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Here’s an attempt at getting all caught up before doing too many things again.

Celebrity Death Watch: Steve Lawrence was a pop singer and actor, best known for his collaboration with his wife, Eydie Gorme (who died in 2013). David E. Harris was the first African-American to be a commercial pilot (for American Airlines). Barbara Hilyer wrote about feminism and disability. Eric Carmen was the lead vocalist of The Raspberries. Bernard Schwartz was the CEO of Loral Space & Communications for 34 years and the largest donor to the Democratic Party from 1992 to 1996. Jim McAndrew pitched for the New York Mets from 1968 through 1973. Angela McCluskey was a Scottish singer, who performed both as a soloist and as part of The Wild Colonials. Air Force General Howell Estes III served as the commander of NORAD and the U.S. Space Command from 1996 to 1998. James D. Robinson III was the CEO of American Express for 16 years. Thomas P. Stafford was a Gemini and Apollo astronaut and one of the 24 astronauts who flew to the moon. Vernor Vinge was a science fiction author. Barry Silver was a lawyer, politician, rabbi, and abortion rights activist. Mike Thaler wrote and illustrated roughly 200 children’s books and was best known for his 37 books of riddles. George Abbey directed NASA’s Johnson Space Center from 1996 - 2001. Gerry Conway was a drummer for a number of bands, as well as a member of Pentangle and of Fairport Convention. Lou Gusset Jr. was an actor, probably best known for his role in An Officer and a Gentleman. Barbara Rush was an actress, best known for It Came From Outer Space and the television series Peyton Place.

Christopher Durang was a playwright, best known for Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. John Barth wrote post-modern fiction, notably Giles Goat-Boy. Lynn Reid Banks wrote the children’s book The Indian in the Cupboard. Lori and George Schappell were the first set of conjoined twins to identify as different genders. Clarence “Frogman” Henry was an R&B singer. Ken Holtzman pitched for the Chicago Cubs, including pitching two no-hitters. Ben Eldridge was a banjo player and a founding member of The Seldom Scene. Bob Graham was a U.S. Senator from Florida from 1987-2005 and had been the governor of Florida prior to that. Carl Erskine played for the Dodgers in both Brooklyn and Los Angeles and was the last surviving member of the “Boys of Summer” of the 1950’s. Dickey Betts was a guitarist and a founding member of The Allman Brothers Band. Roman Gabriel played football for the L.A. Rams. Terry Anderson was a journalist, who was best known for being held hostage by Hezbollah for 6 years. Mike Pinder was a founding member and original keyboardist of The Moody Blues. Paul Auster was a prolific writer, who had over a dozen novels published and edited NPR’s National Story Project.

Laurent de Brunhoff wrote approximately 50 books in the Babar the elephant series, which had been created by his father, Jean de Brunhoff. He also wrote children’s books about other characters of his own creation.

Peter Angelos was the majority owner of the Baltimore Orioles from 1993 until his death in March. He strongly opposed the move of the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C., which I’ve never forgiven him for.

Richard Serra was an artist, known primarily for large-scale abstract sculptures.

Daniel Kahneman was a psychologist and behavioral economist and won a Nobel prize for his work in the latter field. His book, Thinking Fast and Slow was an influential best seller.

Joe Lieberman was a U.S. senator from Connecticut and Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 Presidential election. His biggest political mistake, in my opinion, was his opposition to including a public option in the Affordable Care Act. I will note, however, that the influence of the insurance industry in Connecticut was probably the primary driver for that.

Larry Lucchino was a baseball executive for the Baltimore Orioles, San Diego Padres, and (most importantly, of course) the Boston Red Sox. He led the Orioles to one World Series championship and the Red Sox to three. He also played a major role in the construction of both Camden Yards and Petco Park, as well as initiating the renovation of Fenway Park.

Jerry Grote was a catcher for the Mets from 1966 - 1977. Notably, that includes 1969.

Peter Higgs was a physicist and got a boson named after himself. He also got a Nobel prize.

O. J. Simpson was a football player and got away with murder. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. Interestingly, Frank Olson, who cast O.J. in several Hertz commercials, died just a few days after he did.

Trina Robbins was a comic book artist and wrote extensively about women in comics.

Robert MacNeil was a journalist and television news anchor. He was best known for his public television collaboration with Jim Lehrer.

Faith Ringgold was one of my favorite artists and I feel privileged to have been able to see a couple of retrospectives of her work. I particularly liked her story quilts, such as The French Collection. She was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 13 points.

Whitey Herzog managed the Saint Louis Cardinals throughout the 1980’s.

Alex Hasilev was one of the founding members of The Limeliters. Their records were on frequent rotation in our house when I was growing up.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Dick Plotz, whose NPL nom was Geneal, died in early March. In addition to being a puzzle constructor and having organized the NPL con in Providence, he was very involved in Jewish genealogy and offered me some helpful tips when I started my own research.

I knew Ed Gordon from Loserdom. He was part of the group that I play Code Names with frequently. And he attended Loserfests in both Niagara Falls and Philadelphia. He was also a Scrabble player and active in Mensa. I’m glad he was able to take a 20 day cruise and see the eclipse shortly before his death.

Nancy Schuster was a crossword constructor, editor, and tester. She competed in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament from its very beginning and, in fact, won the first ACPT. She also served as a mentor to a number of other puzzle people.

Leading Jewish Minds at MIT: Barry Posen gave a talk about Israel’s Response to October 7th. He attempted to summarize the range of choices in how to respond. Unfortunately, he essentially summarized the possible responses as bargaining vs. annihilation, which is a misleading choice of terms in my opinion. Most of the history between Israel and Hamas (between 2008 and 2021) was based on bargaining after some precipitating event. The result was something of an equilibrium, largely because nobody saw any acceptable alternative. The problem is that there is less and less reason to trust Hamas. A counter-terrorism strategy, which essentially means killing Hamas leadership, is complicated by the urban nature of Gaza. The other aspect is what political outcome is desirable. That essentially leads to a goal of destroying Hamas as a military entity, which is what he said he meant by annihilation but most people would not characterize it that way. Overall, I was left primarily with despair.

Book Clubs: I missed the Travelers’ Century Club book club meeting this month, since I was at the VASA Gathering. But I made it to both other book clubs. Crones & Tomes discussed Where the Crawdads Sing, which I thought was an enjoyable enough read, though I wasn’t convinced by the last third or so of it. (I had seen the movie previously, by the way, and thought it was pretty true to the book.)

READ had a discussion of Sounds Like Titanic, which I thought was brilliant. This is a memoir about working for an ensemble that is essentially faking their performances while a CD plays in the background. I think it does help to have some background in music. And a little knowledge of geography wouldn’t hurt. (One person thought that her family moving to Virginia meant that they left Appalachia!) I’m a little more sympathetic to the person who thought the author was whiny, but not to the person who didn’t understand why she took the job, apparently having failed to grasp that she needed money to pay for college. Anyway, it was definitely compatible with my sense of humor. How could I not love her description of her job as “Milli Violini”?

VASA Gathering: As I mentioned above, I went down to Richmond for the Virginia Storytelling Association Gathering. Thanks to Jessica for driving and Jennifer for coming along. We stopped in Careytown for dinner at a Thai restaurant and then headed to the hotel for the gathering. The Best Western was in a heavily industrial area, across from the Philip Morris plant and, while the room was okay, it was pretty basic and much of the staff was not particularly amiable.

Anyway, Friday night featured a story swap. There was enough time for everyone who wanted to tell and there was a wide mix of stories. I told a story from Afghanistan about an illiterate lion, which went over well. Some of us went to the bar to chat for a while. Maybe it’s a matter of being old, but how do people not have a go-to drink that they always order at a bar? (For what it’s worth, I’m a gin and tonic gal.)

My biggest annoyance with the hotel was that breakfast wasn’t included and the yogurt parfait and English muffin I got were overpriced. And they were slow to refill the coffee in the lobby.

The morning started with an inspirational talk by Clinton Atwater. That was followed by a talk by Jessica Robinson about the business aspects of storytelling, which covered a lot of ground and had a lot of lively discussion. Lunch was included with registration and the pasta they served was pretty good, as was the tiramisu for dessert. After the VASA business meeting, we returned to the meeting room for a workshop with Loren Niemi, who focused on reimagining how we tell traditional stories. That was interesting (and gave me a few ideas) but he needed a lot more time than he had. Finally, there was a story swap, including feedback, which also needed far more time.

Overall it was worth going to. Of course, the real highlight was getting to see some people who I don’t see very often. (And meeting some new people.) Anyway, the traffic coming back wasn’t too terrible andI got home at a reasonable hour.

A Few Story Swaps: Right after getting back from the VASA gathering, I went to the monthly Voices in the Glen zoom story swap. We had a fairly small group, but it was still fun. I told a very short story about what a clever man asked for when the prophet Elijah offered to grant him a wish to thank him for his hospitality.

The next day, I got together with a few other people from Voices in the Glen for an in-person story swap. With Pesach approaching, I told a story based on my father’s explanation of the crossing of the Red Sea. Since Dad was a civil engineer, Moses had to file an environmental impact statement.

And on Sunday, I went to a zoom swap put on by Community Storytellers in Los Angeles. I told a story I hadn’t told in a while, which mostly has to do with things my father used to say and what I really did and didn’t learn from them.

Grimm Keepers: This session’s discussion was of “The Pink,” also known as “The Carnation.” I think that every single time we meet, our discussion includes the phrase “what a strange story!” In this case, one of the strange aspects is how few things a boy who has the power of having anything he wishes for come true actually does wish for. There was also a lot of discussion about the significance of poodles in German folklore. At ay rate, the discussion left us with a lot of unanswered questions.

Board Games: I have mentioned before that I play board games (almost always Code Names) on-line with a few friends at least a few times a week. We recently realized that our first session of doing that was on 27 April 2020. It was a great way of getting us through the social isolation of the pandemic and it’s continued to be a great way to socialize.

Please Don’t Analyze This Dream: I had a dream the only detail of which I remember is that it involved a character named Tutsi Tu Bruskin. Bruskin is one of my ancestral names (specifically, my paternal grandfather’s mother’s family name) but that doesn’t provide any enlightenment.

Pesach: We’ve just now finished Pesach and I’ve had my traditional post-holiday pizza. I was fairly lazy about cooking this year and, hence, ended up having a lot of string cheese, grapes, matzoh with orange marmalade, and other monotonous foods. Oh, well, it’s only 8 days,

A Few Brief Comments About University Protesters: I think that the correct way for universities to deal with the protests is to focus on enforcing the community rules with respect to “time, place, and manner.” In particular, violence against anyone should be punished, as should blocking off access to particular places. For example, one of my particular concerns about what has happened at some campuses is protestors who have blocked access for disabled students, which is a violation of Title VI and can (and, in my opinion, should) result in the loss of federal funding if it is tolerated. The most difficult of the criteria is “manner of protest,” but I think any civilized person should agree that calls for murder is unacceptable. There are definitely some cases which have crossed that line, e.g. the Columbia student, Khymani James, who published a video in which he said, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” Students holding up posters with slogans like “go back to Poland” are both anti-Semitic and ignorant. (Roughly 12% of the population of Israel has Polish-Jewish ancestry. And over 90% of Polish Jews were massacred during the Shoah.)

My other comment is that I wonder how many of the students pushing divestment from everything associated with Israel are using iPhones or used Waze to find routes to campuses, Do any of them use RSA public key encryption? How many of them eat cherry tomatoes or have websites using wix.com?
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Shameless Self Promotion: I will be telling stories at the Washington Folk Festival on Sunday June 4th at 5:30 p.m. The festival is at Glen Echo Park and is free. There’s going to be plenty of other things to go to there - storytelling, yes, but also music and dance and crafts. And, of course, the famous Glen Echo Carousel.

Celebrity Death Watch: Hodding Carter III was the spokesperson for the State Department during the Carter administration. Harry Bentley Bradley designed cars for Hot Wheels. Gloria Molina was a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Garoar Cortes founded The Icelandic Opera. Doyle Brunson was a Hall of Fame poker player. Robert Lucas got a Nobel Prize in Economics. Marlin Hagge co-founded the LPGA. “Superstar” Billy Graham was a professional wrestler. Andy Rourke was the bassist for The Smiths. Nicholas Gray owned Gray’s Papaya, a famous hot dog place in New York City. Pete Brown was a lyricist, whose work included lyrics for “Sunshine of Your Love” and “White Room.” Martin Amis was a novelist, best known for Time’s Arrow. Ed Ames was a singer and actor, known for playing Mingo on Daniel Boone. Chas Newby briefly played bass with The Beatles. James Lewis sang with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Robert Zimmer was a mathematician and president of the University of Chicago for 15 years. Sheldon Reynolds played guitar for Commodors and for Earth, Wind, & Fire. George Maharis played Buz Murdock on the TV series Route 66, as well as modeling nude in the second issue of Playgirl magazine. Bill Lee was a jazz musician and film composer, as well as the father of Spike Lee. Claudia Rosett was a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the only print journalist to witness the Tiananmen Square massacre. Milt Larsen created The Magic Castle. Alexander Dreyfoos, Jr. was a businessman and philanthropist who donated the money to MIT to build the Stata Center, aka the ugliest building in Cambridge. Mike Young was an outfielder for the Baltimore Orioles. Robin Wagner won three Tony Awards for set design. Harvey Pitt chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission in the early 2000’s. Gershon Edelsten headed the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Beni Brak, and was, thus, a major leader in Lithuanian Jewish Orthodoxy.

John Dunning was a writer, primarily of mysteries, though he also wrote a couple of books about old-time radio. His mystery series featuring Cliff Laneway, a bookseller, was quite entertaining. Check out Booked to Die and/or The Bookman’s Wake if you like detective fiction and have ever wanted to own a used bookstore.

Tina Turner was an eight-time Grammy winner. She overcame an abusive relationship with her first husband, Ike Turner, and went on to a very successful solo career.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: Laura Beasley was a wonderful storyteller and a dear friend. I first met her in the 1990’s at the Southern California Story Swapping Festival, which she came to regularly with her son, Theo, and we saw each other every now and then through the years. I’ll miss her.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I had a postcard from some organization (possibly google) saying they wouldn’t spam me. But, in the same batch of mail, I had the same postcard, only in Spanish.

You May Analyze This Dream: I was in some sort of competition (maybe writing>) I lost to a woman named Ella Siempre.

My interpretation is that I probably need to scale back on how much time I spend studying Spanish on Duolingo.


Alex Padilla: I went to a dinner with Senator Alex Padilla on Tuesday night, put on by the MIT Club of DC. It is always good to have intelligent conversation (with other attendees). His talk was mostly about his path from a mechanical engineering degree and a short career in the aerospace industry to a political career. He was entertaining and articulate. His major focus was on problem-solving in both contexts.

Travel Planning: I have three international trips coming up in the near-term, as well as one later in the year. I also have plans for two domestic trips. And I have plans for a few more things. None of this helps with my household decluttering activities.
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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.
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I have, as usual, been busy. I don’t really know how not to be.

Celebrity Death Watch: Howard Hesseman was an actor, most famous for playing Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati. Art Cooley co-founded the Environmental Defense Fund. Jeff Innes pitched for the New York Mets. Norma Waterson sang folk music with her family. Robin Herman was the first female sports journalist for The New York Times. Lani Forbes wrote young adult fiction. Mickey Bass was a jazz bassist - and that was his actual surname at birth. Jason Epstein was the editorial director of Random House for about 20 years and, more significantly, founded The New York Review of Books. Todd Gitlin was a sociologist, who wrote about (among other things) the Sixties. George Crumb was a Pulitzer Prize winning composer. Ian McDonald was a founding member of the bands King Crimson and Foreigner. Jeremy Giambi played baseball, primarily for the Oakland A’s, but was overshadowed by his brother, Jason. Betty Davis was a soul singer. Henry Danton was a ballet dancer. Ivan Reitman directed a number of movies, including Ghostbusters. Valerie Boyd wrote a biography of Zora Neale Hurston. Gail Halvorsen was an Air Force pilot, most famous for dropping candy to children during the Berlin airlift. Martin Tolchin was a cofounder of the D.C. newspapers The Hill and Politico. Stephanie Selby wrote A Very Young Dacer.

Lars Eighner wrote the book Travels with Lizbeth about his experiences being homeless. It’s an interesting work and made me more sympathetic towards street people, though I disagreed with his decision to prioritize staying with his dog over being housed. (Then again, I am a cat person.)

Herbert Benson was a cardiologist who studied the effects of meditation and prayer on the body. I heard him give a talk at MIT Hillel back in my undergraduate days. His book The Relaxation Response was a bestseller in the late 1970’s. While his research showed no significant beneficial effect of prayer on patients with coronary bypass surgery, there may be something to his ideas about the benefits of relaxation since he lived to 86.

Ashley Bryan was an author and illustrator of children’s books. I saw a wonderful exhibit of his work at the High Museum in Atlanta in 2017. He was, alas, on my backup list for the ghoul pool, so no points.

Nancy Berg was an actress who had a 5 minute a night TV show in New York in the 1950’s called Count Sheep with Nancy Berg. which, apparently involved her pretending to go to sleep as animated sheep jumped over a fence. There are, alas, apparently no recordings of this show available.

Carmen Herrera was an abstract painter. She wasn’t really discovered until she was nearly 90 years old, but enjoyed a fair amount of success in the next 16 years. (Yes, she lived to 106!) There is, in fact, an exhibit of her work coming up at the Lisson Gallery in New York in May. She earned me 30 ghoul point points - 18 for her position on my list and 12 for uniqueness.

P. J. O’Rourke was a humorist, probably best known for his books Parliament of Whores and Holidays in Hell and his libertarian politics. I had deeply mixed feelings about his work. I laughed, but felt bad about what I laughed at.

Institutional Death Watch: I realized the Capital Steps had stopped performing during the pandemic, but had not quite grasped that they actually folded and are not coming back. Their political satire was such a Washington institution that it's hard to imagine that they're really gone.

Bindaas: Before going to the Kennedy Center last Friday night, I tried Bindaas, a well-reviewed restaurant specializing in Indian street food, for an early dinner. Because it was Friday night, I had a cocktail - in this case, something called Fool’s Gold, that has rum, citrus soda, and various spices (cardamom, coriander, fennel seed, mac, and saffron). It was a bit too earthy for my taste, frankly, and I wouldn’t get it again.

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As for food, I had samosas and vegetable korma, both of which were fine, but I can get better at half the price at a number of places closer to home. I would probably be willing to eat there again, but would order different things.

Fran Leibowitz: The reason I was at the Kennedy Center was to go to a talk by Fran Leibowitz. This started with her being interviewed by Ari Shapiro, who is still my biggest celebrity crush. (I mean the man looks like the groom doll on a wedding cake. And, yeah, he is young enough to be my son and is married to another man, so it’s entirely fantasy.) Anyway, the most memorable part of that was what he called Celebrity Lightning Round, in which he named various people and asked her for a brief anecdote about each of them. The most interesting tidbit there was that Toni Morrison didn’t eat pizza. The interview segment was followed by questions from the audience. There was a major failure there, in that they didn’t have microphones for the audience members to use. Fran did try to repeat the questions, but there were several she couldn’t hear all or part of. And some of the questions were truly inane. Still, she lived up to her witty and curmudgeonly brand. I thought she was spot on regarding New York, since the main thing I love about it (and other major cities) is that I can always find something there that I didn’t know existed. I do, however, disagree with her about algebra. Not learning mathematics cuts you out from a huge number of professions. But, beyond that, math provides discipline in thinking. Still, overall, I enjoyed her talk and was glad I went.

By the way, in an odd coincidence, someone I know was sitting right in front of me. I run into people I know at the KenCen all the time, but they are usually not sitting quite so close.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I don’t remember much of this dream, but the key detail was that I was wearing non-matching shoes. I thought I was wearing a pair of sloggers (open toed garden clogs, which is what I put on to go take out the trash or bring in the mail). I didn’t understand why the one on my right foot kept slipping until someone else pointed out that I was wearing a sandal with the back strap unfastened,

Anthony Mordecai Tsvi Russell I went to Anthony Mordecai Tsvi Russell’s virtual talk on what he learned from Paul Robeson. I first encountered Russell as part of a concert I’d gone to because one of the other performers was Mark Glanville. He completely blew me away and I’ve been interested in his mix of African-American and Jewish material since. (Russell is a gay African-American Jew by choice, who is married to a Reform rabbi and specializes in singing Yiddish music.) It’s not surprising for Paul Robeson, whose voice his is somewhat similar to, to attract his attention. Anyway, he talked about moving from the Bay Area to Norfolk, Virginia as a child and being exposed to racist low expectations in school. He’s obviously a very smart (and well-spoken) man and used Robeson’s words to highlight the need to end white superiority and to talk about the role of performance. I particularly liked some of the Robeson quotes he used to emphasize those points:

In America, the most absurd results can be produced, not merely by prejudice itself, but by respect for prejudice.

and

It is not enough for one to be able to do it. I want everyone to have the chance.

and, especially,

I perform what I want to see in the world.

All in all, it was a good presentation, though I’d have liked to hear more of Russell’s singing.

Jewish Dublin: This talk, by Alexander Joseph Vard, was part of a series on various Jewish communities and was broader than just Dublin, also touching on Jews in Cork and Belfast. It was mostly historical and emphasized Jewish support for Irish nationalism. However, Ireland was not always quite so kind to Jews, with incidents including the cover-up of the murders of Jews by two members of the Irish Army and Ireland’s failure to take in Jewish refugees during World War II. The talk was worth an hour of my time.

Science Through Story: This talk by Sara J. ElShafie was part of an MIT Alumni Forum series focused on climate change. I have some issues with people who seek out storytellers by approaching film studios but we live in corrupt times and the use of the term “storytelling” to refer to all narrative (instead of oral presentation) is common enough that fighting it is probably a lost cause. Despite that annoyance, and allowing for the limitations of an hour-long talk over zoom,I thought her ideas about communication were mostly valid. I did wish she had an example that was deeper than a few versions of a single slide. I may get in touch with her later on to bring up some of these issues.

Living Room Archaeology: I have been engaging in a lot of sorting and shredding and so on. I think it is safe to get rid of things like a couple of Italian train tickets from 2014, for example. I cannot, however, figure out why I wrote “Burn Before ..” at the bottom of a to-do list from some time late last year.
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Celebrity Death Watch: Robert Trump was the president’s brother. Ben Cross was an actor, best known for playing Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire. Jack Sherman played guitar with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Fern Cunningham was a sculptor. Joe Englert was a restaurateur, who was largely responsible for the growth of H Street NE in D.C. as a nightlife destination. John H. Hager was the lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1998-2002. Allan Rich was a character actor. Lori Nelson was an actress who appeared in a number of low-budget science fiction films. Arnold Spielberg was an electrical engineer who designed the first computer-controlled point of sales cash register, though he is probably more famous as the father of Steven Spielberg. Gerald Carr was an astronaut. Joe Ruby co-created Scooby-Doo. Ronnie Kole founded the French Quarter Festival. Seymour Schwartz wrote a widely used textbook on surgery. Virginia Bossler was a musical theatre and movie actress, best known for playing Jean McLaren in Brigadoon. Ian Mitchell played bass with the Bay City Rollers. Irving Kanarek was Charles Manson’s defense lawyer. Gary Peacock was a jazz double bassist. Bruce Williamson sang with the Temptations. Kevin Dobson was an actor, best known for appearing in Kojak. Constance Weldon was the first woman to play tuba in an American orchestra. Gerald Shur developed the Witness Protection Program. Luiz Dilipe Barbosa was a choreographer who popularized Israeli folk dance in Brazil. Mel Krupin ran Duke Zeibert’s restaurant in D.C. before opening an eponymous deli.

Gail Sheehy was the author of Passages, a very influential book about aging, particularly for women. She also wrote a lot of long-form magazine pieces, notably one abut Grey Gardens, which led to a documentary about Edie Beale and her daughter and their hoarding issues.

Chadwick Boseman was an actor, who played a number of Black heroes. That includes not only Black Panther, but also Jackie Robinson and Thurgood Marshall.

Tom Seaver was a pitching ace for the New York Mets. For those of us who grew up with the team, he will always be Tom Terrific, their all-time leader in wins. There are too many accomplishments to list them all, but one that is unique is having struck out 10 consecutive batters. Reggie Jackson allegedly said that blind people came to the ballpark just to hear him pitch He was one of my favorite players when I was growing up and will be sorely missed.

Kank Kek Iew, better known as Comrade Duch, was the overseer of the Tuol Seng prison during the Khmer Rouge era. He was an evil man, responsible for torture and mass murder and the world is better off without him.

Lou Brock was an outfielder, primarily for the Saint Louis Cardinals. In addition to his batting accomplishments, his biggest claim to fame was breaking Ty Cobb;s record for stolen bases. (His record has since been surpassed by Rickey Henderson.)


What I Hate About Geni: For those who are unfamiliar with it, geni.com is one of several sites that is trying to build a world family tree. It is somewhat useful for finding relatives, but there are a number of things that annoy me about it. At the very top of the list is the long, complicated lists it shows for how someone is related to you.

So the other day, I got one of their periodic lists of DNA matches. Most of those are around the 3rd cousin level, which is probably further away because of Jewish endogamy. In a few cases, it gives me a list of how a match is related to me. This one showed someone as “second cousin once removed's wife's sister's husband's second cousin's wife's great uncle's ex-wife's great nephew.” This would be mildly amusing, but, no, DNA doesn’t transfer across marriages.


Don’t Analyze This Dream – Part 1: Bert Convy was singing the song “Convoy..” ( woke up focused on the word, “convey.”

Don’t Analyze This Dream – Part 2: I have a lot of dreams that seem to involve architecture. Or, at least, that is the part I remember. I had a dream last week that involved climbing lots of stairs in a white tower.

Code Names: We have continued playing frequently. The most amusing evening this past week was one in which one team (not mine!) hit the assassin 5 games in a row.

Rabbit Holes: Looking at real estate possibilities is always a bit of a rabbit hole. Providence is surprisingly affordable, so I need to look into it further. (I’ve been there multiple times and like it, but visiting and living somewhere are different.)

The bigger rabbit hole I fell into recently was the Try Channel on YouTube. Basically, they have videos of Irish people taste testing foods from other countries (mostly American). There are also ones involving them watching television programs or doing various things while drunk, but those are less my speed.

Retirement Preparation: I got a really great retirement gift today. My boss told me I don’t have to do our annual performance review! Just what I always wanted.
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Celebrity Death Watch: Nick Kotz was a journalist who wrote primarily about politics. Peter Hunt directed the musical 1776. Robert May did significant work on chaos theory. Denis Goldberg was an anti-apartheid activist. Gale Halderman co-designed the Ford Mustang. Robert Park was a physicist and critic of pseudoscience. Sam Lloyd was an actor who was best known for appearing in Scrubs and Galaxy Quest. Gil Schwartz was a humorist, who wrote under the name Stanley Bing. Samuel Roger Horchow was a theatre producer and catalog purveyor. Don Shula was a Hall of Fame football player and coach. Michael McClure was a beat poet. Barry Farber was a conservative talk show radio host. Iepe Rubingh was the founder of chess boxing, a rather unlikely combination of the two forms of competition. Moon Martin was a a singer-songwriter, most famous for “Bad Case of Loving You.” Carolyn Reidy was the CEO of Simon & Schuster. Jorge Santana was a guitarist, who was a lot less famous than his brother, Carlos. Fred Willard was an actor, who worked on several Christopher Guest mockumentaries. Wilson Roosevelt Jerman was a White House butler, who spent over 50 years on the staff there. Lucky Peterson was a blues musician. Ken Osmond was an actor, best known for playing Eddie Haskell on Leave It To Beaver. Willie K was a Hawaiian musician. Annie Glenn used her role as an astronaut’s wife for activism regarding speech disabilities. Alan Merten was the president of George Mason University during a time of its significant expansion. Mory Kante was a Guinean singer and bandleader. Stanley Ho turned Macao into the Las Vegas of Asia

Irrfan Khan was an Indian actor. He is best known in the west for his Hollywood work, which included Life of Pi and Slumdog Millionaire. But I would particularly recommend The Lunchbox as an interesting movie he co-starred in.

Maj Sjowall was a Swedish mystery writer. Her Martin Beck series, co-written with her late husband, Per Wahloo, was a particularly good example of the use of police procedurals for societal criticism.

Jean Erdman was a dancer and choreographer, who incorporated myth into her dancing. She was also Joseph Campbell’s widow. She earned me 25 ghoul pool points (13 for her position on my list and a 12 point uniqueness bonus.)


Little Richard was a rock and roll legend. From the mid-50’s on, he influenced numerous other singers and pianists with his lively style.

Barbara Sher was a lifestyle coach and writer. I know several people who were devotees of her book Wishcraft. Later on, she tackled what she called “scanners,” i.e. people who have multiple interests and don’t want to focus on just one. I actually went to one of her day-long workshops on that subject and found it somewhat useful in my life, mostly as reassurance that I’m not alone.

Jerry Stiller was a comedian and actor. I have to admit I found his work with his late wife, Anne Meara, much funnier than his acting roles on TV shows like Seinfeld.

Phyllis George was Miss America 1971 and went on to a career as a sportscaster at a time when that was pretty much unknown for women.



Last week: Monday night I played board games with the usual group I play with.

Tuesday night was the kick-off for The Great Big Jewish Food Fest, with David Sax interviewing several deli owners about how things are going for them in these times. The answers were more hopeful than I expected, with a lot of take-out business, but it is still difficult, given that restaurants are low margin businesses. It was an interesting program. And, by the way, David Sax is very good-looking.

Wednesday night was book club. We had a lively discussion of My Mother’s Son by David Hirshberg. I liked the book, though it started out a bit slowly. Most of the group liked it, but one person didn’t care for it at all. It actually makes for better discussion when we have dissenting opinions.

Thursday night was a Better Said Than Done storytelling show. I particularly liked Anne Rutherford’s story. And, of course, Andy Offutt Irwin is always a hoot.

Friday night was a reading of my friend, Patrick Cleary’s play Parthenogenesis, which involves interesting questions about what fatherhood means. One nit is that a mother with Type AB blood cannot have a child with Type O blood.

Saturday included zooming into two virtual Balticon sessions - one on Amazons of the Dahoney Kingdom and one on Jews in Space. Both were good, but the latter was particularly entertaining. I zoomed into a session on Sunday about Weather Satellites, which was okay, but didn’t really cover anything I didn’t already know. And I zoomed into a session on Monday (Memorial Day) called The Left Fin of Darkness, which was an interesting attempt to find animal models for the sexual lives of the Gethenians in Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

Other things I did on Sunday evening were a story swap (hosted by Community Storytellers in Los Angeles) and a chavurah tag-up. And I played board games again last (Monday) night.

In between that, there was work and some errands on Sunday.


Cooking For the End of the World: I tried a new chicken recipe, which involved a marinade that had olive oil, lemon, garlic, ginger, and cumin. To go with it, I made tahini-glazed carrots, which involve olive oil, tahini, cumin, and curry powder. It was a nice change of pace, a good break from my usual stir fried random odds and ends. I have a slightly different tahini-glazed carrot recipe I want to try, which includes silan (date honey) so I bought some of that on this week’s grocery excursion.


Ink!: The most exciting
news of the past week was that I got an honorable mention in the Style Invitational (the Washington Post’s humor contest) for my “fictoid” about spring. Namely, “most tulips actually have four to six lips.” So I am no longer a one-hit wonder!


Don’t Analyze This Dream - Part 1: I was at a zoo and there were two large kiddie pools filled with whales. There were also creatures that were a sort of cross between whales and giant humanoids lounging in overhead bins above the pools. A child I was with was given a beeper to follow a red path around the zoo.


Don’t Analyze This Dream – Part 2: I was in Singapore for a job interview. The person interviewing me was upset when I refused to eat raw vegetables on the grounds of hygiene. He proposed that we should eat in Chinatown the next night. I complained that my hotel room had not been cleaned sufficiently, as I found noodles in the kitchen drain. Also, for some reason, Singapore was only an hour flight from Boston.
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Don’t Analyze This Dream: I don’t remember a lot of details, but I dreamed I was on a ship, in a cabin with two bunk beds. I was in an upper bunk and was surprised at how comfortable it was. There was something about worrying how long the trip would take.

Hogwart’s Vacation Bible School: I am not making this up. An Episcopal church in Vienna, Virginia is offering one week morning and afternoon summer camp sessions for children ages 5 through 11, based on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I am sure this will be very successful, but I can imagine what some other denominations would be saying.


Household Blitz: I was hosting our monthly story swap on Saturday night, so I pushed on getting my living room halfway presentable. In the end, there was a bunch of stuff that got thrown into tote bags and put into the Black Hole of Vienna (aka my den). I did find a couple of things I had been looking for, of which the most significant was my check folio. I don’t write a lot of checks but I do need to put a new packet into my checkbook every once in a while.

I didn’t get as far along on vacuuming as I’d intended, as my back can handle only so much at a time. Also, why did I ever think a bagless vacuum was a good idea? The bin doesn’t hold nearly as much as a vacuum bag does, and emptying it is a pain. Admittedly, if I vacuumed more than every six months, there wouldn’t be so much dust.

The biggest household crisis was that the bulbs in the dining room track lighting blew when I turned the lights on about an hour and a half before the swap. And, of course, I never manage to have the bulbs I need to replace them on hand. I lit a couple of candles on the dining room table. When I did have a chance (on Sunday) to get bulbs, I found LED indoor floodlights. Those should be less susceptible to vibration from whatever it is that my upstairs neighbor does. And they are advertised to have a 13 year lifetime.


Story Swap: We had a small group, but a lively evening anyway. One of my non-storytelling friends came and seemed to have a reasonably good time. We had an interesting mix of stories, mostly traditional with a handful of literary and personal. Plus, lots of general conversation, which ended up with a lot of stories about cats and dogs. Overall, it was a nice evening and worth unshoveling the living room for.


Gun & Powder: I saw the world premiere of a new musical, Gun & Powder at Signature Theatre on Sunday. The story is based on family legends that Angelica Cheri, who wrote the book and lyrics, had heard about her great-great-aunts. (Her friend, Ross Baum, wrote the music.) The twins, Mary and Martha Clarke, set out to earn money to pay the rent for their sharecropper aunt. They decide they’ll get better jobs by passing for white. (Their mother is black; their father, who had abandoned her before the twins were even born, was white. So they are what used to be called "high yellow.") They end up as outlaws, until their attempt to rob a tavern owner in a town called Sweet Christine near Houston. Both sisters end up having to make decisions with the potential to separate them forever.

I’m not going to say more about the plot line because I think it is best experienced as a surprise. Ihe music was a variety of styles, from spirituals to romantic ballads. The performances were outstanding, especially by Solea Pfeiffer as Mary, Emmy Raver-Lampman as Martha, Marva Hicks as Tallulah, and Donald Webber, Jr. as Elijah. I would be remiss were I not to also mention the comic relief provided by Yvette Monique Clark as Sissy and Awa Sal Secka as Flo.

The bottom line is that this is an excellent new musical and I expect to see more work from Cheri and Baum in the future. It is precisely shows like this that keep me subscribing to Signature year after year.
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Celebrity Death Watch: Robert Evans was a film producer whose notable works included Chinatown. Paul Barrerre was the guitarist for Little Feat. John Conyers was the longest-serving African-American member of Congress. Al Bianchi was a basketball player and went on to be general manager of the New York Knicks. Bernard Slade created The Partridge Family as well as the play, Same Time, Next Year. Rudy Boesch competed on Survivor. Walter Mercado was a celebrity astrologer in Puerto Rico. Enriqueta Basilio was the first woman to light the Olympic flame.

Ivan Milat was an Australian serial killer, known for murdering backpackers. The world is better off without him. He netted me 16 ghoul pool points.

Holly Clegg was a cookbook author and was, apparently, a big deal in Baton Rouge. She earned me 8 ghoul pool points.


New York Weekend: I went to New York for the weekend, primarily for a bit of a theatre binge. There was no drama with the train either way. I stayed at the Bernic, which is part of Hilton’s Tapestry Collection. The location, near Grand Central Terminal, was reasonably convenient, and the hotel was nice, with a surprisingly large room, excellent toiletries (Beekman 1802), a comfortable bed, and amazingly good sound proofing. The Library Hotel is still my favorite in New York, but this was a bit less expensive and did just fine.


A Note About New York Diners: One of the greatest pleasures of trips to New York is eating breakfast at the sort of old neighborhood diners which have counters where the regulars (and a handful of solo visitors like me) sit. The food isn’t exciting, though it’s fine for what it is. But what makes it so pleasurable is listening to conversations between the regulars and the staff. Saturday morning I ate a plate of chilaquiles and scrambled eggs while a woman from Argentina discovered the waitress was from Columbia. The waitress went on to talk with a guy at the other end of the counter about going to a wedding that afternoon and how to dress her young boys for it.

Sunday mornings are not as good because most people are reading the Times, instead of chatting. Though three people in their 30’s were busily discussing the ins and outs of home insurance.

The truth is, I could get the same experience at home. But I rarely go out to breakfast at home. If I have friends in from out of town, I do like to take them to Market Lunch at Eastern Market to eat blue bucks (buckwheat pancakes with blueberries) and sit at the tall table with the most diverse crowd in D.C. with everyone from Congressional staffers to janitors.


Panama Hattie: The first of two shows I saw (after shopping for tea at a place I like in the Grand Central Market) was York Theatre’s Mufti production of Cole Porter’s Panama Hattie. I have deeply mixed feelings about Cole Porter. While, admittedly, he did not write the books for his shows himself, they tend to be full of offensive sexism. In this case, that involved three sailors whose sole aim in their time in Panama was picking up women. The songs often have little to do with the story, too. The interesting thing here is that Porter and his collaborators didn’t use the trick of making the songs part of one character’s nightclub act, despite the main character (Hattie) being a nightclub singer. Instead there are pieces that come out of nowhere. A good example is "You Said It," a lively ensemble piece which follows an incident in which Hattie saves the Panama Canal from a would-be saboteur. I don’t know about you, but if I had just rescued the canal from a bomb, I would not be going on to sing about my opinions of reducing diets.

What does work is the skill of the performers. This show was originally a vehicle for Ethel Merman and Klea Blackhurst, as Hattie, effectively channels Merman’s style. Stephen Bogardus os quite appealing as Nick (the love interest), though he was given barely anything to do. Kylie Kuloka, who played Nick’s 8 year-old daughter was cute and expressive – and seemed to be having fun, which is important for a child actor. All in all, it’s not a show I’d really want to see revived, but there’s some fun music and it was worth seeing.


Scotland PA This new musical by Adam Gwon was the excuse for the whole trip. I’m a big fan of Gwon’s work and, while I haven’t seen the movie this musical was based on, it sounded right up my alley. Mac McBeth has been laboring at Duncan’s, a burger joint in rural Pennsylvania, and he and his wife are fed up with how Mr. Duncan shoots down every idea he has for expanding the business. His wife, Pat, persuades him that they should rob the safe at Duncan’s, using a party that Banko (another worker at the diner) is throwing as an alibi. Banko’s party is a flop and they arrange for a prostitute to distract Banko, while they conduct the robbery. Duncan catches them, but falls into the fryolater, meeting a horrible death. Duncan’s son, Malcolm, is happy to sell the diner to the McBeths. And then homicide detective Peg McDuff shows up…

There are plenty of Shakespearean references and plenty of MacDonald’s references, mixed with 70’s-type soft rock. In some ways, it feels more like a fringe show than like a true Broadway musical. But I enjoyed it. I particularly liked the three witches being three stoners, who admit that they’re in Mac’s head. The best character is Banko (real name Antony Banconi), who is a sweet and amiable stoner himself. He also gets the best song, "Kick-Ass Party." Malcolm’s song, "Why I Love Football," is also memorable. I should also note that the performance I was at had the understudy, Jimmy Brewer, playing Mac. I would never have guessed he was the understudy from his performance. He was right on the mark, particularly with some complex choreography. This isn’t a revolutionary show and probably won’t have a long life, but I am glad I saw it. And I hope it gets recorded.


Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was in a back yard with several other people. We were all sitting in lawn chairs and star gazing. In addition to the stars, we saw stages separating from a rocket, including being able to see plumes of gas during staging. One of the people was wearing a name tag which I said marked him as a prominent person doing solar research. (In real life, this is someone I know in the context of South African Jewish genealogy.)
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I keep intending to write here more, but I have been absurdly busy at work. And, of course, I try to have a life other than work.

Death of a Friend: Bob Rovinsky, who I knew from Voices in the Glen and was privileged to have shared storytelling stages with from time to time, died Thursday of last week after a massive heart attack several days earlier. He was a good man, heavily involved in several local Jewish communities, and had been particularly helpful when my mother died. I will miss him dearly. I am sure his wife and daughters are devastated. I was at the funeral on Sunday and will be paying a shiva call this evening.

One Note re: Funerals: Well, two notes, actually. There were issues with the sound system. I was particularly frustrated not to be able to hear what Bob’s brother said. The other issue was that they asked people to sing along with a few things, but did not provide song sheets. I don’t know about you, but there are limits to my memory. I plan to leave instructions on these topics.


Alexander McCall Smith: Alexander McCall Smith spoke at the Library of Congress Thursday night. The event was nominally related to the most recent No. One Ladies’ Detective Agency book and the library had exhibits on animals of Botswana and on female detectives available to look at before the talk. His actual talk touched on a number of other topics and he was consistently warm and entertaining. It’s obvious that he genuinely likes his characters. I was reminded of why I find so many of his books so enjoyable.


Spooky Stories: Four of us from Voices in the Glen told spooky stories at the C&O Canal Great Falls Tavern Visitor Center in Maryland on Saturday afternoon. We had a small audience, but it was fun, anyway. I told one literary story ("The New Mother" by Lucy Clifford), an historic ghost story ("Ida Black") and a shaggy dog story ("Lyle and the Ghost").


Don’t Analyze This Dream: I slept really well last night, but I woke up in the middle of a dream involving an incredibly difficult crossword puzzle. I must have been at a competition because Will Shortz was in the front of the room and there was a clock counting down, but I still hadn’t made it out of the northwest corner. In real life, if I am stuck in one part of a puzzle, I try to find things I know in other parts of the puzzle. Dream Me is, apparently, not so good at this.
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Life is busy. So what else is new?


Celebrity Death Watch: Warren Adler wrote the book on which the movie The War of the Roses was based. Fay McKenzie was an actress who played opposite Gene Autry in several movies. Lorraine Warren was a paranormal investigator. Ira Neimark was the chairman of Bergdorf Goodman. Varena Wagner Lafferentz was the youngest granddaughter of Richard Wagner and believed to be one of Hitler’s lovers. Mavis Pusey was an abstract artist. Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian combined geometric art from Iranian traditions with modern abstract art. Ken Kercheval was an actor, best known for playing Cliff Barnes on Dallas. David Winters was an actor and choreographer. Mark Medoff was a playwright, best known for Children of a Lesser God. Jean was the Grand Doke of Luxembourg. Menachem Mendel Taub was the Rebbe of the Kaliv Hasidic dynasty. John Singleton was a film director, best known for Boyz in the Hood. Peter Mayhew played Chewbacca in the Star Wars movies. John Starling was a founder of The Seldom Scene. Red Kelly was a Canadian ice hockey player. Lord Toby Jug was a British politician who, after being expelled from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, went on to the found the Eccentric Party. Mose Se Sengo was a Congolese musician. Rachel Held Evans was a Christian writer. Doreen Spooner was the first woman to become a full-time photographer for a British national newspaper.

John Havlicek was one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He scored more points than anybody else who has ever played for the Celtics.

Richard Lugar was a Republican senator from Indiana. He focused a lot on foreign policy (including measures to address climate change) and on agricultural reform. He was also a liberal on gun control. However, he took conservative social positions on abortion and on LGBT issues.

Jo Sullivan Loesser was the widow of Frank Loesser and looked after his musical legacy. She had also been an actress and singer, including originating the role of Rosabella in The Most Happy Fella.



Inca Social: I completely forgot to mention that I went out to dinner with a bunch of flyertalk friends the week before Pesach. We went to Inca Social, just a few steps from the Dunn Loring - Merrifield metro station. I had a chilcano (a cocktail with pisco and ginger ale) and something called Inca tacu tacu, which consisted of a bean and rice caked topped with steak. The steak was particularly tasty and the serving size was quite generous (i.e. I couldn’t finish it all). In general, everyone seemed to like their food, but the people who got beer were not really impressed with their craft beers. The service was reasonably good, too. The place wasn’t horribly loud and the lighting was decent, so we weren’t struggling to read the menus. Throw in travel-related conversation and it was a nice evening out.

Please Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was on a tour and was sharing a room with a woman from Hong Kong (and possibly her husband, but only she had a suitcase and shoes in the room). We weren’t leaving the hotel for another day, but, for some reason, most of her belongings ended up on the roof rack of our tour bus. I went back to the room to check that my things were okay there and saw just one pair of my shoes and two pairs of hers there. But I discovered that our room was not actually at the end of the hall, but there was another room, with no door. There was a very negative tripadvisor review of the hotel posted on the wall of that room. I went back out to the bus and my suitcase and belongings were scattered around the roof rack.


Something Else About Dreams: Sometimes I seem to have a dream that is all about images, without any actual action. For example, one morning last week, I woke up with a strong mental image of a wall of black and white polka-dot straw hats.


Something Else About Sleep: The absolute worst way to wake up is a leg cramp. Being bitten by a wild animal may be even worse, but I haven’t experienced that and I hope never to, so I will continue to believe this.


Business Trip: I spent all of last week in Colorado Springs for a work-related conference. The weather was particularly crappy, including a couple of inches of snow on Tuesday morning (which had vanished by lunchtime) and lots of cold wind. And I didn’t really have free time to do anything besides work. At least work was decently productive. Also, I had dinner with my boss one evening, during which we mostly talked about music. It’s nice to know he has interesting taste, including a lot of the world fusion type of stuff I also listen to.

The meetings ended early enough on Friday that I was able to fly home that night, instead of having to waste half my weekend on airplanes, which is always good.


TCC Luncheon: Getting home for the weekend allowed me to get to the Travelers’ Century Club luncheon on Saturday. There was a lot of interesting conversation. It seems like the Guyanas are the current hot place for people to go. I’ve also concluded that I need to avoid one person, whose interests are just too far from mine to be worth discussing much with. I always have a reason for where I choose to go – typically wildlife, archaeological sites, and/or music. I don’t really understand people who just want to check off the country boxes and don’t want to spend time understanding a culture. Most TCCers are not just country collectors, but some (like this woman) can be pretty superficial.


JGSGW Meeting: Sunday was a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington meeting. Dan Oren gave a good talk on various things he’s learned during his research. The most interesting anecdote had to do with the interpretation of the date on a tombstone, in which it turned out that the apparent date on the stone actually referred to the Torah portion for the week that the person died. He had several other interesting tidbits, emphasizing patience, continuing to relook at data, and collaborating with other people. It was definitely worth driving to Rockville in the rain for.


Less Stressed: I am not entirely unstressed with work things, but a phone call from a friend who I hadn’t talked with for a while helped quite a lot. We were talking about upcoming travel plans and I mentioned the trip I have planned for December, which includes 5 nights of wild camping in the desert. The conversation ran like this:

Her: oh, cool

Me: That’s why I like you. Everyone else I’ve mentioned this to said I’m nuts.

(I should note that she has some pretty out of the way trips of her own planned.)

Getting By

Apr. 22nd, 2019 02:56 pm
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I am still feeling stressed and overwhelmed. That is partly due to having a lot to do at work, including one project that is: 1) being run by somebody who isn’t qualified to shine my shoes and 2) for which the two of us doing all the real work will not get the credit for political reasons. There is also a big meeting I’ll be at next week, which will end too late on Friday for me to fly home that day, making it impossible for me to get to an event I’d really like to go to on Saturday. On top of the work stress, I am still scrambling around to find some paperwork I need to file this week (because I won’t be around next week). And at least three of my friends have had recent mental health crises, with two of those involving hospitalization. I am functioning reasonably well, but I am exhausted. The net result is that I spent most of the past weekend In a state of suspended animation, i.e. do a few household things, take a nap, lather, rinse, repeat.

Corporate News: I’d be a bit more convinced about my company placing fairly high on a list of best employers of our size if the listing didn’t show our CEO as the one who retired over 2 years ago.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: The first half of this dream involved watching an hour-long romance musical on television, possibly on youtube. The plot had something to do with a woman looking for love and attending the wedding of her friends. Later on, she was kissing their child and I decided she was waiting for the kid to grow up to be her partner. Then, somehow the scene switched to me looking out a window in Philadelphia at a Chasidic family leaving a synagogue.

Pesach: My father has been gone for well over 30 years, but I particularly miss him when it comes to the Passover seder. He didn’t let his lack of a good singing voice stop him from singing every verse of every song, and it’s only as an adult that I think that Grandpa (who had an excellent voice) must have turned off his hearing aid in order to deal with that. And, who knew? It turns out to be possible to hide the afikomen somewhere other than on top of the refrigerator.

I should also note a break from personal tradition this year. I bring string cheese, matzoh, and fruit to work for lunch. But this year I am eating clementines instead of grapes. (And, by the way, clementine has 4 syllables. It sort of rhymes with ballerina.)
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I have been crazy busy at work and trying to get caught up on some household things. Hence, my relative silence. Which is not, alas, likely to change this month. Anyway, here is a quick catch-up of last weekend’s entertainment, before I head out of town for this weekend.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I don’t remember any of the context, but I was wearing a jacket with teal and purple horizontal stripes.

Hexagon 2019 – Romp in the Swamp: Hexagon puts on an annual political satirical musical comedy revue, with the money going to charity. I know two people involved in it. One writes music and lyrics and performs in the show. The other mostly writes lyrics. Some of the funnier bits involved a perfect candidate who is undone by using a plastic straw for her water, a song in praise of athleisure, and a relook at the Golden Girls in the age of #metoo. There are also Newsbreak segments, with late breaking topical jokes. My favorite was about the Georgetown tennis coach being arrested for racketeering. Overall, it was a fun evening. But the venue (a high school auditorium in Tenleytown) had seriously uncomfortable seating. I felt sorry for students who have to sit through assemblies there.

Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity: I saw this play at Signature Theatre on Saturday afternoon. It starts with a lecture by an art historian, during which members of the audience are asked to write down what they would consider a masterpiece that needs to be preserved when the rest of the world is destroyed. Then the scene shifted to the ruins of a museum, with the art historian shackled to the wall. She is tortured by a young woman soldier, while a third woman nurses her. The idea is to force her to restore a Rembrandt painting. There is a fair amount of absurdity in the script, ranging from a choice of music to listen to while she works on the painting to the rhinoceros that has taken up residence in 17th Century Dutch Paintings. That leads to plenty of humor, but, ultimately, the story is about the destruction of a civilization and is very dark. I found it interesting, though more violent than I’d prefer. It was also well-acted by all three women – Holly Twyford (the art historian), Felicia Curry (the soldier) and Yesenia Iglesias (the nurse). I will probably look for other plays by Heather McDonald in the future, as I did find it provocative.

Lost and Found: Saturday night was a Better Said Than Done show on the theme of Lost and Found. I had thought about developing a story about my non-existent sense of direction, but decided I didn’t have the time to flesh it out. So I went with a story I’ve done before about a hiking experience in South Africa nearly 20 years ago. It went over reasonably well, though I did forget a moderately funny line I’ve used in the past. On the plus side, something I added (largely because of a mistake I made during rehearsal) worked well. Overall, it was a nice evening.
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Celebrity Death Watch: Randy Jackson was the last player to hit a home run for the Dodgers before they moved to Los Angeles. Scott Walker was a pop singer with the Walker Brothers and on his own. Rafi Eitan was an Israeli spymaster who captured Adolf Eichmann, but (on the minus side) ran Jonathan Pollard as one of his informants. Larry Cohen directed horror movies. Andrew Marshall directed the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. Gabriel Okara was a pioneer in English language literature (poetry and novels) in Nigeria. Fred Malek was an advisor to Richard Nixon and is particularly notorious for giving Nixon a list of Jews at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. W. H. Pugmire wrote horror fiction. Ranking Roger was a ska singer, who headed up The (English) Beat. Michel Bacos was the Air France pilot who stayed with the Jewish and Israeli hostages when his plane was hijacked to Entebbe. Valery Bykovsky was a cosmonaut.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was stranded somewhere, possibly England, with all planes grounded, possibly after 9/11. Finally, they (not that I have any idea who "they" were) decided to bus everyone where they were going. Somehow, I ended up on a bus with only 3 other people. The driver got lost and we ended up going back to where we had been waiting. Apparently, everyone else had left. We had to wait for our bus to be repaired before we could go. I wondered how we were going to drive across the ocean, but it seemed we only had to drive to a ferry to cross the Atlantic.

MIT Intern Reception: Monday night was the annual reception for MIT students in the policy internship program. There weren’t any students interested in space policy this year, so I could just focus on giving general advice, aka corrupting young minds. One young woman told me I’d reassured her a lot when I told her it was okay not to know what she wanted to do, so I feel like I accomplished what I wanted to.

By the way, they changed venues this year. They've used a room in one of the House office buildings in the past. This time, they rented an event space next to the Shakespeare Theatre. The space looked attractive, but they didn't have as wide a variety of food. And it was very noisy.

Proper 21: A friend and I went out to dinner before theatre-going last night. This place was chosen entirely for a convenient location. The food was pretty good – or, at least, the roasted chicken with chimichurri sauce I had was good. But the service was mediocre (e.g. we had to ask a few times before getting our bill) and the noise level was outrageously loud. I won’t be going back unless I am with someone I really don’t want to converse with.

A Bronx Tale: The show we were going to see was A Bronx Tale at The National Theatre. I had seen neither Chazz Palminteri’s one man show nor the movie based on it, so I really had no idea what to expect. The basic story involves a boy named Calogero who witnesses a Mafia-related murder and, as a result of keeping quiet about it, gets involved with Sonny, the Mafioso, who treats him like a combination good-luck charm and son. That leads to conflict with Calogero’s parents. As Calogero grows up, race becomes a big issue, since he falls for a black girl in high school. His friends are ready to set off Molotov cocktails at a nightclub in the black neighborhood and Sonny keeps him from going along with them – which is fortunate, as they get blown up in their car. But Sonny gets killed by the son of the guy he’d killed at the beginning.

This is supposedly based on Palminteri’s life story, but I found parts of it rather implausible. Sonny’s lack of racism, for example, did not ring true. Nor did his encouraging Calogero to get out of the mob life. But, hey, I am a firm believer in emotional truths over facts, so I can suspend some disbelief.

This is a musical and I thought the music (by Alan Menken) worked reasonably well in pushing the story along. The most notable song is "Nicky Machiavelli," sung by Sonny to Calogero explaining his philosophy. And, while I like doo-wop, I do wish there had been a bit more of an ethnic flavor to the score.

I also wish there were local performers in it, but that is too much to ask for a short-run touring production of a Broadway musical. And several of the performers had been in the show on Broadway. I’ll particularly note Brianna-Marie Bell, who played Jane, and whose voice was particularly powerful in the song, "Webster Avenue," which opened the second act.

Overall, I enjoyed seeing this, but I wouldn’t put it into the essential musicals category.
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Celebrity Death Watch: Rosamunde Pilcher wrote a lot of romance novels and some family sagas, of which the most famous was The Shell Seekers. .Yechiel Eckstein founded the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. Albert Finney was a film actor, who for some reason I tend to confuse with Alfred Drake and Ron Moody. A few of his more notable movies include Tom Jones, Erin Brockovich, and Big Fish. John Dingell was a Democratic congressman from Michigan who served 59 years in Congress. Patricia Nell Warren wrote The Front Runner, the first gay novel to make the New York Times best seller list. Tomi Ungerer was an illustrator, best known for creating Flat Stanley. Walter Jones was a Republican congressman from North Carolina, best known for inventing the term "freedom fries." Lyndon Larouche was a politician, Presidential candidate, anti-Semite, racist, possibly a Soviet agent. Hmm, reminds me of someone else.

Frank Robinson played baseball for several teams, including the Cincinnati Reds and the Baltimore Orioles. He was the only player to be named MVP for both the National League and American League. He later became the first black manager in major league history (for the Cleveland Indians) and went on to manage several other teams, including the Washington Nationals. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1982.


Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was eating lunch in a conference room. On an airplane.


A Brief Rant About Reporting on Taxes: I am tired of seeing articles about people complaining about their refunds being lower. One’s refund could be lower because they are paying more taxes, but it could also be lower because their withholding was lower. Of course, one should ideally aim for not getting a refund at all, since that means you are lending money to the government at no interest. What actually matters is what one’s overall tax bill is. Many people’s will be higher because of the limits on deductions for state and local taxes, but many people’s will be lower because of reduced tax rates.


One Day University – Lectures: Saturday was One Day University. The morning had two lectures, while the afternoon had a short film festival.


The first lecture was by Andrew Porwancher of the University of Oklahoma on The Constitution: Enduring Myths and Hidden Truths. He was rather more enthusiastic about Alexander Hamilton than I’d have preferred, though he did also credit James Madison, George Washington, and Ben Franklin. But how does anybody talk about the Constitution without mentioning Gouverneur Morris, who wrote most of it? Despite that obvious flaw, Porwancher did have several interesting points. One of his key ones is that the three branches of government were not intended to be equal. The legislative branch was supposed to be the most powerful and the judiciary the weakest, with the executive branch in the middle. He went on to talk bout several amendments, starting with the specific part of the first amendment dealing with freedom of religion. His key point there was that there were interpretations of freedom of religion which did not require separation of church and state, but Jefferson’s views won out over Hamilton’s there, largely because of nativism in the form of a fear of Catholicism. He also noted that Article VI, Section 3, which forbids religious tests for serving in office is more significant in practical terms. He also made an interesting point re: the 2nd Amendment. Namely, that Madison’s original language included a conscientious objector clause, which suggests his intention was the military context, not the individual context, for the right to bear arms. Overall, he was an interesting and enthusiastic speaker, albeit more enthusiastic about Hamilton than I am.

The other lecture was by Wendy Schiller of Brown University on What’s Wrong With Congress? Can an 18th Century Structure Still Work? One of the main things she objected to was the staggering of Senate elections, so that only a third of the Senate is up for reelection each term, though I am skeptical about how much of a difference that makes. Mostly, what she claimed is wrong is: 1) polarization, which used to be only about race and trade now being about everything, and 2) the responsibility of the Senate for confirming judges and cabinet members. She talked a lot about changes in how the Senate was chosen, including the corruption that dominated the process when state legislatures chose Senators and the impact of reform intents that resulted in many states going without one or both Senators. The 17th Amendment in 1913 (direct election of Senators) fixed that. Other things she suggested (most of which I agree with) were proportional representation in the electoral college (which is already done in Montana and Nebraska) and which really has more to do with the President than with Congress, lengthening the House term to 4 years to reduce the amount of time spent electioneering versus legislating, making the House bigger (which would, in my opinion, make it harder to manage and make deals), and requiring independent commissions for redistricting. I am more skeptical about requiring gender, racial, ethnic, and economic diversity in redistricting, because I think that would be likely to dilute the influence of underrepresented groups. She also suggested term limits for the Supreme Court and removing term limits for the President, but did not discuss term limits for Congress. Personally, I think term limits for elective offices are a bad idea, though I would support other ways to reduce the perceived advantage of incumbents. Finally, she supported an increase in on-line and mail voting, which sounds great, until you look at research on voting integrity and realize that it is likely to disenfranchise large segments of the population.


One Day University – Short Film Festival: After a lunch break, during which I walked over to Poppa Box for some Korean-ish food, it was time for the Short Film Festival. For this purpose, short films were defined as being under 20 minutes. There were 10 films, with a short intermission after the sixth. There was only one movie I really disliked (Bob, which had what I thought was a cheap ending), I had seen one (The Gunfighter) before, though I can’t remember where, and thought it was funny, but could have been tighter if it were a bit shorter. My favorites were Super Powers, The Tailor, Bridget, and Tanghi Argentini. Overall, it was a fun way to spend a cold afternoon.
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Don’t Analyze This Dream, Part 1: My car had a warning light on, which was in the shape of an exclamation point.

Don’t Analyze This Dream, Part 2: One of my colleagues needed to renew his badge at work. I pointed out to him that he needed to take the elevator to the 8th floor in order to get to the 3rd floor.

Weather Whine: We got 10 inches of snow from sometime on Saturday through late last night. The schools are all closed. The government (the parts of it that were open, that is) is shut down. My company is open. Can I be forgiven for assuming our senior management wants to kill us?

They are predicting snow next weekend, too. Please, no.

Taking Up Serpents: I went out yesterday, despite the snow, to see the premiere of an opera called Taking Up Serpents at the Kennedy Center. This was written by Kamala Sankarem, with a libretto by Jerre Dye. The story involves a young woman, Kayla, who is summoned back to her dying father’s bedside. There is a lot of reminiscence about her relationship with her father, who turned from a rough drunk to a snake-handling preacher. Now, he’s dying of a snake bite, which liberates both Kayla and her mother, both of whom turn out not to be quite so "weak as water, weak as Eve," as Daddy had claimed.

The story is interesting and some of the music was. There was a frenetic scene of shoppers at Save Mart in the beginning, which provided a bit of comic relief. There were echoes of shape note singing (although that works better for me in the more traditional form, with people standing in a square, facing outwards). There was also some intriguing instrumentation, notably in the use of whirly tubes. However, Kayla has more music than anyone else and while I realize that Alexandria Shiner is a powerful soprano, I find those high frequencies annoyingly screechy after a while. I also found the ending unconvincing.

So, overall, this fell into the category of interesting failures. But you might like it better than I did if you have a higher tolerance for sopranos than I do.
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Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was on a game show of some sort. The question I got had to do with identifying the show Who Do You Think You Are? But the host wanted me to answer it in German.

Humanitarian Crisis at the Border: There actually is a humanitarian crisis at the border. It’s caused by Trump’s ridiculous policy of ignoring international law re: refugees and asylum seekers and his family separation policies.

As for a security crisis, I think that expecting TSA, Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, etc. to work without pay is a more significant security crisis than the handful of potential criminals who enter via our southern border.

2020 Presidential Candidates: I miss the days when candidates started emerging somewhere around January of election years, not a full year earlier. But, as a general rule of thumb, I’d really prefer to see candidates who have some executive experience – i.e. as governors or as mayors of major cities. Ideally, a combination of executive experience and experience in either the House or Senate would provide the right mix of skills. Gender, race, etc. are entirely irrelevant. There are white men I’d be happy to support. There are people of color I'd be happy to support. There are women of various ethnicities I'd support. I do have some feelings re: age of candidates, but there’s more flexibility there.

Tax Rates: I am not a big fan of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for reasons I don’t want to go into right now. But I agree with her re: marginal tax rates. We had marginal tax rates well over 70% for the highest brackets for a lot of years and we were far more prosperous.

The Congressional Committee System: What I was waiting for AOC (and other new Congresscritters) to learn and react to is the system of Congressional dues for committee assignments. In the Senate, assignments primary follow seniority. But, in the House, committee assignments – and, particularly, chairmanships – are paid for. The “dues” go to one’s party’s campaign committee and are in the hundreds of thousands dollars for significant committees. Ultimately, of course, the money comes from lobbying organizations.

I consider myself fairly savvy politically and I only learned about this maybe a month ago. But it’s been reasonably widely reported in reliable sources since at least the middle of 2017.
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Celebrity Death Watch 2018: Peter Masterson wrote The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Norman Gimbel was a lyricist, best known for "The Girl From Ipanema" and "Killing Me Softly With His Song." Raven Wilkinson was the first African-American woman to dance for a major classical ballet company (the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo). Donald Moffat was a character actor who won a couple of Tony awards. Paddy Ashdown headed the British Liberal Democrats. Liza Redfield was the first woman to be the full-time conductor of a Broadway pit orchestra (for The Music Man). Wendy Beckett, better known as Sister Wendy, was a nun who became famous as an art historian and critic. Herb Ellis was an actor who co-created Dragnet. Roy Glauber was a Nobel-prize winning physicist. Sono Osato was the first American and the first person of Japanese ancestry to perform with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Lawrence Roberts led the team that created the ARPANET, which made him the founding father of the internet. Nancy Roman was an astronomer who planned the development of the Hubble Space Telescope. Seydou Dadian Kouyate wrote the lyrics to the national anthem of Mali. Amos Oz was an Israeli novelist. Dame June Whitfield was an English actress, best known for appearing in Absolutely Fabulous and for playing Miss Marple on a radio series. Brian Garfield wrote Westerns and mysteries. Dean Ford wrote that one-hit-wonder "Reflections of My Life" for his group, Marmalade.

Jane Langton wrote children’s books and mystery novels. Her Homer Kelly mysteries were literate and witty, with a strong sense of place (largely New England) and charming line drawings. I particularly recommend Natural Enemy (as long as you aren’t an arachnophobe) and The Escher Twist

Larry Eisenberg was a biomedical engineer and science fiction writer. But his bigger claim to fame was in the form of letters to the New York Times, in which his news commentary was in the form of limericks.

Celebrity Death Watch – 2019: Pegi Morton Young was a singer-songwriter and the first wife of Neil Young. Larry Weinberg was a real estate developer and owner of the Portland Trail Blazers. Gene Okerlund was a wrestling announcer. Bob Einstein was an actor known for Curb Your Enthusiasm and for portraying Super Dave Osborne. Daryl Dragon was the Captain in the Captain & Tenille. Jerry Buchek played baseball for the Cardinals and the Mets. Herb Kelleher co-founded Southwest Airlines. Sylvia Chase was a news anchor and journalist. Harold Brown was the Secretary of Defense from 1977-1981 (under Jimmy Carter). Eric Haydock was the bassist for The Hollies. Moshe Arens was the Israeli Minister of Defense for a few terms, as well as being an aeronautical engineer.

Celebrity Death Watch: The lists for this year are officially published so I can reveal my selections for who I think will die in 2019. (The numbers are how many points I’ll get if that person dies.)

20. Kathleen Blanco
19. Leah Bracknell
18. Tim Conway
17. Kirk Douglas
16. Herman Wouk
15. Olivia de Haviland
14. Stirling Moss
13. Jean Erdman
12. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings
11. Al Jaffee
10. Beverly Cleary
9. Jean Kennedy Smith
8. Johnny Clegg
7. Lawrence Ferlinghetti
6. Ken Nordine
5. Jerry Herman
4. Jimmy Carter
3. Russell Baker
2. Robert Mugabe
1. John Paul Stevens

Don’t Analyze This Dream – Part 1: A man was wearing a bright blue sequined suit and standing in the doorway of a metro train. The person sitting next to me commented on the conservatism of my clothing (maroon sweater, grey skirt) and pointed to a woman wearing a red sequined dress and white fur wrap.

Don’t Analyze This Dream – Part 2: A stack of my books were on the night stand at a friend’s house. I reached for what I thought was a poetry book at the bottom of the stack,intending to read a poem or two before going to bed, but it turned out to be a copy of Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror.

Tone Rangers / Impitched: I was pretty exhausted on Friday night, but I still forced myself out of the house and went to Jammin’ Java (conveniently near my house) to see one of my favorite local a capella groups, The Tone Rangers. They had a guest group with them called Impitched, who I thought were fine musically, but whose choreography was weak. The Tone Rangers were as good as ever, with some of my favorite songs, e.g. their arrangements of "Southern Cross" (which is one of my favorite songs of all time), "Helen," and, of course, their most famous piece, "Wild Thing" (which starts out as Gregorian chant). They also continue to be very funny, in general. My favorite joke of the night was about how, with the success of The Crown on Netflix and Victoria on PBS, Amazon Prime is coming out with a confusing series about cops in New Jersey. It’ll be called The Crown Victoria. Overall, it was a great show and I felt energized within the first 10 minutes of it.

TCC Luncheon: Saturday was a Travelers’ Century Club luncheon. There was a huge turnout, which has the downside of making it harder to mingle. There was lots of great conversation. What other group of people is there where having been to 108 countries and territories puts you on the low side? And it is fun to both give and receive travel advice.

Housework: It is remarkable how long housework takes and how much energy it saps.
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I fell asleep about 9 last night. I was expecting to be woken up by fireworks or people banging on pots and pans, but, no, All was quiet, possibly because it was raining but more likely because I live in suburbia.

I woke up at 4:30 in the morning, in the middle of an interesting dream. I was in Nairobi and had to wait in line to get into a museum, where there was an exhibit of elaborately decorated wooden pens - some just nicely turned cylinders of exotic woods, some elaborately carved. Then I went into the courtyard where there was a traditional Shona dance (rather out of place, as that’s one of the major ethnic groups of Zimbabwe). It included women chanting a lullaby in Hebrew ( also out of place). Just before I woke up, I started to panic about getting malaria because I had left on the trip in a hurry and not gotten a prescription for anti-malarial drugs.

It is a good thing I don’t attach much psychological importance to dreams.
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Celebrity Death Watch: Peggy McKay was an actress, primarily in soap operas. Carol Hall was the composer and lyricist for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Sue Hubbell wrote books about natural history. William Coors was an executive of a company that makes something that passes for beer in Colorado. Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft and then used the money he made to buy sports teams. Todd Bol invented the Little Free Library. Anthea Bell was a translator, notably of the Asterix comic books. Charles Wang owned the New York Islanders. Earl Bakken invented the pacemaker. Dorcas Reilly was a home economist who invented the green bean casserole. Apparently the original recipe card is in the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame.


Jonathan Richman: I fulfilled a musical bucket list item on Saturday night by going to see Jonathan Richman at the 9:30 Club. (Hence, the punning title for this entry.) I was reasonably intelligent and went upstairs right when I got there, enabling me to snag a seat on the balcony level. That and an Irish coffee (hey, it was a cold night out!) made for a relaxing evening.

Anyway, I have listened to Jonathan since maybe 1980 or so, back in the days of the Modern Lovers and his early punk efforts with silly songs like "Pablo Picasso (was never called an asshole)." As time went on, he pretty much focused on acoustic music, apparently to protect his hearing. Every now and then there is some song that completely grabs me and I listen to over and over for hours. "Give Paris One More Chance" (from the album, Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eye Shadow) was one of those songs and I probably listened to it during every waking moment for three or four days in a row. I have no idea why that song speaks to me so deeply, but it does and I still end up playing it over several times in a row when I listen to that CD. Which is all a bit besides the point, as he did not play it Saturday night.

What he did play ranged from "No One Was Like Vermeer" to "He Gave Us the Wine to Taste" to "People Are Disgusting" to "Dancing at the Lesbian Bar." And songs in French, Spanish, Italian, and what I assume was Sanskrit because it was based on the works of Kabir. Seeing him live, with just Tommy Larkins on drums as accompaniment, I felt a greater appreciation for Jonathan’s actual musicianship. That is, I had usually thought of him as a bit of a novelty act, with some great songs but more known for weird lyrics and concepts. But in person I could appreciate that he really can play the guitar damn well. There are flamenco and jazz influences. And, most of all, he was having fun, as was I.

I am so happy I went to see him and I hope I will get the chance to do so again.

By the way, top of the music bucket list now is Luka Bloom. But he doesn't appear to have anything scheduled that I can get to in the near future. Maybe next year.


Profs and Pints – Origins of Vampires: I like the concept for Profs and Pints, which puts on lectures at bars in the D.C. area. I finally actually made it to one of these Sunday night. The topic was vampires and the speaker, Bruce McClelland, emphasized the linguistic origins of the word, which he said originally referred to outcasts, rather than to the undead. He was rather disorganized, though reasonably interesting. For example, there were reports of flying bags of blood, but nobody could verify them because seeing one would kill you instantly. Most of the evidence for early belief in the undead has to do with mutilation of corpses. Which makes it interesting that he didn’t cite Lawrence Durrell’s account of the burial of a vampire in Corfu (in Prospero’s Cell) but I gathered that his literary knowledge was not up to his knowledge of Slavic languages as he attributed a lot of things to Bram Stoker that Stoker borrowed from John Polidori, who wrote "The Vampyre" nearly 80 years before Dracula. One would expect a vampirologist to be familiar with Polidori.

As an aside, Dracula is not really about the supernatural if you know anything about Stoker’s background. What makes it an interesting book is that Mina, as the modern woman, is the only complete character, while Lucy’s three suitors together each have only one aspect of success. Stoker’s mother was an early feminist and that almost certainly led to his rather conflicted views on femininity. But I digress.

McClelland’s other interesting point was that the association of outcasts with the supernatural came to be associated with live women (witches) in the West versus dead men (vampires and werewolves) in the East. That was something I’d never thought about before.

Overall, even with a few quibbles, it was worth going to the talk. And, as I said, I like the concept behind the event and will certainly try to get to other Profs and Pints lectures in the future.


Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was at some sort of spa. But, instead of staying at the main hotel, I was at some cheaper accommodations on the other side of the town square. There was a fountain in the middle of the square and a lot of spa-goers were standing around, dressed in white bathrobes, watching the fountain.
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I will get back to catching up on vacation (and pre-vacation) things, but I don’t want to fall further behind, so here is what I’ve done since I’ve gotten back.

Celebrity Death Watch: V.S Naipaul was a Nobel laureate in literature. Mark Baker was a (primarily) theatre actor, best known for playing Candide in the 1974 production of the Bernstein musical. Morgana King was a jazz singer and actress. She actually died in late March, but I didn’t see her obituary until mid-August. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister of India from 1998 to 2004. Kofi Annan was Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1997-2006. Barbara Harris was an actress, both on Broadway (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and The Apple Tree among others) and film (Nashville, Freaky Friday, etc.) Ed King played guitar with Strawberry Alarm Clock and Lynyrd Skynard and wrote the song, "Sweet Home Alabama." Martin Shubik was an economist whose work included analysis of the best pastrami sandwich in New York. Robin Leach hosted Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Princeton Lyman was a diplomat, credited with helping to end apartheid in South Africa. Marie Severin was a comic book artist. Paul Taylor was an influential modern dance choreographer. Peter Corris wrote crime novels. Susan Brown was a soap opera actress. Vanessa Marquez was an actress, best known for playing a nurse on E.R. Gloria Jean was an actress and singer, who appeared in several 1940’s and 1950’s films. Carole Shelley was an actress, whose roles included playing one of the Pigeon sisters in The Odd Couple. Randy Weston was a jazz pianist and composer. Christopher Lawford was the son of actor Pater Lawford and a nephew of JFK, who also became an actor and wrote a memoir about his struggles with drug addiction. Bill Dailey wa a character actor, known for appearing in I Dream of Jeannie and The Bob Newhart Show. Burt Reynolds was a television and movie actor, best known for Deliverance. Richard DeVos co-founded Amway. Mac Miller was a rapper. Sam Cornish was Boston’s first poet laureate.

I hope you don’t need me to tell you about Aretha Franklin. She was one of the greatest singers of all time and a truly iconic American voice. I’m usually not keen on people being dubbed royalty of some genre, but I will make an exception for the Queen of Soul.

Khaira Arby was a Malian singer. I heard her perform at the Festival Au Desert in 2011 and met her briefly in the market in Timbuktu while I was there. She was apparently the first Malian woman to start a career under her own name. She was also an activist for women’s rights and an advocate against female genital mutilation.

I assume I don’t need to tell you about John McCain. He was an interesting politician, something of a maverick among Republicans. While I often disagreed with him, I do think he had a lot of integrity. In an era of bad behavior, he seemed able to be a gentleman most of the time, which deserves credit in and of itself. He also scored on my ghoul pool list (and almost everyone else’s, alas.)

Neil Simon was a playwright, whose work focused on New York and the Jewish-American experience. He received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer. His plays were a good example of my theory that funny and serious are not antonyms.



Please Don’t Analyze This Dream: I don’t remember the context, but there were a bunch of soldiers wearing triangular green-painted (or maybe enameled) metallic masks that I referred to as "Turkish death masks."



Passion: I saw Passion at Signature Theatre on Saturday. This is one of the more difficult Sondheim musicals, largely because Fosca is a fundamentally unlikeable character, stalking Giorgio, a sensitive man who has the heart of a poet in a soldier’s body. It’s an uncomfortable view of love, accompanied by emotional (and only sporadically humorous lyrics, mostly relating to the other soldiers’ reactions to Giorgio). Despite all that, Signature did an excellent job with it. Claybourne Elder was a convincing Giorgio. And Natascia Diaz made Fosca a little bit sympathetic. Overall, I thought it was worth seeing, but though I will never love the show the way I do most of Sondheim’s others.



Gelato Festival DC: On Sunday, I ignored the chill and rain and went off to the city for Gealto Festival DC. The idea is that you buy a wristband (for $30 plus fees) and get to taste all the gelato you want. There were several gelato makers competing, with flavors designed for the festival.

Crusty Fantasy from Gelato Gourment in Weston, FL was a mixture of caramel, cashews and rice krispies. The name is terrible, but the flavor was reasonably good.

Blue Majik from Gelato’oh Brick & Motor in Philadelphia was pineapple flavored with a blue coloring from algae. It supposedly also had ginger and apple juices, but I couldn’t detect them. I liked the idea of a sugar-free sorbetto, but it didn’t quite work for me, largely because the texture was not as smooth as is ideal.

Apurimac from local DC shop Pitango Gelato was a very intense chocolate. I know some people will doubt this is possible, but I thought it was actually too intense and I ate only a couple of spoonfuls.

Trinacrium from uGOgelato in Miami was my favorite. It was a mixture of pistachio and almonds, with a spray of orange. This was absolutely delicious – a lovely combination, with great flavors and texture. I was clearly not the only person who thought so, as it won the competition.

American Dream from Gelato Bliss in Hagerstown, MD had salted peanuts swirled with a coca-cola reduction. This was better than I expected from that description, but not something I wanted more of.

Butter Pecan from Marinucci’s in Reston, VA was disappointing. They apparently used European butter instead of cream, which gave it a weird mouth feel to me. This was another one where I didn’t eat more than a couple of spoonfuls.

Cheesecake with Cherries from Mike’s Gelato in Columbia, MD was exactly what it sounds like. It wasn’t bad, but I am just not crazy about cherries, so had just a small taste.

Nocciola Chocake from Zerogradi Gelateria in Ambler, PA was hazelnut gelato with chocolate sauce and chocolate cake crumbs. I liked this, but would have liked it better if there were more chocolate flavor.


There were also a few non-competitors:

PreGel apparently sells a gelato base to shops, rather than selling commercially. I tried two of their flavors – hazelnut and cannoli. The hazelnut was excellent, but then it’s a flavor that I tend to like a lot. The cannoli was good, but would have benefited from more crunch.

Bella Gelateria (not clear where they are) had some sort of caramel and coffee flavor. This was just okay. There was nothing wrong with it, but it seemed pretty ordinary.

Moorenko’s from Silver Spring, MD had two flavors. The burnt caramel and pear with walnuts was quite good, but could have used more pear flavor relative to the other ingredients. Their ginger, however, was sublime, with large chunks of fresh ginger in it. If this had been a competitor, I would probably have voted for it over the Trinacrium. Best of all, they said it’s available at a couple of local grocery stores!



Rosh Hashanah: I went to the traditional service at Sixth and I. On the plus side, I like the cantor, who is reasonably inclusive, versus some who think they’re performing as operatic soloists. On the minus side, the siddur they use has absolutely terrible English translations. And if I notice that, with my lack of Hebrew fluency, they must be really bad. I was also suffering a bit from difficulty focusing, which I will attribute to jet lag. At the very least, I got to spend time with a couple of friends who I see all too infrequently.

Happy 5779 everyone!

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