fauxklore

In Which I Am Sociable

2023-02-19T16:56:50Z

Shameless Self-Promotion: I am part of an on-line storytelling show this coming Saturday (February 25th) from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. EST. It’s free, with donations requested. The show is titled "Laughter and Humor, in Honor of Rubber Ducky Day” and you can register here.

Tucson Follow-up, Part 1: Because several people commented on the picture of the miniature sculpture done on a pencil point and I had not written down the artist’s name, I did some strategic googling. The artist turns out to be a 50-year-old Russian man named Salivat Fidai. There are many pictures of his work on-line for your viewing pleasure.

Tucson Follow-up, Part 2: I have no idea how I forgot to mention this, but it was late afternoon when I finished up at the eastern part of Saguaro National Park on Sunday. I decided I could check out the Desert Diamond Casino for a little while, I have probably said this before, but my attitude towards gambling is that it is entertainment. I expect to lose, so I just decide how much I am willing to spend on being entertained along the way. I like slot machines with certain types of themes, typically ones oriented towards either space or a movie or television show I like. This casino had few of the ones I like, but I did eventually find a group of Little Shop of Horrors themed ones. I was within about 5 bucks of reaching my allowed losses when I hit a jackpot that paid me $400. So I kept playing for a while. Eventually, the plant fed me to the tune of a little over $700. Which was enough to cover my plane ticket and rental car, but not my hotel.

NSO: Continuing on to what I’ve done since I got back (i.e. over the past week or so), last Friday night, Cindy and I went to see the National Symphony Orchestra. The program included three pieces, conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski. I had never seen him conduct before and I thought he did a good job. I especially appreciated that he made a point of having each section of the orchestra stand for final bows during the applause at the end of the evening.

The first piece on the program was Krzesany by Wojciech Kilar This was completely new to me and I really enjoyed it. It was very dramatic, especially the percussion section. Apparently, it was inspired by a mix of Polish folk dance and a bullfight Kilar had seen in Spain.

That was followed by a Prokofiev violin concerto, which I found comparatively dull. Francesca Dego is a big name violinist and I could appreciate her virtuosity. But, as a recovering violist, I’m not a huge fan of violins and, overall, the piece lacked the level of drama that the other two in the program had.

The final piece, which is why we had gone in the first place, was Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This has been a favorite of mine since I was in high school. The rawness and the emotional tension was radical at its time, but is still powerful for those of us to whom it isn’t quite as revolutionary. I have, by the way, also seen film footage of the original choreography. It’s all very weird. At any rate, the orchestra handled the mixture of frenzy and pagan energy very well.

All in all, it was a good evening.

Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner: The next day, Cindy and I went to see a play titled Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner at Woolly Mammoth. This is the American premiere of this work by Jasmine Lee-Jones and I admit we knew nothing about it, but the title was intriguing. I did warn Cindy that everything I had ever seen at Woolly Mammoth was weird. Anyway, we had lunch at Teaism (one of my favorite informal restaurants - and the only place in the area I know of to get okonimayaki) beforehand. Before the play, we read the Zine that they had available, which discussed Jenner having had lip augmentation, selected vocabulary from “the Internet & Black British Slang” (yes, the play is British), and (most interesting to me) Sara Baartman, an enslaved South African woman who was displayed in London and Paris, where she became known as “the Hottentot Venus.” There are a number of different threads here, leading to a general theme about appropriating blackness.

I am hesitant to write too much about the play because the playwright has said she doesn’t want reviews by white people. So this is a short synopsis and not a review. The gist of it is a series of conversations between two women, Cleo and Kara. Cleo tweets criticisms of white women who co-opt and profit from Black culture, but some of the things she says spill out into real life, including her getting death threats. Also, Kara can’t forgive her for some anti-gay things she has also tweeted. There is a lot of slang used and, while it may all be defined in the zine they gave out, it wasn’t as if I could reference that during the play, so I would say I understood maybe 2/3 of it. Overall, it was interesting, but I am clearly not the target demographic. Younger people might be able to make more sense of it.

Crones and Tomes: I joined a second book club, specifically for older women to read books about women. We started this past Monday night (i.e. the 13th) with Heartburn by Nora Ephron and had a good, wide-ranging discussion of it. I only knew two of the women before (they are puzzle people) and I’m looking forward to getting to know the others better.

Book Club 2 My long-standing book club met on Wednesday night to discuss French Braid by Anne Tyler. I will write more in my quarterly book wrap-up, but the short version is that the book is 241 pages long and I spent 240 of them waiting for something to happen. One person did like the book.

Dinner at Clyde’s: I went to dinner with a couple of visiting Flyertalkers at Clyde’s at Gallery Place last night. It’s not the most exciting menu in D.C. but it’s fine for typical American cuisine. The conversation was about various Flyertalk events we’d been to and upcoming travel plans and things to do in different places (including here.)

By the way, I find it very amusing that the beer menu includes brewery locations for all of the beers they sell. Which makes sense for the Port City Monumental American-Style IPA I got (Alexandria, VA) and other craft brewery offerings. But does anybody really care that their Budweiser and Michelob Ultra are from Williamsburg, VA?

Duolingo: I’m at the 111 day mark on studying Spanish. I think I’ve learned a lot, as evidenced by my ability to read ads in Spanish at various places. But I still have a long ways to go. I’m also sloppy with writing, since they let you get away with using an English language keyboard, lacking accent marks. I’ve also had a couple of times when I think a daily quest has changed after I’ve done it, e.g. something like “find Oscar 7 times” has changed to “find Lily 7 times.” They also added another achievement to work on - Nocturnal, which requires doing lessons after 10 p.m. and I have a few more levels to go on that one. At any rate, it’s still fun, although I don’t know how many occasions are likely to come up where I need to talk about an evil sheep who the lions are all afraid of. This is, however, marginally less ridiculous than my Russian vocabulary, which includes the phrase "talking cockroaches live in Asia."

comments

Whew!

2022-11-28T00:59:27Z

Here is a quick final catch-up before I leave on vacation. American Airlines has already pissed me off, by the way, but that’s hardly news. Since I saved a ton of money by burning up some Advantage miles, I will kvetch only in an undertone.

Election: I was relatively satisfied with the election results. My district was no surprise at all. As I have said before, we are so blue that we are practically indigo, and the incumbent Gerry Connelly was re-elected by a large margin. The more important races in Virginia resulted in Jennifer Wexton and Abigail Spanberger retaining their seats. Alas, Elaine Luria lost her seat, largely due to redistricting, with much of the Eastern shore moved into VA 2 and large swaths of the Hampton Roads area moved out.

Pierre Bensusan: Some time in the early 1980’s I was randomly flipping radio dials and heard an NPR program playing “La Bistrangue,” a French-Canadian dance I know from my years of folk dancing. So I started listening to that show and a couple of other Celtic music shows, resulting in my hearing some music by a French guitarist named Pierre Bensusan. It turned out that he was going to be performing at the Julia Morgan Theatre, which was quite close to where I lived in Berkeley. In short, between his records and seeing him live, he became pretty much my favorite living musician. I’ve seen him perform at least 20 times, probably more.

Well, obviously, he wasn’t touring during the pandemic. (And it turned out that he had a health crisis of his own in there, though he didn’t provide any details about that.) But he went back on the road recently and one of his last concerts on his America tour was at Jammin’ Java, which is just up the road from where I live. Astonishingly, I had no schedule conflicts, so of course I was there. And, of course, he was brilliant. (And, of course, I bought his latest CD.) His English is so much better than it was 40 years ago, too. The best story he told had to do with how he ended up playing guitar on a song recorded by Donny Osmond, who I had a brief crush on somewhere around the Partridge Family days.

I always feel privileged to have access to so much great live music nearby.

Stereo Mystery: Thinking about listening to records in that apartment in Berkeley reminds me that somebody had given me a stereo system. I can’t for the life of me remember the circumstances behind that. It’s possible that it was left behind by the first housemate I had there. I’m fairly sure that stereo system did not come with me when I moved to Los Angeles, however, and I have no idea what became of it.

Thanksgiving: Because I am overwhelmed and life is chaotic, I just did Thanksgiving dinner for myself. I made roasted turkey breast, wild rice with onions and mushrooms (I was going to add pecans, but forgot to), tahini-glazed carrots, and succotash. I had salad with lemon-basil vinaigrette as a starter and apple-cranberry crumble for dessert. I have a lot of leftovers in the freezer. (Well, not any salad. And the succotash started out from frozen to begin with.) Among the many things I am thankful for is having a decent-sized freezer!

Duolingo: I started doing Duollngo in an attempt to learn a bit more Spanish before my upcoming trip. Their way of gamifying language learning certainly makes it easier to study. I’m currently in the middle of Unit 22, out of 207. I will note that their explanations of a few things don’t quite work for me, some of which reflects on problems with the English language, e.g. the dozens of different meanings of “excuse me,” making me unsure when to use “perdon” vs. “disculpe.” I also find that they have some inconsistency in identifying typos vs. actual mistakes, though that probably works in my favor as often as it works against me. Finally, I’m noticing that I am way more competitive than I realized, as I end up spending a lot of time making sure I stay at the top of my current league. That will probably taper off once I make it through all of the achievement levels. Anyway, I’m having fun with it.

Story Swaps: Last Saturday night was the monthly Voices in the Glen swap. I told my story “Dites-la en Huit Langues,” which has to do with how a universal phrasebook I bought at a used book stall at a fair in New Hampshire ruined my life by leading me to attempt to learn several languages. And just now I went to a zoom story swap put on by Community Storytellers in Los Angeles, where I told a folktale from Afghanistan about a lion who didn’t know how to read.

comments

Yiddish New York

2022-01-21T04:22:02Z

I am way behind. So what else is new?

Let’s start the catch-up with Yiddish New York, which occupied pretty much all of the last week of December. Things started on Saturday night of December 25th with a concert and, while I thought I’d scribbled some notes about it, I must have scribbled them either on paper that has teleported to another dimension and/or in invisible ink. The only specific thing I remember is that somebody was playing the cymbalon (a sort of dulcimer-like instrument), which led me to google that and discover that they may not be too expensive, but, no, I will NOT buy one. Anyway, klezmer music is enjoyable, but I didn’t have anything particular to say about that event.

Sunday:

Sunday started with a lecture on Humor in Yiddish Proverbs. Bob Rothstein was knowledgeable, but not really a good speaker, as he spoke in what I refer to as “uh-um-ese,” which is grating to listen to. Still, I was amused by many of the proverbs he discussed, so it was entertaining. Some of the best ones included:

He has as much sense as there are mezuzahs in a church.
G-d, give me help, but, if not, I have a sister in America.
They are in love - he with himself, she with herself.
The only tailor who doesn’t steal material is the mohel.

I should also note that there are a lot of proverbs that equate cantors with fools, which I found surprising since my grandfather was a cantor and no fool. Well, except when it came to women, but that’s another story.

After that I went to hear Itzik Gotterman interview Lilli Rosen on the subject of Off the Derech which is a term used to refer to formerly Orthodox Jews. (And, most specifically, former Hasidim, though I think it can also apply to non-Chasidic haredim.) Rosen, who is transgender, left at puberty, but went back and joined Chabad, married, and left again in their 30’s. At 28, they had gone to law school, which was acceptable within the community. Discussions about religion with colleagues at their law firm were what led to leaving for good and getting involved in Yiddish theatre. Now they mostly consult for television programs. It was an interesting talk, though not really relatable for me.

The Sunday lunchtime concert was by Gica Loaning and Michael Alpert and featured a mixture of Yiddish and Scottish music.

After that I went to a program about Yiddish singing, called Chestnuts and Childhood, which mostly had to do with singing familiar songs. The person leading it had somebody who didn’t know each song learn it. Since they were doing familiar songs (starting with Oyfn Pripetchik), I don’t know how much value this had for me, and I skipped the later sessions in this series.

I’ve already written about the movies I watched as part of the film festival aspect of the conference, so I won’t repeat that.

Monday:

I started Monday with the first half of a talk on Ashkenazi Family Names. Binyamin Schaechter lectured almost entirely in Yiddish, but I was pretty much able to follow his talk, which centered on categories of names. The Monday lecture talked about Matronymic names (e.g. Rifkind, which is derived from the name Rivka), Patronymic names (e.g. Abramowitz from Abraham), Descriptive names (e.g. Kurtz meaning short, or, to bring my genealogy into it Schwartzbard meaning “black beard”), and Occupational names / metonyms (including Nadel, which means needle, for a tailor.) My one complaint is that he showed slides with some names on them and then talked about a lot more names in each category that weren’t on the slide.

The lunchtime concert was by Bob Cohen and Jake Shulmen-Ment, who performed music (primarily instrumental) collected in Romania.

The next talk I listened to was Wexology by Michael Wex, who is well-known as the author of Born to Kvetch. His talk was very entertaining, but a bit rambling. Some of the things he talked about were:

Hebrew could sometimes be used in a pejorative way. For example, actors in Yiddish are actioren but if you want to imply that they are bad actors you could use the Hebrew plural and call them actiorim.
He talked at length about the expression hock mir night kein chainik which literally means “don’t bang on my teapot,” but is used to tell somebody not to talk nonsense. He pointed out that the lid of a teakettle makes more noise the less water is in it, which is a really good explanation.
He had a long semi-rant on the subject of the phrase lign in drerd und baken beygel which literally means “lying in the ground and baking bagels” and is something you might say as a curse. You can also use it as a way to say things aren’t going so well for you. Not only is it hot as hell, but everybody else around you is dead so there’s nobody to sell them to. He equated this to a Yiddish version of the myth of Sisyphus.
He suggested “heartburn rampant on a bed of cholent” as the Israeli flag. (Cholent is a stew of beans and meat that is traditionally eaten on Shabbat, when you’re not allowed to cook. It’s mostly cooked beforehand and kept warm on a stove or in an oven - or, nowadays, in a crockpot.)
There are some Yiddish terms that come from Biblical references. For example, “kiss me where the Jews rested” refers to setting up camp at Takhat (pronounced “b’tuchus” in Ashkenazi Hebrew) so the phrase means “kiss my ass.” Also, “asher yutzer” is Hebrew for toilet paper, from the blessing people say after using the toilet.

Tuesday:

The first program I went to on Tuesday was Memories of the Yiddish Kitchen. The preponderance of recipes discussed were for sweets, e.g. mandelbrot, rugelach, and hamentaschen (including a note that the yeast pastry version declined in popularity after the introduction of baking powder in the 20th century, even though the yeast kind are infinitely better). Other dishes talked about were chopped liver, gefilte fish, borscht, pierogi, and stuffed cabbage. I was particularly interested in the discussion of “farmer’s chop suey,” a dish I haven’t had in years, which consists of various chopped vegetable (cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, scallions) mixed with sour cream.

That was followed by the second half of Ashkenazi Family Names. The categories that got added in this half were Names referring to lineage (e.g. Cohen, Levi), Acronyms and Abbreviations (e.g. Katz = kohen tzaddik, meaning righteous priest), Geographic names / Toponyms (e.g. Wiener from Vienna, Berlinsky from Berlin, but not Moskowitz, which refers to the name Mosko, a form of Moshe, not to Moscow), House signs (famously Rothschild = red shield), and Fanciful / Ornamental / Wealthy names (e.g. Diamant = diamond or Golden, as well as prefixes like Hoff and suffixes like berg or feld).

The lunchtime concert was Susi Evans and Silvia Csaranko from Hanover, Germany performing pieces from the Klezmer Archive of tunes from Ukraine.

Next was the second part of Wexology. This time, Michael Wex, talked a lot about which Yiddish words might be offensive and which are especially polite.

The etymology of certain words used to refer to non-Jews can be offensive. For example, sheigetz” (a derisive term for a non-Jewish man) comes from the Hebrew word “shkotz,” meaning “reptile.” (“Shiksa” has the same root, but is also used in other languages, notably Polish, to refer to a slut.)
He also talked about how to refer to people respectfully, mostly by using the third person. So instead of asking, say, “can you tell me X,” you can say, “Can the Jew tell me …”
Some euphemisms have become more objectionable than they were intended to weaken. “Achar” means “a person I prefer not to mention,” so “dover achar” should mean that you prefer not to talk about that. Instead it is used to refer to things like sodomy.
”Chad gadya,” which is the song that ends the Passover seder is slang for both “rear end” (from that usage), but also for jail because the Polish slang for jail is “chauza,” which literally means goat.

Wednesday:

The first presentation I went to on Wednesday was The Richtige Mikado: Poconos to MGM which had to do with a version of the Gilbert and Sullivan musical developed at Camp Tamiment in the Poconos in 1938. There was a later Hollywood version written in 1942 and both scripts are available. Camp Tamiment was a resort for adults, drawing a lot of singles, especially NYU and City College students. Apparently Jerry Bock (of Broadway Bock and Harnick fame) called it “the Club Med of Bushkill Falls.") Anyway, this was not a full production of The Mikado, but was a set of skits and was not related to the 1950’s Yiddish Mikado, which was recorded. Some of the people involved were Max Liebman (who later did a lot of television revues, including Your Show of Shows), Sylvia Fine, and Danny Kaye. Anyway, this was my favorite presentation of the whole conference, largely because it included a read-through of the script(s) by Eve Sicular and Allen Lewis Rickman. . For example, the song “Titwillow” became “tit gornit,” which means “doing nothing.” In the Tamiment version, it referred to politics (e.g. Neville Chamberlain), while the Hollywood version used it to make fun of Samuel Goldwyn.

After that, I went to a presentation on Yiddish Folklore: Questions and Inspirations. This included a short story (and associated play) by the speaker, Rokhl Kafrissen, which had to do with a woman who did a silent Shabbos in memory of her late husband. There were also discussions of traditions about demons and about Nittel Nacht (Hasidic customs associated with Christmas eve, including refraining from Torah study and, instead, playing cards.) But the main thing that I got out of that session was the formation of a mailing list to talk about Yiddish folklore.

The lunchtime concert was by Susan Watts and Rob Curto and consisted of compositions from a collection called Soul Songs, which is intended to inspire women to perform klezmer music. After that, I went to a talkback about on one of the movies I’d watched.

Thursday:

I started Thursday with a talk by Miriam Isaacs on Chronicle of the Yiddish Stage: Zalman Zylbercweig’s Leksicon which was a 7 volume project that included biographies, photographs, and Yizkor books (i.e. memorial books). One thing I hadn’t known is that there had been unions in the Yiddish theatre in New York - and had been actor’s unions in Poland, too. The chronicles were like a Who’s Who and people paid to be included.

The final presentation I went to was on How to Suppress Yiddish Women’s Writing by Faith Nomi Jones. This was based on Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing, with additions to refer to specific issues for Yiddish writers. For example, women who worked for Yiddish newspapers were relegated to answering reader’s letters or writing for the women’s pages, but not allowed to do real journalism. Women were also not allowed to go unescorted to various cafes were writers mingled. Interestingly, it was more common in Yiddish literature for men to use female pseudonyms than vice versa. This was an excellent talk and I particularly appreciated the inclusion of suggestions on how to fight back, e.g. by challenging instructors to include Yiddish literature by women and to point out assumptions when they occur.

Summary:

I didn’t make it to any of the evening programs, largely because I was mentally satiated by about 5 in the afternoon. But, overall, I thought this was worth my time and I felt that I learned a fair amount. I need to think about how much time I should spend studying Yiddish. And maybe I should look into buying a cymbelon.

comments

Not Quite Heaven, West Virginia

2018-11-19T20:59:53Z

Celebrity Death Watch: John Rogers was the president of San Diego Comic-Con. Douglas Rain was an actor, best known as the voice of Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Katherine MacGregor was an actress, best known for Little House on the Prairie. Caroline Rose Hunt was the daughter of oil tycoon H. L. Hunt and, at one time, the richest women in the United States. Roy Clark hosted Hee Haw. Alec Finn was a bouzouki player who cofounded the Celtic band, De Dannan.

Stan Lee founded Marvel Comics. He created a number of popular characters, e.g. Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, but may be more significant for having challenged the Comics Code Authority in the 1970’s. While I recognize his importance to the industry, I’ve always been more of a DC gal myself.

William Goldman was a novelist and screenwriter, whose best known work was probably The Princess Bride. He won Oscars for the movies Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men.

Barre Toelken was a folklorist. He directed the folklore program at Utah State University and authored important works both on folklore theory and on Navajo stories.

Word of the Day: Aibohphobia = fear of palindromes.

Weather Whine: It snowed on Thursday. Just about an inch and a half, but this was the first accumulating snowfall in November in northern Virginia since 1995, i.e. before I lived here. I was definitely not psychologically ready for it. Fortunately, everything was pretty much gone by Friday.

Charleston, West Virginia: I checked off a state capital volksmarch this weekend with a trip to Charleston, West Virginia. The flight from IAD to CRW was quick and arrived about a half hour early, though we then had to wait 20 minutes to get someone to the gate. My hotel allegedly had an airport shuttle, but it had stopped running by the time I arrived. And, in fact, it doesn’t run at all on the weekend, which is something you’d think would be worth mentioning on their web page. To add to the annoyances, there is exactly one taxi company in Charleston and, when I called them, they said it could be up to an hour to get someone. So I used Lyft, instead, despite my ethical qualms about ridesharing companies.

As for the volksmarch, it was a reasonably pleasant walk. The capitol building is quite grand architecturally, with an elaborate dome. I can’t comment on the interior, as it was closed on weekends. I did, however, check out the West Virginia State Museum, which had a reasonable set of exhibits on the history of the state. There’s also a walk along the Kanawha River and a nice enough historic area downtown.

While I enjoyed the walk, I’ve been having sporadic foot pain and it was much worse after doing it. (I suspect plantar fasciitis.) So I am giving myself a rest from walking for a while. And taking Tylenol for a few days.

By the way, CRW was just as annoying on the way back as it had been on the flight there. I had an early morning flight and was not successful in pre-scheduling Lyft, i.e. the schedule option was greyed out on the app. So I called the one taxi company and scheduled a pick-up. They showed up 27 minutes late – and after I called twice to check on it. The first time (when he was 12 minutes late), the person who answered claimed he would be there in 5 minutes), while the second time, she claimed she had no way of knowing where exactly he was. I got to the airport in plenty of time because I am me and plan to get there early, but there was no way he was getting a tip. Then my flight was delayed over 45 minutes due to a lack of ground crew at the airport. Sigh.

There were a few things I had intended to do yesterday (Sunday) afternoon, but I was too tired after getting up as early as I’d had to. Another victory for my bed in its battle against productivity.

comments

Random Tidbits

2018-04-05T18:08:13Z

Celebrity Death Watch: Ed Charles played third base, including a stint with the Mets, including their 1969 World Series. Louise Slaughter was the oldest member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Sammy Wilson won a Tony for playing Paul in the original production of A Chorus Line. Frank Avruch played Bozo the Clown in Boston through the 1960’s. Charles Lazarus founded Toys R Us. Louis Kamookak discovered the wreck of HMS Erebus. Wayne Huizenga founded Blockbuster Video. Zell Miller was the Governor of Georgia for much of the 1990’s. Seo Min-woo was a K-pop singer. Linda Brown was the subject of a Supreme Court case on segregation. Stephane Audran was an actress, best known for Babette’s Feast. Peter Munk founded the largest gold mining company in the world. Anita Shreve was a novelist. Stephen Reinhardt was a liberal judge. Connie Lawn was the longest-serving White House correspondent. Ron Dunbar was a songwriter whose works include "Band of Gold" and the execrable "Patches."

Rusty Staub played baseball as part of the original Montreal Expos. He came over to the New York Mets in 1972 and was one of the more notable players for them during my high school years. I have a bobblehead of "Le Grand Orange," acquired when I went to a game in Montreal. He was also the first Mets player to get over 100 RBIs in one season.

Steven Bochco was a television producer, most famous for ensemble shows like Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law. He also created Cop Rock, which is worth a look for the musical aspect.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist and the second wife of Nelson Mandela. She was a controversial figure, largely because of the human rights violations committed by her security detail. In addition to her praise of "necklacing," she is said to have ordered kidnappings. She also got involved in fraud related to a funeral fund.

Intern Reception: I went to a reception last week for MIT students looking for policy internships. This appeared to be the year of the economist, with nobody interested in space. I did enjoy several conversations, both with people I knew (including one from an unrelated and, hence, unexpected connection) and who I didn’t. But the most interesting moment of the evening was when a young woman leaned too close to a candle and her hair caught on fire. Nobody was injured, fortunately.

Pesach: As my father used to say to my mother, America is not as rich as they always told us. Here it is a major Jewish holiday and we don’t even have any bread in the house.

Interplanetary Addresses: I get a fair number of invitations to events, not all of which are anywhere near where I live. Not everybody remembers they are posting invitations to international websites or email lists. Therefore, it is not uncommon to get invited to something with the address being given only as, say, 2100 Main Street.

I have developed the mental habit of interpreting such things as 2100 Main Street, Mars.

Don’t Analyze This Dream, Part 1: I was taking a shared taxi to Island Park. I expected to be dropped at the train station, but the driver turned down Carolina Avenue. When we reached my house, I asked to be let out, but the driver wouldn’t stop. Instead, he continued to the corner and turned left onto Austin Boulevard – but in the oncoming traffic lane. I finally got him to stop by opening the rear right-side door, while he was still moving slowly. I threw $40 at him and left. Also, the house numbers were wrong. My house was 127, instead of 60, and the house next door was 241, instead of 66.

Don’t Analyze This Dream, Part 2: I was somewhere in China with my mother. I had arrived a day earlier, so had already taken the river cruise included in our tour package, but I went with her again. Everyone had to show their passports to be able to board the boats and an American man objected. Then we were in the apartment of a man named Anuku and his mother said he spoke such good English because he had studied at Virginia Tech. He had a tattooed Delta on his arm to prove that.

Commute Hell: There was apparently smoke in the tunnel near Virginia Square, so the Orange Line was shut down from East Falls Church to Clarendon. I was smart enough not to think that shuttle bus service would work, so I took the 29N to King Street, where I could get the Blue or Yellow Line to work. It was slow and crowded and reminded me of how much I prefer trains.

Weird Words: Some friends on facebook have been discussing words that they mispronounced because they've only read them, not heard them. I have to admit that I find myself wondering what sort of life people are living that words like "hegemony" or "antipodes" come up in conversation.

comments