fauxklore

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.