fauxklore | Entries tagged with friday cocktail project

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.

I took a brief trip out of town last week. I took the train up to New York on Monday afternoon. I’d been a bit concerned about the aftermath of their snow storm, but the streets and sidewalks had been mostly cleared. I stayed at the Fairfield Inn on 33rd Street, right across from Moynihan Train Hall, which was convenient and fairly good as hotels in that class go. They even had a hot breakfast buffet. However, they had the tables within the breakfast room closed off, which led to a lot of people gathering around one large table and several clusters of armchairs / coffee tables in the lobby, which seems to me to be less socially distanced than the breakfast room would have been.

Anyway, a lot of things are closed on Tuesdays. Looking at the options, I decided to check out the National Museum of Mathematics. This would be an excellent place to go if I were about 8 years old. But it is definitely geared to elementary school age children and I think I saw only one other adult who was not accompanied by a young child. There are a lot of interactive exhibits - but not a lot of actual explanation of the mathematics behind them. Also, a lot of exhibits were not working. Overall, I didn’t think it was worth the $25 admission. The museum shop does have a lot of interesting math-related toys, however.

Tuesday afternoon, I went down to Tribeca to see a gallery exhibit at Sapar Contemporary. The work, by an Indonesian artist named Mulyana, is called Fragile Ecosystems and consists of knitted coral and felted fish and the like. Having worked on the Smithsonian crochet coral reef (back in 2011) this was obviously right up my alley. It doesn’t take long to see, but was worth the stop.

It was a short walk from there to The Mysterious Bookshop, which was one of the (if not THE) first mystery bookstores in the U.S. and is always a delightful place to browse. I could easily spend quite a lot of money there, but I have way too many books to begin with, so limited myself to buying three thin volumes in their Bibolomysteries series of novellas and a few postcards of pulp covers.

I had a quick dinner, then meandered down to Battery Park to the Museum of Jewish Heritage to see Ricky Ian Gordon’s opera of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, which was a coproduction of the New York City Opera and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. Ricky is from my home town, which was another reason for wanting to see this. I had seen the movie long enough ago that I remembered pretty much nothing about it, beyond it having to do with an Italian family during World War II. There are really two plot lines. One has to do with a love story - young Giorgio’s love for Micol Finzi-Contini, who pretty much thinks he is beneath her. There’s a second (gay) love story that is less developed. The other story, which was more successful for me, had to do with the rising anti-Semitism in Italy and I found that more satisfying musically. In particular, I found the scene in the second act of a Passover seder at Giorgio’s home which becomes confrontational about the future of Italian Jewry to be a dramatic highlight. I should also note the performance of Anthony Ciaramitaro as Giorgio, who has returned to Ferrara in his 40’s and is looking back at the events of his youth. Overall, it was worth seeing.

On Wednesday, I went to the Brooklyn Museum, primarily to see two exhibits. I started with the Andy Warhol exhibit, which was, frankly, weird. When I think of Warhol, I think mostly of things like Campbell’s soup cans and screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and so on. Instead, this exhibit emphasized the influence of the Byzantine Catholic Church on him.

They did point out the conflict between his religion and his sexuality, which didn’t stop them from showing a lot of semi-pornographic film, partly in the context of his shooting by Valerie Solanas. But, even there, they played up how much he went to church after recovering from the shooting. Overall, a very strange take on a well-known artist.

The other exhibit I went there for was about Dior, and that was more satisfying. There was plenty of footage of runway shows, which I could watch for ages. And there were luscious dresses. Of course, many of the accessories are especially beyond the reach of the average person. I don’t know where I could get a couple of elephants to set off any of my little black dresses, for example.

Some other parts of the exhibit felt a bit too much like advertising. That was especially true of the videos of perfume ads. I’d also have liked more material about the place of high-end fashion in our culture. But, overall, I enjoyed the exhibit.

While I was at the museum, I did also go through some of their permanent collection. (Well, okay, I ignored the Egyptian stuff. My mother was an archaeology major in college and, as a result, I was overexposed as a child, leading to a lifelong aversion to ancient Egypt.) The strongest part of their collection is contemporary feminist art. In particular, they host The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago.

In the evening, I went to see an extremely silly show called Space Dogs. This was written and performed by Van Hughes and Nick Blaemire. Blaemire is somewhat notorious in the D.C. area for having written music and lyrics for Glory Days, which was successful at Signature Theatre but closed after one performance on Broadway. Anyway, this show had to do with the Soviet use of dogs to prove humans could survive space and focused on the relationship between “the Chief Designer” and the dog, Laika, who was sent to space, but without a plan to return her to earth. There was some catchy music and clever use of video and puppets, but the show was far longer than it needed to be. And some of the historical inaccuracies drove me nuts, though I am sure nobody else in the audience noticed how badly they mangled info about the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Oh, well, it was a lot cheaper than a Broadway show would have been. But you’d be better off going to Los Angeles and checking out the exhibit about Dogs of the Soviet Space Program at the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

The other purpose of my trip was to see the Philadelphia half of the Jasper Johns retrospective and I did that on Thursday. (I had seen the New York part at the Whitney in November). This was definitely worth seeing. Seeing so many of his works in one place made me appreciate Johns more. I think what is particularly striking about his work is that he kept all of his studies (and signed them). But, mostly, I like how he played with his ideas, repeating the same themes over and over.

Another good example is here , in “5 Postcards.”

I did go an revisit other works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, too. There is plenty of American art, including Shaker furniture, for example. They have plenty of works by Monet, Van Gogh, and so on. But my absolute favorite piece there is Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” largely for the epiphany I had about it many years ago. Namely, that the key word in the title is “descending” and that it is really about the motion. This revolutionized how I look at modern art.

All in all, I had a good trip. I got back on Friday afternoon in time to make this cocktail of the week - a nutty African, which consists of brewed coffee, amarula (a South African liqueur made from the marula fruit), rum, and whipped cream, decorated with chopped pecans. It was delicious.

Here is what I’ve been up to over the past month. Aside from something of a fit of organizational mania, which I am still somewhat in the throes of, so I am not ready to write about it yet.

Celebrity Death Watch: John Moriarty was a conductor, primarily of operas. Calvin Simon sang with Parliament-Funkadelic. R. Dean Taylor wrote the song “Indiana Wants Me.” Bobby Harrison was a drummer and singer for Procul Harum. Michael Lang co-created Woodstock. Bob Saget was a comedian and actor. Jean Maheu was the president of the Centre Pompidou for most of the 1980’s. Dwayne Hickman was an actor, best known for The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Don Maynard was a hall of fame football player. Aura Herzog was the first lady of Israel from 1983 to 1993. Clyde Bellecouret co-founded the American Indian Movement. Ronnie Spector was the lead singer of The Ronettes. everett Lee was a violinist and the first African-American to conduct a Broadway musical. Sonny Turner was the lead singer of The Platters. Terry Teachout was the drama critic for the Wall Street Journal for many years. Fred Paris wrote the song “In the Still of the Night.” Israel Dressner was a rabbi and civil rights activist who marched with Martin Luther King. Rick Cook was a science fiction writer. Carol Speed was an actress who appeared in several blaxploitation movies. Yvette Mimieux was a film and television actress, best known for The Time Machine. Peter Robbins was the first actor to voice Charlie Brown. Dick Halligan was a founding member of Blood, Sweat & Tears. Louie Anderson was a comedian, actor, and host of Family Feud. Don Wilson played guitar for The Ventures. Thich Nhat Hanh was a Buddhist monk who wrote books about mindfulness. Sheldon Silver was a corrupt New York politician, which may be redundant. Morgan Stevens was a television actor. Bud Brown was the acting Secretary of Commerce under Ronald Reagan.

Charles Njonjo was a Kenyan politician. He had been on my ghoul pool list a few years ago and I somehow or other had forgotten about him, despite his being a centenarian.

Marilyn Bergman was (along with her husband, Alan) a prolific lyricist, whose songs included “The Way We Were,”“The Windmills of Your Mind,” and the theme song for the television show Maude. The Bergmans won four Emmys, three Oscars, and two Grammys - but no Tonys.

Meat Loaf was a pop singer and actor. He was particularly popular in the late 1970’s. One of my suitemates in college played :Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” frequently. Let’s just sa that my tastes in music were edgier.

Ghoul Pool List: Since I mentioned a ghoul pool failure above, here is my list for this year.

20. Queen Elizabeth II
19. Bob Barker
18. Carmen Herrera
17. Anne Hutchinson Guest
16. Naomi Replanski
15. Ned Rorem
14. Marsha Hunt
13. Lily Renee
12. Caren Marsh Doll
11. James Lovelock
10. Lee Adams
9. Roger Angell
8. Jimmy Carter
7. Sam Nujoma
6. Shannon Doherty
5. Rachel Robinson
4. George Leitmann
3. W. Nicholas Hitchon
2. Al Jaffee
1. James L. Buckley

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: George Moy was a regular at local MIT Club activities. He was always friendly and full of advice, especially about financial matters.

I worked with Rod Barfield for a number of years. He was partially responsible for my transferring from the Engineering Group to a program office

Clark Weissman co-founded the California Traditional Music Society and was responsible for many folk music, dance, and storytelling events in the Los Angeles area and beyond.

Rent: I saw Rent at Signature Theatre a few weeks ago. It’s not one of my favorite musicals, though I don’t dislike it. But Signature always does a good job and this was no exception. In particular, Josh Dawson was excellent as Collins, as was Katie Mariko Murray as Maureen. I particularly liked how they staged Maureen’s performance art number, “Over the Moon,” which provided some needed comic relief. I still think the show is something of a period piece nowadays, given that HIV is no longer the death sentence it was. And, of course, the battle against gentrification has been pretty much lost.

The Paradox of Choice: I went to a discussion group sponsored by a local library about the paradox of choice. There’s a book with that title by Barry Schwartz that I consider one of the biggest influences on my thinking. The basic point is that having too many choices makes decisions harder. The examples the facilitator of this discussion used ranged from deciding on an ice cream flavor to what to wear to making investments. My personal experience goes back to my travels across eastern and southern Africa in 1998. Most of the time, the only cereal we could buy was corn flakes. Once in a while, there were also Rice Krispies. Once I was in South Africa, there were more choices, but still nothing comparable to American (and UK) supermarkets. So, when I got home, I often found myself nearly paralyzed in the cereal aisle. (Nowadays, I have a rotation of maybe four cereals and just ignore the existence of anything else.) At any rate, I find that it reduces my stress to limit the options when I am making decisions.

Loser Holiday Party: Last Saturday night was the annual holiday party for the Loser community, i.e. devotees of the Washington Post Sty;e Invitational. It was a smaller group than usual (under 30 people, I think). Still, many of my friends were there and there was good food, good conversation, and the traditional sing-along to parody songs.

Sam & Dede or My Dinner With Andre the Giant: Last Sunday, a friend and I went to see this play by Gino Dilorio, largely because the title was intriguing. Apparently, the playwright Samuel Beckett used to drive children to school in France, including Andre (nicknamed Dede). There’s no reason to believe they met again in later life, but the idea provides for some amusing dialogues as Andre can’t understand why Sam’s uncertainty about everything he does. It wasn’t a brilliant play, but it was diverting enough. And, of course, it is good to support live theatre, especially smaller companies like the Washington Stage Guild.

DNA Discussion: Today I went to a webinar about DNA for genealogy. The first speaker was very focused on the basics (which are familiar to me), while the others got deeply technical. Overall, I’m not sure how valuable it was, but it is something I keep intending to spend more time on.

Hot Toddies, Redux: I’ve continued my Friday night cocktail experiments. You might recall that for Week 1, I did a basic hot toddy with rum, lemon juice, honey, cinnamon, and hot water, which was okay, but a bit bland. For week 2, I used maple syrup instead of the honey, added allspice, and used slightly less water, which was more satisfactory. For week 3, I went back to honey, but replaced the hot water with ginger tea (and left out the other spices, thinking the ginger flavor would be enough on its own, That was particularly delicious. For week 4, I tried yet another variant, using maple syrup again, with black tea (specifically, Darjeeling) and cinnamon. I think the week 3 version is the winner. For February, I intend to go on to other winter cocktails.

Celebrity Death Watch: Lisa Brown acted in soap operas. Marilyn McLeod was a singer-songwriter. Jim Warren was a computer scientist and co-founder of Dr. Dobb’s Journal. Yvonne Wilder was an actress who appeared in several plays and films, including West Side Story. Charles Moose was the chief of the Montgomery County (Maryland) police from 1999-2003. Adolfo was a fashion designer, whose clients included Nancy Reagan. Curley Culp was a Hall of Fame football player. Shirley McBay was a mathematician and advocate for improving education for members of minority groups. Eddie Mekka was an actor, best known for playing Carmine in the series Laverne and Shirley. Arlene Dahl was a prolific film and television actress. H. Jackson Brown, Jr. wrote Life’s Little Instruction Book and other “inspirational” books. Buddy Merrill played steel guitar. Bill Staines was a folk musician. Fred Hiatt was the editorial page editor of the Washington Post. Steve Bronski was the keyboardist for The Bronski Beat. Sir Christopher Hogg was the chairman of GlaxoSmithKline in the early 2000’s. Robbie Shakespeare was a reggae bassist. Lina Wertmuller was a film director. Cara Williams was one of the last surviving actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Les Emmerson sang with Five Man Electrical Band. Vicente Fernandez was a Mexican singer and actor. Lillian Luckey was a pitcher in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Charles Morris wrote several books, primarily about business and finance. Ken Kragen founded Hands Across America. Henry Orenstein was a poker player and toymaker, who is credited with the success of Transformers. Bridget Hanley was an actress, best known for playing Candy in Here Come the Brides, a TV show which girls of my generation all watched because Bobby Sherman was the celebrity crush du jour. Wanda Young sang with The Marvelettes. Alan B. Scott was the developer of Botox, in the context of its use in treating strabismus. Eve Babits was an artist and memoirist. Judith Davidoff was a violist, cellist, and promoter of early music on the viola da gamba. Robert H. Grubbs won a Nobel prize in chemistry in 2005. Sally Ann Howes was an actress, best known for playing Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Grace Mirabella was the editor of Vogue through the 1970’s and most of the 1980’s, after which she founded an eponymous magazine. Sarah Weddington was the lawyer who won the Roe v. Wade case. Andrew Vachss wrote crime fiction. Michael R. Clifford was a shuttle astronaut. Ted Gardner cofounded Lollapalooza. John Madden was a football coach and sportscaster. Sam Jones was a Hall of Fame basketball player. Stephen J. Lawrence was a composer, best known for writing songs for Sesame Street. Dan Reeves was a football player and coach. Richard Leakey was a paleoanthropologist and conservationist. Jim Corsi was a pitcher whose career included a couple of years with the Red Sox, who he later covered as a reporter. Joan Copeland was an actress whose career included theatre, films, and television. Peter Bogdanovich was a film director. Lani Guinier was a civil rights attorney whose controversial opinions on a few subjects blocked her from an appointment in the Clinton administration.

Bob Dole was a long-time Senator from Kansas. He was the Senate majority leader for 3 (non-consecutive) years, as well as the Republican candidate for Vice President in 1976 and for President in 1996. He was generally viewed as a moderate and was active in hunger relief and in disability rights. However, he lost a lot of political credibility for joining the Trump bandwagon later on. After his political career, he was probably most famous for shilling for Viagra (and other products).

Al Unser was a four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500.

Michael Nesmith was a singer, guitarist, and song-writer, best known as one of The Monkees.

Anne Rice wrote best-selling books about vampires.

bell hooks was a feminist author and scholar, who wrote primarily about the intersections of race, capitalism, and gender. Her book, Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism was particularly influential.

Hans Mark was the director of NASA Ames Research Center in the 1970’s. He was Secretary of the Air Force from 1979 to 1981 and then became Deputy Administrator of NASA. He was the Director of Defense Research and Engineering from 1999-2000. He played a huge role in promoting space technology, both for civilian and military use, as well as having an important academic career at various institutions, including MIT and the University of Texas.

Joan Didion was a novelist, essayist and memoirist. Her best known works include Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, and The Year of Magical Thinking. Her work was deeply personal and often California-focused.

Desmond Tutu was a South African Anglican bishop and anti-apartheid activist, though I sincerely hope you didn’t need me to tell you that. He chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated human rights abuses (on both the pro and anti-apartheid sides). In that work, he exemplified forgiveness. He won the Nobel Peace Prize. He also became involved in other issues, notably support for gay rights.

E. O. Wilson was an observational biologist (specializing in ants) in an era where molecular biology was more in favor. He wrote numerous books about ecology and sociobiology among other topics and is regarded as the successor to Darwin’s legacy. (Except without the plagiarism. Sorry, but I will never believe that it is sheer coincidence that Darwin managed to publish something he had allegedly been working on for years only after getting a letter from Alfred Russell Wallace.)

Harry Reid was a senator from Nevada for 30 years, including 8 years as the Senate Majority Leader. He led the Democratic majority in passing a lot of major legislation, e.g. The Affordable Care Act. The Las Vegas airport was renamed for him only two weeks before his death. (It is my firm opinion that airports should not be named for living people, so I consider this action as a contributing factor to his death.)

Betty White was an actress whose career extended over pretty much the entire history of television. She was well-known for her roles in such TV shows as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls, as well as being a panelist on several game shows. She was also the first woman to produce a sitcom in the U.S. I had been sure she would live to see 100, so it is particularly sad that she died just a few weeks before that milestone.

Sidney Poitier was an actor, whose career included numerous major movies, such as In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. He was the first Black winner of the Oscar for Best Actor (for his role in Lilies in the Field). He was also an activist, who, for example, insisted on half of the people on his film crews be African-American.

Snow: We got 9 inches of snow on Monday. Here is the view from my balcony when it was only about halfway through snowing.

We got another 3.5 inches or so last night. I am hoping that having had all day to clean things up means that the roads will be fine by noon tomorrow when I need to drive somewhere. I hate winter.

Idiot Neighbors: We have trash rooms on every floor in my condo building. There is a trash cute down which you are supposed to toss your trash bags. There are also bins for recycling, labeled for glass, paper, and plastic / cans. Most people understand this, but there are a few idiots who put recycling in the wrong bin. Or, even worse, leave their trash bags on the floor next to the chute.

Hot Toddy: I am still working on the wrap-up from 2021, mostly because goal planning is hard. But one goal I have come up with is to try a new cocktail each week, specifically on Friday night.. Given the current weather, I am starting with hot cocktails. Tonight’s cocktail was a hot rum toddy.

This had honey, lemon juice, dark rum, boiling water, and a cinnamon stick. I thought it was a bit bland, so I will keep trying. There is certainly no shortage of recipes out there.