fauxklore

Catching up on some other things, it’s been a while since I’ve done the ever popular celebrity death watch. (Early February to be exact)

Celebrity Death Watch - February 2026: Sir Nicholas White was a tropical disease researcher, specializing in malaria treatments. Daryl Hoole wrote books about homemaking. Myra MacPherson was a journalist, primarily for The Washington Post. Chuck Negron was a founding member of Three Dog Night. Dame Carole Jordan was an astrophysicist. Lamont McLemore was a founding member of The 5th Dimension, Mickey Lolich was a pitcher, primarily for the Detroit Tigers. Sonny Jorgensen was a Hall of Fame football player. Ed Crane co-founded the Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank). Andrew Ranken played drums for The Pogues. Bud Cort was an actor, best known for playing Harold in Harold and Maude. Ed Graczyk was a playwright whose most successful play was Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. James Van Der Beek starred in Dawson’s Creek. Karen Glaser was an underwater photographer. Eric Dane was an actor, best known for appearing in Grey’s Anatomy. Dan Simmons was a fantasy, science fiction, and horror writer. Iris Cantor was a philanthropist. Coleman Barks was a poet and responsible for popularizing the works of Rumi. Sondra Lee originated the roles of Tiger Lily (in Peter Pan) and Minnie Fay (in Hello, Dolly!) on Broadway. Lauren Chapin was a child actress, best known for playing Kitten in Father Knows Best. Bobby J. Brown was an actor, best known for The Wire. Colman McCarthy was a peace activist.

Robert Duvall was an actor, He won a best actor Oscar for his performance in Tender Mercies and had won several other acting awards. He’s been referred to as “the American Olivier.”

Jesse Jackson was an ordained Baptist minister, a civil rights activist and a politician. He appeared to have repented for some antisemitic comments he made during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. I was once delayed at the Oakland airport while he and his entourage were there, but I don’t remember whether he was coming or going.

Isaiah Zagar was a mosaic artist, who created the Philadelphia Magic Gardens. This is my favorite thing in Philadelphia. I was introduced to it by artistic friends and I’ve gone back to see it multiple times since.

Bill Mazeroski was a second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who is best known for driving in a 9th inning home run in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series to defeat the Source of All Evil in the Universe.

Neil Sedaka was a singer and songwriter. Among the songs he is best known for are “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” and “Love Will Keep Us Together.” I find those two an interesting juxtaposition.

Ali Khamenei was the ayatollah, supreme leader, and president of Iran. The world (and Iran, in particular) may well be a better place without him, but it’s not like he’s been replaced with anyone better.

Celebrity Death Watch - March 2026: Gary Walker was the drummer and a vocalist with The Standells, whose song “Dirty Water” is a Red Sox tradition. Lyle Conway designed the Audrey II puppet used in the film version of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. Russell W. Meyer, Jr. was the CEO of Grumman in the late 1960’s to mid-1970’s and of Cessna after that. Sir Anthony Leggett won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on superfluidity. Alexander Butterfield revealed Richard Nixon’s White House taping system during the Watergate investigation. Tommy DeCarlo was the lead singer for Boston. Paul Ehrlich wrote about the consequences of population growth. Christopher Sims won a Nobel Prize in economics. William C. Dietz wrote military science fiction. Dolores Keane sang with De Dannan. Terry Cox was the drummer for Pentangle. Mike Melvill was a test pilot for SpaceShip One, becoming the first commercial astronaut. Chuck Norris was a martial artist and actor. Nicholas Brendon played Xander in the TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Robert Mueller was the director of the FBI from 2001-2013. Calvin Tomkins was an art critic who wrote for The New Yorker. Chip Taylor wrote songs, including “Angel of the Morning” and “Wild Thing.” Dash Crofts sang with Jim Seals and wrote songs, including “Summer Breeze.”

Lou Holtz was a football coach for Notre Dame (and other schools). He earned me 19 ghoul pool points.

Country Joe McDonald headed up a musical group with the Fish. He’s best known for the “I-Feel-Like-Im-Fixing-to-Die” Rag,” which he wrote and performed at Woodstock.

Len Deighton wrote spy novels, including The IPCRESS File. He also wrote cookbooks.

George H. Goble won an Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry for preparing a barbecue using a smoldering cigarette, charcoal, and liquid oxygen.

Tracy Kidder wrote a number of important non-fiction books, including The Soul of a New Machine and Mountains Beyond Mountains. His writing was vivid and absorbing and well worth reading.

Celebrity Death Watch - April 2026: Jim Whittaker was the first American to climb Mount Everest. Barbara Gordon wrote the book I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can, about her pill addiction. Nick Pope investigated UFOs. Davey Lopes played second base primarily for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ray Monette sang and played guitar for Rare Earth. Africa Bambaataa was a hip hop pioneer. Moya Brennan sang with Clannad. Kevin Klose was the president of NPR from 1998-2008. Don Schlitz wrote country music songs and was best known for “The Gambler.” Roger Adams invented Heelys. Garret Anderson played left field for the Los Angeles Angels.

Sid Krofft was a puppeteer who, along with his brother, Marty, created such television shows as H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost.

Justin Fairfax was the lieutenant governor of Virginia under Ralph Northam. During his term in office, he had faced multiple allegations of sexual assault. He murdered his wife, Cerina, and killed himself.

Desmond Morris was a zoologist. He was best known for his book The Naked Ape, which has been widely criticized for sexist assumptions.

Belated Celebrity Death Watch: I only learned recently that Lyle Feisel died in November 2025. He was known for writing a column in The Bent, the magazine published by the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi, about the people various scientific units are named after.

Continuing my catch-up, I did a theatre binge at the end of March. The impetus for this was City Center’s Encores, which was doing a production of Michael John LaChiusa’s version of The Wild Party. For those unfamiliar with Encores, this is a series that produces infrequently performed, often forgotten, musicals, with minimal staging (although it has gotten more elaborate over the years) and short runs (2 weeks). This was a show that I had wanted to see for ages. They had planned it for a previous season, but it got postponed and there was no way I was going to miss out when it did show up on the schedule. So I bought a ticket as soon as they went on sale - at full price, no less! I built the rest of this trip around that production, so let’s take things in order.

The first show I saw was on Friday night. The hot ticket of the moment was Giant, starring John Lithgow as Roald Dahl. I was able to find a ticket on TodayTix for Friday night. I was literally in the last row of the the theatre, but I had a perfect view. The show has to do with an incident in which Dahl wrote a highly antisemitic review of a book about Israel, leading his publisher to try to get him to issue a retraction. In addition to Dahl, the characters include his fiancee, his housekeeper, and representatives of his publisher (a British man who Dahl considers a friend and a woman from New York). The play was well acted and sadly relevant to our times. I’ve written before about the problem of separating the artist from the art, and Dahl joins people like Caravaggio and Neil Gaiman in my list of people who created some great works despite being terrible people. So this was an interesting look at a deeply flawed person whose works (that is, his children’s books) still endure. However, I didn’t find the play completely satisfying, since Dahl’s deliberate abrasiveness is unrelenting. The reason to see this is Lithgow, rather than the lines he’s been given.

The main event was Saturday afternoon, when I saw The Wild Party at City Center. The back story of why I wanted to see this show so much is that both LaChiusa and Andrew Lippa wrote musicals based on Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 narrative poem in 2000. I’d seen (and liked) Lippa’s version a while ago. But I think LaChiusa ia a better composer. The plot involves Queenie (a vaudeville singer) and Burrs (the vaudeville clown she lives with) who throw a party to try to stir up their disintegrating relationship. The party involves pretty much every vice imaginable, full of sex and drugs and jazz (since this was set in the 1920’s, long before rock and roll). The music was excellent and I thought the choreography was also notable, given the relatively small stage. It’s a show I would definitely see again.

I was back at City Center (this time at the Manhattan Theatre Club, which is their smaller venue) on Saturday night for Bigfoot. The plot involves the residents of the town of Muddirt, which is located between a chemical dump and a nuclear power plant. Bigfoot lives in the woods outside of town because his mother knows he wouldn’t be safe among the biased town residents. The mayor stirs up the townspeople against him to distract them from his plans to sell the town and turn it into a waterpark. Overall, I found the show funny and cute, but pretty silly. I felt like it was more appropriate for a fringe festival.

If you’re going to binge, you might as well go all the way. So I went to see About Time at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, which is in the YMCA on W. 64th Street, just a stone’s throw from Central Park. This is a follow-up to Maltby and Shire’s revues,Starting Here, Starting Now and Closer Than Ever and focuses on issues of aging. The six performers were all excellent and most of the songs were very enjoyable. My favorite was “Smart People” which included lines like, “It’s not a new idea, though to me it’s kind of newish / that when your cast talks really fast, it simply means they’re … smart people.” I also found “I’m Here” (which is about travel) very relatable. However, I’m in my mid-60’s and I was one of the youngest people in the audience. I suspect the show may not appeal as much to younger folks.

The final show I saw was a cabaret show by Joe Fox at Don’t Tell Mama. Anyone who knows me won’t be surprised that I couldn’t resist something with the title Don’t Cry for Me My Yeshiva. Fox combined his story about making a documentary about the fight for (and against) gay marriage in Maine with his personal experience as the gay son of an Orthodox rabbi. That he was adopted is also relevant to his story. I found this pretty entertaining though I thought it could use some editing. I should also note that one of the songs Fox used was based on the Maltby & Shire song “I Want It All” (from the musical Baby.

Overall, this was a good weekend. I should also mention that I stayed at the Sheraton on 50th Street and 7th Avenue, which was convenient, but disappointing. There was an absurdly long wait to check in, for example. The temperature control in the room didn’t work well, so I was too cold most of the time.

Also, I didn’t leave myself time to do much besides theatre going, though I did get in a nice walk around (part of) Central Park. I do have one more trip to New York scheduled, but I don’t think I have any free time on that one.

Books:
I read 11 books this quarter, which is not quite the pace I need to reach my goal of 80 for the year.

1. Herman Melville, Moby Dick (reread). I’m not sure if this counts, since I’ve read it several times. I went to my third Moby Dick marathon (my second in New Bedford; the other was in San Francisco.) It’s an amazing book, with a mix of adventure, social commentary, and humor. If you haven’t read it, you should in order to understand why so many people consider this THE Great American Novel.
   
   
2. Sujata Massey, Girl in a Box. The title refers to a young woman who is overly protected, mostly by her family, Re Shimura is undercover at a Japanese department store, investigating financial malfeasance. The issues she stumble upon involve the yakuza, money laundering, and, unfortunately, murder. There are a lot of interesting details regarding Japanese culture, e.g. a funeral for old sewing needles. While the ending is abrupt and implausible, I still enjoyed this for the most part.
   
   
3. Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship. Buckley has long been the master of humor about Washington, D.C. and this is no exception. The story has to do with a TV judge who gets appointed to the Supreme Court, largely as revenge against the Senate Judiciary Committee, after they reject two perfect candidates. She’s hardly an intellectual, but she’s plain spoken and able to use her common sense. The things that happen are wild - and wildly funny. Overall, this is a delightful romp.
   
   
4. Jasper Fforde, Red Side Story. This is the sequel to Shades of Grey. It started out rather slowly , but picked up as soon as Eddie and Jane set out on a mission to search for spoons in Crimsonalia. The world building is superb and the ending is extremely satisfying. Lots of fun.
   
   
5. J. J. Marric, Gideon’s Power. Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard is dealing with a strong of power outages that appear to be sabotage. And there have also been cases of children kidnapped, molested, and murdered. I didn’t find all of it particularly plausible, but I think it was a reasonably good read as procedurals go.
   
   
6. Terry Pratchett, Making Money. I’ve always found Pratchett to be amusing, but inconsistent, and this book is no exception. Moist van Lipwick (whose name I find very off-putting) was a crook who was saved from hanging and put in charge of the post office, which he made successful. Now he’s put in charge of the bank and the mint. But all the gold has vanished. There’s some funny stuff, but, overall, I didn’t find this book very satisfying.
   
   
7. Boris Kester, The Long Road to Cullaville. I read this for the Travelers’ Century Club Book Club. Kester is one of many people who has been to every UN country. His stories cover some of his travels, including places like Yemen, Cuba, and Equatorial Guinea. The roughest story involves a near-fatal auto accident in South Africa. The writing (which was his own translation of the original Dutch) wasn’t brilliant, but it was still reasonably interesting.
   
   
8. Susan Branch, The Summer Book. I was given several of Branch’s books by one of my mother’s neighbors. This is a mix of household tips, recipes, and such. It’s hard to read because of the fonts, which are meant to resemble handwriting. While I did save a few recipes, overall, I found this (and other books by her) eminently skippable.
   
   
9. Rona Jaffe, Family Secrets. This lengthy novel traces three generations of a Jewish family. The patriarch builds a real estate empire. His children marry, have careers and children, and live in a large compound he’s built. One granddaughter is clearly based on Jaffe herself, who went to Radcliffe and had a successful writing career, starting with her first novel. An okay read, but dated.
   
   
10. Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts. I read this for Crones and Tomes and enjoyed it a lot more than I’d expected to. It’s the story of a road trip taken by an alcoholic older man, who has never recovered from the death of his older daughter, his younger daughter (who does the driving), and the two children of his estranged older brother, who he has become the guardian of There’s also a cat, who frequently steals the show. The premise sounds depressing, but there is surprising charm and humor throughout. Highly recommended.
    
    
11. Graham Greene, Journey Without Maps. This was another TCC Book Club selection. In the late 1930’s, Greene set out to cross Liberia on foot. Because maps were not available he consistently got conflicting information about the distances to towns along the way. He didn’t really know much about the people and, in general, didn’t seem to like them. There were also weird digressions, e.g. one abut an Estonian woman in Riga and another about his youthful episodes of depression. I thought, overall, it was fairly interesting, but a bit of a slog to get through. I wish it had been edited by someone neutral.
    

Movies:
I only saw one movie this quarter.

1. The Choral: This movie is set in 1916 and involves the choral society in a small community in Yorkshire. They’re putting on a production of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius but, because of World War I, there are not enough men available, so they make some changes in the story. Ralph Fiennes puts on an excellent performance as the chorus master. The stories involve the various members of the choral society, and touch on several topics, including sexual relationships. The music throughout is exquisite. Recommended.
   

Goals:

• I’ve got solid plans for one long distance train trip. In May. In Australia. The Ghan. I have an idea about another one.
  
• I’ve got tentative plans for 2 minor league baseball games.
  
• I’ve got solid plans for 2 new to me TCC countries / territories.
  
• I have ideas about national parks, but haven’t acted on them.
  
• I don’t feel like I am making much progress on reading Hangul.
  
• I am way behind on shredding household paperwork.
  
• I’ve read 12 books so far this year (the 11 discussed above plus one more in April) and should finish at least 2 more this month. So I am behind where I should be.
  
• Finished one crafts project (a needle felted penguin.) I am getting close to finishing my Tunisian crochet afghan.
  
• I have done nothing about getting rid of LP records.
  
• I have been keeping up with the Stafford Challenge.
  

In short, I am doing reasonably well on goals so far this year.

I'm sorry for not having written in a few weeks, but I was fairly swamped with the Women's Storytelling Festival, after which I took a trip up to New York City for a theatre binge. I have managed to get through about a quarter of my to-do list, so should be able to do some catching up here.

I've written a blog post about the festival for the Better Said Than Done website and will post a slightly edited version of that here in a little while. Other things I need to write about are:

• the theatre binge
  
• my quarterly run-down on books, movies, and goals
  
• Stafford Challenge update
  
• various articles I've clipped (and some other news items, e.g. the ever popular celebrity death watch)
  
• general kvetching
  

See you soon!

I’ve been rather swamped, trying to get some things organized at home (with little progress, alas) and doing a lot of work for the Women’s Storytelling Festival which is less than 2 weeks away. You can still get tickets here, either in-person or virtual. And you get access to the recordings for an entire month.

Theatre Going: After my trip to New York in early February (which I already wrote about here), I saw a couple of shows locally. I went with my friend, Cindy, to the Taffety Punk Theatre Company production of Beowulf at the Capital Hill Arts Workshop was wonderful. Storyteller Marcus Kyd mixed the story of Beowulf with other stories about heroes - Eddie Aikau, John Henry, and the Oversteegen sisters. He was a very engaging performer and managed to get a whole bar full of people singing Hrothgar’s genealogy to the tune of “This Land is My Land.”

At the end of the month, I went to see The World to Come at Woolly Mammoth. Pretty much everything I’ve ever seen there was pretty strange and this was no exception. The plot involves a group of four people (three women and a man) at a Jewish home for the elderly. The world has started crumbling and everybody over the age of 75 has been forced to move into a retirement community, where they’ve slowly been cut off from the rest of the world, being deprived of television, mail, and visitors. And then the flesh-eating ostriches show up ...

Storytelling: I also went to three story swaps. One was at the Quince Orchard Library in Gaithersburg. It had multiple themes - love (for Valentine’s Day), Asia (for the Asian New Year), and Horses (specifically, for the year of the Fire Horse). I combined all three to tell a Mongolian story about a wife taking revenge on an abusive husband. The next one was the monthly Voices in the Glen swap on-line and I recited a poem I wrote about looking for my muse. I recited the same poem the next day at the Community Storytellers on-line story swap.

Poems: Speaking of poems, I am still keeping up with the Stafford Challenge. Here are the titles of my poems for two more weeks.

Week 6:

21 February 2026 - Soup

22 February 2026 - People of the Notebook

23 February 2026 - Novocaine

24 February 2026 - Game Night Haiku

25 February 2026 - Holiday Edition

26 February 2026 - Levi Strauss

27 February 2026 - The End of the World

Week 7:

28 February 2026 - Silly

1 March 2026 - Measuring Time

2 March 2026 - Hospital Waiting Room

3 March 2026 - Poe-try

4 March 2026 - Midweek Meditation

5 March 2026 - Whelmed

6 March 2026 - The World’s Longest Running Brief Meaningless Fling


A Few Medical Things: I had an annoying periodontist appointment, involving deep scaling of one quarter of my mouth. I hate waiting for novocaine to wear off. And I hate the noises involved.

I also had my mammogram. Taking flat pictures of round objects is painful. At least nowadays, you get the results back in under an hour. And all is well.

I still need to do some bloodwork and my annual physical.

Moving on to March, I took Cindy to the hospital for outpatient surgery. I am not good at sitting still, so waiting for four hours was hard on me, even though I had a good supply of books and puzzles with me. Still, us older women need to support one another.

I went up to New York a couple of weeks ago for a long weekend. (That was after several days of not going outside at all, due to what they called “snowcrete,” i.e. icy sleet on top of snow, which created a disgusting substance with the texture of concrete.) I had originally scheduled an evening Acela, which would have arrived about 9:30 p.m. but I was notified a couple of days in advance that it was canceled, so I took a train that was scheduled to get in about 5 p.m. I usually just take a northeast regional since the time difference from the Acela is minimal, but this was one of those rare times when the cost differences was minimal. In the end, my train was delayed about an hour, which was annoying mostly because they kept changing the time it was going to leave. And, several times, the text they sent claimed that the new time was the original time, despite what was being announced. It didn’t matter much to me, since I was still getting in quite a bit earlier than my original plans. And Amtrak did send me compensation, which will be helpful since I have 2 or 3 more Amtrak trips in the next couple of months.

I had enough time to grab takeout pizza before going to my hotel. I’d gotten a reasonable price at the Fairfield Inn & Suites right across the street from Moynihan Train Hall. I ate my pizza and watched the Olympic opening ceremonies, which annoyed me because of NBC’s overemphasis on Team USA. I wanted to know more about things like the sole competitor from Guinea Bissau. I was also following the Israeli bobsleigh team because their captain, A.J. Edelman is an MIT alumnus (and even course 2, like me and Senator Alex Pedilla!) He was the first Orthodox Jew to compete in the Winter Olympics (in Skeleton in 2018) and his brother is the comedian Alex Edelman, whose show Just For Us has to do with his experiences with a white supremacist group. And, by the way, one of the members of that Israeli bobsleigh team is Druze.

It was particularly windy and frigid out, which limited the amount of random walking around that I did. My plans were for a theatre day, so that wasn’t a huge issue. The first show I saw was the matinee performance of Buena Vista Social Club. This was an easy choice for me to make since I like Cuban music and have loved both the movie and CD for years. And it was, indeed, very enjoyable. The performances were heartfelt and I really appreciated the booklet about the songs that was included inside the Playbill. And the band was incredible, well deserving of the special Tony award they got. By the way, the real Omara Portuondo is still alive (in her mid 90’s) and has recorded an album as recently as 2023. Highly recommended.

Saturday night’s selection was Death Becomes Her. I didn’t know a lot about this musical going in and had chosen it largely because the reviews were good. The basic premise is that Viola Van Horn (played by Michelle Williams, who had started her career in Destiny’s Child) has access to a potion that promises eternal youth - and life. The actual story has to do with the rivalry between an actress named Madeline Ashton, and the friend (named Helen Sharp) who she abuses all her life, down to stealing her plastic surgeon fiance. And that’s exactly the problem I had with this show. The songs have amusing lyrics and there is plenty of funny material and the special effects are impressive. But do we really need a show that is based on two women attempting to sabotage one another?

By the way, how cold was it out? They were claiming the wind chill made it feel like -17 Fahrenheit. In more practical terms, I walked 4 blocks (to 43rd street) and got on the subway for the remaining 10 blocks because I just couldn’t handle the temperature any more. And I was wearing 3 layers of clothes, as well as my warmest jacket.

Sunday wasn’t much better, though I had the sense to add yet another layer to my clothes. I headed cross-town to meet up with a group of folks from FlyerTalk at the 2nd Avenue Deli. Josh organizes Deli Do a couple of times a year and there were about 20 attendees. I’ve been once or twice before and I’ve eaten at that deli lots of times, going all the way back to when it was actually on 2nd Avenue. I noticed that the menu no longer has hot open faced sandwiches, which used to be one of my go-to orders in my childhood. A tongue sandwich and a kasha knish is my most common deli order these days. But, given the cold weather, I thought that the soup and half sandwich option was a good idea. I got the mushroom barley soup and half a chopped liver sandwich. Both were quite good. And, of course, a Dr. Brown’s diet cream soda, since I never acquired the taste for cel-ray. Jewish soul food and talk about flying / travel - what better way to spend a long lunch? Several of us walked over to Blue Haven East afterwards for adult beverages and more conversation. I have a long standing quest for the best hot buttered rum in NYC and theirs was pretty good. And it was nice to be able to mingle and chat with people who had been sitting at the far end of the deli from the table I ended up at.

I took advantage of proximity to walk over to the Morgan Library, which had been on my list of places in New York that I had not been to before. I was particularly eager to get there since they have a Caravaggio painting temporarily on loan from the Galleria Borghese in Rome. In addition to Boy with a Basket of Fruit, there were other naturalist works, mostly by contemporaries of Caravaggio and other painters influenced by his style. I’m mostly a modern art aficionado, but I was awestruck by Caravaggio’s use of color and light when I saw two of his paintings at Saint John’s Co-Cathedral in Valetta, Malta some 25 years ago and consider him the greatest painter of the late 16th / early 17th centuries.



It was also the last day of an exhibit of Renoir drawings. I’m not particularly keen on Renoir (or, frankly, the impressionists, in general). But a quick look through that exhibit left me impressed with Renoir’s skill as a draftsman.



But, of course, the real highlight of the Morgan Library is the actual library, which is spectacular.





Don’t forget to look up at the ceilings, too!



I wandered over to Grand Central Terminal for a bit, then headed back to the west side to go to a cabaret show. I had heard of Don’t Tell Mama from a couple of puzzle people, but had never been there before. I was impressed with the number of people who went there alone, which is a bit unusual in my past experience at cabaret venues. I had a lively and interesting conversation with the woman sitting at the table next to mine, who I found out at the end of the evening was a somewhat well-known actress, Neva Small. As for the actual show, it was called Jewish Caroling: The Music of Carole King, Carole Bayer-Sager and Carolyn Leigh. The performer, Deborah Zecher,is a singer, storyteller, and rabbi and she put together an interesting mix of songs by those three Jewish women. I hadn’t known this going in, but the proceeds from the show are being donated to Beth Israel, the synagogue in Mississippi that was burned down.

For women of my generation, Carole King’s Tapestry was a truly iconic album. I remember listening to it with my best friend in the bedroom of an older girl who lived on our block, who would go on to tell us that an orgasm is like a sneeze between the legs! And, yes, I do still have my own copy of it. Anyway, it was a very enjoyable show and I’ll check out the offerings at Don’t Tell Mama for future New York trips. By the way, the wind had died down and walking back to the hotel was tolerable.

I went down to the Lower East Side on Monday. Walking through Penn Station to get to the F train, I passed this interesting glass mosaic mural. It is called Garden of Circus Delights and was done by Eric Fischl. There is actually quite a lot of interesting art in the New York City subway system and it would be fun to spend most of a day exploring it.



My goal was seeing a temporary art exhibit, sponsored by Manischewitz in honor of a new line of bottled soups.





They also had some cute merchandise, e.g. aprons, baseball caps, and patches with various Yiddish slogans. But none of that is anything that I’d ever use. And neither my brother nor the gentleman with whom I’m conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling ever wear any type of hat. They were also selling soup from a food truck nearby, but I had other intentions.

Specifically, I had lunch at Russ & Daughters. The “Super Heebster” consists of whitefish and baked salmon salad with horseradish-dill aream cheese and wasabi roe. I got it on a bialy, and it was very tasty. It also came with half sour pickles and, while I normally favor full sours, they worked well with the mild spiciness.



And I couldn’t resist their halvah ice cream. While I enjoyed it, I would have actually liked a smaller portion and I didn’t think the salted caramel topping added much to it.



The food was pricy, but worth it.

I spent a lazy afternoon catching up on some reading and puzzles, before heading uptown towards Lincoln Center, where the subway station had another attractive set of glass mosaics (but I didn’t photograph those). From there, it was a short walk to the Marjorie S. Dean Little Theatre to see Going Bacharach. This was (obviously) a tribute to Burt Bacharach, performed by three singers with a small band. All three singers were excellent. I was not thrilled by the musical arrangements, which lacked brass. The music director, Adrian Galante, was impressive on the clarinet, but the flamboyance of his piano playing annoyed me. I’d also have liked to actually learn something about Burt Bacharach as a person. One of the singers did talk a bit about his use of mixed meter, which I thought was interesting. But, overall, I found the show disappointing.

Speaking of disappointing, I ‘d stayed at that Fairfield several times before. While the rooms are comfortable, the breakfast offerings have deteriorated. The breakfast on the weekend was better, but on weekdays, they didn’t have salsa for the scrambled eggs (though they did have bottles of a few types of hot sauce) and they didn’t have pancakes or waffles. More egregiously, the only fresh fruit they had were bananas (yuk). On the weekend, they had salad, but not on weekdays. This is a minor annoyance as there are plenty of places to get a decent breakfast within easy walking distance. But there used to be more variety. Another issues is that one of the three elevators wouldn’t recognize my room key, nor those of several other people, and this did not get repaired during my stay. My biggest complaint is that the rate for Monday night was considerably higher than for the previous three nights and this was not clearly displayed when making the reservation on line. I’ll have to rethink whether or not to stay there in the future.

I didn’t have any issues with Amtrak going home on Tuesday morning. The metro also cooperated and I was able to get in a lovely afternoon nap, before catching up on some household chores.

Celebrity Death Watch - December 2025: Robert Lindsay wrote The Falcon ad the Snowman. Perry Bamonte played guitar for The Cure. David Rosen cofounded Sega. Lou Gerstner was the CEO of IBM from 1993 through 2002. Jeffrey R. Holland was the president of the LDS Church. Thomas J. Fogarty invented the balloon catheter, used for treating blood clots. Julius Berman was a lawyer and Orthodox rabbi who served in leadership positions in several Jewish organizations, including the Orthodox Union. Tatiana Schlossberg was an environmental journalist and the daughter of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. Dick Zimmer was a congressman from New Jersey (and the father of my friend, Ben).

Brigitte Bardot was an actress. She cared more about animal rights than about human rights and was fined several times for inciting racial hatred.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell served in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. During his term in office, he was the only Native American serving in Congress. He had earlier become the first Native American on the U.S. Olympic judo team. He switched from the Democratic to the Republican party in 1995, largely due to a dispute with the Colorado Democratic Party over the balanced-budget amendment.

Celebrity Death Watch - January 2026: Brian Doyle was a Canadian writer, primarily of children’s books. Diane Crump was the first woman to ride in a parimutuel race in the United States. Johnny Legend was a rockabilly musician. Aldrich Ames was a spy, who compromised more CIA assets than any other intelligence officer at the time of his arrest. Philippe Junot was the first husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco. Bob Weir was a founding member of The Grateful Dead. Louis E. Burs won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for co-discovering quantum dots. Kenny Morris played drums for Siouxsie and the Banshees. Gladys West was a mathematician who worked primarily on developing satellite geodesy models. Valentino was a fashion designer. Hudson Talbott wrote and illustrated children’s books and collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on a book version of Into the Woods. Roland Huntford wrote several books about polar exploration, notably The Last Place on Earth about the race between Scott and Amundsen to the South Pole. Bryan Loren wrote the satirical song “Do the Bartman.” Demond Wilson played Lamont on Sanford and Son. Catherine O’Hara was a comic actress known for appearing in Home Alone, Beetlejuice, and Schitt’s Creek. Billy Bass Nelson played bass guitar for Parliament-Funkadelic. Mingo Lewis was a percussionist for Santana and Al Di Meola.

Scott Adams was responsible for the comic strip, Dilbert, which adorned office doors throughout the United States. He fostered a negative view of the corporate world and wasn’t any nicer in the rest of his life. He took to political commentary and was eventually brought down by persistent racism. (I knew someone who had worked with him at Pacific Bell and she said he was, in general, an asshole.) By the way, a colleague and I once bought our boss a pointy-haired boss wig and he wore it while doing our performance reviews. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 19 points.

X. J. Kennedy was a phenomenal poet. He began his career writing science fiction stories for pulp magazine (mostly under the name Joe Kennedy) and had his first book of poetry, Nude Descending a Staircase: Poems, Songs, A Ballad in 1961. He wrote a lot of poetry for children, as well as for adults, and was the poetry editor for The Paris Review. He also taught writing at several universities (notably at Tufts for 15 years) and wrote textbooks. If you like light verse at all, you owe it to yourself to read his work. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 24 points (including a 12 point bonus for uniqueness.) I wrote the following, loosely based on his poem “In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus,” which was the first of his poems I ever read. (This is a revised version after one of my friends objected to an imperfect rhyme on my first attempt.)

A Eulogy for X.J. Kennedy

In a small living room on Long Island one day
I first read the works of the poet, X. J.
Joseph Charles Kennedy was his name at his birth
His poems were amusing, they sparkled with mirth.

He wrote about children, he wrote about art
He wrote with sharp humor, but also with heart.
His verses showed off his supreme savoir faire
He loved rhyme and meter, and used them with flair.

He translated works, from French and from Greek
He won many prizes - at least one each week
And now in his nineties, death’s pulled him away
but I’ll always remember the poet, X.J.


Convergence - Lullabies and Anthems: The final session of Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell’s class was Tuesday of last week. He had two subjects to talk about. Re: lullabies, he asked us which ones we knew. The most familiar one to me was the Yiddish song “Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen” which has a widow sitting in the corner of the synagogue singing to her son about his future. He discussed another Yiddish lullaby and the song “All the Pretty Little Horses,” which he explained as an enslaved man singing to his son, after her mother had probably been sold down the river. He focused on the theme connecting these being the absent parent. I didn’t think of it at the time, but now I’ve been wondering about the level of violence in lullabies, e.g. “Rock-a-bye Baby” (in which “down will come cradle, baby and all”).

As for anthems, most of us knew “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Hatikvah” (the Israeli national anthem, whose title means “The Hope”) but he also wanted us to discuss things other than national anthems, e.g. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (which is sometimes called the Black National Anthem) or even “I Am Woman.” He closed by posing the question, “What does victory look like for us?” It’s a good question to ask in troubled times.

Overall, I thought the class was worth my time. I’ll look for other offerings from New Lehrhaus, though it is always hard to clear my schedule for things like this.

Stafford Challenge - Week 2: I managed to write a poem every day again for the second week. I will, in general, include just the titles here.

24 January - Winter Storm

25 January - Do You Know Who I Am?

26 January - Ink

27 January - The Bordens

28 January - Irony

29 January - LIRR 1

30 January - LIRR 2

I’ve noticed two things. First, I can’t write just about things associated with the wreck of the Congressional Limited, because other topics distract me. I have plenty of things to say about trains in general (including my habit of writing haikus when I am frustrated with the Metro). But other topics inevitably creep into my head. And, secondly, the best advice I’ve gotten for doing this challenge (and for writing in general) is that when you feel blocked, you just have to lower your standards.

Projects: My Tunisian crochet afghan is crawling along. The biggest problem is that I really only work at it during crafts group. I probably need to watch more television.

I finally wrote the first part of my guide to Lithuanian Jewish names. This part covers given names. I still want to write about surnames, but I am not sure where I put my notes for that.

I also have a bunch of things to do for the Women’s Storytelling Festival. I’ve got two major tasks and need to get a good start on them this week.

Snowcrete: We had about 6 inches of snow a little over a week ago. The problem is that we got 3 inches of sleet on top of it, resulting in an annoyingly hard layer of ice which was too difficult for most people to clear. My condo complex does an okay job of clearing the sidewalk, but a lot of people don’t bother. (Or, physically can’t.) And it’s been too cold for ice melt to be effective. Can we please fast forward to springtime?

Both Sides Now: I went to a concert Saturday night at Sixth and I on Saturday night. It was titled Both Sides Now: The Music and Lives of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. It was performed by Robbie Schaefer, who I’ve liked since the days of Eddie from Ohio, and Danielle Wertz, who I hadn’t heard of before. It was generally enjoyable, though I had qualms about a few of the arrangements. In particular, I thought the arrangement of “Big Yellow Taxi” was slowed down too much. But, overall, I thought it was a success. And the audience was engaged and responsive and well-behaved. At the end, everybody sang along to “The Circle Game, which felt like the right closing. I'm glad I braved the frigid evening to go.

At least this time, I am starting my year in review while it is still January. I have an established format for that so here it goes.

I didn’t have any major household crises. I did have knee issues slowing me down much of the year, but I finally got to physical therapy which helped a lot. Overall, my life remains a schedule conflict.

Books: I read 47 books in 2025. That was 19 non-fiction and 28 fiction books, including 2 graphic books (one each of fiction and non-fiction). Also, two of the fiction books were anthologies. Favorites were The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde, David Lagercrantz’s three sequels to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, Alive by Piers Paul Read, The Third Daughter by Talia Carner, The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson, The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams, The Women by Kristen Hannah, and The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. I reread To Kill a Mockingbird and, with all due apologies to its fans, I still detest it. I think the worst book I read in 2025, however, was Dead on Target by M.C. Beaton with R.W. Green.

I made one used bookstore run, getting rid of 16 books. I also gave away 5 books (3 to friends and 2 to members of my neighborhood book exchange) and threw one out because it was falling apart. I have at least another 56 ready to go out.

As far as book clubs, my long-standing one is falling apart, but the one that had disbanded is trying to start up again. The Travelers’ Century Club Book Club is going strong and I have become co-coordinator of that.

Ghoul Pool: I finished 7th out of 14 players with 115 points. People I scored on were Agnes Keleti, Pope Francis, William H. Webster, Sister Jean (unique), Sophie Kinsela, Sam Nujoma (unique), June Lockhart, and Tom Lehrer.

Travel: I did two international trips in 2025. I spent a little over half of June in Greece, most of it on the island of Zakynthos in the Ionian island group for a paper conservation class. And I did an around the world trip, with time spent in Taiwan (mostly Taipei) and Germany (mostly Hamburg) before taking the Queen Mary 2 to New York.

As for domestic travel, I went to Las Vegas in March for my brother’s wedding. Closer to home, I drove down to Williamsburg, Virginia for the VASA gathering in April. I met up with Flyertalk friends in Kansas City in May to eat barbecue and see a few museums. Later in May, I drove to Baltimore for Balticon (a science fiction convention). Then I flew up to Boston (well, Cambridge) for my 45th college reunion, which included my giving a TIM Talk about my travels. In July I went to Minneapolis / St. Paul for the National Puzzlers’ League con. At the beginning of August, I went to the Denver area for Geostock, which is an annual party my friends in Superior host. Later in August, I went to Fort Wayne, Indiana for an annual Jewish genealogy conference, followed by a weekend in Chicago for Sporclecon (a trivia event). Loserfest (related to the Style Invitational humor contest) was in September in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area. I also took a trip up to New York in September. And I spent a little more time in New York after my transatlantic crossing in November.

And I went to the Travel show in D.C. in March.

Genealogy: I didn’t have any particularly notable genealogical breakthroughs this year. I did, however, continue to be the Litvak subject matter expert for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington and put together a guide to using Facebook for Jewish genealogy for that group. And, as mentioned above, I went to the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies annual conference (in Fort Wayne, Indiana) in August where I: a) gave a brief presentation about how my maternal grandparents met and married and b) had time to sit down with one of my Schwartzbard cousins. I also spent some time at the very impressive Allen County Library, which has a huge genealogy collection.

Baseball: I went to see my Red Sox beat up on the Nationals on the Fourth of July, which was very enjoyable though somewhat too hot out. I also went to two minor league baseball games - the Saint Paul Saints (who lost to the Worcester Red Sox, aka WooSox) and the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Tin Caps (who beat the West Michigan White Caps). While I was in the Minneapolis area, I also saw the home plate from Metropolitan Stadium in Minneapolis and the red chair bolted to the wall that marks the longest home run (hit by Harmon Killebrew) at that ballpark. (Both of those are at the Mall of America.)

Also, I went to a Profs and Pints talk about The Physics of Baseball, which was both interesting and enlightening. And, as noted below, I went to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City in May.

Culture: I went to 9 musicals over the year. I also saw the Dolly Parton retrospective at the Kennedy Center, which I’m not sure how to count. Nor do I know how to count the shows I saw on the Queen Mary 2, which also included one non-musical play. My favorites were Schmigadoon (which was part of the Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center), The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical at Signature Theatre, Damn Yankees at Arena Stage, Guys and Dolls at the Shakespeare Theatre, and Maybe Happy Ending on Broadway. I also went to two operas.

If I counted correctly, I saw 9 movies on airplanes and 7 in theaters this year. Favorites were The Penguin Lessons, Conclave, Coco, Rental Family, and Song Sung Blue.

Storytelling: The biggest storytelling event of the year for me was the Women’s Storytelling Festival in March, at which I both told a story and emceed the Story Swap. (Note that the 2026 WSF is coming up March 19 through 22nd and tickets are on sale now.)

Other storytelling shows I was part of were a Better Said Than Done Mother’s Day show in Elliott City, Maryland, the Washington Folk Festival (in October) and the Artists Standing Strong Together New Year’s Eve Blowout. I also went to several story swaps (both with Voices in the Glen and with Community Storytellers in Los Angeles. And I went to a Spooky Stories swap at a library in Maryland.

In April, I not only went to the Virginia Storytelling Association (VASA) gathering in Williamsburg but presented a workshop on Storytelling Ethics there.

I continued to participate in a discussion group centered on the Grimm fairy tales. However, this has ended, due to other commitments on the part of the organizer.

Museums and Art: During my trip to Kansas City, I went to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the American Jazz Museum, the World War I Museum and an exhibit about Snoopy and the Red Baron at the Crown Center.

I’m not sure whether or not to count it, but I did go to some exhibits about the Mechanical Engineering Department when I was at my M.I.T. Reunion in June.

Also, in June, while in Zakynthos, I went to the General Archives and Historical Library of Zakynthos, the Byzantine Museum, and the Ecclesiastical Museum of the Holy Monastery of St. Dionysius.

In July, I went to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

During my September trip to the Myrtle Beach area for Loserfest, I went to Brookgreen Gardens (which has a lot of sculptures and some indoor exhibits). I also visited Atalaya Castle, the Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum, Ripley’s Aquarium, and the surprisingly impressive (albeit small) Myrtle Beach Art Museum.

Later in September, I saw some exhibits at YIVO in New York but, more significantly, went to the Frick Collection.

In October, I saw a couple of art exhibits at Glen Echo Park in Maryland.

During my trip in November, I visited the National Palace Museum in Taipei, as well as the Observation Deck at Taipei 101, and the various exhibits at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. I also went to X-Park, a large aquarium in Taiyuan. Then, in Hamburg, Germany, I visited the German Emigration Museum, the excellent Achilles-Stiftung Glass Museum, an exhibit about the fall of Communism in one of the modern art museums, and a little over half of the museums in the Composers’ Quarter.

Other Stuff:
I went to a couple of MIT Hillel’s Leading Jewish Minds talks (held on-line).

I went to Balticon (a science fiction convention) over Memorial Day weekend. I could have put this under Books, but it’s somewhat broader than that.

As usual, I spent a lot of time doing puzzles and reading.

I played board games with two different groups of friends on-line, though not as often as I’d have liked to. Some day I may have my condo presentable enough to actually have people over for a games day.

I made a fair amount of progress on my Tunisian crochet afghan (mostly during my every other Thursday , but it is still not done, alas.

I have reached the point in my life where I go to way too many memorial services / funerals.


Goals: So, how did I do on my 2025 goals? I did do a westward circumnavigation of the world, so I get 100% on that goal. I got to 2 minor league baseball games (out of a goal of 4), so I get 50% for that. I had a goal of finishing 4 crafts projects and, while I didn’t finish any, I made enough progress on the Tunisian crochet afghan that I’ll give myself 20%. I read 47 books (out of a goal of 80) so I’ll give myself 59%. This is more subjective, but I’ll give myself a 50% on learning to read Hangul. And I did revisit my life list, with some updates. That deserves an entire post of its own. Again, this is subjective, but I’ll give myself a 60%. I made no progress on my parents’ photographs and slides, organizing genealogy files or sorting through cassette tapes. And did not go to any National Parks, so I get 0% on those 4 goals. Averaging things out, I’ll give myself a 34% for the year.

Looking over the past several years, that’s significantly better than the previous year, but is still on the low side.

2025 - 35%
2024 - 23%
2023 - 62%
2022 - 41%
2021 - 48%
2020 - 52%
2019 - 30%
2018 - 40%
2017 - 25-30%
2016 - 25%
2015 - 26%
2014 - 50%
2013 - 60%
2012 - 30%


Which brings me to goals for 2026:

• Take at least 2 long distance train trips
  
• Go to at least 4 minor league baseball games
  
• Go to at least 3 new to me TCC countries/territories
  
• Go to at least 3 National Parks
  
• Become comfortable with reading Hangul (Korean writing system)
  
• File or shred all household paperwork
  
• Read at least 80 books, with a stretch goal of 100
  
• Complete at least 4 crafts projects
  
• Get rid of at least 10 LP records
  
• Successfully complete the Stafford Challenge by writing a poem every day (Note: the 2026 challenge started on January 17th)
  

I will write my 2025 Year in Review in a few days. But, first, let me catch up on what I’ve been doing.

I scurried around to get out of the house for my first trip of the year, which was late on the afternoon of New Year’s Day. I didn’t quite finish everything on my to-do list, alas, so I resolved to just ignore that I’d be returning to even greater chaos than usual. I had no issues getting to DCA. My flight on American up to BOS was delayed about a half hour, which was no big deal since I’d opted to stay at the Logan Airport Hilton that night. In the morning I took the Silver Line to South Station (which is still free from the airport) and got the newish train to New Bedford. I actually had to change trains in East Taunton, but it was just across the platform. When I arrived in New Bedford, I got a Lyft to my hotel. While it was not particularly far, the sidewalks hadn’t been cleared from snow a day or two before and my backpack was heavy.

I stayed Friday night at the New Bedford Harbor Hotel, which is a reasonably short walk to the Whaling Museum. The room was perfectly adequate, though the soundproofing could have been better. I had time for a short nap before walking over to the museum for the opening dinner (which is pricy, but good for meeting people). I found it interesting how many people hadn’t read a lot of literary classics before reading Moby Dick. (If I remember correctly, my gateway drug was Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year.) Most of the people at my table were from New York, but there was one guy who came all the way from Vancouver. Anyway, the speaker, Dr. Joe Roman of the University of Vermont, talked about the positive impact of various environmental laws on whale populations. Apparently, some countries (e.g. Japan) had expressed concerns that preserving whale populations would diminish the fish populations they relied on for food. His studies (which focused on whale poop) showed that actually the fish populations increased with the whale populations.

The hotel breakfast was pretty mediocre, with no hot food. But it was adequate and I was able to store my backpack overnight. The actual marathon started late in the morning on Saturday, with several people reading Excerpts. The official opening was at noon (8 bells!) with Regie Gibson, poet laureate of Massachusetts proclaiming “Call me Ishmael.”



I had been lucky and won the lottery for a ticket to the Seamen’s Bethel for Father Mapple’s sermon. I’d been in the building before (many years ago), but it was still amazing to see the sermon acted out. And, yes, everybody stood and sang “The Ribs and Terrors in the Whale.”



On my way out, I got a picture of Herman Melville’s pew.



The reading continued up on the third floor of the museum, which was very crowded. I later heard that approximately 3500 people attended some part of the marathon. (This was, by the way, the 30th Moby Dick Marathon in New Bedford. The first one ever was in Mystic, Connecticut, and I do need to get to that one some day.)

I’d also been lucky enough to get a seat in the theatre for Chapter 40, which is done as a play by a local theatre group. The song “Yankee Whalermen” is still stuck in my head.



The reading continued overnight in the theatre. Senator Ed Markey read via video. I had gotten a reading slot (reader #102) off the waiting list. The whole marathon is available on YouTube, but if you just want to hear me read, you can do so in the second (of three) videos starting a little after 2:45.



I listened to more reading for a while after I was done, but I also had to take breaks to obtain coffee. The previous time I’d gone, they sold snacks and drinks all night, but they didn’t this year. They did have coffee and tea available free for a while but ran out. I spent some time chit chatting with other attendees. I went back into the theatre and may have dozed off for a while. (After the marathon was over, I did go back and read the sections I had missed.) Eventually, they did start selling food again and also served free malasadas (Portuguese fried dough) which are really better if eaten still warm.

They shut down the theatre and people went back up to the third floor, but there were also several overflow rooms which were less crowded and, hence, more comfortable. The actor who read the final chapter was very good. The Epilogue is brief and was received with thunderous applause. They gave out bags to the hardy souls who had spent the whole day and night. There was a poster (which I declined, as it would be too awkward to carry home), but also a book of pictures, a bumper sticker, and some stickers.

Overall, this was an excellent weekend. I’d been to the Moby Dick Marathon before (in 2023) and I found this ran even more smoothly, despite the crowds. I still consider the book to be THE Great American Novel and find new things in it every time I read it (or hear it read). This experience is, in particular, a great way to appreciate Melville’s humor. For example, I know many people dread Cetology (the chapter describing whales, which is horribly inaccurate scientifically) but this was an audience that was able to laugh along with it.

I walked back to the hotel and retrieved my bag. I decided it was worth taking a Lyft to Providence to avoid having to either go all the way to Boston and back out by train (which would take over 3 hours) or to wait nearly 5 hours for the direct Peter Pan bus. I’ll write about that part of the trip in a separate post.

I’ll do my year in review when I get back from a trip to New England. But, in the meantime, here is my 4th quarter 2025 wrap-up.

Books:

I read 22 books this quarter, which is considerably more than I have been reading, but significantly less than I used to manage in the days when I was working and spending 45 minutes each way on the metro.

1. Sam Haines, MAGAs vs. Zombies: The premise of this short novel is that there’s a virus that turns people into zombies. You can catch the virus from being coughed or sneezed on or from being bitten. Some zombies keep their brains, but most don’t. All of them are hungry. Eventually, the virus takes over the entire federal government. There’s a lot of amusing political satire. I found this scarier than an actual horror story would be.
   
   
2. Sara Nisha Adams, The Reading List: This was for my book club and I had suggested it based on recommendations from a few friends. The story involves an ethnically Indian man in England whose wife died. He found and read a library book of hers and, when he goes to the library to return it, a teenage girl working there gives him a list of 8 books he might consider reading. There are other copies of this list circulating and it ends up bringing several people together. I tried to get my book club’s members to suggest books they would recommend for such a list, but they didn’t bite, alas. Overall, this is a lovely book and I highly recommend it.
   
   
3. Liz Clay, Nuno Nuevo: This is a how-to book on nuno felting. There are some lovely pictures, but there isn’t much detail in the instructions. Frankly, I didn’t feel inspired.
   
   
4. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird: (reread). I read this in high school and hated it. I reread it because various people keep talking about how much they love it and it was one of the books in The Reading List. Sorry, but I still hate it. I think it’s preachy, for one thing. But, more importantly, no actual 6-8 year old girl talks and behaves like Scout. No. Just no.
   
   
5. Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: I read this for my travel book club. The author entered what is considered the world’s most difficult horse race, crossing 1000 kilometers of the Mongolian steppe and changing horses every 40 kilometers. At 19 years old, she was seriously unprepared for the race, but ended up winning it. She’s not particularly likable, but if you have the natural tendency to root for the underdog, you can’t help but cheer her on in between the times you feel like strangling her. Entertaining.
   
   
6. Ryan Browne, G-d Hates Astronauts: This is, essentially, three comic books, collected in one volume, with a bunch of background / supporting material tacked on, The plot is silly, the characters are unlikeable, and the artwork failed to engage me. Meh.
   
   
7. Vogue Knitting, Accessorize: It is unfair to judge crafts books by the same standards as books with an actual narrative. This is, essentially, a collection of patterns for shawls, ponchos, wraps, hats, scarves, and so on. The patterns are charted but the charts are hard to read. I did like a few fair isle and argyle patterns, but I don’t have the patience to work those, so this quickly landed in the discard pile.
   
   
8. Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane (editors), Cursed: This is a collection of short stories on the theme of being cursed. It starts and ends with short poems by Jane Yolen, who also co-authored (with Adam Stemple) a n interesting twist on “Little Red.” Another story I thought did a good job with a familiar theme was “Troll Bridge” by Neil Gaiman. The creepiest stories in the collection were “Again” by Tim Lebbon and “Listen” by Jan Williams. Overall, I thought this was an interesting collection and worth reading.
   
   
9. Chic Simple, Women’s Face:. It appears that the primary author of this book, which is largely a guide to make-up and skin care, is Rachel Urquhart. I found it surprisingly practical and thought it had a refreshing sense of humor. But it isn’t a subject I really care about.
   
   
10. Dawn H. Li, New Dao Fables: The author gave me this book after hearing me tell stories at the Washington Folk Festival. The stories involve pairs of animals and are intended to illustrate Daoist ideas about the balance of nature. It’s designed primarily for children and the stories could use some more fleshing out to be tellable, but the book does provide some insight into Chinese religious values.
    
    
11. Evan Hunter and Ed McBain, Candyland: (reread). The gimmick here is that both authors are the same person, who used different pseudonyms for different types of stories. The first half (written as Hunter)has to do with an architect who pursues sex while on a business trip and gets beaten up outside a brothel. A prostitute from that brothel is raped and murdered, providing the McBain part of the novel, which is a police procedural, It was an interesting approach and I liked this book, though I did think the second half was stronger than the first.
    
    
12. Alison Bechtel, Fun Home: I’d seen the musical based on this graphic novel, but found this quite a bit different since its emphasis was more on her father’s struggles with his homosexuality and less on her own coming out. Overall, I thought this was an excellent book, though I did find the handwriting on her diary pages difficult to read at time.
    
    
13. Stella Sands, Wordhunter: The concept of this mystery is that that Maggie Moore isan expert on forensic linguistics and helps the police decipher notes left by a stalker. Her li fe is a mess with drugs and alcohol and her situation is definitely not helped by being raped by her professor. She does rescue two girls and solve a challenging mystery, but I really wanted her life not to be such a dumpster fire.
    
    
14. Ivo Andric, The Bridge on the Drina: This was a travel book club selection. Andric won the Nobel Prize for this novel centered on the history of the central Baltic region. Parts of the story are quite gruesome, with a man who tried to stop its construction being impaled alive on the bridge, for example, and numerous heads being displayed on stakes. Despite that, I found the book very interesting and it actually made me want to go to Bosnia to see the area for myself.
    
    
15. Kristen Hannah, The Women: This novel, which I read for my long-standing book club, follows a young woman who becomes an Army nurse in Vietnam both through the war and through its aftermath. The fight for acceptance as a veteran with PTSD was very interesting. Eventually, she does find her place in a changing world and then gets a chance at love again. Overall, I thought this was an excellent read and would recommend it.
    
    
16. Stephanie Land, Maid: Land went to work as a maid to support herself and her young daughter as her marriage collapsed. The job gave her flexibility, but was poorly paid and difficult. However, I didn’t think it was particularly well written. My major take-away was that it is probably better to use an independent cleaner than someone who works for an agency.
    
    
17. M.C. Beaton with R.W. Green, Dead on Target: I hadn’t read any of the other books in the Agatha Raisin series and, frankly, this book didn’t make me want to. The murder method was contrived and silly. There were too many irrelevant side plots, ranging from repeated damage to Agatha’s clothes forcing her to wear an ugly sweatsuit to dealing with her various suitors. Maybe the series was better before Beaton died, but I’m not inclined to find out.
    
    
18. Freida McFadden, The Housemaid: I read this not knowing it was about to be made into a movie. It was absorbing and decidedly creepy, But I felt manipulated by what was left unsaid and thought that some major plot holes were not adequately resolved. There are two sequels and I would read them if I got them free, but would probably not buy them.
    
    
19. A. J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically: The premise of this book was that the author would spend a year trying to follow the Bible literally. He enlisted a panel of advisors, covering a wide religious spectrum and arranged to meet with groups as diverse as the Amish and snake handlers. It’s an interesting experiment for someone with a completely secular upbringing to undertake and I found his writing both interesting and often amusing. Recommended.
    
    
20. Linda Leaming, Married to Bhutan: I read this for an upcoming meeting of my travel book club. Leaming went to Bhutan in her late 30’s and fell in love, both with the country and with a Bhutanese artist, who she married. I particularly appreciated her sense of humor as she struggled with lack of some creature comforts, challenges with learning the local language, and the usual issues people have in their relationships. Enlightening and entertaining.
    
    
21. Alex Kotlowitz, There Are No Children Here: Kotlowitz follows two boys in inner city Chicago who face poverty, violence, and lack of opportunity. They see friends murdered and get harassed by both the police and gangs. Girls often get pregnant before finishing junior high. Public housing is infested with rodents and insects and poorly maintained and education is inadequate. I wish that Kotlowitz had talked more about solutions and what some places are doing to try to fix some of these problems. Instead, I was just left depressed.
    
    
22. Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers: This novel started out with an interesting premise. Alice has been crippled by a skiing accident. Matt blames himself for the presumed death of his twin sister. Both of them are like prime numbers, isolated by their childhood traumas. He sets things up so that you expect the two of them to find a connection. Instead, Mattia takes a job far away and Alice marries a doctor she meets during her mother’s final illness. There’s a chance for them to connect again later on. But nothing happens. In short, Giordano throws away what seems like a good premise for two damaged people to fix each other. Disappointing.
    

Movies:

I had a lot of time to watch movies on flights during my trip in November and ended up seeing five. I also saw two movies in theaters. (Well, one theatre, namely Cinema Arts in Fairfax, VA. I love having an independent movie theatre near where I live.)

1. The Hobby: Tales from the Tabletop: This is a documentary about board game culture, which I watched on a flight from IAD to SFO. As a person who enjoys board games, it was reasonably enjoyable, but a bit repetitive. The basic point is that many people play games as a way of finding community, which is at least partly true for me. It was especially true during the pandemic when a group of us from the Loser community played Code Names over zoom nearly every night, but it was also true way back when I lived in Los Angeles and some people I worked with had regular afternoon gaming sessions. I thought the most interesting part of the movie had to do with people who were developing new games and were having people at game conventions play test them. Overall, it made me want to play games more, so I suppose it was successful. By the way, there was apparently a 2012 documentary called Going Cardboard about the American adoption of German-style board games which sounds like something I should look for.
   
   
2. Coco: This Pixar / Disney movie was the first of three movies I watched on my flight from SFO to TPE. It’s about a young boy who dreams of becoming a musician, despite his family’s ban on music. He travels to the Land of the Dead and finds out about the true story behind the origins of that ban. This is one of the best animated movies I’ve ever seen, with an interesting (and somewhat unpredictable) story line, emotionally realistic characters and an excellent score. Highly recommended.
   
   
3. Uncut Gems: Adam Sandler plays a diamond dealer with a gambling problem who scams and lies his way to trying to make a big score. While Sandler’s performance was good, the character he played was so unlikeable and the movie was so violent that I can’t recommend it.
   
   
4. The Holdovers: Paul Giamatti plays a curmudgeonly teacher who is forced to chaperone a group of students who are left on campus during Christmas break. Eventually, he is left with just one student (Angus, played by Dominic Sessa)and the school cook and they take a field trip to Boston, where we learn about the back stories of the characters. It was reasonably interesting and well acted, though it was a bit predictable and the ending was sad.
   
   
5. Knives Out: I hadn’t gotten around to seeing this before and it was a good choice for my flight from BKK to FRA. While I read a lot of mysteries, I’m not generally a huge fan of mystery films, largely because I often find it hard to keep track of the convoluted plot lines. This one was above average, but I didn’t find it particularly believable. I will probably watch the sequels sooner or later, but there are other genres I prefer. (I spent the rest of the flight sleeping, reading, and watching several episodes of What We Do in the Shadows).
   
   
6. Rental Family: This movie has to do with an American actor in Japan, played by Brendan Fraser, who takes a job playing stand-in roles for strangers. For example, his first assignment is playing the groom at a wedding for a bride whose actual relationship is with another woman. He also gets jobs playing the father to a young girl whose mother is eager to get her into a particular school and playing a journalist interviewing an aging actor who worries about being forgotten. Both of those two roles were an interesting mix of comedy and moving moments, but raise questions about the ethical issues associated with the job. Overall, I really enjoyed this movie and highly recommend it.
   
   
7. Song Sung Blue: Confession time: I believe that the very first record I ever bought (a 45) was Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie.” And, of course, as an ardent Red Sox fan, I find it nearly impossible not to sing along to “Sweet Caroline.” My adult tastes may be edgier, but I understand why Neil Diamond has been so popular for so long and, therefore, I was an obvious part of the target audience for this movie about a Neil Diamond tribute band in Wisconsin called Lightning and Thunder. The movie is based on a true story and stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, both of whom give excellent performances. There are some details that aren’t completely accurate, but, overall, both of them make the characters feel real - and, most importantly, make them likable even when they struggle with life challenges. Overall, I really enjoyed this movie, though nobody had warned me to make sure to bring lots of tissues. And the anti-earworm medication, lyricease, exists only in my imagination, alas. Also highly recommended.
   
   

Goals:

There will be more details in my 2025 wrap-up.

• I circumnavigated the world going westward in November.
  
  
• I made progress on my Tunisian crochet afghan, but didn’t finish it.
  
  
• I’ve only managed 47 books for the year.
  
  
• I’m about halfway through updating my life list, but I am still vacillating on a few items.
  
  
• I can read some Hangul, but I am still slow and hesitant at it and make a lot of mistakes.