fauxklore

I’ll get back to the catch-up stuff soon, but there are a couple of newsy things I want to write about while they are still fresh.

Ceasefire: I was going to write a long treatise on this, but I think it is better to just say that I am skeptical of long-term success but trying to be cautiously optimistic.

Art versus the Artist: The scandal du jour is, of course, the sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman. I do think that he has taken advantage of vulnerable young women. The question is whether or not he should be “cancelled.” And, for me, this comes down to the long-standing issue of what to do when bad people produce great art.

I first encountered Neil Gaiman in the early 1990’s when I had a long flight delay in Saint Louis and had reached the end of the book I had with me. So I stopped in at the airport bookstore and, in the course of searching for something tolerable to read on the plane, saw Good Omens, which was co-written by Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Not being a reader of graphic novels (with a few exceptions, that tend to be on specifically Jewish themes), I’d never read the Sandman series, but I had read a few of Pratchett’s books and mostly liked them, though I found them uneven. At any rate, I bought that book and ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Sometime after that, I was in Portland, Oregon and browsing in Powell’s Books and one of the people who worked there recommended Neverwhere to me. It had a combination of real life and folkloric themes that I found inherently appealing and it remains one of my favorites of his work. I have read only a handful of his books and I saw him speak at DAR Constitution Hall a while back. I thought he was good-looking and spoke well. Floppy hair and British accent - I could see young women falling for him in the same way they might have a crush on Hugh Grant.

I obviously don’t know exactly what did and didn’t happen, though it seems clear that he doesn’t really understand power dynamics between people and he doesn’t understand the concept of consent. But what does this imply about his books? It may not be fair for me to comment since relatively few of them are the sort of thing that really appeals to me, but the more general question is what should happen to the work produced by bad people? To cut to the chase, I have no intention of throwing out those of his books that I own nor would I necessarily refuse to buy something he wrote if it fell into the types of books he wrote that I’ve liked in the past.

Let me take another example. In May 2001, I took a trip to Malta, where I saw Caravaggio’s painting Beheading of Saint John the Baptist in St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. This is an astonishing painting, considered one of the 10 most important Western paintings of all time. I was blown away by the use of color as well as chiaroscuro. But Caravaggio himself was a sorry excuse for a human being. He had a number of problematic relationships (primarily with young boys), was arrested frequently for brawling, and even committed at least one murder. Nowadays, he would be a prime candidate for cancellation. But he was also the most brilliant painter of the 17th century.

Where I am going with this is I’ve seen the suggestion that it’s okay to tolerate the work of bad people who are dead for some length of time. But if we act quickly to get rid of the works of the living miscreants, how would we ever see the good art created by bad people? And I think the world is enhanced by good art no matter how bad a person the artist is.

I’ve been fairly busy over the past few weeks. The biggest thing was the Women’s Storytelling Festival, which deserves its own entry. In the meantime, you can still buy a virtual ticket through April 1st and listen to 16 hours of recorded stories. Go to the WSF ticketing page.

In terms of other stuff I’ve been doing, here is what I can decipher from what I scribbled on my calendar and notebooks.

Leading Jewish Minds at MIT: Emily Pollock gave a talk on Continuities, Contradictions, and Carmina Burana: The Problem of Carl Orff. The short version of the problem with Carl Orff is that he used nationalistic language to get his teachings (primarily about pedagogy and primitivism) accepted. He was interested in the medieval, ancient Greek, and Baroque pasts, which led to him using simplified, repetitive rhythms, for example. As a result he did things like write music to replace Mendelssohn’s for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His best known work is, of course, Carmina Burana, which is a scenic cantata (not an opera) and was based on medieval Latin poems. It premiered in Frankfurt in 1937.

That led to the question of whether or not music is political. Professor Pollock noted that, while his music was praised by Hitler, Orff was not a member of the Nazi party. The nuances have to do with historiography, i.e. how we tell the tory and music as a cultural phenomenon. She didn’t have any real answers to this. Orff is played in Israel, while Wagner is, in general, not.

Incidentally, in talking about other German music of the time, Pollock talked a little about Winfried Zillig's opera, Das Opfer, which has to do with the fatal Terra Nova expedition of 1912, during which Robert Falcon Scott and 4 of his companions died on their return from the South Pole. (By the way, the opera apparently does not include Evans, who died earlier than the others.) The intriguing part of this is that the chorus is dressed as killer penguins, who surround Oates and perform a victory dance as he walks into the storm to die. I have not actually heard this opera, but I do think the world needs more music with evil penguins gloating about human deaths.

MIT Presidential Tour: Sally Kornbluth, who has been the president of MIT for about a year, has been doing several trips to meet with alumni (and other community members) and it was Washington, DC’s turn on March 7th. This started out with drinks and hors d’oeuvres for Leadership Circle members (which has to do with how much you donate). The room where that was held was a bit awkwardly shaped, making it a bit hard to mingle, though I did have a few interesting conversations. Then we moved to the general reception area, where they had several food stations, as well as a photo booth and a 3-D printer making coasters. I liked the photo they got of me.



Eventually (after more eating and socializing), we were herded into a conference room for President Kornbluth’s talk. Well, actually, she was interviewed by Annalisa Weigel, who is a member of the MIT Corporation (and a big name in the aerospace world). I was glad they started off with the elephant in the room. Namely, we’d had an opportunity to write in questions beforehand and I am pretty sure I am not the only person who asked about safety of students in light of the Palestinian situation. I thought she had a reasonable reply, mostly focused on enforcing existing rules re: campus protests. There was a lot of stuff about how MIT will address other little issues, like climate change, before getting to some more frivolous subjects, e.g. her hobbies, which include a capella singing and making felted flowers. Eventually, we went back into the main room for coffee and dessert (which included chocolate-dipped strawberries). There was also more swag, e.g. ballcaps and tote bags. All in all, it was a nice evening out.

Book Clubs: R.E.A.D. discussed Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland, which is a novel based on the life of Clara Driscoll, who designed almost all of the famous Tiffany lamps. Crones and Tomes discussed The Thread Collectors by Shauna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman. (You might recall that R.E.A.D. had done that book previously. I did not reread it, since it had been recent enough that I remembered the gist of it.) I should probably also mention that I took some time out from the Women’s Storytelling Festival to call into the TCC Book Club for our discussion of The Places In Between by Rory Stewart, which is about his walk across Afghanistan.

Medical appointment: The last of the catch-up on medical appointments was pretty routine. Mostly, I got the updated pneumonia vaccine that they give to old folks, as well as the final Hepatitis B booster and the RSV vaccine.

Artomatic: I leveraged off being in the vicinity already (for my medical appointment) to go to opening day of Artomatic. This is an art show (including visual art and performance art and films and pretty much anything, since it’s unjuried). On the way there, I stopped at Call My Mother for lunch and, while I know it’s popular, I still find it disappointing and a crime against bageldom.

Anyway, I started at the top floor and worked my way down, managing to look at about half of the displays at Artomatic before fading out. I did take a break to look at a couple of short movies, the best of which was a cartoon about a support group for cats, which resulted in all of the cats moving in with an elderly woman.

This is called “Pink Compass, True North" and is by Sarah Jane Rodman.



Unfortunately, I didn’t capture the name and artist for this sculpture, but I admired the balance and the use of shapes and colors.



This painting by Giovanni Zelaya is called “The Dream is Alive” and depicts Mae Jemison, Sally Ride, and Ellen Ochoa.



There was also a whole wall of little paintings and what looked like refrigerator magnets. depicting books with titles like “Everything I don’t like is WOKE: A book for basic dickheads” and “How to talk to your dog about The Fall of Constantinople.”

I need to get back and see the other three (maybe four) floors of art. One of my friends is doing a storytelling show there, so I hope to get there for that.

Other Stuff: The Saturday before the Women’s Storytelling Festival, we had a Voices in the Glen story swap. I told “Clever Greta,” which is a Grimm story and quite suitable for women’s history month. That Sunday, we had our annual business meeting. And the Sunday after the festival, the Better Said Than Done board had a postmortem of the festival.

We’ve also had three Grimm Keepers meetings because one had had to be postponed due to conflict. “The Children of the Two Kings” is one of the weirder stories, which is saying a lot since my immediate reaction to most of the stories is that they’re really strange. What made it weird is that, while several things are similar to incidents in other stories (e.g. impossible tasks that have to be done for the prince to marry the princess), there’s a recurring image in it involving the use of glass tools, which nobody had any reasonable explanation for. Our discussion of “The Little Donkey” has inspired me to think of trying to do something with the idea of a support group for people who have been turned into animals (or, who were born as animals, but became human.) Finally, we just talked about “The Turnip,” which needs a certain amount of fleshing out to be satisfactory, but I think I could make it tellable. By the way, this is not the same as the Russian story about the giant turnip that takes several people working together to get out of the ground. It’s a tale of sibling rivalry and revenge.

Also, I’ve played board games several times, including managing to make it to NPL Game Night the past three weeks. I had a stupid accident this past Thursday in which I tripped over a concrete parking stop in a supermarket parking lot, ending up with various bruises, including a black eye. At least, so far as I can tell, I didn’t break anything. And, I went to see the William Shatner movie. You Can Call Me Bill with my friend, Kim, this past Sunday, which was interesting but decidedly not what I was expecting.

I still need to do a lot more housework. And do my taxes, the hardest part of which is always finding all of the statements I need.

I think this will get me caught up on everything up until this month.

I’ve been using the same format for my year in review entries for several years now. It seems to work. Note that I took off the Volksmarch category this time since it’s been a couple of years since I managed to actually do anything there.

2023 started out stressful with mail being stolen, including a check which was washed and used fraudulently and a credit card which had to be replaced. It all got resolved, but I could have lived without the stress. There was a lot of stress later in the year, with the incompetence of the person at the local Social Security office who sat on my Medicare application for over two months without doing anything. That took way too many phone calls to get resolved. And, of course, there was the whole Middle East situation to make 2023 the Age of Anxiety.

Fortunately, things were otherwise good during the year.

Books: I read 53 books over the year. 39 of those were fiction, 3 were poetry, and the rest were nonfiction. Only 3 were rereads.

Favorites included Our Ancestors Did Not Breathe This Air (a poetry collection by Muslim women at MIT), Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozu Adichie, The Ghostwriter by Alessandra Torre, and The Caxton Private Lending Library and Book Depository by John Connolly. I also read 6 novels by Dick Francis, whose books provide a reliable antidote to ones in which not enough happens to keep me satisfied. Favorite non-fiction was The Best Strangers in the World by Ari Shapiro. Least favorite book was Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

I got rid of 39 books and have at least another 33 ready to go out.

In addition to my longstanding book club (called READ for Read, Enjoy, And Discuss), I joined another book club, Crones and Tomes, which was started by a friend from the puzzle world.

Other book events included the Moby Dick Marathon in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which was an amazing experience, and a talk by Ari Shapiro at Sixth and I.

Ghoul Pool: I finished 4th out of 14 players, with 220 points. People I scored on were Naomi Replanski, Steve Harrell, Bob Barker, Tony Bennett, Al Jaffee, John Goodenough, Robert Solow, Daniel Ellsberg, Sandra Day O’Connor, James L. Buckley, W. Nicholas Hitchon, and David Oreck.

Travel: In January, I went to New Bedford, Massachusetts for the Moby Dick Marathon. In February, I went to Tucson, which included going to Saguaro National Park and Biosphere 2, as well as winning some money at a casino. March included a trip to New York City to go to the symphony and the theatre and visit with a high school friend. April’s travel was to Connecticut for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

In May I took a river cruise, which included going to the Kentucky Derby. The Derby arrangements were kind of a fiasco, but the stops at various small towns were a lot more interesting than I expected.

June took me to Svalbard, which featured amazing scenery, though the wildlife (or, more accurately, lack thereof) was disappointing. This was somewhere I’d wanted to go to forever, so I am glad to have had the opportunity.

In July, I went to Montreal for the NPL con. That also included eating a lot of Montreal Jewish food and following in the footsteps of Leonard Cohen. Later in the month, I leveraged off a genealogy conference in London to take a trip to Ireland (including a day trip to Belfast) and the Isle of Man. That included fulfilling a life list item by having a beer at the South Pole Inn in Anascaul. After the conference, I did a few more things in London, including side trips to Canterbury and to Ipswich and Sutton Hoo. Soon after I got back, I took a quick trip to New York City for Lollapuzzoola and theatre going.

LoserFest was in Philadelphia in September. Highlights included the Masonic Temple and the Magic Gardens.

In October, I took a quick trip to San Antonio for the annular solar eclipse, which was awesome. While I was there, I also did a day trip to the Hill Country, where I saw several sites associated with Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as visiting the town of Fredericksburg. Later in the month I went to Boston, mostly to go to a concert by Jonathan Richman.

I’m not sure if taking a day trip to Harrisonburg, Virginia in November counts as travel. But my trip to French Polynesia (Austral Islands and Aranui cruise to the Marquesas) definitely does.

Virtual travel talks I went to included one on Jewish Barbados and a few Travelers’ Century Club zoom sessions. There were also a few in-person TCC meetings.

Puzzles: I participated once again in the MIT Mystery Hunt as part of Halibut That Bass. I think the team worked particularly well together, but we had some issues with the way the hunt was structured, which resulted in our seeing only about half of the puzzles.

I was disappointed in my performance in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I finished solidly in the middle of the pack and I wasn’t surprised to have trouble with Puzzle 5, but I left a blank square in Puzzle 3, which was sheer carelessness. I did worse at Lollapuzzoola 16 in August, because I failed to completely read parts of some clues in Puzzle 5 there. I blame jet lag from my trip just before that event.

As I mentioned above, I went to the National Puzzlers’ League Con in Montreal. Highlights included a couple of games by Cute Mage, as well as Rasa’s over the weekend cryptic.


Genealogy: I continued to volunteer as the Subject Matter Expert for a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington Litvak Special Interest Group. I also went to several JGSGW virtual meetings. And, of course, I went to the IAJGS conference in London at the end of July / beginning of August. Aside from several interesting talks, the highlight of that was meeting a distant cousin.

Baseball: I went to a little bit of a Nationals game in May, but it got rained out. In September I went to the new Texas Rangers stadium (Globe Life Field), putting me back at having been to a game at every Major League Ballpark. I also went to two minor league ballparks to see the Aberdeen Ironbirds and the Fredericksburg Nationals.

Culture: I’m not a big television watcher but I kept Apple TV+ long enough to watch Schmigadoon and Schmicago, both of which were tremendous fun for musical theatre geeks like me.

In terms of movies, I saw 18 overall, 4 of which were in theaters, with the rest on airplanes. Favorites were A Man Called Otto, In the Heights, Blackberry, Cocaine Bear, Searching for Sugar Man, Barbie, and Remembering Gene Wilder. Most disappointing was Weird: The Al Yancovic Story.

I went to 5 Gilbert and Sullivan operettas at the G&S International Festival in England, with the best production being of Ruddigore. I went to two other operas, both by Jeanine Tesori (Blue and Grounded). I also saw two ballets and one modern dance performance, with the ballet of The Crucible being the most satisfying. As far as classical music goes, I saw the National Symphony Orchestra twice and was privileged to see Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the New York Philharmonic. The only popular music concert I went to was one by Jonathan Richman, who is always wonderful.

I saw 14 plays and 9 musicals, assuming I counted correctly. Favorite plays were All Things Equal (about Ruth Bader Ginsburg), The Lifespan of a Fact at Keegan Theatre, Selling Kabul at Signature Theatre, and The Pillowman, which is a Martin McDonagh play I saw in London. I also loved The Enigmatist, which is a mixture of comedy. magic, and puzzles and, hence, I consider sui generis. Top musicals were In the Heights at Next Stop Theatre Company, Signature Theatre’s production of Pacific Overtures. and Shucked and Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway.

Storytelling: I went to several storytelling shows, including one by my Grimmkeepers group. I performed in two shows for Artists Standing Strong Together, and also told at the C&O Canal Visitor Center with Voices in the Glen, at the Washington Folk Festival, and in a Better Said Than Done show at the Stagecoach Theatre. Some other shows I particularly enjoyed were Ingrid Nixon’s show about Shackleton and several of the performances at the National Storytelling Festival. And, of course, the Women’s Storytelling Festival (which I also emceed at) os always a highlight of the year.

On a rather different note, the Grimmkeepers discussions about the Grimm fairy tales continue to be enlightening and enriching.

Museums and Art: I went to 32 museums over the year. Highlights included the New Bedford Glass Museum, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, two exhibitions of miniatures (the Mini Time Machine Museum in Tucson and the Small is Beautiful exhibit in New York), the MIT Museum, the Virginia Quilt Museum, and the Museum of Failure. I also really enjoyed seeing the Book of Kells, the Manx Museum, and Sutton Hoo during my travels in July. My absolute favorite for the year was the Museum of Broadway.


Other Stuff: On New Year’s Day, my friend, Cindy, and I went to the Winter Lantern Festival at Tyson’s, which was impressive.

I went to various Loser events, including the post-Post Loser Party, the Flushes, LoserFest. I should probably count Poetry and Punchlines (a poetry reading associated with Light, which is a magazine of light verse) as a Loser event, too.

My crafting group changed to meeting on-line every other Thursday and in person at one members house on the weeks in between. I make it when I can. Similarly, I occasionally managed to get to my other (mostly) knitting group, which meets at the police station twice a month.

I went to a virtual organizing conference in September, which was moderately useful.

I played board games a few times a week, when I was home. Yes, sometimes I was home.

Goals: So how did I do on my 2023 goals? I went through maybe 10% of the photos from my parents and realized I have no idea where I put the slides, so I’ll give myself a 10% there. I did go to some sort of lecture or other formal educational event, either in person or on-line, every month, so I get 100% there. I get full credit (i.e. 100%) for taking 4 international trips. I finished only 1 craft project, so only get 33% there, though I did make progress on two others. I read 53 books, out of a goal of 75, so get 71% there. I get 100% credit for going to three new (to me) ballparks. I made it to at least one museum each month so get 100% on that goal. I only went to one national park, so get 33% on that goal. And I averaged significantly less than a half hour every day on housework, so I’ll give myself 10% there. Averaging things out, I’ll give myself a 62% on the year, which is not great but not terrible either.

Which brings me to goals for 2024:

• Circumnavigate the globe going westward. The backstory is that way back in 2000, I did an eastward circumnavigation, from Los Angeles to Russia via Germany by plane, overland through Siberia to Mongolia and to China, and back to Los Angeles by plane. I’ve got ideas for how I want to do the westward circle.
  
  
• Go to at least 3 national parks.
  
  
• Clean out my saved files of genealogy related emails.
  
  
• Read 80 books with a stretch goal of 125.
  
  
• Finish organizing my bedroom.
  
  
• Finish 3 afghans.
  
  
• Find and sort through my parents’ slides.
  
  
• Go to games at at least 4 AAA ballparks.
  
  
• Exercise for at least 20 minutes at least 3 times a week, with a stretch goal of at least 30 minutes at least 4 times a week.
  
  

I finished a couple of things in the past couple of days, so it seems like a good time to catch up here.

Celebrity Death Watch: Royston Ellis wrote travel guides, particularly for south Asia (e.g. India and Sri Lanka) and rail travel. Charle Harrington Elster was one of the original hosts of A Way With Words. Leon Hughes was the last surviving member of The Coasters. Wayne Shorter was a jazz saxophonist. Tom Sizemore was an actor, best known for starring in Saving Private Ryan. Judith Heumann was a disability rights activist. Gary Rossington was the lead guitarist for Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ian Falconer wrote and illustrated the Olivia series of children’s books. Robert Blake was an actor, about equally well-known for playing Baretta and for being accused of murdering his second wife. Raphael Mechoulam was the chemist who (with Y. Gaoni) isolated THC from cannabis. Masatoshi Ito was the founder of Ito-Yokado which owns over 10,00 7-11 stores, as well as being a franchisee for several other brands in Japan. John Jakes wrote epic novels, including North and South. Dick Fosbury was a high jumper who invented the style of jumping known as the Fosbury flop. Jim Gordon was the drummer for Derek and the Dominos, wrote the song “Layla,” and later murdered his mother. Joe Peptone was a first baseman for the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Pat Schroeder was one of the most prominent women in Congress for over 20 years. Stuart Hodes danced with Martha Graham. Sean Burns was the administrator of Tristan da Cunha for many years. Fuzzy Haskins was one of the founding members of Parliament-Funkadelic. John Jenrette was a congressman from South Carolina, best known for being involved in the Abscam scandal. Lance Reddick was an actor, best known for his roles in The Wire, Bosch, and John Wick. K.C. Constantine was a mystery writer. Jerry Green was the only sportswriter to cover each of first 56 Super Bowl games. Keith Reid was a songwriter and lyricist, most famous for Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” Dan Ben-Amos was a folklorist, who studied Jewish folklore among other subjects. D. M. Thomas was a writer, best known for the novel The White Hotel. Howie Kane sang with Jay and the Americans. Virginia Norwood designed satellite imaging systems, leading to her being called the “mother of Landsat.”

Klaus Tuber created the game “Settlers of Catan.” Kwame Brathwaite was a photojournalist and popularized the phrase “Black is Beautiful.” Seymour Stein co-founded Sire Records. Judy Farrell played Nurse Able on M*A*S*H. Roy McGrath was a former chief of staff to the governor of Maryland, who failed to show up for his trial for various corruption charges, leading to a manhunt and his death from a gunshot, though whether by the FBI or his own hand is unclear. Craig Breedlove was a five-time land speed record holder. Leon Levine founded Family Dollar. Hobie Landrith was a catcher and the first person to sign a contract with the New York Mets. Nora Forster was a music promoter, probably more famous as Johnny Rotten’s wife. Ben Ferencz was a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials. Ian Bairson was a member of The Alan Parsons Project. Pierre Lacotte was a ballet dancer and known for helping Rudolf Nureyev defect to the U.S. Meir Shalev was an Israeli writer. Ed Koren was a cartoonist whose work appeared frequently in The New Yorker.

Robert Haimer was a singer and songwriter, half of Barnes & Barnes and known for writing the song “Fish Heads,” which got a lot of airplay from Dr. Demento.

Chaim Topol was an Israeli actor, best known for playing Tevye in the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof.

Jesus Alou was an outfielder who played for a number of teams, including the Giants and the Astros. His younger brother, Matty, died in 2011, but the oldest of the Alou brothers, Felipe, who was the first Dominican to play regularly in the major leagues, is still alive.

Napoleon XIV was best known for the novelty song “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!”

Willis Reed played for the New York Knicks from 1964 through 1974 and went on to coach for several teams.

Gordon Moore co-founded Intel and was famous for Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years.

Mark Russell performed his unique style of political satire on regular PBS specials, as well as live. I was fortunate enough to be able to see him perform at Ford’s Theatre several years ago.

Mimi Sheraton was the food critic for the New York Times for many years. She also wrote several books, including From My Mother’s Kitchen and The Bialy Eaters.

Harry Lorayne was a memory expert. I once commented on The Memory Book as having been written by “Jerry Lucas and some author,” which may give you an idea of how effective I found his techniques.

Anne Perry was a mystery writer. She was several years into that career when the story came out that she had been convicted of murder as a teenager. It’s a complex story, involving what appears to have been an obsessive relationship with the friend whose mother she helped kill.

Al Jaffee was one of the greatest humorists of the 20th century. He invented two features for MAD Magazine - “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” and the fold-in. My Dad bought MAD regularly, allegedly for my brother and me, but we noticed that the fold-in was always done already by the time we got it. He also had an interesting family history, being dragged back and forth between the U.S. and Zarasai, Lithuania by his parents because his mother was unable to adjust to American life. He lived to 102 and credited his sense of humor for his longevity. Also, he earned me 23 ghoul pool points.

Mary Quant was a fashion designer, known for inflicting miniskirts and hot pants on society. And, yes, I wore those back in the day.


Puzzle Community Death Watch: Marc Spraragen, known within the National Puzzlers’ League as Marcus Asparagus, died suddenly of a ruptured aortic aneurysm. He was smart and kind and I always looked forward to seeing him at the NPL con. He was highly devoted to his family - his wife, Pauline, and their three-year-old son, Zachary. Such a huge loss to our community.

Ari Shapiro: The last Monday of March, I went to Ari Shapiro’s book launch event at Sixth & I Synagogue. He was interviewed by Audie Cornish. He had some interesting things to say about storytelling in the context of journalism and the value of encouraging people to tell their stories. Also, a storytelling friend, Cricket, was there, and it turns out she went to college with Ari’s father.

The Eleventh Plague: My friend, Teri, works at the Library of Congress and let me know about Jeremy Brown’s talk about Jews and Pandemics. Some of the things he talked about were the threat of execution for anyone violating quarantines in the Roman ghetto and exactly how a pandemic was defined by the rabbis. For example, only deaths by people who earned a living were counted, but deaths of animals and of non-Jews were included. It was an interesting talk and the library had various books and other reference documents on display.

Pacific Overtures: Pacific Overtures is my favorite Sondheim score, for a number of reasons. In particular, I think “A Bowler Hat” is an excellent example of how to use a song to illuminate character. “Chrysanthemum Tea” has my favorite Sondheim rhyme in “it’s an herb that’s superb for disturbances at sea.” I think “Please Hello!” is a great rebuttal to those who think of Sondheim primarily as a lyricist, since it takes a lot of musical talent to produce such on-the-mark pastiches of different musical styles. Sondheim’s own favorite of his songs was “Someone in a Tree.” Signature Theatre’s production was brilliant, as I expected, with excellent use of puppets and taiko drumming. Jason Ma was very impressive as the Reciter. All in all, it was a fabulous evening of theatre.

ACPT: The first weekend of April (and the Friday night before) was the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. The ACPT deserves its own entry, which I will try to get to soon.

Grimm Keepers: Our story for the most recent meeting was “The Nightingale and the Blindworm.” This is a particularly short story, which is only in the first edition and not later Grimm collections. The gist of it is that those animals had one eye each and the nightingale asked to borrow the blindworm’s eye for a party, but refused to return it afterwards. This got us talking about other stories with similar themes, e.g. an African dilemma tale about a couple who find eyes and have to decide who to give the last one to.

Pesach: I had a hard time finding a lot of Pesach food this year. Many years, I drive to the Baltimore suburbs, but I had too much going on this year. And most of my local stores didn’t have certain things I usually look for. For example, nowhere had kosher for Passover jam. So I ate a lot of matzoh with cream cheese, borscht, chremslach (matzoh meal pancakes), and fruit and was bored.

Ballet - Anna Karenina: Last Friday (April 7th) I went to see the Joffrey Ballet production of Anna Karenina at The Kennedy Center. Cindy and I had some miscommunication, so I had an extra ticket, which my friend, Teri, took. None of the three of us had ever read the book, so we were somewhat lost. At intermission, I did read the synopsis, but it didn’t help quite enough. For example, I never understood what the scene in Parliament where Anna’s husband rails against immigrants, had to do with anything else. Still, the dancing was impressive.

Afterwards, we walked over to The Reach (the newish extension to the Kennedy Center) and looked at some of the River Run exhibit there. The theme is largely environmental, so, for example, there is this scu[pture made out of plastic pulled from rivers.



And here is an exhibit of “fabric” woven from fishing line.



We also went outside and looked at this installation called Survivors by Cuban artist Roberto Fabelo.



All in all, it was a nice afternoon, even if we didn’t completely understand the ballet.

Story Swap: The Voices in the Glen monthly story swap was last weekend. We had a small group, but an enjoyable evening. I told a Tuvan story about “How the Camel Lost Its Beauty.” I’d been thinking of it because it has some elements that are similar to those in “The Nightingale and the Blindworm.” It had been a long time since I’d told it, but I pretty much remembered it.

Crones and Tomes: This months book was The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. This was about her experiences when her husband died and her daughter was hospitalized in a coma for several months. I thought it was a good read but a lot of people had problems with her level of privilege that let her pull in impressive doctors for her daughter.

Counted Cross Stitch Project: I’ve been working on this counted cross-stitch project for two years and a few months and I finally finished it at my crafts group on Thursday afternoon. I still have to get it framed, of course.



It was designed by Saifhon Borisuthipandit and I bought the kit in Bangkok in 2008. I can, of course, see all my mistakes, but I assume nobody else will notice them.

Taxes: I finished my taxes Thursday night. As usual, what takes time is finding all of the documents I need. The one thing that I had a hard time finding was how much I paid in property tax for my car. In the end, I had to look on the county tax administration website. I ended up having to pay a few hundred bucks because I’d owned shares in an American Depository Receipt which delisted itself from the New York Stock Exchange, triggering capital gains. It was kind of a pain to find my cost basis because I’d owned the shares for nearly 30 years. Anyway, it’s done.

Storytelling - The Musical: To continue the busy Thursday, I attended a virtual storytelling show. Carol Moore emceed and there were 6 tellers. Natalie Jones had a cute story about show piglets (as in “there’s no piglets, like show piglets”) putting on a production of “The Three Little Pigs.” Paul Strickland had a story about an enchanted apple tree with a cursed knife stuck in it. Mo Reynolds told a version of the folk tale “The Sword of Wood.” She was followed by Jack Scheer explaining his magic iPod. Jessica Robinson’s contribution had to do with her mother’s love of singing. And Sam Payne closed out the night with a story about going to church dances as a teenager. All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening and a nice way to transition out of my busy day to a more relaxed evening.

I spent the first weekend of the year in New Bedford, Massachusetts. My primary reason for the trip was the annual Moby Dick Marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. Why? Well, I fell in love with Melville’s writing my senior year of high school, when we read “Bartleby the Scrivener” in our Great Books class. That led me to read more of his work, leading to Moby Dick. Having read it a couple of times, I consider it THE great American novel. When I learned about the annual marathon reading of it in New Bedford, I decided that was something I had to experience. I had made plans to go some years ago, but the weather didn’t cooperate and a snowstorm down here kept me from flying up for it. I did watch bits and pieces of the lifestream the past couple of years, but still wanted to go in person. This year, the stars aligned. So armed with warm clothing and my copy of the book, I flew north.


I’d been to New Bedford for the better part of a day back in 1998, but I still decided to fly in a day earlier than I needed to, mostly because you never know how travel will go in the winter. Fortunately, the flight was fine. When I got to BOS, I looked at the schedule for the Peter Pan bus to New Bedford. This isn’t super convenient, since it goes via Hyannis and takes longer than the DAATCO direct bus from South Station, but DAATCO is intended as a commuter service so wouldn’t leave for several hours. So I went to Hyannis, where I needed to change buses. I had a little time to walk around downtown Hyannis, but the weather was chilly and drizzly, so that was far from optimal. (And, of course, my backpack gained weight with every step I took.) I went back to the transportation center and sat down on a bench with a crossword puzzle book to kill time. The bus was delayed, apparently due to a driver shortage, but we did leave Hyannis about a half hour late. I still got to New Bedford at least an hour earlier than the DAATCO bus would have gotten me there. It wasn’t too bad of a walk to my hotel (the Fairfield Inn), with s bit of confusion on my part about exactly where the hotel entrance was. I had a quick dinner and fiddled around on the Internet before going to bed.


I had bought a ticket to the opening dinner and lecture of the Moby Dick Marathon on Friday night, so I had pretty much all day to kill. I decided to walk over to the New Bedford Museum of Glass. This was about a mile up a moderate hill from the hotel. When I got to the museum (which is downstairs in the James Arnold Mansion, home to the Wamsutta Club), nobody was there. I rang the bell several times and tried calling the museum telephone number, but got no answer. I went back upstairs and the Wamsubtta Club receptionist called the proprietor / curator, who came down to meet me, take my $8 admission fee, and show me around the museum. It was definitely worth this minor hassle, since what amounted to a private tour was very informative. The first part of the museum is focused on glass made in New Bedford, which was a major center for art glass in the late 19th century. There are a number of large and spectacular pieces, Some of the things I found most interesting included uranium glass (which glowed under black light) and glass that was shaded by reheating only part of it, changing the amber color to a darker shade. Unfortunately, I didn’t get good pictures of either of those. I did get decent pictures of some other pieces, however.

There was a fashion for Orientalism and it applied to glass, as well as art.



These lamps are beautiful, with the paintings on their interiors of the shades. Definitely something I would love to own one or more of.



My favorite piece in the museum was this glass library by Lucy Lyon. Every piece of it is made of glass, including each of the books.



I also loved a series of pieces by Edris Eckhardt, who invented a technique for drawing with a glass pen and fusing gold leaf between sheets of glass. The museum has several of her stunning works.



This isn’t a huge museum, but it is definitely worth visiting. They have an associated exhibit of glass animals at New Bedford City Hall. That is free to visit. They have pretty much every animal one might imagine. I felt nostalgic since my best friend in high school collected glass animals. Here are a few samples.












I went back to the hotel to rest for a little while before going to the Whaling Museum for the dinner and lecture. The cocktail hour was a good opportunity to meet some of the other attendees. By an interesting coincidence, one of the other people at my table was an MIT alumnus. There were a lot of semi-local attendees, but there were other people who had come from at least as far away as California and Washington State. I was particularly amused by a group of young men who had t-shirts declaring that they were “The (Moby) Dick Heads.” The food was a buffet of Italian food, which was okay, but nothing special. As for the talk, it was given by Aileen Callahan, whose exhibition “Moby Dick in Days of Pestilence and Chaos” was on display in the upper level galleries of the museum. Her art is abstract and the talk helped me understand both her techniques her intentions. It’s definitely a timely topic, but the paintings weren’t really my sort of thing.

I tried to sleep in a bit on Saturday morning, but failed at that. So I ended up going to part of the pre-marathon “Stump the Scholars” session, which featured two teams of experts (The Cods vs. The Clams) answering pre-submitted questions. In short, people can get fairly obsessed about trivia. For example, there was a particularly long discussion about pitchpoling (chapter 84) and whether it is even possible.

There was a little time before the reading started. I used it to do two things. I checked out the scrimshaw exhibit in the museum, because scrimshaw is something I’ve liked since I was taken to the whaling museum in Sag Harbor, New York as a kid. One particularly impressive piece is this violin with scrimshaw fittings.



And I listened to a couple of the Toward the Sea short concerts by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. Those were played by two students from the Berklee Conservatory of Music, Jessica Lynch and Eric Puente. They were quite evocative and enjoyable.



The first part of the marathon reading itself was the extracts that precede the actual novel. For this, the team of experts took turns reading the quotes about whales from the book. Then it was time for the main event. The opening reader was actress Taylor Schilling. The first hour and a half was quite crowded, by the way, and there were even people sitting on the floor. At 1:30, people who had won a drawing for seats went across the street to the Seamen’s Bethel for the chapters set there, culminating in Father Mapple’s sermon. The rest of us went back downstairs to the auditorium, where that part of the reading was live streamed. There was a glitch at the beginning with the microphone being placed too far away from the reader, but it was fixed. We had been handed song sheets and everybody rose to sing along with the hymn. The lecture itself was performed particularly well.

Then everyone went to the gallery we’d been in for the dinner on Friday night for the rest of the reading. Things had thinned out some, so it was easy to snag a good seat. The readers were a mixed bag. Some of them were hesitant, while others were too dramatic. I can’t completely fault people who mispronounce words they’d learned entirely from reading, but one would think that someone who signs up to read Moby Dick publicly would at least look up how to pronounce “leviathan.” There was also considerable disagreement about how to pronounce the name of Queequeg’s idol, Yojo. I heard Yo-Jo, Yo-Ho, and even Yo-Yo! Over the many many hours there was one girl (who appeared to be a teenager) who was nearly inaudible, despite the microphone, but most readers could at least manage to be heard. One person went on for a bit after being told to stop. There was also some confusion over how to handle footnotes. I had my copy of the book to follow along with and spent some time catching up after I took breaks to use the bathroom and to get snacks. (They had a concession stand with various things, most importantly coffee! I suggest bringing granola bars and trail mix.) I also took another break to go downstairs where they were serving chowder and selling beer and talked with a few people, leading to a longer time catching up. I also needed some breaks just to stand up and moe around and stretch, since the folding chairs got fairly uncomfortable after a while. Also, Chapter 40 (“Midnight on the Forecastle”) is presented as a play, complete with sea shanties and dances, which was fun. That was done back down in the auditorium so provided another break.

As the night wore on, the audience thinned out, though there was at least one family who set up sleeping bags in one corner of the room for their children. There were several children at parts of the event and all of them seemed quite well-behaved. (Or, at least, there parents were alert enough to remove them if they were going to be disruptive.) There was one woman who read in French, while the next reader repeated her section in English. (They had a separate Portuguese reading on Saturday afternoon, by the way. I don’t know what parts of the book that entailed.) Early on Sunday morning, you could go down to one of the classrooms and get coffee and malasadas (Portuguese fried dough).

Somewhat to my surprise, I managed to make it through the entire marathon! You could get stamps every four hours on your program and redeem that for a prize, which consisted of a few books (a comic book version of the story, a collection of maritime prints from Melville’s collection, and a book of the Captain’s specific orders to his officers and crew), as well as a magnet. They announced that 1500 people had attended some part of the events, while about 100 completed the marathon.

So was it worth it? For me, yes. I got a renewed appreciation for the book, and, in particular, a good reminder of how funny Melville could be. I also firmly believe that being around people who are passionate about something is always a good way to spend time and this was definitely an event in that category.

On Monday, I walked to the bus station to get the DAATCO bus back to South Station in Boston. While waiting for the bus, I talked with a young man from Dallas who had also come in for the Moby Dick Marathon. He was also a traveler and we had a very nice discussion about various places we’d been. He had also been to the Moby Dick Marathon in Mystic, Connecticut and said this one was better because they don’t have concessions in Mystic.

I think I’d still like to go to the other Moby Dick Marathons. Mystic, Sag Harbor (Long Island), and San Francisco are the ones I know of. Sag Harbor would be the easiest one physically since they break overnight. It’s also a place I like a lot, having gone to the Old Whalers’ Festival there with my family when I was about 9 or 10 years old. But, for now, I’m satisfied.

Hirshorn: After I got back from New York, I had one day where I had nothing scheduled so could run errands. On Saturday, I was off to the Hirshhorn Museum (which is the Smithsonian’s modern art museum) to see an exhibit of works by Yayoi Kusama from their collection. This was free but required tickets given out that day. We took the first Metro train into the city, so got in line for tickets at about 8:15. When they started giving out tickets (at 9:30) that enabled us to get in the first group.

The exhibit was actually pretty small - just 5 rooms, which included two infinity mirror rooms. The first room had this pumpkin sculpture.



Here is me in the first of the infinity mirror rooms. Only two people at a time could go in and you only got 30 seconds inside.



You got a minute and a half in the other infinity mirror room, where there was a path to follow through what seemed like a lot of disco balls.



The whole thing took only about a half hour to go through. So we continued on to the Laurie Andersson exhibit upstairs. There’s not much point in trying to photograph something which relies on multi-media so much, though I did get part of one of the graffitied walls.




The rest does have interesting stories and some rather strange conceptual art, e.g. a series of photos of her sleeping in various public spaces.

We adjourned for lunch at Jaleo, where we ordered too much delicious food. (This is a tapas place, part of the Jose Andres empire. It’s pricy, but he does such great work through World Central Kitchen that I don’t mind spending money at his restaurants.)


Washington Folk Festival: Sunday was the Washington Folk Festival in Glen Echo Park. I was telling stories at 3:30 in the afternoon, so I had time to get lunch (included for performers), browse the crafts tent, and listen to some other storytellers. Jane told a (slightly different version of) a story I had been planning to tell, so I made a last minute substitution. I mostly told stories from the U.S., Mongolia, Poland, and the deep twisty corners of my mind. The audience was very responsive and I had a good time. I left right after my set to minimize the amount of driving right into the sun I’d have to do to get home. (I have a lot of glare issues, alas, which can make for a headache trigger.)


Decluttering: Decluttering is an on-going process but has to be accelerated a bit when I have company coming. I have not made as much progress as I need to. But I have gotten rid of things like coupons that expired two or more years ago, newsletters from events five or more years ago, and assorted scraps of paper with mysterious notes to myself. Why on earth would I have written the phrase “artisanal (cobalt) mines” on a sheet of paper?


More Storytelling: Thursday night I went to the Auld Sheen for a storytelling show I was not performing in. Andrea Young and Jessica Robinson opened the night, with Andy Offutt Irwin from Georgia as the main attraction. Andy is extremely funny and I love his stories, particularly those about his (fictional) Aunt Marguerite who went to medical school in her 80’s. His work is full of character-based humor with insights into southern culture and is delightful. And, of course, there is no substitute for live entertainment.

By the way, there was also a Voices in the Glen story swap (over zoom) on Saturday night. I particularly liked Tim Livengood’s original story about why dogs howl.


The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Speaking of live entertainment, I went to see The Mystery of Edwin Drood, put on by The Britihs Players, on Friday night. This musical won several Tony awards in 1986, but that was not, frankly, a great year for Broadway musicals. It’s based on an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens, which provides an opportunity for the gimmick of having the audience choose the ending. Several of the performers were difficult to understand and there was little humor, aside from predictable jokes told by the chairman of the music hall. I thought the strongest performance was by Meghan Williams Elkin as Princess Puffer, the proprieties of an opium den in London. Overall, I thought it was too long and I drifted off several times during the first act. (The second act was, mercifully,, shorter.) I’ve enjoyed the Old Time Music Hall performances the British Players put on, but this show just didn’t work for me.


By the way, we had dinner at The Tombs beforehand. That’s a Georgetown University hangout and I thought the food was just so-so. The banh mi I got did have good papaya salad, but the baguette was bordering on stale. So, overall, a disappointing outing.


Party: One of my friends had a party on Sunday. He lives in a condo with an excellent view of National Airport, so the big attraction is hanging out on the balcony watching planes (and trains and boats). There was, of course, lots of travel related conversation. And lots of food. My contribution was white chocolate cheesecake in an oreo crust, which is an easy no-bake dessert. (You blend two packages of cream cheese, a can of sweetened condensed milk, a cup of melted white chocolate chips, and about 1/3 c. of sour cream. Then just pour into the oreo crust and refrigerate overnight.) It was good to see people I hadn’t seen in a while and the weather was lovely for sitting outside.

A Little More About the ACPT: For those who want to know more about the crossword tournament, you could watch the 2006 documentary Wordplay.

Here is a run down of my results from all the years I’ve competed. It may make it clearer why I was disappointed. (But, then, I admit I was out of practice. And there were a lot fewer people participating this year.)

2009 – 265 / 654 (55th percentile)
2012 – 241 / 594 (59th percentile)
2014 – 202 / 580 (65th percentile)
2016 – 171 / 576 (70th percentile)
2017 – 141 / 619 (77th percentile)
2018 – 254 / 674 (62nd percentile)
2019 – 220 / 741 (70th percentile)
2022 - 243 / 474 (49th percentile)

But what’s done is done. I’ll aim to do better at other tournaments. (Next up is probably Lollapuzzoola in New York at the end of August.)

As I mentioned, I took the train from Stamford to New York on Sunday afternoon because I had plans. Here’s what I did.

Ari Shapiro’s Cabaret Show: Back in February, I had seen Ari Shapiro interview Fran Leibowitz at the Kennedy Center. He mentioned he had a cabaret show coming up at Feinstein’s / 54 Below in Manhattan on April 3rd and 4th. I realized that meshed perfectly with the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which was April 1st through 3rd. There were actually two Sunday night shows, but the later one was just too late for me, so I booked the 7 p.m. show. That gave me plenty of time to settle into my hotel room and relax a little before walking uptown to the club, which is a pretty well known cabaret venue.

I had been a bit apprehensive about going to what is, essentially, a supper club, alone. But they seated me at a table with a very personable gay couple and we had a lovely conversation while we ate. (You are required to spend at least $25 on food and drink. This is not a challenge. I went with the drink and appetizer approach and did succumb to dessert. My gin and tonic, crab cake, and gelato were all quite good.)

As for the show, Ari sang an interesting mix of songs in multiple languages (shades of Pink Martini) and told a few stories which touched on his journalistic experiences. For example, he talked about meeting with Ukrainian refugees in Poland and getting a text from his husband about their dog being sick and the dissonance of that. My favorite part involved a particularly evocative story he told about visiting a Yazidi shrine near the Iraq / Syria border, including a song. He had lines like “all around me was just sand. Sand and the sounds of the cello.” (He actually mentioned the cellist’s name, but I’ve forgotten it.) I enjoyed the show very much and it was worth missing the ACPT finals and some socializing time to see it.


MOMA: I hadn’t really made particular plans for Monday. There were several options, but given that the weather was chilly, I decided that museum going was the best thing to do. I chose the Museum of Modern Art largely because it had been a while since I’d been there. They are members-only on Monday morning, so I slept in a bit and took a leisurely stroll around midtown (mostly up Fifth Avenue), enjoying seeing several of my Manhattan touchstones.

I’ve never known which of the library lions is Patience and which is Fortitude. Whichever this is, he is magnificent.



The Chrysler Building is the most beautiful skyscraper in the world. This is not up for debate.



I was interested to see a new sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Brugge. It’s called Plantoir, Blue and was erected in 2021.



And it’s good to see that Atlas is still holding up the Earth outside Rockefeller Center.




As for MOMA, they were installing a couple of new exhibits, so some favorites (e.g. Van Gogh’s Starry Night) were not open for viewing. And it was a bit of a maze getting around parts of the building. There was still plenty to look at. For example, I was quite taken by Marta Minujin’s Minucode which consists of films she made of four cocktail parties she hosted at the Center for Inter-American Relations in 1968. It’s an intriguing look at how people interact in an unexpected social environment. (It is also pretty much impossible to photograph.)


Monet’s Waterlilies are more or less obligatory.



I like Matisse, but I don’t plan to take a dip in his swimming pool.



I was intrigued by Double Transparency by Venezuelan artist, Jesus Rafael Soto.



I like to include at least one work by a woman in every set of photos of art. So have The Family by Marisol.



And I might as well throw in this set of lithographs by Julia Wachtel, based on photos of crowds in various cities.



I also was intrigued by some of the pieces in a special exhibit of work by Kahlil Robert Irving, which I thought had some powerful messages abut the commercialization of art.



There was, of course, plenty of other art to look at and I spent pretty much all afternoon at the museum. There are also plenty of other museums in New York (and, for that matter, here in DC), but those will have to wait for another trip.

Funny Girl: A lot of Broadway theaters are dark on Monday nights. Looking for something to do, I was able to snag a ticket for one of the preview performances of the revival of Funny Girl, starring Beanie Feldstein. The show is very much a star turn and I thought Feldstein was competent enough as Fanny Brice. The book had been rewritten and did give a bit more to Nick Ornstein, played excellently by Ramin Karimloo. I should also note the spectacular tap dancing by Jared Grimes as Eddy Ryan.

But, frankly, the show doesn’t hold together very well. The story line is weak (and not particularly accurate, but, then, it was originally produced by Brice’s son-in-law.) It feels like Jule Style was trying to leverage off of the success of Gypsy. which is a much more satisfying show. I found it entertaining enough for an evening, but not worth going out of the way for.

Footnote: I took the train home Tuesday night, so I was able to call into one of my genealogy groups on Tuesday night from home. But I need to get back to New York in the next several weeks, since I very much need to see Hangmen, which is Martin McDonagh’s new play. And I want to go to the Faith Ringold retrospective at the New Museum.

I took a brief trip out of town last week. I took the train up to New York on Monday afternoon. I’d been a bit concerned about the aftermath of their snow storm, but the streets and sidewalks had been mostly cleared. I stayed at the Fairfield Inn on 33rd Street, right across from Moynihan Train Hall, which was convenient and fairly good as hotels in that class go. They even had a hot breakfast buffet. However, they had the tables within the breakfast room closed off, which led to a lot of people gathering around one large table and several clusters of armchairs / coffee tables in the lobby, which seems to me to be less socially distanced than the breakfast room would have been.

Anyway, a lot of things are closed on Tuesdays. Looking at the options, I decided to check out the National Museum of Mathematics. This would be an excellent place to go if I were about 8 years old. But it is definitely geared to elementary school age children and I think I saw only one other adult who was not accompanied by a young child. There are a lot of interactive exhibits - but not a lot of actual explanation of the mathematics behind them. Also, a lot of exhibits were not working. Overall, I didn’t think it was worth the $25 admission. The museum shop does have a lot of interesting math-related toys, however.

Tuesday afternoon, I went down to Tribeca to see a gallery exhibit at Sapar Contemporary. The work, by an Indonesian artist named Mulyana, is called Fragile Ecosystems and consists of knitted coral and felted fish and the like. Having worked on the Smithsonian crochet coral reef (back in 2011) this was obviously right up my alley. It doesn’t take long to see, but was worth the stop.





It was a short walk from there to The Mysterious Bookshop, which was one of the (if not THE) first mystery bookstores in the U.S. and is always a delightful place to browse. I could easily spend quite a lot of money there, but I have way too many books to begin with, so limited myself to buying three thin volumes in their Bibolomysteries series of novellas and a few postcards of pulp covers.


I had a quick dinner, then meandered down to Battery Park to the Museum of Jewish Heritage to see Ricky Ian Gordon’s opera of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, which was a coproduction of the New York City Opera and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. Ricky is from my home town, which was another reason for wanting to see this. I had seen the movie long enough ago that I remembered pretty much nothing about it, beyond it having to do with an Italian family during World War II. There are really two plot lines. One has to do with a love story - young Giorgio’s love for Micol Finzi-Contini, who pretty much thinks he is beneath her. There’s a second (gay) love story that is less developed. The other story, which was more successful for me, had to do with the rising anti-Semitism in Italy and I found that more satisfying musically. In particular, I found the scene in the second act of a Passover seder at Giorgio’s home which becomes confrontational about the future of Italian Jewry to be a dramatic highlight. I should also note the performance of Anthony Ciaramitaro as Giorgio, who has returned to Ferrara in his 40’s and is looking back at the events of his youth. Overall, it was worth seeing.


On Wednesday, I went to the Brooklyn Museum, primarily to see two exhibits. I started with the Andy Warhol exhibit, which was, frankly, weird. When I think of Warhol, I think mostly of things like Campbell’s soup cans and screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and so on. Instead, this exhibit emphasized the influence of the Byzantine Catholic Church on him.




They did point out the conflict between his religion and his sexuality, which didn’t stop them from showing a lot of semi-pornographic film, partly in the context of his shooting by Valerie Solanas. But, even there, they played up how much he went to church after recovering from the shooting. Overall, a very strange take on a well-known artist.

The other exhibit I went there for was about Dior, and that was more satisfying. There was plenty of footage of runway shows, which I could watch for ages. And there were luscious dresses. Of course, many of the accessories are especially beyond the reach of the average person. I don’t know where I could get a couple of elephants to set off any of my little black dresses, for example.




Some other parts of the exhibit felt a bit too much like advertising. That was especially true of the videos of perfume ads. I’d also have liked more material about the place of high-end fashion in our culture. But, overall, I enjoyed the exhibit.


While I was at the museum, I did also go through some of their permanent collection. (Well, okay, I ignored the Egyptian stuff. My mother was an archaeology major in college and, as a result, I was overexposed as a child, leading to a lifelong aversion to ancient Egypt.) The strongest part of their collection is contemporary feminist art. In particular, they host The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago.





In the evening, I went to see an extremely silly show called Space Dogs. This was written and performed by Van Hughes and Nick Blaemire. Blaemire is somewhat notorious in the D.C. area for having written music and lyrics for Glory Days, which was successful at Signature Theatre but closed after one performance on Broadway. Anyway, this show had to do with the Soviet use of dogs to prove humans could survive space and focused on the relationship between “the Chief Designer” and the dog, Laika, who was sent to space, but without a plan to return her to earth. There was some catchy music and clever use of video and puppets, but the show was far longer than it needed to be. And some of the historical inaccuracies drove me nuts, though I am sure nobody else in the audience noticed how badly they mangled info about the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Oh, well, it was a lot cheaper than a Broadway show would have been. But you’d be better off going to Los Angeles and checking out the exhibit about Dogs of the Soviet Space Program at the Museum of Jurassic Technology.


The other purpose of my trip was to see the Philadelphia half of the Jasper Johns retrospective and I did that on Thursday. (I had seen the New York part at the Whitney in November). This was definitely worth seeing. Seeing so many of his works in one place made me appreciate Johns more. I think what is particularly striking about his work is that he kept all of his studies (and signed them). But, mostly, I like how he played with his ideas, repeating the same themes over and over.



Another good example is here , in “5 Postcards.”




I did go an revisit other works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, too. There is plenty of American art, including Shaker furniture, for example. They have plenty of works by Monet, Van Gogh, and so on. But my absolute favorite piece there is Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” largely for the epiphany I had about it many years ago. Namely, that the key word in the title is “descending” and that it is really about the motion. This revolutionized how I look at modern art.






All in all, I had a good trip. I got back on Friday afternoon in time to make this cocktail of the week - a nutty African, which consists of brewed coffee, amarula (a South African liqueur made from the marula fruit), rum, and whipped cream, decorated with chopped pecans. It was delicious.

Sunday was a relatively lazy day. I had a light breakfast and read for a while, before wandering down to the Second Avenue Deli for the Flyertalk Deli Do. Most of us were there well before the deli opened, as we wanted to be sure they could seat our group, which turned out to be about a dozen people, only a few of whom I had met before. Interestingly, I ended up sitting next to somebody who works for the company I worked for, though she is in Los Angeles. Anyway, I ate a tongue sandwich, some good vinegary cole slow, and a couple of sour pickles. Plus diet Dr. Brown’s cream soda. It was delicious, but pricy. I think the most popular order was the matzo ball soup and half corned-beef sandwich, by the way. Anyway, the food and service were both excellent, as was the conversation.


Afterwards, I had some free time, which I spent meandering around midtown Manhattan. The highlight of that involved looking at some murals outside the Fashion Institute of Technology. Here are just a couple of them:








Eventually, I made my way over to Asylum, where I had a ticket to see Seth’s Broadway Breakdown. I was expecting a sort of cabaret show, but Seth Rudetsky really did mostly a lecture, with musical snippets, intended to give people a better appreciation of Broadway music. He talked about things like chest voice vs. head voice, vibrato, riffing, pure vowels, etc. He also provided several bad examples, notably an arrangement of the Osmond Brothers singing a medley of songs from Fiddler on the Roof. It’s very funny, as well as educational, though it left me longing for more (and, in particular, complete songs. Well, not from the Osmond Brothers.) There was also, apparently, an opportunity to pay extra to meet Seth, which was an option I had missed when buying my ticket. I’m not sure I would have done it anyway, however.


Monday’s big venture was to the Whitney Museum of American Art, primarily for the Jasper Johns retrospective. I took advantage of the location to have breakfast at Hector’s, which is a classic New York diner, still full of guys who work in the last remnants of the meatpacking district, where I had some very filling pancakes. Then I walked over to the Whitney where there was a short wait in line to get my vaccination certificate checked and my ticket for the museum (bought in advance) scanned. Then I took an elevator up to the 5th floor for the exhibit.

The main thing is that Jasper Johns has had a long and prolific career. The exhibit included his most recent major painting, Slice, completed in 2020, which juxtaposes the universe with an interior view of the human body that was drawn by a high school student.




Some of the more familiar works are the sculptures of numbers and the paintings of flags. I also like the painting that looks like a bunch of blobs of color, but becomes a map of the U.S. when you look at it more carefully.










There’s a huge amount to see. I particularly appreciated seeing several different versions of the same image, which helped me appreciate how much of a perfectionist Johns is. Overall, I spent about two and a half hours looking at the exhibit. I definitely need to find time to get to Philadelphia and see the other half of this retrospective (which is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art).


There are plenty of other things to see at the Whitney, too. For example, they have lots of work by Edward Hopper, including notebook pages of his sketches, with descriptions written by his wife.




One of my favorite pieces is in the Crafts section on the 6th floor and is called More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid. This work, by Mike Kelley, was made out of handmade afghans and stuffed animals he found at thrift shops. I had first seen it at an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art many years ago and it has stuck in my head ever since, so it was delightful to see it again. (It is paired with another piece by Kelley titled The Wages of Sin, which is made out of drippings of candle wax.)





Overall, I spent the better part of the day (including a stop for tea). I headed back uptown to rest for about an hour before having dinner and making my final theatre excursion of the trip. This was the most expensive ticket of the trip, since Six is the hot ticket on Broadway right now. For those who haven’t heard about it, the premise is that the six wives of Henry VIII are competing to see which one was treated the worst by him and should, therefore, be the headliner of their girl group concert. This started as a student show at Cambridge and moved on to the Edinburgh Fringe. In my opinion, it belongs more in a fringe than on Broadway. The music was overamplified and mostly standard pop fare.There were some funny lines, particularly in the form of the snarkier efforts of Anne Boleyn. But, despite the early claim, one is unlikely to learn anything new about the wives. And the costumes are absolutely hideous. On the plus side, it’s only 80 minutes long.


I had an earlyish train back to D.C. in the morning, but did have time for another diner breakfast (at Andrew’s Coffee Shop, at 7th Avenue and 35th Street), which is a place where I often ate with my mother. In theory, I could make an omelette and toast at hime, but I am far too lazy to do so, which adds to the enjoyment of eating in diners. Anyway, it was a pleasant enough Acela ride back,


One the thing I should note is that almost everywhere I went in NYC asked to see my proof of vaccination and mask compliance there was much higher than it was in Mystic (or in the D.C. area, alas). Overall, it was a nice week away. I am probably going to go up to New York again in January because of a couple of things I want to do.

I went to a little bit of Art and Soul in Portland, Oregon a couple of weeks ago. This is a multimedia art retreat that I’d been to before in Virginia. I signed up for only three classes, because I am a bit overcommitted right now. (So what else is new?)

The travel (United from IAD to PDX) was pretty straightforward. I had aisle seats with empty middles both ways. I should note that the Turkish Air lounge at IAD (which I have access to thanks to Star Alliance gold status) has a more limited food selection than it used to, with boxed turkey sandwiches, eggplant salad, and chickpea salad. Which is fine, because they still have decent coffee and comfortable seating.


The retreat was at the Sheraton at the airport, which is comfortable enough. It included a so-so breakfast buffet and a nightly drink. The breakfast wasn’t particularly good, but adequate. They did better with dinner - pad thai, in particular, was quite tasty (and a generous enough portion that I had half of it for lunch the next day.) My major whinge is that the hotel is not really within walking distance of anything and, in particular, it is not very easy to get to the light rail from. Not that I had much free time, but, if I had, I would have made a pilgrimage downtown to Powell’s Books.


Anyway, I took three classes. The first one was Felted Slippers, which was also my favorite of the three. I’ve done wet felting before, but LeBrie Rich’s technique was sufficiently different that there was plenty to learn. We started by making a plastic resist to use as a pattern. Then we covered it with 6 layers of roving (wetted with a soapy water solution). That was then decorated, felted, cut it open and fulled, with the latter process shrinking it to a custom fit. My slippers came out pretty nice:




The second class I took was Fabric & Marbling, with Nicole Austin. She mostly did a short demo, then left us to experiment. I wish she had talked more about materials to use (especially inks), though she did have a handout. I have taken a marbling class before (with Galen Berry, and I thought he was more detailed in his instruction. I also thought he had better materials. It was still fun, but I didn’t feel like I really learned anything new.

Here’s a piece of marbled paper:



And here are a couple of pieces of marbled fabric:







The final class I took was Paper and Fabric Beads. I didn’t write down the instructor’s name and it isn’t on her handout. Basically, you take strips of fabric or paper, put glue on the back, and roll them around a skewer. This class was disappointing, largely because all the teaching the instructor did consisted of giving out the handout and admonishing people not to glue the fabric or paper to the skewer. She did have nice materials to use and she had some interesting examples of how to use them. I was also a bit peeved because she told people to bring a cutting mat and scissors / xacto knife, but we only used precut materials she provided. I could have avoided having to check a bag had I known. To be fair, I was grouchy because I was really tired. (It was an evening class and I hadn’t slept well the night before.) So I left about halfway through. I still came away with some beads that I can use for something or other. The ones on the left are paper; the beads on the right are fabric. Each one is roughly an inch long.





I should also mention that there was a daily raffle and I won a goodie bag the first day! The prize included a coffee mug, a couple of calligraphy pens, some rubber stamps, and a couple of little journals.


Overall, I am glad I went and wish I’d had more time, as there were other classes I was interested in. I do hope they go back to holding retreats in Virginia, which would be more convenient for me. They are apparently looking at hotels around Herndon, so that seems likely.