fauxklore

My post-Portugal life has been busy and a bit stressful.

Bionic Miriam, Phase 1: I had cataract surgery on my right eye about two weeks after I got home. My friend, Kathleen, drove me to and from the ambulatory surgery center. I had a bit of a wait while they asked me a lot of questions, often more than once (by different people). I know I was awake, but the only thing I really remember was that I saw Escher-like tessellations against a background of changing colors as the surgeon was using the laser to destroy the cataract. I didn’t feel any significant pain, just a little bit of scratchiness. I spent most of the afternoon and evening sleeping on and off. In the morning, when I took off the eye shield, I was astonished to see clearly out of the operated eye. That is, I could read the titles of books on the top of the stacks on the floor without putting my glasses on. Anyway, the surgeon had left me a voicemail that everything went well and that was confirmed at my follow-up appointment the morning after the surgery.

In the meantime, there are lots of eyedrops and I’m still under restrictions about not lifting anything over 30 lb and not bending over. Fortunately, my friend Kim came over to help me with the laundry, since I wouldn’t have been able to get it from washer to dryer and from dryer to the back of the sofa without bending.

Other Stuff I’ve Done: I had my usual meetings - the monthly Litvak genealogy mentoring session, two Needles and Crafts zoom get-togethers (which includes people working on their projects and book discussions), a Better Said Than Done board meeting to work on casting for next year’s Women’s Storytelling Festival, the monthly Voices in the Glen story swap (at which I told “Ida Black,” a ghost story involving an actual tombstone that I photographed in Maine some years ago), a Grimm Keepers discussion of “One Eye, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes,” and a Loser Brunch at a Mexican restaurant in D.C. Re: the latter, I should note that my preferences for variations of that cuisine in the U.S. is New Mexican (e.g. Santa Fe), California second, and Tex-Mex third, with the mid-Atlantic region about 199th, just above New England. I missed a second Grimm Keepers meeting (re: Snow White) because I badly needed a nap. Oh, there was also a JGSGW meeting with a talk about some complicated immigration situations in the post-World War I era.

I also had a couple of book club meetings. Crones and Tomes discussed Remarkably Bright Creatures which was enjoyable. And the TCC Book Club discussed Blood River: the Terrifying Journey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Country . I’ll write about both of these (and other books in my quarterly update, which should get done in a little over a week.

I had a routine dentist appointment. My dentist retired (largely because of her back problems) and I’m not sure how I feel about her replacement.

Finally, I played board games over zoom at least 4 times. (I might have missed writing one down on my calendar.) Er, yes, I do keep busy.

Still to Write About: Home annoyingness. Travel planning. Why is decluttering so bloody hard? A couple of sets of blog prompts. The quarterly update.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My other comment is that I wonder how many of the students pushing divestment from everything associated with Israel are using iPhones or used Waze to find routes to campuses, Do any of them use RSA public key encryption? How many of them eat cherry tomatoes or have websites using wix.com?

I do actually do things when I’m home sometimes.

Whoops: Stories About Mistakes: I was part of this Better Said Than Done storytelling show at Clare and Don’s Beach Shack in Falls Church. The show was sold out, but that is mostly because it’s a tiny place. The show was wonderful. I was telling a new story about my terrible sense of direction. And, given the theme, it was appropriate that I left out two prime examples of this. The more notorious example among many of my friends has to do with the time I couldn’t find the rental car return at La Guardia Airport, so I drove to the airport terminal and followed an Avis bus. The other one involves why GPS does not actually help. Still, I got plenty of laughs with what I did remember to include. (By the way, I told the story again at the Voices in the Glen story swap this weekend and did better with it, though it still needs more refinement.)

I also got a photo of myself that I don't actually hate.



The Usual Stuff: Knitting Group. A Grimm Keepers discussion of The White Bride and the Black Bride, which Tim informed us is based partly on a story about Bertha Broadfoot, the mother of Charlemagne. My Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) mentoring session, in which I was able to help a couple of people with South African records. My on-line needles and crafts group. Two nights of playing board games. The afore mentioned Voices in the Glen story swap. The Crones and Tomes book club discussion of Lessons in Chemistry which the group was strongly divided about. (For the record, I loved it.)

Lots of Yarn: Last Monday, I went over to my friend, Kim’s, house to help her go through her yarn stash, which proved to be much larger than she thought it was. I explained to her how to calculate if she had enough of a given yarn for a pattern, which needs to be based on yardage of a skein, not weight. And I ended up taking four huge bags home, some of which I will use, but much of which I will give away.

By the way, going over to other people’s houses makes me feel better about my level of clutter at home.

Mindplay: Sunday night, Cindy and I went to see Mindplay at Arena Stage. This is a very weird one man show by Vinny DePonto that is a mixture of mentalism and his personal story about dealing with his grandfather’s dementia, which got him interested in how memory work. Much of the show involves audience participation. Before the show, everyone is asked to fill out a slip of paper with a question on it and put it into an envelope on which they write their first name, last initial, and seat number. We verified that we did not have the same question, though I don’t know how many different questions there are. The show opens with a phone ringing on the stage and a person coming up to answer it and relay things to the audience. When I saw a review of a previous production (in Los Angeles), it suggested that the person who did this was randomly chosen from the audience, but a slip in the program we got suggested it was the stage manager and gave her biography. She seemed to be unprepared for things that happened, but maybe she’s just a good actress. Anyway, much of the show consisted of DePonto’s interactions with random people in the audience and I was definitely in the “please don’t call on me” mode. He started with throwing balloons into the audience - and his first attempt at choosing someone that way was a failure since the person who caught the marked balloon clearly didn’t speak English well and he had to ask them to throw the balloon to someone else. He asked some questions and then had that person pop the balloon and reveal a paper inside that had exactly the answers they’d given. I found that to be a definite “how did he do that? moment.

There were other audience interactions that were along the same lines, where he asked someone a question and appeared to have predicted their answer. He also talked about memory and introduced the concept of a memory palace, which I was familiar with from the excellent book Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer. Incidentally, I have some issues with that technique because visual memory is much weaker for me than other sensory modes. For example, I am sitting in my living room right now and I cannot tell you what color my carpet is without looking. At any rate, he demonstrated his memory techniques by having a few audience members lead him to mnemonics for state capitals - and, apparently, couldn’t remember one of them, though I suspect (partly based on something at the end of the show) that this failure may have been contrived. It was more impressive that he could recite a random section from the complete works of Shakespeare verbatim. Incidentally, I was mildly annoyed that he mispronounced the word “mnemonic” as if it were “pneumonic.”

That was entertaining enough, but some of his other audience interactions made me uncomfortable. He said up front that he would not make any of the people he invited up on the stage uncomfortable or embarrassed, but I cringed at some of the things he elicited from them. He brought one woman to tears by getting her to talk about her deceased godmother. And, cringiest of all, had another woman talk about peeing her pants in public when she was small.

There were also a lot of complicated interactions with the set, which I don’t feel capable of describing. Overall, I was mostly entertained, but I hesitate to recommend this because of the cringe factor. And, of course, you can’t really know what to expect because so much depends on the audience members who get pulled on stage at any given performance.

WTF, Facebook: I was attempting to comment on a post about Samoa to note that, according to T-Mobil’s website, they do offer unlimited texting and data at 256 kbps in Samoa with many of their plans, but that American Samoa is not one of the 215 countries they include. And Facebook took down that comment as being against their community standards on spam because “it looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.” Huh?

Nielsen: I might not have opened this envelope, but I could see two dollar bills through the window in it. It turned out to be asking for an adult resident to fill out a brief survey in exchange for a $5 gift card. It’s not a lot of money, obviously, but it only took a few minutes and I got paid right away. I chose an Amazon gift card, on the grounds that there is always something I could use there.

Elections: The Virginia elections went better than I expected. My area is not at all competitive so there were no surprises locally. (For example, our candidate for delegate was running unopposed.) And I can’t say that I was surprised that the candidate for county sheriff who had a long rant on his web page about why campaign contributions are unconstitutional, quoting from George Mason (who actually never mentioned campaign contributions since such a thing didn’t exist in his time) got nowhere. In the shooting yourself in the foot department, Democratic section, Susanna Gibson, the Henrico county candidate for delegate who live streamed sex videos with her husband, also lost.

But the important thing is that Democrats both kept the Senate and won the House of Delegates, which will keep Glen Youngkin’s more theocratic Christofascist tendencies at bay.

By the way, it was only on Friday (i.e. three days after election day) that I realized I slightly know the (losing) Republican candidate for state senator in my district.

Pandas: The National Zoo pandas are gone. They had special crates for their transportation to China, along with a FedEx truck with a panda picture painted on its side. (I’m not sure if their plane had a panda livery). The cuteness factor at the National Zoo is down by at least 50%.

Major Disappointment: Michael Tilson Thomas has withdrawn from the National Symphony Orchestra concert next weekend on his doctor’s advice. I can’t say I’m totally surprised, since he isn’t expected to live much longer. (Glioblastoma is really nasty.) There was the option to go to the concert with the replacement conductor, but the whole point of buying tickets was to see MTT. I’ve requested a refund from Goldstar, who are not great at customer service.

At least I got to see him conduct the New York Philharmonic in March.

Deli Food: This afternoon we had a Chavurah luncheon at Chutzpah deli. The tongue sandwich I got was fine. Their cole slaw is just okay, since I prefer mine more vinegary. And their potato salad is also a bit bland. In other words, it’s fine for deli food in Virginia (though Perly’s in Richmond is better), but my answer to the best Jewish deli food in this area is still to go to Union Station and take a train to New York.

Still, I was really there for the camaraderie and conversation and that was excellent.

Grimm Discussion Groups: This week’s Brother’s Grimm discussion was on Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty. We had a wide ranging and interesting discussion. At the end, we were discussing spindles and, as a result of a comment someone made about the phrase “spindle, fold, or mutilate,” I have an interesting idea for a twist on the story, involving her fate depending on a spindle file, i.e. the spike used to store receipts at a diner.

My Animal Obsessed Neighbors: Today on next-door, somebody claims to have seen a hawk swoop down and grab a black cat. They wanted to know what kind of hawk it was.

Moving on to last week, it was still pretty busy.

Apple Technology for Jewish Genealogy: I go to a monthly meeting for Jewish genealogists using Apple tech. This month we ended up talking mostly about AI. It hadn’t really occurred to me, but there may be some real potential for using some of the AI engines out there for translating documents. My to-do list re: genealogy keeps getting longer, but my have-done list remains stagnant.

Grimm Keepers: Our story this session was “All Kinds of Fur.” It’s got some creepy elements (involving incest, for example). But it also provides a good opportunity for discussion of some folktale tropes and some mythological bases for this, going back to Sumerian legend. (Marc wrote a note in the chat that read, “Jack and Jill climbed up the ziggurat to fetch a pail of daughter.) Tim has done extensive research on this story, which definitely helped the discussion. This group remains a valuable activity for me.

Needles and Crafts: My weekly crafting get-together continues, also. Basically, we talk about crafts and books and what have you while working on our various crafting projects. In my case, I am currently working on a Tunisian crochet afghan. If it weren’t for that group, I’d never get any needlework done.

All Things Equal: Cindy and I went to see this one-woman play, subtitled “The Life & Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” The play was written by Rupert Holmes. Michelle Azar played the title role ably, with several projections and film clips. It really felt like RBG herself was actually talking to the audience. The aspect of the play that interested me the most (probably because I wasn’t as familiar with it) was her repeated mentions of Erwin Griswold as her foil. As the dean of Harvard Law School, he’d asked her how she justified taking the place of a man - and he went on to swear her in to her Supreme Court seat. There was also an excellent sequence of her dissents as the court moved to the right. I do think Ginsburg made a huge mistake in not resigning during the Obama administration, which she attributed (in the play) to her confidence that Hillary Clinton would become the next president and pick her successor. But, anyway, the play (which was only one night) was worth seeing.

Incidentally, we ate at Ben’s Next Door beforehand. This is the more upscale adjunct to Ben’s Chili Bowl (which is the logical place to eat if you are going to the Lincoln Theatre and has good vegetarian chili.) The food and drink were good, but it was earsplittingly noisy. So I won’t be back there.

The Flushies: Saturday was The Flushies, the annual party / award ceremony for the (formerly Style) Invitational. The Washington Post may have killed the Invitational but it lives on (via Gene Weingarten’s substack page) and there were probably about 70 (maybe more?) losers there. Lots of interesting conversation, seeing people I knew and meeting some I didn’t, plus the usual sing-along to parody songs, and so on. My contribution to the potluck was quesadillas, by the way, because they’re quick and easy to make. All in all, it was a nice afternoon.

PixelBloom: On Sunday morning, Cindy and I went to Artechouse for PixelBloom. This is their annual tribute to D.C.’s cherry blossoms and this year’s edition was butterfly themed. There’s a 22 minute immersive presentation and two side rooms with interactive exhibits. For example, you can color butterfly wings and move your arms to flap the wings.



Another exhibit was called Blooming Strings. In this one, there was a row of transparent panels with branches and flower buds on them. As you walked back and forth, the flowers bloomed and butterflies appeared and flew around. There was also music playing. Here’s a short video. (I think you have to click through to flickr to play the video.)



And here’s a video clip from the main presentation, which we actually watched all the way through twice because it was so relaxing.



There was other interactive exhibits, that I haven’t written about because they’re harder to explain. Anyway, the whole thing was fun and was worth an hour or so.


JGSGW: Sunday afternoon’s Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington meeting had a talk on Jews of Northern Virginia. It was focused on the earliest congregations in the region, most of which were in Alexandria. It also covered Jewish-owned businesses. It’s not particularly relevant to my genealogical research, but it was still worth going to.

Celebrity Death Watch: Andrew J. McKenna was the chairman of McDonald’s. Elena Banchini was an Olympic skier. Rene-Samuel Sirat was the chief rabbi of France in the 1980’s. David Jude Jolicoeur, known as Trugoy the Dove, was a third of the hip hop group De La Soul. Huey “Piano” Smith wrote the song “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.” David Ringmaster was a mathematician who, among other things, analyzed puzzles such as Rubik’s cube. Robert Geddes was an architect. Marshall “Eddie” Conway was a Black Panther party leader. Jerry Jarrett was a wrestler. Charley Ferguson played football with the Buffalo Bills in the 1960’s. Catherine McArdle Kelleher was an expert on international security policy. Paul Berg won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on recombinant DNA. Tim McCarver was a catcher, primarily for the St. Louis Cardinals, and later became a sports announcer. Simone Edwards played basketball for the Seattle Storm. Stella Stevens was an actress and Playboy playmate. Gerald Fried wrote music for film and television scores. Rebecca Blank was an economist. Yoshihisa Okumura developed technology for cellphone networks. Thomas Donahue was a labor leader. Red McCombs founded iHeart Media and owned the San Antonio Spurs and Minnesota Vikings. Richard Belzer was an actor and comedian, best known for playing John Munch on Homicide: Life on the Street. Bruce Barthel was the bassist for Country Joe and the Fish. Tony Earl was the governor of Wisconsin from 1983 to 1987, James Abourezk was the first Arab-American U.S. senator. Bob Richards was a pole vaulter who became the first athlete to appear on the front of the Wheaties box. Betty Boothroyd was the first woman to be speaker of the UK House of Commons. Just Fontaine was a French soccer star.

Burt Bacharach was a songwriter who, along with Hal David, wrote a lot of pop music. Some of his biggest hits include “This Guy’s in Love With You,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” and “Close to You.” His work appeared on the soundtracks of many major films and his songs were recorded by over 1000 singers.

Ted Lerner owned the Washington Nationals and a lot of Washington area real estate. He was also a significant philanthropist, supporting a number of arts, educational, and Jewish charities. In 2015, Forbes magazine wrote that he was the richest person in Maryland.

Raquel Welch was an actress and sex symbol. Among her most famous movies were One Million Years B.C. and Fantastic Voyage.

David Oreck was in the vacuum cleaner business. He earned me 13 ghoul pool (1 for his place on the list and a 12 point uniqueness bonus).

Barbara Bosson was an actress, best known for playing Faye Furillo on Hill Street Blues.

Weather: The weather here has been all over the place. It was close to 80 on Thursday but cold and windy on Saturday, with snow flurries. At least no snow stuck here. The best thing I read was a comparison to Mother Nature drawing Powerball numbers. I just want it to be spring already. Although, actually, no, since every warm day puts the trees to having sex outside and me to sneezing.

King Thrushbeard: I belong to a discussion group re: the Grimm Fairy Tales. This past Wednesday we talked about King Thrushbeard, a story about two unlikeable people. The princess is a nasty, insulting bully and he is gaslighting her to teach her a lesson. So I was challenged by one of the other people in the group (who knows me fairly well) to find a different way to deal with her. My immediate thought was that she would do very well as a stand-up comic. I despise insult comedy, but at least it would put her natural talents to work. As for King Thrushbeard, who is really a prince, not a king at all, I fear that he is unredeemable. He might make a rather nice victim in a murder mystery, however. After hearing that he rode his horse through her wares in the market when she was starting to have some success making money, any sensible jury would deem whatever she did to him as justifiable. And, by the way, would it really have killed the Grimms to give her the dignity of having an actual name?

The Lifespan of a Fact: I saw this play at the Keegan Theatre on Friday night. This is apparently based on a real incident in which an essay about the suicide of a teenager in Las Vegas was pulled by Harper’s Magazine in 2003, but a fact-checked version was later published by The Believer in 2010. The story revolves around the fact-checking and the question of what liberties with the truth are and aren’t acceptable. The fact-checker, Jim Fingal (played by Ivan Carlo) is overly eager and obsessive - and, frankly, annoying. The essayist, John D’Agata (played by Colin Smith) doesn’t necessarily care about the facts. The editor, played by Sheri S. Herren, tries to mediate things, and seems on the edge of a nervous breakdown through most of this.

The play raises some good questions about the difference between truth and facts. That’s highly relevant to me since my usual tagline about the storytelling I do is that all of my stories are true, whether or not they happened that way. Unfortunately, there isn’t a strong resolution at the end. So, while I found the play interesting, I was not really satisfied by it.

Rubber Ducky Day Storytelling: I was part of a humorous storytelling show on Saturday for Rubber Ducky Day. There was a great mix of material. I adapted a story about things my father told me and their consequences for this purpose, including an episode (not entirely factual) about creating a magic spell to bring rubber bath toys to life. I really did write down “witchcraft” as one of my hobbies on my 9th grade English teacher’s “getting to know you form” and she really did make me give a talk on that subject to the class. But, no, we did not (alas) actually have such a distinction as “most likely to move to California,” no matter how many times I have used that line. My point is that we should have. Anyway, it went well and I got plenty of laughs and great comments in the chat.

Golden Girls - The Laughs Continue: Cindy and I went to see this show at the Warner Theater on Sunday. Before the show, we had lunch at the Elephant and Castle, which is pretty much the only reasonably priced restaurant near there. The food is fairly good, but the service, which has often been a problem there, was atrocious. Anyway, there were two things I hadn’t known when we bought the tickets. 1) Cindy had never actually seen an episode of The Golden Girls so I had to explain who the characters were to her (and, especially, who played each one) and 2) it’s a drag show. I thought the performers nailed the roles, especially Adam Graber as Rose (the Betty White role). The humor is, not surprisingly, very raunchy, particularly since part of the premise is that Blanche and Rose have created a sex app for senior citizens. But for me, the funniest material had to do with references to the actresses who played the various roles. For example, at one point, Blanche says something like “Rose is going to outlive all of us.” And, of course, Betty White did live several years past the other three. They also gave Rose a line in which she says she dreamed she was on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. My very favorite joke had Dorothy (who had been played by Bea Arthur) questioning whether to pursue a show biz career because “I’d die of stage fright. Maybe not die, just be maimed.” I had to explain to Cindy that Bea Arthur had won a Tony for Best Featured Actress for playing Vera Charles in the original production of Mame. Based on the mix of laughs and groans, most of the audience got it.

Anyway, it was a funny show and worth seeing.

Last week, one of my friends commented that I was the busiest retired person he knew. I do a lot of things, but I also waste a lot of time and am kind of annoyed with myself over how much stuff I have not been getting done. I definitely need to spend more time on housework. And I need to cook real food and get more exercise. Sitting down to write this catch-up is at least something I can check off my to-do list, which is back up around CVS-receipt length.

Celebrity Death Watch: David Foreman was an environmental extremist who co-founded Earth First! Hilary Mantel wrote historical fiction about Oliver Cromwell, including Wolf Hall. Louise Fletcher was an actress who was most famous for playing Nurse Ratched in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Rita Gardner was an actress who originated the role of Luisa in The Fantasticks. Pharaoh Sanders was a jazz saxophonist. James Florio was the governor of New Jersey in the early 1990’s (and in the U.S. House of Representatives before that). Coolio was a rapper. Stephanie Dabney was a ballerina with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and was particularly famous for performing the role of The Firebird. Jim Lisbet wrote mysteries and poetry. Bill PLante was a long time senior White House correspondent for CBS News. Sachsen Littlefeather rejected an Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando. Audrey Evans cofounded the Ronald McDonald House Charities. Hector Lopez played baseball and went on to become the first black manager of a AAA minor league team. Al Primo created Eyewitness News. Tiffany Jackson was a basketball player whose career included three WNBA teams and 7 years with Maccabi Ashdod in Israel. Charles Fuller was a playwright, best known for A Soldier’s Play. Peter Robinson wrote detective novels. Lenny Lipton wrote the lyrics to “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” Judy Tenuta was a comedian. Jody Miller was a country singer whose signature song was “Queen of the House,” the comeback to Roger Miller’s “King of the Road.” Ivy Jo Hunter was a Motown songwriter, notable for cowriting “Dancing in the Streets” with Marvin Gaye and Mickey Stevenson. Robert I. Toll cofounded the housing developers Toll Brothers. Grace Gluck was an arts journalist.


Kevin Locke was a Lakota storyteller, flautist, and hoop dancer. He received a number of awards (primarily for music) and was a significant keeper of traditional culture.

Loretta Lynn was a country singer-songwriter and the subject of the movie Coal MIner’s Daughter. She won three Grammy awards.


LJ/DW Death Watch: I learned the other day that Howard Stateman, known on LiveJournal and Dreamwidth as howeird, died last week. He’d had numerous health issues recently and had had surgery in September, so it is not entirely surprising. I assume his sisters will be sorting out his estate. I hope his cat, Spook, and his aquarium fish are being well cared for.

Baseball: While I am on the subject of death, the New York Mets had been my one bright spot in a bleak baseball year. I will spend the post-season cheering for my second favorite team, namely whoever is playing the Yankees. (At the moment, that is the Guardians, who also have the plus of being managed by Terry “Tito” Francona, who led my BoSox to their 2004 and 2007 World Series titles.)

Yom Kippur: Yom Kippur was Wednesday. I did zoom services again, which is not really satisfying. But it did let me sleep later. I did fast, but, overall, I was not very into it this year.

Spaghetti and Matzoh Balls: This is a short film by Rena Strober, which I saw via an on-line screening from the Union for Reform Judaism, with a talk-back afterwards. The short version of the story is that she used to sing at a restaurant in New York called Rao’s. It was a mob hangout and one night one guy objected to her singing and someone else shot and killed him. This ended up in her reconnecting to some aspects of her Jewish upbringing. She wrote and performed a one-person show about this. The movie is based on but not identical to this. It’s an interesting story, with a lot of warmth and a surprising amount of humor, and I’m glad I saw it.

Thursday: Thursday was a completely insane day for me. I had my Global Entry renewal interview in the morning. It took me 45 minutes or so each way on the Metro to get downtown to the Reagan Building, but the actual interview took about 5 minutes. Anyway, I got the acceptance email less than an hour after I got home, even though they told me it would take up to 72 hours. I should get the new card in the mail within a week or two.

My Grimm discussion group is normally on Wednesdays, but moved to Thursday because of Yom Kippur. This session was about the Gold Children, which is an amalgamation of various folk tale tropes. We had an interesting discussion, particularly regarding the ability of children made completely out of gold to move around perfectly normally. As I pointed out, gold is pretty malleable.

That was followed immediately by another zoom meeting. That one was training for the Capital Jewish Food Festival, where I was volunteering on Sunday.

And, then, in the evening I went with my friend Cindy to see Ichabod at Creative Cauldron. We had dinner beforehand at Pizzeria Orso, which is right up the street. The mushroom and olive pizza was good. Their pizza crust is excellent. I also had tiramisu gelato for dessert.

Ichabod: This was a new musical, obviously based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Matthew Conner had a previous attempt at musicalizing this story, but The Hollow, which I saw at Signature Theatre in 2011 was a failure. This reworking (with book by Stephen Gregory Smith) was better, but I still didn’t care much for most of the music. It stuck fairly closely to what I remember of the story, but the music was meh. I might have liked the opening number (“Invocation”) but neither of us could understand the lyrics. I did like two songs - “Clippety, Cloppety” (in which Bram Bones tells the story of the headless horseman) and “Midnight Ride” (which tells the part where Ichabod Crane disappears). But I didn’t think the more romantic pieces worked particularly well. The performers were fine - especially Colum Goelbacker as Ichabod and Bobby Libby as Brom, but the whole thing just didn’t work well for me. I’d have more to say, but they don’t have printed programs and I accidentally deleted the electronic one. I tried to find a link to it on their website but failed. Grr.

Guys and Dolls: As you may have heard me say before, I consider Guys and Dolls to be the best musical of all time. It’s got a witty book, great music, and lively choreography. There was a production of it at the Kennedy Center, as part of the Broadway Center Stage series, which I saw on Friday night. While this was a scaled down production, the cast was, decidedly not scaled down. James Monroe Iglehardt, who played Nathan Detroit, has made numerous Broadway appearances, including winning a Tony for playing the Genie in Aladdin. Jessie Mueller, who played Miss Adelaide, won a Tony for playing Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, as well as originating the role of Jenna in Waitress (among other Broadway roles). Sky Masterson was played by Steven Pasquale who was in the recent CSC production of Assassins. And Sarah Brown was played by Philip Soo, who is most famous for playing Eliza Schuyler in Hamilton. By the way, Pasquale and Soo are married in real life, so it’s particularly nice seeing the chemistry between them. The most unconventional bit of casting was Rachel Dratch (of SNL fame and who I recently saw in POTUS) as Big Jule. I want to note the choreography for “Luck Be a Lady Tonight,” in particular, which was exciting and impressive. Anyway, it was an extremely enjoyable evening. And, by the way, the Kennedy Center has actual printed programs available. This is a very limited run (10 performances only), so if you want to see it, get your tickets now for this coming weekend.

By the way, I had dinner before the show at Bandoola Bowl, a new Burmese place in Western Market (a food hall in Foggy Bottom). I got a ginger salad with tofu and lemon dressing, which was absolutely delicious. I will definitely eat there again. Also, the weather was particularly nice, making for an especially enjoyable walk over to the KenCen.

Capital Jewish Food Festival: As I mentioned above, I volunteered at this festival on Sunday. It was the first time they were doing it and things were a bit chaotic. I was assigned to check IDs and give out wristbands (green for over 21, blue otherwise). I was on the first shift (10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.) and we pretty much ran out of green wristbands. In retrospect, it would have made sense to have wristbands only for people who were over 21. Volunteers got t-shirts and 3 tasting tickets. By the time my shift finished, several of the vendors had run out of the tasting samples, though there was still plenty of food for sale at most of the vendors. I did get samples of things like bagel chips with lox spread (and a salmon salad from another vendor. I’ve forgotten what my third sample was.) And I bought a turkey sandwich with cole slaw from Corned Beef King for lunch. Anyway, it was definitely crossed so I’d say the event was a success. Also, Michael Twitty gave an interesting talk. One disappointment was that there were only a few kosher-certified vendors.

Murder Mystery Weekend: No, I haven’t gone to one, but I’ve sort of decided I’d like to. I see a few companies that run them but, if anyone I know has done one, I’d love recommendations. Ideally, the venue should be either academic or country house / hotel (not urban). It should be friendly for a single attendee, since none of my friends are likely to want to go along for this. I’m looking for a weekend (Friday night through Sunday brunch looks typical). And I’d like it to be in (in order of preference) Ireland, the UK, or southern U.S.

Any suggestions?

Before I get into writing about Friday night, I want to note the death of Archie Green. He was (among other things) the founder of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. That is one of the Library's resources I've used at times and I am thankful for his instigation.

Another resource I take advantage of is the programs that the Music Division puts on. The final Music and the Brain lecture for the season was Friday night. The speakers were cognitive psychologist Michael Kubovy and composer Judith Shatin, both of the University of Virginia and the lecture title was "The Mind of the Artist." They focused on the extramusical meaning of music. Kubovy started by talking about a priming experiment. People are given a list of words to read aloud and will read a word faster if the preceding word is related. For example, the word "sofa" is read faster if it is preceded by "couch" than if it is preceded by "wrench." There are experiments that show the priming effect works if music related to the word is played, instead of another word being used. He also played several examples of music and asked questions like, "is this a bird or a staircase?" All of this goes back to the overlap in the parts of the brain which process language and which process music.

Shatin attempted to illustrate this via examples of her music. I think she might have been more effective if she had actually talked about her conscious decisions instead of just playing the music. The real question I have is how much of the meaning we read into pieces of music is actually intended by the composer. It's one thing to look at program music (e.g. Vivaldi's Four Seasons) and another to take, say, some random string quarter and decide what it's about. During the Q&A, somebody asked about applying the idea to more technical music, e.g. minimalist compositions. Shatin and Kubovsky claimed you can. I think a better example to question the concept would be Satie's "musical wallpaper," since specifically intended it to be background and not really listened to.

I don't usually stay around for the concerts since that makes for two late a night for me, but I was intrigued by one of the pieces that the New Zealand String Quartet was going to play. I didn't get a ticket in advance (which requires paying Ticketmaster fees) but had no trouble getting a seat with a standby number. The first piece was Mendelssohn's String Quartet in E minor, op. 44, no. 2. This was pleasant enough, albeit not outstanding in one way or another. (Which can be said, alas, of a lot of chamber music.) The piece that I (and, I suspect, much of the audience) wanted to hear was Gillian Karawe Whitehead's "Hineputehue" for string quartet and taongo puoro (Maori instruments), for which the quartet was joined by Richard Nunns. Nunns started with an incantation in the Maori language, which had something to do with summoning the spirits. The Maori instruments created some interesting sounds and the strings were used in unusual ways to blend with them. The result was certainly evocative, but did not really suggest peacefulness to me. (Hineputehue is a Maori goddess of peace.) I'm not a fan of excessively dissonant modern compositions and this fell into that category. I'm glad I heard it, but I wouldn't go out of my way to hear more of Whitehead's compositions.

There was also a Schubert quartet on the program but I was exhausted so left at the intermission. I suspect it was considerably more conventional and easier to listen to.