fauxklore

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.
  
  

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've had a pretty sociable week.

Storytelling Show: Saturday night’s storytelling show went well. We had a good and responsive audience. The venue was easier to get to than I expected it to be. And they had an excellent sound system. My story went okay, but I left out a couple of things I had planned to say, but so it goes.

Medicare: I had my appointment on Monday to go down to the Social Security office to show them my proof of age. I am sure that I clicked the “I have an appointment” button on their check-in kiosk, but somehow it gave me a number for a drop-in, instead of an appointment. Which meant that I ended up waiting much longer than I should have. But I got everything sorted and should have my Medicare card any day now. I still need to get my Social Security account on-line sorted. They could reset my password, but not my cell phone number for two-factor authentication. So I had to fill in the stuff on-line that has them send me something to fix that. (Last night, I stumbled upon the piece of paper on which I’d written down my password, but the old cell phone number would still have been a problem.) What is particularly annoying is that, if I hadn’t set up the account a long time ago, I could have circumvented all of that, because I could have logged in using my login.gov account, which I set up to get global entry.

Knitting Group: We normally meet at the police station, but the community room gets used for early voting, so we were at Wegman’s instead. We had a good group, with two new people. I’m making progress on my Tunisian crochet afghan, but it may not be completely done by the end of the year. It’s still a good project for social crafting as it is pretty brainless. Also, I brought some knitting pattern books from the 1950’s to give away and Tom took two of them.

Needles and Crafts: My other crafting group, which meets on line, had been on hiatus over the summer and just started up again yesterday afternoon It was great seeing everyone and I got some more done on the afghan. We’ll actually be meeting at a member’s house on alternate weeks, which is, of course, less convenient, especially because she lives in darkest Maryland.

Buy Nothing: I got rid of three things last week. So far this week, I got rid of one item (two furnace filters that were the wrong size) and am waiting for someone to pick up another thing (a trivet made of wine corks.)

Baseball: I had been rooting for the Marlins, primarily because I think Kim Ng is cool, but, oh well. (She is being talked about for the BoSox GM job.) I find the Dodgers the most tolerable of the teams who are left. The Twins are okay, I suppose. I wouldn’t mind the Phillies so much (I do like their GM, Sam Fuld), but I hate mascots in general and the Phanatic is the worst of the worst of them. I detest the Orioles because of all the effort their leadership put into trying to keep Washington from getting a team, as well as their failure to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch.

Genealogy: Wednesday night was the Litvak genealogy group I am the subject matter expert for. One of the good discussion topics had to do with what resources are worth paying for. My opinion is that it is perfectly fine not to renew relatively expensive sites like Ancestry and My Heritage until you need to use them. They don’t delete your account, so you can start up again when it makes sense to.

Celebrity Death Watch: Dick Biondi was a disc jockey who is claimed to be the first AM radio deejay to play several famous rock stars, including the Beatles. Sanjay Mitter was a control theory professor in the EECS department at MIT. Evelyn Boyd Granville was the second African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American university (specifically, Yale) and did important research on computing.

Frank Field was a TV meteorologist. Susan Love was a surgeon, best known for writing a book about breasts. George Tickner played guitar for Journey and Furious Bandersnatch. Judith Liebman was the only woman to become president of the Operations Research Society of America. Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. was the president of Yale University from 1986 to 1992 and later became the chairman of the Board of Trusties of the City University of New York. Tom Adam was a warlord in the Central African Republic. Carlin Glynn won a Tony award for performing in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. James Reston Jr. was a journalist, novelist, and playwright. Pamela Blair originated the role of Val in A Chorus Line, in which she sang the song “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three.” Inga Swenson was an actress, best known for playing Gretchen Kraus on Benson. Alice K. Ladas wrote about the G-spot. Paul Reubens was an actor who played the role of Pee-wee Herman.

Sir Michael Boyd was a theatre director who oversaw the revitalization the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Walter Charles was a Broadway actor. Mark Margolis was a character actor best known for playing Hector Salamanca in Breaking Bad. Boniface Alexandre was the provisional president of Haiti from 2004 to 2006. John Gosling played keyboards for The Kinks. William Friedkin directed several movies, including The French Connection and The Exorcist. Jerry Moss cofounded A&M Records. Renata Scotto was an operatic soprano, whose name I know only because of its frequent appearance in crossword puzzles. Al Quie was the governor of Minnesota from 1979 to 1983. Maxie Baughan was a football player. James Burke was the first manager of the Ranger program (which photographed the moon from space probes), making him a pioneer of America’s space program. John Warnock co-founded Adobe. Bob Feldman wrote the song “My Boyfriend’s Back.” Yevgeny Progozhin was a mercenary, who co-founded the Wagner Group. Pat Corrales was the first Major League Baseball manager of Mexican American descent. Joe the Plumber was a right wing political commentator. Don Sundqvist was the governor of Tennessee from 1995-2003.

Dennis Austin co-created Powerpoint, doing untold harm to business productivity. Gary Wright was a singer-songwriter, best known for “Dream Weaver.” Lisa Lyon was a bodybuilder and modeled for Robert Maplethorpe. Gita Mehta wrote interesting books about India. I remember reading Karma Cola and Snakes and Ladders many years ago. Billy Miller was a soap opera actor. Michael McGrath was a Tony-award winning actor.


Lowell Weicker was a senator from 1971-1989 and the governor of Connecticut from 1991-1995. He had been a Republican as a senator but formed a third party (“A Connecticut Party”) for his gubernatorial campaign. He held a number of apparently contradictory positions (e.g. having been on the board of directors of a tobacco lobby and of a non-ptisan health policy research organization). He was also one of the first Republicans to call for Richard Nixon’s resignation. Overall, one of the more interesting politicians of his time.

Alan Arkin was an actor, who received a number of awards for his roles in movies like Little Miss Sunshine and Argo, as well as having won a Tony award for his role in the play Enter Laughing.

Milan Kundera was a Czech novelist, most famous for The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Kevin Mitnick was a computer hacker who later became a security consultant.

Tony Bennett was a singer of pop music and jazz. He is best known for “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” and is also notable for his late in life collaboration with Lady Gaga. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 13 points.

Randy Meisner was a waist and vocalist for The Eagles and Poco. He also wrote the song “Take It to the Limit.”

Sinead O’Connor was an Irish singer and songwriter, who was controversial for her political activism, most notably for tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II to protest against abuse in the Catholic Church.

Sixto Rodriguez was a singer-songwriter, far better known in South Africa than in the U.S. There’s an excellent documentary about him, Searching for Sugar Man. Interestingly, Clarence Avant, who founded Sussex Records and may have cheated Rodriguez out of royalties, died just days after he did.

Robbie Robertson was the lead guitarist for The Band and wrote such songs as “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

Tom Jones was the lyricist who collaborated with Harvey Schmidt on several musicals, including The Fantasticks, 110 in the Shade, and I Do, I Do. I’d had him on my ghoul pool list a few years ago, but not this year.

James L. Buckley was a U.S. Senator from New York from 1971-1977, elected as a member of the Conservative Party. He was the oldest living former senator at the time of his death. I had him on my ghoul pool list and he earned me 16 points.

Nick Hitchon was a physicist but the real reason anyone has heard of him was his participation in the 7 Up series of documentaries. He was on my ghoul pool list and got me 14 points.

Bob Barker hosted The Price is Right for many many many years. He was an advocate for animals, but was also a serial sexual abuser. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 15 points.

Bill Richardson was the governor of New Mexico from 2003-2011. He was my choice in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, but was out of it by the time things got to Virginia. In recent years, he played a major role in freeing political prisoners. He was a diplomat in the truest sense of the word.

Jimmy Buffett was that rare musician who almost everyone liked. I was fortunate enough to see him perform live once. He was also an entertaining writer and an excellent businessman. Have a margarita in his memory.

Steve Harwell was the lead singer for Smash Mouth. I’d seen a news story that he was on his death bed and did a quick ghoul pool substitution, giving me a whopping 32 points and putting me (briefly, alas) at the top of the score board.

Fernando Botero was a painter and sculptor. He’s best known for his work depicting fat people and fat cats. I think I first encountered one of his sculptures in Yerevan, Armenia and saw several more of his artworks in Barcelona.


Non-Celebrity Death Watch:I caught up on the monthly newsletter from my former employer. The obituaries from the past few months included a few people I knew fairly well - Bob Leatherman, Jim Gidney, Les DeLong (who I worked with on an INCOSE committee several years ago) and, most significantly, Roberta Gleiter. Roberta was a powerful voice for women in engineering and was, in fact, the President of the Society of Women Engineers around 2000ish. After that, she founded the Global Institute for Technology and Engineering. She and I worked together for several years and she was always a pleasure to hang out with. I’ll miss her.


Errands: I had a lot of catching up to do at home. This was a mixture of boring and frustrating and stressful. For example, I had to renew the registration for my car. This was actually easy to do on-line, but that didn’t stop me from having a minor panic attack the day before it was due because I couldn’t remember that I’d actually done it.

Renewing my driver’s license was more of a hassle. I had to go to my eye doctor to get the vision test because I always have trouble with the machines. If I’d been smart, I’d have realized I could renew a full year before the license expired, which would have been right after I got new glasses. Anyway, I am good to drive, but I will have to have cataract surgery in the coming months. This is not a surprise. There’s a part of me that is looking forward to it.

The catch is that I’m in the process of transitioning to medicare. This is more complicated than it should be, for a number of reasons. The bottom line is that I should have started the process two months before my 65th birthday, rather than a week before. And coordinating things with the retiree medical people from my company is also stressful. They had previously told me that they would send me something 60 days before my eligibility, but, no, they just called me with incomplete information. And then I had trouble with the social security website and ended up having to call them. That meant spending ages on hold, followed by a lengthy phone conversation, which only resulted in a phone appointment which is this Friday. Oy. Now, it looks like I’ve gotten a bill from the people who handle the payment processing, but it doesn’t recognize that I’d been using their autopay option. I may have to actually call them, which is annoying.

My other source of stress was that I found an envelope relating to my real estate property taxes, but couldn’t find the actual tax statement. So I wasn’t sure if I did or didn’t pay them already. Why, yes, this motivates me to clean off my dining room table. And my sofa. And the other places that mail I may not have dealt with accumulates. Ah, wait. It was due in late July and I just verified that I paid it before I went to Ireland.

Some Socializing: I went out to dinner one night with a few people from FlyerTalk. NightHawk in Pentagon City has decent food and beer, but an annoying interface to their ordering system. At least, I was able to pull up the menu on my iPhone, which a couple of people couldn’t. It was also kind of noisy. But it was good to get out and it’s always fun to talk about travel.

It had been a long time since I’d been to that part of town, but I ended up over there again less than a week later. A college friend was in town and we went out to dinner at Lebanese Taverna. All of the food we got was good and I was even able to take some home to have for lunch the next day. It was good to catch up with him and talk about what various people we knew back in the day were up to.

I’d also gone to a movie with Cindy. And gone to knitting group. And to an on-line story swap. And to one of my genealogy groups, one of my book clubs, and my Grimm folk tales discussion group.

Baseball: Somewhat on the spur of the moment, I drove down to Fredericksburg to see the Fredericksburg Nationals (the Single A affiliate of the Washington Nationals) get slaughtered by the Lynchburg Hillcats. The ballpark is a huge improvement over the one the Potomac Nationals used in Woodbridge, though the concessions were so-so. Also, I tried their special beer, the Slugging’ Gus blackberry blonde ale, but I didn’t much like it. I stayed down there overnight.

Two Things I Will Write About Separately: LoserFest was in Philadelphia this year and is worth its own entry. And I went to a (virtual) organizing event, which may prove useful in the decluttering (and associated de-stressing).

Happy 5784: Finally, this past weekend was Rosh Hashanah. I ended up going to zoom services, because I felt a little under the weather. That’s not very satisfying, but I just couldn’t get myself moving.

I also called my brother, mostly to make sure he’s still alive. Let’s just say he is continuing his usual patterns of driving me crazy. Which is not something I will write about publicly.

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.”

Celebrity Death Watch: Thomas Cahill wrote several books about history, including How the Irish Saved Civilization. Charles Duncan, Jr. was the U.S. Secretary of Energy from 1979 to 1981. Robert Gordon was a rockabilly singer. John Jay Osborne wrote The Paper Chase. Charley Trippi was a Hall of Fame football player. Ron Masak was an actor, best known for playing Sheriff Metzler on Murder, She Wrote. Leslie Jordan was an actor and writer. Mike Davis wrote about urban life, with City of Quartz (about Los Angeles) a notable example. Julie Powell wrote Julie & Julia. Gael Greene was the food critic for New York Magazine for over 30 years. Geraldine Hunt was an R&B singer. D. H. Peligro played drums for the Dead Kennedys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Mike Fanning played football for the L.A. Rams for seven seasons. Samuel Katz was one of the developers of the measles vaccine. George Booth was a cartoonist, whose work often appeared in The New Yorker. Ray Guy was the first punter to be inducted into the football Hall of Fame. Bill Sheffield was the governor of Alaska from 1982 to 1986. Aaron Carter was a teen idol in the 1990’s. Jeff Cook was one of the founders of Alabama (the country band, not the state). Lee Bontecou was a sculptor. Gallagher was a comedian, best known for a shtick involving smashing watermelons.

Both of Carly Simon’s sisters died within a day of one another. Joanna Simon was an opera singer, while Lucy Simon was a folk singer who went on to write the lovely score for the Broadway musical The Secret Garden.

Ash Carter was the U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2015-2017. He had been the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics for two years before that and was, effectively, my customer great-great-grandboss in that role. I vaguely remember that he sent out fewer memos and definitely had fewer all-hands meetings than his successors did. At ay rate, he was a smart man and a devoted public servant.

Jerry Lee Lewis was a singer and pianist, who stirred up controversy by marrying his 13-year-old cousin. His songs, like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” were high energy and defined an era.

Friends Death Watch: Josephine Quinones died on November 5th at the age of 95. She was a mainstay of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and Lollapuzzoola, along with her daughter, Christine, and her son, Ric. She was a warm and lovely person and I am glad I had the opportunity to know her.


Beisbol: Once the Source of All Evil in the Universe was defeated, I didn’t really care much about the postseason. I am okay with the Astros having won the World Series, despite the 2017 cheating scandal. My logic is that the most important players to their win (e.g. Yordan Alvarez) were not part of the team then. And, of course, Dusty Baker was not managing the team then.

Liana Finck: I went to a (virtual) talk by graphic novelist Liana Finck last Wednesday. I had really enjoyed her book, based on A Bintel Brief (A Bundle of Letters), which was an advice column in the Yiddish newspaper, the Jewish Daily Forward. Her new book is Let There Be Light and is based on the biblical book of Genesis. The twist is that she imagines G-d as a young girl. I particularly liked her take on the Garden of Eden, where she imagines Eve being tempted not by a snake but by Lilith. (In Jewish tradition, Lilith was Adam’s first wife.) Anyway, it sounds like a book I’d like to get. I also found her discussion of her influences, which include Roz Chast and Sol Sternberg, to be interesting.

Cox Farms Fall Festival: Last Thursday my friend, Frances, and I went to Cox Farms in Centerville for their Fall Festival. I had originally texted a few friends to ask about going on the weekend, but Frances pointed out it was half-price on Thursday and, therefore, twice as much fun. We started out with going on a hayride - something I hadn’t done since I was about 10 years old. It gave us a pretty good tour of the sprawling property, which has a number of silly features, like dinosaurs and ghosts and pumpkins. And aliens.




The main reason I wanted to go to Cox Farms in the first place was Foamhenge. This model of Stonehenge is made out of styrofoam and used to be out near Natural Bridge in the Shenandoah Valley, but was moved to Cox Farms some time ago. It’s about what you’d expect. As silly henge models go, I think Carhenge in Nebraska is better, but this was worth a look.



We tasted some apple cider, then went to The Forest. There are sculptures that have to do with a lot of different classic children’s stories. You can help Little Bo Peep find her sheep, for example, and go to the house of the Three Bears. The three little pigs were safely inside a sturdy house, but the Big Bad Wolf lurked outside.



There is also a unicorn.



There were real farm animals (including cows, sheep, and pigs). And the Cornundrum, which had various rooms (like the Pharaoh’s tomb), a place where you were supposed to count aliens, a room full of (artificial) bugs, etc. I would have preferred an actual corn maze. There are various slides, but those are entirely for children. And there is plenty of junk food, as well as a farm market, which had cider and donuts. Your admission included a pumpkin to take home, which I passed on, since I am lazy enough to prefer my pumpkins to come nicely ready to use in a can. Anyway, it was entertaining enough for a couple of hours.


Leading Jewish Minds: MIT Hillel has a regular series of talks by Jewish professors. This one (last Friday) was by Paul Osterman o Free Agents or Company People: What Will Work Look Like?. While he discussed long-term changes in how work is organized (including increased inequality, declines in union membership, and automation), he mostly focused on the changes in the relationship between employers and employees. He didn’t really talk about remote work, but was focused on three categories of workers - standard employees, freelancers, and contractors, The latter range from the low end (cleaning services and security guards) to the high end (computer programmers and professionals like adjunct faculty). Gig workers make up very small numbers. Overall, he said that freelancers are satisfied, but contractors are often treated poorly. What he discussed was pretty much entirely within the private sector, however, and he didn’t discuss government contractors, who (in my experience) rarely want to be actual government employees. He also mentioned the need for policies to address standards and training. Overall, it was an interesting talk, but decidedly a work in progress.

Intergenerational Storytelling: To follow up on my previous post, my storytelling event last Friday night went well. I was pleased to see several people I knew among the attendees. I thought everyone told well and I got positive feedback. I should also note that I was particularly delighted by Laura’s twist on a selkie story, transported from the Irish tradition to Florida.

Still to Come: I have several other things still to write about, including:

• Genealogy stuff, including IAJGS presentations and a surprising record that I am skeptical about
  
• Last weekend, which I spent in the Shenandoah Valley
  
• Politics
  
• Concert going
  
• Language learning
  

All of us were leaving Niagara Falls on Friday. I’d arranged with Ed and Doug to get a ride to Buffalo. I’d originally thought of just flying back from there, but then I had a moment of inspiration and checked minor league baseball calendars. And, not only was there a Bisons game that night, they were playing the WooSox! (That’s the Worcester Red Sox, the AAA affiliate of the BoSox.) A little further research revealed that I could easily take a short trip in Western New York state that would get me to three AAA ballparks and allow me to see a few other places I was interested in.

First, we had to get back to the U.S., which was made slightly complicated by Ed overexplaining why we’d been in Canada. All he really needed to say was that we’d been touring Niagara Falls. Instead, he tried to explain Loserdom. I successfully persuaded the border crossing agent that I was not being abducted by Texans and they dropped me off at my hotel in downtown Buffalo.

I had plenty of time to settle in, have lunch at a reasonably good Jewish deli several blocks from the hotel, and walk around the area. Buffalo City Hall is a rather grand Art Deco building.



There is a statue of Grover Cleveland (who had been mayor of Buffalo) in front of it. But the statue I was more interested in is decidedly not of a former mayor.



Shark Girl was created by Casey Riordan Millard in 2013 and is supposed to symbolize a fish out of water and the longing for normality. I think this photo makes a fine addition to my collection of pictures of weird public art.

As for the ball game, Sahlen Field was pretty nice and the Bisons fans were definitely enthusiastic. (I was, of course, rooting for the WooSox, who, alas, lost.) I was, however, annoyed that their mascot sometimes blocked the action while the game was in progress.



There were fireworks after the game, which I only watched a little of, before walking back to my hotel.

In the morning, I took a Lyft to the airport and picked up a rental car for the next couple of days. My first stop was a little under an hour away, in the town of Le Roy. I had picked up a brochure for the Jell-o Gallery Museum ages ago and I finally got to go there.

They have lots of info about the history of Jell-o, along with displays about the Jello Girl, a place to vote for your favorite flavor (lime!),and displays of Jello molds.



They also have recipes. This one, for “Savory Vegetable Salad Mold” is especially for spikesgirl58.



I should note that I did not buy any of the cookbooks for sale in their gift shop. All in all, the museum was reasonably amusing and worth a little under an hour. There is also an historic house in front of it that you can tour, but I had other plans that I thought were a better use of my time.

Specifically,, I had learned that the National Toy Hall of Fame is housed at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, just about a half hour further east. This is an absolutely amazing museum and I could probably spend days there. In addition to the Hall of Fame, there are displays about pretty much every aspect of play - including story books, sports, games (including board games), dolls, building toys, transportation toys, etc. It would be hard to go through it without stopping to ooh and aah over things you grew up with. There’s a theatre where a small music group played songs that were composed to match some of the hall of fame toys. There’s an area where (at extra cost) children can climb structures and ride a zip line and so on. There’s even a carousel.



Here are some of the hall of fame toys:



Barbie is just about the same age as I am, but she seems to have aged better. I suspect plastic surgery.



One fun thing I did was have their etch-a-sketch draw a portrait of me. Since I was wearing a mask, I think I came out looking a bit ape-like.



After a few hours at the museum, I went to my hotel and checked in. A friend who lives in the area picked me up and took me on a driving tour around Rochester, including passing the Eastman Mansion (as in Eastman Kodak), Lake Ontario, and crossing the Erie Canal several times. We also went over to her house, which includes acres of land and a little vegetable farm. It’s a very attractive part of the country, but I doubt I would want to spend a winter there.

In the evening, I went to my second baseball game of the trip. The Rochester Red Wings are the AAA affiliate of the Washington Nationals. They were playing the Scranton / Wilkes Barre RailRiders, who are the AAA affiliate of the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Alas, Rochester lost. Frontier Field was a pretty average ballpark in my opinion.



The really unique thing there was Milo the Bat Dog, who was definitely cute. (And popular.)



In the morning, I was off to my final destination for this trip. Syracuse is a little under an hour and a half east of Rochester. I didn’t really have time to do anything touristy there because I had to call into a meeting relating to some volunteer work I’m involved in.

Anyway, the Syracuse Mets (who are the AAA affiliate of the New York Mets, duh) were playing the Omaha Storm Chasers (AAA affiliate of the Kansas City Royals) at NBT Bank Stadium. The ballpark was pleasant enough, though it is located in what appeared to be a semi-industrial neighborhood. I was pleased to recognize Nick Plummer, who I’d seen play in his major league debut at Citified when I was there in late May.



After the game, I drove to the airport and returned my rental car. I then took a shuttle bus to my hotel. In the morning, I flew home, complicated by a 4+ hour flight delay due to a mechanical problem with the lane the night before. Fortunately, United had notified me of this before I went to bed, so I got a decent amount of sleep. It was good to get home after the back to back trips, fun as those had been.

One quick follow-up. It turns out that the experience of starting to dream before falling asleep is not actually uncommon. It’s called hypnagogic hallucination and about 70% of people experience it. I am less unique than I thought.


Celebrity Death Watch: Steve Wilhite invented the GIF (and still managed to pronounce it incorrectly). Ralph Terry was a pitcher who spent several seasons with the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Peter Bowles played Guthrie Featherstone in the Rumpole of the Bailey TV series. Scotty Mitchell was a television actor, who often appeared on game shows, as well as having recurring roles on a couple of sitcoms. Winfield Scott Jr. was an Air Force general and superintendent of the Air Force Academy in the mid-1980’s. John Roach led the development of the TRS-80 microcomputer. Kip Hawley directed the TSA from 2005 to 2009. Charles Boyd was a combat pilot in the Air Force and was the only Vietnam War POW to reach 4-star rank in the military. Edward Johnson III ran Fidelity Investments from the 1970’s on. Taylor Hawkins was the drummer of the Foo Fighters. Kathryn Hays was an actress, best known for appearing in As the World Turns for almost 40 years. Bobby Hendricks sang with The Drifters. Cat Pause was a fat studies activist. Bethany Campbell wrote romance novels. Patricia MacLachlan wrote Sarah, Plain and Tall.

C.W. McCall was a country singer, best known for the song, “Convoy.” Estelle Harris played George Constanza’s mother on Seinfeld and voiced Mrs. Potato Head in the Toy Story movies. Sidney Altman won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his studies of RNA. Nehemiah Persoff was an actor whose roles included the father in Yentl. Bobby Rydell was a pop singer who played the role of Hugo in the movie version of Bye Bye Birdie. Mimi Reinhardt was Oskar Schindler’s secretary. Gilbert Gottfried was a comedian whose shtick included a really annoying voice. Mike Bossy played hockey for the New York Islanders. Liz Sheridan played Jerry’s mother on Seinfeld. Wendy Rieger was a news anchor in D.C. Barbara Hall was a British crossword constructor and puzzles editor for the Sunday Times. Cynthia Plaster Caster was a groupie who went on to create plaster casts of famous men’s erect penises. Guy Lafleur was a Hall of Fame hockey player. Mike Summer played football for the Washington Redskins. Susan Jacks sang the song “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” Andrew Woolfolk played saxoophone with Earth, Wind & Fire. David Birney was an actor who is probably best known for the TV series Bridget Loves Bernie but also performed in a lot of serious theatre on Broadway. David Walden contributed to the development of ARPANET. Neal Adams was a comic book artist. Joanna Barnes was an actress whose movie credits included Auntie Mame and The Parent Trap. Naomi Judd was a country singer/songwriter.

Regine was a singer and nightclub owner. Jerry verDorn was a soap opera actor. Rick Parnell was the drummer for Spinal Tap. Norman Mineta was the Secretary of Transportation in the 2000’s. Mary Fuller was a sculptor. Midge Decter was a neoconservative, probably best known as the wife of Norman Podhoretz. Randy Weaver was a survivalist and the key figure in the Ruby Ridge siege. Robert McFarlane was the National Security Advisor under Ronald Reagan and a key figure in the Iran-Contra Affair. Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan was the president of the United Arab Emirates. Ben Roy Mottelson won the Nobel prize in physics for his work on the geometry of atomic nuclei. Vangelis was a musician and composer, whose work for films included Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner. Bob Neuwirth wrote the song “Mercedes Benz.” Rosmarie Trapp was one of the Von Trapp Family Singers.

Madeleine Albright was the first woman to be the U.S. Secretary of State. She was also famous for her collection of brooches, which I once saw at the Smithsonian.

Ann Hutchinson Guest was an expert on dance notation. She lived to the age of 103 and earned me 29 ghoul pool points.

Robert Morse was an actor. He won a Tonyin 1962 for playing J. Pierrepont Finch in How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying and another in 1989 for the one-man play Tru about Truman Capote. He later appeared in the TV series Mad Men. I believed in him.

Orrin Hatch was a Republican Senator from Utah for 42 years. He also wrote and recorded Christian music.

Roger Angell wrote about baseball, primarily for the New Yorker, for about 75 years. Saying that is like saying that Herman Melville wrote about whaling. He was eloquent and insightful, a true poet laureate of the sport. He earned me 21 ghoul pool points.


Non-celebrity Death Watch: Ernest Cravalho was an MIT professor of Mechanical Engineering. I don’t remember if I had him for Thermodynamics, but I am fairly sure we used a textbook he had co-written. He died in April 2021 but I only just learned of his death a couple of weeks ago.

Suzy Pietras-Smith kept an on-line journal at https://www.mutteringfool.com. I met her only once and briefly (at Journalcon several years ago.) She wrote well - not surprisingly, as she was a professional journalist. She had been in the hospital for well over a year, so her death was not a total surprise, but still sad.

I knew Patricia Hansen from FlyerTalk (where she went by the handle, Lili). She was a lively person and a good traveler and I always enjoyed seeing her at FT Dos.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I worked in the offices of a large corporation. There was some sort of invasion by armed intruders. I locked myself in my office, but somehow I could see what was going on. Several people ran down a hallway to try to escape, but even though they were wearing hazmat suits, they got trapped in a hallway and mowed down. Two women started running in that direction but got away and ran into an office catty corner from mine and, like me, were able to see things happening. The intruders were mostly in a big open room downstairs and were trapped there, where they were killed, so all three of us survived.

Yemandja: I saw this show (play? opera?) at the Kennedy Center a couple of weeks ago. I went to see it largely because of Angelique Kiddo’s involvement. In addition to co-writing the music (with Jean Hebrail), she played the title role. Yemandja is the Yoruba goddess of water and healing. She has a running conflict with Oro, the god of wind. The story involves the influence of these spirits on a girl named Omulola as she tries to rescue her uncle from the slave trade. This is made more complicated because her fiancé , Olajuwon, is the son of the slave trader, De Salta. Throughout all of this, music is used to influence events and, eventually, provide healing. Overall, it was an interesting show and worth seeing.

Maryland Sheep ad Wool Festival: The first weekend of May brought the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which is, essentially, a cross between a county fair and the world’s largest yarn shop. I met up with a few friends there, but mostly shopped on my own. I did not buy any sheep and confined my purchases to two books - one on sock architecture and one called What Would Madame DeFarge Knit? because how could I resist that title? I also bought a gradient yarn kit - several skeins in a blue, green, and purple color way called “They’ll Be Writing Songs About This.” That will eventually get turned into a shawlette.

Re-Boosted: I got my second COVID booster last Monday, I had gotten Pfizer previously and opted for Moderna this time because there is some evidence that mixing the vaccines might give more protection. I did have more side effects (arm soreness, headache, fatigue, mild nausea) but nothing intolerable.

Leading Jewish Minds - Daniel Jackson on Software: MIT Hillel has a series called Leading Jewish Minds at MIT and the most recent speaker was Daniel Jackson. His talk was on software and why it does and does’t work well. A lot of what he said had to do with user interfaces. But the broader question was what the key concept is that makes a technology useful. He was worth interesting and entertaining and I plan to check out his blog in the future.

Story Swap: The monthly Voices in the Glen story swap was last Saturday night. I told a story from Azerbaijan that I had heard from my guide when I was in Sheki. There was also a story about - and a lot of discussion about - pigeons.

Genealogy Meetings: I went to two genealogy talks over the past week. One was on Immigration and Naturalization correspondence files, which had a lot of information, but I need to go back through the slides to see how useful it is. The other was on tracing ancestors before they had surnames. That one seemed less useful, because almost all of the sources the speaker talked about were from southern Germany and Galicia.

Lunar Eclipse: I had looked forward to the lunar eclipse / blood moon of Sunday night. But, alas, the weather here in Northern Virginia did not cooperate. Damn clouds.

White House Webinar on Jews and Baseball: This was, apparently, an event for Jewish Ameriican Heritage Month. The moderator was Chanan Weissman, who is the White House liaison to the Jewish community. The speakers were baseball historian John Thorn, former player Shawn Green, Justine Siegal (the first woman to coach a professional baseball team), and Misha Halperin from the Museum of American Jewish History. Overall, this was entertaining, but I can’t say that I learned anything new out of it. Well, one thing - Shawn Green is still astonishingly good-looking I suspect that wasn’t the message the event was intended to get out. (The real subtext was that baseball was viewed by Jewish immigrants as a means to Americanization. In fact, Thorn said he learned to read English from the backs of baseball cards.)

Abortion Rights Rally: I went to the Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice on Tuesday. That deserves its own post, which I will try to write in the next couple of days.

2021 year in review

The pandemic put a damper on the year, again, though I did manage a little bit of domestic travel. Breaking a rib in August also put a damper on things, but I recovered in a reasonable amount of time.My real life may have been constrained, but my virtual life was pretty busy.

Books:I read 37 books, 24 of which were fiction. Favorites for the year were The Great Alone by Kristen Hannah, Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky, One Day by Gene Weingarten, and several books by Alexander McCall Smith. My favorite books of the year were The Bees by Laline Paull and Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder. Books I disliked were The Pigskin Rabbi by Willard Manus, The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, and Normal People by Sally Rooney.

I got rid of 28 books. I have plenty more ready to go. Maybe I will even manage a used bookstore run this week.

I also went to two virtual presentations that were part of the National Book Festival - one on book structures and one on crossword puzzles. And I toured the New York Society Library (in person) in November.

Volksmarch: No and I really have no excuse. I have done plenty of shorter (1-3 mile) walks around my neighborhood, however.

Ghoul Pool: I finished 9th, which is solidly middle of the pack with 128 points. The people I scored on were Prince Philip. Beverly Cleary, Renee Simonot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gilbert Seltzer, Neal Edward Smith, DMX, and Bob Dole.

Travel: No international travel, alas. But I did manage some domestic travel. In June, I went to Philadelphia to see the Soutine exhibit at the Barnes Foundation and go to the Flower Show, to Boston to get together with a few friends and go to a WooSox game, and to Portland, Oregon for a little bit of the Art and Soul Retreat. In August I did a driving trip around south central Pennsylvania and flew to Chicago to get together with friends, go to a Cubs game, and take a day trip to Indiana Dunes National Park. I had another day trip to Gettysburg in late October. In November, I went to Mystic, Connecticut and to New York City for friend-visiting, the Jasper Johns exhibit at the Whitney, and theatre binging. That adds up to 7 trips, which isn’t too shabby under the circumstances, but is still less than I would have liked.

I am not sure how to count these , but I went to some on-line travel presentations, including a few virtual tours from the New York Adventure Club and talks about various destinations from the Travelers’ Century Club. We had an actual in-person TCC meeting, too, which was wonderful.

Puzzles: I did the MIT Mystery Hunt for the second time. Which was virtual (as will this year’s be). I didn’t feel completely useless. The bigger event was the National Puzzlers’ League convention which happened live and in person, right here in Washington, D.C. It was smaller than usual, but was still a lot of fun. And I enjoyed being able to provide some local expertise. I did not do any crossword tournaments because I just don’t enjoy doing them virtually. Hopefully things can happen in person again this year.

Genealogy: I went to the (virtual) International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies (IAJGS) conference in August and particularly enjoyed mentoring a few people on Lithuanian research. I also listened to a (very) few presentations from Roots Tech. I also went to a few other on-line talks, primarily with Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington. I did not, alas, manage to do much research and/or organizing.

Baseball: As mentioned above, I went to check out the new AAA Red Sox affiliate in Worcester (known as the WooSox) in June and to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field in August. I also went to two Nationals games. The BoSox provided their usual mix of elation and stress.

Culture: I saw 2 plays and 4 musicals in person. I particularly enjoyed Remember This: The Jan Karski Story at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Having Our Say at Creative Cauldron, and Baby at Out of the Box Theatre in New York. I only went to one in-person concert, which was a very enjoyable cabaret show by Alan Cumming and Ari Shapiro. The other in-person event I went to was the Maryland Renaissance Festival. On-line concerts included Carole King, John McCutcheon, and Christine Lavin. There were also a couple of Sondheim related on-line events, including a retrospective about Assassins. I went to a couple of virtual talks about musicals. And I saw one opera on-line.

I saw 10 movies, including 2 in theaters. My favorites of the year were West Side Story, Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day, and When Tango Meets Klezmer.

As for storytelling, I told stories at various virtual events, including a Valentine’s Day show for a friend’s church, a midsummer show by Voices in the Glen, the National Storytelling Network Conference, and the New Year’s Eve Storytelling Blow-out. More excitingly, I performed at two in-person Better Said Than Done shows. (There is nothing like a live audience.) I attended the Women’s Storytelling Festival (which I also worked at, including emceeing the story swap) and the National Storytelling Festival (both on-line) as well as at least 8 on-line shows and one on-line workshop. I also went to over a dozen story swaps, including several non-local ones, which is the saving grace of zoom events.

I need to add a category for art. In addition to the Soutine and Johns exhibits mentioned above (and the Art and Soul retreat), I went to a couple of exhibits of light sculptures, an art fair in Alexandria, and a reception for a Rockwell painting at the Women’s Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. I also went to an exhibit at the Renwick and toured Glenstone with my alumni club. Then there was the Immersive Van Gogh event. And I did an Ugly Architecture tour in Chicago. More significantly, I finished the Smithsonian certificate program in World Art History. Someday I might even write about that.

Other stuff:

• I went to various on-line talks on subjects ranging from vampires in Jewish mysticism to the history of chocolate.
  
  
• I’ve been going to an on-line needles and crafts group run by the library a friend works at. This has enabled me to get more than halfway through a cross stitch piece I bought in Bangkok in 2008.
  
  
• I went to a few talks at (virtual) Balticon.
  
  
• I got interviewed for 2 podcast episodes and 1 radio show.
  
  
• I played a huge number of games of Code Names (and a lot fewer other board games) on-line with a group of friends.
  
  
• I got one more honorable mention in the Style Invitational.
  
  
• I went to Yiddish New York (virtually), which I also still need to write about.
  
  

Goals:

So how did I do on my goals from last year? I had 8 goals. I hoped to get 200 books out of my house, but only managed to get 28 out. So that goal got 14%. I did enter the Style Invitational 6 times, so got 100% there. I finished the Smithsonian certificate program in World Art History so got another 100%. I didn’t get things out of my storage locker because: a) I need to clear a place to put them and b) I have no idea where I put the key to the storage locker, so get a 0% there. I had no progress (so also 0%) on goals to organize my genealogy files and my craft supplies. I’d hoped to read 52 books, but only read 37, so get a 71% there. I did get 4 new stories into tellable form, so get 100% on that goal. That gives me a little over 48% on the year, which is, alas, about typical for how I do on these things.

Which brings me to goals for 2022:

• Take at least 10 trips.
  
  
• Finish at least 2 embroidery or needlepoint projects.
  
  
• Finish knitting or crocheting at least 2 afghans.
  
  
• Organize all the photographs on my computer.
  
  
• Finish going through all the magazines I have lying around.
  
  
• Create at least 1 new personal story and learn at least 3 new to me folktales.
  
  
• Organize my yarn stash.
  
  
• Read at least 75 books.
  
  
• Spend at least 2 hours a week on language study.
  
  

After coming home from Philadelphia, I spent a few days doing boring household things, then flew up to Boston on Monday morning (June 14th). Yes, flew - for the first time since mid-February 2020. It was, admittedly, a short hop from DCA to BOS on JetBlue, but it still felt weird to be back in the air. The trip was fine, though the flight up had been delayed due to weather in Boston.

I stayed at the Hilton in downtown Boston, which is conveniently located. My first excursion was to Hingham to get together with an old friend who lives in a retirement community there. It’s reachable by ferry, though it wasn’t entirely obvious how to actually buy a ferry ticket. (It turns out you can buy it on board. Having a sign to that effect might have been helpful.) Anyway, we had a late lunch, a lot of conversation, and a short walk in between raindrops.


Tuesday started with meeting another friend, Ron, to go to the New England Aquarium. This is still one of my favorite places, though it was rather more crowded than I would have liked. We saw all the typical aquarium things - sharks, rays, penguins, fish of all colors and sizes, eels (yuk), a giant sea turtle, jellies, sea horses, and (my favorite) sea dragons. We also found one of the docents very helpful in telling us about some of the critters on display. We followed the aquarium with lunch at Legal Seafoods - and, no, I don’t feel guilty about eating fish after going to the aquarium.

Later on, we walked down the greenway to South Station and took the train to Worcester to go to Polar Park, the ballpark for the Woo Sox, the minor league team that replaced the PawSox (in Pawtucket). Checking out Polar Park had been the excuse for the trip and we were fortunate that the weather cooperated, despite a forecasted chance of rain. It’s a longish train ride, mostly because of the large number of local stops. It was not obvious where to go when we arrived, but we figured things out and had time to explore the ballpark a little. It is still somewhat under construction, but functional enough. The WooSox were playing the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, who have the absolute ugliest uniforms I’ve seen in my life. Their playing wasn’t much better. The game was exciting and helped by our having excellent seats on the third base line. The fans were nicely enthusiastic, too. And, yes, they do “Sweet Caroline” in the 8th inning, just like at Fenway. Overall, it was a good time and we made it back to the train station in time to get the last train back to Boston. I am contemplating a few driving trips to check off more minor league ballparks (as well as flying to Dallas to go to the replacement Rangers ballpark).

For my final day in Boston, I met up with my doppelgänger, Janet, for one of our periodic get-togethers where we prove we are not the same person by being seen in public together. We went to the Institute for Contemporary Art, which gave me an excuse for a pleasant stroll over to the Seaport District, which is radically changed from the semi-industrial wasteland it used to be. We looked at art, with the most notable piece being “The Visitors” by Ragnar Kjartansson, which consists of film of musicians playing various instruments (alone or in small groups) in different rooms of a house in upstate New York. We also spent some time admiring the view of the harbor from the museum. Afterwards, we had lunch at a Greek restaurant. I also had some time for just general strolling around Boston, which is always pleasant. If only it weren’t so expensive a place to live.

I flew back early the next day and my flight even arrived early at DCA. All in all, it was a good trip.