. It was easy to pick up my rental car and a short drive to my hotel, though it was a bit challenging to actually find the front desk since my GPS had outdated directions. (I’d gotten a good deal at the Grand Palms Resort, where am entire 2 bedroom villa cost slightly less than a room at the Holiday Inn.) I had time to settle in and take a short nap before going to Kathleen’s house for an informal dinner. She’s got a lovely little place, with a plant-filled backyard. There were probably a dozen or so of us there and we had the usual lively conversation, while nibbling on various goodies.

We had originally been scheduled to do a dolphin watching cruise on Friday morning, but the weather forecast was unfavorable so it got switched to Thursday morning. We had an excellent breakfast beforehand at the Golden Egg before driving to the Crazy Sister Marina, where we boarded a RIB (rigid inflatable boat). We saw a lot of dolphins, including some leaping right in front of us. Alas, I failed at dolphin photography, which is not surprising since every time I’ve been whale watching I’ve mostly gotten pictures of where whales were. It was really awesome watching them and an excellent start to the day.

Then we drove north to Myrtle Beach, where we had lunch at Margaritaville. That was followed by the Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum, which was fun, even though pretty much all the pinball machines were after my time. I thought the Munsters themed one was the most interesting machine, but most of them were fun.

From there, we went to Ripley’s Aquarium. This was a bit pricy for its small size, but they did have some interesting exhibits, starting with African penguins.

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There were plenty of assorted fish, including at least one robotic one. There were also a lot of jellyfish. And sharks. They didn’t have any leafy sea dragons (my favorites at any aquarium that has them), but they did have weedy sea dragons.

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And there was an axolotl, a creature I’ve been mildly obsessed with since I learned about it via a crossword puzzle.

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That, of course, had me singing The Axolotl Song for days.

We finished the day with dinner at 42nd Street Bar and Grill. The food was good, but rather pricy.

On Friday, we started the day with breakfast at Blue Sky Restaurant. I suggested the Myrtle Beach Art Museum as a substitute for the dolphin cruise which had gotten shifted to Thursday. The museum proved to be small, but very good. There were two exhibits. The upstairs gallery had enhanced cyanotypes by Cora Ennis Morris.

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The downstairs gallery was more to my taste, with an exhibition of winners of the Artfields competition. This piece by Brent Afford is titled Remember This as a Time of Day and pays homage to cast iron skillets.

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The intriguing thing about this portrait by Stefanie Glen is that it was drawn in one continuous line.

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I think most of us really liked Consume by Mike + Patz Fowle.

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My very favorite piece was Mexicans in Canada, by Amira Hanafi. This is an interactive exhibit, which you can stop by touching the television screen. You can also start and stop the on-line version to see how clever it is.

We drove up to Brookgreen Gardens, a former rice plantation, where we started with a lovely lunch at the Austin Harvest Restaurant. After eating, we had a docent tour. Unfortunately, the docent started out by standing in one place and talking for over 20 minutes. We assumed he’d seen all the grey hair in front of him and thought we wouldn’t want to walk. But, actually, standing in one place is harder on most of us than walking.

It wouldn’t be South Carolina without a live oak allee and Spanish moss.

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The main thing to see is the collection of American figurative sculpture, which is huge and impressive.

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Our next stop was at Atalaya Castle. It would have been helpful if the directions had mentioned that the actual entrance is marked as Huntington Beach State Park, instead of claiming that it was “just across the street” from Brookgreen Gardens. The only sign that actually says “Atalaya Castle” is some ways down the state park road.

The castle was built as the winter home of philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. Frankly, I wasn’t particularly impressed with it. Apparently, they kept bears, horses, monkey, and a leopard in enclosures within the castle, which might have made it more interesting.

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I was feeling rather grumpy. And the Red Sox were playing the Source of All Evil in the Universe, so I decided to skip out on dinner at the Gulfstream Cafe in favor of takeout food and watching the ballgame. Which, alas, my Bosox lost.

We had breakfast on Saturday at Johnny D’s Waffles, which had the advantage of being particularly close to my hotel. Then we went back to Brookgreen Gardens, where we did the Creek Excursion. This is a lovely and peaceful boat trip along the creeks of the property.

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After that, some of the group went to the zoo, but I’m a lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) kind of gal and don’t feel the need to look at non-predators. The plan to have lunch at a barbecue restaurant followed by miniature golf and shopping for tacky souvenirs also failed to do anything for me. But Brookgreen had a Gullah Geechee Junkanoo Festival going on and music and dance and, especially, storytelling are very much my sort of thing. So I listened to a singer and a storyteller who had an Anansi story. Then I checked out the art exhibit and sampled jollof rice and delicious pound cake. There are also several recordings which you can listen to which feature local people of Gullah descent talking about their lives.

I finished the day by strolling around more of the gardens and looking at more sculptures. Here’s an interesting one relating to the Pledge of Allegiance.

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There was a brief downpour, which started ironically just as I reached Rainey Plaza. I took refuge in the gift shop, but didn’t see anything I wanted. I drove back to my hotel and rested for a while before heading back down o Murrell’s Inlet for dinner at Dead Dog Saloon. We were rather crowded together and the food was just okay, but the atmosphere was fun, with lots of 1970’s music.

My travel home the next day went smoothly.
All in all, it was a fun trip with a lot of interesting activities and, more importantly, fun people (which is really the point of it) and I look forward to the next LoserFest. (I’ve been lobbying for New Orleans, by the way.)
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Birthday:Moving on to what I did in September and so far in October. First of all was my birthday. I’m now 67.

A Few Things I Did in September: I took two trips which will get their own blog posts. Alas, my needlework group conflicted with one of those trips and with Yom Kippur, so I only made it to one meeting. I saw the movie Guns and Moses (which I already wrote about in my quarterly update on books, movies, and goals) at Tyson’s Corner and browsed an Indian clothing store while I was there.

Dinner With Friends: I went to dinner with friends from Flyertalk at the end of the month. Note to self: the pizza at Fireworks in Clarendon is better than their other menu offerings. The fish sandwich was okay, but fish sandwiches should really come with cole slaw, not potato chips.

High Holidays: I went to High Holiday on-line services at Fabrengen, mostly to save the hassle of dealing with things in the city. I generally try to find some interesting take away every year, particularly for Yom Kippur. This year, my takeaway was this quote from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel at the August 1969 Liturgical Conference in Milwaukee, which was in a footnote in the machzor (prayer book):

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.”


Damn Yankees: I did a bunch of theatre going on one of my trips, but still saw two musicals when I was home. The first of those was Damn Yankees at Arena Stage. I’d talked my friend, Cindy, who was entirely unfamiliar with it, into coming along. While I’d seen the movie version and listened to the original cast recording a gazillion times, I hadn’t seen a live performance of it before. Anyone who knows me at all knows how I feel about a certain pinstriped baseball team (who I was very happy to see lose to Toronto after beating up on my Bosox, but I digress), so it’s no surprise that I love this show. This version was updated, to the early 2000’s and the Source of All Evil in the Universe was playing against Baltimore, not Washington, presumably to make it feasible for the two teams to face each other in the World Series. Anyway, the score has some iconic songs - especially Heart and Whatever Lola Wants, but I think the real highlights of this production were Near to You and A Man Doesn’t Know, both of which I found very moving. I can’t ignore the choreography which was excellent, though I still think the song Who’s Got the Pain? is useless filler. All of the performers were excellent, and I want to particularly note the singing of Quentin Earl Darrington, who plays the aging Joe Boyd, and the dancing of Ana Villafañe as Lola. I should also mention that they had the Orioles mascot come out and lead everyone in Take Me Out to the Ball Game after intermission. But the Orioles don’t actually do that. For some ungodly reason, they sing Thank G-d I’m a Country Boy instead, which is just wrong. Anyway, the show runs through November 9th and you should go see it if you possibly can.

By the way, we had dinner after the show at 54 Noodles Bar, a new Vietnamese restaurant near the Waterfront metro station. The spring rolls and pho were both very good and the service was efficient enough. I’m likely to eat there again in the future.

The Turn of the Screw: The other musical I saw locally was The Turn of the Screw at Creative Cauldron, which has moved to a new location, still in Falls Church. I read the novella it’s based on long ago and remembered it being creepy, but unsatisfying, with the key issue being that there is no resolution as to whether there are actual ghosts or the governess is losing her mind (with the children possibly manipulating her). This version added another twist, as it implies that the boy may have been sexually molested by the valet. (I should note that Cindy did not interpret things that way at all.) I was also unimpressed with the acoustics of the new space. On the plus side, the uncle (whose song I’d Rather Not Know was the best of the evening) was played by local favorite Bobby Smith and it is good to see him back on stage after several months recuperating from a terrible car accident.

October So Far: My book club met this past Wednesday night and talked about The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams. I loved this book, as did most of the other people in the book club, though one person couldn’t get through it. I posed a question that I thought would make for good discussion, namely what books you would put on a list that you think everyone should read. Unfortunately, nobody else took the bait. (For what it’s worth, my top choice would be Alice in Wonderland, which is the best book ever written about pretty much everything.)

Story Swap: The monthly Voices in the Glen story swap was held over zoom tonight. I ran through a story I am planning on telling next weekend at the Washington Folk Festival. The highlight of the evening (in my opinion) was Margaret’s recitation of Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market.

Shameless Self Promotion: The Washington Folk Festival is next Sunday, October 19th at Glen Echo Park. I’ll be on the Storytelling stage from 3:30 to 4 in the afternoon. My blurb is “Spare Change - Join Miriam Nadel for tales of transformation and metamorphosis from around the world and across time.” There’s also plenty of music and dance. It’s always a good time.

Celebrity Death Watch: BeBe Shopp won the 1948 Miss America pageant. Joan Bennett Kennedy was the first wife of senator Ted Kennedy. Mike Greenwell played left field for the Red Sox from 1985-1996. Tommy Price was the drummer for Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. John Lodge performed with The Moody Blues and wrote the song I’m Just a Singer in a Rock ad Roll Band. Diane Keaton was an actress whose film roles included Annie Hall. Tony Fitzpatrick was a collage artist. Sandy Alomar Sr. played second base, primarily for the California Angels. He also had two sons who were successful baseball players - Sandy Alomar Jr. and Roberto Alomar. D’Angelo was a neo-soul singer-songwriter.

Mel Taub created the Puns and Anagrams puzzle in The New York Times. This is not quite as complex as a typical cryptic crossword is. But, as a person who loves puns (and, as far as I am concerned, the more atrocious the better), they were always fun to solve.

Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt was the chaplain for the basketball team at Loyola University in Chicago. She was the subject of numerous newspaper articles about being a superfan and even became the subject of a bobblehead. She was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 24 points, which includes the 12 point uniqueness bonus. I was, frankly, surprised that nobody else had her on their list, since she was 106 years old.
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1. What actor would you hire to play you in your TV movie biography, and why? Definitely Amy Irving, because she’s played a lot of quirky women.

2. What extinct animal would you bring back, if you could? According to a list of cute extinct animals I found online, the lesser bilbo was “a small marsupial that looked like combination of a mouse, kangaroo, and bunny.” Aww.

3. When have you realized you were really wrong in your judgment about someone? As I’ve gotten older, I understand my parents better and cut them more slack about areas where I disagreed with them.

4. Who was the best teacher you ever had, and why? It’s really hard to choose one. One piano teacher I had, Johanna, stands out because she was the first person who ever suggested to me that I was having trouble with something (in this case, playing triplets with one hand and 4/4 rhythm with the other) because it was actually difficult and not because I was a musical idiot.

5. What is your favorite season and why? Autumn, because I love the crispness in the air and the colors of the leaves.

6. What was your major in college? How did you choose it? My degrees are in mechanical engineering. I’d started out planning to major in chemistry, but some aspects of organic chemistry didn’t resonate with me. I could figure out some reactions that might happen, but never quite grasped how I could tell which one would happen. I read about work some professors were doing on intelligent prosthetics and that led me to mechanical engineering. One of my early classes in that field was Introduction to System Dynamics and it just clicked with my world view.

7. If you had a mind-reading ability but could only choose 3 people to read their minds, who would they be? The most obvious one is the Gentleman With Whom I’m Conducting the World’s Longest Running Brief Meaningless Fling. Next would be my brother. As for a third, on any given day, I would suggest one or another of my friends, but perhaps it might be more interesting to get into the mind of one of my favorite authors, e.g. Jasper Fforde or Alexander McCall Smith.

8. What is an experience you have had when you went fishing or swimming? When I was in grad school, there was a period when I lived in an apartment building with a swimming pool and I swam almost every day. I found that I could sometimes get into a state of perfect flow, with my mind completely relaxed thinking only of the rhythm of my strokes.

9. What do you like to do when it is really hot outside? Cower next to the air conditioner.

10. Tell about the kind of kids you hung out with as a kid. I mostly hung out with the other kids who lived on my block when I was younger. As I got older, I spent time with people with whom I had overlapping interests, ranging from dancing to playing tennis to science.

11. What are two things you want to do less of next week? What are two things you want to do more of next week? I want to waste less time watching dumb reels on Facebook. I want to spend more time reading and crafting. I should spend more time on housework, but I don’t really want to.

12. Which do you prefer, a shower or a bath? Why? Showers are for cleaning. Baths are for soaking and relaxing.

13. if you were on a game show (like Big Brother or Survivor for example) what would your strategy be? Lay low? make big moves? Win all the comps? How would your strengths and weaknesses play a role in your success or failure of the game? I can’t really imagine being on that sort of game show, where the whole point is interpersonal relationships. My idea of a fun game show is trivia / knowledge related and the only real strategies for those is to just know a lot of stuff. (Note: I was on Jeopardy! in 1989 and The Challengers around 1991.)

14. What does success mean to you? Success means meeting one’s goals to the best of one’s ability. It has to be self-defined, not dependent on another person’s standards.

15. How comfortable are you with saying “no”? It depends on the situation. I am usually good at saying “no,” but sometimes agree to go to an event I don’t really want to in order to support a friend or relative.

16. When was the last time you woke up and realized that today could be the best day of your life? I feel that way whenever I have plans to do something I’ve always wanted to but have never done before.

17. Where is your “happy place?” What about it makes you feel content? I often joke that my natural habitat is an airport lounge. In short, traveling makes me happy. That said, I love being near a beach with white sand and few people.

18. Have you ever pretended to be someone else? Why? Does giving a fake name and phone number to a guy who was hitting on me count?

19. Describe a game or activity you used to play with a sibling. My family played board games a lot. My brother was the worst person in the world to play Scrabble with because he was obsessed with keeping track of every move each of us made and it made things take forever.

20. Do you think your next car will be electric/hybrid? I doubt that I’ll live long enough to own another car. Twain (my Hyunday Accent, the logic being Accent Mark / Mark Twain) is 6 years old and has under 20,000 miles.

21. What's your earliest holiday memory? I don’t know if it’s the absolutely earliest holiday memory I have, but I remember the parades we used to have outside our synagogue on Simchat Torah when I was a child. We’d wave brightly colored flags and eat candy apples.

22. If you could be anybody, who would you be? I’m quite happy being myself.

23. What would you write in a letter you could send forward in time to yourself in 10 years? Hmm, maybe congratulations on having reached my late 70’s and wishes for continued good health.

24. Describe your favorite memory about an amusement park or county fair you visited. Do the rides at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and Expo ’67 count for amusement parks? I think Expo ’67 had a bobsled ride (on a track, not downhill) that I really enjoyed because it was fast but not high. There was also a small amusement park next to Nathan’s in Oceanside and I remember liking the helicopter ride.

25. Imagine you're stuck on the roof of a house that has been carried away by a flood. Which person would you most like to be on the roof with you? Practically speaking, I think it would be best to be on the roof with somebody trained and skilled in water rescue.

26. If you suddenly gained the ability to tell whether someone was lying, would you use it? Sure. It sounds useful, particularly with people I don’t know well.

27. When you were a child, how did you imagine your adult life? How is it similar or different to what you imagined? The main thing I remember imagining about my adult life had to do with where I’d live. I had some sort of building kit that let you design a studio apartment. I loved rearranging the walls and the furniture. I also liked drawing house plans. As an adult, I haven’t lived anywhere that matches the perfection of what I imagined when I was young.

28. What was the first way you earned money? My parents used to pay both my brother and me for certain chores that they considered above and beyond what we were normally expected to do. For example, in the autumn, they’d pay us so much per bag when we raked leaves.

29. What foreign countries have you been to? Which ones do you want to go to? Counting only UN member states, I’ve been to 93. In alphabetical order, those are Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, The Bahamas, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Czech, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Eswatini, Fiji, Finland, France, The Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Haiti, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kiribati, Laos, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Federated States of Micronesia, Monaco, Mongolia, Namibia, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru. Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Turkiye, United Arab Emirates, UK, USA, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabe.

As for where I want to go to, pretty much all of them but the top five would be Bolivia, Cabo Verde, Eritrea, Mozambique, and Turkmenistan..

30. Tell about the first time you ever held hands with someone. Assuming you exclude family members, it was probably a boy I knew in summer camp when I was about 10 or 11 years old. For what it’s worth, I’m in my late 60’s and I still think it’s really sweet when old folks like me and The Gentleman With Whom I’m Conducting the World’s Longest Running Brief Meaningless Fling hold hands in public.
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Books: I read 8 books this quarter.


  1. Colm Toibin, Long Island. An Irish woman, married to an Italian-American man and living in close proximity to most of his family, learns that her husband has gotten another woman pregnant and that woman’s husband plans to leave the baby on their doorstep. The Italian family plan to have her husband’s mother raise the child. She goes off to Ireland for her mother’s 80th birthday and rekindles an old flame. But she doesn’t count on what his current lover plans to do. Overall, this was readable if you suspend a lot of disbelief about human behavior, but it lacks a satisfying resolution. My book club concluded that Toibin was setting things up to write a sequel.

  2. James A. Michener, Tales of the South Pacific. I read this for my travel book club and, frankly, found it a total slog for the most part. The best stories are the ones that were used for the musical South Pacific but I had to read through plenty of racism and sexism (which, alas, was realistic, though unpleasant to read) and far more detail about how tedious waiting for battle was to get to the good stuff.

  3. Alison Espach, The Wedding People. I didn’t expect to like this book, which I also read for my long-standing book club. The premise is that a woman who has failed both in her academic career and her attempts to have a baby goes to a fancy hotel in Newport, Rhode Island to kill herself and fails at that too. Everyone else at the hotel is there for a wedding. She gets involved in the bride’s wedding plans and a lot of absurd things happen. Despite this ridiculous idea, I actually enjoyed it. The tone was light and the events were just plausible enough to keep me from wanting to throw the book into the river.

  4. Felicia Day, You’re Never Weird on the Internet (almost). If you’re not familiar with Felicia Day, she reached a level of nerd fame via The Guild, a web series about a group of gamers. She also played Penny in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. This wasn’t a bad read, but I had expected it to be brilliant. Alas, it didn’t go into enough detail about the weirder aspects of her life, to be completely satisfying. However, I do recommend her chapter on GamerGate and being doxxed if you want to understand how scary being a highly visible woman on-line can be.

  5. Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club. I was probably about 2/3 of the way through this book before I realized that the author is the same Richard Osman who has appeared on many British quiz shows. (It turns out that he also created Whose Line Is It anyway? and Deal or No Deal, as well as Pointless, which is one of my favorite British quiz shows. None of which really ties into this book directly.) Anyway, the premise of this book (and several follow-ups. which I haven’t read yet) is that a group of elderly people at a retirement community meets weekly to discuss the cold cases of a one-time detective, who is now suffering from dementia. Then a murder happens. And another one. And the discovery of an older one. They enjoy solving all of those. I mostly enjoyed this but I didn’t like that there were characters with similar names, e.g. Stephen and Steve and John and “Turkish Johnny.” You know, they sell books of baby names for a reason. That won’t stop me from reading more of the series.

  6. Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca. I read this for my travel book club. The story involves a group of men who set out to colonize Florida in 1527. Due to a hurricane and navigational errors, only 4 of them survived - three Spaniards and a Moroccan slave. It took them almost 10 years to cross from Florida through what is now the American Southwest (e.g. Texas, New Mexico and parts of Mexico), including six years of enslavement by various native tribes. They learned to pass as medicine men and gain favor with some of the groups they encountered. This was a very interesting book and I appreciated learning about a part of the history of exploration that I had been entirely unfamiliar with.

  7. Mary Janice Davidson, Fish Out of Water. Yes, I sometimes read paranormal romance. This is the third book in a series about Fred, a half-human, half-mermaid who is torn between a human man and the prince of the Black Sea. In the meantime, her father shows up and is trying to overthrow the royal family of the sea people. Overall, this is an amusingly silly book and a nicely diverting quick read.

  8. Lisa See, Peony in Love. This complex historical novel follows the life of a teenage girl in 17th century China. Her family puts on a production of an opera called The Peony Pavilion and the female members of the household are permitted to watch from behind a curtain. Peony is overwhelmed by her emotions and leaves for a while, meeting a young man who enthralls her, even though neither of them knows that he’s the man who her family intends her to marry. This leads her to die of “lovesickness,” i.e. anorexia. Her ghost wanders the area and things get more complex when the man marries another woman, who Peony then induces to add to a commentary that she was writing about the opera. After she dies, Peony arranges a third bride, who also adds to the commentary. The commentary of the three wives becomes the first book written and published by women. I found this book a fascinating insight into traditional Chinese belief and culture, based on real events.



Movies: I saw three movies in theaters this quarter. I only had two flights that were long enough to watch movies on, but I think I was too absorbed in what was reading to bother.I


  1. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: I’d loved Alexandra Fuller’s memoir of her childhood on a farm in (then) Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. So I had to see the film version, which I thought was pretty true to the book. Lexi Venter, who played the 8-year-old Bobo, gave an impressive performance. You do have to be able to tolerate a fair amount of violence and racism, however.

  2. Cat Video Fest 2025: This is an annual event, which consists of a curated collection of cat videos. In addition to live videos, it has memes and animations. The whole thing is less than an hour and a half, so not particularly good value. My basic conclusion is that, yes, the cats are cute and often funny, but it’s not really satisfying as a movie. However, part of the proceeds (admittedly only a little over 10%) do go to cat-focused charities, so you can feel like it wasn’t a waste of time.

  3. Guns and Moses: Sal Litwak, known as the Accidental Talmudist and famous for his videos of old Jewish jokes, wrote, directed, and produced this movie, which tells the story of a small town rabbi who sets out to solve the murder of one of his congregants. The police are insisting it was the act of a neo-Nazi, but Rabbi Mo thinks otherwise. He investigates some shady goings on and learns to use a gun himself when he becomes a target. It was entertaining, though rather more violent than something I would normally watch. I also want to give the writers kudos for using the song “Kol Ha’olam Kulo,” which is a personal favorite, in its soundtrack.



Goals:

I made a lot of progress on my plans for a westward circumnavigation of the world. I still have a couple of hotel bookings to make, but I’m pretty close to having a complete itinerary.

I made it to two minor league baseball games. I was just too busy with other things to get more games in.

I’m not quite as far along on my Tunisian crochet afghan as I thought I was. I am, however, making a serious attempt to get that done this month. I’ve also got a couple of smaller projects in the works.

As of the end of September, I was only at 25 books. But I’ve already read three this month, and I expect to have a lot of quality reading time on my round the world trip in November.

Updating my life list should only take me an afternoon, but I’m the sort of person who starts my weekly to-do list with “write to do list” so decision making tends to move slowly.

I can sound out a certain amount of Hangul, but there are some letters that continue to confuse me. At least I now understand the “r” vs. “l” confusion that is common in many Asian languages. As for Korean more generally, at least I’ve finally figured out that the verb always goes at the end of the sentence, but I still find the syntax very non-intuitive.

I did nothing on going through my parents photographs and slides. Nor did I make any progress on organizing genealogy files. Nor did I make it to any national parks.

I had good intentions re: going through cassette tapes, but discovered that the little cassette player I found in the closet in my study doesn’t work. I need to try to remember how to work the tape deck on my stereo system.
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Celebrity Death Watch - August 2025 Linda Hodes was a dancer and choreographer who was closely associated with both Martha Graham and the Batsheva Company in Israel. Loni Anderson was an actress, who was most famous for appearing in WKRP in Cincinnati. Paul Vincent Davis was a puppeteer. Jane Morgan was a pop singer, most famous for the song “Fascination.” Eddie Palmer was a pianist, composer, and bandleader. Antony Maitland wrote and illustrated children’s books. Gary Theroux was a rock historian. David Ketchum played Agent 13 on Get Smart. Bobby Whitlock was a singer and songwriter, who performed with Derek and the Dominos and with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. Cool John Ferguson was a blues guitarist. Louis Naidorf was an architect who designed several significant buildings in Los Angeles, including the Capitol Records Building. Jackie Bezos was Jeff’s mother. Greg Iles was a novelist and was part of the musical group, Rock Bottom Remainders, with several other authors such as Dave Barry, Stephen King, Amy Tan, and Matt Groening. Dan Tana was the proprietor of an Italian restaurant favored by Hollywood personalities. Joe Hickerson was the Librarian and Director of the Archive of Folk Song at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress and is credited with creating some folk songs, including some of the verses to “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” Gene Espy was the second person to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Maurice Tempelsman was a diamond magnate and the longtime companion of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Ruth Paine was a teacher who housed Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife, Marina, in her home for several months, and in whose garage Oswald stored the rifle he used for the Kennedy assassination. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro wrote historical horror novels about the Count of Saint-Germain, a vampire.

Jim Lovell commanded the Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 missions. He was one of only three men to travel to the Moon twice, but he never walked on it.

William H. Webster directed the FBI from 1978 to 1987 and the CIA from 1987 through 1991. He was the only person to have held both of those positions. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 14 points.

Tony Saletan was a folk singer. He is credited with the rediscovery in the 1950’s of the songs “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” and “Kumbaya.” He was also the first musical guest to appear on Sesame Street.


Celebrity Death Watch - September 2025: Graham Greene was a Canadian Oneida actor, most famous for appearing in Dances With Wolves. Darleane Hoffman was a nuclear chemist. Ken Dryden was a Hall of Fame ice hockey player for the Montreal Canadiens. Mark Volman was a founding member of The Turtles and later performed as Flo in Flo & Eddie, as well as playing with The Mothers of Invention. Rick Davies was the founder, vocalist, and keyboardist for Supertramp. Marilyn Diamond wrote books promoting a diet for longevity. Ann Granger was a prolific writer of mysteries. Philippe Goddin wrote several books of literary criticism about Tintin. Polly Holliday was an actress, best known for playing Flo in the sitcom Alice. Robert D. Maurer did not invent optical fiber but did develop it into a viable technology. Bobby Hart wrote the song “Last Train to Clarksville.” Charlie Kirk was a MAGA icon. Thomas Perry wrote thrillers. Marilyn Hagerty wrote a newspaper column for the Grand Forks Herald and became famous for her review of the food at Olive Garden. George Smoot was a Nobel Prize laureate in physics. Sonny Curtis performed with The Crickets and wrote the song “I Fought the Law.” Marian Burros was a food writer for The New York Times. Aaron Bielski (aka Aaron Bell) had been the last surviving brother of a family of partisans during World War II. Henry Jaglom wrote and directed very weird films, e.g. Eating. Claudia Cardinale was a movie actress. Danny Thompson was the bassist for Pentangle. Patricia Crowther was a British occultist. Belva Davis was the first African-American woman to become a television reporter on the U.S. West Coast. Sara Jane Moore attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford. Chris Dreja played guitar for The Yardbirds. Russell M. Nelson was the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Lally Weymouth was the last member of the Graham family to be affiliated with he Washington Post, which helped her get a lot of high profile interviews, e.g. with Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, and Benazir Bhutto.

Davey Jonson was a second baseman, primarily for the Orioles, and later managed several teams, including the Mets from 1984-1990 (which includes their 1986 World Series win) and the Nationals from 2011-2013, which includes their first division title since they moved to Washington, D.C.

David Baltimore won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1975 for his work on reverse transcriptase. He helped establish the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT. He later became president of Rockefeller University and of CalTech.

Robert Redford was an actor and director. He was one of the heart throbs for my generation, particularly for The Way We Were. He also co-founded the Sundance Film Festival. In high school, one of my friends had a huge crush on him. A few of us went to a John Denver concert at Madison Square Garden, but her parents wouldn’t let her go. When we told her we had seen Robert Redford at the concert, she dropped the stack of books she was holding!

Ashleigh Brilliant was an epigrammist and cartoonist. His Pot-Shots were sold primarily in head shops during my teenage years. A few of my favorites of his epigrams include “I feel much better now that I’ve given up hope,” “Appreciate me now and avoid the rush.” and “I have abandoned my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy.”

Celebrity Death Watch - October 2025 (so far): Edward J. Kennedy was a former mayor of Lowell ad a member of the Massachusetts Senate. Patricia Rutledge was an actress, best known for playing Hyacinth Bucket on Keeping Up Appearances. Ivan Klima was a Czech writer and playwright. Jilly Cooper was a romance novelist.

Jane Goodall was a primatologist who spent more than 60 years researching the lives of wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. She wrote 32 books, including 15 for children.

SporcleCon

Oct. 6th, 2025 04:43 pm
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One of my NPL friends had mentioned SporcleCon on his Facebook page just about when I was making my travel plans for the IAJGS Conference. For those who aren’t familiar with Sporcle, it’s a web site with lots of fun trivia quizzes. SporcleCon was being held in Chicago the weekend just after the IAJGS conference. Since flights via ORD were the best option for travel between WAS and FWA, it seemed like a no brainer to just stop in Chicago for the weekend on my way home. I registered for SporcleCon, booked my hotel registration at the Hyatt attached to the McCormick Place Convention Center, and arranged my flights accordingly.

That meant leaving FWA crazy early on Friday morning, but there’s no shortage of things to do in Chicago. So I confidently shared an Uber to the airport with another conference attendee. Alas, the best laid plans of mice and Miriam once again went agley. About a half hour before the flight was scheduled to leave, I got a notification from United about a flight delay, due to a mechanical problem with the plane. The delay started at about 3 hours and increased. Several people left to rent cars and drive to Indianapolis or Detroit. Since I was staying in Chicago for the weekend and, therefore, didn’t have to worry about making a connection, I figured I could wait things out. To cut to the chase, the eventual delay was nearly 10 hours (for a 40 minute flight!) and they had to get a rescue plane to fly in from northern Michigan. (I did get compensation, by the way.)

On arrival, I took the El to the Cermak-McCormick Place station. It actually made sense to stop in McCormick Place and do the SporcleCon check-in on my way to the hotel. Then I went to the hotel, checked in, grabbed some supper, and pretty much collapsed since I’d been up since oh-dark-thirty.

Since I still can’t be in two or more places at the same time, the number of different trivia games going on at a time is both the best thing and the worst thing about SporcleCon. I had to make wild guesses about what event I would enjoy most. The way I handle situations like that is to just tell myself that it doesn’t matter. I figured that general knowledge events were a better bet than more specialized single subject events. The first event I went to on Saturday was Orange Cat Trivia, which was fun, though the room was very crowded and, hence, noisier than I’d have preferred. I particularly liked the Before and After category.

After lunch, I went to a talk by podcaster Gary Arndt about extreme travel. I could tell he was a Travelers’ Century Club member because his blurb referred to his having been to over 200 “countries and territories.” Only TCC people put in that “and territories” phrase. I wasn’t super impressed by the talk, actually. He may have me beat on sheer numbers, but I’ve been to places that he hasn’t, e.g. Paraguay and Kiribati.

A few events used the trivnow platform, which I thought worked well. The first of those I played was Triviality. It was a bit more pop culture heavy than is optimal for me, but I did still finish in the top quarter.

The biggest event of the con is the Battle of the Brains on Saturday night. I had chosen to have them assign me to a team and, for the most part, the team I was on worked reasonably well. I wasn’t completely useless, though how on earth is it possible that Austin, Texas is bigger than Atlanta, Georgia? I guess you can’t rely on traffic as a measure of how big cities are! I did at least know an answer relating to African geography. Anyway, we did respectably, finishing 15th (out of 100+ teams) overall. By the way, they also have special guests introducing some categories. I found the South Side Drill Team impressive, but Second City reminded me how much I hate improv comedy.

On Sunday, I did a few games at Sporcle’s World Fair. I won a bunch of raffle tickets, but no prizes in the drawing. I did win a banner from the Geography section. Then I played Crowdsourced Curiosities, which I was very bad at. I did much better at Liquid Kourage Trivia, mostly because I ended up with a team that had a good mix of different areas of knowledge. I did find it hard to believe that I was the only member of our team that knew what university has an annual puzzle hunt every January. (I’ve done the MIT Mystery Hunt. And that didn’t even exist until long after my time at MIT.)

Overall, I had a fun weekend. I probably won’t do next year’s SporcleCon since it is going to be: a) in November (generally a good month for international travel) and b) in Schaumburg, which is even less convenient to anything interesting in Chicago than McCormick Place. Anyway, after SporcleCon ended, I walked to the el station and headed to ORD, where I spent the night at the Airport Hilton, which is very convenient if you have an early morning flight.

Alas, the curse of ORD weather struck. I once (several years ago) had a flight from ORD that got delayed by a tornado, followed by a mechanical problem, followed by a crew timing out. In this case, there were thunderstorms, which caused all flights to the east to be shut down. We got lucky and they were able to reroute us around the worst of the weather, so we were going to be only about an hour and a half late. Except there was a fire (or, at least, a fire alarm) at DCA, which led to the control tower there being evacuated. We didn’t have enough fuel to keep circling until that was resolved, so they had us land at IAD. Normally, that would have been fine, since I live halfway between the two airports and I could have just taken the metro home from there. But I had checked a bag and they announced that: a) they weren’t taking any bags off the plane and b) they wouldn’t deliver bags to people. So I waited a bit over an hour while we refueled and we took the 15 mile / 11 minute flight to DCA. Where it turned out that my bag was waiting for me, because they had put it on the 5:21 a.m. flight.

And now I’m caught up through August!
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My next trip was to Fort Wayne, Indiana from 9-15 August for the annual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). This was only the third time I attended the conference, though I had gone to bits and pieces virtually during the COVID shutdown. The two I’d gone to previously were in London and in Philadelphia. So why was it in Fort Wayne this time? Well, Fort Wayne has a small Jewish community, but it also has the Allen County Public Library, which has the second largest genealogy collection in the United States, behind the LDS Family History Center in Salt Lake City.

I flew in on Saturday, via Chicago. My flight to ORD left about 40 minutes late, so I was a bit concerned about my connection. But we did make up some time in the air. And I walked as quickly as I could through the unwashed hordes at ORD, arriving at the gate for the FWA flight slightly out of breath just before it started boarding. I forgot to look for the stand that allegedly gives out cookies to arriving passengers in Fort Wayne, alas. I did find where the van to the Hilton picks up and had a bit of a wait for that. The hotel check-in was on the slow side, but I got to my room just fine. I walked around a little and got some mediocre Chinese food for supper. Then I spent time in my room reviewing my plans for which conference sessions I wanted to attend.

On Sunday, I checked in at conference registration. Then I connected with a guy from my home town (who I didn’t know before, though I’d been friendly with his sister, who was in my Hebrew school class), connected with my cousin Fred who I hadn’t met in person before, and compared photos with a woman whose father had been in a DP camp in Italy with my father. I spent an exhausting amount of time in the exhibit hall, where I learned about some potentially useful resources. The opening session was that evening, with keynote speaker CeCe Moore, who spoke on The Power of Genetic Genealogy. Her most significant advice was to “fish in all four ponds,” i.e. have your DNA data on all of the major DNA sites. She also talked a lot about the use of genetic information in solving criminal cases, with an example of how finding DNA data for close relatives led to solving a murder.

Monday (day 2 of the conference) started with a breakfast with Jody Tzucker of LitvakSIG. For some mysterious reason, one person kept asking questions about Slovakia. After that I went to a talk by Rabbi Ben-Zion Saydman on Morris, Izzy, and Seymour: What’s In a Name, which was amusing, but rather sloppy about some details.

The luncheon for JRI-Poland (JRI=Jewish Records Indexing) had a talk by Halina Goldberg on Not Warsaw: Jews and Culture Beyond the Capitol. A particular line I liked was “let’s get the fiddler off the roof.” I followed that with Robinn Magid’s presentation on What’s New at JRI-Poland.org. They still need to unify systems to pay for things, e.g. membership is not handled through the shopping cart. It does look like they’ve added records for Tykocin (where my Chlebiocky family is from) so I need to spend some time on that. My favorite quote from that talk was “There was no one in 19th century Poland named Jennifer.” But I learned recently that there actually were women named Tiffany in medieval times, so you never know. Also, they have a new book club,although another book club is the last thing I need.

Small world department: I was washing my hands in the lady’s room in between talks when someone said to me, “Is your name Miriam?” When I said “yes,” she asked “did you go to West Hempstead High School?” She turned out to have been in my high school class!

I managed to find someone who could read the writing on the back of one photo and was able to verify that I was correct about who it was of. Then I spent about an hour and a half mentoring someone re: a ship manifest. I discovered that the person she was researching wasn’t traveling alone, but was probably with a son or nephew. (I did some other mentoring later on in the conference, but that was mostly answering quick questions, e.g. reading a name written in Russian.)

After that I went to the Family Journey Showcase talks, mostly to see what people were doing that I should keep in mind for my presentation on Thursday. The day ended with a presentation by Karen Franklin on JewishGen 2025, which had some info about who is filling what roles. The item of the most interest to me is that Shul Records America now includes Canadian and Caribbean records.

Which brings us to Tuesday, day 3 of the conference. I started it with another “Breakfast with the Expert” session. This one was with Curt Witcher of the Allen County Public Library. The table I was at had a lively discussion about how to get younger people interested in genealogy. My answer to that always has to do with emphasizing stories, rather than lists of names.

Next, I went to an excellent talk by Ellen Cassedy about Women of Lithuania. Something I learned from that talk was that Lithuania was the last country in Europe to become officially Christian. In 19th century Lithuania, Jews were the middle class, below aristocrats but above farmers and peasants. The first Lithuanian women’s conference was in 1907. Jewish women played the role of healers and non-Jewish women went to them for help with the evil eye, for example. Also, in 1926, the quota for Lithuanian immigration to the United States was 380 people. That explains why so many of my relatives who left Lithuania went to South Africa or to Argentina instead.

Continuing on that regional theme, the LitvakSIG meeting had updates about new records that have been added, as well as about changes in board members and leaders of District Research Groups. Afterwards, I talked to somebody who turned out to know part of my Atlanta family. That was followed by the LitvakSIG luncheon, where Dan Rabinowitz talked about The Strashun Library Ledgers Project. This wasn’t a lending library, but rather an annex to the Great Synagogue, with a reading room. There were 5 ledgers which have records of the reading lists of its members.

After lunch, I went to a talk by Anna Wiernicka about How to Learn Family Story from Crumbs - About the Value of Notary Records. I don’t know of my Polish ancestors having had any court cases that would have been handled in notarial courts, but who knows? Maybe somebody did own land and had a deed recorded or there was some issue with an inheritance.

Dan Rabinowitz gave his second talk of the day, this time on Vilnius: Traces of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. This is an almost 800 page book by Irina Guzenburg that is designed as a comprehensive guidebook to the city. There is a version in English, published in 2021,that includes several tours, with detailed information. This looks incredibly useful and I definitely want to try to get my hands on a copy.

The last talk I went to on Tuesday was titled My Mother’s Life in Cuba - In Her Own Words by Martin Fischer. Mostly, this had to do with poverty and moving from house to house because of it. While it had interesting material, the presentation annoyed me because I hate when people just read their slides verbatim.

A large group of conference attendees went to a baseball game that night. I pulled out my Hebrew language Nationals ball cap for the occasion. Here’s a picture of me wearing it, sitting next to a statue of Johnny Appleseed. who spent the last 10 years of his life in Fort Wayne and is allegedly buried there.

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As for the ball game itself, the Fort Wayne TinCaps are the High-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres. They beat the West Michigan Whitecaps, who are affiliated with the Detroit Tigers. Here’s a picture of Parkview Field. which was nice enough but had very limited vegetarian food options. (I got a slice of cheese pizza for supper.)

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Day 4 of the conference was Wednesday. I started with another Breakfast with the Expert. This one was with Jude Richter from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Our table had a good discussion on what resources you can use only on site.

The first presentation I went to was by Debra Kaplowitz on Using Pre-1826 Polish Parish Records in Jewish Research. The basic point was that there was no civil vital records registration in Congress Poland until 1826 and vital records were maintained by Catholic parishes. Those records also include things like manufacture and sale of alcohol, which was a a trade dominated by Jews. There may be some things in these records that are worth looking at.

I walked over to the Allen County Public Library where I watched a short movie, The Ice Cream Man about a Jewish ice cream parlor owner who was targeted by Klaus Barbie shortly after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. It was interesting and very moving.

I stayed at the library and did the (somewhat overwhelming) library tour, followed by some time using some of their resources. I spent some time looking at the 1896-1897 directory of Bulawayo (in present day Zimbabwe) but that appears to be too early to find information about my Meltser family who I have reason to believe went there.

I went back over to the conference center for the IAJGS annual meeting. The big (and disappointing) news was that next year’s conference will be virtual. They are also trying to plan some sort of events in association with the 250th anniversary of American independence. After the meeting, I sat down with my cousin, Fred, and we compared trees.

The day ended with the annual banquet. The banquet speaker was Daniel Horowitz, a retired Smith College professor (as opposed to the Daniel Horowitz of My Heritage). He gave an amusing talk about bears, primarily teddy bears and Paddington Bear.

Which brings me to Thursday, which was Day 5. I slept in a bit. The first talk I went to was by Banai Lynn Feldstein and had to do with Morse Code: Favorite Tools on Steve Morse’s web Site. Like many people, I most use stevemorse.org for searching immigration records and finding enumeration districts (EDs) for the U.S. federal census. The key new thing I learned is that there is now an interactive map of Manhattan on the ED finder.

Tammy Hepps gave a very entertaining presentation on The Dark Side of the Census No One Told You About. Her examples included an enumerator who didn’t understand exactly where his district was, so recorded the area on the wrong side of a major road and another enumerator who just made up at least 40 entire families. She also discussed several strategies which can help, such as searching by address instead of name, looking for names of other family members or neighbors, and using the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

Suzanne Fialkoff gave a talk titled Find Your Ancestors in These Little-Known Publications. Some of the resources she discussed include the American Jewish Yearbook, synagogue yearbooks, industry publications (such as Fur Trade Review), Who’s Who in American Jewry, and state and local historical societies.

Finally, it was time for my presentation His Own Teeth, which was part of the Family Journey Showcase. I didn’t have as many listeners as I’d hoped for, but those I did have were responsive and thought the story (which has to do how my grandparents met) was charming.

Overall, I enjoyed the conference and thought it was worth my time. I had some travel issues the next day, but I’ll write about that (and why I spent the weekend in Chicago) in another post.
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I had some irritating travel experiences in August, which I’ll get to shortly. Other than that, I had a couple of meetings of my on-line crafting group, where I continued working on my Tunisian crochet afghan. I also had my long-standing book club, where we discussed The Wedding People by Alison Espach. And I had a follow-up Physical Therapy appointment, where I got promoted to a stronger resistance band and told that I don’t need to come back.

The first weekend of the month was Geostock, a big party that my friends in Superior, Colorado throw approximately annually. It’s named that after our host, whose username is Geo on the MUD we met on umpty-ump years ago. He and his wife, Momerath, are excellent hosts and, aside from on-line friends, they bring in colleagues (current and past) and neighbors and so on. The festivities start Friday night, so I had planned a morning flight so I would have time to do something touristy and check into my hotel before going over to their house.

Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and Miriam. United did notify me early in the morning of a two and a half hour departure delay, which I assumed was related to the thunderstorms the previous day. At least it meant I could get a little more sleep. I took the metro to IAD and got lunch at the Turkish Air lounge before going to the gate. But then came an additional 4 hour delay. To make a long story short, the flight (which was supposed to leave at 8:50 a.m. left about 6 p.m. They announced on-board that the delay had been related to TSA at LAX being closed when the aircraft arrived there so the flight crew couldn’t get to the plane and they had to get another plane from SFO. I did get compensation (a credit for a future flight) and the email for that said it was a mechanical delay, so who knows? Anyway, we eventually arrived 9 1/2 hours late. It took me about an hour to pick up my rental car (which is, alas, par for the course in Denver) and road work made the drive slower than normal. But I got to my hotel safely and collapsed.

In the morning, I got breakfast at the Walnut Cafe (a long-time favorite of mine, with excellent blueberry corn bread). I spent part of the morning reading and relaxing. In the afternoon, I went over to Lafayette to get together with a college friend for coffee (well, actually tea) at a cafe in Lafayette. We had 45 years to catch up on! If only I’d known she was in Boulder years ago, since I used to go there on business trips more or less weekly.

I did make it over to the party in the late afternoon. It was great seeing people who I don’t see regularly, some of whom I’ve known since somewhere around the mid-1980’s. There is something wrong with the rotation and revolution of the earth, based on the ages of so many people (and especially friends’ children. How do babies turn into actual human beings?) Anyway, there was the usual mix of good food and interesting conversation. A particular highlight was seeing our hosts’ son show off the euphonium he plays in his school’s marching band. (He plays the slide trombone as well. But that’s not suitable for a band that doesn’t just march in a straight line where you can put the trombones at the front to keep them from killing other musicians. I hadn’t thought about that before and I now find the song “Seventy-six Trombones” from The Music Man vaguely disturbing.)

I also learned that my friend, Marcia and her husband, who have lived in Colorado for a long time (first in Colorado Springs and more recently in Denver) finally got too tired of dealing with snow and are moving to Phoenix. I first met her at a Usenet party in Portland, Oregon and we used to get together in San Francisco frequently to go power shopping.

We used to always go to Le Peep in Boulder for brunch on Sunday morning, but they had the audacity to close. We had made plans for another place, which turned out to be temporarily closed due to flooding. We ended up at Tangerine in Lafayette, which was very nice once I managed to find parking. I got a special that included a delicious omelet with a peach and chili pepper jam.

My flight home went more smoothly. We actually landed at IAD 20 minutes early, but we had to wait 33 minutes for a gate. At least I had five days at home to recover.
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1. What do you think your life will be like ten years from now? Hopefully, not a lot different than it is now. Though I am contemplating moving to somewhere without stairs.

2. Where would you travel, if you could go anywhere? I’d love to take a cruise through the entire Northwest Passage.

3. Explain how you chose your career path. I started college intending to major in chemistry but didn’t like organic chemistry my freshman year. I read something about the Boston Arm, which was one of the earliest prosthetic limbs attached to the body’s nervous system and was intrigued. That led me to the mechanical engineering department. One of the two classes I took first semester sophomore year in that major was Intro to Systems Engineering, which really clicked with me. People told me if I liked that, I should take Control Systems and that’s what I ended up doing and going to graduate school for. When I was job hunting, I found that there were a lot of interesting controls problems in the aerospace industry, so most of the jobs I interviewed for were in that area. It worked out well for me.

4. Write about the last time weather scared you. Probably the last time I got caught driving through a severe thunderstorm.

5. What animal do you identify with most closely? Probably bears. I’m chubby and hairy, but still very cute.

6. What kind of jobs have you had in the past? In high school, I got paid for tutoring, primarily for math and science New York State Regents exams. I also was a summer camp counselor the summer after my freshman year of college. I worked desk at my dorm at MIT. I particularly liked doing the mail because I got paid for a full hour for it, but it generally took me less time than that. I also did that during the summers, as well as doing maid work when the dorms were used to house conference attendees. Most of those jobs reminded me that I was in school so I didn’t have to do jobs like that for the rest of my life. On a more occasional basis, I got paid for being a test subject for research projects. I only did one psych experiment that I can remember, but I did a lot of experiments for people who were working on speech processing. Those basically involved reading sentences into a tape recorder. The only requirement was being a native speaker of English and, for some reason, they thought New York qualified. You could only do two hours at a time, but you got enough money to afford to go out to dinner at Joyce Chen’s Monday night vegetarian buffet.

7. What is one skill you wish you had and how would that make your life different? I wish I had a long enough attention span to get my condo organized.

8. Have you ever had an incident because you overslept? I’ve sometimes missed an event I planned to go to because I overslept, but I’ve never had anything happen with real consequences.

9. How much was Gas the last time you filled up? I think I paid $2.79 a gallon near the Myrtle Beach Airport a couple of weeks ago.

10. What kinds of activities when on at the kitchen table at home when you grew up (eating doesn't count)? I did most of my homework at the kitchen table. I also spent time there drawing and coloring. And we played board games there a lot - everything from Candyland when my brother and I were little to countless games of backgammon with my mother and scrabble with my father later on.

11. What is the biggest risk you have ever taken? Probably going to Berkeley to go to grad school. Moving to California triggered a lot of culture shock.

12. When was the last time you sent or received a card from someone? My brother sent me a birthday card.

13. If money were no object, what would you spend your days doing? I’d fly in business class a lot more.

14. What is one thing in your life that requires immediate attention? I need to go grocery shopping.

15. How do you feel about change and uncertainties? I like change. I like to go to places I haven’t been to before, for example. And I usually like meeting new people.

16. Which foods do you remember eating often as a child? I’ve told this story before but it is worth repeating. My mother once bought 12 cases of bottled borscht, 24 bottles per case, as part of our local public television station’s annual fundraising auction. She gave some of it away, but we did eat borscht for dinner at least once a week for ages. Borscht with sour cream and boiled potatoes is still one of my favorite hot weather dinners. (We usually had a second course of tuna croquettes.) When my mother died (many many years later), my uncle and I found one bottle of borscht in the pantry and we joked that it was the last one from that purchase.

17. What kind of art is your favorite or least favorite? Why? When it comes to painting, I generally prefer modern art to old masters, though there are exceptions. I am often impressed by how a given painter uses color to invoke mood. I also like photorealism, including works by Edward Hopper and Richard Estes. I tend to prefer figurative sculpture to abstract sculpture, however. As for “why,” I suppose some of it is familiarity, but I’d also say there have been works of art I’ve seen that I made me see the world in different ways. Those range from Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” to Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase” (which captures movement more effectively than any other painting I’ve seen) to Faith Ringgold’s story quilts.

18. What do you think makes a happy family? I think families are happiest when their members respect one another, including accepting their differences.

19. How do you decide if you trust a person or not? Frankly, I find trust to be mostly a matter of instinct. I have been fooled by people who I thought were good people who turned out to be deceitful users, but, for the most part, I trust my judgmement.

20. How many pillows are on your bed? Generally, two or three. I normally like flat, squishy pillows, unless I have a cold.

21. Tell me about an old friend you've lost touch with. I stayed in touch with my best friend from high school for several years, but we lost touch when she got married to a man who I didn’t much care for.

22. Think of a loved one that you have lost. If you could ask this person one question, what would you ask, and what do you think they would say? There are lots of things I’d like to be able to ask my parents and grandparents. My paternal grandmother was killed in the Shoah and I’d love to be able to ask her what my Dad was like as a child.

23. What would you write in a letter you could send back in time to yourself as a teen-ager? Mostly, I’d like to be able to tell younger me not to take myself so seriously. There are lots of specifics, e.g. focusing on health instead of weight, and learning to deal with my curly hair instead of getting it straightened, etc., but the gist of the message I wish I’d learned earlier was that I’m basically okay.

24. How do you think instant riches would affect your friendships and familial relationships? I’d like to think they wouldn’t affect most of my relationships. Except, I know my brother would always be at my heels, begging for money.

25. Can you buy happiness? Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy things that can distract you from misery.

26. What is a secret about you? If I wrote it here, it wouldn’t be a secret any more now, would it?

27. If you could travel anywhere in the world for a vacation, where would it be and why? Didn’t I answer that already in question 2? Seriously, I’d like to go almost anywhere that: a) I hadn’t already been and b) is not an active war zone.

28. Tell about a story when you got a parking ticket or traffic violation. I got a speeding ticket from a speed camera in D.C. once.

29. Is there a movie that has brought you to tears? Tell about it. There have been several. Let’s go with The Visitor, an exquisite 2007 movie directed by Tom McCarthy about a widowed professor (played perfectly by Richard Jenkins) who finds an illegal immigrant couple living in his apartment. (Note that this is entirely unrelated to the 1979 and 2022 movies by the same name.) This is one of my favorite movies of all time.

30. Name one of the kindest people you have ever met. Why? My friend, Teri, stand out. For example, when we eat out, she gets her leftovers wrapped up and gives them to homeless people.

31. Tell about a time you laughed until you cried. Back in 1998 I was on a trip on the St. Helena mail ship and one night, I was playing Pictionary with a few people. I don’t remember the exact trigger, but it might have had to do with my inability to draw a lamb. At any rate, one of the others said something that started me laughing uncontrollably. I eventually had to go to my cabin to stop.
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Before I move on to things I did in August, let’s make an attempt to get more up to date on the ever popular celebrity death watch. This will cover May through July. I intend to do August and September next week and then I’ll be caught up for, uh, maybe a few hours.

Celebrity Death Watch - May 2025: Ruth Buzzi was a comedian, best known for appearing on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Jill Sobule was a singer-songwriter, whose biggest hit was “I Kissed a Girl.” James Baker was the drummer for various punk rock groups, including Beasts of Bourbon. Stephen Fabian was a fantasy and science fiction illustrator. Nate Holden was a member of the Los Angeles City Council. John Edward sang with The Spinners. Richard Garwin was the author of the first hydrogen bomb design. Junior Byles was a reggae singer. Norma Meras Swenson co-founded the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective and co-authored Our Bodies, Ourselves, a book that was essential reading for women of my generation. Roger Nichols was a songwriter whose songs included “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Times of Your Life.” George Wendt played Norm on Cheers. Mary Katharine Gaillard was the first tenured female physicist at Berkeley. Susan Brownmiller wrote the book Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape which raised awareness of the impact of rape on our society. Phil Robertson was the patriarch of the Duck Dynasty Robertson family. Robert Jarvik developed an artificial heart. George E. Smith was a co-inventor of the charge-coupled device and shared in the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics. Loretta Swit played “Hot Lips” Houlihan on M*A*S*H.

David Souter was a Supreme Court Justice from 1990 through 2009. George Bush appointed him, thinking he’d be a reliable conservative and he was opposed by both NOW and NAACP at the time. However, in part because of his respect for precedent and because of his recognition that all Supreme Court decisions have impacts on actual people, he came to be considered a liberal justice. He was probably the greatest intellectual of the people who’ve served on the Supreme Court in my lifetime and I had a lot of respect for him.

Charles Strouse was the composer of several musicals, including Bye Bye Birdie , Applause, and Annie. My favorite of his collaborations with Lee Adams was It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman. An interesting bit of trivia is that he was Frank Loesser’s rehearsal pianist.

George Leitmann was a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. I studied optimal control and game theory with him.

Gerry Connolly was my Congresscritter, starting in 2009. While I generally agreed with his positions, I detested his use of autodialers.

Celebrity Death Watch - June 2025: Fred Espenak was an astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center, known for his eclipse predictions. Dennis Waitley was a motivational speaker. Frederick Forsyth wrote thrillers, including The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File. David H. Murdock owned Castle & Cooke and Dole Food Company. Sly Stone was a musician and songwriter. Jonathan Mayers co-founded the Bonnaroo and Outside Lands music festivals. John Robbins wrote Diet for a New America, which seems ironic for a descendant of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream dynasty. Mary Alice Torrance Malone was the heiress to the Campbell Soup Company. Ron Taylor was a relief pitcher for the 1969 “Miracle” Mets and later went to medical school, ending up a team physician for the Toronto Blue Jays. Charles Burrell was a bass player who was the first African American to be a member of a major American symphony. Sir Francis Graham-Smith was the astronomer royal from 1982-1990. Frederick W. Smith founded FedEx. Mick Ralphs played guitar for Mott the Hoople and Bad Company.

Surely you don’t need me to tell you who Brian Wilson was. But, in case you forgot, he sang with The Beach Boys (and on his own) and wrote songs like “Good Vibrations” and had a couple of very well publicized mental breakdowns. During a short period of the time that I lived in Venice, California (in the late 1980’s), there was a club a block or so from my apartment that played surf music for dancing on weekend afternoons. I still miss that place.

Bobby Sherman was an actor and pop singer. I had a huge crush on him when I was a pre-teen. My best friend and I would rush home to watch him in the TV show Here Come the Brides. And I am sure my whole family was sick of listening to me playing the 45 of “Julie, Do Ya Love Me.”

Bill Moyers was a journalist and political commentator. He had also been White House press secretary for most of a year under LBJ.

Celebrity Death Watch - July 2025: Alex Delvecchio was a Hall of Fame hockey player for the Detroit Red Wings. Jimmy Swaggart was a television evangelist. Richard Greenberg was a playwright, best known for Take Me Out. David Kaff was an actor, best known for playing the keyboard player in This Is Spinal Tap. Martin Cruz Smith wrote the novel Gorky Park. Dave Cousins was the lead singer of Strawbs. Robert Fuller co-founded The Hunger Project. Connie Francis was a pop singer, probably best known for covering “Who’s Sorry Now?” Jack McAuliffe founded New Albion Brewing Company, considered the first American microbrewery of the modern era. Edwin Feulneer founded the right wing think tank, The Heritage Foundation. Malcolm-Jamal Warner was an actor, best known for playing Theodore on The Cosby Show. Chuck Mangione was a flugelhornist and composer. Hulk Hogan was a professional wrestler. Cleo Laine was a jazz singer. Wallis Annenberg was a philanthropist who used her inherited wealth to support a variety of educational and arts organizations. Cecile Dionne was the fourth of the Dionne quintuplets to die, leaving just her sister Annette. Ryne Sandberg played second base, primarily for the Chicago Cubs, and later managed the Phillies.Allan Ahlberg wrote a lot of children’s books, many of which were illustrated by his late wife, Janet. Paul Mario Day was the original lead vocalist of Iron Maiden. Robert Wilson wrote the libretto for the opera Einstein on the Beach, which is probably better known for its music by Philip Glass.

Alan Bergman was a songwriter. He and his wife, Marilyn (who died in 2022), wrote lyrics for pieces by several composers, notably Marvin Hamlisch and Michel Legrand. Some of the songs they are known for include “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “The Way We Were,” “Yellow Bird,” and “In the Heat of the Night.”

Ozzy Osborne headed up the group Black Sabbath. I’d say he was a colorful character, but black is technically not a color. Incidents like him biting the head off a bat are, alas, more memorable than any of his music, in my opinion.

Tom Lehrer was best known for his humorous / satirical songs. I was raised on his work. My father regularly brought home comedy records and Lehrer was part of the rotation, along with Allan Sherman and various spoken word recordings like “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish.” Some of Lehrer’s most popular songs include “The Elements,” “The Vatican Rag,” and “The Masochism Tango.” I also saw the off-Broadway show “Tomfoolery,” based on his songs. By the way, I had forgotten at first that he was on my ghoul pool list but remembered in time to collect my 2 points.
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After the conclusion of the NPL Con on Sunday morning, I got together with my friend, Melissa, who I’d met in December 2023 on the Aranui cruise to the Marquesas. We spent a lovely afternoon going to the Walker Art Center, which I had never managed to get to on my previous trips to Minneapolis.

Here’s a piece by Robert Rauschenberg, who is as famous for his relationship with Jasper Johns as for his art.

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Edward Hopper is one of my favorite artists and I find his work instantly recognizable.

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I had not heard of Gala Porras-Kim before, but I was quite intrigued by this series by her, which this is a small part of. These are all done with colored pencil, but they look 3-dimensional.

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We did also go outside. The best known piece at the Walker is Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg, another artist whose work is easy to identify. We had to wait a little while to get a picture without a horde of people around it.

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We also did plenty of non-art related talking, including reminiscing about the Aranui and talking about other travel things. And we had mocktails at the Cardamom Cafe at the museum. I had a very tasty drink called solea, which had pineapple, sumac, lime, and ginger beer. Overall, it was a lovely afternoon. Afterwards, Melissa drove me to the hotel near the airport where I was spending the next couple of nights.

I spent Monday going back to the Mall of America. Melissa had pointed out to me that it was previously the site of Metropolitan Stadium, which had been the home of the Twins (and the Vikings) from 1956 to 1981 when they moved to the Metrodome. In memory of that, there is a red chair bolted to the wall that marks the longest home run ever hit at that stadium (520 feet, hit by Harmon Killebrew).

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There is also a marker showing where home plate had been.

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I also did some general browsing. The only thing I was at all tempted by, however, was a yarn store, which had some high quality yarn, e.g. Malabrigo and Nori, but nothing I can’t get at home.

On Tuesday, I went to Saint Paul. I’ve been there before, so didn’t feel the need to go back to the state capitol and state museum. The weather was pleasant enough to spend some time walking around downtown. Another friend had mentioned the Peanuts statues in downtown Saint Paul, so I did photograph some of those. (Charles Schulz spent much of his childhood there.)

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The main reason I went to St. Paul was, however, to go to a St. Paul Saints game. They’re the AAA affiliate of the Minnesota Twins and play at CHS Field. The ballpark was pleasant and I enjoyed the game, especially since the WooSox (BoSox affiliate, based in Worcester, Massachusetts) won. I also ran into two NPL people there.

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All in all, I had a nice trip. My flight home went smoothly, too. I wish I could say the same about some of my travels in August.
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Sorry for the long delay in getting this post finished. I had underestimated the impact of an absurd amount of (domestic) travel on my getting things done.


This year’s National Puzzlers’ League convention was in Minneapolis. I planned things so that I stayed on a couple of extra days, enabling me to check off another AAA ballpark - namely, CHS Field, the home of the St. Paul Saints. I'll write about that part of the trip separately, since it will be a bit picture heavy.

The main hotel for the con was the Courtyard by Marriott. However, I reserved too late to get in there so ended up at the overflow hotel, which was the Aloft about a half mile away. It wasn’t a terrible walk, but it wasn’t at all scenic and was remarkably deserted at night. I also found the Aloft substandard as Marriott brands go, largely because of the lack of 24 hour coffee / hot water in the lobby. Lesson learned: I should book the hotel right when registration opens.

Anyway, I flew to MSP on American, which was fine. I took the light rail from the airport to downtown and it was a short, easy walk to the Aloft, though I had a wait before I could check in. Once I did, I walked up to the Courtyard for the con picnic (and to say hello to various people). The picnic was actually an indoor food event, the only thing of which I remember was that there was pizza. I would normally hang out and play games with other NPL people, but I wanted to call into my Book Club meeting so I walked back to the Aloft for the discussion of Long Island by Colm Toibin.

Thursday morning started with getting a breakfast of croissant perdu (i.e. French toast made from a croissant) at Mother Dough Bakery. Then I took the light rail down to the Mall of America, where a group of us were playing The Great Big Game Show. This involved two teams, who competed in a variety of games . For example, we started with having to build the tallest structure out of foam blocks. There were some trivia games, e.g. one called It’s Elementary which was roughly based on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader. I was nervous about representing my team in Drawing in the Dark but, fortunately, I was able to draw a flashlight while blindfolded. Overall, it was fun.

I browsed the mall briefly afterwards and had lunch, before taking the light rail to downtown Minneapolis. I had to get a photo of the Bob Dylan Mural at North 5th Street and Hennepin Ave.

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From there, it was a short walk to the Mary Tyler Moore statue.

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I returned to the Aloft and rested for a little while before walking over to the Courtyard to meet up with a group for dinner. The Thursday night foodie dinners, organized by Neuromancer, are an NPL con tradition. The group I was with had chosen to go to Mama Safia’s Kitchen, a Somali restaurant. We ordered a bunch of different dishes - basically flatbread and rice with various types of meat (goat, lamb, chicken, beef) and a couple of plates of appetizers (a deep-fried dough called mandazi and sambuza). Everything was very tasty.

The official con program started shortly after we got back to the Courtyard. There were three games on the official program. The first one, Compound Sentences was an ice-breaker in which everyone got a card with a word on it and people had to connect their word with other people’s words to form a sentence. The tricky thing was that some words were a lot harder to use than others. Next up was Jibber Jabble! which was, essentially, a version of a commercial game and was fun to play. The final one, Segues, was a word association game and I have to admit I don’t remember anything specific about it. I know I played some unofficial games until late in the night, but I don’t remember which things I played which nights.

I won’t write in detail about Friday night and Saturday afternoon’s puzzles and games. The most notable thing about Friday night’s official program was that my storytelling friend, Sufian, joined us for the evening. This was a world that was completely new to him, but he seemed to have a good time. And he may have inspired me to work on a story about puzzles. For example, the unforgivable sin in my household when I was growing up was to enter anything into the Sunday New York Times crossword before Mom had given up on finishing it.

I spent part of the day on Friday co-solving con cryptics. I did Slik’s ConCryptic Junction with Nimbus and TMcAy’s Double Play with Needy. Both of those were really enjoyable and I found the latter particularly satisfying because we started out feeling intimidated but, once we got a few answers, things fell into place fairly rapidly. That aha moment is a lot of what I find so satisfying about cryptics.

The Saturday night extravaganza is always a highlight of con. This year’s was called Twin City and was based on the premise that when Romulus founded Rome, Remus founded Reme. Each of those two cities had a suite of puzzles associated with it. There were some particularly fun puzzles among those. One, called Puntheon, was so completely in my wheelhouse that it could have been custom written for me. For example, a dog breed that gets into minor fights at a Catholic service would be a mastiff.

I am also always impressed by the creativity that people put into the games they bring. Silk’s Jeopardy game was high on that scale, with a mixture of trivia questions in unusual categories and various gimmicks involving things like matchbox cars and, well, really you had to play it for yourself to appreciate it. Noam’s Jeopardy game was more normal, but he always has fun categories with interesting trivia. Bonus did a game of Faster, which had been invented by Dart, and has the gimmick that each round has the same answers (with different questions) and decreasing time to get through them. I’m generally useless at Trash by Ember because pop culture is not my forte, but there were a few Broadway-related topics that were involved, which is one of my strong suits.

Of course, the major reason I’ve prioritized the NPL con over other things I could do is the people. I won’t attempt to name names because there are too many to include. I will note that the kindness of NPLers really came to the fore in handling a situation with one person who was having difficulties due to memory issues and how people went out of their way to help him throughout the con.

I’m looking forward to next year in Bloomington, Indiana and 2027 in Philadelphia.
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The biggest thing I did in July was go to Minneapolis for the National Puzzlers’ League Convention, which will get its own entry.

As for other things in July, I had a few of my usual activities, including my Litvak genealogy mentoring group and playing board games over zoom. I also had a couple of other zoom meetings - one to get an introduction to the app for the Jewish genealogy conference I was going to in August and another for planning for the 2026 Women’s Storytelling Festival.

Physical Therapy: I finally had my first PT appointment. The PT said that my knee issues were actually due to having strained my patellar tendon and he gave me a series of exercises to help strengthen the surrounding muscles, as well as the tendon itself. The most challenging is the wall sit, largely because I don’t have an obvious smooth stretch of wall to use for them. My doors all have indented panels in them. And most of my wall space has things against it (either furniture like bookshelves or boxes of stuff).

Baseball: The Washington Nationals always play an early (11 a.m.) game on the Fourth of July. This year they were playing my Red Sox, so I couldn’t resist getting a ticket. It was very hot out and my phone overheated, so I didn’t get any pictures. Despite that I had a great time watching the BoSox demolish the Nats, with a final score of 11-2. By the way, this was just a few days after Wilyer Abreu became the first player since 1958 to hit an inside-the-park home run and a grand slam in the same game.

After the game, I stopped by Bereshovsky’s Deli (attached to Gatsby) and got a potato knish and a can of Dr. Brown’s diet cream soda. It’s not like a real New York deli, but the knish was decent and I would probably be willing to eat there again.

The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical: On Saturday of the fourth of July weekend, I went to see this show at Signature Theatre. It was created by Joe Iconis, who is best known for Be More Chill, which I had never seen but heard good things about. This was, sadly, politically relevant and very very funny. Eric William Morris starred as Hunter S. Thompson, but the really notable performance was by George Abud as Richard M. Nixon. There was also some very interesting use of puppetry. Overall, this was well worth seeing and a good reminder of why I love Signature so much.

Profs and Pints: A few days after that, I went to a Profs and Pints talk on The Physics of Baseball given by Scott Paulson, a professor at James Madison University. His lecture was both entertaining and enlightening, with topics related to pitching, batting, and fielding. I liked his explanation of why knuckleballs behave so strangely and what the real impact of things like corked bats and the thin air of Mile High Stadium in Denver were. By the way, the event was at Penn Social, which is huge and has a very extensive bar menu and reasonably priced food with large portions. (I couldn’t finish the grilled cheese sandwich I ordered.)

Please Don’t Analyze This Dream: I had a dream that involved a very elaborate grey hat, sort of like a huge saucer shaped fascinator grafted onto a brimless cloche. I am seriously tempted to try to make this if I can find the right color and weight of felt. By the way, I think this may have been inspired by a photo I saw of Princess Beatrice.
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Continuing the catch-up ...

1. What's your favorite charitable cause and why? The charity I give the most money to is the MIT Alumni Association, much of it earmarked for my class’s scholarship fund. MIT opened a lot of doors for me and funding scholarships allows it to do so for other people.

2. What is the most important aspect of your life and why? Storytelling is something I devote a lot of my time to. Aside from getting a lot of pleasure out of performing (and, specifically, hearing positive reactions to my stories), I enjoy the variety of other people’s stories I get to hear.

3. When did you first realize you would someday be old or someday die? I’m not sure, largely because my ideas of what being old is have changed so much over the years. I am roughly the same age now that my grandmother was when she died, for example. And I thought of her as much older than I think of myself now.

4. When was the last time you lied and why? I don’t lie very often, but I do sometimes say that I have something I have to do when I just don’t feel like talking to somebody.

5. Which would you choose: immense wealth in obscurity or poverty and fame (think "starving artist”)? This reminds me of the board game, Careers, which was very popular in my family. You chose a goal that involved assigning how many Fame, Happiness, and Money points you needed to earn. Most people divided things up evenly, with maybe a slight imbalance. I think I usually went with 30 points each for Fame and Money and 40 for Happiness, which is what is missing from this question and what I would still choose. But I do know one person who says she always went for Fame, thinking that it would bring both money and happiness.

6. How would handle life in an arctic climate? I’ve spent some time in the Arctic (e.g. Churchill, Manitoba and Svalbard) and I could handle it if I had to, but the winter darkness would probably trigger depression after a while. So I would want to leave after a couple of weeks.

7. If you found a suitcase full of money in the middle of the street, what would you do? Bring it to the police station.

8. What is an unusual form of transportation you have used? Probably the most unusual (and uncomfortable) form of transportation I’ve used was the zebu cart I rode in on a tour in Madagascar. When I booked the tour from Ifaty to Reniala Nature Reserve, I had expected that I’d get there by car. For the benefit of anybody who thinks this would be a great cultural experience, zebu carts don’t have shock absorbers.

9. Which decade of clothing fashion was your favorite and least favorite? I really liked the padded shoulders of the mid to late 1980’s since they helped to make my waist look smaller. One particular item I am grateful has never made a comeback is the elephant bell bottoms of the early 1970’s, particularly worn with platform heels. That look flatters absolutely nobody.

10. Who is one of the most courageous people you have ever met? Why? My first thought was someone who didn’t let severe disability due to a car accident in her late teens stop her from having a successful law career and traveling extensively. But I could also go with my father, who survived the Kaunas Ghetto and Dachau and made it to the U.S. after a few years in Displaced Persons’ Camps.

11. Tell about a time when you shocked someone. I think I shocked people at work on the rare occasions that I cussed. And bear in mind that I worked among some people who had no sense of restraining their language, e.g. a guy I once heard use the f-word 8 times in a 12 word sentence.

12. Who is the best laundry folder in the family? I’ve always been good at folding laundry.

13. When was the last time you extended kindness to someone else? I try to be kind to others whenever possible.

14. What hobby or interest would you like to try, but haven’t? I've done wet felting but I haven’t done needle felting.

15. What is your birth order? Do you think it affected your childhood? Why or why not? I am the younger of two. It had mixed effects on my childhood. I generally got to do things just a few months after my brother did, even though he is a year and a half older than me. But it’s also hard to say whether the differences in our privileges were more related to age or to the idea that girls mature faster than boys do.

16. Do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real” you? I think my outward appearance is often more conservative than I actually am. But that wasn’t always the case and there were years when I dressed quite flamboyantly, despite being more introverted than people would expect.

17. If you could be any other being (other than human) what would you be and why? I’d want to be an alpha predator. So, probably, a bear.

18. What occupation do you think would be fascinating? I had a pretty fascinating career, actually. But I do think I’d have enjoyed being in the diplomatic corps.

19. What is the first movie you remember seeing in the theater? I’m not entirely sure what was the first. It was either Fantasia (those dancing hippos! And Mickey Mouse as the Sorceror’s Apprentice!) or Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.

20. Who taught you how to drive? I took driver’s ed in high school.

21. What seemed unusual on your morning commute today? I don't have a morning commute. For one thing, it’s the weekend. And, for another, I’ve been retired for almost five years.

22. If you could take home any animal from the zoo, which would it be, and what would you do with it? I wouldn’t take a zoo animal home. I don’t really have the room to keep anything interesting and it’s not fair to keep animals locked up in cages.

23. What do you think about as you are falling asleep? Mostly about the things I need to get done the next day.

24. Where would you most like to watch the sun come up? Why? I like watching both sunrises and sunsets from deserted beaches. I suspect that Mozambique would be an excellent place to watch a sunrise.

25. Which photo of yourself do you hate the most, and why? I went through a period in my 20’s of cutting my own hair. I think I’ve destroyed most of the evidence of that, but I know that a few friends may still have pictures.

26. What is the earliest memory you have of a sibling? Since my brother is older than me, he was always there. I have a vague memory of him helping me escape from my crib.

27. What is the best thing and the worst thing that happened to you this week? Well, I got a lot of birthday wishes, which is nice. None of them were from either my brother or the gentleman with whom I’m conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling.

28. What is a convenience you wouldn't want to do without? When I was traveling overland in Africa, I sometimes went without hot running water, which is no fun. I also went without freshly ground and freshly brewed coffee for a few months, which I never want to do again.

29. At what age did you learn to ride a bicycle? I don’t really remember. Maybe 6 or 7 ish? I know our next door neighbor taught me since neither of my parents knew how to ride a bike.

30. Tell a memory that you have with one of your grandfathers. I have a vague memory of my paternal grandfather reading to me from the Forward (the Yiddish newspaper.) As for my maternal grandfather, I have several memories. I loved going to his jewelry store. He’d close up the store early sometimes and we’d ride the subway to the Bronx Zoo.

31. How have you adjusted your eating habits to be healthier? Sadly, I think my eating habits were actually healthier 30-40 years ago. I do try to avoid junk food, but I cook less and don’t eat as wide a variety of vegetables as I used to.
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I first became aware of the Balkan Heritage Society and their archaeological field schools several years ago, when I was browsing various listings of volunteer and field school opportunities on-line and saw a workshop they were offering on photographing Roman mosaics. I didn’t do anything about it at the time since I couldn’t have made it fit my schedule. But I would continue to browse their offerings every few years.

Being retired helps a lot with schedule flexibility and this time I saw they were offering a workshop on textile conservation, which would fit in nicely with my crafts interests. I was all set to register for that, but then I got invited to do my travel talk at my MIT reunion and - poof! My life is a schedule conflict! But I noticed that there was also a workshop on paper conservation that was a couple of weeks later. Since: a) that would fit my schedule and b) I do play with paper crafts (particularly bookbinding, but I’ve also made paper and done plenty of surface design, e.g. marbling, over the years), I thought that would be worth doing. So I signed up, and began devoting some time to figuring out how to get to Zakynthos, Greece, where the workshop would be held. I also tried to make a dent in the somewhat intimidating reading list they provided.

For those who don’t know (which is the vast majority of Americans), Zakynthos is in the Ionian Islands, off the west coast of Greece. There are flights there from a number of European cities and the least expensive route I could find involved flying to Athens and then going there by bus / ferry. Since I’d been to Athens before (way back in 2004, for the Olympics), I just spent a night there. I flew over via FRA, which is one of my least favorite airports, but it worked okay. I spent one night at the Hotel Mirabello, which is conveniently located near Omonia Square. The staff was friendly and helpful and there were plenty of reasonably priced restaurants nearby. I didn’t write down the name of the place I ate at, but I had a reasonably good moussaka. In the morning, the hotel had a particularly good breakfast buffet, by the way, with hot options that even included spanakopita. I would consider staying there again if I had some reason to be in Athens.

In the morning, I took a taxi to the Kifissos bus station, which is large and chaotic. By the way, buying my ticket on-line had been a bit stressful, because KTEL (the major bus company) apparently sells tickets on the route I needed only a couple of weeks in advance. Still, I had been able to get a ticket to Nea Manolada, which proved to take about an hour longer than Rome 2 Rio had claimed it would. It turned out that this was just a stop on the side of a road, not an actual bus terminal. There was a South African woman who was also heading to Kyllini Port for a ferry (in her case, to Kefalonia, which is the next island north) and we walked across the street to a kiosk where the proprietor called us a cab. I stayed overnight at the Glarentza Hotel, which was a short walk to the port and was reasonably nice. I had time to walk around the port a bit both that afternoon and the next morning, before boarding the 1 p.m. ferry to Zakynthos.

Our accommodations were at the Hotel Yria, which is decently central. However, the rooms are on the small side and the breakfast is just adequate. I was sharing a room with a young woman from France, by the way. This is probably a good place to note that most of the group were 20ish, i.e. young enough to be my grandchildren. Only four of us were there just for the paper conservation program, while the majority had been doing a three week program that included one week each of textiles, metal, and paper. Despite the age gap, I found them generally thoughtful and interesting people. (There were a couple of other older people, but I’m reasonably sure I was the oldest. Well, someone has to be.)

Anyway, the program started on a Monday morning and I’d arrived on Sunday. That evening I went with a couple of the other people to Solomos Square (the central square of Zante Town) to see an event called Giostra of Zakynthos, which was a sort of medieval parade, followed by a jousting tournament. It was colorful and interesting, but uncomfortably crowded. Note that there were groups from several countries - including Scotland!

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I wasn’t able to get close enough to the jousting to get any pictures worth sharing of the horses and the riders, who included a young boy. Eventually, I decided I should go find something to eat. There is no shortage of restaurants in the area and I got a tasty supper before returning to the hotel and going to bed.

The workshop itself began on Monday after breakfast. We met our instructor, Dr. Nikolas Sarris (and his dog, Jimmy) and were transported in a minibus to Ionian University. The first day started with a couple of lectures (history of paper, causes of deterioration of paper) and a presentation about documentation of paper objects, before we set out to document the paper objects that had been distributed for us to work on. I had a 12-page set of what were essentially census records from 1959. There were extensive tears and cuts on the front cover, and folded edges and stains on every page, as well as rusted staples (which later on proved to be small nails / pins, not staples) and writing on the front and back covers.

We started out with a few conservation treatments and I brushed and vacuumed it. Later on, I would spend time cleaning with various tools, e.g. vulcanized latex sponges and patching with hollytex, which is a sort of paper made of non woven polyester. One of the other people in the workshop referred to it as “magic paper.” Here is a picture of the document with the pins removed and some cleaning done.

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The edges of the front cover were patched but you can still see a lot of writing and stains.

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Anyway, we continued to work on our documents during the subsequent days. There were some other types of (mostly Japanese) paper used in patching paper. We also spent time on humidifying and flattening paper. Our lab work was mixed in with lectures. We did have morning and afternoon coffee breaks and a lunch hour, where we ate at the student canteen, which was okay. I’d estimate that we were doing lab work maybe 6 hours a day. By the way, we had been told to bring lab coats, which gave me an excuse to dig out this personalized one, which I’d been given several years ago when I went to an event at the United Airlines catering facility in Denver.

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On Thursday morning we had a field trip to the General Archives and the Historic Public Library of Zakynthos. There were lots of historic photos, many of them related to the 1953 magnitude 7.2 earthquake, which caused extensive damage throughout the southern Ionian islands. (By the way, there were a couple of smaller earthquakes at the end of my time on Zakynthos, the larger of which was magnitude 4.1. Having lived in California for 22 years, that didn’t even wake me up.)

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There were also a couple of cases of dolls.

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And, of course, there were shelves and shelves of books, many of which had significant damage, including tunnels from being insect eaten. Nikolas also talked about storage of books / documents. The next day, we made the most basic storage enclosures, essentially just folders.

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Friday night, most of us went out to a fancy dinner at a restaurant called Manoo. You can get surprisingly good sushi in Greece (and, less surprisingly, a good gin and tonic). We bade goodbye to the people who were leaving on Saturday. The four of us who were left had the weekend free. I was fairly lazy, with some reading and puzzles to catch up on, but I did spend some time at the Byzantine Museum, which has a lovely collection. Here are a few examples.

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On Monday, we were back to lectures and workshops. By the way, since we were down to 4 people, we went to and from the University in Nikolas’s car. We started learning about wet cleaning techniques and stain removal, including the use of suction tables. The rest of the week continued with paper deacification, paper sizing, removal of adhesive tape, and more advanced paper repair techniques. I’ll spare you the pictures of paper immersed in various chemical solutions. A local man had heard that there was a book conservator teaching our class and brought Nikolas some documents to look at and he had us work on them, too. I spent a fair amount of time cleaning and repairing this, for example.

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On Thursday morning we went to see the Church of Agios Dionysios, followed by the Ecclesiastical Museum of the Holy Monastery of St. Dionysios. The church was elaborately decorated outside.

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Inside, the architecture felt typical of Orthodox Christian churches I’ve seen, with an ornate iconostasis.

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The museum had a lot of books on display, including some very old ones.

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The workshop finished on Friday, which we spent making boxes to protect books. We also visited another room at the University, which had a nitrogen hypoxia chamber for killing insects. We also got our certificates for completing the course.

While I’d taken bus and ferry to Zakynthos from mainland Greece, I had opted to fly back to Athens. Sky Express was a new airline for me and I found their service reasonably good. Here’s an aerial photo of Zakynthos.

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I stayed at the convenient but very pricy Sofitel Athens Airport overnight before my flights home on Swiss (via Zurich), which went smoothly. Airport hotels are always a good idea when you have an early morning (6:55 a.m.) flight.


Overall, I think the workshop was interesting and worth my time. I don’t expect to do much with what I learned, though you never know what may come in handy. I also enjoyed getting to know the other students, who generally made me feel more optimistic about young people nowadays. What more could I ask for?
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I was home just a few days before flying off to spend a little more than half of June in Zakynthos, Greece at a workshop on paper conservation. That deserves its own entry, which I hope to write in the next day or two.

Other than that, I had my routine annual medical exam before I left, the most significant part of which was getting a referral for physical therapy for my knee. I also had my monthly Litvak genealogy mentoring group, at which I gave a talk on Using Facebook for Jewish Genealogy.

After I got back from Greece, I had a couple of routine things, e.g. playing Code Names on-line with my friends and going to my needlework group (also on-line). The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington had a meeting at the Capital Jewish Museum with a presentation on updates to the Family Tree Maker software. One of the more interesting features is the capability to create custom fields, e.g. to add someone’s Hebrew name to their entry.

The final thing I did was go to the Kennedy Center with my friend Cindy to see the National Symphony Orchestra production of Dolly Parton’s Threads. Dolly herself appeared only on video. The program was conducted by Steven Reineke, with three women (Katelyn Drye, Hollie Hammel, and Blair Lamb) singing the songs. Many of the songs were familiar, e.g. “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You,” and “Nine to Five.” It was entertaining enough, but my taste in music is mostly edgier.
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1. Have you ever made a huge change to your hair - cut or colour? I have dyed my hair various times. The most interesting is probably the time I got magenta cellophane immediately before having new passport photos taken. Australian immigration looked at me a bit strangely a few weeks later.

2. What is one thing that happened today that you really want to remember 10 years from now? I’ve really just spent the day mostly on errandy stuff, e.g. laundry and sorting through receipts, none of which is memorable. The news is full of one Trumpist outrage after another and I’d like to think that will all be over long before 10 years from now. So, frankly, I got nothing.

3. Are you happy with my job, life, and situation? What parts are good? What parts are bad? What a badly phrased question. I’m reasonably happy with my life, but know nothing about yours. The major thing I need to work on is decluttering my living room.

4. Where would you go to relax and why? I’d love to spend a week or so at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, Oregon. I’d probably choose the Agatha Christie room.

5. What trait did you admire in a relative, friend, classmate, or coworker today? I’m proud of one of my friends for writing honestly about her mental health struggles and what she’s been doing to address them.

6. What is the weather like today? How do you feel about it? I think the weather in June was hot and muggy. But the weather right now is quite pleasant, sunny with a high in the mid-70’s Fahrenheit.

7. What's the most difficult part about being you? I have high standards that I can’t always live up to.

8. Good or bad, what is your hometown best known for? Uh, there were a few couple of famous mafiosi who lived there. And also one former U.S. Senator.

9. Describe an incident at a beauty or barber shop. Does getting a chocolate pedicure at the spa at the Hotel Hershey count? Or, even better, the fish pedicure I once got?

10. What musical instrument(s) do you play or wish you could play? I took several years of piano lessons off and on. I also did two years of viola in elementary school. I’ve fooled around with various other instruments, ranging from the accordion to the tin whistle to the bowed psaltery over the years. But (to steal a joke from my Dad) my best instrument is the stereo system. I wish I could play the didgeridoo, but I've never been able to make sense of circular breathing.

11. Tell about one of your first away-from-home experiences. I went to three different summer camps. Two of them were relatively normal. The one that I went to for two summers in a row is the source of some of my best stories, since it was run by a socialist zionist organization and we had events like Capitalist Day.

12. What makes you feel safe? I guess I feel safest in familiar environments, but that includes places like home (duh!) and comfortable hotels and many major cities. Frankly, I rarely feel unsafe.

13. Have you ever been to a surprise party? Was it for you or someone else? Was it a good surprise? I don’t remember anyone ever throwing a surprise party for me, but I did go to a few surprise parties for other people when I was a teenager. The best one was for two people whose birthdays were close in time. (Their birthdays may have been the same day, but I don’t remember.) At any rate, the host told Marc it was a surprise party for Vicki and told Vicki it was a surprise party for Marc and gave them arrival times about 15 minutes apart.

14. What does abundance mean to you? Abundance is just a step beyond enough. There is a step beyond abundance that is really too much, e.g. the quantities of books and of yarn in my house.

15. Name 3 friends that shaped your childhood. My best friend for several years was Kathy, who lived down the street from me and who I spent part of nearly every day with. We spent our time listening to music, playing hopscotch, hanging out in our secret place (a clearing in the middle of an empty lot, which later became a shopping center), and memorizing things like “Jabberwocky.” I was also very close to Norman, who I shared a crayon box with in elementary school. I remember being the only girl at his birthday party one year in elementary school. And, hmm, Carol was one of the two other girls in my Hebrew school class and was the first peer who told me what getting a period was like. Her exact comment was “it’s literally a pain in the ass.”

16. If you suddenly had an extra room in your house, what would you do with it? I’d like it to be an art and music room, with a piano and shelves for my yarn stash.


17. What needs to be true for you to feel empowered to speak up in a group? I really don’t have any hesitation in speaking up in a group.

18. Describe your ideal book club. My long-standing book club works for me because: 1) we read a wide variety of books, 2) everybody actually reads the book, and 3) we talk about the book instead of just general chitchat,

19. What’s your favourite animated movie? I have a long-standing fondness for Fantasia, which I think was one of the first movies I ever saw. But I also have a soft spot in my heart for The Aristocats.

20. What’s the biggest life decision you’ve ever made? How did it affect you? Choosing to go to MIT opened up a lot of opportunities for me. I made that decision because I knew so many people who had decided to change their majors from what they originally planned and I was reasonably sure anything I chose to do would be in the math / science realm. (I’ve often joked that my brother holds the Michigan State record for changing majors.) This worked well since I had originally planned to major in chemistry and ended up in mechanical engineering. And, while I found Dartmouth very attractive, I felt that I wanted to live in a city, rather than a rural area.

21. What is your favourite vegetable? There are many vegetables I like, but I think I’ll opt for carrots, due to their versatility. I particularly like roasted carrots with a tahini glaze. But I also use carrots in stir fries and make carrot-ginger soup.

22. Which disease known to humankind do you hate the most? Explain why. I’ve lost too many people I cared about to various forms of cancer.

23. What would be your ideal birthday present, and why? I am much more about experiences than about things, so I’d suggest theatre or concert tickets.

24. This morning, when you got out of bed, you ….. Before bed tonight, you will…. These are pretty much the same every day. When I get out of bed, I do my various daily puzzles, starting with the New York Times crossword. Before I go to bed, I read for at least half an hour.

25. Who would you most like to be like if you could change your personality? Maybe Mallory Lewis, the daughter of Shari Lewis. She puppets Lamb Chop, so has a fun sassy alter ego.

26. What are some colors you see the most in your every day life? I’ve been using blue bed linens lately, so that should be right up there. I tend to wear a lot of black and red, so those should also be on the list. And my furniture is mostly wood, so you can throw in brown, which is a color I rarely wear.

27. What is your most prized possession? I have a necklace that my great-grandmother allegedly bought in Shanghai. I am skeptical of that story, but it’s still a necklace I like a lot.

28. What animals frighten you and why? Having grown up on Long Island, sharks are at the top of my scary list, followed by polar bears. I also tend to be leery of certain breeds of large dogs, though I’m fine with others. I suspect that dates back to a neighbor who was attacked as a child and had an ear bitten off.

29. What kind of fairytale creature would you be? I think I am well-suited to be either a fairy godmother or the wise woman who lives at the edge of the forest.

30. What is an exciting or crazy trip you have taken? Before my 40th birthday, I took a leave of absence from work and spent 6 months traveling on overland trucks through Africa, followed by taking the Saint Helena mail ship from Cape Town to the U.K.
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Here’s a partial attempt to catch up on the Celebrity Death Watch backlog. I will go back to things I’ve actually done for a few posts before I finish getting up to date on this.

Celebrity Death Watch - January 2025: Wayne Osmond was one of the Osmond brothers. James R. Hogg was a four-star admiral in the U.S. Navy. Peter Yarrow was part of Peter, Paul, and Mary and wrote the song “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Charles Person was the youngest of the 1961 Freedom Riders. Merle Louise was an actress, known for her roles in Sondheim musicals, including playing the Beggar Woman in the original cast of Sweeney Todd. Joel Paley was the lyricist and playwright of the musical Ruthless! Lynn Taylor-Corbett was a choreographer. Irmgard Furchner was a Nazi war criminal. Howard Andrew Jones wrote and edited speculative fiction. George Kalinsky was the official photographer for the New York Mets for several years and also photographed other notable events in New York City. Toby Myers was the bassist for John Cougar Mellencamp. Dame Joan Plowright was an actress who won a Tony for her role in A Taste of Honey Bob Uecker was a catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, who later became a broadcaster. Cecile Richards was the president of Planned Parenthood from 2006 through 2018. John Sykes played guitar with Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake. Garth Hudson was the keyboardist for The Band. Elliot Engber was the guitarist for The Mothers of Invention. Howard Morrison designed the game Simon. Iris Cummings was a swimmer and was the last surviving participant of the 1936 Summer Olympics. Jane McGarrigle was a songwriter and musician who performed with and managed her sisters, Kate and Anna. Jaun Quick-to-see Smith was a painter and printmaker. Harold Katz founded Nutrisystem. Alicia M. Soderbergh was an astrophysicist who specialized in supernovae. Elisa Rae Shupe was the first person in the United States to be legally recognized as non-binary. Dick Button was an Olympic medalist as a figure skater and did commentary on skating for several years. Marianne Faithfull was a singer and songwriter and was Mick Jagger’s partner for the latter half of the 1960’s.


David Lodge was a British novelist who wrote primarily about academic life. I read several of his books back in the 1980’s and 1990’s and found them amusing. I should probably dig them out and reread them to see how they’ve held up over the years.

Agnes Keleti was a Hungarian gymnast, who was an Olympic champion in 1952 and 1956. The only Jewish athlete who won more Olympic medals than her was Mark Spitz. She was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 20 points.

David Lynch directed the movies Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. I would have walked out off Blue Velvet had it not been the first movie of a double feature. (The second film was Something Wild, which I liked.) He also produced Twin Peaks, which I found similarly unwatchable.

Jules Feiffer was a cartoonist and playwright. He illustrated The Phantom Tollbooth and he wrote Passionella, which was one of three short works that were incorporated into the musical The Apple Tree. He also wrote the screenplays for Carnal Knowledge and Popeye.


Celebrity Death Watch - February 2025: Fay Vincent was the commissioner of baseball from 1989 to 1992. Aga Khan IV was the imam of Nizari Ismaili and one of the richest people in the world. Tony Roberts acted in several of Woody Allen’s movies. William R. Lucas directed NASA’s Marshall Flight Center from 1974 to 1986. Lynn August was a zydeco musician. Uri Shulevitz wrote and illustrated children’s books, including some of folktales about fools. Jamie Muir was the percussionist for King Crimson. Jerry Butler was a Hall of Fame soul singer. Clint Hill was a Secret Service agent who was present at the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Larry Dolan owned the Cleveland Guardians. Chris Jasper sang with The Isley Brothers. Laura Sessions Stepp wrote about American teen culture. Michelle Trachtenberg played Dawn in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Melody Beattie wrote self-help books about codependence. Boris Spassky played chess. David Johansen was the lead singer of the New York Dolls.

Sam Nujoma was the president of Namibia from independence in 1990 through 2005. He earned me 21 ghoul pool points, which includes 12 points for being a unique pick.

Tom Robbins was a novelist, best known for Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Still Life with Woodpecker.

Gene Hackman was a film actor who won two Oscars. He is best known for starring in The French Connection. He also played Lex Luther in three Superman movies and numerous other roles.

Roberta Flack was a Grammy-winning singer, best known for “Killing Me Softly with His Song” and “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”

Joseph Wambaugh wrote novels and non-fiction about police work. His best known books include The Onion Field, and The New Centurions.


Celebrity Death Watch - March 2025: Joey Molland was a songwriter and guitarist for Badfinger. Jean Van Leeuwin wrote over 40 children’s books. Brian James played guitar with The Damned and The Lords of the New Church. D’Wayne Wiggins was a founding member of Tony! Toni! Toné! Atoll Fugard was a South African playwright whose work included ”Master Harold” … and the Boys. L. J. Smith wrote young adult fiction, including The Vampire Diaries. Clive Revill was an actor whose career included both Shakespeare plays and musical theatre, including playing Fagin in Oliver! on Broadway. Ron Nessen was Gerald Ford’s White House press secretary. John Feinstein was a sportswriter. David Schmittlein was the dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management from 2007 through 2024. Jesse Colin Young was the lead singer of The Youngbloods. Bob Harvey was the original bassist for Jefferson Airplane. George Ball was the tallest man in the United States at 7 foot 8. Sam Keen was a founder of the men’s movement and proved that men’s liberation was not inherently anti-feminist. Kitty Dukakis was the first lady of Massachusetts for many years. Gillian Baxter wrote children’s books, mostly about ponies. David Childs was the architect of record for One World Trade Center in New York. Kerry Greenwood wrote the Phryne Fisher detective novels, as well as other detective fiction, science fiction, historical fiction, and children’s books. Richard Chamberlain was an actor, best known for playing Dr. Kildare. Nancy Bea Hefley played the organ at Dodger Stadium. Tracy Schwarz sang with the New Lost City Ramblers. Lynn Venable wrote science fiction stories.

Jimmy Neil Smith was the creator of the National Storytelling Festival and the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytelling (NAPPS) which led to the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough and, in a rather complicated and contentious manner, to the National Storytelling Network. So, in a somewhat indirect way, he changed my life.

George Foreman was a boxer and grill salesman. He lost to Muhammed Ali in The Rumble in the Jungle in 1974. My favorite fun fact about him is that he named all 5 of his sons “George Edward Foreman.”


Celebrity Death Watch - April 2025 George Freeman was a jazz guitarist. Wayne Hardy was a rockabilly singer. Michael Hurley was a folk singer-songwriter. Val Kilmer was an actor, known for The Doors, Batman Forever and other movies. Johnny Tillotson was a singer-songwriter whose songs included “Without You.” David Paton cofounded Orbis International, a charity that provides eye care throughout the developing world. Clem Burke played drums for Blondie. Jay North played Dennis the Menace on television in the early 1960’s. Andrew Gross wrote thrillers and collaborated with James Patterson. Sybil Shainwald was an activist for women’s health issues. Peter Lovesey was a British mystery writer. Mike Wood cofounded LeapFrog Enterprises, which makes educational toys. Max Romeo was a reggae musician. Gretchen Dow Simpson was an artist who created over 60 New Yorker covers. Chuck Connelly was a prolific painter. Jean Marsh was a British actress, best known for appearing in Upstairs, Downstairs. Wink Martingale hosted the game show Tic-Tac-Dough. Irwin Lachman co-invented the catalytic converter. Ed Smylie led the team at NASA that saved the crew of Apollo 13. Barry Benepe was responsible for the establishment of many farmers' markets in New York City. David Horowitz was a conservative writer and activist.


Amador Bagayoko was a blind Malian guitarist and vocalist who performed with his wife Mariam Doumbia (who is also blind). I highly recommend their 2004 album Dimanche a Bamako.

William Finn was a composer and lyricist, best known for Falsettos and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Richard Arbitrage served in a number of government positions in both the Department of State and the Department of Defense, but is notorious for his role in leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as a CIA operative.

Pope Francis (nee Jorge Mario Bergoglio) was the head of the Catholic Church from March 2013 through his death in April 2025. He was the first Jesuit pope and the first Latin American. He was generally relatively liberal politically, opposing the death penalty and calling for protection of migrants. He earned me 20 ghoul pool points.
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The last weekend of May was my 45th MIT Reunion. I flew up to Boston on Thursday. Checking in was quick. I was staying at New Vassar, which is a dorm that didn’t exist back in my day. There was a problem with my room. Namely, the bed had been raised so that the dresser went under it. But the ladder up to the actual bed was placed in a way that was way too hard for me to negotiate. The dorm staff was able to lower the bed, but it took some time. (Staying in a hotel, rather than a dorm on campus would be nicer, of course, but they sell out quickly. And they cost a lot more.)

Anyway, the first event I went to was the Class of 1980 Gathering at State Park Bar in Kendall Square. We had a private room for us, with drinks and heavy appetizers. We also got MIT Class of 1980 baseball caps (in a choice of red or pink). It was a nice opportunity to mingle and chat.

I spent Friday going to various receptions. The Hillel reception had good bagels (and other food), but was notable for my getting to see a couple of people (not in my class) who I hadn’t seen in a lot of years. One of them had been a grad student when I was an undergrad and I’d last seen him when he was passing through Los Angeles and we had lunch at a Yemenite restaurant in Pico-Robertson. The other was someone who I knew from my days in Berkeley. There was also, alas, a lot of discussion of the incident at commencement in which a graduation speaker delivered a pro-Palestine speech. The thing that didn’t get discussed enough in the news stories I saw was that she had submitted an entirely different speech for approval beforehand. I was not at commencement to see this, but the buzz in the room was that the Institute did not handle the situation well.

Conversation at the other two receptions I went to was considerably tamer. The Mechanical Engineering reception was in too small a space, but did provide an opportunity to reminisce a bit about some projects from back in my day. However, none of the professors I'd have liked to see were there. Instead, I did have a couple of conversations about theatre. The reception at McCormick Hall (the all women dorm I lived in while I was at MIT) was entirely unmemorable, though I do remember talking to the former dorm headmaster who ran the Washington summer program back in the days when I tried to find minions, er, I mean summer interns.

After that was the Tech Reunions Welcome Reception, which had some confusion about which tables our class was supposed to be at. Here’s a photo of me (in the red dress) with my friend, Robert, and his wife, Merlie.

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Then we got on the buses to Symphony Hall for Tech Night at the Pops. Some friends and I had requested seating together, but were given tickets at three separate tables. We did sort that out ourselves, but it was annoying. The concert had a good mix of material, with a highlight being a sing-along to 1980’s music. There was also a version of “America the Beautiful” which included an MIT chorus. I mention that because, as we were leaving to go back to the buses, someone I know from the puzzle world called out to me. It wasn’t her reunion year, but she had been part of that chorus! Overall, it was a nice event.

Saturday is always Technology Day, which features talks about MIT research. The theme this year was From Lab to Life: How MIT is Advancing Health and Humanity. and addressed two new initiatives. The first part was on the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative and the speakers were Angela M. Belcher on Changing the Optics on Ovarian Cancer Detection and Prevention, Jonathan Gruber on Paying for Health: Insurance and the Life Sciences, Hugh Herr with On Being Bionic, and Bryan Bryson on Breakthrough Solutions for (and from) an Ancient Disease. That last one had to do with tuberculosis, which (as you may know) has made something of a resurgence. The definite highlight of that session was Hugh Herr. I had read about him some time ago and his story is very compelling. In short, he had both of his legs amputated below the knee after a mountain climbing accident when he was 17. He designed improved prosthetics, which there is no word for other than amazing. He can extend the length of his prosthetic legs, for example, enabling him to climb things that nobody else can. Just watching him walking around on the stage, you would never think of him as being at all disabled. He also showed a short film with a woman trying out new prosthetic legs and not needing any time to adjust to them. I swear every jaw in the room dropped during his talk. (I should probably note that learning about the Boston arm, which was one of the first prosthetic devices to connect to the body’s nervous system, was one of the things that drew me into majoring in mechanical engineering in the first place. But other people without that background were also talking about how amazing his talk was.)

The second part was on the MIT Human Insight Collaborative. The speakers were Lily L. Tsai on A Compass for the Digital Age, Caspar Hare on Machines That Want What We Want, David Rand on During Reducing Conspiracy Beliefs Using Human-AI Dialogues, and Eran Egozy on Good Vibrations: The Technology behind Musical Instruments and the Human Connection. I was unconvinced by Rand’s talk. Egozy’s talk was on a subject that is right up my alley, but I hadn’t gotten enough sleep on Friday night so I can’t say that I absorbed much of it. After all of that, there was a fireside chat with MIT President Sally Kornbluth. She touched on the commencement kerfuffle and sounded reasonable about how it was handled. She also talked more generally about life at MIT.

Next up was lunch and the Tech Challenge Games, which we had too small a group for. I did submit a couple of haikus, but neither of them got read out loud. The event I was most looking forward to was the Class of 1980 TIM Talks. (TIM the Beaver is the MIT mascot. He did not actually have a name back in my undergrad days, but it’s cute. Anyway, that’s why we have TIM Talks instead of TED Talks.) One of my friends was on the program committee and asked me to give a talk on travel which is, as many of you know, one of my favorite subjects. The other two speakers were Tomas A. Gonzalez on Remanufacturing and Circular Economy and David Alexander on Making Infinite Connections. I particularly liked David’s talk because he referenced the book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, which has been a big influence on my life. It has to do with the decline of social capital in our times and the need to reconnect with other people. David’s examples included things like his involvement with his church, with Toastmasters, and with a book club that reads only one book - James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.

My talk was titled Reel to Real Travels. The title, which was provided by my friend, Teri, refers to my being inspired to travel by ViewMaster reels I had as a child.

IMG_5225

Basically, I talked about overcoming lack of opportunity to travel (time and money), people who offered helpful advice, my mid-life crisis trip , and what makes me choose specific places to go to. My biggest take-aways were that: 1) famous places are usually famous for good reasons and 2) it’s not a competition though some people treat it as one. I thought it went well. I got some good questions and had some nice conversations at the dinner that followed the TIM Talks.

On Sunday morning, there was a brunch at McCormick Hall. I went back to the dorm to collect my bag and then set off to the airport. Getting home went smoothly. And then I was all ready to unpack - and pack for a trip later in the week.

Balticon 59

Aug. 6th, 2025 05:29 pm
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I spent Memorial Day weekend at Balticon. I’d attended bits and pieces virtually before, but had never gone in person. The drive to Baltimore was slow and annoying and my GPS screwed up on where I needed to turn to get into the parking garage at the conference hotel, but I managed to figure it out. I had made my plans too late to get into the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, but it was a short walk to the Springfield Inn, which was perfectly adequate.

It’s been long enough since that weekend that I probably won’t remember every session I went to. On Friday night, I went to a panel on The Commercialization of Space, which included a friend of mine from storytelling. The focus was really on privatization, while I’d have preferred a broader view. After that, I walked around the art show and did a quick recon of things for sale. Then I decided that I needed sleep more than I needed to go to another session so walked up to my hotel and collapsed.

I started Saturday with I am the Very Model… which was a filk panel on patter songs. I was glad to see a mention of Sondheim’s “Getting Married Today” (from Company, which is one of the rare patter songs for a woman. I found the claim that patter songs are the forerunner of rap to be rather dubious, since I am fairly sure “The Signifying Monkey,” which is based on Yoruba folklore, predates Gilbert and Sullivan. Also, none of the panelists had an actual answer to my question on why the Major General’s song remains the most popular patter song for parodies, instead of, say, the nightmare song from Iolanthe or “Tchaikovsky” from Lady in the Dark. (Or, for that matter, Tom Lehrer’s “Lobachevsky.”) It was still an entertaining session and if you disagree with anything I’ve said, it really doesn’t matter

I went out for a short walk and lunch. After that, I know I went to a talk by Alan Doctor titled Wonderful News for Vampires - Synthetic Blood (True Blood?) is Being Developed. But I don’t remember anything specific about it. After that I went to hear Marc Aabrahams talk about Improbable Research and the Ig Nobel Prizes. That was the definite highlight of the con for me. I am, of course, familiar with the publication and the prize ceremony. I expected to laugh a lot and, indeed, I did.

Later in the afternoon, I went to a panel on My Favorite Monster. I did like that the panelists went beyond werewolves and vampires. Personally, I am particularly fond of the Hastrman, which is a Slavic water sprite that lives in rivers and eats children. The charming part is that it knits sweaters to keep the souls of its victims warm. I am reasonably sure that nobody has written about it in a science fiction or fantasy book. Yet. Later in the day, I couldn’t resist a panel titled Humorous Fantasy is a Serious Business. I think that the note I wrote on my phone which reads “The Cellphone Towers of Elfland” is probably a recommendation from this session. Also, I did buy Martin Berman-Gorvine’s book 100 Curses on Trump and Musk, which, alas, proved to be disappointing.


I started Sunday with a panel on The Folklore of Space. There were some interesting stories, but not really anything I hadn’t heard before. I followed that with a panel titled Ducks and How to Make Them Pay which was about as silly as the title suggests. (Note: I do not really have anything against ducks, although I do believe that eating duck increases the net intelligence of the universe. Geese, however, are the shittiest birds in the known universe.)

After a walk and lunch, I went to a panel on Non-European Folklore in SFF. This was fairly interesting and I was particularly glad that one of the panelists talked about African folklore - specifically, Nigerian folklore if I recall correctly. I followed that with a panel on Jews in Space: Jewish SF On and Off the Page. Of course, there was some discussion of Wandering Stars, a short story anthology that was revolutionary when it was published in 1974. The basic premise of the discussion was that there are a lot of Jewish SF writers, but few Jewish characters in their work. I don’t read enough SF to know how true that is, but I suspect that it could be because many of those Jewish authors are pretty assimilated.

Somewhere in there, I did a little bit of shopping. I’d been wanting to get Jasper Fforde’s Red Side Story (which is the sequel to Shades of Grey and I also bought a memoir I know a friend will want. (He may read this, so I am not giving more details.) I also couldn’t resist a bee-hive themed game tray. There were a few odds and ends I contemplated, but I am trying to declutter my life, so I restrained myself.

In the late afternoon, I went to a Classic Filk Sing-Along. I closed out Sunday with a talk by Brent Warner on A Fannish Introduction to Runes as a Writing System That was interesting, but there was a lot of distracting fiddling around with the presentation technology.

I think the only session I went to on Monday was a panel on Creation Myths, which was pretty interesting. There were other things I was interested in, but since it was Memorial Day, I was concerned about traffic driving home. It was slower than normal, but not as bad as Friday had been.

Overall, I enjoyed going to Balticon and was able to see a few friends who are regulars at it. I had my usual issue at all events, which is my inability to be in multiple places at the same time. I did a reasonable job of balancing things I wanted to go to without getting too exhausted. I would have liked to have checked out some of the game demos and watch some film screenings, but couldn’t make that work, mostly because I wasn’t staying in the con hotel.

But the biggest problem is the Memorial Day weekend is not really a great time for me to go to something like this, since it conflicts with other things I want to do. I’m likely to be traveling next year, for example. So, overall, going virtually and going to some events after the fact will have to do.

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