fauxklore

2024 Year in Review

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 14:34:17 GMT

I am fairly sure this is the latest I have ever done a year in review. Let’s just say that I’ve been crazy busy. Anyway, here we go in the same format I’ve used for several years now.

The worst thing that happened in 2024 was the whole fiasco with the HVAC leak in late June / early July. Which turned out to be due to a blockage from a line in a unit above mine, so didn’t involve as much money as it might have, but it was still very stressful.

Beyond that, there was also some medical stuff. Having cataract surgery was actually a really good thing. It was quite miraculous the morning after the first eye was done when I could read titles of books across the bedroom without putting on my glasses. (The second eye also went well, but that was a less dramatic change.) The knee issues that I had later in the year were also a big deal. Let’s just say I have good days and I have bad days. Getting old sucks.

Books: I read only 36 books in 2024, which is pathetically few for me. That was 14 non-fiction books and 22 fiction books. Favorites were Sleeping With the Fishes by Mary Janice Davidson, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehotto Hindman, Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, and a couple of Dick Francis mysteries. The worst book I read during the year was The Naked Face by Sidney Sheldon, a suspense novel full of racism and homophobia.

I didn’t manage any used bookstore runs over the year, though I did give away 4 books. I have at least 60 waiting to go out.

I belonged to three book clubs, one of which has disbanded.

As for book-related events, I went to the Moby Dick Marathon in San Francisco in October and even read one chapter (Chapter 8, The Pulpit).

Ghoul Pool: I finished 6th out of 14 players with a final score of 117 points. People I scored on were Jimmy Carter, Daniel J. Evans (unique), Shannon Doherty, Janis Paige, Jean Malaurie (unique), Bud Harrelson (unique), and Faith Ringgold (unique).

Travel: My only international trip of the year was to Portugal (Porto and Lisbon) and the Azores in May / June. But I had plenty of domestic travel. I went to New York City in late January / early February. Then to Salt Lake City in late February / early March for Roots Tech. The total solar eclipse took me to Bruceville, Texas (near Dallas) in April, including an Israeli dance camp. Also in April, I had an overnight trip to Richmond for the Virginia Storytelling Alliance gathering. In May I went to Colorado for RhinoStock (a memorial for a friend) and also had a quick trip to Indianapolis to go to a baseball game, which unfortunately got rained out. I flew back to Dallas in July for the National Puzzlers League con, adding on a train trip to Oklahoma City to go to a baseball game. In August, I went to a Jewish genealogy convention in Philadelphia, and added in a couple of days in New York City for Lollapuzzoola (and theatre going, of course). And in October, I made a quick trip to San Francisco for their Moby Dick Marathon.

Genealogy: I’ve continued mentoring members of my local Jewish genealogy society on Lithuanian Jewish genealogy. As I’ve probably mentioned before, when I was starting to do genealogy research, other people helped me, so I feel happy to be able to help other people.

In February, I went to Roots Tech, which is a large genealogy conference held annually in Salt Lake City. The most interesting thing there was the presentation on using DNA from an old envelope - amazing, but not ready for the general public yet. I also went to the IAJGS convention in Philadelphia in August, at which I finally got to meet a cousin in person, as well as doing some volunteering.

Baseball: As I mentioned above, I had a failed attempt to go to a minor league game in Indianapolis (damn rain!) but a more successful game experience in Oklahoma City in July.

Culture: I went to 10 musicals and one non-musical play. My favorites for the year were Tick … Tick .. Boom at the Kennedy Center, Harmony on Broadway, Soft Power at Signature Theatre, and Suffs on Broadway.

I saw 7 movies in theaters and two on airplanes. Favorites were Next Goal Wins, Shari and Lamb Chop, and My Penguin Friend.

Storytelling: I performed in a Better Said Than Done show in February and emceed at the Women’s Storytelling Festival in March. I told a story at the Artists Standing Strong Together New Year’s Eve storytelling show. I went to several local story swaps (some in person, some over zoom), as well as zoom story swaps in Los Angeles and in Ottawa, Canada. I saw a friend’s storytelling show as part of Artomatic. And I participated in several discussions of Grimm fairy tales.

Museums and Art: I went to an exhibit of Dorothea Lange’s photos at the National Gallery of Art with a friend (and looked at some other art in the museum afterwards). I saw a Judy Chicago retrospective at the New Museum in New York City. I went to much of Artomatic. And I went to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas and the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City.

During my trip to Portugal, I went to a stained glass museum in Porto, the Museo Nacional de Azulejo (National Tile Museum) and Oceanario (aquarium) in Lisbon, and the Museum of Myths and Legends in Sintra.

Other Stuff:

I participated in Lollapuzzoola (a crossword contest) in August. I played board games, sometimes with the National Puzzlers’ League, sometimes with people I know from the loser community. I also went to other loser events, including a few parties and a couple of brunches.

I went to Kochavim, an Israeli folk dance weekend (in association with the eclipse).

I did a tour of M&S Schmalburg’s fabric flower factory (via the New York Adventure Club).

I attended a few lectures in the Leading Jewish Minds at MIT series (over zoom). And I went to a reception for MIT president Sally Kornbluth.

I’ve probably forgotten something or other among this, but it was a weird and stressful year. And I think that compared to normal people, I still did a lot of things.

Goals: So how did I do on my 2024 goals? Frankly, not very well. I did not circumnavigate the globe going westward, though I did map out about half of a general plan for doing it, so I’ll give myself a 5% on that goal. I didn’t make it to any national parks. I also did nothing about cleaning out my saved files of genealogy emails. I read 37 books out of my goal of 80, so I get only 45% there. I did make some progress on organizing my bedroom, but I don’t have a good metric for that. I’ll estimate that I accomplished about 50%. I finished just about 2/3 of one afghan (out of a goal to finish 3 afghans) so I’ll give myself 22% on that goal. I still haven’t found my parents’ slides. I made it to one AAA ballpark (Oklahoma City), and had an attempt at going to a game in Indianapolis, which got rained out. So I’lll get 25% on my goal of 4 AAA ballparks. I did fairly well on exercise the first part of the year, but my knee injury meant that I did very little from August on, so I’ll give myself a 60%.

So, overall, I’ll give myself a rather pathetic 23% for the year.

Which brings me to goals for 2025:

Circumnavigate the globe going westward. I think I have a plan for somewhere in the October / November time frame.
Go to at least 4 minor league baseball games.
Finish 4 crafts projects.
Read 80 books, with a stretch goal of 100.
Finish going through my parents’ photographs and slides.
Revisit / update my life list.
Organize genealogy files.
Go to at least 3 national parks.
Learn to read Hangul (Korean writing system).
Sort through cassette tapes.

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Dancing in the Dark (Hora Eclipse 2 / Kochavim)

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 19:51:24 GMT

Background, Part 1 - Eclipses: Somewhere around 2000 or so, I wrote a “life list,” a term I prefer to “bucket list” because I think it has a more positive emphasis. One of the items on it was “see a total solar eclipse.” To be honest, that was an item I had cribbed from the lists several other people had written and was not so much something I felt I had always wanted to do. (I did have a vague memory of seeing a partial solar eclipse, using a pinhole to project the image of the sun on a windowsill in our house, about 1970.)

At any rate, it’s a bit absurd to plan a major trip around an event that lasts just a few minutes, so it made sense to go somewhere that would be interesting for other reasons, too. I don’t remember why I decided that the 2006 eclipse was the one to focus on, but I researched options for it and I found a tour by Tusker Trail that was going to Ghana and would be accompanied by an astronomer. There was also an add-on available to Togo and Benin. Anyway, the eclipse was an amazing experience (as was the rest of the trip.) I was also intrigued by a few people on the trip who had seen several eclipses. What I wrote at the time was “I’m not sure I would become an eclipse groupie, but if another upcoming one is in an otherwise interesting place, it could affect my travel scheduling.”

I don’t remember where, but I saw a blurb about a trip to see the 2009 total solar eclipse from Iwo Jima. That qualified as “otherwise interesting” and I signed up. Unfortunately, the Japanese government withdrew permission for the trip. The company running the trip (Ring of Fire Expeditions) countered with another option - the island of Butaritari in the Republic of Kiribati. (Which is pronounced “kiribass” and no I can’t explain the orthography of the i-kiribati language any more than I can explain why there’s an “n” sound in front of the letters “d” and “g” in the Fijian language.) As one of my friends said, how often was I going to go to a remote part of the South Pacific? Things got more complicated and we couldn’t actually get to Butaritari, but we did see the total eclipse form a lovely islet called Ouba. I also went on the add-on extension to Guadalcanal, by the way.

Since then I saw the 2016 total solar eclipse from a ship in Micronesia, the 2017 “great American eclipse” from Carhenge (a scale model of Stonehenge, built out of used cars) in Alliance, Nebraska, and the July 2019 total eclipse from a ship due south of Tahiti. I also saw (most of) an annular solar eclipse in December 2019 in Oman. (Most of, because who knew it would rain in the desert?) I was more successful for the annular solar eclipse in October 2023, which I saw from San Antonio, Texas.

The bottom line is that, despite my initial intentions, I became a full fledged umbraphile! (Which is a much more polite term than “eclipse chaser.”) So there was no doubt I would try to find something interesting to do for the April 2024 total solar eclipse.

Background, Part 2 - Israeli Folk Dancing: I know we did stuff like square dancing and the Virginia Reel in elementary school gym class, but my major exposure to folk dancing in my youth was Israeli dancing at Camp Ein Harod, a socialist Zionist camp I went to for a couple of summers in the early 1970’s. There were only a handful of dances we learned there - Mayim, Hora Kirkoda, and Erev Ba. Probably the most memorable was Ha’Roah Ha’Ktana, which we called “the bouncing dance”. It was memorable because of a couple of particularly well-developed girls who we joked didn’t have to practice bouncing.

Fast forward to college. MIT has a 4-1-4 calendar. That is, there are two 4 month semesters with a one month term (Independent Activities Period, abbreviated as IAP) which people use to work on various projects and take more offbeat classes - everything from building a hammer dulcimer to welding sculptures to (tada!) Israeli folk dancing. The MIT Folk Dance Club had Israeli dancing on Wednesday nights and international dancing on Sunday nights, each of which drew about 150 or so people every week and the class (taught by George Kirby) provided a good start on learning enough to get me hooked. Not long after, Larry Denberg taught an intermediate class. The key point was that during the rest of my time at MIT, I was either in the Sala de Puerto Rico (a large room in the student center) or Lobby 13 twice a week.

I went off to grad school at Berkeley and found the weekly Israeli dancing at Hillel there. And, when I moved to Los Angeles, I quickly found Cafe Danssa, run by Dani Dassa, a famous Israeli choreographer. (I also went to dancing at UCLA Hillel, which was coordinated by his daughter, Dorit.) I even went to a couple of folk dance camps.

Anyway, Cafe Danssa closed in 2007. I was already going less often for a number of reasons, ranging from a broken ankle sidelining me around 1990 to frequent business travel to having gotten involved in storytelling to an incident involving some semi-stalkerish behavior on the part of a guy I knew. And, oh yeah, I moved to Virginia in 2002. I tried to find folk dancing here but there wasn’t anything especially convenient and compatible with my work hours, so it became a very occasional thing. Driving to and from darkest Maryland on a weeknight - not really going to happen. I did a little dancing at various other folk events (which I was mostly at for storytelling). The pandemic didn’t really help either, of course. (By the way, I did do other dancing, particularly a Bollywood dance class that I only stopped going to when the teacher entered into an arranged marriage and moved to Los Angeles.)

As things have been reopening from the pandemic (not that it is really over), I’ve thought more about dancing and I’ve done some searching a few times, particularly for Israeli dance events. Which led me to find out about Hora Eclipse 2 / Kochavim.

What Exactly Is/Was HEK2/Kochavim? Remember my mention of taking a class years ago from Larry Denenberg? His name was associated with Hora Eclipse and it turns out that he had organized an Israeli dance camp for the 2017 Eclipse, i.e. Hora Eclipse 1. And he was part of a team organizing one for the 2024 Eclipse, being held in conjunction with an annual Israeli dance camp called Kochavim in Texas. That little bell you hear ringing was the idea lighting up in my brain. Texas was a promising place to see the eclipse and it would be a good opportunity to get back into folk dancing. I was a bit apprehensive given how long it had been since I did much dancing, but I told myself I would just do what I could. Oh, yeah, there was also another dance camp (The National Folk Organization, which is oriented towards International folk dance) going on at the same place (the Green Family Camp in Bruceville, Texas, about 2 hours from Dallas), with their events open to us.

So I signed up, which included paying for accommodations in a cabin with 5 other women. There was a form to fill out for sharing a ride from the Dallas airport. I dug out my eclipse gear (which includes solar filtered binoculars and a filter for my iPhone). And I was off to Texas!

So How Did It Go? My flight to DFW was fine, though the WiFi on American Airlines didn’t work. I stayed on Thursday night at the Hampton Inn in Grapevine, which was adequate, though my room could have used better lighting. After breakfast on Friday morning, I took a Lyft to the hotel where one of the other people was staying and all of us who were in the same car met up there for the drive to camp. The traffic wasn’t terrible, the conversation was lively, and there were plenty of wildflowers (bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush) to look at along the way. We stopped in Waco where a couple of us had lunch and some other people went to the Dr. Pepper Museum. ((If I'd had a ton of free time, I might have done that, but it was too pricy for the amount of time we had.) We continued on to camp and checked in and got our housing assignments. Finding our way around camp was a bit confusing. And, since I wanted to unpack and get a bit organized, I ended up missing the NFO workshop on “100 Years of Israeli Dance.” I heard later on that it was mostly lecture and demo and not much actual dancing, but it was still disappointing. I did make it to the opening session and did a little dancing. That was followed by Shabbat Dinner and a welcome dance party, which started out with a lot of easy dances. I was a bit sleep deprived from the travel and the dance floor was rather more crowded than I’d prefer, so I didn’t stay very late. I should mention that I’d brought both my dance paws and a pair of suitable sneakers (no outside shoes allowed on the dance floor) and that first night was good for deciding to use the sneakers the rest of the time because most people were wearing shoes of some sort.

Saturday was chilly and windy. There was a dance workshop and session between breakfast and lunch, which included 4 dances being taught. I managed to absorb about 2 1/2 of those. I particularly liked Simcha, taught by Yaron Carmel, which had a Moroccan beat. After lunch, there was a session of line dances, followed by Larry’s Eclipse 101 lecture. There was another workshop and more dancing after that. I skipped the partner dance session in favor of taking a nap before dinner and a campfire. I particularly enjoyed the Saturday night dance party, partly because they played a few older dances I like a lot, e.g. Joshua, which is one of my favorite dances of all time.

Sunday was similar - meals and dancing. Larry gave an advanced Eclipse lecture. I have to disagree with him on one point. Having seen two eclipses from small cruise ships (under 200 passengers), there are definitely advantages to being able to position a ship for optimal viewing regardless of the weather. (There is also a downside in that high seas can make photography more challenging.) I liked the session on “Debkas and Crazy Rhythms” and quite enjoyed one of the dances that was taught (Ansi Dize) though my knees were not really up to it. Once again, I was reminded of my failure to get an extended warranty on several of my body parts. (By the way, debkas are Arabic-inspired dances, in case you didn’t know.) Later on, there was Texas line dancing (decidedly not my thing) followed by a barbecue dinner. And, of course, more dancing, which I didn’t really try to last very long at. But some people were up pretty much all night.

Here’s an obligatory photo in which I am dancing (in the back, behind the circle).

Finally, Monday was eclipse day. As you may have heard, there were a lot of concerns about the weather in Texas. I’d gotten my money’s worth of fun, so I just had to be philosophical. But, before I get to the eclipse itself, let me mention a surprise sighting of one of my other obsessions - namely the National Puzzlers’ League (NPL)! There was a game called Sound Off, which had apparently been played at an NPL convention before I started going to those! It was basically a “name that tune” type of thing and, of course, the songs were all eclipse themed. The group I ended up with had pretty good teamwork and I was reasonably useful since some of the songs were ones that are on my personal eclipse playlist (e.g. Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”)

As eclipse time neared, things got cloudier. Still, the early phases of the eclipse had reasonably clear skies. And, where there were clouds, they provided interesting views.

Alas, as totality began, the sky did not look at all good.

One of the dances we had learned had a section which had a step described as “push,” so everyone began calling out “push, push” in an attempt to influence that huge cloud. It sort of worked and we were able to see the last 30 seconds of so of totality. There was a good view of the “diamond ring” but I didn’t get a photo worth sharing.

Bottom line is that I can count this as my sixth total solar eclipse. I have tentative plans for Spain in 2026, Egypt in 2027, and Hora Eclipse 3 in Sydney, Australia in 2028.

We were rather concerned about post-eclipse traffic, but it really wasn’t bad and took us just about 2 hours to get back to the DFW area. I stayed overnight at the Sheraton in Irving, which was fine. I was a bit worried about my trip home since there were forecasts for thunderstorms, but everything went well, despite having a weird routing that involved connecting through Birmingham, Alabama. (The joys of using frequent flyer miles.) Since these were regional jets, American once again failed to have functional wifi, alas. They also annoyed me by having screwed up on which belt the bags would come out on - despite multiple messages and a sign at baggage claim that said it would be baggage claim 10, they were really at baggage claim 7. Still, I got home pretty much on time, so I can’t really complain.

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Partial Catch-up

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 23:19:47 GMT

Shameless Self Promotion: I’m part of a Halloween show on Monday night, October 30th from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. EDT. You can find details and register at the Artists Standing Strong Together website It’s free, but donations are gladly accepted.

Celebrity Death Watch: James M. Hoge was a journalist and publisher, best known as the editor of Foreign Affairs. Katherine Anderson sang with The Marvelettes. Evelyn Fox Keller was a physicist and went on to write about gender and science. Terry Kirkman performed with The Association and wrote their hit song “Cherish.” Barry Olivier founded the Berkeley Folk Music Festival. Burkey Belser designed the nutrition facts label. Matteo Messina Denaro was the head of the Italian Mafia. Pat Arrowsmith co-founded the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Theresa Kuruor was the first lady of Ghana from 2001 to 2009. I met and shook hands with her husband, John Kufuor, when I was in Ghana in 2006. Thomas Gambino was the caporegime of the Gambino crime family. Loyal Jones was an Appalachian folklorist. Burt Young was a character actor, best known for playing Paulie Pennino in the Rocky franchise. Herschel Savage was a porno actor. Buck Trent was a country musician who appeared on Hee Haw. Steven Lutwak wrote the score of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Martin Goetz held the first patent ever issued for software. Mark Goddard played Major Don West on Lost in Space, which was the first television series I ever saw in color. (We went over to a neighbor’s house to watch it, before we got a color TV of our own.) Rudolph Isley was one of the founding members of the Isley Brothers. Phyllis Coates played Lois Lane in the first season of the television series Adventures of Superman. Lara Parker played Angelique on Dark Shadows. Louise Gluck was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and Nobel laureate. Piper Laurie was an actress whose roles included Carrie’s mother in the movie version of Carrie. Suzanne Somers was an actress, best known for playing Chrissie on Three’s Company. Joanna Merlin originated the role of Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. Don Laughlin was a gambling entrepreneur and the town of Laughlin, Nevada is named after him. Lee Elliot Berk was the president of Berklee College of Music, which was originally Schillinger house but was renamed for him by his father in 1954. Richard Roundtree was an actor, best known for playing Shaft. Robert Irwin was an installation artist. Richard Moll played the bailiff on Night Court

David McCallum played Ilya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Ducky Mallard in NCIS, as well as many other television and film roles. He also recorded four albums of instrumental music in the 1960’s and narrated spoken word recordings of literary stories.

Brooks Robinson played third base for the Baltimore Orioles. His record of 2870 career games at third base remains the most game played by any player in major league history at a single position. He is best known for his skill as a defensive player. He also played a significant role in developing the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball and, specifically, the York Revolution.

Diane Feinstein was a long-serving senator from California. She’d come into political prominence as the mayor of San Francisco after the assassination of George Moscone and appeared to be particularly effective in that role. She broke a lot of glass ceilings for women in politics and I really wish she’d left office as her health declined instead of sticking it out until her death.

Tim Wakefield pitched for the Red Sox for 17 years. He is the all-time leader in innings pitched by a Red Sox pitcher. It’s probably worth noting that being a knuckleballer contributed to his longevity. He died of brain cancer at the young age of 57.

Dick Butkus played football for the Chicago Bears for 8 years, followed by a successful career as an actor and television pitchman. I think people of my generation will always associate him with Miller Lite.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: Kek Robien died last week. I met her over 20 years ago, when we were both on a tour of Papua New Guinea and we stayed in touch via holiday cards and Facebook, as well as meeting for dinner in Chicago. She was over 90, so the news wasn’t terribly surprising. But I admired her for staying active and traveling for most of those years.

I also heard of the deaths of two people I grew up with. Matt McDermott was a year younger than me and lived next door while I was a kid. And Danny Goodman was a year older than me and was very friendly with my brother.

The Medicare Saga: I finally managed to successfully get into my Social Security account and change my password and, most importantly, update my phone number for two-factor authentication. I also discovered that they still haven’t finished reviewing my medicare application. It isn’t at all clear why, since it says that is normally takes 2 to 4 weeks and they started the review on September 22nd. Unless, maybe they are counting from when I brought in the documents they asked for (e.g. my birth certificate), which was October 2nd. At that time, the guy I worked with said it would take about one week. Yes, I am very frustrated and stressed over this.

The Tell-Tale Heart: Last Thursday night, my friend Cindy and I went to see Synetic Theatre’s production of The Tell-Tale Heart. This is a theatre that specializes in movement-based shows, sort of a cross between mime and ballet. This production also had a lot of narration and weird music. And, for some reason I can’t explain, vultures, including one on stilts. (That is, dancers dressed as vultures. Not actual birds.) I thought it was possible I’d forgotten something about Poe’s story, but I did go and re-read it and, no, there’s not even a crow or raven there. It was all very pretty, but too weird and too far from the source material for me.

Bazaar by Jose Andres: Before a concert on Friday night, my friend Kathleen and I had dinner at Bazaar by Jose Andres, which is in the Waldorf Astoria. (Which, by the way, I kept thinking was the Ritz Carlton.) It was a very extravagant meal. This is the sort of place with a lot of small dishes, many of them just one or two bites. My favorite was something called “Neptune’s Pillows” which was spicy tuna on some sort of sesame toast thing. There was a very interesting dish of brussels sprouts with grapes and apricots and lemon foam that looked like ice on top of it. There was also coconut rice and onion soup and tomato bread. I know Kathleen got a crab louie cone and a plate of different type of ham, and a taco which had gold leaf and caviar in it. There’s probably something else I’ve forgotten. The food and the service were exquisite, but it was quite pricy.

Randy Rainbow For President: The reason we were downtown on Friday night was to see Randy Rainbow’s show. For those who are somehow unfamiliar with him, he does parody songs on political themes, often based on show tunes. He’s very funny. I enjoyed the show, though I thought it was a bit longer than it needed to be.

Baseball: I don’t really care who wins the World Series this year. I feel sorry for the Phillies having had their collapse - and that was after Bryce Harper stole home in NLCS Game 5.

As for what really matters in baseball (namely, the Grand Unified Theory of Politics, Economics, and the American League East), I was pleased to see that the BoSox have given Craig Breslow the Chief of Baseball Operations job. The guy is smart - with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale. He was accepted to NYU Medical School but has postponed that a few times already, so I doubt that medicine is really his future career. I hope he’ll find them some depth in the pitching line-up.

To Be Continued: This is long enough for now, so I’ll put a write-up of my trip to Boston last weekend in a separate entry.

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The Week Before Last

Tue, 23 May 2023 01:30:50 GMT

Getting through some more of the catch-up:

I got home on Tuesday May 9th and immediately had things to do almost every night since. Here’s a run-down of the first week back.

Book Club: Our book this time was The Ghostwriter by Alessandre Torre. All of us liked it. The story involves a romance writer who is dying of cancer and hires her main rival to ghost write a final novel for her. There are plenty of twists along the way, which kept the book interesting. I found it a quick and enjoyable read.

Passing Strange: I saw this very accurately named musical at Signature Theatre on Thursday. It tells the story of a young black man who goes off to Europe to make music. He discovers sex and drugs in Amsterdam and radical politics in Berlin. The music was mostly not my sort of thing, though some of the songs were amusing. In particular, the song “We Just Had Sex” (in the Amsterdam section) was very funny. There was also some humorous material as the Youth exploits his black identity to get credibility with the radicals in Berlin. I was glad I saw it but I have no desire to see it again.

Nationals Game, sort of: On Friday, Cindy called me and asked if I wanted to go to a Nats game on Saturday afternoon. (She had free tickets from her job.) I agreed. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t work and a rain delay was announced in the top of the third inning. We sat out the delay - but, after four hours, the game was suspended. By the way, the tickets also included a food and concession credit. I used part of it for food, but with what I had left, I got a Screech plushie, which is really cute. By the way, the tickets from Cindy’s company have been rescheduled, but I’ll be out of the country.

Transformations: On Sunday, I went to see a dance performance at the National Portrait Gallery. This was by the Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company and was called Transformations. (The son of one of my friends is part of this dance company.) It was very modern and athletic and kind of weird. with some Asian, yoga-esque undertones. I enjoyed it but was glad it was just half an hour. I leveraged off being at the museum to see a couple of exhibits. I did a fairly cursory glance at “1898: U.S. Imperial visions and Revisions” before the dance show and a quick walk through “Portrait of a Nation: 2022 Honorees” afterwards. The former had to do with the U.S. acquisition of Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, largely as a result of the Spanish-American War. So there were portraits of people like Queen Liliuokalani and of Jose Marti.

The latter has to do with various prominent Americans and included both Serena and Venus Williams. I was particularly pleased to see Jose Andres (of World Central Kitchen, as well as several of the best restaurants in D.C.) and Anthony Fauci among the honorees.

Audrey: And then Sunday night, Cindy and I went to see a new musical about Audrey Hepburn at Creative Cauldron. This is a very small theatre in Falls Church, which produces a lot of new musicals designed for their intimate space. At any rate, I enjoyed the show, but Cindy didn’t like it as much because she thought that Rebecca Ballinger was inconsistent in the title role. There was another actress, Morgan Arrivillaga, who played young Audrey, who I thought was an excellent dancer. The dynamics between Edith Head (played by Bianca Lipford) and Hubert de Givenchy (played by Tyler cramer) were also fun. I liked some of the songs, e.g. “Woman of the World” and, especially, “The Go-Go Lightly Drag.”

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Dance and Philadelphia Trip

Thu, 23 May 2019 19:02:18 GMT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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