fauxklore

I also did some things in July. I will spare you details about home repairs and household paperwork.

Fourth of July: Aside from dealing with condo woes, described in a locked entry, I went to a friend’s house for holiday socializing. That incl I uded dinner - and the inevitable smoke alarm going off as the steaks were grilled - and lots of good conversation, as well as sitting out on her balcony to watch fireworks. Lots of fireworks, since Kathleen lives in Crystal City part time for now, though she’s giving up her apartment in October to live full time in her house in South Carolina. You can’t see the DC mall fireworks from her apartment, because part of the building is in the way, but there are a lot of fireworks in Maryland (and some in southern DC) which you can watch. And, of course, there are lots of planes taking off and landing at DCA also. Overall, it was a nice evening, despite my being stressed out over my AC woes.

The Flushies: A few days later was The Flushies, one of the two big Loser parties of the year. (The other is the post-holiday party in January.) There was the typical potluck array, to which my contribution was cheese and crackers (and some leftover hummus) because I was going away right after the party. There was plenty of good conversation, followed by the awards to various people for their accomplishments. Judy Freed won Loser of the Year. Her inkblots included this particularly brilliant take on a bad idea with the book title Self Esteem for Dummies.

Big-D Con: This year’s NPL con was in Dallas. It is worth its own entry, which I will try not to be so bloody slow in writing.

Book Clubs” R.E.A.D. discussed Mad Honey by Jodi Picot and Jennifer Finley Boylan. It was an interesting book with great pacing and, surprisingly, everyone liked it. The Travelers’ Century Club read The Curious Case of William Baekeland by Harry Mitsidis, which has to do with a con man who ripped off a lot of extreme travelers, including TCC members. It was an interesting book, but not particularly well-written, in my opinion.

Speaking of TCC: The book club meeting ended a while before the monthly virtual exploration, which had to do with Fernando de Noronha and the Falklands. I’ve done a fair amount of reading on the latter, but I really knew nothing about the former except for its existence. Bottom line is that it looks very appealing, though it is also expensive and possibly a bit too resorty for my tastes, since I’m not a lie on the beach and do nothing sort of person.

This past weekend was our chapter’s regular lunch meeting. There was plenty of wide-ranging travel conversation. I particularly enjoyed talking with one of the new people, who appears to have similar tastes to mine.

Bad News: My brother had a heart attack. Apparently one artery was 100% blocked, while the other two were 60% blocked. They put in a stent in the blocked one and he goes back to the doctor this week to learn about the way ahead. He said he feels okay and he is home and resting.

Good News: I got some resolution on the household crisis. It turns out that there was a clog in the main drain clog, so it is the condo association’s responsibility to pay for repairs related to it.

Eye Have Really Good News: I had my second cataract surgery last week. It went well. My vision was still blurry the next day when I went in for my follow-up appointment, but cleared up by the next day. Really, these intraocular lenses are quite miraculous. As for the surgery, I remember being more conscious than I was for the first eye, but the only specific thing I remember them doing was cleaning my eyelashes. And there were some purple, green, and yellow blobs, presumably due to the laser dissolving the cataract.

Celebrity Death Watch: James Wright was the president of Dartmouth College from 1998 to 2009. Dick Ellsworth was a pitcher, primarily for the Cubs. Michael Callan originated the role of Riff in West Side Story on Broadway. Charles Sherrod was a civil rights activist. Mary Adelia McLeod was the first female bishop of an Episcopal diocese. Lucious Jackson played basketball for the Philadelphia 76ers. James McDivitt was an astronaut who flew on Gemini 4 and Apollo 9. Jan Rabson was a voice actor who played the role of Leisure Suit Larry, among many others. Robbie Coltrane was an actor who got a lot of attention as Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies. Noel Duggan was an Irish musician who was part of Clannad (and was, by the way, Enya’s uncle). Benjamin Civiletti was Jimmy Carter’s last attorney general. Alan Halsey was a poet who managed The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye for 18 years. Carmen Callil co-founded the magazine Spare Rib and founded Virago Press, which publishes feminist works, including books by such authors as Margaret Atwood, Adrienne Rich, and Naomi Wolf.


You can’t possibly need me to tell you who Angela Lansbury was. She was such an iconic actress, whose career spanned film, stage (5 Tony awards, plus a special one for lifetime achievement!), and television. This Interview with the New York Times was recorded in 2010, under the condition that it not be released until after her death.

Bruce Sutter was a relief pitcher for the Saint Louis Cardinals. He was the first pitcher to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame without having ever started a game. He was also a pioneer of the split-finger fastball. Overall, he was one of those rare players who actually changed the sport.


Family Death Watch: I recently learned that my distant cousin, Aharon Schwartzbard, died in August of 2021. I’d never met him in person but we were connected on FaceBook. I guess it’s another reminder that I’m part of the older generation.


Faraday Prize Lecture: The Royal Society gives out the annual Faraday Prize to a scientist who excels in communicating to the general public. The winner gives a public lecture, which was available on-line. This year’s went to neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott, whose lecture was titled Funny, peculiar? The Science of Laughter. Here are a few of the highlights:

• She talked a lot about laughter in other animals, including apes and rats (who, apparently enjoy being tickled. Who knew?)
  
• Laughter is associated with play. All animals play when juvenile.
  
• In terms of the rib cage, laughter is prioritized over breathing, so laughter is literally trying to kill you.
  
• Contagious laughter is a learned behavior and may be unique to humans. You are 30 times more likely to laugh if other people are around.
  
• We all laugh more than we think we do. (As someone who laughs a lot, I find this slightly frightening.)
  
• Laughter serves to de-stress situations.
  
• There are no convincing examples of humor in wild animals, though they do laugh.
  
• Humans are th only animals that produce emotional tears.
  

Overall, this was a fascinating and entertaining lecture. You can find a recording of it here


Book Club: My book club met Wednesday night and we talked about The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Overall, pretty much everybody liked the book and we had a good conversation about whether or not we’d want to have a similar experience of seeing how things would have turned out had we made other choices in the past. I admit to some curiosity about some decisions I made, but I don’t have regrets associated with them.


Storytelling: The Musical: On Thursday night, I watched Better Said Than Done’s virtual storytelling show. Storytelling: The Musical. The gimmick was that each of the six tellers had (primarily original) songs interspersed in their stories. Ed Stivender’s material was largely excerpted from his show (and book), Raised Catholic, Can You Tell? It was entertaining, but felt a little bit long. Gwendolyn Napier told a story about taking herself out to dinner and meeting a man who she fell in love with. Norm Brecke did songs based on “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and “The Three Little Pigs.” Lona Bartlett told about the songs she sang to her children and the struggle to find ones that weren’t full of death. Alton Chung talked about a community theatre production of Into the Woods. Saving the best for last, Anne Rutherford had a very funny version of The Princess and the Pea, somewhat along the lines of Once Upon a Mattress. All in all, it was a fun show.


Jonathan Richman: It is apparently Bostonian month at the Lincoln Theatre in D.C. I went to see Jonathan Richman on Friday night and will be seeing the Dropkick Murphys next week. Because it was open seating, I made a point of getting there early (after grabbing a quick bowl of vegan chili at Ben’s Chili Bowl, which is an iconic DC place) and ended up having a great, far-ranging conversation with a couple of other people who were there early. As usual, Jonathan was brilliant. He did several songs that drew on works by Rumi, including “He Gave Us the Wine to Taste.” There was a great mix of old and new, ranging from “That Summer Feeling” and “Dancing at the Lesbian Bar” (which had everybody singing along - and wishing we could dance along) to “Everybody Loves Dolly,” “People Are Shameless,” and an instrumental piece called “Guitar in Orange, Drums in Pale Purple.” I was particularly pleased to hear “The Fenway,” which I hadn’t heard in ages. And everyone enjoyed singing along to “Cold Pizza.” All in all, a great show, full of child-like sincerity and laughter.


Once On This Island: On Saturday afternoon, I went to see the Constellation Theatre Company’s production of Once On This Island at the Source Theatre. While I do own the original cast recording of this musical, I hadn’t listened to it in a long time and I admit I didn’t really know much about the show. I was very pleasantly surprised. The basic plot involves a French Caribbean island that is divided into two worlds, primarily along racial lines. A poor peasant girl rescues a member of the rich beauxhommes after he crashes his car and decides her fate is to save him. She offers her life to the god of death, in exchange for his. Throughout, the gods influence what happens, for better or worse. The story is interesting and the music is effective in moving it along and telling the audience how the characters feel. I was hooked right from the beginning, with the Afro-Caribbean beats of “We Dance.” I will definitely be listening to the cast recording more often!

After the show, we stopped by Ice Cream Jubilee, where I had a scoop of their maple rye pecan ice cream. I got home in time to eat a somewhat healthier supper and go to the monthly Voices in the Glen story swap, where I inflicted my seasonal story “Lyle and the Ghost” on my friends.


And now I am pretty much caught up.

There are several things I should have mentioned in yesterday’s entry about my education and career.

1. My father was a civil engineer. When I started college, he advised me to study anything except engineering. His reasoning was that if you’re any good at engineering, you don’t get to do it after a while. He had become, essentially, an urban planner. I don’t think he was particularly unhappy with the direction his career took, but it hadn’t been what he had planned. I did reach a point in my career where pretty much all I did was go to meetings and write email, but I enjoyed doing policy related work (e.g. I had some work related to international cooperation) and I really liked opportunities to be a bridge between different government and industry organizations. That did require me to be able to talk intelligently with people who were doing the down in the trenches sort of engineering work, so I certainly don’t feel that my background was wasted.
   
   
2. There was a while (in the early 1970’s, I think) when Dad had a female engineering assistant and a male secretary. I am fairly sure he had hired Carole because she had gone to his alma mater, the City College of New York (or, as it was usually referred to in our house, The Harvard of the Proletariat). She certainly experienced plenty of sexism in her time. People would come into the office and, even though Carole was sitting at a drafting table poring over blueprints and Marvin was typing at the front desk, people would speak to her when they had administrative questions.
   
   
   
3. The National Science Foundation does still have summer programs for high school students, but I haven’t found any evidence that PIB still exists. There was some study of alumni of the program, maybe in the early 1980’s. I think that almost all of the alumni had gone into biochemistry related careers, with a lot having gone to medical school and a lot into relevant academic fields. If I recall correctly, there were two exceptions - me, with my engineering career, and one guy (not my year and not someone I knew) who had become an architect.
   
   
   
4. The Columbia University Science Honors Program does, however, and I can certainly recommend it to students who live within the area it serves (basically, within 75 miles of the university). The benefits were less specific knowledge than getting a better idea of what college would be like. I should also have noted that the program was tuition-free, though there was the cost of transprtation. My parents increased my allowance to cover the weekly round-trip LIRR ticket and subway tokens. Also, because I was taking the same trains every week, I got to know some other regular weekly commuters, including a guy who was studying at Julliard, who I ended up dating a few times.
   
   
   
5. My MIT class was about 15% women and the majority of women majored in math or biology. Recent MIT classes have been almost (but not quite) 50% women. I don’t know of great statistics for overall engineering degrees to women over the years. SWE has some statistics, but they start in 2005. Also, part of the problem is including computer science in most statistics. Computer science hould be counted separately (with the exception of computer hardware engineering, which is a branch of electrical engineering). My reasoning is that software does not follow laws of physics.
   
   
   
6. In hindsight,, I should have stayed at MIT for a masters degree and then worked for a few years before going on for a Ph.D. I would have learned better time management in the workplace and just gotten more perspective. This was not really a woman’s issue, but a personal one. The thing I was most lacking was the self-knowledge and assertiveness to ask my advisor for some things that would have made my life better. For example, it would have been useful for me to have had a standing meeting with him every couple of weeks, instead of the catch as catch can method he preferred. But here’s the thing. We make the decisions we make knowing what we know at the time, so there’s really no point in using hindsight to second guess ourselves.
   
   
   
7. I had started grad school intending an academic career. What changed my mind there was seeing how hard younger faculty members were working, It’s not that I object to hard work per se, but I was just never that single minded. There is a part of me that regrets not having gone back to academia later on, but I did have opportunities to teach some short courses within the workplace. And, frankly, a lot of academics have only one idea in their lives and spend the rest of their careers having their grad students write papers on “m brilliant idea applied to X.” “my brilliant idea applied to Y,” and so on. (Yes, I have reviewed a lot of conference papers and journal articles over the years.)
   
   
   
8. The single best decision I made came from the realization that almost everyone I knew who was unhappy with their job was unhappy because of people issues, not the nature of their work. I had one interview at a place I thought I would like to work at. The guy I interviewed with had no enthusiasm whatsoever for what he was doing. I suppose he could have just been having a bad day, but I knew I could not work for somebody who had all the personality of Mr. Potato Head.
   
   
   
9. The one thing I think gets left out of the vast majority of STEM programs is how creative jobs in engineering can be. The biggest thing I think gets left out of university level engineering programs has to do with communication skills. MIT’s Mechanical Engineering department did have a writing professor review some of our lab reports. But I didn’t have to do oral presentations until taking my qualifying exams for my doctorate (and failing the first time around). Learning how to give briefings was a critical aspect of my early working years.
   
   

There’s probably something else I forgot to say, but that’s enough for now.

I was thinking about various places I've spent Christmas and remembered this story.

My parents' 25th wedding anniversary was in January 1981. I was in grad school at Berkeley at the time, so we couldn't do a celebration then. I don't remember why we didn't do something in the summer, as I am fairly sure I came to New York at some point then. But, whatever the reason, eventually my brother and I ended up deciding we would take them out for their anniversary on Christmas.

My brother did most of the planning. There was a production on Broadway of The Pirates of Penzance, which seemed like a sure thing as we had listened to Gilbert and Sullivan recordings lots of times as we were growing up. The bigger question was where to eat dinner. I am not sure how he knew this, but he said that Mom and Dad had eaten at Lou G. Siegel's on their honeymoon, so that was what we decided on.

Now, Lou G. Siegel's was a big deal in our family. It was a somewhat upscale Jewish restaurant, which was particularly known for the little pots of schmaltz (chicken fat) on the table. I could only remember having been there once before. My father had taken me in to work with him and at the end of the day we met up with Grandpa and the woman he was involved with, Rose. Grandpa was separated from his second wife and we all expected that he would eventually succeed in getting a divorce (less easy in New York in those days than it is now) and marry Rose. He did, indeed, get the divorce a couple of years later - and, not long after, announced his engagement ... to Edith. Rose sued him for breach of promise. And a dozen or so other women called our house asking, "is it true that Leo is getting married? I'm so disappointed!"

Anyway, I think we went to the matinee. Since it was on Christmas Day, a large number of the men in the audience were wearing kipot. (Gilbert and Sullivan is very popular among modern Orthodox Jews. I don't know why.) The show was great, with a particularly notable performance by Kevin Kline as the Pirate King. The other big name in the cast was Linda Ronstadt as Mabel, who I thought was less than up to the part.

So we walked down to West 38th Street and Lou G. Siegel's, which, by the way, is now the site of Ben's Kosher Delicatessens midtown Manhattan branch. We had a very nice meal, not that I can remember what I ate. My brother carefully explained why he'd chosen it. And my mother then told us that, yes, they had eaten there on their honeymoon - and she had promptly thrown up on the subway on the way back to the Bronx.

So it might be a good idea if you know the whole story. That advice applied to Rose, also, of course. Grandpa and Edith's marriage don't last either, for what it's worth.

This post is a mixture of a few things, but the common bond is synagogues.


Yom Kippur: For Yom Kippur, I “attended” services put on my Shirat HaNefesh. Their cantor is a friend of a friend and it turns out that I had me their rabbi a couple of times, though she was conducting services elsewhere. Their zoom set-up worked reasonably well, with the cantor (and, in some cases, other speakers) visible in one window and the text of the service scrolling in the main window. I’d characterize the service as more or less Reconstructionist. I could have lived without the sporadic guitar music and some other less traditional elements, but it was okay under the circumstances. One thing I did like a lot was that they had various congregants talk about sections of the service. In particular, I thought that having an EMT talk about life and death was appropriate. Also, they used Ishay Ribo’s Seder HaAvoda for that part of the service (which has to do with the high priest’s Temple service), which is a great piece of music, (They played his recording for that.) I could have drifted off, but I think they skipped the Martyrology, which is fine with me. I was, alas, disappointed in the lack of the priestly blessing.

Bottom line is that it was fine under the circumstances, but not really quite what I was looking for. I suspect I need to go to an Orthodox shut to get the level of tradition I want.


Grandpa: As I’ve mentioned before, my paternal grandfather was a cantor and there were some years he was hired to do the High Holiday services at our shul. I had this realization this year, when I was thinking about him, that, since he was born in 1906, he would have been 62 (the age I am now) in 1968. Which is when I was 10 years old. I tend to think of him as being much older. I’m not sure that means anything, but it’s interesting.


Synagogue Art and Architecture: In October, the Orange County (California) Jewish Community Scholar Program had a three part lecture series on synagogue architecture with Samuel Gruber, who is a well-known expert on the subject. I’m not sure where I heard about this - somewhere on Facebook, I assume - but it was right up my alley. The lectures are actually available on YouTube, including a bonus lecture (a continuation of Lecture 2) because Dr. Gruber was ambitious in how much material he intended to cover.

Lecture 1 had to do with Great Synagogues of the World. A key point was the multiple uses of the synagogue, which include a house of meeting (Beit Knesset), house of prayer (Beit Tefillah), and house of study (Beit Madras) and, in early times, also included use as a hostel. (I believe that is not necessarily limited to early times, as there are folktales where people sleep in the synagogue of a town they are visiting.) Dr. Gruber listed a lot of historic synagogues in places ranging from Alexandria, Egypt to Vilnius, Lithuania, from Sydney, Australia to Fez, Morocco. One interesting feature was what he called the “bipolar” plan, in which the bimah (reading desk) is at one end and the aron kodesh (ark where the Torah scrolls are kept) is at the other, with seating along the sides. Another interesting seating arrangement was in the Kehila Kenosha Yeshen (Old Synagogue) in Ionian, Greece, where seats faced outside, as well as inside. He also noted that painted synagogues were the norm in Eastern Europe. As for synagogue exteriors, he discussed the rise of the Moorish style in the 19th century.

Lecture 2 was titled Arise and Build: American Synagogues and Jewish Identity. It was interesting to learn that there was not, in general, any resistance to synagogue building in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. The dominant arrangement of interiors of those earlier synagogues was the “bipolar” one and the “theatre” style came later. Some of the synagogues were originally churches (and, of course, some synagogue buildings later became churches). As a result, there are some with stained glass derived from Christian Bible pictures. There were a variety of architectural styles, including Greek revival, Federal, and Egyptian revival. The biggest development in interiors was the rise of the Reform movement, which replaced the women’s balcony with an organ loft (and, in some cases, a choir loft). In the mid-19th Century, the Romanesque Revival style became popular with Central European congregations,, while the Gothic style was popular with German congregations. Almost none of the Gothic style synagogues are used as such now, however. The Moorish style became popular under the Reform leader Isaac Meir Weiss, who envisioned a “Jewish Alhambra.” By the 1880’s, all of these styles merged, with the Moorish dominating and that style (notable for having two towers, often topped with cupolas) was adopted by Orthodox congregations, too.

What made these synagogue buildings uniquely American was the eclectic mix, which also included styles from other American civic buildings, e.g. town halls. Dr. Gruber also noted that “Americans like change.” But the Moorish style predominated, with horseshoe arches, cupolas, and arabesque decorations. Eastern European congregations favored painted interiors, some of which still exist, with scenes of Zodiac signs (“mazole” in Hebrew) and Holy Land landscapers dominating. However, another common style, particularly in rural areas, was the vernacular wooden synagogue, derived from a common form in Poland and Lithuania. This was a rectangular building with a gabled roof. Those also often had elaborate paintings and carved arks. He showed several pictures of a mural from a shul in Burlington, Vermont. The building became an apartment building, but the mural was intact and has been conserved.

Lecture 3 was focused on Modernism. Dr. Gruber noted that we tend to think of modernism as dating from the 1930’s, but “yesterday’s modernism is today’s tradition.” In the late 19th century, classicism was considered modern, especially among the Reform movement. The 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago was a major influence and the so-called White City was picked up by the City Beautiful movement. However, he noted, that Shearith Israel in New York (aka the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue) had always been classical because its architect, Arnold W. Brunner, thought that was appropriate based on excavations in Palestine. What also arose during the early 20th century period was the Jewish Center movement, with synagogues also hosting classrooms, gyms, and even a swimming pool. However, few of those buildings survived the depression. Other modern features that arose were domes (applied to all styles, starting in the early 20th century), art nouveau, and art deco. Orthodox synagogues came to favor the stripped down International style. By the 1950’s classroom wings became as important as the sanctuary. Under the influence of Percival Goodman, a lot of synagogues came to resemble high schools.

The trend now is for smaller, more flexible spaces. This is true even at Orthodox synagogues. There is also a trend to use natural materials and art made by congregants. The lifespan of American synagogue buildings is typically 20-40 years. Finally, Dr. Gruber suggested that you should view photographing a synagogue as if you are the last person ever to see it.

Overall, this was an excellent lecture series and I am glad I stumbled upon it. It was very information dense, with lots of photos of specific synagogues and information about architects, so what I wrote above is a very brief summary. The Community Scholar Program has a lot of other lectures recorded and I intend to watch some of them when I have time.


Three Specific Synagogues: I have attended some High Holiday services at Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington, D.C. which is interesting for having been successfully restored and revitalized in 2004, after having become a church when Congregation Adas Israel moved to the Cleveland Park area in Northwest D.C. (where it remains) in the late 1940’s. It is also a major cultural center with an active program of lectures and concerts in normal times.


The Vilna Shul on Beacon Hill in Boston has, alas, become more or less a museum and cultural center, but has not had an active congregation since 1985. My understanding is that it was pretty much the victim of urban renewal, which destroyed the Jewish community in that part of Boston. I went to High Holiday services there (along with a few friends) during my undergraduate years. It was obviously struggling since, without the four or so young men from MIT who went there, they would have been unable to have a minyan even on Yom Kippur. I liked the connection to my Litvak heritage (my grandfather was born in Vilna, after all), though apparently the building had been altered enough as not to completely reflect that, with the wall murals having been painted over to a bland American beige. While I was sad about this, somebody once reminded me that we are supposed to think of all synagogues in galut (i.e. exile, the Diaspora) as temporary).


Finally, the synagogue I grew up going to was the Jewish Center of Island Park, aka Congregation Beth Emeth. It merged with another congregation some years ago and became the South Shore Jewish Center. I was last there in 2014, when my mother died, and found that they were no longer using the main sanctuary upstairs because too many members of an aging congregation couldn’t handle the stairs. Anyway, it occurs to me that I don’t know much about when the building was erected, as it was already there when we moved to town in 1961. The congregation was apparently founded somewhere around 1950ish (I have seen both 1948 and 1952). I was growing up during a time of rapid growth and there was an expansion added, which was used as a social hall for bar mitzvahs (and, presumably, weddings, though I have to admit not knowing of any). It was also used for services on the High Holidays. I think it was built in the late 1960’s. I should actually know, since my father (who was a civil engineer) chaired the building committee, but my memory is fuzzy on the details. Anyway, in light of Sam Gruber’s lecture series, it would be interesting to spend some time documenting its history - and the history of suburban Long Island synagogues more generally. Because, you know, I don’t have enough projects to spend time on.

Volta: I went to see Cirque du Soleil’s show Volta at Tyson’s Corner this past weekend. I generally enjoy their shows, but I thought the costumes and sets for this one were less interesting than usual. The story involves a young man who competes in a talent show but has a breakdown afterwards and is rescued by a roller-skating woman, who tries to teach him to find his true self by introducing him to various extreme sports artists. Those are the more typical Cirque performers – a fairly spectacular trampoline act, for example, and a bunch of daredevil BMX bikers. The most unusual was a "hair dangler," i.e. a woman who performed an aerial act while suspended by a hook attached to her hair bun. That was impressive, but also kind of scary.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I had two dreams that involved yetis trying to force me to read documents. One yeti looked fairly muppet-like, but the other was much creepier, with longer hair.

Business Trip: I flew to Los Angeles early Monday morning. Meeting there on Monday and Tuesday, then a trip up to the Bay Area on Wednesday. Because the Tuesday afternoon meeting was in Azusa, I stayed that night near the Ontario Airport and flew up from there to San Jose. I don’t think I’d ever been to ONT before. It was definitely the better route, but forced me to fly Southwest, which is the moral equivalent of a Greyhound bus. Actually, the last time I took a Greyhound bus, the passengers on it kept their shoes on.

Anyway, the meetings were productive but exhausting, going on until 7 every evening. I wish I had the stamina that the primary customer for this has. (Admittedly, he is probably close to 20 years younger than I am.) At some point, I speculated about what a lethal does of caffeine would be.


Oh, Brother: I leveraged off being in the area to have dinner with my brother, who lives in San Jose, and his girlfriend. We went to Aqui where, despite the place being nominally Mexican, I had a Thai peanut bowl, which was fairly tasty, although the broccoli in it was undercooked. Afterwards, he insisted on showing me his place, which really wasn’t necessary as far as I was concerned. And then I got sick in his car on the way back to my hotel. Yuk. Fortunately, I had a plastic bag to put my clothes in when I packed them for the trip home. I am assuming this was food poisoning, rather than his driving. I was fine in the morning, though in dire need of more sleep, some of which I did get on the flights home.

Celebrity Death Watch: I know one is supposed to identify Jeremy Tarcher as a publisher (primarily of self-help books), but to me his significance will always be as the husband of Shari Lewis (and, hence, the step-father of Lamb Chop). Until reading his obituary, I had not realized that he was also the brother of trashy novelist Judith Krantz. (I mean that her novels are trashy. I’m sure she is a perfectly lovely person.)

Al Seckel was a collector of and author of books about optical illusions. Back when the giant redwoods were saplings and I was an undergraduate, I took a series of biomedical engineering classes, one of which involved sensory and motor systems. Aside from getting to play with some intelligent prostheses (remember the Boston arm?), we had problem sets that involved predicting what an optical illusion would look like, essentially by taking its convolution with a model of the human visual system. I still think that was one of the coolest engineering classes I took at MIT. (The coolest class I took overall, however, was Evil and Decadence in Literature, but that’s another matter.)

And then there’s Yogi Berra. True, he played for (and managed) the Source of All Evil in the Universe. At least he also managed the Mets. Aside from being notable as a catcher, he was (of course) well-known as a folksy and humorous philosopher. I cannot tell you how many times (admittedly as a Red Sox fan), I have taken comfort from knowing "it ain’t over till it’s over." And, like Yogi, on weekends I often "take a two hour nap from one to four."

Yom Kippur: Wednesday was Yom Kippur. It was also (part of) the Pope’s visit to Washington. I considered just going to Shoreshim (which is in Reston, so well away from any potential chaos), but I was reasonably sure I would be disappointed in their abbreviations to the services. So I bit the bullet and went downtown to Fabrangen.

(I should interject that I had a similar situation some years ago. Pope John Paul II visited Boston during Yom Kippur in 1979. I don’t remember any particular impact on the area around the Vilna Shul on Beacon Hill, other than the joking about saying "Gut Yontif, Pontiff.")

Anyway, it turned out that the metro was not the nightmare everyone feared it would be. Not that it was perfect, as they are still dealing with some track issues that will probably have the Orange Line (and Blue and Silver) with fewer trains than scheduled for the rest of our natural lives. (I think they said about 6 weeks, but they said that the weekend track work they have been doing for the past decade would take a year.) But I got there reasonably close to the beginning of services, which is, as Jewish time goes, early. (Note, however, that they were starting late, because of the Pope’s visit.)

So… let’s see. Mostly closer to traditional service than Shoreshim. A bit too much showiness in some singing, e.g. rounds, which are a hard thing to do for those of us who are not inherently musical. Leaders for some sections were too chatty, but that’s kind of okay on Yom Kippur because it’s not like you’re trying to get out of there to get to a meal. Some of the things people said did resonate with me, e.g. the image of Japanese pottery in which cracks are filled in with gold to create a beautiful new object. And a poem (in the lead-in to Yizkor) that had to do with ironing underwear. My favorite part of the service was an addition to "Al Chet" (the list of sins we ask forgiveness for) which was written by members of the congregation. My least favorite was that they used a Reconstructionist machzor mostly, but not completely, leading to a lot of page-flipping to an additional book. (This is a common problem, by the way, but it still drives me nuts. It’s hard enough for Little Miss Short Attention Span here to pay attention to where we are without us suddenly being 100 pages away.) No musical instruments, at least, though there were microphones. And they have the entire congregation bless one another, instead of having the priestly blessing, so lose both tradition and drama. (I am more comfortable with skipping it altogether, actually, but really I want it done correctly, i.e. traditionally.) I left at Mincha, since I can’t lose on Jeopardy again by not knowing Jonah. And I needed a nap.

Overall, I’d say it was a reasonably satisfying and reasonably meaningful service.

I’ll also note that there is a part of me that expects to hear the High Holiday liturgy in my grandfather’s voice, since he was generally hired to do that at our shul when I was growing up. And then, it’s been a lot of years, and I can’t really remember his voice all that well. I actually remember it best on something entirely non-liturgical. I used to play the piano for him to sing Yiddish songs to, because my brother was too showy and impatient to accompany other people when we were kids. (I assume he has gotten past that, since he plays in bands and does sing-alongs.) So I think particularly of Grandpa whenever I hear the song "Papirossen." Somewhere I have a recording of him. I need to find that.

I have various other things to write about but tonight starts Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) and I wanted to make a translation of some testimony of my father’s available. I believe he submitted this in order to apply for reparations money.

This is my translation (with some assistance from Google translate, but much of the language was within my limited German reading skills). There are a few notes in italics which are things I’ve filled in.

Sworn Declaration

Today, the (date not filled in – it was some time in 1955) appeared before me the man named Erich Nadel, a student living at 1508 St. Marks Avenue, Brooklyn, NY and explained the following to me under oath:

I was born in Koenigsburg, East Prussia on September 15, 1929. (The actual date of his birth was September 1, 1930. He had lied about this to the Nazis during a particular selection and the earlier date was on all the paperwork, so he stuck with it. He celebrated both dates.) A year after my birth, my parents managed to continue to Kovno, Lithuania. I went to school there and was there when the war began. After the occupation of Kovno, the Nazis forced me to wear a yellow Jewish symbol. At the end of August 1941, I was brought to the Ghetto Slobodka-Williampole. The ghetto was fenced with barbed wire and guarded by armed police. The Jewish council was headed by Dr. Elkes. Although I was a minor, I was forced to work in the laundry (I am not sure this is the correct translation of waschanstalt but Google's suggestion of "wash institution" wasn't any better), of the Ghetto workshop and afterwards for the N.S. K. K. ( i.e. the National Socialist Motor Corps).

The work was under forced conditions and I was not paid for it.

In July 1944, while the Ghetto commander was S. S. Hauptsturmbanfuhrer (not sure how to translate this – it is sort of high main leader) Goeke, I was forcibly transported to Dachau, LagerNumber 1, near Landsberg. (I chose not to translate Lager to Camp since I think it is clear enough as it is.) There I was given the number 81520.

During the time I was in Lager Number 1, I worked for the Kommando Mohl to build an underground aircraft plant. Although I was a minor, I was forced to carry heavy sacks of cement for 12 hours each night for three months. In November 1944, I became sick and was transferred to Lager Number 4. I remained in Lager Number 4 until April 26, 1945. On that day, I was brought back to Lager Number 1 and was freed the next day. After being liberated, because I was sick, I was brought to the refugee hospital in Landsberg. After a month, I was brought to the Sanatorium (there is a blank here – I assume he intended to fill in a name) in Landsburg. Then I traveled to Italy and arrived there on August 1, 1945. On August 15, 1945, in the Displaced Persons Camp at Bologna, I contracted the malaria from which I still suffer. From October 1945 until May 1947 I was in Santa Maria de Leuce (in the Lecce district). After that I lived in Palese in the Bari district from April 1947 until December 1947 and Barletta in the Bari district from December 1947 until my emigration to America.


I came to America on March 29, 1948 on the S. S. Sobieski from Naples, Italy. Since April 20, 1954, I have been a citizen of the United States of America and have lived at the address mentioned above since July 1950.

I assure the correctness of my sworn disclosures. I am aware of the importance of a sworn declaration and the consequences of a false sworn declaration.

I sign the same in the presence of the notary of my free will.

Cleaning out things in my mother's house reminds me of how privileged we are in the U.S. I often accused Mom of having more clothing than some entire third world countries and I am convinced that I was not exaggerating very much. I've made two trips to Goodwill and have the car packed up for a third and final one. To give a couple of minor examples, Mom had 57 pairs of slacks. Even allowing for heavier stuff for winter and lighter stuff for summer, that is decidedly excessive. I am reasonably sure that, excluding the ones that are part of suits (which would only add 2) and not counting 3 pairs of sweats, I have well under a dozen total. Or, consider sweatshirts. Mom had at least 17. I have exactly 3 and all of those were bought when I was somewhere that was colder than I expected it to be.

People in much of the world are lucky to have one change of clothes. Traveling in general, and in the developing world in particular, has taught me how little one really needs. So I am thankful to have the opportunity to have too much and the wisdom to realize that enough is enough.

I've noticed 2 things I got wrong in recent entries:

1) My paternal grandfather actually died in February, which is not around this time of year. To be fair, I did say that I didn't remember.

2) The borscht actually cost my mother $13. She called to bid 12 and was told somebody already had done so, so she upped her bid a dollar. Nobody else was nuts enough to bid on 12 cases of borscht. I'd like to believe the two bottles I found in the house recently were not still left from that purchase. (And, by the way, I still consider borscht with sour cream and potatoes the best possible warm weather meal.)


Also, a few people have asked me about making charitable contributions in my mother's memory. Since her favorite place was the library, I will suggest making a donation to your local Friends of the Library or similar library foundation. Her library was The Island Park Public Library, which would, of course, be suitable.