fauxklore

Stafford Challenge - Weeks 33 through 37

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 02:17:27 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, here are the titles of my September poems:

Week 33:

29 August 2026 - That’s All Folks

30 August 2026 - Breakfast Out

31 August 2026 - Axolotls Anonymous

1 September 2026 - Mysterious Email Addresses

2 September 2026 - Promoting Myself

3 September 2026 - The Birthday Story

4 September 2026 - 68

Week 34:

5 September 2026 - Reflections of an Old Bag

6 September 2026 - Another Poet Gone

7 September 2026 - Investigation

8 September 2026 - Mystical Realism

9 September 2026 - Free Range Children

10 September 2026 - The Usurper

11 September 2026 - Remembering That Day

Week 35:

12 September 2026 - Rosh Hashanah

13 September 2026 - Fear

14 September 2026 - Get Organized

15 September 2026 - Book Club Bucket List

16 September 2026 - Sequins

17 September 2026 - Psychedelic Design

18 September 2026 - Kennedy Center Protest

Week 36:

19 September 2026 - Captain Cook

20 September 2026 - Kol Nidre

21 September 2026 - Who By Fire

22 September 2026 - Reef Madness

23 September 2026 - Arrrgh!

24 September 2026 - Packing

25 September 2026 - Traveling While Sleepy

Week 37:

26 September 2026 - Waterfront

27 September 2026 - South Shore Ramble

28 September 2026 - Crazy Knitting

29 September 2026 - I Don’t Understand

30 September 2026 - Scarecrows

1 October 2026 - Scary Motel

2 October 2026 - Failing at Being a Celt

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Two Storytelling Shows

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 02:05:43 GMT

I started September with two storytelling shows.

The first one was on September 3rd, when Better Said Than Done put on Huzzah: a 15th Anniversary Show at Jammin’ Java, which is a great venue. For one thing, it’s close to where I live. And, even more importantly, it has an awesome sound system. I even managed to get a few friends to show up - one of whom flew up from South Carolina for the event. All of the tellers did very well. I told a new story, which wasn’t quite as polished as I’d hoped, but it still went over reasonably well. And, when I listened to the recording afterwards, it was okay, though I caught some annoying vocal tics (e.g. repeating the word “well” numerous times). For what it’s worth, the story had to do with birthdays (because the show was the night before mine) and was focused on the birthday traditions in my family, which were centered around food and presents. And, yes, I do still miss birthday cake from Custom Bakers and birthday dinners at Palace of Wong, both of which have been gone for many years. I do have a modern day equivalent. Because my friend, Cindy, has a birthday reasonably near mine, we always go out for Thai Food at Elephant Jumps tp celebrate.

The second show was on September 9th, when I was one of the two featured tellers at The Grapevine in Takoma Park, which is a monthly program put on by The Folklore Society of Greater Washington. I told a mixture of stories:

The Three Sisters - an original fairy tale

Beryl the Baker - my adaptation of a Jewish folk tale about the wise men of Chelm

M.D., Ph.D., G.R.E.A.T. - a personal story about vacations

Thank You, Miss Tammy - a personal story about what I really learned in ballet class

The Lion Who Couldn’t Read - a folk tale from Afghanistan

I was particularly pleased that not only did two local friends show up, but my childhood friend, Norman (who plays a key role in the first of those personal stories) zoomed in (and sent me a nice note afterwards). And the in-person audience was nicely responsive. Overall, it was worth the long metro ride to darkest Maryland.

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Placeholder, Once Again

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 21:05:15 GMT

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

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

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Stafford Challenge - Weeks 29 through 32

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 22:42:52 GMT

I also owe you an update on the Stafford Challenge. Here's the August edition of that. I'll post about September when I get back from my next vacation.

The August guest poet was Christopher Luna. He started with talking about Allen Ginsburg, including two quotes I liked. To wit: 1) ”All the things we can do to improve our lives can also improve our poetry.” and 2) “Candor ends paranoia.”

Some of the other things he said that I liked were:

Listening to your intuition will always serve you well
There is an inherent connection between poetry and music / rhythm
Keep writing without worrying about the process
You have to write the bad stuff to get to the good stuff

In terms of poetic forms, he talked about collage poems, which involve rearranging things in found material, as well as something he called “investigative poetry.” I’m not sure exactly what he meant by the latter. But, overall, it was an interesting talk, with a several things to think about.

As for the titles of my poems from August, here they are.

Week 29:

1 August 2026 - Blood Count

2 August 2026 - A Conversation with My Body Fat

3 August 2026 - Borscht

4 August 2026 - New Skills

5 August 2026 - Ching Chang Piano Song

6 August 2026 - Not Daniel

7 August 2026 - Room

Week 30:

8 August 2026 - Finding a New Artist

9 August 2026 - Bilbao

10 August 2026 - Wandering Around Bilbao

11 August 2026 - From Bilbao to Burgos

12 August 2026 - Burgos Cathedral

13 August 2026 - The Eclipse

14 August 2026 - To Madrid

Week 31:

15 August 2026 - Hotels

16 August 2026 - Jet Lag and Crosswords

17 August 2026 - Catching Up

18 August 2026 - Book Club

19 August 2026 - Beat Poetry

20 August 2026 - National Book Festival Preparation

21 August 2026 - Medical Procedure

Week 32:

22 August 2026 - National Book Festival Info Desk

23 August 2026 - Doing the Work

24 August 2026 - In the Beginning

25 August 2026 - A Hot Drink

26 August 2026 - The Punster’s Pets

27 August 2026 - Powerful Poem, Part 1: The Limerick

28 August 2026 - Powerful Poem, Part 2: The Haiku

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The Rest of August

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 12:26:21 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

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Catch-up Part 3: Lollapuzzoola 19

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 01:40:39 GMT

Sorry for the delay in getting this post done. In short, I fell into a couple of rabbit holes involving: a) travel planning / arranging and b) not entirely successful attempts at organizing. I hope to get a bit more caught up before I leave again in in (gasp!) a few days.

The reason I had flown to the New York area instead of home was because my favorite crossword tournament of the year was that weekend. I like Lollapuzzoola because the puzzles are particularly creative and, frankly, just a little bit twisted. I was particularly eager to go this year since I’d missed last year due to a genealogy conference.

I stayed at the Moxy Hotel, which claims to be at Times Square but is actually at 36th and 7th, which doesn’t quite qualify in my opinion. At any rate, it’s a short walk from Penn Station, so it was convenient. I had stayed there once before and it’s decent, and relatively reasonably priced for New York. I checked in, walked over to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant to get supper, and had an early night.

In the morning, I had a leisurely breakfast at a nearby coffee shop before taking the subway uptown to Columbia University and walking over to Riverside Church, where the tournament was being held. I checked in, topped up my blood caffeine level, and connected with a few friends before things started. I also showed off my eclipse photo to anyone who would stay still long enough to look.

Puzzle #1 was by Matthew Gritzmacher and Doug Peterson. It was pretty straightforward and I was confident that I’d solved it cleanly. So I was surprised when my score was missing from the standings. I texted the organizers asking what had happened. Uh, remember jet lag? I discovered that I’d written my contestant number incorrectly on the back of the puzzle. Fortunately, they corrected my error quickly.

Puzzle #2 by Sara Cantor was slightly trickier, but there was nothing about it that one wouldn’t encounter in, say, a New York Times crossword. So things were still going well.

Puzzle #3 by Ricky Cruz was in the shape of a box,, with answers wrapping around onto adjoining surfaces. I’ve done plenty of puzzles in this form before and, while they aren’t my favorite, they’re not actually scary. I thought I had solved cleanly, but when the results came in, I apparently had three letters incorrect. They don’t provide scans of your puzzles, so I’m not sure what those were.

I had done the smart thing and ordered pizza for lunch, satisfying one of my New York needs. I got one slice with mushrooms and one with black olives, as well as some coke zero. It was delicious, but probably didn’t help with my level of alertness (or lack thereof).

And then it was time for the dreaded puzzle #4, which is always the hardest puzzle at Lolla. This year’s torturer was Adam Wagner. I was completely confused at first, then started to find some things I could fill in, but I was still struggling. I did make some progress and I did finish the puzzle, but I did not completely grasp the trick in the theme. Surprisingly, I ended up with only one mistake, but whew!

Here is a brief spoiler (encoded using a href="https://rot13.com/"rot13:

Gur tvzzvpx gung v zvffrq jnf gung gur erirnyre ersreerq gb jbeqf va fbzr bs gur pyhrf, abg va gur nafjref. Guvf vf gur frpbaq gvzr V'ir frra gung qbar va n chmmyr jvguva gur cnfg srj zbaguf, fb V ernyyl fubhyq unir pnhtug ba. Ohg, znlor abg, fvapr gur gevpx nyfb vaibyirq hfvat gjb yrggre nooerivngvbaf sbe qnlf bs gur jrrx (r.t. Zb sbe Zbaqnl, Gh sbe Ghrfqnl, naq fb ba), juvyr V trarenyyl guvax bs qnlf nf univat guerr yrggre nooerivngvbaf.

Puzzle #5 by Will Nediger was back in the Things I Can Solve category. It was also the sort of theme that I enjoy, so was a nice end to the main part of the day. I knew I wouldn’t be in the finals (and, frankly, I wouldn’t want to be solving on a big board in front of everyone), so I could kick back and relax. In the meantime, Ben Zimmer and Neville Fogarty had a cute little game to keep us occupied while the judges were tallying the final scores.

So, how did I do?

I finished 86th out of 165 in the local division (which is people who haven’t finished in the top 20% at other tournaments). I think that's pretty solidly middle of the pack. But I was 169th out of 249 in the express division. (which is everyone) and that’s the fairly pathetic score I should really be counting. That’s actually reasonably consistent with my performance at the past couple of Lollas I’d been to.

And, of course, I was extremely jet lagged.

I took the subway back downtown and, given my state of exhaustion, decided that a container of yogurt and a granola bar was a perfect choice for dinner. I faffed around on-line for a little while, then collapsed into bed.

In the morning, I walked over to Moynihan Train Hall, got a bagel (from H&H Bagels in the station), and took the train down D.C. I normally just take the regional, but I’d had a $50 credit for a one-way Acela trip, which made it the cheaper option. And, gee whiz, an early(ish) train on a Sunday is pretty uncrowded. There were no issues with the metro either.

And then home. In other words, the usual chaos of unpacking and doing laundry and trying to get caught up.

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Storytelling Show Tomorrow Night!

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 11:43:24 GMT

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

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

I hope some of you can make it!

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Catch-up - Part 2: Burgos (and the Eclipse)

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 22:53:12 GMT

I’d booked a bus ticket from Bilbao to Burgos. There are several buses a day (all run by Alsa), but I was unable to get a seat on one of the faster ones. So it was a little over 3 hours. The bus was not luxurious, but was tolerable enough. I should note that intercity buses leave Bilbao from what is called the Intermodal (which also has stops for local buses, trains, and trams) and was an easy trip (and only EUR 1.60) from a bus stop right in front of my hotel. The scenery along the way to Burgos was fairly agricultural and, unfortunately, had an excess of sunflowers, which I despise. There were also lots of solar panels and wind turbines, which are not exactly scenic.

The bus station in Burgos was a bit shabby. I took a taxi to the Hotel Cuantame La Puebla, which was reasonably priced and very conveniently located. The bed could have been softer and the air conditioning quieter, but it was adequate for three nights.

In the morning, I set out to walk around Burgos. It was only a few minutes walk to the Teatro Principal and the statue of El Cid.

I meandered my way over to the Cathedral de Santa Maria de Burgos. The cathedral is the must-see tourist attraction of Burgos and is a World Heritage site. I should note that admission is free on Tuesday mornings until about 11:30, so I saved myself about EUR 10.

Anyway, the cathedral is spectacular. I took over 100 photos there, though, admittedly, some of them were of signs that told me which room I was in. Construction started around the 13th century and the entire cathedral is full of gold, marble, paintings, and ornately carved wood. Here is a small sampling.

I will admit to mixed feelings about all of this. I do understand the desire to create beautiful works of art to glorify G-d. And I assume the artists and artisans were well-paid for their work. But how many ordinary people could have been fed and sheltered if the money spent on all the spectacle were put to that use? And, no, I don’t have a good answer to that.

I spent a few hours in the cathedral (and its associated museum) and then went to get lunch. I found an Asian street food restaurant of all things, that had a special eclipse menu. For EUR 12, you got an appetizer, a main course, soda and a pair of eclipse glasses. I had several pairs of eclipse glasses with me already, but I heard that many stores in the area had run out.

I did some random meandering on my way back to my hotel. It was a bit hot out, but not unbearable. There are a lot of interesting sculptures around the city.

I will note that Burgos does adhere to traditional Spanish hours, so pretty much everything is closed from about 2 to 5 p.m. I took the hint and went back to my hotel for a siesta.

It was pleasantly cool in the evening when I went out to get supper. I enjoyed seeing all the people out and about and, overall, I enjoyed Burgos.

Wednesday was eclipse day. But the eclipse didn’t start until about 7:30 in the evening, so I had all day for further sightseeing. First, however, I had an important errand to run. I have this theory that yarn purchased in other countries is souvenir, not stash. Google maps initially led me astray and the first store they pointed me to sold a small amount of thread but primarily dealt in underwear and socks. Fortunately, they showed another shop not much further away, which proved to have an excellent selection of yarn, including some lovely purple cotton that is, indeed, made in Spain. If you share my yarn addiction and happen to be in Burgos, do check out Dedales Merceria Creativa.

Having accomplished that mission, I set out to go to the Museum of Human Evolution. There is an excellent view of the cathedral from its entrance.

MEH (to use its Spanish acronym) is anything but meh. It’s very modern, with lots of information about archaeological research into human origins. I should note that I apparently have some sort of sensing mechanism for free admission days at various tourist attractions. Though, to be fair, it is always free if you are over 65 years old and only EUR 6 otherwise. The list of other categories for free admission is pretty interesting, by the way, and includes victims of terrorism, members of large families, single parent families, and unemployed people.

There are plenty of displays and exhibits, including videos of discoveries. Some are subtitled and there are some films that alternate between Spanish and English.

Apparently, brains are important to human evolution. Who knew?

I spent over 3 hours there. I also got a late lunch at their cafe, before walking back to my hotel for a pre-eclipse siesta.

I had realized that the view from the terrace at the entrance to MEH was a perfectly reasonable place to watch the eclipse from. It was quite crowded, but still doable. Also, remember my saying I had several pairs of eclipse glasses? I was able to give a couple to people who hadn’t been able to find any. One woman couldn’t believe I didn’t want her to pay for them. (I still had a few pairs, as well as other solar filtered viewers.)

Here’s a picture using a filter attached to my cell phone.

At totality, it is safe to look without filters and to take unfiltered photos with a camera or cell phone. I’m quite pleased with this photo, wth the cathedral in the background. And, yes, it was crowded, but people behaved well.

Yes, this eclipse had a short period of totality, but I still thought it was worth the trip. And, yes, I am working on plans for next summer’s eclipse.

In the morning, I managed to figure out how to take the public bus to the Burgos train station, which cost all of EUR 1.20. The train to Madrid Chamartin was comfortable, despite some (sadly, American) children who had never been taught the concept of an inside voice. My ticket (which I’d bought in advance on-line) also included the connection on the Cercanias train to Madrid Airport Terminal 4. From there, I got a shuttle bus to the Hilton, where I spent the night. I should note that United uses Terminal 1 at MAD, which is outdated, chaotic, and annoyingly lacks a Star Alliance Gold lounge. My flight to EWR was okay. The need to take a shuttle bus to the Newark Airport train station is annoying, but I did get to Penn Station in New York without any real hassle.

Overall, I’d have like a little more time in Spain, but I had a commitment in New York on the weekend. I had a good week and accomplished the things that were most important to me, which is really about what one can hope for.

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Catchup - Part 1: Bilbao

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 03:17:55 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here’s a pice by Ai Wei Wei.

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

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

And here are a little bit of the old city.

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

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Placeholder, Sigh

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 02:13:28 GMT

I was only gone about a week and a half - mostly on a trip to total solar eclipse, followed by going to Lollapuzzoola (a crossword tournament) in New York. But I've had a bunch of other stuff to be busy with, all of which is worth writing about to some extent or another.

In addition to the two items mentioned above, expect entries about the National Book Festival, a couple of social events, my futile attempt to catch up on dealing with various articles I've clipped to comment on, and life in general.

I'm trying to have a productive month. So stay tuned!

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National Storytelling Network Conference

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 02:57:29 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Separation (or leaving)
Initiation (or struggling)
Return (or becoming)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Stafford Challenge - Weeks 25 through 28

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 14:24:26 GMT

Here’s the rest of my catching up on writing about The Stafford Challenge.

The July guest poet was Brad Aaron Modlin. He focused on talking about the human body. When challenged to write about a body part, I wrote a poem to my body fat. I haven’t put that in my file of poems for the challenge, which is silly. I guess I can use it for one of those days when I am feeling uninspired. He followed that with asking us to write a reply from that body part. He also offered up a few prompts:

”I am the poet I am because of …” something about my body. I think my note “times of injury holding me still” was my response to that.
How do you describe your body to someone who hasn’t experienced it? (He gave the example of an astronaut, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.)
How would you describe your body to an alien? What is a human? What is this place?

My answer to that last prompt was “to err is human.” We are the beings of mistakes. We do not know right or wrong.

Here are my titles for Weeks 25 through 28.

Week 25:

4 July 2026 - Fireworks

5 July 2026 - A Call From My Brother

6 July 2026 - IRS Letter

7 July 2026 - Looking For Concessions (a haiku)

8 July 2026 - The Haunted Tavern

9 July 2026 - Birthday Dactyl

10 July 2026 - Woodrow

Week 26:

11 July 2026 - Extravaganza

12 July 2026 - Home From Puzzle Convention

13 July 2026 - Home Contradiction

14 July 2026 - Body Poem, My Ass

15 July 2026 - Games With Friends

16 July 2026 - My Desk

17 July 2026 - Patterns

Week 27:

18 July 2026 - Annual Checkup

19 July 2026 - Two Book Clubs

20 July 2026 - Sleeping Beauty

21 July 2026 - App-oplexy

22 July 2026 - Packing for the Surface of the Sun

23 July 2026 - Pre-Dawn Flight

24 July 2026 - No Soap

Week 28:

25 July 2026 - Choosing Your Ancestors

26 July 2026 - Coming Home

27 July 2026 - My Left Foot

28 July 2026 - Mar-a-Lago Zip Ode (33480)

29 July 2026 - Wednesday

30 July 2026 - Grocery Shopping

31 July 2026 - It Makes Scents

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Stafford Challenge - Weeks 21 through 24

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 02:24:46 GMT

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

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

Then she offered up some exercises:

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

Poets in the Round

If Billy Collins Lived Next Door

Good Guy With a Gun

Week 21

Week 22:

Week 23:

Week 24:

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BloomingCon

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:14:02 GMT

I still owe you an update on the Stafford challenge, but I want to write about the National Puzzlers' League convention while things are somewhat fresh in my mind. It’s hard to believe that this was the 17th consecutive year that I’ve gone to the NPL con. It is always amazing to be together with other people who are as passionate as I am about something most people think is kind of odd. And I continue to be awed by the creativity of NPLers.

This year’s con was in Bloomington, Indiana. I leveraged off that to make another attempt at going to a baseball game in Indianapolis. My previous attempt at seeing the Indianapolis Indians at Victory Field had been thwarted by rain, but the weather did cooperate this time. I did have a bit of a flight issue on Tuesday, with a delay on the regional jet from IAD to IND (cascading delays due to an early morning mechanical issue), complicated by having a long wait for a ramp crew to tow us the last several yards to the gate. But I still had plenty of time to take the bus to downtown and check into the SpringHill Suites before going to the game. (There are several Marriott branded hotels in a cluster just north of the ballpark, which is only about a 5 minute walk away.)

As for the ballpark, it’s nice enough, with a large picnic area near the outfield. The concessions are pretty weak, however, which is typical of most minor league parks. It was Irish Heritage night, but that pretty much meant only a brief walk around by a bagpipe band, a table where Aer Lingus was handing out little green rubber airplanes, and a group of young girls from an Irish dancing school performing on top of the dugouts in the middle of one inning.

The Indians beat the Toledo Mud Hens 9 to 3, for what it’s worth. And I’ve now been to 11 1/2 of the 30 AAA ballparks. (The half is because I watched a major league game at Sutter Health Park in Sacramento, not the Sacramento River Cats.)

I had time on Wednesday morning to take a short walk around the area. In particular, I wanted to see some brass sculptures by Tom Otherness, an artist I was introduced to by a former colleague who was writing a paper about him for a night class she was taking.

These are right by the Convention Center.

Here is just a glimpse of the State House.

And here is the Eiteljorg Museum, with a group of deer statues in front. (I visited this museum with friends many years ago, probably on my first visit to Indianapolis for a Halloween party put on by my evil twin, Holly.)

I went back to the hotel, checked out, and took a Lyft back to the airport, where I got the shuttle to Bloomington. Several other NPLers were on the same shuttle. When we got to Indiana University, we checked into the Biddle Hotel, which is physically part of the Indiana Memorial Union (IMU) building. The room was adequate, though the air conditioning was not easily adjustable and I ended up fiddling with it for the entire time I was there. After unpacking and relaxing for a little while, I wandered down to the Solarium, where the Wednesday night picnic was being held. It was a longish walk to the Solarium and Alumni Hall, where most of the con events were being held. That meant that I was reluctant to go back to my room to drop off or pick things up throughout the day. The picnic food was pretty good but, of course, the real pleasure was in seeing people who, in general, I only see once a year. (There are some I see on line, but one cannot exchange hugs over zoom.) By the way, I should mention that NPL members generally use their noms, rather than their real names, at con and I will continue to refer to them that way in this write-up.

After the picnic, I did a mini-ganza (that is, a short version of an extravaganza) with a group of three other people. It was called The Dining and was written by WXYZ and Whimsy. The theme had to do with a group of girl scouts who had supernatural things happen at a diner. The puzzles were interesting and the final result was satisfying, so it was a good way to end the day.

I started Thursday by going out to breakfast at Uptown Cafe with Gotcha. The food (a vegetarian version of a Denver omelet, in my case) was good and the conversation was better. We came back to the hotel and, a little while later, I walked over to the Lilly Library to play with the Slocum collection. Jerry Slocum (who is 95 years old and did come to the con) put together a large collection of mechanical puzzles and we had the opportunity to sign up for slots of time to play with them. I started out by doing a puzzle that involved putting pieces together to form a glass full of whiskey on ice. It wasn’t too hard to figure out how to do it, but it needed a second person to hold things in place while all the pieces were being assembled.

We also spent a little time working on a puzzle that involved putting together plastic pieces to form a custard cake, but I didn’t take a picture of that one.

I wasn’t hungry for lunch, so I walked over to the Sidney and Lois Eskanazi Museum of Art. They have a large art collection, but the exhibits I was particularly interested in were mostly (but not entirely) centered on textiles.

I was very proud of myself for immediately recognizing that this piece was by the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, whose work I had first seen at the High Museum in Atlanta. His sculptures are made from pieces of aluminum held together with wire, giving them the flexibility of fabric.

This brought back memories of my trip to Ghana, where we visited the coffin makers in Accra.

There were several examples of Fulani textiles from Mali and thereabouts.

The other textile exhibit I went to there was titled Fashioned by Women: Indonesian Clothing.

I did meander around the rest of the Art of Africa, Oceania and Indigenous Art of the Americas collection, before stopping in their cafe to refresh my blood caffeine level and eat a blueberry muffin. Then I went back to the Lilly Library, where we got to see part of the library’s Special Collections. There were a lot of amazing things to look at - old books, maps, and all sorts of object.

For example, here’s a 15th century pattern book of an Italian craftsman.

This is Rita Hayworth’s make-up case.

I love artist books. This is Color by Timothy C. Ely.

Here’s a collection of miniature books.

This are the first appearances of Spiderman and of the Avengers. I’m more of a DC Comics gal, but this is still cool.

I was supposed to go out to dinner with a group, but I decided I needed a good nap more than a fancy meal. So I slept for a couple of hours and grabbed a reasonably good slice of pizza at a place in the IMU food court before the official program began on Thursday evening.

The first game was Climb For Season by Kryptogram and involved creating rhymes for words that would lead to a category. It was fun but I did get a couple of words that are nearly impossible to rhyme, e.g. “h”.

Willz had a game based on one by Ken Jennings (Kennections) that involved figuring out what answers to 5 clues had in common. We did well on some, but went completely astray on others.

Finally, CarpeDiem and I did very badly at Zeroing In by WXYZ, which involved guessing the range of numbers the answers to various trivia questions would fit into.

Then the over-the-weekend critic crosswords were handed out. There was a newish solver who had said he would solve one with me, but we never managed to reconnect. Apparently he believes in something called sleep.

I finished off the evening with a group of us solving a folktale themed mini-ganza (called Two Sides to Every Story) by Rubrik and Trazom. Each of the puzzles presented a story from two perspectives, e.g. Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. This was right up my alley and I found it very enjoyable.

On Friday morning, I got a quick breakfast (a spinach pastry and coffee) at Sugar & Spice in the IMU building. Then I went back to the Lilly Library to play with more puzzles. Meet Woodrow, the giant wooden robot, which I worked on with Bookworm and another person (a first timer) whose nom I don’t know. Sorry for this picture being a bit blurry.

Woodrow was specially commissioned by Jerry Slocum and the first challenge is taking him apart. Basically, you have to move certain parts of him to enable you to move other parts and slide things apart. Eventually, we were left with this assortment of body parts.

The catch is that we then had to put him back together. This was even more challenging than disassembly had been. Most of the library staff didn’t know what to do either! We were joined by another person (whose nom I missed) and were eventually successful. But, overall, we spent nearly two hours on the whole thing.

After that I listened to Elf (and another lexicographer, Pandatron) talk about Noah Webster. I also stopped by the room with the display of miniature books and took more pictures of those.

Then I went back to the hotel and pair-solved one of the con cryptics (Hosiers by Trazom) with Clio. We got through it reasonably quickly. Then I went over to the hospitality suite to grab a quick snack (Joey had been unable to attend, but had sent some Tim Tams, which I consider the height of Australian cuisine) and started pair-solving another of the cryptics with Endgame.

There was an okay Mexican themed buffet for dinner. The official program started with an absolutely brilliant wordplay game by Qaqaq. There were six trivia questions in each round and the answers to the last three were an anagram of the answers to the first three. I worked on this with Gotcha and our knowledge bases were different enough that we did reasonably well. I am still absolutely in awe of how well put together this was.

Next was Anti-Anti Match Game by Squonk. He runs his Anti-Match Games a few times a year, themed to the various award shows (Oscars, Emmys, Grammys) and the goal is to find correct answers to trivia questions that other people won’t choose. In this case, you had to find the second most popular correct answers. I think I played that one with Lady Mondegreen and her husband Earl Grey and possibly someone else. (Things get to be a blur after a while). We didn’t do remarkably well at it.

The official program ended with Three of a Kind by Bluff. He’s run this several times before and you have to guess what the category is, with more points the earlier you guess it. You also get points if you correctly guess the second and/or third words.

As for after hours, I managed to get in on Noam’s Jeopardy game. He always has an excellent variety of topics, which makes things more fun for people like me who are pop culture illiterate but good at things like geography and literature. Before that, Famulus ran a pop culture team trivia game. Noam’s Jeopardy was much more in my wheelhouse. I particularly liked his Scotland category in which I correctly got an answer that he said nobody else had ever gotten. I was also the only person who got his final Jeopardy correct, but Famulus had built up a strong lead early in the game so I didn’t win.

Saturday breakfast was part of the con package and was, frankly, dreadful. At least I learned the trick to getting the coffee urn to dispense coffee properly. I expect any coffee away from home to be mediocre at best (though useful for medicinal purposes), but it should at least flow freely, not trickle out. The conversation is always, of course, better than the food.

The business meeting was pretty routine. The major thing to pay attention to there is the presentations for future cons. (The actual voting was done on-line afterwards. I had some issues with discord, but got things resolved enough to vote.) The results were announced on Sunday and 2028 will be in Albuquerque, which makes me happy. (Next year is in Philadelphia which is, of course, very convenient for me. And I have a couple of ideas for possible puzzles to write for it.)

Lunch (sandwiches and salad) was better than breakfast had been. There was time to start the last of the con cryptics with Gotcha, though we didn’t manage to finish it. (Alas, I didn’t manage to connect with Endgame to finish the one I’d started with him.) I’ll get around to finishing solving them sooner or later. Or so I say, ignoring the existence of a couple of boxes of unfinished puzzles in my house.

As for the afternoon, I continued working on the third con cryptic with Gotcha. The afternoon official puzzles started with Which One Don’t Belong? by Willz, in which there were four words and you had to find two ways that three of the four were connected. Unfortunately, one of the answers was incorrect because, apparently, he doesn’t shop at the same sort of supermarkets I do and was unfamiliar with the existence of Malta, a common beverage that, while most popular in Latin America, is widely available in pretty much every store in the DMV (that is what we call DC, Maryland, and Virginia and has nothing to do with motor vehicles), Germany, Iceland, and the UK.

That was followed by Two of a Kind by Murdoch, in which you had to fill in missing letters in 7 letter words to make two distinct words. I didn’t quite finish it in time, but that’s one in the stack of things to finish when I have time.

Flats are a type of puzzle involving wordplay which are a big thing in the NPL and take up a lot of the monthly publication, The Enigma. I never do the flats competition, because I only really understand a few types of flats and they’re not the sort of thing I can enjoy doing quickly. Tyger had asked for help with the competition and I agreed to help out, in lieu of taking a nap. There wasn’t really a lot for me to do, but she thought it was useful to assuage her anxiety over running it for the first time. (Gotcha also helped out, and helped grading.)

After dinner (okay pasta and salad) and the Golden Sphinx Awards presentations (of which the notable part is that Fraz won the well-deserved Maso memorial award for service to the NPL, I played the Taskmaster Board Game (run by Squonk). I teamed with La Do La Li/Ti. I mostly enjoyed the game, but I was also reminded that I’m not always great at being creative on demand. (Which is interesting to me because I do think of myself as being a very creative person, in general.)

Saturday night is always devoted to the Extravaganza and this year’s was written by Evv and Nominal and named BloomingCon SWAG. I was on a Stroller team with arcbat, Brigand, and Gotcha. We did reasonably well at working our way through the puzzles, taking advantage of the hint system when we needed to. Each round ended with our collecting swag, mostly consisting of little plastic doohickeys. There were several very clever puzzles. My favorite was Schoonerisms, which involved a pirate story full of spoonerisms. We did need some help here and there and it took us past 1 a.m., but we did finish. And we got fabulous swag bags as a reward.

The final day of con was Sunday. Breakfast that morning was somewhat better than Saturday had been. There were awards given out for the weekend contests. I went back up to my room to finish packing and to check out. I wasn’t leaving until the afternoon, so pretty much hung out in the hotel lobby catching up on some on-line reading and working more on some puzzles. The shuttle back to the Indianapolis airport worked fine and there were lots of NPL folks at the airport (though no others on my flight home). There were no issues getting to IAD and just the typical annoying wait for the metro (about ten minutes each for the Silver and Orange line trains).

I’m looking forward to next year (July 8-11th) in Philadelphia!

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California - Westwords and Sacramento

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:27:08 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What I Did in June (mostly)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 01:18:42 GMT

This is a quick run-down of what I’ve been up to over the past month or so. It includes a couple of teasers for things that deserve their own entries.

Celebrity Death Watch: Clive Davis was a record producer and founded Arista Records. Alan Greenspan was the chair of the Federal Reserve from 1987-2006. Jill Smokler blogged as “Scary Mommy.” Anna Blyth was an actress, most famous for the movie Mildred Pierce. David Clayton-Thomas was the lead singer and songwriter of Blood, Sweat & Tears. Martha Lillard was the last known person reliant on an iron lung. Victor Willis was the lead singer of the Village People and wrote the song “Y.M.C.A.”

Joe Melson was a songwriter whose songs included “Only the Lonely” and “Blue Bayou.” Herman Chernoff was a mathematician. Phil Regan was a pitcher for several teams, including the Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers, ad Chicago Cubs. Dermot Murnaghan presented the BBC quiz show Eggheads between 2003 and 2014. Pat Opliphant was a political cartoonist. Sam Neill was an actor, best known for Jurassic Park.

Louise Lasser was an actress, most famous for playing the title character on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. She was married to Woody Allen from 1966 until 1970 and appeared in a number of his early movies, including Take the Money and Run and Bananas.

Bonnie Tyler was a singer, best known for “Holding Out for a Hero” and “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” The latter is one of my favorite songs.

Wally Funk was part of the Mercury 13 group and had a number of firsts for a female aviator. She became the oldest person to go into space (at age 82) on Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft. (William Shatner broke that record later the same year, but she remains the oldest women to have traveled to space.)

Lindsey Graham was a Republican senator from South Carolina from 2003 until his death and a member of the House of Representatives prior to that (from 1995). He was pretty much a Trump lackey in recent times.

Guy Scott was the acting president of Zambia briefly from 2014 to 2015, making him the first head of state of European descent in mainland Africa since F. W. de Klerk in 1989. He had a Ph.D. in cognitive sciences and artificial intelligence from the University of Sussex and later studied robotics at Oxford University.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: I learned that Ron Herm died recently. We worked together off and on for several years and I remember him being a nice guy.

Genealogy: I spent a while on the phone at the beginning of June with one of the people I mentor on Lithuanian Jewish genealogy. He’s planning a trip to Lithuania and I gave him some tips and some ideas on research he can do to identify specific places to visit. I also had my regular monthly mentoring meeting and have notes on some topics people are interested in.

Crafts: I think I made it to two sessions of my on-line crafting group. I’ve made a fair amount of progress on my Tunisian crochet afghan. The big decision is what to do about edging. I am deciding between cream, grey, or dark green and leaning towards a simple crab stitch edging. But I need to go through my stash and see if anything jumps out at me. Otherwise, I could always make a quick trip to Michael’s.

California: I took a short (4 day) trip to California to visit with a friend from my crafts group, go to Westwords (a crossword tournament), and go to Sacramento to visit another friend and go to a baseball game. That will get its own entry.

Literature: I had book club meetings for both the TCC Book Club and Crones and Tomes. We also talk about books at my crafts group (since Eve, the organizer, is a librarian). And I’ve been keeping up with the Stafford Challenge and will write an update about that.

Broadway In the Park: On June 20th, I went to a Travelers’ Century Club DC Chapter event at Wolf Trap. We had dinner at Ovations Restaurant. The buffet had plenty of options and the food was pretty good, but it was rather pricy. After dinner, we walked over to the Filene Center to see their annual Broadway in the Park show, produced by Signature Theatre with two guest singers (Titus Burgess and Heather Headley). The program started out fine with “Night Waltz” from A Little Night Music. Then it moved on to “Opening: The New World” from Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World, “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz, and “Much More” from The Fantasticks, none of which has ever been on Broadway. I won’t go through every song on the program. The best performance, in my opinion, was Kevin McAllister’s rendition of “Man of La Mancha (I, Don Quixote)” from Man of La Mancha. The program also included pieces from jukebox musicals, which really shouldn’t count in my book, especially since they included “I (Who Have Nothing)” which was included in Smokey Joe’s Cafe and is my second least favorite song ever, behind only “We Will Rock You.” The organizer of the TCC group said the songs were chosen to highlight American music, but they included pieces by Elton John and Tim Rice and by Andrew Lloyd Webber (with both Don Black and Tim Rice), all of whom are British. And, of course, “I (Who Have Nothing)” was originally in Italian and has music by Carlo Donida. If I go to see a Broadway program, I expect at least some songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Frank Loesser, Cy Coleman, or Bock and Harnick. It was still a fun evening, but it could have been so much better. Or they could have advertised it more honestly.

Loserdom: The Flushies (the annual Invitational awards ceremony party) was in late June. It included a potluck, for which I made my signature dessert, which consists of nectarines and blueberries, soaked in apricot brandy. It normally has apricots, not nectarines, but there weren’t any at the first grocery store I went to. I also brought sponge cake to have with the fruit. I don’t think that was very successful, since I had enough leftovers to use as dessert for the next three days. There was also, of course, the sing-along to parody songs, which included Jonathan Jensen’s recent “What’s It All About, Algae?” and a medley of songs to the tune of “Be Our Guest.” Overall, I had a great time and it was worth the drive to darkest Maryland. (It was at Mount Vermin, the home of the Empress and Royal Consort, in Fort Washington.)

Renwick - State Fairs Exhibit: The next day I went out to brunch and to the Renwick Gallery with my friend, Kathleen, who’d come up from South Carolina for the Flushies. We ate at Immigrant Food, which is more or less across the street. (They do also have two other branches - one at Planet Word and one in Ballston.) I got the very tasty Old Saigon Sandwich (essentially a banh mi), while Kathleen had The Heritage, which is a bowl with Indian and Caribbean flavors. We also had a particularly chatty waiter, by the way.

As for the Renwick, I had wanted to go in order to see their exhibit on state fairs since it opened. Note that this had nothing to do with the fiasco on the National Mall. It had lots of really interesting exhibits. Also, I ran into someone I knew from Aerospace, who was visiting from Alabama.

This cowboy boot (and another one) were outside, next to the main entrance to the museum.

Here’s a dress made out of butter wrappers.

I loved this crocheted afghan, which looks like needlepoint.

This sweater was designed and knitted by Maryland’s own Sam Barsky.

I’ve never been interested in canning, but this collection was fascinating.

Of course, there had to be a butter cow. (There was also a video about how they carved it.)

Overall, it was a great exhibit and well worth a couple of hours. It runs through September 7th so you still have time to see for yourself.

Indiana: Last week I took a trip to Indiana for the National Puzzlers’ League convention. That also deserves its own entry.

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Second Quarter 2026 - Books, Movies, Goals

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:56:46 GMT

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

Books:

I read only 7 books during this quarter.

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

Movies:

I saw 6 movies this quarter, all on airplanes.

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

Goals:

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

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Oz, Part 3 - OzFest in Darwin

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 01:23:12 GMT

I’d been fighting off a cold for a couple of days and it was worse in the morning. I took a taxi to the airport, where I got my Qantas Link flight to Darwin. There’s a new shuttle service to city center hotels and that was very convenient. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get early check-in at the Doubletree. I chose to sit in the lobby and read until I got into my room. I should also note that, while the room was fine, the hotel had a lot of construction going on, so the path from the street to the entrance was a bit of a labyrinth. I had a light and mediocre dinner (satay and coke zero) at the hotel before calling it a night. The rest and the sleep did me a lot of good and I was pretty much over the cold by the morning.

OzFest officially started Friday night. Several of us met up at Lizards Bar & Grill for lunch around 1 p.m. I got (alcoholic) ginger beer and beef tacos, which were fairly good, though not as spicy as I would have preferred. A lot of the conversation ran to either people trying to remember where they’d met before (e.g. “oh, you were at that dinner in XXX, right?”) or introducing themselves to people they were sure they’d never met before. Most of us walked over to the Novotel afterwards for a little birthday party for one of the attendees.

The first official event was dinner at Stokes Hill Wharf. This is a seaside area with a bunch of food stalls and a pleasant view of the sunset. There’s also a memorial to the bombing of Darwin there.

The directions for meeting up there had been a bit vague, but it worked out in the end. We’d managed to grab a few tables close to one another and I think most of the people who intended to come managed to find the group. I have deeply mixed feelings about WhatsApp, but it is very useful for this sort of thing.

We had an early departure on Saturday with a hired bus that picked people up at a few hotels. We drove out a ways from Darwin to take the Original Jumping Crocodiles Cruise. This was one of the highlights of the weekend for me. Yes, they do dangle food to attract the crocodiles, but we definitely got good views of them.

By the way, these are estuarine crocodiles, which can live in either freshwater or saltwater, but they’re usually just called “salties.” We did also see some birds (generally raptors, e.g. kites).

The boat trip was about an hour. And everybody came back with all their limbs, so it must have been a success.

Our next stop was the Purple Mango Cafe and Brewery, where we had drinks and pizza. Most of the pizza was kinds of weird in my opinion, e.g. mango chicken or potato and onions. After that we drove to Corroboree Billabong Wetland Cruises, where we got on two boats for a cruise along the billabong, with more wildlife viewing and a boxed lunch. While we did see a few crocodiles and several birds (e.g. cormorants and egrets), it was hot out by then and, overall, this was less enjoyable than the morning boat ride had been.

On the way back to Darwin, we saw a lot of wallabies along the road. They’re very cute, but they ran off when they heard the bus, so I couldn’t get any decent pictures of them.

We had a brief stop to drop people off at the hotels so they could refresh themselves. Then we reboarded the bus and got dropped off at the Darwin Trailer Boat Club for dinner. It was very crowded, so there was a long line at the bar and a long wait for food.I got fish and chips and Thai salad, which was pretty good. I also had a gin and tonic because anybody over about 40 should have already decided on their default go-to drink. You can get a G&T anywhere in the world and you can always pretend the quinine in the tonic water is healthy even if there isn’t really enough to prevent malaria. Anyway, there was lots of lively travel-related conversation. Eventually, I shared an Uber back to the Doubletree with a couple of other people.

Our bus driver on Saturday had told us the true story of Crocodile Dundee, i.e. the actual man who had vaguely inspired the movie. We had a different driver on Sunday, who was called “Magpie Mike” and told us stories about his entertainment career imitating bird calls.

Our first stop was the Darwin Military Museum. There are outside areas that have displays of everything from uniforms to cannons to aircraft.

There are more displays inside and one of the major ones is a film about the Japanese bombing of Darwin. I can’t speak for other Americans, but given that we learned fairly little about Pearl Harbor, I’m pretty sure Australia’s involvement in World War II was never even mentioned in my high school history classes. (We spent months on the French Revolution and less than a week on the entire 20th Century.) There is also a section on the Holocaust and I was also interested in a scheme for creating a Jewish state in northern Australia.

Our next stop was the Mangrove Boardwalk. This was very pretty and I wish we had had more time there so I could enjoy it at a more leisurely pace. Note that it was high tide, so a lot of the roots were covered by the water.

We stopped for lunch at the Cool Spot Cafe, where I had a (non-alcoholic) ginger beer and a very tasty Korean chicken burger with chips (i.e. fries). After lunch, we got back on the bus and people got dropped off at their choice of a few places. I opted for the Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery. The art gallery focused on pieces by students finishing high school. Here are a couple of pieces I liked.

There was an interesting film with interviews with the students. Many of them had entirely unrealistic visions for their futures, focusing on money and stardom.

Other exhibits in the museum included natural history and a large exhibit about Cyclone Tracy, which destroyed Darwin 50 years ago. Another person and I shared an Uber back to the Doubletree. People were meeting up at the Mindil Beach Sunset Markets for dinner, but I decided I needed a nap and some introvert time, so passed on that.

Overall, I had a good time with interesting activities and good conversation. As I’ve said before, while there is great scenery and cool animals, the major reason to go to Australia is Australians. While I am not planning to go to next year’s OzFest in Canberra, I am sure I will go again in the future.

One issue with Darwin is flight schedules. There are a lot of flights that depart at absurd hours like 1 a.m. I opted to take a more reasonable flight on Monday afternoon, on Virgin Australia to Brisbane. Since I’ve been there a couple of times, I just stayed overnight at the Ibis Hotel (a short walk from the domestic terminal). It was fine for what it was, though the only charging port was in the back of the clock radio.

In the morning, I took the (paid) shuttle to the International Terminal. I had breakfast in the Air New Zealand lounge. Shortly before boarding, I got a notice that I’d gotten upgraded to Polaris for my flight to SFO. It was (as is typical at SFO) a bit of a hike to get to my connecting flight, which was completely full and, hence, uncomfortable. But, I had an aisle seat and I had no issues getting home, which is the important part. Getting caught up at home is, alas, another story.

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Oz, Part 2 - The Ghan and Alice Springs

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:30:23 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I also liked this mural.

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

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

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Oz, Part 1 - Adelaide

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 01:58:56 GMT

I’ll do another Stafford Challenge update at the end of the month. But let’s get back to catching up on travel with a few posts about my trip to Australia over a month ago.

I’m very good at leveraging off one thing I want to do to add on other things I want to do and that was exactly how I arranged my trip to Australia. There is an annual FlyerTalk get-together called OzFest, which is held in different parts of Australia every year during U.S. Memorial Day weekend. I’d been to it a couple of times before (in Canberra and in Perth) and decided I wanted to go to this year’s get-together in Darwin. To make things more interesting, I decided I could combine that with a trip on the Ghan, which is generally considered among the greatest train journeys in the world. For various scheduling reasons, it made sense only to do the first part of the Ghan journey, from Adelaide to Alice Springs. That also allowed me to visit with a friend in Adelaide and to do a couple of things there that I hadn’t done before.

My flight from IAD to LAX wasn’t very crowded. We were projected to land 50 minutes early, but got put in a holding pattern so it was only 20 minutes early. Still, that gave me plenty of time to make my connection. I was in Premium Plus for the LAX to MEL flight, but was disappointed in the seat design, which made it hard to find the headphone jack and the USB port. We ended up getting delayed due to some ground equipment issue. As a result, we got in just a little too late for me to make my connection (on Virgin Australia) to ADL. Still, there are millions of worse places to have to spend an extra few hours waiting and the flight from MEL to ADL was fine. After so many hours traveling, I opted for a taxi to my hotel. After resting for a little while and catching up on-line, I had dinner at a nearby Thai restaurant. Then I came back to my room and collapsed for the night.

The Hotel Indigo Adelaide Markets was comfortable and conveniently located - a block from the Central Market, in an area with lots of restaurants and easy access to public transportation. Note that public transit is free within the central Adelaide urban core. There are a couple of circular bus routes that can get you to the major tourist attractions, as well as a tram system. So, overall, the city is quite tourist friendly. In the morning, after getting coffee and a croissant at one of the cafes nearby, I took advantage of one of those circular bus routes and headed off to the Adelaide Zoo.

The first animals I saw were little blue penguins (also called fairy penguins). These are very cute and are found along part of the south coast of Australia, as well as in New Zealand.

The big attraction at the zoo is their giant panda exhibit. These are cute, but not indigenous to Australia. Because the one who was outside had turned its back to the audience and the other one was inside behind glass that mostly reflected the people looking at it, I was unable to get a photo worth sharing. The red panda, however, was: a) even cuter and b) far more cooperative.

There was an exhibit area for Australian animals and it did have a couple of kangaroos. There were no koalas and both the wombat and the Tasmanian devil were hiding from the public. The non-native animals were more eager to show off, with both the komodo dragon and the giraffes eager to pose.

There were also lots of other things to look at (primates, birds, and so on). It was getting pretty warm out, so I decided to wander over to the botanical gardens (which are free) and spent a little time walking around there.

I’d have liked to spend longer, but jet lag was catching up with me. So I took the bus back to the Central Market, which I meandered around a little bit (including buying a pastry) before going back to my hotel for a late afternoon nap.

Friday’s weather forecast was for rain, so it was a good day to go to a museum. I chose the Art Gallery of South Australia, which was easily reached by a tram. Half of the museum has Australian art and half has international art. The Australian art, especially pieces by indigenous artists, was generally more to my taste. I didn’t take good notes, alas, but you can look at some pieces I liked.

One which I did capture a little information about is this installation by the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, who created this labyrinth of string (titled “Absence embodied) specifically for the space it’s in.

There was also a special exhibition which included an interesting movie called “Pocket Money” by Emmaline Zanelli, which had to do with young people working their first jobs. There was some film footage about moths, too, but I never figured out if that was connected to this or completely separate.

I’d made plans with my friend, Amanda, for later in the day. We started out going over to the Central Market for her (and her partner, Chris) to buy a few things. We also went to Chinatown (maybe a block further) to get hand-pulled noodles. Then we went to their home in the Adelaide Hills for dinner and conversation. It was great to see them after 13 years and catch up / reminisce.

My final full day in Adelaide was spent taking a Barossa Valley Food and Wine Tour. There were only 5 of us - me, a couple from Brisbane, and a mother and daughter from Singapore. I’m not really a big wine drinker, but I do try to educate myself on it every now and then.

After picking everyone up, we drove on twisty back roads to our first winery, Kersbrook Hill. Along the way, we saw some pretty scenery, along with sheep and some cows here and there.

My usual experience with wine tasting has been that a given winery will give you samples of 3 or 4 wines. At Kersbrook Hill, I think we had about 10. Most of them were variants of shiraz, but there were sweet and dry, red and white, still and sparkling. My favorite of what we tasted there was a tawny port.

Our next stop was at Kies Family Winery. I have to admit that I don’t particularly remember any of the wines we tasted there, one way or another. We did also have lunch there. I had a meat pie which was just okay. There was also a nice salad and overly salty fries.

Our next stop was Maggie Beer’s Farm. Maggie Beer has done television cooking shows and written cookbooks and so on, in addition to running this store and cafe. I suppose this is a good stop if you live in Australia and want to buy fancy food, e.g. jam and vinegar and sauces and the like, as gifts. The property is pretty and there’s an aviary with several different types of pheasants.

Next we drove to Chateau Dorrien, which proved to be my favorite of the wineries we visited. They had a really cool historic area, with paintings of the history of the winery on old concrete wine vats.

More to the point, they had some very unusual wines, including fortified wines and mead. We did start with some more normal wines, e.g. semillon and several variants of shiraz (including a shiraz rose). But the highlights were things like their fortified wines with various liqueurs, e.g. Chocolatino (with chocolate flavor, duh). If I weren’t going to be traveling for several more days, I would definitely have bought a bottle of that. And then there was mead, which our hostess heated up for us to taste. There was a spiced mead with cinnamon and cloves and honey. Even better was the Scarlet Mead, which had cinnamon and cocoa over a base of honey. That would be perfect served in a chocolate liqueur cup. It’s probably a good thing that the logistics were just too challenging for me.

Our final winery was Chateau Tanunda.

This was much larger than the other three, so we got much less personal service for our tastings. I was, frankly, not really interested in any more wine at that point. That’s really my problem with going wine tasting. I’m hesitant to buy anything at the first place or two since I might like something later on better. But I’m jaded by the time we get to the later places on the itinerary. The ideal situation is to go to an art or music event at one winery, taste just a few wines, and have the good fortune to find one that you like enough to buy. (For example, many years ago, I bought a really nice white wine at a storytelling event at a winery in the Santa Ynez Valley in California.)

We did have one more stop before returning to Adelaide. That was at the Barossa Valley Chocolate Company. We sampled small bits of several of their chocolates. And I did buy two of their miniature chocolate bars - one with milk chocolate and honeycomb and one with dark chocolate, orange, and almonds.

Back in Adelaide, I pretty much collapsed. I would be off on the next segment of the trip in the morning and I definitely slept very well that night.

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Stafford Challenge - Weeks 16 through 20

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 03:00:20 GMT

And here is the May update on the Stafford Challenge.

The May guest poet was Jacqueline Allen Trimble, who just started a term as the poet laureate of Alabama. The theme of her talk was “Elegy,” which she got interested in because of the death of her son, which resulted in her writing a book titled Joy in the Time of Elegy. She noted that elegy is one of the oldest forms of poetry. Then she had a few bullet points about what elegies are:

an elegy is usually thought of as a lament for one who has died
There is also “elegiac meter” which alternates lines of dactylic hexameter and pentameter and can be about any subject
the term “elegy” also applies to love poems
an elegy can be a lament and celebration in any meter

In short, an elegy doesn’t have to be melancholy.

She recommended reading things that are not your style. I think I make a conscious effort to do this with the written word, but I’m less likely to do this deliberately when it comes to the spoken word.

She quoted Caroline Forche as having said “your poem is about something but also about something else.” I think the context of this is related to things Forche has written about the difficulties inherent when one tries to distinguish between the “personal” and the “political” in poetry.

Then she read a few of her poems. I was particularly awed by one about a woman attacked by a bear.

She also said you have to find your own rhythm for writing. Mine is decidedly chaotic.

Finally she mentioned The Poetry Pharmacy in London. Basically, they sell pill bottles with capsules containing poetic extracts. I definitely need to go to this place the next time I’m in London.

Overall, I really enjoyed her talk.

As for titles of poems, here are a few more weeks worth:

Week 16:

2 May 2026 - Sea Fishing

3 May 226 - At the Fforde Fiesta

4 May 2026 - Huzzah!

5 May 2026 - Toy Museum

6 May 2026 - Airplane Haiku

7 May 2026 - No Water

8 May 2026 - Brainy Girl’s Lament

Week 17:

9 May 2026 - Packing

10 May 2026 - Travel Haiku

11 May 2026 - Heading Away

12 May 2026 - International Date Line Haiku

13 May 2026 - Travel Connection Haiku

14 May 2026 - Adelaide Zoo Haiku

15 May 2025 - Rainy Days

Week 18:

16 May 2026 - Wine Tasting

17 May 2026 - The Ghan

18 May 2026 - Arrival in Alice

19 May 2026 - Around Alice

20 May 2026 - Art Class

21 May 2026 - Arrived in Darwin

22 May 2026 - Socializing

Week 19:

23 May 2026 - Crocodile Teeth

24 May 2026 - Museum Day

25 May 2026 - Searching for a USB Port

26 May 2026 - International Date Line, Part 2

27 May 2026 - Home Is Where the Chores Are

28 May 2026 - Closures

29 May 2026 - Bookcases

Week 20:

30 May 2026 - No Chance to Dream

31 May 2026 - House Tour

1 June 2026 - June

2 June 2026 - Catching Up On Mail

3 June 2026 - Home For a Change

4 June 2026 - Faithless

5 June 2026 - The River Isle of Manhattan (with apologies to W.B. Yeats)

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Stafford Challenge Update - Weeks 13 through 15

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 22:36:35 GMT

Before getting back to the travel catch-up, I also owe everybody an update on the Stafford Challenge. I’ll finish off April here and write a separate post about May. (And, later on, one about June. But I intend to do some other catching up between the May and June posts.)

The April guest poet was Kevin Prufer. His talk focused on images and what they mean. He distinguished between image meeting abstraction vs. image meeting another image. He used a few poems by Russell Atkins to illustrate this. I thought it was interesting that he drew pictures on a whiteboard to make the idea more concrete. He also talked about the use of white space (e.g. breaks between parts of a poem) and moving white space around when editing the poem, which he referred to as “moving with the silence.” Overall, it was an interesting talk, though I’m not sure how useful it was to me.

As for titles of poems for April 11th on, here they are.

Week 13:

11 April 2026 - Zip Ode #2: MyTo-Do List

12 April 2026 - Notes On My Phone (Written on 25 March 2022)

13 April 2026 - Marshmallows

14 April 2026 - Telephones

15 April 2026 - Tax Day

16 April 2026 - Early Voting Haiku

17 April 2026 - Reunion Happy Hour

Week 14:

18 April 2026 - 50 Years Later

19 April 2026 - Amtrak Acela

20 April 2026 - Underwear

21 April 2026 - Traveling When Old

22 April 2026 - Collective Poems

23 April 2026 - Occupation Tapestry (Jersey)

24 April 2026 - Jersey Zoo

Week 15:

25 April 2026 - Guernsey Ferry haiku

26 April 2026 - Bathing Pools, Guernsey

27 April 2026 - Relationship Rhyme

28 April 2026 - Poetry Reading

29 April 2026 - Ferry Noises

30 April 2026 - The British Museum

1 May 2026 - Shakespeare’s Deaths

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Celebrity Death Watch: mid-April through mid-June 2026

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 03:27:30 GMT

Note that this post got delayed a little over a week because of a power outage just before I left for a short trip to California. I’m going to get caught up real soon now.

I have another trip (to Australia) to write about. It will have three parts and I hope to get started on it in the next few days. But I want to do a bit of other catching up first. Let’s start with the ever popular celebrity death watch.

Belated Celebrity Death Watch: I only recently learned that Scottish singer/songwriter Adam Mcnaughton died in early December 2025. What first brought him to my attention were his two Shakespearean songs - Oor Hamlet and The Scottish Song. I had the interesting experience of seeing him perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival back in 1998.

Celebrity Death Watch - April 2026: Dave Mason was a founding member of the rock band Traffic and wrote some of their songs. Patrick Muldoon was a soap opera actor. Alan Osmond was the eldest of the Osmond brothers. Dirk Kempthorne was a senator, governor of Idaho, and secretary of the Interior. Donald Riegle was a congressman and senator from Michigan, notable for his opposition to the Vietnam War (which led him to switch from the Republican to the Democratic party) and for co=sponsoring the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (with Bella Abzug). Nedra Talley sang with The Ronettes. David Allen Coe was a country singer and songwriter, responsible for writing “Take This Job and Shove It.” Gordon Snell was a British children’s author but is probably more famous for having been married to Maeve Binchy. Gwen Farrell was the first licensed woman boxing referee. Alex Ligertwood was the lead vocalist for Santana.

Michael Tilson Thomas was one of the most distinguished orchestra conductors of our times, as well as a pianist and composer. Some of the orchestras he was affiliated with during his career included the New World Symphony London Symphony Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony. I was privileged to see him conduct a few times and particularly appreciated his insightful spoken introductions to the pieces he conducted. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 18 points.

Nicole Hollander was a feminist cartoonist, best known for her comic strip Sylvia. She retired in 2012, but her comics have retained their relevance. She also drew a lot of comics about cats, including illustrating several books by Allia Zobel.

Celebrity Death Watch - May 2026: Greg Hyman co-created Tickle Me Elmo. Martin Weisskopf was a scientist, specializing in x-ray astronomy for NASA. Judith Barnard co-write several novels, e.g. Deceptions with her husband, Michael Fain, using the pseudonym Judith Michael. Aryeh Stern was the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. Michael Pennington was an actor and co-founder of the English Shakespeare Company. Bobby Cox was a Hall of Fame baseball manager for the Atlanta Braves and Toronto Blue Jays. David Burke was a British actor, best known for playing Dr. Watson opposite Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. Abraham Foxman directed the Anti-Defamation League from 1987 through 2015. Mark Fuhrman was an LAPD detective, best known for allegations of manufacturing evidence in the O.J. Simpson trial. Rex Reed was a film critic. Clarence Carter was a singer-songwriter, best know for the song “Patches,” which is (in my opinion) one of the sappiest songs of all time. Claudine Longet was an singer and actress, most famous for shooting her boyfriend, an Olympic skier. Edmund Phelps won the Nobel prize for economics in 2006. John A. Lent founded the International Journal of Comic Art. Dennis Lecorriere was a founding member of Dr. Hook. Michael M. May was a theoretical physicist who became the 5th director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and later co-directed the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford. Peter G. Neumann was a computer scientist who studied how computers failed and how to make them fail less often. Piper J. Drake wrote speculative fiction. Maribeth Sisco was a folklorist and storyteller whose work centered on her Ozark heritage. Cleve Moler created MATLAB. Kyle Busch was a NASCAR driver. Ted White was a science fiction writer. Robert Daley wrote both crime fiction and true crime books.

Ted Turner was a media titan and also owned the Atlanta Braves. I think only MIT-affiliated people of my age remember that TBS was originally (as WTBS) Technology Broadcasting System and was the MIT amateur radio station. Turner bought it (leading it to become Turner Broadcasting System) and MIT’s radio station to become WMBR (which stands for Walker Memorial Basement Radio).

Manny Nosowsky was a crossword puzzle constructor. He had more puzzle published in the New York Times than any other constructor.

Sonny Rollins was a jazz saxophonist. He was a defining figure of the genre and was awarded a lifetime Grammy Award.

Celebrity Death Watch - June 2026: Peabo Bryson was a Grammy award singer of Disney duets. Marjane Satrapi was a Iranian writer, best known for the graphic novel Persepolis. Lady Pamela Hicks was a bridesmaid and, later, lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II. James Bradley wrote historical non-fiction, notably Flags of Our Fathers. Lee Raymond was the chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil from 1987 to 2005. Bob Packwood was a senator from Oregon for over 25 years who resigned after allegations of sexual harassment and assault of women. Alan Hale was an astronomer and co-discoverer of Comet Hale-Bopp. Mary Hooper wrote historical fiction for children. Dee Palmer was an arranger for Jethro Tull. Danny Simmons was an abstract expressionist painter. Justin Cary played bass guitar for Sixpence None the Richer.

Anthony Stewart Head was an actor and singer. He was best known for playing Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He also appeared in other television roles and a seres of coffee commercials.

Jane Yolen wrote fantasy, science fiction and children’s books. She also collected folk tales. In 2012, she became the first woman to give the Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St. Andrews on the subject of “Folklore vs. Fakelore: An Imagine Conversation with Andrew Lang.” Her 450th and final book is scheduled to be published in July.

David Hockney was an influential painter. In 2018 his painting Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures sold at Christie’s for $90 million, making it the most expensive artwork by a living artist to be sold at auction. (This record was later surpassed by a sculpture of Jeff Koons, proving that there is no accounting for taste, or lack thereof.)

Gene Shalit was a movie critic, known primarily for his appearances on The Today Show. As someone with thick curly hair and a fondness for puns, I related to him. (Thankfully, I don’t have a matching mustache.)

Yaakov Agam was an Israeli sculptor, best known for his brightly colored kinetic and optical art. I particularly liked his fountain in Dizenoff Square in Tel Aviv, which also served as a useful landmark when I stayed at a hotel nearby.

Family Death Watch: My sister-in-law, Cynthia Banks, died in late March. This wasn’t particularly surprising, as she’d had heart issues for some time. In fact, one of my brother’s friends had refused to go to their wedding because he thought my brother was making a mistake and would just spend all his time as a caretaker. By the way, I have heard nothing at all about any plans for a celebration of life.

Friend Death Watch: I knew Marleen May from the Loser community. She had gotten ink several times in the Invitational and was a frequent attendee at Loser brunches and other events like the Flushies. I was able to go to the last day of shiva at her very impressive house (and give a ride to another Loser). I will miss her sharp wit and enthusiastic spirit.

I knew Kate Miller from my Needles & Crafts group (which meets on-line every other week). I hadn’t known until I read her obituary that she had a degree in Petroleum Engineering and had worked as a gas pipeline inspector for several years.

I also learned recently that my former colleague, Kevin Walker, died of cancer last year.

Finally, Joan Brown Swift died a couple of days ago. I knew her from the Virginia Storytelling Alliance. She was a kind person and a great storyteller. I have particularly fond memories of her tandem telling with her late husband, Mack.

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Catch-up Part 5: The End of the UK Trip (mostly about Brighton)

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:27:39 GMT

Getting from Swindon to Brighton required going through London. Why was I going to Brighton? Well, I watch various musician’s reels. One performer who I’ve found interesting over the past couple of years is Thomas Benjamin Wild and I saw that he was performing in Brighton the day after the Fforde Ffiesta. I’d never actually been to Brighton before, so I figured that going to his show there would kill two seagulls with one stone. (Er, yes, I do have something against seagulls. I grew up having to fend them off when picking berries and having to dodge flying clams that they were trying to crack on sidewalks.)

Anyway, I figured out the train connections. I had booked a room at the Ibis Hotel in downtown Brighton, which proved to be particularly convenient to the train station. (And, hence, to buses that run to other parts of Brighton, which proved to be convenient later on.) I’d paid for early check-in so was able to leave my bag in my room and study a map for a little while, before setting out to walk around the city a bit.

Brighton is quite hilly but, fortunately, I was able to meander mostly downhill to get to the Pavilion. Among the way, there was a lot of brightly colored graffiti.

I also window shopped at various artsy stores before going over to the Pavilion, which is a very striking building, surrounded by lovely gardens. It was a nice enough day out that I didn’t feel like paying to go inside to see the current exhibit, which focused on dragons.

Eventually, I meandered over to the seaside. During the day, there’s a GBP 1 admission fee for the pier, which I thought was worth paying for. There are lots of benches and free deck chairs - and lots of people. The beach itself is meh in my opinion. Personally, I prefer fine white sand to rocky beaches.

The pavilions were crowded and noisy and the rides were primarily oriented towards children. There were various food stands, selling the sort of junk food you expect at this sort of beach. Being England, there were also plenty of alcoholic beverages for sale. Toss in seagulls and jet skis to add to the noise and, overall, Point Lookout / Lido Beach / or even Jones Beach or Rockaway it ain’t. (By the way, it has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to this, but the most beautiful beaches in the world are along the Indian Ocean coast of Africa, e.g. in places like Zanzibar and Madagascar. I really need to get to Mozambique some day.)

As the sun went down, it began to cool off quite a bit. I got supper at a pub and found the venue for the show I was going to. There was some confusion about what time it started. If a show is at 8 p.m., but the doors open at 7 p.m., you should make that clear on the ticket, instead of just listing the opening time. The venue proved to be a gay bar and the only seating was a few rows of steps. It was crowded and uncomfortable and you had to stand if you wanted to see anything. Fortunately, Thomas Benjamin Wild was the first of the three performers. I am still struggling to understand why his web page advertised this as a solo show when there were two other performers, as well, but it’s not as if I’ve never gone to venues who don’t even mention the eight opening acts you have to sit through before hearing the main act you’re there for.

Anyway, he was pretty entertaining and did some of his more popular songs. Some of my friends might find this relatable.

And, of course, he closed with his best known song.

I should also probably mention that, while he is known for playing a (normal) ukulele, he did all of his accompaniment at this show with a banjolele.

I normally would have stayed for the other two performers, but the venue was so uncomfortable that I left after his show. It reminded me of the night one of my friends left a show at The Anthem (on the Wharf in Washington, D.C.) before the Dropkick Murphys. Luckily, the bus I needed to get back to my hotel was right across the street as I was leaving, so obviously I made the right choice.

Since the gentleman with whom I am conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling had meetings the next day, there was no real reason for me to rush back to London. I opted to spend some time at the Toy and Model Museum, which is on a steep street underneath the train station. The biggest collection involves model trains. There were some layouts where you could press a button to see the train move around.

But there were also exhibits of pretty much everything else you might want to see. For example, there were a few cases of board games. Note that “Cluedo” is British for the game Americans call “Clue.”

I bet you didn’t know that Legos were originally made of wood, not plastic.

And it wouldn’t be a toy museum without a collection of stuffed animals.

There were, of course, also dolls, puppets, dollhouses, toy cars, toy planes, etc. Overall, it was worth the GBP 8 admission price.

I had no problem getting a train to Victoria Station and taking the tube back to Earl’s Court Station. We went out to dinner at Reuben’s on Baker Street, which is an actual kosher delicatessen, allowing him to get his pastrami sandwich fix. (I had knaidlach soup, with a side of a small portion of chopped liver.) The interesting part of this is that I had eaten there before - on my first trip to London in 1980. Someday someone will have to teach the Brits how to make proper pickles.

The next day, I was off to LHR. My flight was okay, with a fairly empty plane. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a wait for a jet bridge and an even longer wait for a moon buggy to immigration and customs. So it ended up taking me almost an hour and 45 minutes from when we landed until I got home.

Overall, I had a great trip, seeing a lot of interesting things and having a lot of fun. Which is really about all you can expect out of travel.

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Catch-up Part 4 - The Fforde Ffiesta

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:58:49 GMT

As I mentioned before, the primary purpose of this entire trip was going to the Fforde Ffiesta, which is a celebration of the works of Jasper Fforde. The personal back story here is that from the late 1980s through 2002 I more or less commuted between Los Angeles and Boulder, Colorado. I discovered a mystery bookstore in Boulder (Rue Morgue Books, owned by Tom and Enid Schantz) and made regular trips there, especially when they had signings and, hence, stayed open late. A couple of my colleagues were also mystery fans and we spent many pleasant evenings at a Caribbean restaurant a couple of doors away, followed by book browsing. Anyway, they published a newsletter, in which they made book recommendations and one recommendation in 2001 was for a book titled The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I bought and read this and loved the originality of the concept, so I kept reading the Thursday Next series and many of the rest of his books. A couple of years ago, I had a conference to go to in London and learned of the existence of the Fforde Ffiesta, but the tickets were already sold out. I kept it on my list of things to do. And back in May 2025, I was able to register for the 2026 event, which happened the first weekend of this May (i.e. 2026).

I had a little preparation to do. For one thing, it made sense to reread The Eyre Affair as I had forgotten various things in the past 40+ years. I had ideas for the costume contest, but never managed to complete executing them. I also never quite got around to crocheting a dodo. (Dodos are popular pets in the Ffordean world.) I decided that it would be easy enough to join the Legion of the Danvers, so I did actually do what amounts to cosplay. Mrs. Danvers is the evil housekeeper in Daphne DuMaurier’s novel, Rebecca, and the prototype for evil housekeepers in other literature, e.g. Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein. Clones of her work for the Goliath Corporation in Fforde’s books. Dressing as her just requires a long black dress, a grey wig, and dark glasses. Here I am as Mrs. Danvers, standing next to a cardboard cut-out of Jasper Fforde, i.e. Flat Jasper. (I’ll explain more about this later on.)

While the Ffiesta officially started on Saturday morning, I arrived at the hotel in Swindon late in the afternoon on Friday. I ended up having supper at the bar and didn’t know that two of the people sitting across from me at a table were Jasper and his wife, Mary. (And I got to explain airag, the Mongolian fermented mare’s milk drink, to Mary. It’s actually not bad and, yes, I’ve done some weird traveling over the years.)

Anyway, I picked up my Ffiesta packet and joined a group of people to play the unofficial Friday night trivia. Our team was doing well until a question which required teams to match Shakespeare plays to the number of people who died in each one. I figured that people don’t die in the comedies, but I have pretty much no clue when it comes to the histories. I redeemed myself when it came to some geography related questions and, in particular, got us close enough on listing countries that have capitals starting with the letter “K” for the rest of the team to make a good guess and have us end up in 3rd place overall.

The official Ffiesta started on Saturday morning. There was a Ffordian Fete with several games to play. Two of them stuck in my mind. One involved guessing the contents of three cans with their labels removed. (I didn’t have a clue.) The other required fishing for magnetic word tiles and using them to write a poem. I came up with:

Chant sweet summer death
Her dragon eyebrows can shine.

Also on Saturday morning was a brief opening ceremony, which included singing the song “Leaning on a Lamppost.” The significance of that is that it was originally popularized by George Formby, who is President for Life in the Thursday Next books. But it has some personal significance for me, because it was used in the revival of the musical Me and My Girl in 1986. I saw the Encores production of this in 2018. “Leaning on a Lamppost” is the second stickiest song in its score (behind only “The Lambeth Walk,” which is as much of an earworm as “It’s a Small World” and the Oompa-Loompa Song from Willy Wonka. There is a special circle of hell for the writers of all of these.) There was also an opportunity to sign up for some activities and I signed up for Literary Karaoke, choosing Chapter 12 of The Eyre Affair, which involves Mycroft’s Prose Portal.

The first event of the afternoon was Jasper’s Tour of Swindon. Some people had spent the morning building a cardboard model of Swindon and Jasper pointed out various of the places and people in it. My favorite part of this involved Michelle, Swindon’s only jogger. There was also Michelle’s understudy, her understudy’s understudy, her stalker, her stalker’s stalker, etc.

That was followed by a Q&A. The most exciting thing Jasper said is that there will be a sequel to Red Side Story, which is itself the sequel to Shades of Grey. Yay!

After a brief break, there was Quiz Hour, with three games. I thought I would have been good at Name That Fruit, since I’ve eaten odd things like kiwano melon and tamarillo (tree tomato) but it turned out to include activities like making a face out of a coconut, which I don’t think I would do so well at.

Next was Evade the Question, in which contestants had to talk for a minute without mentioning anything relating to the given subject. For example, the first subject was “elephant” so one couldn’t mention anything like animal, Africa, trunk, grey, etc. My favorite challenge of that round came when one contestant said “I was painting my room” and was challenged because “elephants are notoriously in the room.” By the way, the last round is traditionally “Life, the Universe, and Everything,” and the challenges were fast and furious, on the order of one or two seconds. I may suggest playing a version of this at a Loser event. (For those who don’t know, Losers are devotees of the Invitational, a humor contest that used to appear in the Washington Post. For more information, see The Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society. Loserdom is a big part of my life.)

The final game was Fforde or Fraud in which two contestants had to guess whether or not characters appeared in The Eyre Affair. The catch was that they were separated by a whiteboard, so couldn’t see each other. The funniest part of this is how much trouble Jasper and Mary had with it.

I also spent some time hunting lobsters. There were various toy lobsters hidden around the public areas of the hotel, each with a tag on them. You had to find them and write down the name on each tag next to the number from the other side of the tag. I call shenanigans as some of them were actually crabs. (And some of us know the sad story of Herman the Lobster and Sally the Crab, immortalized by the Smothers Brothers in the lyrics “crabs walk sideways and lobsters walk straight and we won’t let you have her for your mate.”) I never did manage to find the last few crustaceans, alas.

The evening started with the Fancy Dress parade. (In case anyone doesn’t know, “fancy dress” is British English for “costume.”) My personal favorite was the two people who dressed as “Deleted Characters.”

The day ended with an auction, which was raising money for a literary charity in Swindon. There were several interesting items, but the prices got steep rather quickly. I was seriously tempted by a CD about Swindon and cheese, but wasn’t willing to spend GBP 40 for it. Overall, I think the auction raised about GBP 3000, which is impressive.

By the way, my favorite quip of the day (from Jasper, of course) was “I just learned that microbiologists are the same size as other biologists.”

Sunday morning started with Jasper reading from Dark Reading Matter, the last book in the Thursday Next series, which is scheduled to come out in October. I’m looking forward to being able to read it.

Then it was time for the Legion of the Danvers to meet in the hotel’s quadrangle. There were 81 of us, total, which is impressive given that there were 158 total attendees at the Fforde Ffiesta. There was an oath, a bit of “tutting” and “huzzahs,” drills, marching, and songs. Later on in the day, we got our service and pay books, which obviously need to be kept in a safe place for future events. Here’s a picture of extreme Danversing. (I think you should be able to click on the picture on flickr to see the action.)

I did not stay around for Lobster Space Invaders, since I wasn’t in the mood for a water fight. I used the lunch break to catch up on my travel journal and puzzles and such other mundane activities. In the early afternoon, everyone reconvened to watch the production of Richard III. There were a few people who seemed a bit lost as to what they were supposed to be doing, but it was still entertaining, especially as we were provided with noisemakers to aid us with audience participation.

That was followed by Literary Karaoke. I think my reading went fine and someone did tell me I’d read well. The main thing I’d practiced was making sure I stayed within the time limit.

After a short break, there was a demonstration of dodo whispering. Because, as everyone knows, it does take some effort to train your pet dodo properly. That was followed by prize giving. There were elaborately designed plates for the winners of the big contests and bags or boxes of sweets for the more minor events. Even though there was a brief closing ceremony, there was another unofficial event later on. That was a race night. There were videos featuring races with dachshunds, Shetland ponies, marbles, pigs, sheep, babies, and Fforganizers (that’s the term for the volunteers who organize the Fforde Ffiesta). I used the same approach which I take to actual horse races - namely choosing the contestant whose name I like best. It worked about as well as it does for actual horse races, in case you thought that was a rational approach.

In the morning, I got a taxi to the train station and on to the next leg of my trip, which I’ll write about soon. The bottom line is that the Fforde Ffiesta proved to be ffabulous ffun and I’ll certainly try to go to it again in the ffuture.

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