fauxklore

As usual, my life is a flurry of activity.

LJ and DW: I am planning to continue posting to both sites. If you are concerned about the future of LiveJournal, feel free to add me on Dreamwidth (under the same name). There are things I like and dislike about both platforms, by the way, but that is neither here nor there under the current circumstances.

Ink!: I got ink in the Style Invitational contest for fictoids about the financial world. My entry (which got merged with another person’s similar one) had to do with the Susan B. Anthony dollar being 82% the size of the Eisenhower dollar that preceded it.

Jewish Mustard: I went to a talk about Jewish mustard on Tuesday. The speaker was Barry Levenson, director of the National Mustard Museum I went to the Museum when it was still in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, but it has moved to larger quarters in Middleton, Wisconsin. It;s an amusing place and he was an entertaining speaker. Mostly, he recommended specific mustards to eat with various Jewish foods, e.g. mustard with dill to accompany lox (smoked salmon) or horseradish mustard to go with gefilte fish. Despite his suggestions, I am not going to start putting even the fruitiest of mustards on my cheesecake.

Sistine Chapel Exhibition: I probably would not have gone to this on my own, but one of my friends wanted to go and, as she’s been having a rough time lately for several reasons, I thought it would be good for her to get out. The exhibit is set up in an unleased retail space in Tyson’s Corner Center, which is a large shopping mall not far from where I live. Basically, they have large reproductions of the panels from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, with explanatory plaques. The plaques are set up on easels, so they are not at eye level, and are, therefore, rather difficult to read for those of us who wear bifocals. More egregiously, the panels are not arranged in any particular order. They’re numbered, but they are not arranged in numerical order. That led to a lot of frustration as people were trying to find the next one in sequence. I suppose some people wouldn’t care if they see them out of order, but I am way too compulsive to do that. The advertising had led me to think there would be some immersive aspect (like the Van Gogh exhibit had), but that was not the case. They did show a few informative videos in the final room. Anyway, it was quite crowded and, between the crowds and the chaos, I was very disappointed.

We retreated to Coastal Flats (a good seafood restaurant in the mall) for lunch. After that, I did walk more around the mall, just to get some more steps in on a chilly day. It was more crowded than I’d prefer, but better than being cold.

Fairy Tale Variations - Little Red Riding Hood: Stories with Spirit did one of their Fairy Tale Variations storytelling shows on Saturday night. This one was based on Little Red Riding Hood. There were a couple of stories that portrayed her as a healer and mender. There was one in which grandmother and the wolf were long-time friends. My favorite of the stories was Cooper Braun’s version, which drew on Norse mythology.

Iolanthe: On Sunday afternoon, I drove to darkest Maryland (well, okay, Rockville) to see the Victorian Lyric Opera company production of Iolanthe which is my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. I love the political humor of it and there are several songs I end up humming for days after listening to it. They did quite a good job. I will note that Claudia Finsaas who played Phyllis is extremely tall and towered over almost all the rest of the cast, which looked a bit odd. (But she did have an excellent voice). There was also some particularly clever costuming.

Jewish Magic: This morning I went to a very interesting lecture by Yoel Finkelman on Jewish magic. The talk was part of Jewish Book Week and included a lot of discussion about amulets, including documents with texts directly appealing to demons to stay away and bowls with incantations intended to trap demons. He talked about contradictions in the Torah about what type of magic is permitted. There is also a concept of letters being the building blocks of creation, which led to instructions on how to make a golem (a Frankenstein-like creature made from clay. Bu the way "golem" is also the modern Hebrew word for "robot.") He also talked about the differences between magic and technology. (In short , if it works, it’s technology.) Finally, he talked about Kav Hayashor (which translates as The Straight Measure) which contains a story about the demons who live in the basement of a house and cause trouble for the homeowners because they claim to have a deed to the basement. So the Rabbinical court has to get involved in this supernatural real estate dispute. I found the whole talk fascinating and wished it had been more than an hour long.

Shameless Self-Promotion: Don’t forget to get tickets for the Women’s Storytelling Festival. We’ll be performing live at Old Town Hall in Fairfax, Virginia on March 18-20th, but it is being live streamed so you can watch from anywhere. And you get access to the videos for an entire month.

Back in October, fansee asked me (in response to my retirement) how I came to be a satellite systems engineer and, more specifically, about my experiences as a woman in that field. I have plenty of other catching up to do, but I’m in the mood to write about this.


As far back as I can remember, I was interested in science. As a child in the 1960’s, I had a particular interest in space. The first book I remember, from about age 5, was You Will Go to the Moon. Later on, I recall writing to NASA and getting pictures of spacecraft and planets. The first news story I remember was John Glenn orbiting the earth, And the moon landing was one of the major events of my childhood.


But, when I asked if girls could become astronauts, my mother said, “no, but maybe when you’re old enough...” For a while, after reading a biography of Maria Mitchell (part of a series my elementary school library had on childhoods of famous Americans), I thought of becoming an astronomer. Or, at least, going to Vasaar College, like she had. But then I read about Marie Curie in the back of a Classics Comics (possibly one about the story of the atom) and decided I wanted to be a chemist. I did go through other potential careers throughout elementary school and junior high, ranging from being an actress to becoming the first woman to win the Indianapolis 500. But I pretty much stuck to chemistry as the plan. For a while, I specifically wanted to be an analytical chemist for the police department, like Barry Allen (the alter ego of The Flash), which would also solve the problem of how I would get super powers without having been born on Krypton or being an Amazon princess. By high school, I was primarily interested in biochemistry and, specifically, neurochemistry.


That pretty much continued to be the plan. I did well in chemistry class (and other science classes). I also went to two National Science Foundation programs. The Columbia University Science Honors Program was held on Saturdays and I spent 3 years taking the train into the city (and the subway uptown) for it. I took a wide range of classes, not just biochemistry related. I remember one about statistics for psychology, one on elementary particle physics, and a biochemistry class where we extracted DNA - something far more exciting in 1975 than it would be now. There were also afternoon lectures a few times each semester, with the most memorable of those having to do with topology. There were also social benefits, including meeting my first real boyfriend. When there weren’t afternoon lectures, he and I hung out in the city and perpetrated public displays of affection in Central Park. But that’s a whole other story. (Before I met him, I sometimes went to the headquarters of the socialist Zionist group that ran a summer camp I’d gone to for a couple of summers and spent the afternoon handing out leaflets on the street.)


The other NSF program was the Program in Biochemistry (PIB), the summer after my junior year of high school. It was held at the Loomis-Chaffee School in Connecticut and was a mixture of lectures and research projects in small groups. I had actually spent the previous summer taking a summer school class (at my high school) on biochemistry research, which I remember as being almost entirely focused on individual projects, with a few field trips thrown in. I did a project in which I injected the nerves of clams (which are big red threads) with neurotransmitters. I don’t remember what I was trying to prove. As for the field trips. we did one or two to various institutions within a couple of hours of our school. I know we went at least once to Waldemar, which was a medical research facility that had its own summer program for high school students. And I know we went to the Coney Island Aquarium, but I don’t remember if that was an official event.


Anyway, PIB was a fun and intense summer. We took pride in sleep deprivation and people signed up for one hour naps on the sofa in the lounge, for example. We learned how to “sacrifice” mice and grind up their livers in a blender and an unlucky member of my team got a taste when mouth pipetting some of the resulting liquid. We did have papers to write and the various instructors (who were upperclassmen at prestigious universities; the head of my team was a junior at Harvard, if I recall correctly) graded them according to their own systems. There was one instructor who favored the use of classical compositions as grades. To this day, I have no idea whether “Glinka’s Summer Night in Madrid” was or was not a good grade. We also had various extracurricular trips. I know I went to concerts at Tanglewood a few times. There were tours of various colleges. And there was a trip to New York to see Equus on Broadway.


So, when I was applying to colleges, I was still planning to be a chemistry major. But my brother was busily setting a Michigan State record for changing majors and someone I knew from high school was rethinking his plan to major in math at Yale. I chose MIT over Yale largely because I figured that, if I did change my mind about my major, I would still want to do something scientific.


Freshman year included 5.41, which was an Intro to Organic Chemistry class. I was reasonably well prepared and went on the next semester to the next class, 5.42. (I was also taking a lab class.) I discovered that, while I could think of lots of reactions that could happen, I often had no idea which one would happen. More significantly, I was not enjoying either of those two classes. At the same time, I read about some work that people in the mechanical engineering department were doing on prosthetics that used the body’s nervous system. That sounded fascinating and I looked further at ME as a major. (Or, in MIT lingo, Course 2.) The biggest advantage is that it would give me a broad engineering background, meaning I didn’t really have to make up my mind. There was a program (2A) that let you design your own major within the ME department and I used that to design what was, essentially, a biomedical engineering major.


One of the first classes I took was 2.02, Introduction to System Dynamics. This was focused on modeling and it just clicked with my desire to view the world as simple. There were a few times that I rushed back to my dorm room after class to work on a problem set right away to see if it all made as much sense as I thought it did. (I assure you that was not normal behavior for me.) Anyway, people said that if I liked that class, I should take 2.14, which was Introduction to Control Systems. I did and it continued to click with me. So I kept taking classes in system dynamics and controls and enjoying them. And I pursued that into grad school (at UC Berkeley).


While I was in grad school, I got a fellowship from NASA, which came about mostly because one of my professors knew somebody and helped me write the application. When I was nearing completing my doctorate and was job hunting, I did look at things in various industries, but most of the interesting controls issues were in the aerospace industry. I went to work at The Aerospace Corporation (aka The Circle-A Ranch) largely because it offered the opportunity to work across a wide range of systems. And that worked out we’ll for me, obviously, since I stayed there (in various jobs) for 35 years.



This has been fairly long and I haven’t gotten to writing about the specific issue of being a woman in the field. The short version is that I certainly had to deal with individual assholes, but I was always able to find support. As an undergrad at MIT, I chose to live in an all-women’s dorm, partly to have other women to vent to. Most of that was in the form of mircroaggressions, e.g. the instructor who headed a research project I worked on who kept a ruler with Playboy pictures on his desk or another professor who would make comments like “those co-eds are always turning in things late.” The most egregious example was a professor who had started every lecture for years by addressing the class as “:Gentlemen.” I was the only girl in the class and he’d then start with “Gentlemen,…and Miss Nadel.” On the plus side, he definitely knew who I was and I did well in his class. (I am fairly sure he was entirely unconscious of why this was annoying.) I should also mention that my undergrad advisor was a woman.


In grad school, I remember a reception where our department head proudly announced that he had doubled the number of women on the department faculty. They’d hired one person. (They did hire a couple more while I was still there.) But there were a couple of other women working on Ph.D.s and, even though we were in different subfields, we often had coffee together.


Job hunting was another story. A few places made a point of having me talk with a token woman in their group. More than one interviewer expressed surprise at seeing a female job candidate. One organization even sent me a thank you letter addressed to “Mr. Nadel” after my interview.


Circle-A was pretty good from that standpoint. Yes, I often found myself counting the number of women in the room at meetings (which included government and contractor employees, too), but I can think of only a handful of inappropriate comments. I do know of one woman whose (female) boss told her she should wear makeup. And I’ve heard of a few incidents of sexual harassment. On the plus side, we did have an African-American woman as our CEO for several years.


Overall, I had a career that suited me well.

I am still having trouble with executive function. That is, there are lots of things I should be doing, but it’s hard to motivate myself to do them. Today, I did manage to set up an account I need at work (a temporary thing for a specific project) and I made an appointment to get my car serviced next week, so I feel somewhat productive.

I have been fairly busy with entertainment of various sorts, however. The Sunday before last was a story swap with Community Storytellers, the Los Angeles group that introduced me to storytelling.

Tuesday night was a Profs and Pints lecture by Allen Pietrobon on “The Truth Beyond White Picket Fences.” This is the third of his talks I’ve been to and he is always engaging, informative and entertaining. He talked about the post-World War II housing shortage and how that led to the development of suburbia, with its environmental impacts and explicit racism. My home town was a fishing village turned suburb, so this had some personal resonance for me. We were always aware that Mr. Garrett, who had developed our neighborhood (if not other parts of town) had what was, by far, the nicest house in the area. (We always made a particular point of hitting up his house when trick or treating, for example.) I don’t think there were explicit racist covenants there, though there were in many other places. The really chilling story involved the Pennsylvania Levittown, which harassed a black family for 4 years before they gave up and moved away. There were perfectly nice looking women interviewed by a reporter about how they wouldn’t have bought their houses if there weren’t racial covenants. There was a little discussion at the end about the trend now for younger people to want to live in cities and the uncertainty about whether that will continue with the pandemic. Overall, a very interesting talk. (The recorded talk is available on line if you are interested.)

Wednesday night, I played board games – Code Names and Wise and Otherwise.

Thursday night was an on-line musical theatre trivia game run by York Theatre, which is a theatre in New York that I like a great deal. I mostly go to their Musicals in Mufti, which are concert versions of (generally) obscure old musicals. There were four rounds with 8 questions each. I had a perfect score in the first two rounds, but the last two had more questions I needed to guess on, so I didn’t win any of the prizes. It was still fun.

Friday night saw me listening to a program of Broadway musical performances by Upper Room Theatre Ministry. It was reasonably entertaining, but there was nothing really surprising. Before and after that, I listened to bits and pieces of the Lowell Folk Festival (which went on all weekend).

I spent the weekend doing some household odds and ends, including grocery shopping. Sunday night was a Chavurah meeting, which included some rather bizarre political discussion. Er, no, Biden is not a puppet of “those three girls.” And, no, it is not unreasonable for vaccine manufacturers to get paid for their products. To be fair, this was pretty much on the part of one person and other people pushed back.

Which brings us back to doe, er board games. We had a quick round of trivial pursuit and spend the rest of the time playing Fibbage.

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.

Elections: Most of the election in my district was uninteresting, since I live in an area that is so blue that it is practically indigo. The Republicans no longer bother running candidates for Delegate or State Senator here. But we did have an interesting race for our representative to the County Board of Supervisors, with a Republican candidate whose platform included restoring female modesty to schools and rec centers. I actually approve of many school dress codes, but I believe they should apply to boys, as well as girls. And rec centers? How do you apply female modesty to swimming pools and gyms and still allow girls and women enough freedom of movement to exercise?

Fortunately, the rightest of right wingers lost (not surprisingly). But where does the Virginia Republican Party find these people?


Condo Association Annual Meeting: Wednesday night was our annual condo association meeting. There were only as many candidates for the board as there were openings, so it should have been short and sweet. Except, there is the matter of this lawsuit. We share our clubhouse with another condo association (representing the building next door) and they don’t like how much they have to pay to use the facilities. So there was a whole big presentation on that. The only thing we can really do is wait while the lawyers fight it out.


A Chorus Line: I went to see A Chorus Line at Signature Theatre on Friday night. The big deal with this production is that it is the first time Michael Bennett’s estate has given permission to use new choreography (in this case, by Denis Jones). I saw the show during its original run, but that was long enough ago that I remember little of the original choreography.

The main thing to keep in mind is that this was always intended to be an ensemble show, based on real stories of real dancers. Despite which, a few of the stories are always going to end up dominating the evening. The most obvious one is the history between Cassie, who failed at her attempt at stardom and is willing to be back in the chorus, and Zach, the director. Paul doesn’t get a solo song, but his monologue is the longest in the show. It’s hard to remember how revolutionary his story of coming to terms with his sexuality – and his parents’ eventual acceptance of who he was – seemed in the late 1970’s. The most dated line is the one about "what do Puerto Ricans know about musical theatre?" but Lin-Manuel Miranda wasn’t even born when the show was first produced. But I still think the line in "I Hope I Get It" which runs "What am I anyway? Am I my resume?" (not, of course, unique to dancers) captures the experience of people in their 20’s. And "At the Ballet" remains one of the saddest songs ever in a musical, with its contrast between the emotional abuse of childhood and the beauty of the ballet. Throw in the humor of "Sing!" and "Dance Ten, Looks Three" and the spectacle of "One” and the score remains memorable. Despite all of that, the song which sticks in my head afterwards is one that isn’t even from this show. It’s Kander and Ebb’s "Why Don’t They Mention the Pain"” which was apparently written for Chita Rivera and is sometimes included in And the World Goes ‘Round under the title "Pain." Let’s just say that my strongest sensory memory of many years of dance classes of various sorts has to do with the smell of ben-gay.

As for the performances, I’ll particularly note Jeff Gorti as Paul and Signature regular Maria Rizzo as Sheila. But it is unfair to single people out in what is, after all, an ensemble show. It’s a good show. Go see it if you can.


Metro Whine: Because I had gone from work, I took the bus to/from Shirlington (where Signature Theatre is) on Friday night. Taking the bus back to connect with the metro, I was really annoyed when the driver made racist comments about "Spanish" immigrants. Oy.


One Day University: The metro was also annoying on Sunday, when they were doing track work that made what should be a 45 minute trip take nearly twice that. Still, it isn’t as though I had any desire to drive into the city and I definitely have no desire to ever park anywhere near Lisner Auditorium, where One Day University was being held.

Anyway, I made it before the talks started. The first speaker was Stephanie Yuhl of College of the Holy Cross on The Shifting Lens of History: How We Reimagine the Past. Her key point was that there is a distinction between history, which allows for multiple perspectives, and heritage, which she defined as a particular social groups claims about their past. She talked about the role language plays in this (e.g. whether we refer to "slaves" or "enslaved persons"), what stories we tell (e.g. lack of discussion of the domestic slave trade), and what monuments we have. One interesting bit of trivia was that a statue of King George III was melted down and the lead which most of it was made of was used to make bullets during the Revolutionary War. Re: monuments, she spent a lot of time on World War II and on the American War in Vietnam. I think that the fate of monuments to Lenin in Russia would probably be an even better example, as there are still statues of him in places that most Russians would think of as the hinterlands (not just parts of Siberia, but also in places like Belarus). Overall, it was an interesting and thought-provoking talk.


The second speaker was David Helfand of Columbia University on What We Know About the Universe (and What We Don’t Know). He emphasized the centrality of light to the study of cosmology and how our ability to perceive only visible light limits our perception. He showed a lot of photos from the Hubble Space Telescope and mentioned things like dark matter and dark energy. Because One Day University was being chintzy and didn’t serve coffee and I refuse to pay four bucks for a cup of the swill the Lisner Auditorium sells, my blood caffeine level was too low to stay awake for much of this.


The third and final talk was by Sean Hartley of Kaufman Music Center on Four Memorable Musicals That Changed Broadway. For a theatre geek like me, it was pretty easy to predict which musicals he would talk about. Pretty much everybody acknowledges Showboat as the turning point of the American musical, using songs to tell a story, versus just interjecting popular music that doesn’t advance the plot. In addition, it dealt with the serious subject of miscegenation and it had a sort of integrated cast. Only sort of because the white characters and black characters interact only in the context of master and servant, not as equals.

The next obvious choice is Oklahoma! which advanced the idea of the book musical and triggered a whole era of that genre. I think he missed a key point by not mentioning choreography at all. Oklahoma! is generally credited with introducing the dream ballet, an instrumental piece in which dance moves the plot along and reflects character. On the plus side, he had an audience sing-along (to "Oh What a Beautiful Morning") which is always a fun thing.

His third choice was Company, which was the first successful concept musical, as well as the first Stephen Sondheim musical that Hal Prince produced. He was a bit mocking of Sondheim’s concepts, however, which he described primarily as people regretting what they’ve done in their loves.

Finally, he talked about Hamilton. While I can’t argue with its success, I think it’s too early to tell how much long-term influence it will have on Broadway. Also, Hartley got several things wrong there. For one, Lin-Manuel Miranda was born in New York and was not an immigrant. (I’d argue that even had he been born in Puerto Rico, he wouldn’t be an immigrant as he would still be a natural-born U.S. citizen.) I also think it’s unfair not to mention his earlier success with In the Heights, which did win the Best Musical Tony (and three others).

On the plus side, he did also talk about the role of regional theatres in keeping musicals a viable art form. That’s precisely why I support Signature Theatre and Creative Cauldron (among others). Still, I wish he’d said something I didn’t already know.


Veteran’s Day: I did not get off from work yesterday. Alas, neither did the people doing extremely noisy construction work inches from my office. Sigh.


Weather Whine: It should not be this cold until December. I need to fast forward to April or so.






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First, re: the Christchurch attacks, about all I can say is that it proves that it can happen anywhere. Nobody is safe. Some (white, Christian, cis-gendered men) are relatively safer, but they run the risk of believing they’re in danger and perpetrating horrible acts out of that. To quote Jonathan Richman (in a somewhat different context), "people are disgusting."

On a broader note, the whole idea of entitlement is also a lot of what was behind that college cheating scandal. I didn’t grow up in an environment where anybody had enough money to think that way – or, frankly, to believe that there was any hope of finding their way to an elite university. Except, some of us did. I mean, I’m the daughter of a refugee and I ended up at MIT. A guy I grew up with was the son of a conductor on the railroad and went to Harvard (and, later on, Columbia Law School). We did have a community ethos that led to relatively high taxes that funded good public schools, with the complexity that my home town was too small to have its own high school and, in retrospect, there was probably some racism involved in the choice of which school we did end up contracting with. An interesting thing about school budgets is that, since our school district had its own, there were years when we got schoolbooks and the kids from the district where the school was located, which had not approved their budget and was on austerity, did not.

But there were also people who went into the military or got apprenticed to trades or took over the family business. And the majority of the ones who went to college went to local schools (including community college) or state schools. Sure, parents would boast about kids who were at more prestigious places, but that just wasn’t the be all and end all of their lives. What a difference 40-something years makes!

Is our culture really that screwed up or is it just the celebrity news mill at work? Can we still think about the good of the community instead of individual greed? Or am I just a hopeless dreamer?

A couple of things came up on facebook recently which have me thinking about what it is that children should be taught.

One item had to do with a person in a crafting group who said she was forcing her children to learn essential life skills – and included cross stitch among those. Cross stitch does involve a few things I consider essential life skills – sewing, counting, planning – but each of those could be taught in other ways. Knowing how to sew on a button or fix a hem is important, but cross stitch itself is a decorative art and isn’t worth forcing somebody to do if they don’t enjoy it. I do think it is fair to make children try a variety of things - different sports and musical instruments and the like (and I recognize that these are not necessarily available to everyone based on their economic situation, but there are ways of addressing that)- but don't push it if they want to quit after a fair try.

The other thing was an argument I had with a friend regarding the teaching of religion. I contend that teaching about religion (and, specifically, what the basic tenets of the major religions of the world are) does not violate the first amendment and is important to understand history and literature. For example, if you don’t know about, the Protestant reformation, you can’t really understand anything that went on in Europe for at least 200 years (from roughly 1500 to 1700 CE). She thinks it is adequate to say people fought wars because they had religious differences. I’m talking learning about religions at the half dozen or so bullet point level and including religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Zoroastrianism, animism, etc., in addition to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, by the way. (And, for that matter, Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology.) Similarly, a lot of literature assumes you have a familiarity with Biblical stories. I don’t think it harms, say, a Wiccan child to read Sylvia Plath’s poem "Lady Lazareth," but they certainly won’t understand it if they don’t know that Christians believe Jesus brought someone named Lazareth back to life. And how on earth could you learn about Western art without ever looking at a painting of a saint or a Madonna and child? (Or, for Eastern art, looking at depictions of Hindu gods or of Buddhas and bodhisattvas.) How do you talk about music without understanding the huge role of churches in its development?

Also, the reason I believe it is possible to teach about religion without any risk of indoctrination is because that’s how it worked in my high school. We did non-Western cultures in 9th grade and that included learning what the basic tenets of various Indian, East Asian, and African religions are. We did European history in 10th grade and spent about 6 weeks on the Protestant Reformation (as well as a couple of months on the French Revolution). In 11th grade, we did American history and focused on the Constitution and a large number of Supreme Court cases, which we had to memorize. We read plenty of mythology, including the Odyssey. And we learned to identify various works of European art. And none of that converted anybody to anything they hadn’t grown up with but it did prepare us well for success at competitive universities.

I’ll also note that our 10th grade teacher had a particular obsession with the Balkans. This proved useful years later when that region fell apart and I could talk somewhat intelligently about places like Bosnia and Hercegovina.

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.

I had a rather hectic week. (So what else is new?)

One Day University: Saturday was One Day University. This time they did it at Lisner Auditorium, which is a good choice as the seats are reasonable comfortable and it’s easy to get to by metro.

The first speaker was Stephen Kotkin of Princeton, His talk was on American Foreign Policy: Where Are We Headed? He had a strong emphasis on the role of economic considerations, starting with the Clinton-era theory that as other nations got wealthier, they would become more like us. He focused on Iran, Russia, and China. His major points were that Iran is constrained by the Sunni-Shia conflict and the potential for Kurdistan to be a disruptive force in the Middle East. In short, he concluded that it shouldn’t be a priority. As for Russia, he said we can’t ignore it, but we overfocus on it. China, however, is an economic powerhouse and we should prioritize remaining competitive with it. The way to do that is to invest in infrastructure and scientific competitiveness. While he was an entertaining speaker, I thought his graphics were terrible. I also wish he had talked more about emerging nations. When someone asked a question about India, for example, his answer was entirely focused on their role as a buffer against China. I was also concerned that he made it all about economics and ignored moral questions, e.g. the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So I found his talk interesting but not entirely convincing.

The second speaker was Jacob Appel from Brown University on Ethical Dilemmas and Modern Medicine: Questions Nobody Wants to Ask.. He summed the issue up with two questions: 1) When do people have a right to healthcare that society refuses to give them? And 2) When can people refuse care that society wants to give them? Then he talked about several examples. Issues include the cost of treatment, quality of life, chance of recovery, whether or not the reasons somebody gives for their decision should matter, and how long-held someone’s beliefs are. My personal bias is to go with somebody’s stated wishes, whether or not I agree with them, but that’s easier said in theory than in practice. At any rate, I thought his talk was very interesting and the highlight of the day for me.

The third speaker was Carol Berkin, who is retired from Baruch College. Her talk was on What The Founding Fathers Were Really Like (and what we can still learn from them today). I have a quibble with her definition of founding fathers, as she focused entirely on the people who were at the Constitutional Convention. That leaves out a number of people who were important to independence, even if they may not have shaped the later form the United States took. But within her framework, the people she singled out as particularly notable were Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, and (partly) James Madison. She had quite a lot to say about Gouverneur Morris, though I’d be somewhat more convinced had she pronounced his name correctly. At any rate, her key point was that most of the men at the Constitutional Convention were fairly ordinary, albeit rich. Still, 5 or 6 geniuses out of 55 delegates seems remarkable to me. Do we have anybody of that intellectual caliber in Congress nowadays? She was a good speaker, but I found her unconvincing, overall.

There was a break for lunch, during which I walked over to a Korean dumpling place I’d been meaning to try. Since when is it socially acceptable for somebody to occupy one of 6 seats at a restaurant while eating their own food out of a Tupperware? The food was just okay, by the way, so, for future reference, I would probably go to Beefsteak or Roti instead. Or maybe try one of the food trucks that were lined up around the corner.

The last speaker of the day was Anna Celenza from Georgetown University, speaking on The History of Jazz: America’s Greatest Original Art Form. This was the talk I was looking forward to the most. Perhaps it was the post-lunch haze or perhaps it was overly high expectations, but I was disappointed. She had some good points about the role of technology (specifically, recording, including piano rolls) in th spread of jazz She touched on several interesting topics (e.g. the racial divide in jazz, the role of agents) and ignored others (orchestration, role of women). Overall, her approach reminded me of my high school history teacher who spent months on the French revolution, 2 days on World War I, and one day on everything since.

Volunteer Training: Sunday saw me back in the city for a training session for the upcoming U.S. Science and Engineering Festival. The training was fairly painless. By the way, I think I was one of a handful of volunteers there who was not accompanied by school children. (I think the minimum age for volunteers is 13, but some of those kids looked younger to me.)


Work and Snow: We got a spring snowstorm on Wednesday. That meant the second day of my two-day meeting this week turned into a telecon. If I’m going to work from home, that’s probably the best sort of work to have. I was even able to reorganize my scarf drawer while listening to one of the presentations.

I was also busy because I had to cover a meeting for my boss and draft inputs for a semi-annual report. When I tell people that I go to meetings and write email for a living, I am only half in jest.

A Minor Ambition: Just once, I would like to finish reading the Sunday Washington Post on Sunday.


Now I am ready to search my house for a bag of pencils that I hope the other dimensional beings have returned. And to pack for my excursion to Connecticut for the ACPT.

Yes, it’s catch-up time!

Celebrity Death Watch: P. F. Sloan wrote "Secret Agent Man," "Eve of Destruction," and numerous other songs. Amir Aczel wrote readable books about mathematics. (I recommend The Mystery of the Aleph.) Holly Woodlawn was a transgender actress who was in a few Andy Warhol movies, but is more significant for being the subject of the opening verse of Lou Reed’s "Walk on the Wild Side." Dolph Schayes was a Jewish basketball hall-of-famer. He also had a degree in aeronautical engineering from NYU. Peter Dickinson was a mystery writer. Lillian Vernon ran a mail order catalogue emporium. Kurt Masur conducted the New York Philharmonic. Dickie Moore was a hockey star.

The Amazing Race: I realize I have not commented on this past season. Let me just say that I am happy with who won. I was, however, annoyed by the last leg telling them to fly to Long Island. I am pretty sure they flew to JFK, not Islip. Yes, Queens is physically on the island, but it is not considered part of Long Island by real Guylanders.

One Day University: This was actually before I went on vacation, but I hadn’t managed to find time to write about it until now. There were 4 lecturers.

First up, Tina Rivers Ryan of Columbia University spoke on The Genius of Michelangelo. She emphasized his sculpture, pointing out the particular challenge of working with marble (vs. bronze), though she did also discuss the Sistine Chapel (including the Last Judgement). Having been privileged enough to see the major works she discussed in person, I found her talk both informative and entertaining.

Next up was Austin Sarat of Amherst College on 4 Trials That Changed the World. This was my favorite talk of the day, largely because of his breezy lecture style. The four trials he discussed were the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Nuremberg trials, the prosecution for murder of O.J. Simpson, and the impeachment trial against Bill Clinton. I’d quibble some on his discussion of O.J. While it certainly raised issues about the treatment of celebrity (both among the defendant and various of the legal players), I think that the racial atmosphere in Los Angeles after the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots played a significant role that he neglected. (Remember, I lived in L.A. at the time. And I was called for jury duty downtown at the time the O.J. trial was going on, though I got sent over to traffic court to be bored waiting around for two weeks.)

The third speaker was Jennifer Lawless of American University, with a talk on Men, Women, and Politics (A World of Difference). Her primary thesis was that women are underrepresented in political office largely out of a lack of ambition. In other words, women don’t think they’re qualified, so there is a self-fulfilling prophecy. She had some interesting data (notably, about the negative effect of term limits on underrepresented groups), but I was not convinced overall. Or more precisely, I don’t think she got at the reasons why women might be hesitant to run for office. It would be interesting to see if there is similar research for things like high school and college student council elections and local things like school boards and such.

The final speaker was Mark Brackett of Yale on What is Emotional Intelligence? I found his presentation disappointing, largely because his attempts at being interactive didn’t work for me with as large an audience as there was. I also felt that it was a bit of a pop-psych advertisement, but I was expecting that, so it was less of an issue. His personal anecdotes were, however, interesting and, often, amusing.

Virgin Galactic: This month’s MIT Seminar Series talk was by Steve Isakowitz, the president of Virgin Galactic. He was a very entertaining speaker and actually made me wish I had a spare $250K to sign up for a suborbital flight. He also talked about Launcher 1, their small satellite launch vehicle, which will be dropped from a 747. When he told his mother he’d bought a 747, she said, "Good. Now you can come visit me."

I should note that I find Virgin Galactic fairly credible in the commercial launch world for the simple reason that Burt Rutan is the designer of their spacecraft. He’s always made a strong impression on me for his engineering and design skills. One question someone asked is what goes into making somebody such a good designer and nobody had a really great answer.

Three Holiday Parties: First party was at home of my former great-grandboss. Food was potluck and I went with lukshen kugel (noodle pudding). I discovered that none of the recipes I had for a dairy kugel had what I consider the key sweet ingredient, namely crushed pineapple. But it’s not like it’s the sort of thing for which one follows a recipe anyway. (I was mostly looking to see what people use as the noodle to egg ratio. 6 eggs for a 12 oz bag of noodles seems typical.) Anyway, it went over reasonably well. I also told a story. And we played a couple of rounds of Telestrations, a reasonably amusing party game. Overall, it was pretty nice as these things go.

Second party was the annual condo complex party. I remembered that I had to get there early to have any hope of getting food. They do heavy hors d’oeuvres and they’re gone in less than an hour. I chatted with a few folks, mostly about travel. Mostly, this is a "might as well get a meal out of my condo fees" event.

Third (and final) party was the holiday lunch at work. They cater mains and sides and do potluck appetizers and desserts. I did spring rolls because I am still trying to finish up the rice paper from a misunderstanding a while ago. (I assumed that saying the package made 12 servings meant it would make 12 spring rolls. But they defined a serving as an ounce. The package really makes about 100 spring rolls. I make spring rolls a lot.) At any rate, the ones I brought all got eaten, though I had leftover peanut sauce which I can toss with pasta for supper one night. That party also has a white elephant gift exchange. I contributed a Star Wars coloring book and colored pencil set. I got a bottle of wine. Consumables are actually a good thing to get, since it isn’t like I need more stuff. (Well, except books and yarn. One can never have too much of those.) One of the vice presidents got an Obama chia pet. This is something like the 4th year in a row he got a chia pet. He’s now announced his pending retirement.

Texas Jack’s BBQ: I went to this new barbecue place in Arlington with friends from flyertalk. I’m not all that big on Texas barbecue, so I thought the food was just okay. It’s an order by the pound type of place and we got a pound of lean brisket, a pound of moist brisket, and a pound of pulled pork, plus fried potatoes and brussels sprouts. That was plenty of food for 6 people. I sure eat brussels sprouts a lot for somebody who refused to touch them until a couple of years ago.

At any rate, it was good to see some folks I hadn’t seen in a while and meet a couple of new people. And, of course, to talk travel (and miles and points and such.)

Bright Star: This is a new musical, written by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, and it’s at the Kennedy Center for a pre-Broadway run. The story revolves around two people – a young man aspiring to be a writer and the steely editor of the journal he is trying to sell his work to. The editor has a deep dark secret, involving an illegitimate child. The first act ends on a truly shocking note, but anybody with any sense of drama knows how the story will end, if not quite how it will get there. The music is pleasant, a bit more twangy than I might like, given that I tend to need subtitles once I get south of Richmond. (It’s set in North Carolina. There is a western North Carolina / eastern Tennessee accent that this northerner finds particularly incomprehensible.) There’s little actual dancing, with the exception of a drinking song (“Pour Me Another”) which is somewhat of a throwaway. It’s intended to contrast the big city girl going after our innocent young writer, but we all know he’s going to end up with the girl back in his home town, so that side plot doesn’t provide much real drama.
All in all, the show was enjoyable. But, other than being written by big names, I’m not sure I really see it as a Broadway production. It seems more suitable for a more intimate, smaller theatre. Roundabout might do well with it, for example.

This Past Weekend: I was hoping to get completely caught up on things at home. I didn’t get anywhere near done, but I did make a fair amount of progress. I also got out of the house for a bit to go to knitting group, which is always enjoyable.