fauxklore

To follow up on the noisy neighbors, the building manager sent them a letter. He told me that if it happens again, I am within my rights to call the police.


I had a very quiet day today. I spent part of it reading, part of it trying to deal with all the paperwork littering my house, and part of it napping. In the evening, I went out to dinner with a couple of friends - one local and one who’s in town for the World Science Fiction Convention which starts in a few days. On the way to the restaurant, I stopped at Nordstrom Rack and managed to buy a cute pair of pajamas. We at at Pisco y Nazca, which has excellent Peruvian food. I had a seasonal cocktail called El Pituco, which consisted of rye, apple cider cinnamon syrup, lemon juice, and fresh sage, followed by bistec (i.e. steak) con tacu taco. (Tacu tacu is one of my favorite Peruvian dishes - basically a rice and bean cake, that does a good job of soaking up juices of the main dish and accompanying sauces.) This was topped with lots of grilled onions and had a couple of moderately spicy sauces. For dessert, I had a dish called buenazo, which was essentially a brownie sundae, with kahlua chocolate mousse, candied walnuts, and lucuma ice cream. (I don’t know an English name for lucuma, but it’s a South American fruit.) Overall, it was a delicious meal and we all agreed we’d eat there again, preferably in the summer when it would make sense to try their ceviches.

I have a number of things to write about (so what else is new) but let’s start with festive food.

On those occasions when I spend Thanksgiving at home, it’s an excuse to cook a rare multi-course meal. This year I started with a green salad with lemon basill vinaigrette dressing.

For the main course, I roasted a turkey breast. This is easy - you just mix olive oil with seasonings (a little paprika, oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, except I was out of thyme and didn’t have time to go out to the store for more). You rub that under the skin of the turkey breast and then rub more on the skin. Then roast the whole thing in a 375 degree oven until a meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part reads 165 degrees. (It took a little over 2 hours.)

I wanted to go with Indiian (as in East Indian, not Native American) flavors for the side dishes. One of those was a potato casserole with spinach and chick peas, that is intended to be sort of like the filling of a samosa. It’s seasoned with garam masala and amchur (mango powder). and chilis. It wasn’t as spicy as I’d hoped and I’ve been remedying that as I heat up the leftovers.

My other side dish was going to be butternut squash theron. But the recipe called for coconut and, when I took the bag of shredded dried coconut out of the pantry, I discovered it had weevils! Despite one friend who suggested that just adds extra protein, er, no, I don’t do insects. So I just tossed the squash with olive oil, cumin, black pepper, and cinnamon and roasted it until tender.


I was also going to bake carrot bread, but that also calls for coconut, so I just skipped it. It’s not like I needed more food.

Here’s a picture of the plated turkey and sides:




I poured some shiraz to drink with that, which worked well.

For dessert, I had apple-cranberry crumble:




That came out a bit sweeter than I intended, probably because I used sugar bee apples instead of the granny smith apples I would usually have used. It was still good.


I’ve been eating leftovers ever since. Though I’ve now used up the leftovers I put in the refrigerator and can hold off eating those in the freezer for a few weeks, while I eat other stuff.


On top of that, Chanukah started last night. I’ve gone with boughten potato latkes this year, since I don’t feel like grating onions. (Grating potatoes is fine, but onions get painful quickly. No wonder my mother used to make me and my brother do those.) also bought a box of sufganiot, i.e. doughnuts from Astro Doughnuts and Fried Chicken in Falls Church. The challenge is trying to make them last eight days. I fear I am going to fail at that.





The undecorated ones are creme brûlée. The ones with powdered sugar and chocolate gelt on top are filled with jelly. Everything is tasty.


I’ve made plans for my next round of ProLon in a couple f weeks.

I keep meaning to post here and not getting around to it. Here’s an update.


Celebrity Death Watch: Carola Eisenberg died in March at the age of 103. She was the Dean of Students at MIT during at least part of my undergraduate days and was the first woman to hold that position. Adlai Stevenson III was a senator from Illinois through the 1970’s. Edward Barnes co-created Blue Peter. Neddy Smith was an Australian criminal, who I’d had on my ghoul pool list a couple of years ago but given up on. Art Metrano was an actor who appeared in the Police Academy movies. Audrey Haine was a pitcher and Joan Berger was an infielder in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Abigail Guzman was the founder of the Shining Path terrorist group in Peru. Don Collier was an actor in television westerns. Ida Nudel was an activist who was instrumental in freeing Soviet Jews. Norm MacDonald was an actor and comedian. Reuben Klamer invented board games, including The Game of Life. George Ferencz was a theatre director. Penny Harrington was the first woman to head a major police department in the U.S. (in Portland, Oregon). Clive Sinclair was pioneer in electronics, including personal computers. Jane Powell acted in a lot of MGM musicals. Ronald Probstein was a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, who did a lot of research on hydrodynamics and spacecraft reentry. Sarah Dash sang as part of Labelle. Melvin Van Peeble was a filmmaker, actor, and director. Peter Palmer played Li’l Abner on Broadway. Al Harrington was an actor, best known for appearing in Hawaii Five-O. Willie Garson was an actor known for appearing in Sex and the City. Jay Sandwich was a television director who won four Emmys. Roger Michell was a film director, whose work included Notting Hill. Pee Wee Ellis was a saxophonist. Bobby Zarem was a publicist for people ranging from Dustin Hoffman to Cher. Michael Tylo was a soap opera actor. Lonnie Smith was a jazz musician. George Frayne, better known as Commander Cody, was a pioneer ion alt-country music. Lars Vilks was a sculptor who founded his own micro country, Ladonia, due to a property dispute over the location of some of his work.

Willard Scott was best known as a TV weatherman. He had also been the creator of Ronald McDonald, but the company decided they wanted to use a thinner man as their mascot.

Harold Franklin was the first black student at Auburn University. The university removed everyone else from a wing of his dorm to prevent contact with him and refused to grant him his degree by creating various pretexts to refuse to accept his thesis. It took until 2001 before they acknowledged his having been their first black student, even though he enrolled in 1964. They finally granted his master’s degree in 2020 after he had retired from an academic career at other universities.

Anthony Hewish was a radio astronomer who won a Nobel prize. He is widely reviled for having appropriated the work of his graduate student, Jocelyn Bell, who discovered pulsars.

Rabbi Moshe Tendler was an expert on Jewish medical ethics. His writings on the subject of organ transplantation (which include discussion of the concept of brain death) have been very influential in the Orthodox Jewish world.

Tommy Kirk was a child actor in Disney films, including Old Yeller and The Shaggy Dog. His later career was, alas, destroyed by drug addiction.


Health Update: I think my rib is as close to fully healed as I’m going to be able to tell. However, I wrenched my left wrist painfully last week. How? I was just trying to open a a plastic bottle of Coke Zero. See, I knew soda was bad for me. (I eventually had to resort to using pliers.)

Rosh Hashanah Leftover: I forgot to mention that I had seen a video (about cooking fish) that mentioned five traditional foods for Rosh Hashanah. These are apparently based on having Aramaic names which sound similar to words in accompanying blessings. These are zucchini, black-eyed peas, leeks, Swiss chard, and dates. I wonder if this is the source of the Southern U.S. tradition of eating black-eyed peas for the (secular) new year. Also, Ashkenazim (i.e. Eastern European Jews) added carrots to the list, presumably because of availability.Of course, a better known tradition is to eat the head of a fish or a sheep. If you’re a vegetarian, you can just have a head of lettuce!


National Book Festival: The National Book Festival was the last week or so of September and was mostly virtual. I watched two presentations. One, on book construction (i.e. book structures and bookbinding) was mediocre, but might be of more interest to people less familiar with the topic. The other was about crossword puzzles and featured Will Shortz (of course) and Adrianne Raphel. They were entertaining and there was some fun crossword trivia included. I need to find time to go back and see what other presentations I want to watch.

Aptonym: The founder of Epik, the web host of choice for neoNazis and other right-wing lunatics is named Rob Monster. And that is, apparently, his real name.

Korean Food: I went out to dinner a few nights ago with a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while. We went to ChiMC, which is a Korean place near where I live, chosen for interestingness, outdoor seating, and easy parking. She got their signature fried chicken, but I am not so keen on fried chicken, so I opted for something called tteobokki, which consists of fish cakes and cylindrical rice cakes, in a spicy sauce. It was pretty good, assuming you like spicy food, but the texture of the rice cakes was a bit weird.


Mock Jury: I spent a day in a hotel conference room being a mock juror. I can’t write about any of the details, but it was interesting and I walked away with $200. I’d do it again. I’ve filled out an info form with another company that does what sound like similar focus groups. (And I felt like Susan Dennis who seems to do lots of focus groups.)


Speaking of Finding Time: The National Storytelling Festival is going on right now. But I have two things I need to finish by October 5th, so I won’t be watching any of it until at least Wednesday. Plus, of course, baseball is another distraction, what with my Red Sox facing the Source of All Evil in the Universe in the Wild Card playoff on Tuesday. I went to Saturday’s game at Nats Park, by the way, which was exciting, but in a way that I am sure was not good for my blood pressure. Fortunately, the BoSox pulled it out, but the eighth inning was decidedly scary. And why did Alex Cora leave Austin Davis in for the ninth? Admittedly, that led to the rare sight of a pitcher being deliberately walked (and then advancing to second base, a place he probably hadn’t seen since high school) but he raised the stress level in the bottom of the ninth by giving up a two run homer.

A Follow-up re: the Flushies: You can hear me interviewed on the You’re Invited podcast. The little segment where Mike talked with me starts just about 07:34, but if you listen to whole show, you can get an idea of what my social life is like. And, as a bonus, this is a photo of the shirt I was wearing (which is part of what we talked about):



I will fully admit I don’t know what all of the equations are supposed to be. And I especially don’t know why one of them is repeated on the shirt.

Celebrity Death Watch: Jackie Lane was an actress, best known for playing one of Dr. Who’s companions. John McAfee wrote anti-virus software before becoming a libertarian political candidate and tax evader (and, possibly, a murderer). Jack Ingram was a NASCAR driver. Mike Gravel was a senator from Alaska. Hiroaki Nakanishi was the president of Hitachi. John Lawton sang with Uriah Heep. Sir Nicholas Godson was the chairman of the London Stock Exchange from 1976 to 1986. Robert Downey, Sr was a film director and actor. Dilly Kumar was one of the most successful Bollywood actors. Jean Sadat was the first lady of Egypt through the 1970’s. Esther Bejarano co-founded the International Auschwitz Committee. Dick Tidrow pitched for the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Charlie Robinson was an actor, best known for playing the clerk of the court on Night Court. Edwin Edwards was a three-time governor of Louisiana. Jerry Lewis was the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee from 2005 to 2007. William F. Nolan wrote Logan’s run. Biz Markie was a rapper. Tom O’Connor hosted the British version of Name That Tune, as well as other game shows. Chuck E. Weiss inspired the song Chuck E.’s in Love. Steven Weinberg won a Nobel Prize in physics. Bob Moses was a civil rights advocate. Louise Fishman was an abstract artist. Dusty Hill was the bassist for ZZ Top. Bent Melchior was the chief rabbi of Denmark from 1969 to 1996. Richard Lamm was the governor of Colorado from 1975-1987. Carl Levin was a senator from Michigan from 1979 to 2015. Alvin Ing performed in several musicals, including playing the role of the Shogun’s mother in Pacific Overtures, which means he sang the song, “Chrysanthemum Tea,” which has some of my favorite Sondheim rhymes. (“It’s an herb that’s superb for disturbances at sea.”) Paul Cotton was a singer-songwriter for Poco. J. R. Richard pitched for the Houston Astros in the 1970’s. Herbert Schlosser was an executive at NBC and responsible for creating Saturday Night Live. Jane Withers was a former child star. Markie Post was an actress, best known for playing a public defender on Night Court. Bobby Bowden was a college football coach. Tony Esposito played hockey for the Chicago Blackhawks. Nancy Griffith was a Grammy winning country folk singer.

Donald Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense from 1975-1977 and 2001-2006. His memos were known within the Pentagon as “snowflakes” because of the volume with which they fell.

Pete Teets was the Undersecretary of the Air Force and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office from 2001 to 2005. I briefed him several times when I first came to Washington. I found him intelligent and committed to improving how we acquire space systems. (He died in December, but I seem to have missed having read about that until now.)

Renee Simonot was an actress, probably better known as the mother of Catherine Deneuve. She was 109 years old when she died and earned me 13 ghoul pool points.

Jackie Mason was a comedian and actor. He started his career as a rabbi and then played the Borscht Belt. I never cared much for his humor, personally, but several members of my family liked him.

Ron Popeil was an inventor of interesting things nobody really needed but bought because of his marketing. Admit it - you know someone who had a vvegematic or a pocket fisherman or the in-egg scrambler. The latter was a particular favorite of the gentleman with whom I conducted the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling.

Neal Conan was an NPR correspondent. He was a producer of All Things Considered and was the senior host of Talk of the Nation from 2001 to 2013. I did not know until reading his obituary that he had been married to Liane Hansen from 1982 to 2011.


Storyteller Death Watch: Arthuretta Holmes Martin was an excellent Virginia-based storyteller and activist. She died in early July of COVID-19. Please, get vaccinated.

I only learned recently that Wanna Zinsmaster died in December. She was in her mid-90’s, so that isn’t particularly shocking. But she played a major role in my development as a storyteller, as she organized a weekend workshop with Doug Lippman and Jay O’Callahan that I went to shortly after I had first stumbled upon storytelling. And I went to a couple of other workshops with Doug at her condo. I wish she had pulled together a story I heard her work on about her service in the Navy during World War II. While it had been some time since I’d last seen her, she was someone I will always treasure having known.


Ex-coworker Death Watch: I finally had a chance to catch up on reading the obituaries in the monthly newsletter of my former employer. I have only a vague memory of Nancy Reber, though I have a definite mental picture of her. I have a stronger (and, alas, somewhat conflicted) memory of John Stubstad, who I worked with briefly (after he had left the company) on a project that went nowhere (justifiably so, in my opinion). I relied a lot on information Dolores Modolo gave me in one of my jobs. The person whose obit I read who I worked with most closely was Nate Rosenblatt, who I spent a lot of time traveling to Boulder with in the late 1980’s into the 1990’s. He once had me teach a three-part class on some of the technical material I worked on and wrote a very nice note to my management, saying something like “everybody who attended left as a better engineer.”


A Yiddish Renaissance: The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene put on an excellent on-line concert of excerpts from several of their shows. Adam B. Shapiro was as adorable as ever and there were several other prominent actors and musicians involved. The big news is that their upcoming productions include an adaptation of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis with music by Ricky Ian Gordon, a well-known modern opera composer who happens to be from my home town.


Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens: I went with a friend to try to see the lotus flowers and water lilies almost a month ago. It was beastly hot out and, because we went in the afternoon, most of the flowers were not in their full glory. Oh, well, it was still a nice walk. We went back to Virginia and retreated to frozen margaritas at a restaurant in Ballston.


TCC Meetings: The Washington chapter of the Travelers Century Club had an actual in-person meeting a couple of weeks ago. It was great seeing people and hearing about travels past and planned. There have also been virtual TCC meetings (over zoom). I went to one today about Greenland, which has been on my list for a while.


Storytelling: All three shows I was in recently went well. It was especially fun to perform in front of a live audience and I was pleased that a few non-local friends tuned in to the lifestream.

I also learned a few things about my process in developing stories from the two personal stories I told for the first time. For the Okay Boomer show, I knew where I wanted my story to go - essentially, to conclude that, despite my disdain for the way they dress, millennials have a lot of values I approve of. And I knew that a lot of the story would have to do with how clothing defined my identity over the years. But I went through a number of different ways I could start the story - from conversations with a friend where we mocked the clothes the younger generation wear to remembering how we had to learn to live with freshman when I was a junior in college to the futility of clothes shopping as an adult - before realizing I could bring in Julie Albright, the American Girls doll of the 1970’s to lead to my tween wardrobe.

In the case of the travel story I told (that was for the live show), I didn’t really figure out the ending until maybe 10 minutes before getting up on stage. So I found it interesting that a few people commented on how polished the story was.


IAJGS: I went to the virtual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. The best presentations I went to were one by Michael Morgenstern on using The Forverts (a Yiddish newspaper), even if you don’t speak Yiddish and one by Steve Morse on preparing for the 1950 census (primarily focused on how to find enumeration districts). There are several other presentations I need to watch over the next month or so. Also, it turned out that the problem with the mentoring appointments was that the appointment system was fundamentally broken and was sending requests to everyone, not to specific people, because it was really geared to the staff of the commercial booths. I was able to help a few people with Lithuanian records, so I felt like I was reasonably useful.


Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience: I went with a friend yesterday to see this show. We had a little trouble finding the venue, but we’d left plenty of time. I’ve been to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam a couple of times and seen various other of his paintings, including a large exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art a while back. I have also read his letters to his brother. So I didn’t expect to learn much from the exhibit, though I did enjoy several of the quotes from his letters that it used. Fortunately, the parts of the exhibit that animate the paintings were more worthwhile. There was one with a vase of flowers, morphing between the different floral paintings. And, at the end, there was a huge room with animations of several painting and accompanying music. I thought it was worth seeing, but still pales in comparison to the real thing. I was also rather disappointed that they repeated the discredited theory that he was color blind.

By the way, afterwards, we went to have lunch at Immigrant Food. They were ding restaurant Week so got a three course meal for $22 (plus tax and tip and, of course, whatever you spent on drinks). I had white sangria with my meal, which consisted of delicious harissa hummus, the Madam VP Heritage Bowl (coconut chicken curry with plantains, potatoes, pineapple, spinach, and chick peas), and flan. It was a nice change of pace, but I would order a different entree next time. (I’d had their Old Saigon sandwich the other time I was there - essentially a somewhat spicy banh mi.)


Still to Come: I took a driving trip around south central Pennsylvania. That merits its own post. I am going on another trip this week, so may end up combining the two.

Random odds and ends, though I am still way behind.


Beisbol: All of the teams I care about are doing horribly. The only team with a worse record than my beloved BoSox is Pittsburgh (who I don’t really care about). The Nats, the Giants, and the Royals are all cellar dwellers and the only reason the Mets aren’t is because they play in the same division as the Nats. Even worse, the Source of All Evil in the Universe is In second in the AL East, which is, as always, a bad sign for the universe in general. Sob.

Quick Political Note of the Day: I am not watching much of the Democratic Convention, but I couldn’t resist watching the roll call. I have two questions: 1) What on earth was the woman from Iowa wearing? And 2) Does anybody actually think of calamari when they think of Rhode Island? I could see clams, but tentacles? Really? (Note: when I think of Rhode Island, I mostly think of johnnycakes and coffee milk.

Other Places to Consider Living: I should probably also look at Rhode Island (both Newport and Providence) and maybe Southern Connecticut, though the latter suffers from lack of great airport access.

Looking at Boston-area real estate (on-line) is depressing. I am spoiled where I am now, with a lot of space (1100 square feet) and full size washer and dryer in my unit, as well as various yuppie amenities in my condo complex (aside from the expected like gym, pool, and sauna, there is, for example, a golf simulator). It looks like prices in, say, Somerville, would beat least half again as much as what I would be likely to get for my condo, with taxes about double what they are here and none of those amenities, not that I really make much use of them. To be fair, HOA fees are about half what mine are now. But still …

And, no, I don’t know why I am even looking since I have no intention of moving for at least 3 years.

10 Rules For Pairing Potato Chips: I forgot to write about this virtual play I saw a douple of weeks ago. The premise was interesting enough. The world expert on crispology, the art of what potato chips to serve with any given main course, has to avert a diplomatic crisis when a White House menu has both potato chips and French fries on the menu to accompany hamburgers. An agent of a rival country is opposing her, as is another expert on potato chip pairing. She is assisted by her young protégé. This should have been funny, but it didn’t quite work for me.

Code Names: We’ve continued to play Code Names a couple of times a week. I’ve noticed that when we are teaming up, we most often do it along gender lines.

Wednesday night, I thought I had given a rather clever clue, by using “Frenchman” to clue the words “cheese” and “monkey.” Alas, my teammate had never heard the phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkey,” so it didn’t work.

Film Talk: I went to a n on-line talk with Eric Anjou, director of Deli Man and other Jewish-themed movies, including a couple of documentaries about Jewish music, last night. He spoke well, though he was wrong about several things. For example, he claimed that Katz’s is the only Jewish deli left in Manhattan. Er, no, there’s Ben’s, Pastrami Queen (which is opening a branch at the old Fine and Shapiro’s), and, my favorite, 2nd Avenue Deli, as well as others I don’t generally go to. He also said that Kenny and Zuke’s in Portland is gone, which is not true.

Celebrity Death Watch: Clive Cussler explored underseas and wrote adventure novels that sold well, despite being astonishingly badly written. Michael Hertz was a graphic artist, best known for the 1979 New York City subway map. Joe Coulombe founded Trader Joe’s. Johnny Antonelli pitched for the New York (later San Francisco) Giants. Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric for about 20 years. James Lipton hosted Inside the Actor’s Studio.

Freeman Dyson was a physicist and mathematician. Interestingly, he never earned a Ph.D. He was an original thinker, particularly known for work in quantum electrodynamics and nuclear propulsion. He was also on my ghoul pool list and earned me 23 points (11 for being in that position on my list, plus 12 for uniqueness), which has put me into second place for now.


Pre-Reunion Reception: My 40th college reunion is coming up at the end of May and there was a reception Thursday night to stir up interest among reunion year grads. The food (at Urbana in Dupont Circle) was just okay – cheese and crackers, pizza, mac and cheese – with wine and beer on offer (I had one glass of prosecco, followed by sparkling water). The cake for dessert was better. The conversation was much better, covering a wide range of subjects. There was only one other person from my class there, but it didn’t really matter. One of the things I live about MIT people is that we all tend to be passionate about whatever we do and that tends to make for interesting socializing.


Food Pornography: I didn’t talk about pre-theatre food last week, but there were a couple of restaurant meals I should have mentioned.

There are several Thai restaurants in downtown Silver Spring and I had dinner Friday night at Amina Thai. Frankly, it was just okay, with rude service and insufficiently spicy drunken noodles with tofu. I wouldn’t go back there again, especially as there are at least three other Thai places nearby to try.

A friend and I had brunch at Dirty Habit in the Kimpton Hotel Monaco on Sunday. I had scrambled eggs with home fried potatoes, turkey bacon, and English muffin, which is (admittedly) not a very challenging meal, but was done well. And their coffee was reasonably good, as was the service.

This weekend, I went with a friend to lunch at Coopers Hawk in Reston. I had their ahi tuna salad, which was basically a green salad with pineapple and avocado and sesame vinaigrette, served with seared ahi tuna and pickled ginger. It was very good, with the salad dressing just the right level of spiciness. I had a chocolate covered strawberry and a cup of coffee for dessert. Overall, I was favorably impressed and would go back if I had some reason to be in the area.

Ordinary Days: The reason we were eating lunch in Reston is that we went to see Ordinary Days at NextStop Theatre in Herndon. This is probably Adam Gwon’s best known work and is more of a song cycle than an actual play. The story revolves around four youngish people (mid to late 20’s I’d guess) in New York. Warren is cat-sitting for an artist who’s in jail. Deb is a grad student. Jason and Claire are a couple who have just starting living together, but perhaps don’t really know each other as well as they might. Deb meets Warren when she loses her notes for her dissertation and he finds them and emails her. Their lives also intersect with Jason and Claire’s in a surprising way.

Anyway, I had seen a previous production of this show, which I think is a lovely and intimate one. I had, astonishingly, completely forgotten a major plot point which explains pretty much everything about why Claire is struggling within her relationship with Jason. As a result, I sobbed through much of the song "I’ll Be Here.”" Overall, I thought the show was done well and I was particularly impressed with Carl Williams, who played Warren. One thing we were talking about afterwards was how great it is that we have so many small theatres we can go to for inexpensive theatre, instead of spending a couple of hundred bucks at the Kennedy Center.


Easy Women Smoking Loose Cigarettes: I went to see this world premiere play at Signature Theatre on Sunday. It’s their 60th world premiere and part of a program to showcase works by female playwrights (with female directors). The story involves the people living in a house in Florida. Marian and her second husband, Richard, have taken in two adolescents – his pregnant niece and a boy next door. Then Marian’s 30-something daughter shows up with her own crisis and demands for attention. Marian tries to make the family bond, first by all flossing their teeth together and later by doing exercises that involve letting negative energy out through their private parts.

Frankly, I didn’t know what to make of this. Parts of it (especially Marian’s exercises) are very funny. And there’s a very sweet scene between the teenagers. But Lee (Marian’s daughter) is thoroughly unlikeable and her relationship with Marian is didn’t really work for me. On the other hand, the ending was more satisfying than I expected. I guess my best summary is that I am glad I saw it, but I hesitate to recommend it. As for the performances, they were all competent, but I was most impressed by Susan Rome as Marian. That may have a lot to do with the material each of the actors had to work with.

Fall for the Book Storytelling: Better Said Than Done did a free storytelling show Thursday night as part of the Fall for the Book Festival in Fairfax, Virginia. The theme was True Lies: Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them. I went with a story that was about various members of my family and lies they told, primarily about how old they were. It went well, as did the show as a whole. At the end, the audience was asked to guess who was lying and who was telling the truth. The one lie I had in my story was pretty obvious, so nobody had any trouble guessing my story was true. But a couple of people did snooker the crowd.

Escaped Alone: I went to see Caryl Churchill’s play, Escaped Alone. at Signature Theatre on Saturday afternoon. I barely made it there as I had flaked out on the way there and made a wrong turn. Given how often I make that trip, I have no idea what was going on in my head.

Anyway, I did make it just in time and am glad I did. The play was intriguing, albeit confusing. The premise is that a woman named Mrs. Jarrett (played very smoothly by Valerie Leonard) is passing by a house where three women are sitting and drinking tea and is invited in to join them. Their conversation is wide-ranging, but each scene is interrupted by Mrs. Jarrett giving a monologue involving some sort of disaster (collapsed buildings, floods, disease, famine). Most of those monologues mix in a certain level of dark humor, e.g. most food being diverted from people to television cooking programs. The conversations the women have touch on some odd aspects of their lives. One of them spent six years in prison for stabbing her husband to death. Another is terrified of cats. The third is apparently agoraphobic. I thought that those scenes took place over several weeks, but it was ambiguous and some people seemed to think it was a single afternoon. After the play (which is only about an hour long), they served tea and had a video about the play. Since Churchill refuses to speak publicly about her work, it’s not like anything much was going to be revealed, but it was an interesting play to see.


Kellari: A friend had gotten a groupon deal at a good price for brunch at Kellari Taverna so we went on Sunday. The three course prix fixe menu includes unlimited drinks, which was pretty much wasted on us. I did drink about half of a mimosa, but that was it. I had spanakopita (which was excellent), tuna salad (nicely seared tuna, with a lot of salad), and cheesecake (good, but I have had better). Both the food and service were good, but I wouldn’t want to pay full price to eat there.

Celebrity Death Watch: Larry Siegel wrote TV and movie parodies for Mad Magazine. David Koch funded right wing political causes. Clora Bryant was a jazz trumpeter. Mitch Podolak co-founded the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Vince Naimoli founded the Tampa Bay Rays. Isabel Toledo was a fashion designer, who designed dresses for Michelle Obama among others. Jessi Combs was a race car driver and television presenter. Frances Crowe was a peace activist (and on my back-up ghoul pool list, alas.) Brad Linaweaver was a science fiction writer. Valerie Harper was an actress, most famous for playing the title role in the TV series, Rhoda. (She was also someone I had considered for the ghoul pool, but so it goes.)


Heritage Brewing: I had dinner with flyer talk friends last Wednesday night at Heritage Brewing in Clarendon. The food I had (a turkey burger and salad) was okay, but nothing special. The beer, however, was quite good. I got a flight of their own brews (i.e. four 3 oz glasses). I particularly liked the Revolution (an amber ale) and American Expedition (a ginger wheat ale). I was less impressed with the other two beers I had, to the extent of not remembering what they were, though I am fairly sure at least one was an IPA because I always get IPAs. The atmosphere was cozy and the conversation (largely about travel) was good, too. Overall, a nice evening out.

Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me: Thursday night, a friend and I went to Wolf Trap to see a taping of the NPR show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. There were some issues at the beginning of the evening with the sound system, which were mostly resolved after the intro jokes, which, alas, don’t end up on the actual broadcast. You can, by the way, hear that broadcast at Wait Wait for August 31, 2019. The panelists were Negin Farsad, Peter Grosz, and Faith Salle, none of whom I was particularly familiar with. (Hosts Peter Sagal and Bill Kurtis are, of course quite familiar.) The guest was chef Jose Andres, whose restaurants include some of my favorites in the D.C. area (Zaytinya, China Chilcano, Jaleo, etc.) and who is also significant for his humanitarian efforts feeding victims of natural disasters. His English is a little hard to understand, but wasn’t a huge barrier. (I should note that we had been reseated by that segment to a part of the pavilion with better sound.) Overall, it was a fun evening.

National Book Festival: I volunteered at the National Book Festival again this year. That also involved spending a couple of hours on Tuesday evening at the training session. My actual shift was Saturday afternoon, from 12:30 to 5:30. I was a Hall Chaperone, which means I stood around with an "Ask Me" sign attempting to answer questions. I was on the lower level and stood near the escalator into Hall B, which meant that I answered about a hundred times more questions than the other hall chaperones in the area, who weren’t quite as visible. (I think it’s more fun if you are busy, so this was a deliberate choice.)

The most common questions were where to find book sales (since the sign for that area was obscured by a pillar) and where to find the two children’s stages. A lot of people needed to be directed to where specific authors were signing, as the line numbers were only on the app and not on the printed program. Also (and this is not news) the Convention Center maps suck. My most interesting observation was that all of the people who asked about the Veteran’s History Project (which was at one of the Library of Congress exhibit areas) were African-American women. Also, there were several people who had no idea what there was to do on the exhibit floor. I told them about the exhibitors and the book sales and the Parade of States and the stages. Overall, it was fun, but exhausting as I was on my feet for the whole time.


The Rest of the Long Weekend: I had good intentions re: housework, but was too tired to get through nearly as much as I had hoped to. I did, however, get some critical errands done and managed to read most of the Sunday Washington Post. I also partly caught up on puzzles, but I am still a couple of weeks behind. I got out of the house every day – Sunday to do a quick grocery run and Monday for a rehearsal for an upcoming storytelling show. Apparently, "oak tag" is very much a regionalism as none of the other people there knew what it was. (For those who don’t know, it is thinner than poster board and the color of manila folders. It was a mainstay of my school days.)

Now I am busy with work and real life. Yesterday involved a dentist appointment (getting two old fillings replaced plus prep for a crown). And today is my birthday.

The Indie 500: Saturday was The Indie 500, which is an annual DC crossword tournament. The name refers to the organizers being independent crossword constructors. I’ve managed to compete in this every year, which is a bit surprising given that it is inevitably the same weekend as two dozen other things I want to do. Just imagine you hear me muttering something about priorities.

Puzzle 1 was a straightforward one, with a theme full of the sort of wordplay I enjoy. I solved it cleanly in 7:17, which I think was a little slower than it should have been. I will blame the lack of speed on being sleep deprived. I should probably mention that all of the themes were sort of travel related which is, of course, right in my wheelhouse.

The traditional pie arrived at that point and included coconut custard, which is as good as it gets without a time machine. (Nesselrode pie from Custom Bakers would be better, but is long extinct, alas.)

That lack of speed was even more apparent on Puzzle 2. The theme wasn’t difficult, but didn’t particularly resonate with me. And I had a few moments of hesitation regarding the fill. As a result, it took me 12:19, while it should have only taken me about 10 minutes. (Note that the top competitors finish a puzzle like this in maybe 5 minutes.) It was not helped by them having left out clue 75, which was read out. How did the test solvers miss that? At least I was still error-free.

I continued being accurate, but plodding through Puzzle 3. In this case, it took me a while to grasp the theme. Once I did, I thought it was particularly clever and I’ll say it was my favorite of the day. While my time of 17:05 was middling, it is better than making mistakes. (See the comments for a spoiler in rot-13.)

Over the lunch break, I went with a few people to Poki DC, conveniently around the corner. Getting some protein and upping my blood caffeine level apparently helped quite a bit, as I more or less zoomed through Puzzle 4 in 14:47. That is, of course, a bit of an abuse of the word "zoomed" given that the top solvers finished in 5 or 6 minutes, but it was a big improvement over the morning. The theme was the type I tend to be good at, which also helped. More importantly, I was still solving cleanly.

And, yes, the perfect solving continued through Puzzle 5, the last regular puzzle of the day. I didn’t find the theme particularly interesting, but it was easy enough to grasp. I finished the puzzle in 7:14, which I thought was pretty respectable.


While we were waiting for scoring to complete, we played a game that involved identifying countries through various clues. Some of those involved anagrams, which are hard to do quickly and, for me, something I either see immediately or never. On the other hand, geography is one of my good trivia categories, so I can quickly answer clues like the location of the Blue Hole.

They did something experimental this year and had the non-finalists do Puzzle 6 before bringing in the top 3 in each track. I thought this worked well. The puzzle was challenging and I had to switch from the inside track clues to the outside track ones to finish it. (The inside track is for people who have finished in the top 25% in a crossword tournament within the past 5 years. The grid for both tracks is the same, but the clues differ.)

I needed to meet a friend at 6, so left at that point (i.e. without watching the actual finals) so as to not be disruptive while slipping out. All in all, it was a fun event and good to see people I don’t see often enough, as well as meeting a few new ones.

So how have I done overall in the Indie 500? Here are my results:

2019 – 83/195 (57th percentile)
2018 – 100 / 164 (39th percentile)
2017 – 64 / 128 (50th percentile)
2016 – 60 / 117 (49th percentile)
2015 – 61 / 100 (39th percentile)

Note for next year - be sure to caffeinate adequately in the morning.

Oyamel: My friend, Teri, made a dinner reservation at Oyamel, because we had tickets to see Describe the Night at Woolly Mammoth, which is more or less around the corner. When she got to the restaurant, she went to check what time the show started – and discovered it was cancelled. I’d bought the tickets on Goldstar, checked my email, and saw the cancellation notice, as well as a refund notice from Goldstar (whose customer service is quite good about this sort of thing). I was already in the city, at least, so it wasn’t horribly annoying. And, frankly, I was tired enough to be glad for an early night. (We found out later that an actor was ill. Do they not have understudies?)

There was no reason not to continue with dinner, however. We shared a dish of stuffed plantains with a chili arbol sauce and brussels sprouts with pumpkin seeds. I got a lengua taco (i.e. tongue) and she got some other sort of taco. I drank a cocktail with the cute name of Nick and BacaNora. (Bacanora is similar to mezcal, but less smoky.) Everything was quite good. We also had a brief conversation with two women at the next table about theatre and other things to do.

JGSGW Annual Potluck Luncheon: I had to be up early on Sunday to cook for the annual Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington members’ potluck luncheon. I made cold peanut noodles, largely because I had all the ingredients on hand. The event was in downtown Silver Spring and I contemplated metroing there, but decided that it would be an okay drive on a Sunday. And it was, except for the part where I thought I knew where I was going and had to circle around the downtown area to get to the parking garage. Still, I had left plenty of time and it all worked well.

The speaker, Emily Garber, talked about evidence and how you can prove or disprove family lore. She had a couple of interesting examples, e.g. a claim that a Shawnee chief in Ohio was a white man.

Which gives me an excuse to talk about a particularly ridiculous story in my family. I think the source of this was my great-aunt Bernice, but it is possible someone else told it to my mother, who told it to my brother. Anyway, the claim was that my great-great-grandfather, Berel MAKOWER, lived to be 100 and was murdered on his birthday by Hitler himself. Aside from there not being any evidence that Hitler personally killed anyone, there are two problems with this. Namely, my great-grandmother, Malka Ryfka MAKOWER, married Enoch Ber SZWARCBORT in 1896 and their marriage record (which I have a copy of) says that her father, Berel, was already deceased. And the death certificate of my great-great-grandmother, Byna MAKOWER, from Pultusk in 1909, shows that her husband, Berel, was deceased. So, even though I haven’t found his death certificate, I can be reasonably sure he died long before Hitler came to power. And, while it isn’t impossible that Byna was a lot younger than he was, it seems unlikely he made it to 100.

Movie Night: Monday night, I went to see the new documentary The Spy Behind Home Plate at the Cinema Arts Theatre in Fairfax, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker, Aviva Kempner. The film is about Moe Berg, who was one of the more interesting Jewish baseball players. He was known for his prowess with languages, which allegedly led someone to say about him that "he knows 12 languages and can’t hit in any of them." More significantly, he became a member of the OSS during World War II. I’ll say more about the movie itself when I do my quarterly rundown. The Q&A was interesting mostly for learning that a major source was archival footage from Princeton from an earlier attempt at making a movie about him. She also emphasized that the OSS deliberately drew people from all walks of life, which was part of the reason for their success. All in all, it was an interesting evening.

Bowen McCauley Dance: I went to a dance performance at the Kennedy Center on Friday night because one of the dancers in the company is the son of some storytelling friends (who were also there, as was another of my friends). I was impressed with his athleticism, which was particularly noticeable in the first piece as he had a lengthy solo in it.

I have noted before that I don’t really understand modern dance well enough to write about it. I realized that the problem I have describing these pieces is that they are largely about emotion, not narrative. The most interesting was the third piece, Lissajous, which was commissioned by Drexel University’s School of Engineering with music by Jordan Alexander Key titled To Say Pi. The development of this involved putting sensors on dancers to collect accelerometer data. The connection to Lissajous figures (which have to do with the intersection of sinusoidal curves) wasn’t really clear. The relation of the music to pi was clarified in the talkback, with the composer explaining his use of time signatures that had approximations to pi, e.g. 22/7. As a mechanical engineer by training, this appealed to my nerdiest instincts.

JGSJW Trip to Philadelphia: The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington organized a trip to Philadelphia on Sunday. I decided to take the train up the day before, because I like Philadelphia. The weather was gorgeous and I spent a few hours walking around the city center. Philly has the same advantages and disadvantages as D.C. – a rich cultural life and a walkable urban core but too far inland for my tastes. My original plans fell apart but I was able to get together with another friend for dinner at Hershel’s at the Reading Terminal Market. Their matzoh ball soup was excellent – not too salty and no dill. Their chopped liver was okay, but a bit bland. They appear to have only half-sour pickles, while I prefer full sours.

I stayed ate Philadelphia 201 Hotel, which, I believe, used to be the Sheraton. I was just about to go to bed when the fire alarm went off. The PA told people not to evacuate yet, so it was just an annoying 20 minutes or so of repeated announcements until they cleared the alarm.

Anyway, the JGSGW event included a (too short) tour of the National Museum of American Jewish History. I need to go back and spend an entire day there. We went across to Mikve Israel Synagogue for lunch and talks. The food was pretty good. The first talk was by the rabbi, about the history of the synagogue and was reasonably entertaining. The other speakers were from the Historical Society and from the Special Collections Library at Drexel University, so were more directly genealogy related. But the real thrill was that I got to meet a cousin who I have corresponded with sporadically for ages (and who is a facebook friend). She had pictures of my great-grandmother and one of my ggm’s sisters. And we had lots of interesting conversation. All in all, it was a worthwhile, though lengthy, day.

Speaking of Genealogy: I gave a talk to the genealogy club at work on Tuesday afternoon about my trip to Lithuania (and Latvia and Belarus) last summer. About half of it had to do with research I did beforehand, while the rest was about what I found out during the trip. Overall, I think it went well and I got a couple of nice emails afterwards.