fauxklore

Yes, I am behind on things. I am planning to get caught up real soon now.

Books:

Thirteen books this quarter! That’s the pace I should be aiming for all the time.

1. Amos Towles, Rules of Civility. This was a book club book and I think those of us who voted for it did so because we’d all liked the author’s A Gentleman in Moscow so much. This novel had some moments, but was not nearly as charming as his other one. The story involves a young woman working as a secretary in New York who has a chance meeting with a man and ends up being thrown (along with her roommate) into the whirl of high society. She ends up juggling a literary career, several men, and her general zest for life. But nothing much really happens and, frankly, I didn’t think the book was very interesting.
   
   
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. I read this in high school and didn’t particularly like it then. I decided to reread it because a couple of friends were discussing it on Facebook. I still didn’t like it. All of the characters are selfish and entitled. Gatsby's obsession with Daisy is creepy and not really adequately explained. Tom Buchanan is a bad husband - and a bad person, in general. And everyone else (especially Nick) is just hanging around partying with no depth. I was glad to have forgotten most of it in the past 45+ years.
   
   
3. Alexander McCall Smith, The Peppermint Tea Chronicles. It’s always enjoyable to spend time with the 44 Scotland Street characters. Dominica conspires to get Angus new clothes, Bertie and Ronald obtain a dog, Stewart appears to be embarking on a new romance, and Pat is definitely falling for Matthew and Elspeth’s new au pair. In other words, nothing major happens, but it is all very cozy and delightful. Highly recommended.
   
   
4. Janice P. Nimura, Daughters of the Samurai. This was another book club selection. It tells the story of three Japanese girls (originally five, but two didn’t stay long) who were sent to the United States in the late 19th century to go to school and bring modern education for girls back to Japan. This was a fascinating book and I learned a lot both about Japan and about the evolution of women’s education in the U.S.
   
   
5. Pete Hamill, Snow in August. This is a very strange book. The story involves an Irish-Catholic boy in Brooklyn who befriends a local rabbi, who has a complicated Holocaust-related history. He also incurs the wrath of a local tough guy, who beats him up badly. The writing is absorbing and I enjoyed reading this - up to the last couple of chapters, which takes a very strange turn that I didn’t find entirely satisfying.
   
   
6. Alexander McCall Smith, The Department of Sensitive Crimes. This is a new series, in a new genre, called Scandinavian blanc (to contrast with Scandinavian noir). The idea is to have a special police group that handles oddities. For example, a young woman’s boyfriend disappears, but he was actually imaginary all along. The book is moderately entertaining, but not really as funny as I think it was intended to be. I might read the next one in the series if I find it used, but I am unlikely to go out of my way for it.
   
   
7. Sally Rooney, Normal People. This was another book club book. The plot, such as it is, involves two people in a small town in Ireland who enter into a relationship, that sort of continues as they go to college. The woman has been abused and is a masochist, while the man suffers depression, partly related to his insecure social status. Both of them have other screwed-up relationships with other people. Overall, an unlikeable book about unlikeable people. I rarely say this, but I absolutely hated this book.
   
   
   
8. Sisterhood of Congregation Beth El, From Manna to Mousse. This is a congregational cookbook from the 1960’s. The recipes are predictably awful, with lots of prepackaged ingredients. There are also some that are unpredictably awful, like the one that uses baby food banana in a marinade for chicken. I find this sort of thing amusing, albeit unusable.
   
   
9. Dick Francis, Second Wind. A meteorologist, who often provides weather predictions to horse trainers, accepts an invitation to fly through a hurricane, and gets entangled in mysterious goings on on a Caribbean island. Like all Dick Francis heroes, he has remarkable powers of survival and recovery, bounding back from a couple of near-fatal incidents. At any rate, Francis is a reliable escapist author, with strong plotting and plenty of excitement. Recommended.
   
   
10. Dr. Seuss, You’re Only Old Once. I got this from a friend who is thinning his shelves. The silly rhymes and drawings are typical of Dr. Seuss. But I was disappointed to see yet another take on aging that is all about health issues. I will probably pass it along to someone else.
    
    
11. Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation. Yes, I know every else read this 20 or so years ago. Frankly, it didn’t tell me much that I didn’t already know. Low-wage workers are exploited, factory farming and meat processing are bad, etc. The pandemic has, of course, added new dimensions, but none of this was news even when this book was written. It’s still reasonably worth reading - just not the revolutionary work it was portrayed as.
    
    
12. Nancy Pickard, Twilight. Two people have been killed where a rail-trail intersects a highway. Jenny Cain agrees to look for possible solutions to improve safety, but has to fit this in with her efforts to put on a Halloween Festival for her small town charitable foundation. That’s all interesting enough and plenty of exciting and mysterious thing happen. Unfortunately, the conclusion is something of a cop-out.
    
    
13. Marcus Barbeau. The Golden Phoenix and Other French-Canadian Fairy Tales. I’m lucky if I find one or two tellable stories in a book of folk tales. This one, however, was excellent. I found all of the stories tellable, though there are a couple I am unlikely to bother learning. I have, in fact, already told one of them at a story swap. I also appreciated the chapter at the end that discusses the (mostly European) origins of the stories and where they were collected.
    
    

Movies: Only one this month, which was via an AARP free on-line Movies for Grownups showing.

1. Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day: Miss Pettigrew has been fired from her job as a governess and the employment agency no longer wants to help her, so she picks up a slip of paper and presents herself as a personal assistant to an actress. Surprisingly, they hit it off and Miss Pettigrew is swept up in a social whirl. She gets a makeover, sorts out her employer’s love life, and finds a romance of her own. I thought this was a charming movie and well cast (with Frances McDormand in the title role).
   

Goals:

I entered the Style Invitational 3 more times (brining me up to 5 out of my goal of 6 for the year). I even got ink for one of them.

I’ve read 30 books, out of my goal of 52 for the year.

I got another 4 stories (2 personal stories and 2 folktales) into tellable condition, so I exceeded my goal of 4 new stories for the year.

I still need to do a bunch of organizing tasks and do a used bookstore run. Sigh.

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.

I will get to the year-end wrap-up in the next couple of days, but, for now, here is what I read and saw in the last quarter.

4th Quarter Books:

1. Heather Morris, The Tattooist of Auschwitz. This was a book club choice, but I ended up missing that particular meeting, so I am not sure how the discussion went. I had been hesitant to read it, given the subject matter, but I am glad I did because it tells a good, albeit gruesome and somewhat ahistorical, story. Yes, there are numerous details that can’t be correct, but Morris did not claim to be writing actual history. There is emotional truth in this story of two people struggling to carry on a romance amid the horrors of Auschwitz. And that made it ultimately an inspiring story of humanity. Recommended.
   
   
2. K. David Harrison, The Last Speakers. Harrison is a linguist who specializes in endangered languages, which is a subject I find fascinating. I particularly appreciated his emphasis on the need for the ethnic groups he studies to retain control over their cultural heritage, even as he documents their songs and stories. This is a good introduction to his work, but it is also a bit depressing given that there are so few speakers of some languages left.
   
   
3. Selected Stories of Sholom Aleichem.For those who are not familiar with Sholom Aleichem, he was sometimes described as the Yiddish Mark Twain. Many of the stories in here are based on traditional humor, e.g. one in which a man switches hats with an official and, therefore, decides the person he sees in a mirror is the official, not himself. There are a few stories about Tevye the Dairyman, of which the most interesting is the unfamiliar one of how Tevye got into the dairy business in the first place. At any rate, there are a few stories in this collection which I think will be worth telling (with appropriate credit).
   
   
4. Elizabeth Strout, The Burgess Boys. This novel has to do with the relationship between three siblings (two brothers and a sister) and what happens when the sister’s son is accused of a hate crime. The family dynamics are interesting, and the characters change as the events unfold. This was a rare book club selection that everyone liked. Recommended.
   
   
5. Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, The Serial Killer. I liked a lot of things about this book, particularly the insight into Nigerian culture as one sister finds herself in the role of helping to cover up for the actions of the other. I will note that I had to look up several words for clothing items and foods. However, I wanted the ending to work out differently, so I am hesitant to recommend it whole-heartedly.
   
   
6. Rich Cohen, Sweet and Low. Cohen’s mother was disinherited from the fortunes made in the artificial sweetener business, but he still tells an interesting story of the rise and fall of the little pink packets that are still found on most diner tables. I found this an entertaining read, full of Jewish family dynamics with a touch of mob activity. Cohen could have used better fact checking on a few points, especially as he gets some things very wrong about my home town, which is in Nassau County, not Queens, but what can you expect of a kid who grew up in Chicago?
   
   
7. Norah Vincent, Self-Made Man. We’re going to discuss this at book club this week and I will be interested in what everyone thinks since it was my suggestion (at the recommendation of a friend). Vincent disguised herself as a man and joined groups ranging from a bowling club to a men’s movement therapy retreat. She dated both men and women, worked for a sleazy sales organization, and went on retreat to an abbey. Her insights into how men live when they think there are no women present are more sympathetic than I expected. But it is really hard to tell how representative they are, especially since she disguises a lot of details. It’s an interesting premise and should make for good discussion.
   
   
8. Thomas Heggen, Mr. Roberts. This is set on a supply ship in the South Pacific during World War II. The title character joined the Navy hoping to see fighting and is frustrated, while most of the other men on the ship are lazy and seeing what they can get away with. It’s a quick read, but not very relatable in these times. At least I’d like to think the modern military is better disciplined.
   
   
9. Sophie Kinsella, Mini Shopaholic. The Shopaholic series is a great example of chick lit. While I have minimal interest in fashion and expensive brand names, I find Becky’s efforts to deal with her family amusing and this was a quick escapist read. You already know whether or not you like this sort of thing, so recommending it would be preaching to the choir.
   
   

4th QuarterMovies:

1. Jo Jo Rabbit. This is a rare movie I saw in the theatre, basically because I am a huge fan of Taika Waititi. He continues to excel at the “what did I just watch” school of movie making. In this case, the film follows a boy who wants to be an ideal Nazi and has Hitler (played by Waititi) as an imaginary friend. Then he discovers his mother is hiding a Jew in their attic. This sounds like a horrible premise, but the movie sets up the Nazis for ridicule and it works surprisingly well.
   
   
2. 63 Up. I’ve been watching this series since 28 Up so, when a friend mentioned that Michael Apted would be doing a talk back at a screening here, I couldn’t resist. Being close to the age of the participants makes some of it hit home for me more than it might for younger people, I think. I was sad to see Nick’s health issues and pleased to see how well things have worked out for several of the other participants. I continue to find Neil, who has struggled with mental health issues, particularly interesting. As for the talk-back, I did not find Apted to be a particularly engaging speaker. He does admit that the participants are not as broad a cross-section of British society as he had originally thought. He was a bit evasive re: his style of interviewing the participants. And he didn’t really seem to follow some of the questions audience members had. In short, interesting movie but no need to hear Apted himself.
   
   
3. His Girl Friday. What could be better watching for a long flight than a classic screwball comedy? This one has Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in an adaptation of The Front Page. They talk over each other with rapid-fire wit as his character tries to get hers to return to reporting for his newspaper and abandon her new fiancé to come back to him. This is a great example of its type, with the perfect cast and sharp writing. Highly recommended.
   
   

Goals: I’ve been gone more than half of this past quarter, between vacation trips and business trips. So it’s no wonder I’ve done little towards my annual goals. I did get a little done with respect to household paperwork and read another 4 books. But that is about it. Sigh. I believe the business travel part should be done with, which will help.

Movies: I ended up sleeping a lot on airplanes, so just a few movies this quarter.

1. Free Solo: This documentary tells the story of Alex Honnold and his quest to perform a free solo climb (i.e. alone and without ropes) of El Capitan. As a person who is terrified of heights, I found this tense, but absorbing, to watch. At one level, it’s a reckless thing to do. But Honnold clearly planned carefully, figuring out exactly what he had to do. The film crew capturing his climb has a good grasp of the moral implications of the filming. And his girlfriend’s hesitation about the whole thing adds another dimension. Literally breathtaking.
   
   
2. Green Book: A successful African-American musician hires a working class Italian as a chauffeur for a trip through the Southern U.S. in the early 1960’s. Don Shirley is forced to endure numerous indignities, such as a mansion where he is hired to perform a concert, but they won’t let him use a bathroom inside the building. Tony Lip is crude and confrontational, but does prove to be capable of learning and the two men achieve genuine friendship. I’ve seen criticisms that the movie is cliched, but I didn’t care. I thought it was entertaining and I found myself genuinely liking the characters for their ability to learn and confront their own weaknesses. Recommended.
   
   
3. Eighth Grade: This story involves a shy eight grade girl who tries to remake herself in her last week of middle school. She makes videos that offer advice she finds herself unable to take herself. Her father worries about her – but he also lets her retreat into a world based on Instagram and the like. The most cringeworthy part is an evening she spends with some high school kids. One of the boys drives her home and initiates a game of truth or dare, during which I was sure he was about to assault her. Mostly, this movie made me glad social media didn’t exist when I was that age. This was listed under comedy, but there was absolutely nothing funny. I watched all the way through because I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.
   
   
   

Books: I only managed to finish four books this quarter. It did not help that a couple of them were over 500 pages.

1. Cathie Pelletier, A Marriage Made in Woodstock. This was a book club book, though I ended up missing the book club meeting due to a last minute business trip. That’s just as well as I thought this book was dull. Years after Woodstock, the man is an accountant, while the woman remains a bit of a free spirit, teaching new age psychology groups and participating in protests. Their marriage splits up for less obvious reasons and he falls apart, encouraged by his brother in binge drinking and picking up young women. Basically, this was about unlikeable people who needed to grow up.
   
   
2. Robert Ludlum, The Holcroft Covenant. The plot of this novel involves a young man who discovers that his real father was a Nazi who, along with two friends, claimed to have squirreled away money to compensate victims of the Holocaust. At the same time, there are children of the Nazis, who were raised to grow up and recreate the Third Reich, led by an assassin called the Tinamou. This was a complex, suspenseful novel, in which it was impossible to tell who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. I found it riveting, though I hesitate to recommend it due to the sheer level of violence.
   
   
   
3. John Dunning, The Bookman’s Promise. I’ve read a couple of the other Cliff Janeway detective novels by Dunning and liked them. This one had the added appeal of involving a mysterious journal by the explorer, Sir Richard Francis Burton. Janeway travels to Baltimore and Charleston to find out what Burton might have done in the American South just before the Civil War. I thought this was a good, absorbing read, but I was less than crazy about the ending.
   
   
4. Rosemary Rogers, The Crowd Pleasers. The daughter of one prominent politician and the wife of another decides to leave her unfulfilling marriage. As a result of a childhood friendship, she gets involved with modeling and a movie and has a passionate affair with an actor, who may also be working with the Mafia. There is a lot of violence and multiple pornographic elements, including her filmed gang rape, with undertones of political intrigue. In other words, this is trash, though it does have a satisfying resolution.
   
   

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.

Goals: I am on track with 4 of my 9 goals. As you will see below, I’ve read 13 books over the first quarter. I entered the Style Invitational twice. I’ve done reasonably well at bringing lunch to work and at eating fruit daily, with a few weeks of slip=ups. Everything else, alas ….


Quarterly Movies: My quarterly movie list is easy this time, as I appear to have not seen a single movie over the past three months. I might have watched a couple on my flights to and from El Salvador, but the earbuds I had with me broke.


Quarterly Books: I did, however, read a bit. I wrote about the 8 books I read in January already, so here is my list for February and March.

9. Tom Hodgkinson, How To Be Idle. This was a surprisingly humorless volume about the virtues of things like sleeping, slacking off at work, smoking, alcohol, etc. I suppose one could add reading this dull a book to the list of time wasters.
   
   
10. Kathryn Lilley, Dying To Be Thin. This mystery, set at a weight-loss clinic, wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either. I could have lived without the diet tips thrown in, though they did make sense in context (as the heroine is focused on losing weight). Even more so, I could have lived without the romantic subplot, which has her being pursued by two different men. And I could have really lived without her being enough of an idiot to end up in a confrontation with the murderer that results in her being poisoned.
    
    
11. Danielle Steele, Silent Honor. At last, a book I really enjoyed. This traces the story of a young woman from Japan, whose progressive father sends her to live with relatives and go to school in California. She gets stuck in the U.S. when World War II breaks out – and ends up in an internment camp with the family. There’s a romance with a (white) American man and a lot of complications before they end up living happily ever after post-war. I felt like I knew a lot more about the indignities suffered by Japanese Americans – and the differing reactions to them – after reading this. Recommended.
    
    
12. Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, The Nest. This was a book club selection, though I ended up missing our meeting because I was sick. The story involves 4 siblings who are waiting to receive their nest egg from their father’s estate on the 40th birthday of the youngest. Then, one of them has a drunk driving incident and their mother uses the money to pay off the woman he’s injured. Unfortunately, all of them need money and try to find ways to manipulate him into paying them back. This was interesting enough, but the siblings were all unlikeable enough that I wanted them to just grow up already.
    
    
13. Helen Van Slyke, No Love Lost. This is the story of a woman who grows up rich, marries the man of her dreams, and loses everything when her daughter dies in childbirth. There’s plenty of infidelity plus betrayal by a one-time best friend. Then there’s a most unsuitable second marriage… Despite all the trauma, most of the bad behavior of the various characters is understandable. So, while I wanted to tell them to grow up and/or go to therapy, I didn’t cringe at all of their behavior. Reasonably entertaining, but could have used some trimming.
    
    

2018 was fairly stressful, largely due to a work situation that appears to be resolving itself. And, of course, the state of the world didn't help.

Books: I read 40 books, which is probably the fewest since I learned how to read. Also, surprisingly, only 6 were non-fiction. This is a little misleading in that I don’t count guidebooks, which end up being most of what I read when I’m traveling. My logic for not counting them is that I rarely read them cover to cover.

Favorites were Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See, Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, and Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde.

The book I hated the most was Murder By Sacrilege by D. R. Meredith.

I really need to do a used bookstore run. I’m not even sure how many books I have ready to go out.

Volksmarch: I did three events – in New Orleans, Atlantic City, and Charleston, West Virginia. The latter was a State Capital walk. I should get back into focusing on special programs, but first I need to resolve some issues with my right foot.

Travel: I started the year out in Singapore. My last trip of the year was to the U.S. Virgin Islands (St. Thomas and St. John) which is only semi-international, involving a dependency of the U.S., not a separate country. My major trip of the year was my family roots trip to Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus (plus a part of a day in Zurich), which was incredible.

Domestic trips included business trips to Colorado Springs and to Layton, Utah. Personal travel was to New Orleans, Stamford (Connecticut, for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament), Atlantic City,New York (4 times, including a Brooklyn Cyclones game), Portland (Oregon), Rhode Island (mostly for a PawSox game), Memphis (Redbirds game), Milwaukee (Wisconsin for the National Puzzlers’ League con), Frederick (Maryland, for Loserfest. It counts because I did stay overnight), Richmond (Virginia – and, again, staying overnight makes it count), and Charleston (West Virginia). It seems unlikely, but it appears that I had an entire year without going to California.

Puzzles: This was pretty much a middle of the pack year. I ended up in the 62nd percentile at the ACPT, the 39th percentile at the Indie 500, and 55.7th percentile at Lollapuzzoola. Annoyingly, I didn’t solve cleanly at any of them.

I also had a good time (as always) at the NPL con. That included bringing along a hand-out puzzle, which I think went over reasonably well. I am planning for a walk-around puzzle for the 2019 con, since it’s in Boulder, Colorado, a city I have spent a lot of time in.

Ghoul Poul: I didn’t do particularly well in my second year. I finished 14th out of 20 participants, with 70 points. The people I scored with were Prince Henrik, Barbara Bush, John McCain, and George HW Bush.

Genealogy: I did the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks project, which got me writing about a few family stories, but didn’t really drive much research. I did, however, get in touch with a few unknown cousins (two from the FAINSTEIN family, one from the KHAIKEL / MEDINTS family) and made some progress on the GOLDWASSER family (my maternal grandfather’s mother’s side).

Baseball: I only made it to one Major League game this year – Red Sox at Nats on the Fourth of July. But it was a good year since: 1)I got to three minor league games (Memphis, Pawtucket, and Coney Island) and 2)my BoSox won the World Series.

Culture: If I counted correctly, I went to 16 musicals, 2 operas and 14 plays. My favorite musicals were Dave at Arena Stage and Me and My Girl at Encores in New York. My favorite plays were Heisenberg and 4380 Nights at Signature Theatre and Becoming Di. Ruth and Treyf at Theatre J. I also went to one ballet, one Cirque du Soleil shows, and 6 concerts. The most significant of the latter was seeing Jonathan Richman at the 9:30 Club. I had wanted to see him live for ages, so I was really glad to have the opportunity.

I went to One Day University 5 times. And I saw 16 movies, of which my favorites included What We Do in the Shadows, The Shape of Water. and Bathtubs Over Broadway

There was also a bunch of storytelling in there, some with me on stage and more with me in the audience.

Goals: I had six goals for 2018. So how did I score? I got about halfway through 2 afghans, so that gives me 33% on the goal to finish three. I did nothing about organizing photos, though I did find out about scanning resources at the library. I read 40 books, including 1 poetry book, so I I get 77% and 33% for that goal. I think I entered the Style Invitational twice, so will give myself 33% there. I did 3 Volksmarch events, so get 50% there. And I think I got through roughly 65% of catching up on household paperwork. I figure that gives me somewhere around a 40% on the year, which is not terrible, but not wonderful, either.

So what about goals for 2019?

• Finish shredding and filing household paperwork.
  
  
• Organize my genealogy files, both physical and electronic.
  
  
• Organize my yarn stash. Ideally this would include using up at least 25% of the yarn. While I am at it, I also need to organize knitting needles and crochet hooks and the like.
  
  
• Organize photos. Yes, really.
  
  
• Read at least 52 books.
  
  
• Enter the Style Invitational at least 4 times.
  
  
• Do a 20 minute or longer workout at least 3 times a week.
  
  
• Bring lunch to work at least twice a week.
  
  
• Eat fruit every day.
  
  

I am pretty sure I won't see any movies this weekend, so I am getting a head start on quarterly things.

1. Three Identical Strangers: I saw this as part of the year-round component of the Washington Jewish Film Festival. This is a documentary about triplets who meet accidentally at the age of 19, after having been separated at birth and placed with three very different families. There’s a fascinating – and disturbing – story about the circumstances behind that separation. There are lots of interesting issues that get raised, as well as unsolved questions at the end. Recommended.
   
   
   
2. The Catcher Was a Spy: As many of you know, I am obsessed with the subject of Jewish baseball players. That explains why I went to see this in an actual movie theatre. Moe Berg was one of the most interesting of those players – not a great ball player, but a Princeton alumnus, with a wide knowledge of foreign languages. This film (based on the book of the same name) is focused on his having been sent on a mission to find out how close Heisenberg was to creating an atomic bomb. There’s plenty of action – which detracts from what Berg’s strengths as a spy were. The story is interesting, but the execution in this movie was disappointing. I also had some issues with the way Berg’s relationships (and possible homosexuality) were addressed. Aviva Kempner is working on a documentary about Berg and I expect that to be better.
   
   
   
3. The Leisure Seeker: I saw this on an airplane. It’s the story of an elderly couple who go off for one final adventure in their RV. Ella has cancer and has chosen to stop treatment. John has Alzheimer’s. Their adult children are concerned, but unable to stop them from making the drive to Florida. Various things go wrong along the way, but lots of things go right. I particularly loved a scene when a group of younger people at a campsite choose to spend the evening with them watching old home movies. There’s excellent acting from Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland as the leads. I thought this was a warm and touching movie, with plenty of humor. I highly recommend it for people who are over 50 and/or those dealing with aging parents.
   
   
   
4. Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: This was the first of two movies I saw on my flight home from vacation. I have a confession to make. I have never seen an entire episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I do, however, appreciate how influential he was. After watching this documentary, I came away with an added appreciation of what a fundamentally good person he was and what he was trying to do. I do wish, however, that the documentary had more to say about his personal life. For example, there are hints about childhood trauma, but they were rather too vague for me. I did appreciate that the filmmakers stopped short of hagiography, e.g. by addressing how slow Mr. Rogers was to come to terms with homosexuality. I still have no particular desire to watch (old episodes of) the show, but this was a good documentary.
   
   
   
5. Lady Bird: This was the other movie I watched on my way home. Being a teenager is rough enough without having a father who is out of work, a mother who works too hard to support the family, and living in Sacramento. I thought the conflicts (choosing friends, exploring sexuality, hating one’s home town, deciding where to go to college) were realistic, although the anger in the mother-daughter relationship felt more prolonged than I expected. (I spent much of my teen years in screaming matches with my parents, but they tended not to last for weeks. Or maybe I’ve just forgotten?) The acting was excellent, with Saoirse Ronan convincingly sincere in the title role. Overall, worth watching.
   
   

I have political rants to inflict on people, but let me first speak of what I have been up to.

Celebrity Death Watch: Sachio Kinugasa was a Japanese baseball player who played in 2215 consecutive games. Alice Provensen illustrated (and later wrote) children’s books. Larry Harvey founded Burning Man. Judith Leiber designed handbags (and died the same day as her husband, Gerson, a painter.) Abi Ofarim was an Israeli musician and dancer, best known for "Cinderella Rockeflla" with his wife Esther. Rabbi Aaron Panken was the President of Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. Charles Steger was a former president of Virginia Tech. Paolo Ferrari played Archie Goodwin in the Italian television adaptation of the Nero Wolfe books. George Deukmejian was the governor of California through much of the 1980’s.

Conference Going: I spent three days last week at a work-related forum that may or may not prove useful in the future. Parts of it were like having somebody read a dictionary to me, parts had me metaphorically throwing up my hands in despair on how little progress we’ve made in too many years, and only a couple of speakers seemed to have anything concrete to say. I suspect it is just that I am old and have been through a few too many fads on how to engineer systems better. Also, I am tired of people who are speaking at space-related events starting out by admitting they don’t know anything about space systems. Or I could just have been cranky because I had to drive and, while Route 28 is almost tolerable in the morning, it is inevitably a slow-moving hellstream in the afternoon.

Canadian Embassy: On Wednesday evening, I went to an MIT Club event at the Embassy of Canada. The talk was on renewable energy (hydropower on the part of the Canadians; wind and solar on the part of the Americans) and how our grids play together. The interesting part was the relative dearth of east-west transmission lines in both countries, while there is good north-south connectivity. Admittedly, it’s not like anybody actually lives in the Dakotas or Saskatchewan … (Er, yes, I am joking. Sort of.) The reception was pretty much the wine and cheese and crackers sort (plus charcuterie and excellent dried fruit and mixed nuts). One of the embassy people was from Saskatchewan and I extracted some tourist tips from her, e.g. the existence of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Museum. (I have been trying to find a reason to go to that province, without much success. This sounds like a plausible weekend trip.) Aside from that, I talked with fellow alumni.

Around the World Embassy Tour: I did more embassy going on Saturday, which featured the annual Around the World Embassy Open House. (There is a separate event for EU embassies, which is this coming weekend, but I have prior commitments.) We started at the Embassy of Nepal, which had some photos, a short film, and food that it was too early in the day for. The Embassy of Guinea was just steps away, so we walked through, looked at the building and some photos, and listened to some music. Then we cabbed over to the Embassy of Angola, which was high on my list, largely because Paul Theroux hated it so much that it piqued my interest in going there. They had excellent snacks – some sort of peanut brittle like thing, chocolate cake, coconut rolls, what looked and tasted like malasadas (though I don’t know the Angolan name for them). There was also good coffee and some weird but not unpleasant drink made from corn. They also had a fair amount of swag, including paperweights and brochures and an issue of National Geographic.

We took the bus down 16th Street to the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center (roughly affiliated with the Embassy of Oman) where we dressed up in Omani clothing for selfies, drank coffee heavily scented with cardamom and rosewater, and ate dates. Then we cabbed over to the Embassy of Qatar, where we had more selfies in costume, more coffee, more dates, and some fairly substantial food (they had meat pies, chicken sandwiches, and cheese pies). They had advertised falconry but were unable to get permission for it.

That was as far as we had planned, so we looked at the map and settled on going to the northwest end of Embassy Row and the Embassy of South Africa. There was a long line, with free bottles of Nando’s lemon-herb sauce at the end of it, along with biltong samples. There was also a marketplace, mostly selling jewelry. (They had a food court, with food for sale, outside.) The Embassy of Bolivia was just across the street, so we went there and got some sort of alcoholic drinks. Inside, there was an art exhibit and a look at a fancy dining room. Back outside, there were costumed dancers. I was fading quickly and decided that I was better off going home at that point, but my friend wanted to stay to the bitter end. I abandoned her in line for the Embassy of Brazil (where, coincidentally, she was standing just a couple of people in front of a woman from my book club). I walked down to Dupont Circle and metroed home for a nap.

Paperwork: Our "improved" foreign travel reporting system at work (and, yes, that applies to embassy visits, unless you go to the embassy to get a visa for a real trip) is annoying. This is no surprise. I am especially peeved that they ignored all of my comments in the pre-rollout test session we had. Peeved but not, alas, surprised.

Team Israel: On Sunday, I satisfied my obsession with Jewish baseball players by seeing the documentary Heading Home: The Story of Team Israel as part of the Washington Jewish Film Festival. It was worth the schlep to Bethesda.

Crumbs and Whiskers: A few weeks ago, a friend had been talking about her struggles with depression and I asked what I could do to help. One of my suggestions was a visit to a cat café. (I have learned over the years that it is best to offer a few suggestions, because depressed people tend to be unable to think of what might help. And what helps me may not be right for you.) So we made that excursion Monday evening. Petting cats is good therapy and they’ve adopted out hundreds of cats, who get to live better in the café than they did in cages in shelters.

I mentioned that my mother sucked at naming cats. She had one named Mamacat and had named one of the ferals who hung out on her lawn Rita. So I was challenged on what makes a good name for a cat. I believe that the name of a god or goddess (ideally Egyptian, but others will do) is a good starting point. Beyond that, one should consider the cat’s physical characteristics. I’d love to have a pair of Siamese cats named Mocha and Java, for example. But avoid trite names like Tiger. Names of authors can work well. Royalty is always good. (My brother and his ex-wife had a cat named Empress Josefina, for example.) My former boss always named his cats after serial killers. Note: no matter how much I think you have misnamed your cat, I will never tell you this, because I am not a monster.

Other good therapy is walking and the weather was lovely for a stroll back to Foggy Bottom. M Street still annoys me, with large herds of slow-moving tourists, but the weather mostly made up for it.

Celebrity Death Watch: Anna Mae Hays was the 13th chief of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and the first woman in the U.S. armed forces to become a general officer. France Gall wa a French singer. Doreen Tracey was one of the original Mouseketeers. Keith Jackson was a sportscaster, particularly known for college football. Dan Gurney was a race car driver and is credited with creating the tradition of spraying champagne on the podium after the race. Dolores O’Riordan was the lead singer of The Cranberries. Edwin Hawkins was a gospel musician, best known for "Oh Happy Day." Jo Jo White played basketball, largely for the Celtics. Jessica Falkholt was an Australian soap opera actress. Her greatest significance is that she’s the first person anybody scored on in this year’s ghoul pool.

Joe Frank was a radio personality. I used to listen to his show, Work in Progress, on KCRW when I lived in Los Angeles. He was always interesting and, often, quite funny. There is apparently a documentary about him scheduled to be released this year.

Ghoul Pool – 2018: Speaking of ghoul pool (a contest to predict what famous people will die in the next year), the entry lists are now out of the beginning of the game embargo, so I can reveal mine. Note that the number indicates how many points a person is worth and you get an extra 12 points for uniqueness, i.e. being the only participant to have someone on your list.

20. I.M. Pei
19. Robert Mugabe
18. Ed Kranepool
17. Honor Blackman
16. Beverly Cleary
15. Dervla Murphy
14. John McCain
13. Johnny Clegg
12. Al Jaffe
11. Herman Wouk
10. Jimmy Carter
9. Javier Perez de Cuellar
8. John Paul Stevens
7. Tom Jones (the lyricist, not the Welsh singer)
6. Lawrence Ferlinghetti
5. Norman Lloyd
4. Jerry Herman
3. Olivia de Haviland
2. Sheldon Harnick
1. Sara Paretsky

The Pajama Game: Looking back, I realized I never wrote about the production of The Pajama Game at Arena Stage, which I saw just before leaving for my vacation. It’s a problematic show to modern sensibilities. I’m tempted to retitle it to something like "Sexual Harassment at the Sleep-Tite Factory." I also find a lot of the lyrics to be full of cheap, amateurish rhymes ("A new town is a blue town…")

But – and this is a huge redeeming factor – there is fabulous choreography. I was particularly pleased to see that Donna McKechnie, who played Mabel, still has it at age 74. (I saw her as Cassie in A Chorus Line back in the 1970’s!) The most striking dance moves, though, came from Blakely Slaybaugh as Prez (the union president).

I do prefer the modern sensibilities and deplore the sexism. But I also miss the days when people broke out into spectacular dance moves with little provocation. In fact, I often wish that people in real life would spontaneously broke into song and dance. It would certainly liven up many a design review.

Losers’ Post-Holiday Party: Getting back to the present time, Saturday night was the annual post-holiday party for the Style Invitational Losers. As usual with potlucks, I have a long debate with myself over what to bring. Someday I will use up the spring roll wrappers that I bought way too many of because I misunderstood the package labeling. But this time, I went for quick and easy in the form of stuffed mushrooms. You just take baby bella mushroom caps, arrange them on a baking pan. Fill each cap with some alouette (or similar) cheese. Dip the cheese-stuffed end in panko (Japanese bread crumbs). Bake at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes or so.

As for the party itself, it was conveniently metro-accessible. Or, conveniently if the Red Line weren’t running only half-hourly over the weekend, so I got there later than I intended. Still, I was in time to get food and, more importantly, in time for the sing-along, which is always a highlight of these things. Throw in lots of intelligent conversation, both with people I already knew and those I hadn’t met before, and it was a good time.

One Day University: On Sunday, I went to One Day University. This time out, it was at the Lansburgh Theatre and consisted of two lectures. The first was The Presidential Library given by Joseph Luzzi of Bard College. I had actually heard Luzzi lecture (on a different literature topic) previously and he’s quite a dynamic speaker. He posed a few general questions about the relationship between reading and ability to be an effective leader. He discussed several presidents in depth, focusing on what they read. George Washington, for example, used Cato as a model of manhood. He also collected etiquette books. Thomas Jefferson read pretty much everything. Lincoln was, of course, an autodidact. As a counterexample, Warren Harding’s reading was limited to things like Rules of Poker. Buchanan and Fillmore supposedly both read a lot, but neither was much of a leader. Grant didn’t get mentioned, but I find it hard to imagine him reading much of anything beyond the labels on liquor bottles. (Apparently, he got in trouble at West Point for spending his time reading James Fenimore Cooper, instead of his textbooks.)

Luzzi compiled an American Library List that included some obvious authors (Locke, Rousseau) and works (Plutarch’s Lives, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Bible). He also recommended things like Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and Ben Franklin’s autobiography. Fictional works which got mentioned included Great Expectations and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Didn’t any presidents appreciate the real Great American Novel – namely Moby Dick?

Anyway, Luzzi’s conclusion was, essentially, that good readers make good leaders. He made four points to support this: 1) reading fundamentally suggests a person knows he doesn’t know everything, 2) readers are curious, 3) reading supports collaboration, and 4) reading puts one in another’s shoes. As a self-confessed biblioholic, I tend to agree.

The second speaker was Mark Lapadusa of Yale University, speaking on How to Watch Movies Like a Film Professor. He started out by pointing out that this applies to seeing a movie repeatedly and, for first viewing, one should just enjoy it for what it is. Then he showed various film clips and talked about aspects of them. The films he discussed were Casablance, Citizen Kane, Psycho, Dr. Strangelove, and The Godfather (Both I and II). That’s a pretty wide assortment of styles and subject matter. He touched on one subject that I have a long-standing interest in, namely film music, specifically in the case of the shower scene from Psycho. If he’d had time for questions, I might have asked him more about that.

I was also a little disappointed that he didn’t talk about source material. For example, The Godfather is one of a handful of movies that is generally considered far more successful than the novel it is based on. Casablanca was based on an unsuccessful play. What makes a film adaptation successful and why do so many movies based on bestsellers fail either by being too true to the novel or not true enough?

I had a chance to discuss the lectures a bit more after. I had gotten into a conversation with a woman named Ann before the program. We ended up sitting together in the auditorium and decided to go out to lunch (at China Chilcano – tasty Peruvian / Asian fusion food) afterwards. It was nice to have the opportunity to digest some of what I’ve heard. All in all, an excellent way to spend part of a day.

Murder Was Her Hobby: I took advantage of being in the city to go to the Renwick Gallery and see their exhibit of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death by Frances Glessner Lee. This is a series of miniature rooms depicting what may or may not be murder scenes. They were built to be a teaching tool for forensic science and are incredibly detailed. Apparently, Lee even made underwear for the dead bodies. Because they are still used for teaching, the exhibit does not include solutions to the cases. There were a few where I thought I had a good idea of what had happened, but I was completely puzzled by the majority of them. So much for all the hours I’ve spent reading murder mysteries!

The craftsmanship is amazing and the exhibit included flashlights to allow for closer examination of the crime scenes. However, there wasn’t very much thought given to the flow through the room, so one was stuck standing and waiting for people to move for long stretches of time. It would have been better to set things up so people moved only in one direction through the exhibit. And it would have been much better to limit the number of people allowed in at a time. Even with these annoyances, it was worth seeing the exhibit and I’m glad I took the time to.