fauxklore

Doing monthly updates on my progress on this challenge seems to be working well for me. So here is the September(ish) update.

There were two Stafford Challenge presentations in September. The first one was early in the month (specifically on September 8th, which was day 235 of the challenge) and was intended to help people who had fallen behind to get back on track. Melissa Helton’s presentation was called “Prompt Me Up: Helping You to Get Back on Track.” She used examples from several different poets to lead into the prompts. The first was Frank x Walker, who she credited with coining the term “Affrilachia” (which I am familiar with from the storyteller Lynette Ford). She used that as a prompt to list groups you belong to and look for unusual or surprising connections or disconnections between them. I used that to write about the some mixed feelings I have about being what I refer to as a “mystical realist.” Prompt #2 came from the work of Annie Woodford and had to do with thinking about animal or plant species that either don’t exist where you are from or are invasive in that area. I used that to write about being a free-range child. The third prompt was from Diane Gilliam-Fisher and suggested writing about someone breaking a law or rule to do what’s right. I scribbled some notes about Jan Karski. I haven’t yet worked them into a poem, but I still intend to. Prompt #4 came from Willie Carver, who wrote a collection of poems titled Gay Poems for Red States. The prompt from that was to think about precious lost toys. This led me to a poem about my cousin, Ellen, who I have always felt usurped my position in the family, specifically with respect to my maternal grandfather. The 5th and final prompt was from Crystal Wilkinson and was to write about a fear you have for someone else or about belonging to a group that is misunderstood or demonized. The latter half of that led me to write about anti-Semitism.

The second presentation was the monthly guest poet, who was Deborah A. Miranda. Her talk was titled “Writing Prompts from the Ancestors: 13 Ways to Use Archives as Poetry Catalysts.” As a genealogist, this was obviously of a lot of interest to me. A few points I found particularly relevant are:

• Stories tell us who we are and who we will become.
  
• Question what is in the archive and look for an answer.
  
• Absence is a powerful place to write from.
  
• Consider what you wish to know about an ancestor and what you wish you didn’t know.
  

I also liked her suggestion of using found material, which can be done using an archival document. I may be able to do something using some of the newspaper coverage of the Wreck of the Congressional Limited, which is what I’d intended to write about when I started the Stafford Challenge.

Finally, here are the titles of my September poems:

Week 33:

29 August 2026 - That’s All Folks

30 August 2026 - Breakfast Out

31 August 2026 - Axolotls Anonymous

1 September 2026 - Mysterious Email Addresses

2 September 2026 - Promoting Myself

3 September 2026 - The Birthday Story

4 September 2026 - 68

Week 34:

5 September 2026 - Reflections of an Old Bag

6 September 2026 - Another Poet Gone

7 September 2026 - Investigation

8 September 2026 - Mystical Realism

9 September 2026 - Free Range Children

10 September 2026 - The Usurper

11 September 2026 - Remembering That Day

Week 35:

12 September 2026 - Rosh Hashanah

13 September 2026 - Fear

14 September 2026 - Get Organized

15 September 2026 - Book Club Bucket List

16 September 2026 - Sequins

17 September 2026 - Psychedelic Design

18 September 2026 - Kennedy Center Protest

Week 36:

19 September 2026 - Captain Cook

20 September 2026 - Kol Nidre

21 September 2026 - Who By Fire

22 September 2026 - Reef Madness

23 September 2026 - Arrrgh!

24 September 2026 - Packing

25 September 2026 - Traveling While Sleepy

Week 37:

26 September 2026 - Waterfront

27 September 2026 - South Shore Ramble

28 September 2026 - Crazy Knitting

29 September 2026 - I Don’t Understand

30 September 2026 - Scarecrows

1 October 2026 - Scary Motel

2 October 2026 - Failing at Being a Celt

I have been back from vacation just under a week and am slowly getting caught up on real life. I still have things left to write about from before I left. At any rate, here is a list of what you can expect to read about over the next several days.

• Two Storytelling Shows
  
• Stafford Challenge - September Update
  
• Quarterly Update - June Through September
  
• Organizing Conference
  
• Other Things I Did in September
  
• Celebrity Death Watch
  
• My Vacation - probably in three parts
  
• Assorted Clippings
  

So let’s move into what I did in the rest of August.

Book Club: The Crones and Tomes book for August was How to Read a Book by Monica Wood. I thought the characters were interesting. And it got me to reread Spoon River Anthology. I definitely did not remember how much violence and criminality there is in the latter. I missed the Travelers’ Century Club book club because of Lollapuzzoola, but I did read the book, which was Hilary Bradt’s autobiography, Taking the Risk. I'll write more about these books in my quarterly update.

My Left Foot: Well, more precisely, one toe. I’ve had an issue with a hammertoe for a number of years. A few months ago, I got a blister on that toe after a long walk on a shoe that was probably too worn to still be in rotation. Anyway, it resulted in a painful sore and I finally got a podiatrist referral from my doctor. The podiatrist gave me a pad to wear, which helped a lot and I could walk without pain all through my trip to Spain. When I came home, I had a follow-up appointment and saw a different podiatrist (at the same practice) due to scheduling issues and he decided I should have flexor tenotomy, which involved cutting the tight tendon. I’m not convinced that this improved things over just using the pad. For one thing, I can’t bend that toe as fully as I used to be able to. I need to make another follow-up appointment but I want to go back to the first podiatrist I saw. It’s not going to happen for another couple of weeks at any rate, since I’m going to be traveling again.

NBF: I volunteered at the National Book Festival, which I’d done a few times before. I was at one of the information booths. I’m always amazed that people are surprised that the things we give out are free. Unfortunately, we ran out of programs and tote bags. But we had plenty of posters. It was more fun to direct people to the rooms where different presentations were. And I was able to recommend a few activities (primarily for children). If I can, I'll do this again in future years.

Miscellany: Other odds and ends were some genealogy-related work, my crafts group, a story swap, a board game night, the monthly guest poet talk for the Stafford Challenge, and a rehearsal for a storytelling show. I went with my friend, Kim, to see Coyote vs. Acme, which I loved. And I had breakfast with a college friend who was in town. Er, yes, I do keep busy.

Before I move on to more catching up from August, here is a bit of shameless self-promotion.

Tomorrow night (September 9th) I’m a featured storyteller at The Grapevine, which is a storytelling series put on by the Folklore Society of Greater Washington. The show is at Busboys and Poets in Takoma Park and starts at 7:30 p.m. EDT. It is also live-streamed over zoom and recorded for later viewing, so those of you who don’t live nearby can watch at your convenience. Full information, including registration,is on the FSGW website

I hope some of you can make it!

The major reason for my trip to Spain was to see the total solar eclipse on August 12th. I had seen several eclipses before (6 total, 2 annular) and I had long ago figured out that, since you can never guarantee the weather, the best thing to do is to choose somewhere that would be interesting to go to even if the weather didn’t cooperate. I’d been wanting to go to Bilbao, Spain for a while (primarily to see the Guggenheim Museum there), but I also thought the weather near the coast was more likely to be iffy, while Burgos (which is inland) would be more likely to have clear skies. So I worked out an itinerary that included both of those cities.

I flew to Bilbao via Munich. Unfortunately, the first leg of the flight was on Lufthansa from IAD to MUC. Normally, I would have used the Turkish Air lounge at IAD, but they were limiting it to only their own passengers and the only other Star Alliance Lounge that was open was the United Club, which is approximately a half hour away from the gate my plane was boarding at. (The LH lounge is being renovated.) As for the actual flight, it may be physically possible for an airplane to have less leg room, but I’m not quite sure how. Let’s just say that I’ve been on low cost airlines in a few countries that had significantly more space. On the plus side, I did have a whole row to myself. In theory, that meant I could stretch out and get some sleep, but two noisy women in the row in front of me who talked loudly all night made that damn near impossible. MUC is a reasonably efficient airport and I had enough time to wrestle with the new EES system, which was fine with my passport and photo, but couldn’t read my fingerprints, dooming me to wait in the longer border crossing line. I was still able to take advantage of lounge time. And the flight from MUC to BIO had a decent amount of leg room.

On arriving at BIO, I paid EUR 5 for a bus ticket to the center of the city. I was staying at the Amari by Pillow, a reasonably affordable (and very central) hotel. It was conveniently right next to the first bus stop. I walked around the neighborhood for a while, had a light supper, and collapsed for the night.

The main thing I wanted to see in Bilbao was the Guggenheim. Even if you didn’t know it was designed by Frank Gehry, his architectural style is distinctive, though not particularly to my taste.



There’s a large sculpture of a puppy, covered with flowers, in front of the building. This is the work of another artist I don’t much care for, namely Jeff Koons. I’ve often said that ugly architecture and sculpture should be large enough to serve as a visible landmark and this qualifies.



There is one piece outside the museum that I like. That is the spider sculpture Maman by Louise Bourgeois.



Fortunately, the art inside the museum was more to my taste. I particularly enjoyed an exhibit by the South African artist, Igshaan Adams, whose work was completely new to me. Here are a couple of pieces from his exhibit called “Unsettling Dust: The Body’s Archive.” these are a mixture of textiles and beading and I was absolutely awestruck. The photos don’t come close to doing these justice.





The third floor of the museum has works from the permanent collection. The Ghanaian artist El Atsugi has been one of my favorites since I saw a piece of his at the High Museum in Atlanta several years ago. I also saw another of his works in Indiana recently.



There was one of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror rooms. I had a long wait to get in, but I thought it was worth it. Again, she was an artist whose work I’d seen several times before.



I fell in love with Mike Kelley’s work many years ago when I saw his piece “More Love Hours That Can Ever be Repaid” at LACMA. I also saw that piece again at the Art Institute of Chicago. This is another assemblage of stuffed animals and is named “Fruit of Thy Loins.”



No collection of modern art would be complete without some pieces by Roy Lichtenstein.



After about 5 hours in the museum, I needed a break for fresh air and lunch. Alas, the pizza I got for lunch was disappointing. I’d intended to go back and finish up the museum after lunch, but decided I needed a siesta more. I did go back to the Guggenheim in the late afternoon the next day, specifically because I wanted to see the large Jasper Johns retrospective there. I had seen the retrospective that was divided between the Whitney in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art a few years back, so I knew I would enjoy this.





I particularly like the way he has used optical illusions. Stare at the white dot in the upper flag for 10 seconds, then look at the black dot.



There was also a retrospective of work by Ruth Asawa and a reasonably interesting short film about her.



Earlier that day, I had walked down to the Ellipse, an attractive park with a fountain at its center and some grand buildings around it.



Then I walked up Calle Gran Via, which is the major upscale shopping street of Bilbao. I went on to a park with a couple of monuments, that led me to a part of the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts on Eduardo Chilida Square.



There were two major exhibits there. One had to do with Denise Scott Brown, an artist, architect and urban planner. It included some pieces by her, as well as a very interesting film about her work.





The other was titled “Parallels and Meridians” and featured art held by Iberdrola, an energy company. For example, I am far more familiar with Alexander Calder’s sculpture than his paintings, so I found this piece very interesting.



And here’s a pice by Ai Wei Wei.



I had a brief stop to take a picture of Frank Gehry’s sculpture of a crumpled paper bag, which did nothing to convince me to like his work any better.



I had a leisurely lunch, then took an hour long bus tour of the major parts of Bilbao, on both sides of the estuary. Here’s the Maritime Museum.



And here are a little bit of the old city.





I would have liked to have had at least half a day to wander around the old city, but seeing the rest of the Guggenheim was more important to me. I was still better off than people I’d talked to who were on an eclipse tour and didn’t even have a full day in Bilbao, while I had a little over two full days there. The next day, I was off to Burgos, but I’ll write about that in a separate post.

The last major thing I did in July was go to the National Storytelling Network (NSN) Conference, which was held at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas, near Amarillo. That’s a somewhat irritating place to get to, since there are non-stop flights from only a few places. I coordinated travel with my friend, Tim, which meant taking a flight from DCA to IAH at oh-dark-30. The flight was on-time and I managed to get in a too short nap and watch the first episode of The 99 Year Old Man, an HBO documentary about Mel Brooks. While it is a long ways from Terminal C (where my flight arrived) to Terminal B (where the regional puddle hoppers depart from), the train system at IAH worked well. Tim arrived from BWI and we were also joined by Les, who arrived from RIC. We got in on time and discovered that the directions to get to the campus were, let’s just say, incomplete. We did eventually figure out how to get where we needed to go. We had plenty of time, so we got mediocre pseudo-Mexican fast food for lunch.

We checked in for the conference and my annoyance grew as I discovered that my name was misspelled on my badge. An obviously completely accurate web site claims that there are 116,900 women in the United States who share the name Miriam with me. By comparison, there are 17,694 women in the U.S. named Mariam. There is NO excuse for screwing up my name. I should note that there was also plenty of sloppiness in other things throughout the conference. For example, there was a table in the front of the conference booklet (“the green page”) that showed all of the events and where they were, but it didn’t match the detailed program (“the brown pages”) later in the booklet. This created chaos and late starts to some events as people went to the wrong rooms. Proofreading is still important.

While I am on reasons to be grumpy, the dorm accommodations were marginally adequate. We had had to purchase our linens (which were being donated after the conference), but we had not been warned that we needed to bring our own soap. (Tim walked to a supermarket and bought supplies.) When we first arrived, there was no toilet paper in either of the two bathrooms in the suite I was in, though that was quickly remedied. There were also no wastepaper baskets and most of us just used the boxes the linens had come in. The only electrical outlet in my room was not next to any of the furniture. There might have been another outlet, but, if so, it was unreachably blocked by heavy furniture. And, then, there was the food, which was monotonous and mediocre. On the plus side, it being Texas, they did have Diet Dr. Pepper on tap. Also, it was over 100 Fahrenheit outside, but everywhere inside was completely frigid.

But I was there for storytelling, not for luxury. I did give myself a little time to decompress, so came in just at the end of the opening mixer. I did hear the welcome talk by the NSN president. I’m still impressed with how well Rishi Nixon, who is still a teenager, has handled that role. (I’ve known him since he was about 8 or 9 years old, since he was one of the youth tellers who was part of the Twinbrook Tellers and associated with our local guild, Voices in the Glen.) He talked a little about networks and posed the question of how we should think about networking. He was followed by an opportunity to talk with the NSN board members. The key question (which barely got talked about in my opinion) was how to couch NSN’s 50th year. Note that that includes all of the organization’s previous names. I’ve been around long enough to remember all the way back to the National Association for the Preservation and Perpetuation of Storytellers (NAPPS) and, in my heart of hearts I still think it was the best name, but I understand that most people don't share my love for long words.

After dinner, there was a concert by featured Regional Tellers. The highlight of that was Fran Stallings, telling an excellent gender-swapped Cinderella story which featured a Prairie Godfather. That was followed by what they called a “Texas campfire,” which was indoors, had no physical fire, and had sweet snacks and lemonade. Apparently people in West Texas have never heard of drinking hot beverages after maybe 10 a.m. I would have liked to go to one of the Fringe shows but I was already sleep deprived so thought better of it. Being a responsible adult? Who'da thunk it?

Moving on to Friday, they did have coffee available at breakfast and, at that time of day, I consider it strictly medicinal so don’t require my normal coffee snobbishness. (Hey, I come by it honestly. I am descended from a coffee merchant from Poland! Yes, really.) I inevitably had a hard time choosing which morning workshop to go to and settled on Funlocking Your Hero’s Journey by Charlie McCoin. His goal was focused on having everyone reflect on personal experience through narrative. He emphasized that meaning is not the same as understanding. Then we got in small groups and each person talked about a time that changed them.

We reconvened and he talked some about Joseph Campbell’s framework for the hero’s journey, which consists of:

1. Separation (or leaving)
   
2. Initiation (or struggling)
   
3. Return (or becoming)
   

Unfortunately, he got a little confused about which order the first two of those steps should go in, which made things harder to follow. We did do an exercise in which he posed scenarios and asked us which of those steps they belonged to. It was interesting to see that people came up with different answers for many of the scenarios. Overall, I enjoyed this workshop, but I’m reasonably familiar with Joseph Campbell so there wasn’t much that was new to me.

Not at all relevant to this, but how many of you know that Joseph Campbell’s wife was Jean Edman, one of the most influential forces in modern dance? She researched international dance traditions and worked with many of the important figures of modern dance, including Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham.

The morning workshops were followed by a production of Texas: The Musical, which is apparently a major open-air production that people actually pay to go to. I found it hokey, but entertaining. However, as I said on Facebook, should I ever be caught saying “yippee kay yi,” please have me institutionalized.

There were two workshops after lunch. The first one I went to was Marilyn McPhie’s on AI Tools For Storytellers. I am, in general, skeptical about AI, though I do admit that AI meeting summaries are sometimes useful when I am writing up meeting minutes. (For those who don’t know, I suffer from a genetic disease that causes members of my family to volunteer as board secretaries and newsletter editors.) Marilyn discussed various other ways that AI can be useful for storytellers, starting with administrative tasks. I can buy some utility for things like writing publicity and press releases, reviewing documents, preparing grant proposals, and (especially) creating lists of notes and sources for research. However, you do have to be careful about the use of quotes. She did give a couple of amusing examples of creating stories with AI, but I can’t really see myself pursuing that.

The other afternoon workshop I went to was Anne Rutherford’s on Create Your Historical Alter-Ego. For those who are not familiar with Anne, she tells some of her stories using the persona of Clementine Ryder, a Wild West heroine. She had us fill in forms with a number of traits for our characters, e.g. descriptions of when and where they lived, who their friends and families were, what their dreams were, etc. We then did small group exercises to help flesh these out. I had fun and thought that the small group I was in meshed well.

There was a room where people were being interviewed about some aspects of NSN history and I had volunteered to do a video interview, mostly because I remembered a couple of details about the name switch from the National Storytelling Association to the National Storytelling Network. I was fairly active on the stortell listserv and was on a technology committee around that time. I also had some relevant experience as a state liaison. I thought the interview went okay.

I skipped the story slam because I needed to spend some time tweaking my story for the showcase I was part of on Saturday. After dinner, there was a concert with featured national tellers. All of them were good, but I want to particularly note two of them. Adam Mellena had an incredible take on Red Riding Hood, involving a tour de force of physical comedy. And Pippa White had a very interesting piece about Nebraska, largely in verse. It reminded me of Ernest Hemingway’s somewhat obscure parody of Joyce Kilmer that starts out “I think that I have never trod / on anything so swell as sod” and ends with “Trees are made by fools like G-d / who pushes them up through the sod.”

Someone had recommended one of the flavored popcorn mixes (with chocolate!) at the Texas campfire, so I gave it a try. It was, indeed, tasty. Once again, I’d have liked to go to one of the fringe shows, but I was still trying to tweak a couple of things in my story for Saturday, so opted to go back to my room and spend an hour or so checking that the timing would work. In the end, I took out a couple of lines that I decided were not worth an extra minute or so.

I had signed up for a tour to Palo Duro Canyon on Saturday morning, but decided that I would rather go to a workshop and a story swap than be outside in the heat. I can afford to lose the 8 bucks I had paid.

There were a few workshops I was interested in and I settled on one by Paul Strickland titled Re-upholstering Folk Tales: Honoring Old Stories, Inspiring New Audiences. The key point was how to reach people who may not realize that folk tales are for them. He used the metaphor of a chair in a museum that you’re not allowed to sit in and noted you have two options - either reinforce it or reupholster it. He also stated that “just because something is old, doesn’t mean it is interesting.” I will admit that I didn’t love the chair metaphor because I firmly believe that furniture only becomes an antique because it is too uncomfortable to use, while the comfortable furniture gets worn out. But I thought his essential questions were useful. To wit: 1) why should I tell the story? 2) why this story? 3) why now? 4) why to these people? He went on to talk about people entering the story when they recognize themselves, in terms of someone they love, something they fear, someone or something they work for, or a version of themselves they prefer not to discuss. He recommended that you first situate your audience (i.e. find a way in, and then intrigue your audience by creating a question in the listener’s mind that they need you to answer. But you have to keep in mind that confused and curious are not the same thing. (I like the example he used, which referred to “the foundation for unadopted highways.)

Then we did an exercise in groups, in which we discussed where we might take a sentence he gave us. My group had “The queen ordered the girl to separate a room full of mixed grain before sunrise.” We took this in what proved to be an unexpected direction, where the queen is actually trying to help the girl. I can do something with this. His final step had to do with transformation. He talked about having: 1) one moment, 2) one clear job, and 3) one tool, with several examples, especially for what that tool can be. The example he used started with “The old woman warned the boy not to follow the light into the marsh.” This amused me, largely because, as a child, I firmly believed that Martians lived in the marshes. Overall, I thought this workshop was a lot of fun and wished it had been longer.

I had a hard time deciding which story swap to go to, but settled on Fairy Tales. It took a long time to get started, mostly due to confusion about what room the swap was in. The first person to tell asked for feedback, which is fine, but should have been limited to less time to allow more people to tell. I told my original fairy tale, The Three Sisters which got a good reaction. (I am reasonably sure this is the first story I ever told in public, by the way.) Two other people told and I felt sorry for the last of them, who was forced to rush through her story. Overall, it was fun, but could have been organized better.

I skipped out on the SIG meetings to run through my story a couple of more times, After lunch, I changed clothes and went over to the general membership meeting but I didn’t take any notes at it. After that, it was time for the heritage showcase (a panel put on by the Producers and Organizers SIG) titled Find and Tell the Story of You, which had 4 tellers (of which I was one) telling stories about their heritage. I told a story about my love for puzzles leading me to genealogy research, which resulted in learning about my maternal grandfather’s sister, Mariasha Chlebiocka (later Mary Lehman), who had some legal issues (a criminal record makes research much easier) and died in the wreck of the Congressional Limited train in 1943. Lynette Ford had a story she recently learned about one of her ancestors. Jessica Piscitelli Robinson talked about interviewing her father and learning how to make family recipes. Alton Chung closed out the session with a story about his grandfather, which included being given a new “American” name at school and participating in a rubber band war. There was a Q&A afterwards. Overall, I thought it went well. It was streamed and recorded and I got positive feedback from a couple of people who watched it on-line. Here’s a picture of the four of us (from left to right: Jessica, me, Lynette, Alton).



Saturday night was the Oracle Awards. The mid-Atlantic region was well represented, with Tim Livengood receiving a Service and Leadership award, largely for his involvement with organizing The Grapevine storytelling series. And Jessica Piscitelli Robinson won a Distinguished National Service award, largely for founding and leading the Women’s Storytelling Festival. (She had received a Service and Leadership award previously, for her work with Better Said Then Done).

The conference concluded Sunday morning with a discussion on the future of NSN. I think a lot of this missed the mark, because there is an inherent problem with talking to the people who are present at a conference and not thinking about the people who aren’t present and finding out why they aren’t present. For example, I hadn’t been at the previous two conferences because Juy is pretty much always a hectic month for me. (As you already know, my life is a schedule conflict.) I can imagine that a lot of people missed this conference because the location was not very transit accessible and many people have concerns about their safety in Texas given the political environment there. Money can also be a significant factor for attendance. But you don’t learn those things if you don’t ask.

Anyway, after the conference was over, we had some time and Tim, Les, and I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Amarillo before going to the airport. There was quite a crowd of storytellers there, pretty evenly divided between three flights. I had no issues with the train between terminals at DFW. I’d deliberately chosen the later of two flights from DFW to DCA, so I didn’t get to DCA until well after midnight. It took a while to walk over to the rideshare pick-up area. I got a Lyft driver who used a very weird route (probably only about 3 miles further than what any sane person would do but I am fairly sure it was slower) and it was about 1:30 a.m. by the time I got home. Frankly, I could have just as well skipped the Sunday sessions, but so it goes.

Overall, the conference was worth going to, largely because of getting to hang out with people I see all too infrequently. There are several folks I wish I’d had more time to spend with. I've got a few ideas I want to follow up on, though I have no idea where I'll find the time to. And I hope to be able to make it to next year’s conference in Minneapolis.

I was going to do one big Stafford Challenge update, but I was getting overwhelmed, so here is the first of two parts. This covers June.

The June guest poet was Kelli Russell Agodon, whose presentation had to do with prose poems. She quoted Charles Simic on prose poems as having said “All poets do magic tricks.” She also said Simic described them as “fly traps for our imagination.” She suggested we shouldn’t spend time arguing, but just write our poems. Prose poems are just things, not about line breaks.

Then she offered up some exercises:

• … and maybe…
  
• 6 things that don’t belong together
  
• I / they / you saw / remembered / lost / wish you’d said
  
• one impossible thing
  


She finished by saying that the mind doesn’t move in straight lines. Most of this didn’t resonate with me in the moment, but I have attempted using a couple of the ideas in some of my poems. And I never know what path I may want to follow later on, which has been on of my big discoveries in doing this project.

The last week of June there was another event - a reading of poems from the 2025 Stafford Challenge Cohort Anthology. If my notes are correct, there were a dozen poets who read, followed by a group poem from last year which Brian Rohr read. I noted that David Hoffman (who opened the reading) wrote a lovely poem called Poets in the Round. My overall favorite of the evening was If Billy Collins Lived Next Door by Vanessa Proctor from Sydney, Australia. I also particularly liked R J Ingram's poem, Good Guy With a Gun and Susan Michele Coronel's poem about half sour pickles.


And here are the titles of my poems for Weeks 21 through 24.

Week 21
:
6 June 2026 - Moving Into My Books

7 June 2026 -Office Supplies

8 June 2026 - Tick

9 June 2026 - Limerick

10 June 2026 - Gesundheit!

11 June 2026 - Wearing Many Hats

12 June 2026 - The Idea Factory

Week 22:

13 June 2026 - Pre-Flight Thunderstorm

14 June 2026 - Tectonic Plates

15 June 2026 - Stomper

16 June 2026 - Catalogue

17 June 2026 - Six Unrelated Things

18 June 2026 - Westwords

19 June 2026 - Home Again

Week 23:

20 June 2026 - The Light of Day

21 June 2026 - Teddy Bear

22 June 2026 - Broadway at the Park

23 June 2026 - More About Broadway

24 June 2026 - A Long-distance Love Song

25 June 2026 - The Tartan Army

26 June 2026 - Horse Racing

Week 24:

27 June 2026 - The Flushies

28 June 2026 - State Fairs

29 June 2026 - Foods That Don’t Rhyme

30 June 2026 - Twelve Random Words

1 July 2026 - Second Half of the Year

2 July 2026 - Another Zip Ode (22181)

3 July 2026 - Inspiration

I took a short trip to California in June. The primary purpose was to go to Westwords, a crossword tournament in Berkeley. I leveraged off that to do a few other things.

I had a bit of an issue the night before my trip, since we had a sudden major power outage It had been a very long time since I had to pack my bag by flashlight, which is a bit challenging. My flight into SFO on Saturday morning was reasonably comfortable. It wasn’t too bad a hike to the BART station. I’d managed to forget to bring my BART card, but it didn’t really matter since they you can tap in and out with a contactless credit card nowadays. My friend, Carol, met me at the North Berkeley station and whisked me off to her condo.

After she parked her car, we walked around for a while. We intended to get lunch at a Chinese restaurant, but it turned out to be closed. So we went off to Saul’s Deli instead. I got a chopped liver sandwich and thought both the chopped liver and the rye bread were good. The full sour pickle was excellent. The potato knish was disappointing, however. Carol got the chicken schnitzel salad and liked it a lot.

We walked back to her condo, which is lovely. She showed me a lot of her artwork and we had a lovely conversation. It was nice to see her in person, instead of in a zoom box during our crafts group (which is where I know her from). Eventually, she drove me over to my hotel and I called into a story swap on-line.

I should note that Berkeley has changed surprisingly little in the past 35 or so years. However, it is sad to have lost several bookstores and, apparently, my favorite hat store closed recently. Also, it is apparently no longer considered acceptable to refer to the northern stretch along Shattuck Avenue as “the Gourmet Ghetto.”

Sunday was the crossword tournament. The event was at a local synagogue, which I don’t think had existed when I lived n Berkeley in the early 1980’s. I only knew a few people there, which is not surprising because the majority of attendees were local(ish), though there were other people who had traveled to attend. There were 124 individual participants and 24 pairs, with similar numbers participating on-line. There were 6 puzzles total, with a break for lunch after puzzle #3.

Puzzle #1, by Andrea Carla Michaels and Mark Axel was straightforward enough, with a theme that was easy to figure out.

Puzzle #2 By Sophia Maymudes was freestyle (i.e. unthemed) and also pretty easy, though it had a bit more pop culture than I prefer.

Puzzle #3 was by Zhou Zhang and Mallory Montgomery and had the sort of theme that I like a lot.

Puzzle #4 was by Rebecca Goldstein. This was definitely the most challenging puzzle of the day, but I figured out was going on quickly. A lot of people apparently figured out part of the theme, but missed another aspect of it.

Puzzle #5 was by Sarah Sinclair. While it had a theme, I think it would be easily solvable without noticing the theme.

I solved all 5 of those puzzles cleanly. For puzzle #6, you had a choice of two options - beach (easier) or mountain (harder). This were untamed and by Byron Walden. I thought it was pretty straightforward but, apparently, I did have one error. But, overall, I was satisfied with my performance, finishing 40th overall and 16th out of 70 in the Beach division.

In the morning, I walked over to the Berkeley Amtrak station and took a train to Sacramento. My friend, Jan, who I hadn’t seen in person in many years (but interact with frequently on Facebook) met me at the Sacramento station and we went over to the heart of Old Town to go to the Sacramento History Museum, after a brief stop for coffee and freshly made donuts. (We would have gone to the Crocker Art Museum, but it is closed on Mondays.) In addition to their regular collections, the museum had an exhibit on baseball in Sacramento, which I really enjoyed. It included lots of video about teams and players. We spent a couple of enjoyable hours exploring the museum, after which Jan dropped me off at the Embassy Suites (chosen entirely for location), where I settled in to rest for a while, before walking over the bridge to Sutter Health Park for a baseball game between the Athletics (using the River Cats ballpark temporarily while waiting for their new ballpark in Las Vegas to be built) and the Pittsburgh Pirates.



You can see the towers of the bridge towards the left of the photo. The fans were very enthusiastic and the A’s played well. I am, in general, anti-mascot, but I didn’t even mind the A’s mascot, Stomper the Elephant. (Apparently, back in the days when the A’s were in Philadelphia, they bought up contracts of a lot of players and were accused of having a big white elephant on their hands because of how much money they had spent. Connie Mack was amused enough by that comment that he made a white elephant the team’s unofficial mascot.) Since I am a bit obsessed with Jewish baseball players, I want to note that Zack Gelof of the A’s had a good game. (He injured his knee a few weeks later.)

In the morning, I took a Lyft to the airport and had a nice conversation about baseball with the driver. I had no issues getting home. Overall, I had a good, but brief, trip.

I’ve got several more things to catch up on. Let’s start with the quarterly update (April through June) on books, movies, and goals.

Books:

I read only 7 books during this quarter.

1. Richard Osman, We Solve Murders: This is the first book in a new series. The main character, Amy Wheeler, works security and has a job protecting a best-selling author whose life has been threatened. Other people who worked for the same company as Amy have been killed - and someone is after her, too. Her father-in-law, Steve, who normally lives a quiet life, also gets involved. Amy, Steve, and Rosie (the author) hop around the world trying to figure out who is behind all of it. I didn’t find the story very convincing, but it was still entertaining.
   
   
2. Beryl Markham, West With the Night (reread): I liked this book better on rereading than I had initially, though I remain skeptical about Markham’s accuracy. Her writing is vivid and exciting, from a childhood playing with native children (and being attacked by a lion) to training race horses to her accomplishments as a pilot. I found it a bit disappointing that we don’t learn anything about her personal life, but I guess I’ll have to read a biography of her to get the dirt about her scandals and affairs.
   
   
3. Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair (reread): I read this book when it first came out 25 years ago and thought it was incredibly clever. It was still fun on rereading it, which I did in preparation for going to The Fforde Fiesta, which I’ve already written about. I was also surprised at how much I’d forgotten, e.g. Richard III, the original ending to Jane Eyre, and Thursday’s love life. All and all it remains a very amusing combination of mystery and fantasy and a masterpiece of world building.
   
   
4. Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness: This was for the Crones and Tomes group I belong to, but I didn’t manage to read much of it before the discussion. I did read the whole thing afterwards and thought it was interesting, but rather a slog. The premise is that there is a planet (called Gethen or Winter) whose inhabitants are gender-fluid, taking on either male or female sex for a brief period called “kemmer” each month. Genly Ai is the envoy of an intergalactic civilization that is trying to bring these people into that confederation. He builds a complex relationship with Estraven, a high ranking official who is exiled from one of the nations. They journey together through a vast ice-filled region and learn a lot about each other’s ways. The concept is interesting, but I found the treatment of gender to be unsatisfactory. Admittedly, this was written in 1969. And I did like the inclusion of bits of Gethenian folklore in it.
   
   
5. George Orwell, Burma Dreams: I read this for the Travelers’ Century Club Book Club. It was Orwell’s first novel and it is based on his experiences as a policeman in Burma during the British Raj. The British community consists of some men who work in the timber industry and a handful of government officials, all of whom spend their time in the Club. A controversy arises about admitting a native to the club. One person, Mr. Flory, wants to invite an Indian doctor to join. There is also a young lady visiting her aunt and uncle, who Mr. Flory tries to court, but she prefers a military policeman. There’s also a Burmese official who tries to stir things up against the actor. Overall, I thought this was a good read. However, (as is, alas, not uncommon for first time novelists) the ending wasn’t very satisfying.
   
   
6. Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus: This had been a TCC Book Club selection some time ago, but I was unable to make it to that meeting. Durrell’s time in Cyprus was a mixture of village life and government service, made complicated by the desire of Greek Cypriots for Enasis, i.e. being ruled by Greece rather than Britain. As rebellion breaks out, he can’t completely avoid the impacts of the violence on his relationships with both Turkish and Greek Cyrpiots. Overall, this book taught me a lot about the history of Cyprus and made me want to visit there even more than I’d already wanted to.
   
   
7. Elizabeth Letts, The Ride of Her Life: I read this for Crones and Tomes. It tells the story of Annie Wilkins, who set off to ride a horse from Maine to California in the mid-1950’s, while (in her mid-60’s) being told she only had a couple of years to live. She wasn’t well-prepared for the trip but managed to find help and support along the way. In addition to the personal aspect, much of the book is about the changes in America, with the growth of highways and widespread car ownership (and, to some extent, television). I found this absorbing and inspiring. Highly recommended.
   
   

Movies:

I saw 6 movies this quarter, all on airplanes.

1. The Housemaid: I had read the book and thought the movie was fairly true to it, which I found pretty blah. I particularly hated the deliberately spooky music.
   
   
2. Moana: A number of years ago, a guide on a day tour on Moorea had recommended this movie as being particularly true to Polynesian culture. I’m not knowledgeable enough to speak to that, but it did feel reasonably accurate. I suspect I was too tired to really get into it, however, and it didn’t grab me as much as some other Disney musicals have. I will have to give it another chance some time.
   
   
3. Retirement Plan: This is a lovely short (7 minute) animated film in which a man talks about what he will do when he retires. I found it highly relatable and suspect most other people will also. You can watch it on YouTube and it is worth the time.
   
   
4. Is This Thing On?: This movie has to do with a couple whose marriage is collapsing. The husband seeks new purpose in doing comedy, while the wife seeks fulfillment in coaching women’s volleyball. I found this really slow-moving and - hmm, what is the opposite of absorbing?
   
   
5. Marty Supreme: This is, apparently, based on the true story of Marty Reitman, who was a table tennis champion and hustler. Timothy Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, who is trying to bring American attention to table tennis, as well as selling his own line of table tennis balls. He’s also having an affair with a married woman, as well as pursuing an actress, mostly to steal her jewelry. Basically, he’s a manipulative no-goodnik. It’s an interesting and watchable movie and Chalamet is a good actor, but I there’s only so much of an unlikeable character that I can handle.
   
   
6. Nothing Is Lost: This is a documentary about Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, directed by their son, Ben Stiller. I thought this did a good job of exploring the bonds between their show business careers and their home lives. The impact of their ups and downs on Ben (and his sister, Amy, who also appears throughout the movie) is a recurring theme, In the wrong hands, this could be an act of therapy, but it felt much more loving. Overall, I think it was worth watching.
   
   

Goals:

• I took one long distance train trip (The Ghan from Adelaide to Alice Springs in Australia). I have tentative plans for another.
  
  
• I’ve been to one minor league ballpark, though I saw a major league team there. So I’m not sure it counts. I do, however, have tickets for a minor league game in July.
  
  
• I went to 2 new to me TCC territories (Jersey and Guernsey) and have plans for one more.
  
  
• I had a little bit of a new insight into reading Hangul. Namely, the arrangement of the letters (with some below others) divides things into syllables. I’m not sure why I didn’t realize that sooner.
  
  
• I’ve shredded some things, but have a lot more to go.
  
  
• I’ve only read 18 books so far this year, so have quite a ways to go.
  
  
• I am very close to finishing the Tunisian crochet afghan, but still have edging to do. I need to decide on what yarn I am going to use for that.
  
  
• I’ve been pretty much keeping up with the Stafford Challenge, though I sometimes need to catch up on a few days.
  
  

On Sunday morning, I took a taxi to the Parklands Terminal to board the Ghan. I had booked a single gold cabin and was given cabin R4. While waiting, there were snacks (tasty mini quiche) and drinks (including champagne, though I stuck to orange juice). There was also a musician who played soft rock / folk songs. I was slightly amused that instead of “leaving on a jet plane,” he sang, “leaving on a long train.”



Shortly after we departed, we had lunch. It was a long walk from my car to the lounge car, where we waited. I sat with 3 other people, one of whom was deaf and, while he could read lips, he communicated by writing on a pad of paper. I had a nicely spicy vegetable curry for my main course and cheesecake for dessert. After eating, I went back to my cabin to relax, listen to music (they have several radio channels to choose from), and watch the world go by. At about 5:30 p.m., I went back to the lounge for trivia. The questions were decidedly Aussie focused, though I knew the answers to several of them and the team I was on tied for fourth place. For dinner, I started with kangaroo loin (delicious!), followed by lamb for the main course, and a parfait for dessert. After the previous day’s wine excess, I stuck to drinking sparkling water. When I got back to my cabin, the seats had been made up into a bed. I read for a while before trying to sleep.

Key word was “trying.” It was a bit noisy and my bladder had decided to be a bit hyperactive, so I didn’t get a lot of high quality sleep. We stopped early in the morning - well, really, in the middle of the night - at Marla, where we had an opportunity to get off the train to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately, it was overcast, so I didn’t get a decent sunrise photo. Have a couple of pictures of the train, instead.





It was also really cold out. They did give us coffee and a light meal. I really liked the spinach and cheese biscuits they served. I also liked getting back on board to warm up and go back to sleep for a bit longer. They served brunch at 10 a.m. and I had a tasty omelet with French toast for dessert.

Along the way, we crossed the border between South Australia and the Northern Territory. I failed to get a picture of the sign marking the border, but I did get one of an Iron Man statue a bit further on. (Note that the statue is a bit to the left of the sign.)



We arrived at the Alice Springs station at about 2 in the afternoon.



I had booked a hotel and tour package in Alice. It was a bit of a wait for the bus that would drop people off at their hotels, but it’s not like I had anything better to do. I stayed at the Crowne Plaza, which was fine. Overall, I enjoyed the trip on the Ghan, but I would still like to do the full route (most likely from Darwin to Adelaide) some day. Note that: 1) it IS expensive and 2) if you were looking to do one classic Australian train trip, I’d probably recommend the Indian Pacific (which I did in 2013) instead.

The hotel included a buffet breakfast, after which I was picked up for the Alice Springs Highlight tour. There were only 4 of us on the tour, but we were on a 50 passenger bus, apparently because that’s all that the tour company had. Our first stop was at the grave of John Flynn, who founded the Royal Flying Doctor Service.



We continued on to Simpsons Gap, which is a break in the West MacDonnell Ranges. It was definitely scenic, but the trail is a bit rocky at some points and I found myself wishing I’d had trekking poles witth me at a few points.





Our next stop was Stanley Chasm. The walk there was easier, except for one bit near the very end.



I should also mention that both of these walks were within the West MacDonnell National Park, which requires purchasing a Northern Territory parks pass. This is cheap (AUD 20, if I recall correctly) but it seemed odd to me that the tour company didn’t include it in the package and you had to buy it yourself on-line.

Our next stop was the Anzac Hill Memorial. This was built as a memorial to those who died in World War I and opened in 1934. But they have added memorials to later wars in which Australia participated. It has excellent views over the entire city of Alice Springs, which is, frankly, not a particularly attractive city.



We went on to the Telegraph Station. This was built in the early 1870’s and is, essentially, the birthplace of Alice Springs. It’s now a museum and is fairly interesting to look around. You can look at buildings where the telegraph equipment was set up and where the staff worked.



The most interesting displays have to do with “The Bungalow,” a residential institution for mixed race Aboriginal children. It’s probably needless to say that those children were not treated well and the native cultures were not respected.

There is also a cafe, where we got lunch (at our own cost, but it is reasonably cheap.) I found this sign (on the way to the toilets) interesting.




Our final stop on the tour was at the School of the Air. This serves students who live in remote places, allowing them to get an education meeting state standards for primary and early secondary school. Most of the students go to boarding schools after that. I hadn’t realized that all of the children have “home tutors” (either a parent or a hired tutor) to help them in their daily work. (I had always assumed it was entirely correspondence school.) It’s good to see that they get lots of interaction with the teachers and fellow students. That is, of course, easier in these days of the internet. They also come to the physical school facility (in this case, the one in Alice Springs we visited) a few times a year, which gives them further interaction with other students.

Overall, the tour gave me a fairly good overview of the tourist attractions of Alice Springs and was easier than trying to set things up on my own.

I did have a free day the next day and had looked up various things to do. There are tours of galleries specializing in aboriginal art, but they were all sold out. However, I found an aboriginal art workshop, taught by a woman named Marie Ryder. This sounded like fun, so I signed up for it. It was held in Olive Park Botanic Gardens and, after some confusion with exactly where the class was, we got started. Marie uses watercolor paints and she demonstrated various symbols used in her paintings. One of the key characteristics of a lot of aboriginal art is the dotting around the symbols.



The painting on the right is Marie’s with symbols for two women (her and me), a plant with berries, and two honey ants. The painting on the left is my feeble attempt at representing a journey to three places. Overall, it was interesting listening to Marie talk about her family, the development of her artwork, and the problems with galleries that exploit artists. It as worth the 90 minutes or so of the class.

After we were done, I walked around the botanical gardens a bit more, then walked to downtown Alice Springs. I got lunch at a banh mi shop and browsed a few shops. I took this picture of the wall outside one of the art galleries.



I also liked this mural.



Eventually, I walked over to the Royal Flying Doctor Service Museum. This is an excellent site to visit. They start with a film about the history of the RFDS. But the real highlight is their virtual reality set-up, where you can experience being either a pilot or a nurse. (Most people do both.) There are also more conventional museum exhibits, e.g. this one showing radio equipment.



Eventually, I meandered back to my hotel. Since I’d had a 15,000 step day, I felt no guilt about just grabbing a quick snack at the casino bar for supper. Overall, I spent just about the right amount of time in Alice Springs. If I do take the Ghan again, I would focus on going to Uluru for a few days instead. I felt ready to move on the next morning.