fauxklore

I’d made plans for this past weekend back in February. Luka Bloom, an Irish folk singer I’ve wanted to see perform for a long time, was going to be performing in London. You are probably unfamiliar with his name, but you may know of his brother, Christy Moore, who is a big name in Irish music. Anyway, I discussed this with the gentleman with whom I am conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling (who lives in London) and we made plans that included that concert and an excursion to Winchester. By the way, this is an example of his indulging me in my interests since he doesn’t like folk music.

Alas, the universe conspired against me and the concert got cancelled. On the plus side that meant that I could go to another event I wanted to. Namely, RhinoStock, a celebration of the life of the late Clint Weathers, aka ZenRhino (or just Rhino). I flew to Denver on Thursday afternoon and, after picking up my rental car (a Chevy Bolt - see rant below), spent the night at a hotel near the airport.

I had a few options for things I could do on Friday and decided that the best choice was to go to Louisville (a little south of Boulder) and do a Volksmarch for the first time in about 7 years. The weather was very nice for walking. Louisville has a cute enough downtown, but the route between the walk start / finish point (a recreation / senior center) and downtown was pretty much bland suburbia. Still, it was good to stretch my legs and there were some interesting bird sounds that I was unable to identify. After my walk, I had Thai food for lunch (reasonably good drunken noodles with tofu), then headed to my hotel where I took a long nap.

I’d had a vague intention of having supper at an interesting looking place across the parking lot from my hotel (the Courtyard Boulder Broomfield, which is in neither Boulder nor Broomfield). A combination of barbecue and Indian food - what could be wrong with that? Well, what was wrong was that they had a water problem and were closed! I ended up just grabbing a sandwich nearby. (For anyone who didn’t know, tunafish sandwiches are one of the key components of what I consider Purina Miriam Chow.)

RhinoStock didn’t start until early afternoon, so I drove over to downtown Boulder and had breakfast at The Walnut Cafe. It used to be one of my go-to breakfast places in Boulder. A lot of my friends favor Le Peep, but I’d eaten there somewhat more recently, so I figured I might as well go to a place I hadn’t been to in 20-odd years. I’m pleased to report that the food is as good as ever, with a particularly excellent Mexican omelet. And blueberry corn bread. (The latter is another essential component of Purina Miriam Chow.)

I was well behaved and did not go into McGuckin’s, the hardware store of the gods. (Seriously, this is the best hardware store I have ever been in anywhere in the world. I love it even more than I love McLean Hardware, which is my best local option.)

Eventually, I meandered over to RhinoStock central, namely the home of our hosts, Geo and Momerath. I suspect it is boring to read about a party if you weren’t there and don’t know the people who were, so I’m not going to give a lot of details. Let’s just say that there was lots of wide ranging conversation, lots of catching up with people I hadn’t seen in ages, and lots of reminiscing about events from decades ago.

At some point there was a zoom hook up so several people who weren’t able to be there in person could share their memories of Rhino. I should probably explain that most of us knew him (and each other) from a MUSH called Tiny TIM. If anyone cares, my name on there was cypria (Or is? I haven’t logged in for years and I don’t have a working MUD client). Some of the people there have been friends since the usenet days and some things that happened at soc.singles parties of the late 1980’s got mentioned. If you know, you know.

There was also a sing-along of “The Weight” by The Band. And toasts with various alcohol options available. I am smart enough not to become a party victim.

I didn’t stay super late since I had a crazy early flight on Sunday morning. I managed to get barely enough sleep to be able to drive back to the airport. After a decadent breakfast (pancake flight!) at Snooze on the mezzanine level of Terminal B, I collapsed onto the plane and mostly slept my way to IAD. As exhausted as I was, it was definitely worth the trip.

The Chevy Bolt - A Rant: I did not want to rent an electric car. However, Payless Car Rental insisted that the only other options were a minivan or an SUV, which were even worse.

There are two significant problems with electric vehicles as rentals. The first one is that I have yet to see one which is not an ergonomic nightmare. For example, I never succeeded in opening the trunk. I googled how to do this and, given the number of hits that turned up, this appears to be a common problem. As another example, given that everything else is done off of a large screen, why is the seat adjustment manual? What I find particularly egregious is how many steps it takes to adjust anything, e.g. the climate settings. In my opinion, sliders or dials are really a much more intuitive way to adjust the temperature and airflow. It also took way too many steps to pull up the radio and I never succeeded in finding the volume controls. (Which are another thing for which sliders or dials are more intuitive, by the way.) And then there is the nightmare of the voice announcing when you are exceeding the speed limit. Except it was usually wrong. If there is a speed limit sign reading 65 right next to me and I am driving 63, I am NOT exceeding the speed limit you bloody idiot.

Of course, there are also many gas-powered cars with sucky ergonomics, too. So what is specifically wrong with an electric car? As far as I can tell, there are roughly 347 different companies running public charging stations for electric cars. And every single one of them has its own app they want you to download. And, if you are driving far enough to need to recharge the car, you may not have a lot of choice in which charger company you are at the mercy of. I don’t know about you, but I need less than one gallon of gas to add 25 miles of range to Twain, my beloved little gas-powered econobox. That takes maybe 2 minutes? (And, of course, I fill the gas tank completely, so I spend maybe 15 minutes buying gas and have a range of over 300 miles.) It takes an hour to charge a typical electric car enough to add 25 miles of range. Yes, there are fast chargers, but only a limited number of them and most of those are for Teslas and only usable by other cars with an adapter that rental car companies don’t necessarily give you. Frankly, I don’t have four or more hours to waste when I am out of town for a couple of days.

In short, an electric car only makes sense if you have a dedicated place to charge it. (Which is also why they don’t work for me as a condo dweller.) But they damn well don’t make sense as rental cars.

Grounded: I went to see the opera, Grounded, at the Kennedy Center on Saturday night. The story involves a female F-16 fighter pilot who gets pregnant as a result of an affair with a rancher while on leave in Wyoming. She takes 8 years off, but returns to the Air Force and is shunted into being a drone pilot. She resents that at first, but she finds herself liking the job, which also lets her go home to her family every night. Then, she’s assigned a mission that may hit too close to home…

I thought this was effective, for the most part, though I had some qualms about the second act. Jeanine Tesori’s score was at its best when capturing the excitement of the battles - especially for the F-16 pilots. The staging, which used projections on LED screens also added a lot of excitement. And Emily D’Angelo was excellent in the starring role.

Overall, I thought this was worth seeing. The Washington National Opera production was the world premiere and it will be at the Metropolitan Opera in New York next season.

I should also note that I find Tesori to be one of the more interesting composers working nowadays. She’s done a lot of both opera and musical theatre and some of her material bridges the two genres. I first became aware of her via Caroline or Change and I also really liked both Fun Home and Kimberly Akimbo. It’s good to see a woman being so successful in those worlds.

Brunch of Losers: On Sunday, there was a Loser Brunch at Aditi, an Indian restaurant in Alexandria. It’s not a particularly convenient location for me, but their buffet is pretty good (especially a spicy okra, potato, and spinach dish) and there was plenty of good conversation. I really should get myself back into actually entering the Invitational. but I’ve just had too much else going on. I’ll have to think about it for next year’s list of goals.

Crones and Tomes: Monday night was this book club’s monthly meeting. We discussed State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, which I enjoyed reading. I loved tidbits like a description of a crested bird which noted that you could clean a pickle jar with that bird’s head. However, I did find the ending rather implausible. Also, I think I have to go to an opera in Manaus, Brazil.

Manassas Errand Running: I’d made an appointment to get my car serviced on Tuesday morning. It’s always kind of a pain in the neck scheduling service so, alas, this made me miss the pro-Israel rally on the National Mall. Anyway, I got the anti-theft software update done, as well as routine service. But they annoyed me by sending me way too many appointment reminders - several by email, at least 3 by text, and a phone call.

Anyway, I treated myself to breakfast at IHOP before the appointment. And, I took advantage of being out that way to stop at McKay’s Used Books, where I got rid of 33 books and came home with 14 new (to me) ones.

FlyerTalk Dinner: Wednesday night was a FlyerTalk dinner at Lost Dog Cafe in Dunn Loring. Once we got seated away from the area where the extremely loud karaoke was going on, it was fine. I satisfied a craving for spaghetti, as well as having a decent IPA. But, of course, the real point of going to things like this is the conversation, including discussions of last minute travel and great bargains (including mistake fares) we have found in the past.

Medicare: I called the Social Security office again. And this time the person I talked to told me that the person who called me to take the application just sat on it and hasn’t done anything - since September 22nd. So the person I talked to last time, who told me I should have the medicare card “any day now” was also lying to me.

This person said she was messaging my local office and marking it urgent. She also gave me a direct line to my local office and told me to call them if I haven’t heard anything in a week, so I have some hope. But this has been extremely stressful and annoying. My last resort will be trying to get some help from my congresscritter’s office.

Poetry and Punchlines: Last night (Friday), I went to a poetry reading downtown that was organized by Light a magazine of light verse. I knew most of the people reading from the Loser community. There was a reception with time for mingling and light snacks (e.g. cheese and crackers, little sandwiches, strawberries, and cookies) as well as drinks (including wine) beforehand. The readings started with Gene Weingarten reading several “pokes,” i.e. jokes in the form of poems. Among the Losers who read were Duncan Stevens with a selection of limericks among other things, Mark Raffman (who included his song parody about Putin, “If I Only Had Ukraine”), Claudia Gary (who had a lovely song parody to the tune of “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” about the pandas’ departure from the National Zoo), and Melissa Balmain, with pieces from her two books, The Witch Demands a Retraction and Satan Talks to His Therapist. The other “official” reader was J.D. Smith (who I hadn’t met before). There were also four open mike readers, one of whom had a wonderful piece about chemotherapy. Overall, it was a fun evening.

Shameless Self Promotion: I’m part of a Halloween show on Monday night, October 30th from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. EDT. You can find details and register at the Artists Standing Strong Together website It’s free, but donations are gladly accepted.

Celebrity Death Watch: James M. Hoge was a journalist and publisher, best known as the editor of Foreign Affairs. Katherine Anderson sang with The Marvelettes. Evelyn Fox Keller was a physicist and went on to write about gender and science. Terry Kirkman performed with The Association and wrote their hit song “Cherish.” Barry Olivier founded the Berkeley Folk Music Festival. Burkey Belser designed the nutrition facts label. Matteo Messina Denaro was the head of the Italian Mafia. Pat Arrowsmith co-founded the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Theresa Kuruor was the first lady of Ghana from 2001 to 2009. I met and shook hands with her husband, John Kufuor, when I was in Ghana in 2006. Thomas Gambino was the caporegime of the Gambino crime family. Loyal Jones was an Appalachian folklorist. Burt Young was a character actor, best known for playing Paulie Pennino in the Rocky franchise. Herschel Savage was a porno actor. Buck Trent was a country musician who appeared on Hee Haw. Steven Lutwak wrote the score of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Martin Goetz held the first patent ever issued for software. Mark Goddard played Major Don West on Lost in Space, which was the first television series I ever saw in color. (We went over to a neighbor’s house to watch it, before we got a color TV of our own.) Rudolph Isley was one of the founding members of the Isley Brothers. Phyllis Coates played Lois Lane in the first season of the television series Adventures of Superman. Lara Parker played Angelique on Dark Shadows. Louise Gluck was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and Nobel laureate. Piper Laurie was an actress whose roles included Carrie’s mother in the movie version of Carrie. Suzanne Somers was an actress, best known for playing Chrissie on Three’s Company. Joanna Merlin originated the role of Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. Don Laughlin was a gambling entrepreneur and the town of Laughlin, Nevada is named after him. Lee Elliot Berk was the president of Berklee College of Music, which was originally Schillinger house but was renamed for him by his father in 1954. Richard Roundtree was an actor, best known for playing Shaft. Robert Irwin was an installation artist. Richard Moll played the bailiff on Night Court

David McCallum played Ilya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Ducky Mallard in NCIS, as well as many other television and film roles. He also recorded four albums of instrumental music in the 1960’s and narrated spoken word recordings of literary stories.

Brooks Robinson played third base for the Baltimore Orioles. His record of 2870 career games at third base remains the most game played by any player in major league history at a single position. He is best known for his skill as a defensive player. He also played a significant role in developing the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball and, specifically, the York Revolution.

Diane Feinstein was a long-serving senator from California. She’d come into political prominence as the mayor of San Francisco after the assassination of George Moscone and appeared to be particularly effective in that role. She broke a lot of glass ceilings for women in politics and I really wish she’d left office as her health declined instead of sticking it out until her death.

Tim Wakefield pitched for the Red Sox for 17 years. He is the all-time leader in innings pitched by a Red Sox pitcher. It’s probably worth noting that being a knuckleballer contributed to his longevity. He died of brain cancer at the young age of 57.

Dick Butkus played football for the Chicago Bears for 8 years, followed by a successful career as an actor and television pitchman. I think people of my generation will always associate him with Miller Lite.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: Kek Robien died last week. I met her over 20 years ago, when we were both on a tour of Papua New Guinea and we stayed in touch via holiday cards and Facebook, as well as meeting for dinner in Chicago. She was over 90, so the news wasn’t terribly surprising. But I admired her for staying active and traveling for most of those years.

I also heard of the deaths of two people I grew up with. Matt McDermott was a year younger than me and lived next door while I was a kid. And Danny Goodman was a year older than me and was very friendly with my brother.

The Medicare Saga: I finally managed to successfully get into my Social Security account and change my password and, most importantly, update my phone number for two-factor authentication. I also discovered that they still haven’t finished reviewing my medicare application. It isn’t at all clear why, since it says that is normally takes 2 to 4 weeks and they started the review on September 22nd. Unless, maybe they are counting from when I brought in the documents they asked for (e.g. my birth certificate), which was October 2nd. At that time, the guy I worked with said it would take about one week. Yes, I am very frustrated and stressed over this.

The Tell-Tale Heart: Last Thursday night, my friend Cindy and I went to see Synetic Theatre’s production of The Tell-Tale Heart. This is a theatre that specializes in movement-based shows, sort of a cross between mime and ballet. This production also had a lot of narration and weird music. And, for some reason I can’t explain, vultures, including one on stilts. (That is, dancers dressed as vultures. Not actual birds.) I thought it was possible I’d forgotten something about Poe’s story, but I did go and re-read it and, no, there’s not even a crow or raven there. It was all very pretty, but too weird and too far from the source material for me.

Bazaar by Jose Andres: Before a concert on Friday night, my friend Kathleen and I had dinner at Bazaar by Jose Andres, which is in the Waldorf Astoria. (Which, by the way, I kept thinking was the Ritz Carlton.) It was a very extravagant meal. This is the sort of place with a lot of small dishes, many of them just one or two bites. My favorite was something called “Neptune’s Pillows” which was spicy tuna on some sort of sesame toast thing. There was a very interesting dish of brussels sprouts with grapes and apricots and lemon foam that looked like ice on top of it. There was also coconut rice and onion soup and tomato bread. I know Kathleen got a crab louie cone and a plate of different type of ham, and a taco which had gold leaf and caviar in it. There’s probably something else I’ve forgotten. The food and the service were exquisite, but it was quite pricy.

Randy Rainbow For President: The reason we were downtown on Friday night was to see Randy Rainbow’s show. For those who are somehow unfamiliar with him, he does parody songs on political themes, often based on show tunes. He’s very funny. I enjoyed the show, though I thought it was a bit longer than it needed to be.

Baseball: I don’t really care who wins the World Series this year. I feel sorry for the Phillies having had their collapse - and that was after Bryce Harper stole home in NLCS Game 5.

As for what really matters in baseball (namely, the Grand Unified Theory of Politics, Economics, and the American League East), I was pleased to see that the BoSox have given Craig Breslow the Chief of Baseball Operations job. The guy is smart - with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale. He was accepted to NYU Medical School but has postponed that a few times already, so I doubt that medicine is really his future career. I hope he’ll find them some depth in the pitching line-up.

To Be Continued: This is long enough for now, so I’ll put a write-up of my trip to Boston last weekend in a separate entry.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. So what else is new?

First, the gentleman with whom I’m conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling was here. Most of his visit is not for public consumption. But we did go to Signature Theatre to see their production of Sweeney Todd. We had dinner beforehand at Carlyle Grand Cafe. Their pecan crusted trout was delicious. As for the show, he had never seen it before and enjoyed it. I’ve seen a few productions of it before (including on Broadway in 1980) and I thought the performances were very good. I was particularly impressed by Bryonha Marie as Mrs. Lovett, who came across as truly demented. However, I disliked the set. They had meathooks, from which they hung various things - bird cages, for example, but worst of all, two rows of body bags. One thing I did like is that they included some of the music that is often omitted, e.g. Judge Turpin’s rendition of “Johanna” and Beadle Bramford’s performance of “Parlor Songs.” Overall, it was a nice night out.

By the way, I think it’s really sweet when old people (a category in which I include us) hold hands in public.

I had two Fourth of July events to go to. The first was a chavurah get together. It was supposed to be a barbecue outdoors, but it was very hot and humid, so we ate inside. I brought hummus and pita chips, but nobody ate them. (Mostly, the chicken and corn on the cob got eaten and some of the cookies.)

After that I went over to my friend Kathleen’s place in Crystal City. Her balcony overlooks the Potomac (and DCA) so is a good place for watching fireworks. Part of her building blocked the view of the fireworks on the National Mall, but we could see fireworks from 30 or so other places. Also, we played a few rounds of Blank Slate, which was fun. It was a fun evening, though the traffic coming home was terrible.

And Saturday, I went to see the touring company of the revival of 1776 at the Kennedy Center with Cindy. This production features “a company of artists who identify as female, trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming.” For the most part, the script appeared unchanged, but it’s not like I have it memorized. The fundamental problem I had with this show is that 1776 is one of the rare musicals for which the book is good but the score is so-so, with amateurish lyrics. Sherman Edwards never wrote another musical and the world is better for that. There are two songs I like. They did fine with “Mama Look Sharp.” “Molasses to Rum to Slaves” will never be entirely satisfying to me without John Cullum playing Edward Rutledge. (Admittedly, I would pay good money to watch John Collum open a supermarket, so I may be biased.) Overall, I thought the show was just okay.

Afterwards, Cindy and I went to meet up with a flyertalk friend of mine at Pisco y Nazca. This is an excellent Peruvian restaurant. I drank a classico chicano, which was delicious and refreshing. As for food, I ate ceviche dos temperaturas which consisted of marinated fish with choclo (a type of corn with large kernels) and sweet potatoes in a spicy sauce. That was also quite tasty. The others also seemed to enjoy their food. We had lively conversation, mostly travel related.

Now I am in minor panic mode regarding upcoming travels. I’ll be fine, but there are always last minute things to get done.

I had bigger plans for Saturday, starting with meeting up with a high school friend. Ellen was a year behind me, but she hung out with a bunch of people my year and endured a lot of what would have been early college planning for her, as well as playing tons of word games in the library. We had planned to get together last summer, but she got COVID. So it had been a while since I’d seen her and I was particularly happy to have this opportunity.

New York Historical Society: We had agreed to meet up at the cafe attached to the New York Historical Society. It had rained Friday night, but the rain had stopped by late morning. I enjoyed a leisurely stroll through the Upper West Side to get there, but ended up having a hard time finding the cafe. It turns out that my phone was off by a block about exactly where it was, but Ellen had gotten there early and was able to direct me. It took ages for me to get a cup of tea, but I eventually did and we were able to enjoy our drinks and chat for a while before going into the museum.

The main reason I’d wanted to go there was to see their current exhibit I’ll Have What She’s Having about Jewish delis, which is closing in early April. I can’t say I learned a lot, but it was reasonably interesting. We both particularly liked looking at prices on the old menus. And the television / film clips they showed (including that iconic line from When Harry Met Sally) were also fun.

We finished with it in time to join the highlights tour of the museum. This started with the 4th floor, where there’s a reproduction of the Oval Office and an exhibit about presidents. That didn’t particularly excite me, since I live in the D.C. area and I’ve seen the presidential portraits in the National Portrait Gallery a few times. We went on to look at various other exhibits, however, including the gallery of Tiffany lamps. I particularly liked the dragonfly series. (I have a thing for dragonflies, in general, by the way. I have a vase with a design of them and several items of dragonfly jewelry.) But, anyway, I really need to go back some day and spend a couple of hours just in that gallery.




Another unique collection at the museum is John Jacob Audubon’s original watercolors of North American birds. To preserve the works, only one at a time is shown, under low light conditions. The bird of the month was the Kentucky warbler. The exhibit includes the plate used for printing the folios and several copies of prints, as well as the watercolor.



As I already said, there’s lots more to see. I was particularly intrigued by this image which shows a health care worker as a heroine of the pandemic.



All in all, the tour was a good way to get a quick look at some of the collection and I thought the museum was worth a visit. We did also do the obligatory browse through the gift shop. Back when I was working, I would probably have bought a scarf. as they had some nice ones. But neither of us saw anything we absolutely had to have. And we had dinner plans!

Chama Mama: When we were planning what to do, I looked for restaurants reasonably near the museum and saw that Chama Mama, a Georgian restaurant I’d been wanting to try based on another friend’s description of his birthday dinner there, has a branch on Amsterdam Avenue and 78th. I got some cred with the waiter by asking if they had tarragon lemonade (a unique Georgian soda, which I love) and explained that I had been to Georgia and that I frequently eat at Supra in D.C. Anyway, we followed his guidance and got quite a feast. We started with what they call “taste of Georgia,” which is an array of spreads with bread - eggplant, beet, kidney bean, some unnamed wild plant, and something else I’ve forgotten. Khachapuri (cheese bread) is an essential of Georgian food and we got the Imerui Khachapuri. We also got khinkali (dumplings). And for the main course, I got a dish of cauliflower in garlic sauce, while Ellen got chicken in walnut sauce. We also got some amber wine. Everything was delicious. It was definitely extravagant (and pricy), but well worth it.


NY Phil and MTT: The primary reason for the trip had been to see Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the New York Philharmonic. He’s a marvelous conductor and, given his health, I doubt I have many more opportunities to see him conduct. The renovated David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center only opened in October 2022. The acoustics are wonderful - which had not been the case at its predecessor. (Avery Fisher Hall had once been described as “a very fishy hall.”) There are, oddly, some seats that are behind the orchestra, which looks weird to me, but I had a seat at the back of the (normal) orchestra section.

MTT was conducting two pieces - his own Meditations on Rilke (which consists of 6 songs) and Schubert’s Symphony in C major, D.944, Great. One of the reasons I love him as a conductor is his talks about the works he is conducting. In this case, he talked about his father telling him that Schubert’s music is like cowboy music. He then told a story about his father going to California with friends, all of them hoping to find work in Hollywood. They ran out of gas and money in a small town in Arizona (“not even a one-horse town. There might have been a burro.”) He went into a bar which was looking for a piano player and they asked him to play some honky tonk song, which he could do after they hummed a little of it. That led to an imagined episode years later in a small Western town in which an old guy named Izzy plays the piano at a honky tonk bar, but every now and then slips into some Mahler or Berg and everyone just nods and says, “yeah, that’s how Izzy is. He’ll get back to our music.”


Anyway, the concert was extremely enjoyable. Some day I need to write about what goes through my head when listening to “classical” music - well, really, any instrumental music or even just music in languages I don’t understand. It’s a very different process than listening to popular music where I do understand the lyrics. I haven’t figured out how to articulate this yet, however. At any rate, MTT’s talk definitely enhanced my listening experience. I felt deeply privileged to be able to experience such a fabulous performance. Bravissimo!

I’ve been in rather a blur of social activity since I got back. But let’s do first things first.

Celebrity Death Watch: Robert Clary was an actor, best known for playing Corporal LeBeau on Hogan’s Heroes, though he got his start in the musical revue “New Faces of 1952.” Carol Leigh was an activist who focused on sex workers. Fred Brooks wrote the book The Mythical Man-Month. Greg Bear and Ray Nelson were science fiction writers. June Campbell was the fashion reporter who created the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Jay Pasachoff was an astronomer who is believed to have seen more solar eclipses than anyone else. Jean-Marie Straub was a film director. Wilko Johnson played guitar for Dr. Feelgood. Ray Oldenburg studied urban sociology and popularized the term “third place.” Bernadette Mayer was a poet. Sheila Vogel-Coupe was the oldest sex worker in the United Kingdom and had apparently started her career as an escort at the age of 81. Louise Tobin was a jazz singer. Christine McVie was a keyboardist and singer, as well as songwriter, for Fleetwood Mac.

Gaylord Perry was a pitcher, primarily for the San Francisco Giants. Quentin Oliver Lee was an operatic baritone, best known for playing the time role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. Dominique Lapierre wrote Is Paris Burning? Dick Enthoven owned Nando’s. Bob McGrath played the human character Bob Johnson on Sesame Street. Jim Stewart cofounded Stax Records. Jay Goldberg was a lawyer who represented a lot of famous people, including Donald Trump, Johnny Cash, Mick Jagger, and Bono. Roddy Jackson was a rockabilly performer. Lee Lorenz was a cartoonist and editor for The New Yorker. Jean-Louis Bourgeois was an expert on mud brick architecture and worked both in the American southwest and in Djenne, Mali. Ruth Madoc played Fruma Sarah in the 1971 film version of Fiddler o the Roof. Herbert Deutsch co-invented the Moog Synthesizer. Grant Wahl was a sports journalist. Paul Silas played basketball for the Boston Celtics and the Seattle SuperSonics before going on to coach for the Charlotte Hornets. Georgia Holt was an actress and singer best known as the mother of Cher. Dame Beryl Grey was a ballerina. Abigail Kinoiki Kekaulike Kawananakoa claimed to be the last remaining Hawaiian royal princess. Frances Hesselbein was the CEO of the Girl Scouts starting in the mid-1970’s and changed their focus away from homemaker type activities, Wolf Erlbruch wrote German children’s books. Stuart Margolin was an actor, best known for playing Angel Martin in The Rockford Files. Curt Simmons was a pitcher, primarily for the Phillies. Steven “tWitch” Boss was a dancer and actor. Belinda Douglas-Scot-Montagu was commissioned to work on an embroidery for the 900th anniversary of the New Forest. Dino Danelli played drums for The Rascals.

Ned Rorem was a Pulitzer Prize winning composer. I have to admit that I knew his name mostly from crossword puzzles. But he earned me 27 ghoul pool points (15 for his position on my list, plus 12 for uniqueness).

Irene Cara was a singer and actress, best known for the song “Flashdance … What a Feeling.”

Kirstie Alley was an actress, best known for playing Rebecca Howe on Cheers.

Joseph Kromelis was a homeless man and sometime street vendor in Chicago who was known as “Walking Man.” He was the victim of an arson attack while he slept under a bridge in May 2022. People suck.

FlyerTalk Dinner: Last Friday night, I went out to dinner with a few friends from FlyerTalk at Open Road in Rosslyn. The food and beer were both very good and the service was okay. (I had the Tropic Thunder IPA and their tacos.) The prices were a bit on the high side, though we got the happy hour prices on the drinks and the entrees were big enough for two meals. Overall, I’d recommend it and I’d be happy to try their Merrifield location (which is closer to my house, though the Rosslyn one is right across the street from the metro, so is reasonably convenient). I should also note that Rosslyn looks to have been cleaned up quite a bit since the last time I was there, which was ages ago.

Chocolate Tasting: Last Saturday, Cindy and I went to a chocolate tasting at River-Sea Chocolates in Chantilly. The place was a little hard to find, since their sign is not visible from the parking lot. But we did figure it out and were in plenty of time. We watched a few videos about chocolate growing, processing, and shipping, then tasted 5 different chocolates. The first two were dark chocolates - one from Thailand, one from Brazil. While they had similar cacao percentages, they tasted very different. Then there were two milk chocolates - one plain and one one with salted caramel. Finally, there was a white chocolate with gingerbread spices. The Thailand and the salted caramel milk chocolate were my favorites. We also got a little tour of their factory, seeing all the machines.

I also liked that their products are ethically sourced. For example, they check that the beans are all grown organically and that no child labor is involved. They even ship their beans by sailboats, to prevent the environmental impact of containerized cargo ships.

I bought several chocolate bars (as did Cindy) and highly recommend this place to people who like good chocolate. I thought I knew a lot about chocolate, but I did learn more and I will definitely be shopping there again.

Voices Swap: Last Saturday night was the monthly Voices in the Glen story swap. I got there late, because I had taken a nap and forgotten to turn on my alarm clock. At least I was on time to hear Margaret tell Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” which is always a delight. I told a very brief version of La Segua, a Costa Rican horror story, in honor of my recent vacation.

Loser Brunch: Sunday was a Loser brunch at Lena’s in Alexandria. We had three tables full of people, scattered throughout the venue, which was slightly awkward, but we were able to get up and mingle. I got a margarita pizza (very good) and a drink called a Venus de Milo, which had campari, white peach, proseco, and grenadine, and was very tasty. Service was slow and there were some mistakes, but it was very busy, so it was forgivable.

This is rather burying the lede, but some of you already know that the WaPo killed the Style Invitational (along with the Sunday Magazine section and some other stuff). What you may not know is that Pat (the Empress) and her predecessor (Gene Weingarten, aka the Czar) are giving it a new life (alas, without prizes) on substack. They are hoping to get people to pay $5 a month or $50 a year, but you can sign up to read for free if you just want to read. Go to The Gene Pool and join.

Cookie Exchange and Dinner: I did a holiday cookie exchange with a bunch of puzzle folks again this year. We simplified things by having centralized receiving points for each city with multiple participants. The DC folks met up on Monday night to have dinner at Rasika West End (good Indian food) and distribute cookies. There was also lively conversation involved. By the way, my contribution was maple cinnamon stars, which are basically ordinary sugar cookies with cinnamon and maple extract added, cut into star shapes and decorated with gold sprinkles. Here’s a picture:



Also, I met up briefly today (Sunday the 18th) with the guy who received our cookies from the out of towners to get the rest of the ones he had. We still have one person who hasn’t done his share yet.

Post Office: I mailed off the rest of my cookies on Tuesday morning. The Merrifield Post Office is very efficient and it didn’t take long. I didn’t think I’d need another post office trip, but I discovered that some of the holiday cards I had required extra postage, so I made another excursion on Friday morning, this time to the Oakton Post Office because I had a couple of other errands to run in that direction. Things were slower there, since it’s much smaller and has fewer people working. Still, it gave me an opportunity to do my good deed for the month, since I always have a baggie full of pens and pencils in my pocketbook and was able to lend a pen to two people who needed to fill out customs forms. Note to self: check the box next time I buy cards to make sure they just require normal postage.

MIT Club of DC Holiday Party: Wednesday night was the MIT Club of DC holiday party, which was at a law office in Georgetown. The food (heavy hors d’oeuvres) was pretty tasty, but the drink assortment was weird, with lots of wine, sodas, and a bottle of Ketel One vodka. (I stuck to ginger ale, by the way.) I had lots of interesting conversation, some with people I knew before (e.g. someone I used to work with) and some with people I hadn’t met before. The possibility of a storytelling event for the club got mentioned.

TCC Webinar: Today there was a Travelers’ Century Club virtual explorations seminar about festivals. There were three speakers, who covered Guerewol in Niger, Naadam in Mongolia, and Punakha Drubchan in Bhutan. I’ve been to Naadam in Tuva (and the so-called “little” Naadam in Mongolia, which paled in comparison), but both the other two looked interesting. There was also good conversation in the breakout room for the Gurewol Festival afterwards.

Condo Association Holiday Party: Tonight was the annual condo association holiday party. There was fairly good attendance. I sampled several of the hot hors d’oeuvres including some very nice cheese puffs. And I had a glass of wine. I talked with a few neighbors but didn’t stay for long. I went back up to my condo and lit my Chanukah candles and now I am about to play board games over zoom.

Chanukah: I lit the first candle tonight. Chappy Chanukah!

I am, as usual, behind on everything. Sigh.

Celebrity Death Watch: Marilyn Loden coined the term “glass ceiling.” Lamont Dozier wrote and/or produced a lot of Motown hits. Darryl Hunt played bass guitar for The Pogues. Olivia Newton-John was a singer and actress. Raymond Briggs wrote and illustrated British children’s books. Richard Caruso founded Integra LifeSciences, a successful manufacturer of artificial skin. Robyn Griggs acted in soap operas as a young adult. David Kay led American weapons inspection efforts in Iraq. Clayton Jacobson II developed the jet ski. John Wockenfuss played baseball, primarily for the Detroit Tigers. Tom Weisskopf was a golfer who won several PGA championships own the 1970’s. Jerry Allison was the drummer for The Crickets and wrote several songs, including “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.” Esther Cooper Jackson was a civil rights activist. Len Dawson was a football player, primarily for the Kansas City Chiefs. Kurt Gottfried cofounded the Union of Concerned Scientists. Roland Messier was the White House executive pastry chef from 1980 to 2004. Robert LuPone originated the role of Zach in A Chorus Line on Broadway and co-founded the MCC Theater, but was never as well known as his sister, Patti. Peter Eckersley was a cyber security activist. Frank Drake was an astronomer. Peter Straub wrote horror novels. Moon Landrieu was the mayor of New Orleans for most of the 1970’s. Earl J. Silbert was the first prosecutor in the Watergate case. Tina Ramirez founded Ballet Hispanico. Bernard Shaw was the lead news anchor for CNN for over 20 years. Rommy Hunt Revson invented the scrunchie. Lance Mackey was a four-time Iditarod champion. James Polshek was an architect, whose work included the Clinton Presidential Center and the Newseum. Lowry Mars co-founded Clear Channel Communications. Ramsey Lewis was a jazz pianist and composer. Ken Starr was a lawyer, probably best known for writing the Starr Report which led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Roxanne Lowit was a fashion photographer. Jean-Luc Goddard was a film director. Fred Franzia made cheap wine. Irene Pappas was an actress, probably best known for playing the widow in the film version of Zorba the Greek. Liam Holden was the last person sentenced to death in the UK, though his sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment and his conviction was overturned later in response to revelations about the torture used to extract his confession to killing a British soldier in Northern Ireland. Brian Binnie was one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, built by Scaled Composites. Nick Holonyak invented the red LED.


Norah Vincent died in early July, but her death was not publicly announced until mid-August. She was most famous for her book Salf-Made Man, in which she described her experiences living as a man for 18 months.

David McCullough was a historian. He won the Pulitzer prize for his books about Harry S Truman and John Adams.

Marc Lapadula taught film studies at Yale University. He also lectured as part of One Day University and I’d been to a couple of his lectures about significant American movies.

Anne Heche was an actress who died in a rather spectacular traffic accident. She was probably at least as well known for her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. I was able to use one of my ghoul pool trades for her, so she earned me 32 points (including the 12 point uniqueness bonus, which really only worked due to some convenient timing on the trade).

Barry Boehm was the founding director of the Center for Systems and Software Engineeringg at USC. He was something of a fixture in software engineering and systems engineering circles, and did important work on cost modeling, models for software development, and systems engineering processes. I scribbled down various words of wisdom from him at numerous conferences over the years, including, “the standards have been tailored so much that the suit has become a vest.”

Lily Renee was a comic book artist. She escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria to England as a teenager, before coming to the United States and becoming one of the first women in the comics industry. She was also the subject of a book by Trina Robbins which revived interest in her career. She earned me 25 ghoul pool points, which includes the 12 point uniqueness bonus.

I hope you don’t really need me to tell you who Mikhail Gorbachev was. He presided over the break-up of the Soviet Union peacefully and got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

Barbara Ehrenreich was a nonfiction writer, specializing in social issues. Her most famous book was Nickel and Dimed, which discusses trying to live on minimum wage jobs. I have been hearing the term “toxic positivity” quite a lot lately and a lot of her writing touches on that subject.

Marsha Hunt was pretty much the last actress of her generation left when she died at age 104. Her career was cut short by McCarthyism, leading her to become an activist. She earned me 14 ghoul pool points.

You really really don’t need me to tell you who Queen Elizabeth II was. For people of my generation, she was the one British monarch throughout our lives. I think the most interesting thing about her was her World War II service as a driver and mechanic. Whatever one might think of the monarchy, she fulfilled her role with dignity and grace. She earned me 20 ghoul pool points.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: I only learned a week or so ago that Mort Rau died at the end of July. I knew him as spaceman on flyer talk and got to spend time with him at a few FT events, including OzFest. We had a mutual professional interest in space systems so had plenty to talk about. He was a nice guy and I’m sorry to see him join the ranks of FTers who’ve flown off into the sunset.

Baseball: I know the season isn’t actually over, but the Mets are the only team I follow who are still in it. The Nats were particularly pathetic, even worse than the Royals. (I follow the Royals because a guy from my home town used to pitch for them.) And I can’t even think about my Red Sox without distress, though they haven’t actually been eliminated from the wild card race yet.

National Book Festival: I spent the afternoon of September 3rd volunteering at the National Book Festival. They were a bit disorganized this year, sending out the info for the zoom training sessions rather last minute. And I got my email with my volunteer assignment early in the morning the day before the festival. That assignment turned out to be program distribution. I was stationed at the L Street South entrance to the Convention Center. People were surprisingly enthusiastic in their gratitude for being handed a program. Some people (mostly men) were astonished that the program was free. (As was the entire festival.) I was mostly able to direct people to where they wanted to go, but I did misdirect one person (in fact, one of my neighbors!) because it was still early and I had forgotten that, for some ungodly reason, the convention center map has north on the left. Standing for 5 hours was tiring, but I’m still glad I did it and I’ll do it again in future years, schedule permitting.

My Birthday / Storytelling Workshop: I’d had an early birthday celebration on the Friday night before my birthday, in the form of going out to my favorite Thai restaurant (Elephant Jumps in Falls Church) with a friend. Then on Sunday September 4th, I turned 64. I celebrated by going to a storytelling workshop (over zoom), having to do with tall tales and liars’ contests. Bi Lepp was the perfect person to lead this and it was a fun afternoon.

Getting Rid of Books: I made a used bookstore run on Friday the 9th, getting rid of 59 books and bringing home only 13 with my trade credit. (I still have 30 odd dollars of trade credit, however.) The next day I drove to Baltimore and donated 77 books to The Book Thing. There are still too many books in my house.

JGSGW: Tyler Ainbinder gave a very interesting talk about Jewish Immigrants in Urban America. He talked about several things that I hadn’t already known. For example, the Statue of Liberty was funded by French radicals who were protesting the monarchy. 1 in 100 immigrants were turned away at Ellis Island, generally for health reasons. When you see pictures of people climbing the stairs to the hall, that was a test to make sure their lungs and legs were healthy. One thing that struck most of us as weird was that immigrants had to answer that they did not have a job that they were going to. This was because of a concern that they would have accepted low pay, which would take jobs away from people already in America. I’ll take Things I Wouldn’t Have Imagined for $600, Alex.

The Usual: My usual routine includes lots of other things over zoom. I have a once a month session on Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) research discussion with JGSGW, for which I am the primary Subject Matter Expert. I go to a crafts group on Thursdays, which provides for time to work on projects (an on-going cross-stitch in my case) and good conversation, always including books. The discussion group on Grimm’s Fairy Tales started up again with “The Handless Maiden,” a story that poses a number of difficulties. And I play games (mostly Code Names) with friends several nights a week. As I like to say, I am retired from work, not from life.

FT Dinner: I had dinner a week ago with a couple of Flyertalk people at Farmers Fishers Bakers in Georgetown. The restaurant is at Washington Harbor, which is always a bit of a pain in the neck since, while it isn’t terribly far from the Foggy Bottom metro station, part of the route is rather pedestrian unfriendly. Anyway, I had a nice cocktail called a Southside, which had gin, lemon, mint, and clementine bitters. My seared tuna was just okay, as it was a little overcooked. I also had coffee ice cream for dessert, which was fine. The service was so-so, which is my usual experience at Founding Farmers affiliated restaurants. But the conversation (primarily about travel) was good and that’s the important thing.

No Place To Go: I saw this musical at Signature Theatre this past Thursday. It was written in 2012 and is somewhat dated given the rise in remote work, but the premise is that an “information refiner,” who is a “permanent part-time worker” has to decide whether or not to relocate when his employer announces they are moving - to Mars. It’s reasonably amusing and the music (played by a three-man band) was enjoyable. I was particularly impressed by Ben Boker, who played the saxophone at the performance I was at. But the whole thing works largely because Bobby Smith, who is well-known to all regular Signature attendees, is excellent. There are some ver funny moments, such as the song “Aging Middle Class Parents,” in which he considers moving in with his (or his wife’s) parents as a way to avoid moving. There’s also a running joke in which the last sandwich left in the conference room cries out to be eaten. There’s also a poignant song, “The Mighty Mench [sic],” which tells the story of a former employee who died. The key message is that people get more out of work than just a paycheck. Overall, this isn’t essential, but it was an enjoyable hour and a half.

The Color Purple: I was back at Signature on Saturday afternoon to see their production of The Color Purple. I’ve seen this show before (a touring production st the Kennedy Center) and thought it was just okay. But Signature made it outstanding, largely due to some excellent performances. I knew I was in for a treat when I saw that Nova Payton, one of the best actresses in the DC area, was starring as Celie. I was also very impressed by French Davis as Sofia and Danielle J. Summons as Shug Avery. There was also great choreography - especially for the song “African Homeland.” There are major holes in the book. I find Mister’s reformation completely impossible to believe, for example. But the show was both entertaining and moving. This type of performance is why I’m a long-time subscriber to Signature Theatre.

Story Swap: We had the monthly Voices in the Glen story swap on Saturday night. People are gearing up for Halloween. Myself included, as I did my first telling of a Russian folk tale (The Coffin Lid) that is, essentially, a vampire story. I also particularly enjoyed hearing a few stories from The Devil’s Storybook by Natalie Babbitt.

Bernstein’s MASS: On Sunday, a friend and I went to see Leonard Bernstein’s MASS at the Kennedy Center. This was commissioned by Jackie Kennedy for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971. Before the performance, we had lunch at the KC Cafe (overpriced and unexciting, but convenient) and checked out the new exhibit about JFK in the Gallery on the Terrace level.

As for the theatrical work (and it is theatrical, incorporating dance with the wide ranging music), it is very much a product of its turbulent times, which actually makes it relevant in these turbulent times. I’d only heard excerpts before, so was not entirely prepared for the complexity of the complete piece. I was glad for the supertitles (which translated the gist of the Latin mass portions, as well as English texts, which were sung clearly enough that I didn’t need the supertitles for them for the most part). Will Liverman gave an excellent performance as the Celebrant, which is a demanding role, given the emotional intensity of the piece, especially the Fraction. James Gaffigan conducted the orchestra and was less showy than some other conductors I’ve seen over the years (including Leonard Bernstein himself). I’d say my favorite section is the Credo, in which various members of the congregation sing about their conflicting beliefs. I’ll also note that the most memorable lyric is “half of the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election; half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction,” which was a gift from Paul Simon to Bernstein. (The primary lyricist was Stephen Schwartz.) At any rate, this was definitely worth seeing and it made me feel privileged to have access to the cultural life here.

Rabbi Doctor Silver: I forgot to mention this play that I watched on-line in early May. It’s a new translation of a Yiddish play by Sholem Asch. The plot involves a well-respected rabbi, whose wife is having an affair with her music teacher. She ends up leaving her husband, but when things go wrong for her with the music teacher, the rabbi tries to take her back. This stirs up his congregation (and, especially, the board of directors). There is also tension with his mother who lives with him. I didn’t find the story particularly convincing, but the play was well acted.

The Flushies: Last weekend was The Flushies, the annual award ceremony / party for the Style Invitational Loser community. My contribution to the potluck meal was tabbouleh and, after chopping ridiculous amounts of parsley, I remembered why I don’t make that more often. At least it was successful, meaning I had only enough leftovers for one meal. I thought some of the award announcements went on a bit long, with Pat reading too many of the entries by a couple of the winners. The group singing of song parodies also seemed longer than usual. But my perception of length was probably influenced by the absurdly hot weather (90+ Fahrenheit). I, generally, handle heat well, so I imagine other people were also chomping at the bit. Still, it was good to see some people I don’t see frequently (and see some in person who I usually see over zoom). And, of course, it is always fun to meet new folks.

Transport Planning for the Exurbs: I went to an MIT-related webinar about transport planning this week. The speaker is a planner for the Fredericksburg, Virginia area. I didn’t find much of what he had to say surprising. For example, of course people are reluctant to use a bus service that runs only once an hour. I was also glad that he talked about integrating pedestrians and bicyclists into the complete picture of transit needs. But I was somewhat disheartened by the length of time to get improvements implemented.

Textile Museum: I went to the Textile Museum on Wednesday with a few people from my crafts group. They have an exhibit on Indian textiles, which included examples from the 14th century to the present time and ranging throughout the subcontinent. In general, I preferred the embroidered textiles to the block printed and dyed ones. One other interesting thing was that a lot of pieces had an unusual sort of symmetry, where, say, both sides had birds but each side had different birds.

The stitching on this piece was particularly detailed:



This piece is more modern with interesting stylized figures:



The exhibit also includes various garments.



This piece incorporates iridescent beetle wings, along with the stitching.



After looking through the exhibit (and browsing in the gift shop), we had lunch a the falafel place in Western Market. I couldn’t resist trying their vegan shawarma. It was tasty, but I think the falafel would have been a better choice. (There are a wide range of other food stalls at Western Market, by the way, ranging from arepas to lobster rolls, fried chicken to sushi. Someday I have to try the Guatemalan place.) All in all, it was a lovely excursion.

The Upstairs Department: On Thursday night, I went to see this new play at Signature Theatre. The story involves a young man who came out of a medically induced coma with the ability to hear dead people. His father died of COVID while he was in the coma - and that’s the one person he can’t hear. He and his sister go to Lily Dale (a real spiritualist community) where he hopes to learn how to control his power. His sister is a skeptic and the real gist of the play has to do with their relationship. The other character is the medium who they work with. The tone is much lighter than this description suggests and there were several moments of excellent character-driven humor.

By the way, I had dinner before the play at Tacos y Pina. The food was very good, as was the margarita I got. But I thought it was rather pricy for what it is.

Chavurah Barbecue: Yesterday afternoon, my chavurah had a cookout. The weather was beautiful - well, except for a brief rain shower. My contribution to the side dishes was a simple macaroni salad (elbow macaroni, scallions, pimentos, dill pickle relish, olives, and mayonnaise). It was good seeing folks and the conversation ranged from politics to movies to genealogy to books to baseball, etc. We will probably do another event for the Fourth of July.

Tone Rangers: I left the Women’s Storytelling Festival a bit early on Sunday so I could zip up Chain Bridge Road to Jammin’ Java to see the Tone Rangers, one of my favorite a cappella groups. Since this was their first show in over two years, they focused on familiar songs. I was happy that included “Helen,” “One More Minute,” and (of course) their arrangement of “Wild Thing,” which starts with Gregorian chant. It was a lot of fun and continued the theme of of live entertainment being the best sort.

Boston - Part 1, The Encore: I already wrote about going to the opera on Monday night. On Tuesday, I flew up to Boston. That gave me a chance to check out the changes they’ve made to DCA, which mostly consist of having centralized the security screening so you can go between the piers of Terminals B and C without having to go through security again. While that does open up more shopping and dining options, in the process of doing that they got rid of the mail drop and all of the fee-free ATMs.

My flight (on Jet Blue) was delayed, but that wasn’t a big deal since I didn’t have anything pressing to do Tuesday evening. I took the T to North Station and checked into my hotel, the Citizen M, which is very conveniently located and decidedly modernistic. That evening I went over to the Encore casino to have what proved to be a mediocre dinner and check out the architecture and decor (not all that impressive). I was not impressed by their selection of gambling machines either. Vegas isn’t going to lose any sleep over this as competition.

Boston - Part 2, The Gardner: On Wednesday, I went over to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I used to occasionally go to chamber music concerts in the tapestry room there when I was in college, but I hadn’t been back in 40+ years. The main change is that they added a new, modern wing, with temporary exhibits (plus a cafe and the museum shop). For example, one exhibit was of portraits of museum staff and patrons by artist-in-residence Charmaine Wheatley.



There was also an intriguing exhibit of art by Zanele Muholi, a non-binary South African artist.





The main part of the museum is preserved as it was when Gardner lived there. The courtyard is lovely in early springtime,



“The Rape of Europa” by Titian is probably the most famous painting in their collection.



There is also plenty of stained glass.



And tapestries.



I had lunch in their cafe and then, because the weather was nice, walked around the area for a while. In the evening I was off to see The Tannahill Weavers.

Boston - Part 3, The Tannahill Weavers: The excuse for the trip was a concert by the Tannahill Weavers at The Burren, an Irish pub in Somerville. I met up with my friend, Ron, there and we had dinner (fish and chips in my case) before the show started. When I first saw the Tannies live (sometime in the early 1980’s), they were described as ‘young, loud, fast, and good.” They are all of those 40 some odd years later, except for young. And, even there, they do have a new young (ish) piper, Iain MacGillivray, and a young fiddler, Malcolm Bushby. But both Roy Gullan (vocals and guitar) and Phil Smilie (flute, tin whistle, bodhran) are original members.

Anyway, it was a nice lively evening, marred only by the room being too small for people to move very much beyond a toe tap or two. This is not music you can listen to sitting still! I was especially pleased that they did the Stan Rogers song, “The Jeannie C,” as well as their arrangement of “Auld Lang Syne.” Also, they closed with “Johnny Cope” which is one of the songs I associate most closely with them. All in all, an enjoyable evening.


Boston - Part 4, Salem: On Thursday, Ron and I went up to Salem, primarily to go to the Peabody Essex Museum. The weather was miserable - cold and rainy. Since our train got in before the museum opened, we had coffee at a place nearby.

When we got to the museum, they told us we could get right into their special exhibit, The Great Animal Orchestra. We didn’t really know what it was about, but figured we should take advantage of not having a wait. This proved to be an excellent move, as this was one of the best museum exhibits I’ve been to in my life. You sit in a dark room, while animal sounds (recorded in a number of different places, from Alaska to Zimbabwe) play and a screen shows their frequencies and amplitudes. There are brief explanations by Bernie Krause, who recorded the sounds, before each segment. The whole thing is about 100 minutes and I loved every second of it. It mostly reminded me of camping in remote places mixed with night safaris where they turn off the jeep engines and you listen to the night sounds. A particularly dramatic segment included sounds from the same place before and after trees were cut down, showing the impact of even controlled forestry. The whole thing was absolutely incredible and I am so glad to have had the opportunity to experience it.

We went to some of the other exhibits upstairs, starting with Each/Other: Marie Watt and Canupa Hanska Luger. This was a series of mixd media sculptures by two indigenous artists. There was an interesting set of opera costumes by Luger:



Watt had several pieces that focused on textiles, like this collection of blankets:




We also looked through parts of the exhibits of Salem Stories and Japanomania! Japanese Art Goes Global. The latter covered the history of Japanese art and its interaction with the West. I was intrigued by this “edict tablet,” which apparently has to do with a ban on Christianity in 17th century Japan.



After a stop for lunch we went on to On This Ground: Being in Belonging in America. This combines Native American art and American art over 10,000 years. This had a wide range of works. For example, there was a piece titled “Honoring Our Foremothers” by Patrick Dean Hubbell, a contemporary Dine (Navaho) artist, with its obvious links to the American flag:




There’s a very different tone to this early 19th century painting, “The Apotheosis of Washington,” by an artist in Guangzhou, China after an engraving by John James Barralet.




There was a wide range of art and fashion. My tastes run decidedly towards the more modern pieces. To give just one more example, this piece, “Mari Mary” by the contemporary Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, was panted on two Toyota car hoods.



By the time we finished with this exhibit, we were both pretty much museumed out. While there was more stuff we might have liked to see (the PEM is a very large museum), neither of us felt capable of absorbing much more. So we adjourned to the Kakawa Chocolate Haus, next door to the museum. This is a branch of a favorite place of mine in Santa Fe and specializes in historic chocolate, including excellent hot chocolate blends.

We had one more stop to make before returning to the train station. If the weather had been nicer, we’d have walked around Salem more, but we were not going to let mere rain stop us from visiting the extremely silly Bewitched statue. (Never mind that the Salem witch trials were actually in what is now Danvers. They know how to stir up tourist business.)




Once back at North Station, Ron went home while I retrieved my bag and switched to the Hilton at Logan Airport, as I had an early flight in the morning. That flight went smoothly and I had plenty of time to nap before going off to the Kennedy Center for the Michael Tilson Thomas concert I’ve already written about.


I hope not to be so slow on further catchup posts.

I have, as usual, been busy. I don’t really know how not to be.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

and, especially,

I perform what I want to see in the world.

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

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

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

Living Room Archaeology: I have been engaging in a lot of sorting and shredding and so on. I think it is safe to get rid of things like a couple of Italian train tickets from 2014, for example. I cannot, however, figure out why I wrote “Burn Before ..” at the bottom of a to-do list from some time late last year.