Five Questions Meme
Nov. 26th, 2022 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreThese questions are from mallorys_camera. If you want me to give you some questions, please comment. But note that I may not have time to reply until about December 9th or 10th.
1. You're a storyteller. And a scientist. How do you define "truth"? š I am an engineer, not a scientist. That affects this answer, because one of the most important principles of engineering is that it doesnāt matter whether or not something is correct as long as it works. So, for example, most mechanical engineers are perfectly free to ignore, say, any physics beyond Newtonian mechanics.
From the storytelling standpoint, my usual tagline is that all of my stories are true, whether or not they happened that way. There are emotional truths that go beyond facts. I feel perfectly free to fill in some details I donāt actually remember if I can get a good laugh out of them and they make emotional sense within the story context.
2. Do you like to dress up? I love to dress up, I have a few dressy dresses, at least two of which still fit me. The catch is having appropriate events for them. I do have one dress-up party I go to pretty much every year, except that it was virtual for two years and I had a schedule conflict this year. I may have to revive the concept of Black Tie Miniature Golf.
3. Who did you feel closer to when you were growing up, your mother or your father? And why? Or did you feel equally close to both? Thatās a tough question. I had a rather turbulent relationship with my father, but that is largely because I am a lot like him. He was definitely an imposing and opinionated man. Also, I feel that I knew my mother a lot better, largely because she had a large family and lots of pictures of family and friends from her childhood, which she would show us frequently. My father, being a Shoah survivor had few living relatives (and, except for his father, the only ones he was close to lived in Israel). So I guess it is pretty much a tie.
4. What's your favorite museum? There are many museums I could choose, starting with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and the British Museum. There is a wonderful museum in Pretoria, South Africa (I think it is the African Window Cultural History Museum) which has the unique feature of having a section where they ask a local group to curate an exhibit out of items in their permanent collection, so you can get a perspective on what items are important from the standpoint of, say, a luncheon club in a nearby village.
But let me go with a museum I could probably spend an entire month in without getting tired of it. The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona is absolutely amazing, with demonstrations and concerts as part of their exhibits. I was there on their opening day and it was a good thing that it wasnāt completed yet because I had limited time.
5. Of the many, many places you've traveled, about which ones did you think, "I could live hereā? There are several, though many donāt really meet my bigger criteria for somewhere to live, often due to a lack of a suitable Jewish community. In the U.S., the two paces where I found myself looking at real estate ads were Charleston, South Carolina (which does have what I consider a reasonable Jewish presence, but suffers from political neanderthalism in the state) and Traverse City, Michigan (which has nothing Jewish and is way too far from a major airport, but is beautiful). The only other place in the Western Hemisphere I could really imagine living in is Montevideo, Uruguay, though Iād have to improve my Spanish considerably. There are a few places in Europe I could live in. London is one, but I think my top choice in Europe would be any of several Italian cities, especially Bologna, though Venice, Rome, or Capri would also do just fine. Other places that are appealing for various reasons are Cape Town, South Africa and Perth, Australia (or, possibly, Melbourne, but I need to go back there to reinvestigate it). Oddly, as much as I have enjoyed traveling in Asia, I canāt think of anywhere there I would actually want to live. But I suppose my overall top choice would be Israel, except that Tel Aviv is too expensive and the retirement community near Haifa Iād want to move to has an incredibly long waiting list and Iād be unlikely to get a spot there before I was 80.
mallorys_camera. If you want me to give you some questions, please comment. But note that I may not have time to reply until about December 9th or 10th.1. You're a storyteller. And a scientist. How do you define "truth"? š I am an engineer, not a scientist. That affects this answer, because one of the most important principles of engineering is that it doesnāt matter whether or not something is correct as long as it works. So, for example, most mechanical engineers are perfectly free to ignore, say, any physics beyond Newtonian mechanics.
From the storytelling standpoint, my usual tagline is that all of my stories are true, whether or not they happened that way. There are emotional truths that go beyond facts. I feel perfectly free to fill in some details I donāt actually remember if I can get a good laugh out of them and they make emotional sense within the story context.
2. Do you like to dress up? I love to dress up, I have a few dressy dresses, at least two of which still fit me. The catch is having appropriate events for them. I do have one dress-up party I go to pretty much every year, except that it was virtual for two years and I had a schedule conflict this year. I may have to revive the concept of Black Tie Miniature Golf.
3. Who did you feel closer to when you were growing up, your mother or your father? And why? Or did you feel equally close to both? Thatās a tough question. I had a rather turbulent relationship with my father, but that is largely because I am a lot like him. He was definitely an imposing and opinionated man. Also, I feel that I knew my mother a lot better, largely because she had a large family and lots of pictures of family and friends from her childhood, which she would show us frequently. My father, being a Shoah survivor had few living relatives (and, except for his father, the only ones he was close to lived in Israel). So I guess it is pretty much a tie.
4. What's your favorite museum? There are many museums I could choose, starting with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and the British Museum. There is a wonderful museum in Pretoria, South Africa (I think it is the African Window Cultural History Museum) which has the unique feature of having a section where they ask a local group to curate an exhibit out of items in their permanent collection, so you can get a perspective on what items are important from the standpoint of, say, a luncheon club in a nearby village.
But let me go with a museum I could probably spend an entire month in without getting tired of it. The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona is absolutely amazing, with demonstrations and concerts as part of their exhibits. I was there on their opening day and it was a good thing that it wasnāt completed yet because I had limited time.
5. Of the many, many places you've traveled, about which ones did you think, "I could live hereā? There are several, though many donāt really meet my bigger criteria for somewhere to live, often due to a lack of a suitable Jewish community. In the U.S., the two paces where I found myself looking at real estate ads were Charleston, South Carolina (which does have what I consider a reasonable Jewish presence, but suffers from political neanderthalism in the state) and Traverse City, Michigan (which has nothing Jewish and is way too far from a major airport, but is beautiful). The only other place in the Western Hemisphere I could really imagine living in is Montevideo, Uruguay, though Iād have to improve my Spanish considerably. There are a few places in Europe I could live in. London is one, but I think my top choice in Europe would be any of several Italian cities, especially Bologna, though Venice, Rome, or Capri would also do just fine. Other places that are appealing for various reasons are Cape Town, South Africa and Perth, Australia (or, possibly, Melbourne, but I need to go back there to reinvestigate it). Oddly, as much as I have enjoyed traveling in Asia, I canāt think of anywhere there I would actually want to live. But I suppose my overall top choice would be Israel, except that Tel Aviv is too expensive and the retirement community near Haifa Iād want to move to has an incredibly long waiting list and Iād be unlikely to get a spot there before I was 80.
