fauxklore

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car and a short drive to my hotel, though it was a bit challenging to actually find the front desk since my GPS had outdated directions.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.



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.



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



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.



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.



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



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



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.



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



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.





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.



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.



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.)

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.

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.

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.



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.)



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.

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.

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.



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




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.



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.



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).



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



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.)





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.



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.

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.

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!









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.



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



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.



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.)



There were also a couple of cases of dolls.



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.



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.











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.



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.



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



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



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.




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?

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.

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.




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.



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.