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Which Brings Us Up to Date (Well, Almost)
May. 20th, 2022 11:40 pmOne 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.
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.
