fauxklore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sorry for the long delay in writing. I’ve been distracted by trying, not very successfully, to get caught up on stuff at home. I’ve also been getting ready for an upcoming storytelling show (live only and sold out, so I’ll spare you the shameless self promotion this time).


Celebrity Death Watch: Edwin Wilson was a theatre critic, primarily for the Wall Street Journal. Denny Laine co0founded both the Moody Blues and Wings. David Ellenson was a Reform rabbi, who headed Hebrew Union College for several years. Jacqueline Mesmaeker was a Belgian artist who worked in plastic, which is, indeed, a messy medium. Richard Kerr was a songwriter whose work was performed by singers such as Dionne Warwick and Barry Manilow (e.g. “Mandy.) Mort Engelbert was the advance man for Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign and Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Andre Braugher was a television actor, best known for appearing in Homicide: Life on the Streets ad Brooklyn Nine-Nine. William G. Connolly co-authored The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. Lee Redmond held the world record for longest fingernails on both hands (roughly 30 inches). Bob Johnson was a member of Steeleye Span. Colin Burgess was the original drummer for AC/DC. Amp Fiddler was a member of Parliament/Funkadelic. Irwin Cohen was the real estate developer responsible for Chelsea Market in New York. Ryan Minor played baseball for the Baltimore Orioles and started in place of Cal Ripken, Jr., breaking Ripken’s 2632 game streak. Ruth Seymour managed KCRW, a PBS station in Santa Monica, California and was responsible for, among other things, a lot of Jewish programming. Richard Bowes was a science fiction writer. Herbert Kohl was a co-founder of Kohl’s Department stores and owned the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team. Herman Raucher wrote Summer of ’42. Maurice Hines was an actor, dancer, and choreographer. Cindy Morgan was an actress, best known for appearing in Tron and Caddyshack. Tom Wilkinson was an actor, best known for appearing in The Full Monty and Michael Clayton. Shecky Greene was a comedian, who performed in Las Vegas for many years. Cale Yarborough was a stock car driver. Tall Ross played rhythm guitar for Funkadelic. Bridget Dobson was a soap opera writer.

Frank Ryan was a football player for several teams, including the Redskins, and also earned a Ph.D. in mathematics and became an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University during his playing career. Jack O’Connell wrote noir crime fiction. Avi Zamir headed the Mossad from 1968 through 1974. Joseph Lelyveld was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, who was the executive editor of the New York Times from 1994 to 2001. Sarah Rice was an actress who originated the role of Johanna in Sweeney Todd. Joan Acocella was a dance critic for The New Yorker. Edward Jay Epstein was an investigative journalist and political science professor who wrote about conspiracy theories. Terry Bisson and Howard Waldrop were science fiction writers. Bill Hayes sang “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” and became a soap opera actor. Jo-El Sonnier performed Cajun music. Tom Shales wrote about television for the Washington Post. Joyce Randolph played Trixie on The Honeymooners. Laurie Johnson wrote television and film music. Mary Weiss was the lead singer for the Shangri-Las, most famous for the song “Leader of the Pack.” Norman Jewison directed numerous movies, including In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof. and Moonstruck. Frank Farian was behind Milli Vanilli and Boney M. Carl Andre was a minimalist sculptor.

Norman Lear was a television producer. All in the Family was revolutionary for its treatment of controversial topics and Lear followed it with other important TV shows such as Maude and The Jeffersons.

Ryan O’Neal was an actor, who starred in such movies as Love Story, Barry Lyndon, and Paper Moon.

Dan Greenberg was a humor writer, best known for How to Be a Jewish Mother, a book my mother thought was very funny. He was also Nora Ephron’s first husband.

Robert Solow was an economist who won the Nobel Prize in 1987, He scored me 21 ghoul pool points.

Tom Smothers was a comedian and musician, who performed with his brother, Dick. My family had all of their records and we watched their TV show regularly. He also performed as Yo-yo Man.

Niklaus Wirth was a computer scientist who won the Turing Award in 1984 and, among other things, created the Pascal computer language. There’s a funny story about him involving how people pronounced his name. He was Swiss and his compatriots pronounced his name “Nik-lous Virt” while Americans tended to say “Nickles Worth.” As he said, the Swiss called him by name and the Americans called him by value.

Glynis Johns was an actress whose roles included the mother in Mary Poppins and Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, winning a Tony for the latter. Stephen Sondheim wrote the song “A Little Night Music” specifically to accommodate her limited vocal range.

David Soul was an actor, probably best known for playing Hutch in Starsky & Hutch. But I remember him better from Here Come the Brides which we always use to run home to watch because of Bobby Sherman. Ah, the crushes of a 10 year old girl!

Bud Harrelson was a shortstop for the Mets for the Mets from 1965 through 1977. He was my mother’s favorite baseball player. He later became a coach and manager and part owner of the Long Island Ducks. He was my first ghoul pool score of 2024, earning me 18 points.

Peter Schickele was best known to most people as the “discoverer” of P. D. Q. Bach, though he did write serious compositions under his own name. He brought a lot of people to classical music with his humor and I have fond memories of listening to such pieces as “Eine Kleine Nichtmusic” and “The 1712 Overture.”

Charles Osgood was a television news anchor and radio commentator. He also wrote a couple of books of light verse on news subjects and I have fond memories of both Nothing Could Be Finer Than a Crisis That is Minor in the Morning and There’s Nothing That I Wouldn’t Do If You Would Be My POSSLQ. He was also known for his tag line, “See you on the radio.”

Melanie was a singer, known for such songs as “Brand New Key” and “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain.”

Jimy Williams managed the Boston Red Sox from 1997 through 2001.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Mark Baird was a former colleague. We worked closely together for a couple of years and had a running inside joke regarding his desire to go to Belize and mine to go to Mozambique. He was a nice guy, very devoted to his daughters, and a pleasure to be around. He died suddenly of a blood clot, possibly related to recent hip replacement surgery. (I’m also biased because he once called me a national asset.)

Linda Goodman was a storyteller. I got to know her fairly well when we were both on the board of the Virginia Storytelling Alliance at the same time. Her death was no surprise, as she’d been dealing with Parkinson’s disease and dementia for a while, but it is still sad.

Non-human Death Watch: The Jewish Center of Island Park (now the South Shore Jewish Center) was the synagogue I grew up in. My father was active in the Men’s Club, headed the building committee when they added an extension / social hall / ballroom, and edited the newsletter for several years. My grandfather was the cantor for High Holiday services for many years. The shul has been dying for several years, largely due to demographic shifts and exacerbated by Hurricane Sandy. So they’re now seeking to sell the building. I’m buying the memorial plaques for my grandparents and my father.

I know I’m supposed to view all synagogues in the Diaspora as temporary, but it’s still sad. I have a lot of memories from there. Sigh.


Obit Poems: I never got around to writing these up to enter them in the Invitational, largely because I decided they weren’t good enough to be worth entering. But I can inflict them on you.

Tom Terrific was not a reliever
The ’69 Mets left it to Seaver

Al Jaffee always drew the Fold-In
Now, alas, he’s just a moldin’

Normal Busy Life: I went to a Chavurah brunch on New Year’s Day. I’ve had meetings for several of my usual activities, e.g. a couple of genealogy related things, a Grimm Keepers discussion of “The Little Red Hen” (a particularly weird story), planning for some storytelling events, crafts groups, book clubs (which I’m now up to three of), playing board games on-line, a Travelers’ Century Club meeting, etc.

No wonder I keep falling behind!

Important Local News: Oakton High School, which is just up the street from my house, won Metallica’s Marching Band Competition. There are various groups from the school who put on fund raising car washes and I would definitely stop if they were doing one.

Weather: We got about 4 inches of snow on January 15th and another 5 on January 19. There were also several insanely cold days. And then we had a couple of days in the 60’s and it even got up to 72 on Friday. Fortunately,it looks like normal weather for the near future. That is, lows in the low 30’s and high in the mid-40’s.

National Gallery of Art: I leveraged off having an event to go to in the city last Monday night to go to see a couple of museum exhibits during the day on Monday. My friend, Jane, met me for lunch at Teaism and part of the museumage. Because we were running early, we had time to check out the 19th century French art first, which included pieces by several impressionists and post-impressionists, including Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, and Gauguin.



We managed to kill enough time there to rush through some coffee before going on the docent tour of their current exhibit of photos by Dorothea Lange. The docent talked some about Lange’s life and then talked in depth about some of the photos. Because she had time to discuss only a few of them, I think I need to go back and spend three or so hours looking at all of them.

This one, of a stenographer, struck me for the repairs to the woman’s stockings.



The most heartbreaking photo, in my opinion, was this one of a store that had been owned by Japanese-Americans. Note that I’d once had a boss who spent part of his childhood at one of the relocation camps that are such a shameful part of American history.



Jane was museumed out at that point, so she left, while I went over to the East Building to see the Mark Rothko on Paper exhibit. I’d gained a much greater appreciation for Rothko when I went to the museum dedicated to him in Daugavpils, Latvia nearly five years ago. I do, however, prefer his earlier works, such as “Undersea Cabaret.”



I always think the more familiar style of his paintings would make great designs for rugs.



Since I was there, I also looked at some of the rest of the modern art in the East Building. That included this wonderful case of pies by Claes Oldenburg.



“The Flag is Bleeding” is part of Faith Ringgold’s The American People Series. She remains one of my favorite artists.



No Accident: The primary reason I’d gone into the city was to go to a screening of a documentary titled “No Accident,” about the lawsuit against the August 2017 Charlottesville rioters. It was in the Congressional auditorium at the Capitol.



There were three senators who introduced the film - Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, and Cory Booker. I thought that Senator Kaine spoke particularly well.



As for the documentary, I found it very interesting. Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan and Karen Dunn led a team that successfully proved that the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville was planned. It was chilling - and, of course, the most frightening part is that most of the groups involved are still out there. By the way, Kaplan also represented E, Jean Carroll in her defamation lawsuits against Donald Trump.

Other Stuff: I still have to write about - a theatre outing and a Loser Party, (including a good recipe) - but I want to get this posted now because I have to leave the house early in the morning.

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.

Celebrity Death Watch: Dick Biondi was a disc jockey who is claimed to be the first AM radio deejay to play several famous rock stars, including the Beatles. Sanjay Mitter was a control theory professor in the EECS department at MIT. Evelyn Boyd Granville was the second African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from an American university (specifically, Yale) and did important research on computing.

Frank Field was a TV meteorologist. Susan Love was a surgeon, best known for writing a book about breasts. George Tickner played guitar for Journey and Furious Bandersnatch. Judith Liebman was the only woman to become president of the Operations Research Society of America. Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. was the president of Yale University from 1986 to 1992 and later became the chairman of the Board of Trusties of the City University of New York. Tom Adam was a warlord in the Central African Republic. Carlin Glynn won a Tony award for performing in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. James Reston Jr. was a journalist, novelist, and playwright. Pamela Blair originated the role of Val in A Chorus Line, in which she sang the song “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three.” Inga Swenson was an actress, best known for playing Gretchen Kraus on Benson. Alice K. Ladas wrote about the G-spot. Paul Reubens was an actor who played the role of Pee-wee Herman.

Sir Michael Boyd was a theatre director who oversaw the revitalization the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Walter Charles was a Broadway actor. Mark Margolis was a character actor best known for playing Hector Salamanca in Breaking Bad. Boniface Alexandre was the provisional president of Haiti from 2004 to 2006. John Gosling played keyboards for The Kinks. William Friedkin directed several movies, including The French Connection and The Exorcist. Jerry Moss cofounded A&M Records. Renata Scotto was an operatic soprano, whose name I know only because of its frequent appearance in crossword puzzles. Al Quie was the governor of Minnesota from 1979 to 1983. Maxie Baughan was a football player. James Burke was the first manager of the Ranger program (which photographed the moon from space probes), making him a pioneer of America’s space program. John Warnock co-founded Adobe. Bob Feldman wrote the song “My Boyfriend’s Back.” Yevgeny Progozhin was a mercenary, who co-founded the Wagner Group. Pat Corrales was the first Major League Baseball manager of Mexican American descent. Joe the Plumber was a right wing political commentator. Don Sundqvist was the governor of Tennessee from 1995-2003.

Dennis Austin co-created Powerpoint, doing untold harm to business productivity. Gary Wright was a singer-songwriter, best known for “Dream Weaver.” Lisa Lyon was a bodybuilder and modeled for Robert Maplethorpe. Gita Mehta wrote interesting books about India. I remember reading Karma Cola and Snakes and Ladders many years ago. Billy Miller was a soap opera actor. Michael McGrath was a Tony-award winning actor.


Lowell Weicker was a senator from 1971-1989 and the governor of Connecticut from 1991-1995. He had been a Republican as a senator but formed a third party (“A Connecticut Party”) for his gubernatorial campaign. He held a number of apparently contradictory positions (e.g. having been on the board of directors of a tobacco lobby and of a non-ptisan health policy research organization). He was also one of the first Republicans to call for Richard Nixon’s resignation. Overall, one of the more interesting politicians of his time.

Alan Arkin was an actor, who received a number of awards for his roles in movies like Little Miss Sunshine and Argo, as well as having won a Tony award for his role in the play Enter Laughing.

Milan Kundera was a Czech novelist, most famous for The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Kevin Mitnick was a computer hacker who later became a security consultant.

Tony Bennett was a singer of pop music and jazz. He is best known for “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” and is also notable for his late in life collaboration with Lady Gaga. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 13 points.

Randy Meisner was a waist and vocalist for The Eagles and Poco. He also wrote the song “Take It to the Limit.”

Sinead O’Connor was an Irish singer and songwriter, who was controversial for her political activism, most notably for tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II to protest against abuse in the Catholic Church.

Sixto Rodriguez was a singer-songwriter, far better known in South Africa than in the U.S. There’s an excellent documentary about him, Searching for Sugar Man. Interestingly, Clarence Avant, who founded Sussex Records and may have cheated Rodriguez out of royalties, died just days after he did.

Robbie Robertson was the lead guitarist for The Band and wrote such songs as “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

Tom Jones was the lyricist who collaborated with Harvey Schmidt on several musicals, including The Fantasticks, 110 in the Shade, and I Do, I Do. I’d had him on my ghoul pool list a few years ago, but not this year.

James L. Buckley was a U.S. Senator from New York from 1971-1977, elected as a member of the Conservative Party. He was the oldest living former senator at the time of his death. I had him on my ghoul pool list and he earned me 16 points.

Nick Hitchon was a physicist but the real reason anyone has heard of him was his participation in the 7 Up series of documentaries. He was on my ghoul pool list and got me 14 points.

Bob Barker hosted The Price is Right for many many many years. He was an advocate for animals, but was also a serial sexual abuser. He was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 15 points.

Bill Richardson was the governor of New Mexico from 2003-2011. He was my choice in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, but was out of it by the time things got to Virginia. In recent years, he played a major role in freeing political prisoners. He was a diplomat in the truest sense of the word.

Jimmy Buffett was that rare musician who almost everyone liked. I was fortunate enough to see him perform live once. He was also an entertaining writer and an excellent businessman. Have a margarita in his memory.

Steve Harwell was the lead singer for Smash Mouth. I’d seen a news story that he was on his death bed and did a quick ghoul pool substitution, giving me a whopping 32 points and putting me (briefly, alas) at the top of the score board.

Fernando Botero was a painter and sculptor. He’s best known for his work depicting fat people and fat cats. I think I first encountered one of his sculptures in Yerevan, Armenia and saw several more of his artworks in Barcelona.


Non-Celebrity Death Watch:I caught up on the monthly newsletter from my former employer. The obituaries from the past few months included a few people I knew fairly well - Bob Leatherman, Jim Gidney, Les DeLong (who I worked with on an INCOSE committee several years ago) and, most significantly, Roberta Gleiter. Roberta was a powerful voice for women in engineering and was, in fact, the President of the Society of Women Engineers around 2000ish. After that, she founded the Global Institute for Technology and Engineering. She and I worked together for several years and she was always a pleasure to hang out with. I’ll miss her.


Errands: I had a lot of catching up to do at home. This was a mixture of boring and frustrating and stressful. For example, I had to renew the registration for my car. This was actually easy to do on-line, but that didn’t stop me from having a minor panic attack the day before it was due because I couldn’t remember that I’d actually done it.

Renewing my driver’s license was more of a hassle. I had to go to my eye doctor to get the vision test because I always have trouble with the machines. If I’d been smart, I’d have realized I could renew a full year before the license expired, which would have been right after I got new glasses. Anyway, I am good to drive, but I will have to have cataract surgery in the coming months. This is not a surprise. There’s a part of me that is looking forward to it.

The catch is that I’m in the process of transitioning to medicare. This is more complicated than it should be, for a number of reasons. The bottom line is that I should have started the process two months before my 65th birthday, rather than a week before. And coordinating things with the retiree medical people from my company is also stressful. They had previously told me that they would send me something 60 days before my eligibility, but, no, they just called me with incomplete information. And then I had trouble with the social security website and ended up having to call them. That meant spending ages on hold, followed by a lengthy phone conversation, which only resulted in a phone appointment which is this Friday. Oy. Now, it looks like I’ve gotten a bill from the people who handle the payment processing, but it doesn’t recognize that I’d been using their autopay option. I may have to actually call them, which is annoying.

My other source of stress was that I found an envelope relating to my real estate property taxes, but couldn’t find the actual tax statement. So I wasn’t sure if I did or didn’t pay them already. Why, yes, this motivates me to clean off my dining room table. And my sofa. And the other places that mail I may not have dealt with accumulates. Ah, wait. It was due in late July and I just verified that I paid it before I went to Ireland.

Some Socializing: I went out to dinner one night with a few people from FlyerTalk. NightHawk in Pentagon City has decent food and beer, but an annoying interface to their ordering system. At least, I was able to pull up the menu on my iPhone, which a couple of people couldn’t. It was also kind of noisy. But it was good to get out and it’s always fun to talk about travel.

It had been a long time since I’d been to that part of town, but I ended up over there again less than a week later. A college friend was in town and we went out to dinner at Lebanese Taverna. All of the food we got was good and I was even able to take some home to have for lunch the next day. It was good to catch up with him and talk about what various people we knew back in the day were up to.

I’d also gone to a movie with Cindy. And gone to knitting group. And to an on-line story swap. And to one of my genealogy groups, one of my book clubs, and my Grimm folk tales discussion group.

Baseball: Somewhat on the spur of the moment, I drove down to Fredericksburg to see the Fredericksburg Nationals (the Single A affiliate of the Washington Nationals) get slaughtered by the Lynchburg Hillcats. The ballpark is a huge improvement over the one the Potomac Nationals used in Woodbridge, though the concessions were so-so. Also, I tried their special beer, the Slugging’ Gus blackberry blonde ale, but I didn’t much like it. I stayed down there overnight.

Two Things I Will Write About Separately: LoserFest was in Philadelphia this year and is worth its own entry. And I went to a (virtual) organizing event, which may prove useful in the decluttering (and associated de-stressing).

Happy 5784: Finally, this past weekend was Rosh Hashanah. I ended up going to zoom services, because I felt a little under the weather. That’s not very satisfying, but I just couldn’t get myself moving.

I also called my brother, mostly to make sure he’s still alive. Let’s just say he is continuing his usual patterns of driving me crazy. Which is not something I will write about publicly.

Shameless Self Promotion: I will be telling stories at the Washington Folk Festival on Sunday June 4th at 5:30 p.m. The festival is at Glen Echo Park and is free. There’s going to be plenty of other things to go to there - storytelling, yes, but also music and dance and crafts. And, of course, the famous Glen Echo Carousel.

Celebrity Death Watch: Hodding Carter III was the spokesperson for the State Department during the Carter administration. Harry Bentley Bradley designed cars for Hot Wheels. Gloria Molina was a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Garoar Cortes founded The Icelandic Opera. Doyle Brunson was a Hall of Fame poker player. Robert Lucas got a Nobel Prize in Economics. Marlin Hagge co-founded the LPGA. “Superstar” Billy Graham was a professional wrestler. Andy Rourke was the bassist for The Smiths. Nicholas Gray owned Gray’s Papaya, a famous hot dog place in New York City. Pete Brown was a lyricist, whose work included lyrics for “Sunshine of Your Love” and “White Room.” Martin Amis was a novelist, best known for Time’s Arrow. Ed Ames was a singer and actor, known for playing Mingo on Daniel Boone. Chas Newby briefly played bass with The Beatles. James Lewis sang with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Robert Zimmer was a mathematician and president of the University of Chicago for 15 years. Sheldon Reynolds played guitar for Commodors and for Earth, Wind, & Fire. George Maharis played Buz Murdock on the TV series Route 66, as well as modeling nude in the second issue of Playgirl magazine. Bill Lee was a jazz musician and film composer, as well as the father of Spike Lee. Claudia Rosett was a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the only print journalist to witness the Tiananmen Square massacre. Milt Larsen created The Magic Castle. Alexander Dreyfoos, Jr. was a businessman and philanthropist who donated the money to MIT to build the Stata Center, aka the ugliest building in Cambridge. Mike Young was an outfielder for the Baltimore Orioles. Robin Wagner won three Tony Awards for set design. Harvey Pitt chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission in the early 2000’s. Gershon Edelsten headed the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Beni Brak, and was, thus, a major leader in Lithuanian Jewish Orthodoxy.

John Dunning was a writer, primarily of mysteries, though he also wrote a couple of books about old-time radio. His mystery series featuring Cliff Laneway, a bookseller, was quite entertaining. Check out Booked to Die and/or The Bookman’s Wake if you like detective fiction and have ever wanted to own a used bookstore.

Tina Turner was an eight-time Grammy winner. She overcame an abusive relationship with her first husband, Ike Turner, and went on to a very successful solo career.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: Laura Beasley was a wonderful storyteller and a dear friend. I first met her in the 1990’s at the Southern California Story Swapping Festival, which she came to regularly with her son, Theo, and we saw each other every now and then through the years. I’ll miss her.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I had a postcard from some organization (possibly google) saying they wouldn’t spam me. But, in the same batch of mail, I had the same postcard, only in Spanish.

You May Analyze This Dream: I was in some sort of competition (maybe writing>) I lost to a woman named Ella Siempre.

My interpretation is that I probably need to scale back on how much time I spend studying Spanish on Duolingo.


Alex Padilla: I went to a dinner with Senator Alex Padilla on Tuesday night, put on by the MIT Club of DC. It is always good to have intelligent conversation (with other attendees). His talk was mostly about his path from a mechanical engineering degree and a short career in the aerospace industry to a political career. He was entertaining and articulate. His major focus was on problem-solving in both contexts.

Travel Planning: I have three international trips coming up in the near-term, as well as one later in the year. I also have plans for two domestic trips. And I have plans for a few more things. None of this helps with my household decluttering activities.

I finished a couple of things in the past couple of days, so it seems like a good time to catch up here.

Celebrity Death Watch: Royston Ellis wrote travel guides, particularly for south Asia (e.g. India and Sri Lanka) and rail travel. Charle Harrington Elster was one of the original hosts of A Way With Words. Leon Hughes was the last surviving member of The Coasters. Wayne Shorter was a jazz saxophonist. Tom Sizemore was an actor, best known for starring in Saving Private Ryan. Judith Heumann was a disability rights activist. Gary Rossington was the lead guitarist for Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ian Falconer wrote and illustrated the Olivia series of children’s books. Robert Blake was an actor, about equally well-known for playing Baretta and for being accused of murdering his second wife. Raphael Mechoulam was the chemist who (with Y. Gaoni) isolated THC from cannabis. Masatoshi Ito was the founder of Ito-Yokado which owns over 10,00 7-11 stores, as well as being a franchisee for several other brands in Japan. John Jakes wrote epic novels, including North and South. Dick Fosbury was a high jumper who invented the style of jumping known as the Fosbury flop. Jim Gordon was the drummer for Derek and the Dominos, wrote the song “Layla,” and later murdered his mother. Joe Peptone was a first baseman for the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Pat Schroeder was one of the most prominent women in Congress for over 20 years. Stuart Hodes danced with Martha Graham. Sean Burns was the administrator of Tristan da Cunha for many years. Fuzzy Haskins was one of the founding members of Parliament-Funkadelic. John Jenrette was a congressman from South Carolina, best known for being involved in the Abscam scandal. Lance Reddick was an actor, best known for his roles in The Wire, Bosch, and John Wick. K.C. Constantine was a mystery writer. Jerry Green was the only sportswriter to cover each of first 56 Super Bowl games. Keith Reid was a songwriter and lyricist, most famous for Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” Dan Ben-Amos was a folklorist, who studied Jewish folklore among other subjects. D. M. Thomas was a writer, best known for the novel The White Hotel. Howie Kane sang with Jay and the Americans. Virginia Norwood designed satellite imaging systems, leading to her being called the “mother of Landsat.”

Klaus Tuber created the game “Settlers of Catan.” Kwame Brathwaite was a photojournalist and popularized the phrase “Black is Beautiful.” Seymour Stein co-founded Sire Records. Judy Farrell played Nurse Able on M*A*S*H. Roy McGrath was a former chief of staff to the governor of Maryland, who failed to show up for his trial for various corruption charges, leading to a manhunt and his death from a gunshot, though whether by the FBI or his own hand is unclear. Craig Breedlove was a five-time land speed record holder. Leon Levine founded Family Dollar. Hobie Landrith was a catcher and the first person to sign a contract with the New York Mets. Nora Forster was a music promoter, probably more famous as Johnny Rotten’s wife. Ben Ferencz was a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials. Ian Bairson was a member of The Alan Parsons Project. Pierre Lacotte was a ballet dancer and known for helping Rudolf Nureyev defect to the U.S. Meir Shalev was an Israeli writer. Ed Koren was a cartoonist whose work appeared frequently in The New Yorker.

Robert Haimer was a singer and songwriter, half of Barnes & Barnes and known for writing the song “Fish Heads,” which got a lot of airplay from Dr. Demento.

Chaim Topol was an Israeli actor, best known for playing Tevye in the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof.

Jesus Alou was an outfielder who played for a number of teams, including the Giants and the Astros. His younger brother, Matty, died in 2011, but the oldest of the Alou brothers, Felipe, who was the first Dominican to play regularly in the major leagues, is still alive.

Napoleon XIV was best known for the novelty song “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!”

Willis Reed played for the New York Knicks from 1964 through 1974 and went on to coach for several teams.

Gordon Moore co-founded Intel and was famous for Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years.

Mark Russell performed his unique style of political satire on regular PBS specials, as well as live. I was fortunate enough to be able to see him perform at Ford’s Theatre several years ago.

Mimi Sheraton was the food critic for the New York Times for many years. She also wrote several books, including From My Mother’s Kitchen and The Bialy Eaters.

Harry Lorayne was a memory expert. I once commented on The Memory Book as having been written by “Jerry Lucas and some author,” which may give you an idea of how effective I found his techniques.

Anne Perry was a mystery writer. She was several years into that career when the story came out that she had been convicted of murder as a teenager. It’s a complex story, involving what appears to have been an obsessive relationship with the friend whose mother she helped kill.

Al Jaffee was one of the greatest humorists of the 20th century. He invented two features for MAD Magazine - “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” and the fold-in. My Dad bought MAD regularly, allegedly for my brother and me, but we noticed that the fold-in was always done already by the time we got it. He also had an interesting family history, being dragged back and forth between the U.S. and Zarasai, Lithuania by his parents because his mother was unable to adjust to American life. He lived to 102 and credited his sense of humor for his longevity. Also, he earned me 23 ghoul pool points.

Mary Quant was a fashion designer, known for inflicting miniskirts and hot pants on society. And, yes, I wore those back in the day.


Puzzle Community Death Watch: Marc Spraragen, known within the National Puzzlers’ League as Marcus Asparagus, died suddenly of a ruptured aortic aneurysm. He was smart and kind and I always looked forward to seeing him at the NPL con. He was highly devoted to his family - his wife, Pauline, and their three-year-old son, Zachary. Such a huge loss to our community.

Ari Shapiro: The last Monday of March, I went to Ari Shapiro’s book launch event at Sixth & I Synagogue. He was interviewed by Audie Cornish. He had some interesting things to say about storytelling in the context of journalism and the value of encouraging people to tell their stories. Also, a storytelling friend, Cricket, was there, and it turns out she went to college with Ari’s father.

The Eleventh Plague: My friend, Teri, works at the Library of Congress and let me know about Jeremy Brown’s talk about Jews and Pandemics. Some of the things he talked about were the threat of execution for anyone violating quarantines in the Roman ghetto and exactly how a pandemic was defined by the rabbis. For example, only deaths by people who earned a living were counted, but deaths of animals and of non-Jews were included. It was an interesting talk and the library had various books and other reference documents on display.

Pacific Overtures: Pacific Overtures is my favorite Sondheim score, for a number of reasons. In particular, I think “A Bowler Hat” is an excellent example of how to use a song to illuminate character. “Chrysanthemum Tea” has my favorite Sondheim rhyme in “it’s an herb that’s superb for disturbances at sea.” I think “Please Hello!” is a great rebuttal to those who think of Sondheim primarily as a lyricist, since it takes a lot of musical talent to produce such on-the-mark pastiches of different musical styles. Sondheim’s own favorite of his songs was “Someone in a Tree.” Signature Theatre’s production was brilliant, as I expected, with excellent use of puppets and taiko drumming. Jason Ma was very impressive as the Reciter. All in all, it was a fabulous evening of theatre.

ACPT: The first weekend of April (and the Friday night before) was the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. The ACPT deserves its own entry, which I will try to get to soon.

Grimm Keepers: Our story for the most recent meeting was “The Nightingale and the Blindworm.” This is a particularly short story, which is only in the first edition and not later Grimm collections. The gist of it is that those animals had one eye each and the nightingale asked to borrow the blindworm’s eye for a party, but refused to return it afterwards. This got us talking about other stories with similar themes, e.g. an African dilemma tale about a couple who find eyes and have to decide who to give the last one to.

Pesach: I had a hard time finding a lot of Pesach food this year. Many years, I drive to the Baltimore suburbs, but I had too much going on this year. And most of my local stores didn’t have certain things I usually look for. For example, nowhere had kosher for Passover jam. So I ate a lot of matzoh with cream cheese, borscht, chremslach (matzoh meal pancakes), and fruit and was bored.

Ballet - Anna Karenina: Last Friday (April 7th) I went to see the Joffrey Ballet production of Anna Karenina at The Kennedy Center. Cindy and I had some miscommunication, so I had an extra ticket, which my friend, Teri, took. None of the three of us had ever read the book, so we were somewhat lost. At intermission, I did read the synopsis, but it didn’t help quite enough. For example, I never understood what the scene in Parliament where Anna’s husband rails against immigrants, had to do with anything else. Still, the dancing was impressive.

Afterwards, we walked over to The Reach (the newish extension to the Kennedy Center) and looked at some of the River Run exhibit there. The theme is largely environmental, so, for example, there is this scu[pture made out of plastic pulled from rivers.



And here is an exhibit of “fabric” woven from fishing line.



We also went outside and looked at this installation called Survivors by Cuban artist Roberto Fabelo.



All in all, it was a nice afternoon, even if we didn’t completely understand the ballet.

Story Swap: The Voices in the Glen monthly story swap was last weekend. We had a small group, but an enjoyable evening. I told a Tuvan story about “How the Camel Lost Its Beauty.” I’d been thinking of it because it has some elements that are similar to those in “The Nightingale and the Blindworm.” It had been a long time since I’d told it, but I pretty much remembered it.

Crones and Tomes: This months book was The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. This was about her experiences when her husband died and her daughter was hospitalized in a coma for several months. I thought it was a good read but a lot of people had problems with her level of privilege that let her pull in impressive doctors for her daughter.

Counted Cross Stitch Project: I’ve been working on this counted cross-stitch project for two years and a few months and I finally finished it at my crafts group on Thursday afternoon. I still have to get it framed, of course.



It was designed by Saifhon Borisuthipandit and I bought the kit in Bangkok in 2008. I can, of course, see all my mistakes, but I assume nobody else will notice them.

Taxes: I finished my taxes Thursday night. As usual, what takes time is finding all of the documents I need. The one thing that I had a hard time finding was how much I paid in property tax for my car. In the end, I had to look on the county tax administration website. I ended up having to pay a few hundred bucks because I’d owned shares in an American Depository Receipt which delisted itself from the New York Stock Exchange, triggering capital gains. It was kind of a pain to find my cost basis because I’d owned the shares for nearly 30 years. Anyway, it’s done.

Storytelling - The Musical: To continue the busy Thursday, I attended a virtual storytelling show. Carol Moore emceed and there were 6 tellers. Natalie Jones had a cute story about show piglets (as in “there’s no piglets, like show piglets”) putting on a production of “The Three Little Pigs.” Paul Strickland had a story about an enchanted apple tree with a cursed knife stuck in it. Mo Reynolds told a version of the folk tale “The Sword of Wood.” She was followed by Jack Scheer explaining his magic iPod. Jessica Robinson’s contribution had to do with her mother’s love of singing. And Sam Payne closed out the night with a story about going to church dances as a teenager. All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening and a nice way to transition out of my busy day to a more relaxed evening.

Esther Krinitz: A guy I used to work with, Mark, went to my storytelling show for rubber ducky day. He sent me a very nice email afterwards and mentioned an upcoming lecture being livestreamed by the American Visionary Art Museum about The Art and Story of Esther Nisenthol Krinitz. Krinitz was a Holocaust survivor who created fiber art pictures (appliqué and embroidery) depicting her life in Poland before the War, her life in hiding during the war, and events afterwards. For example, she went to the Majdanek Concentration Camp and looked through piles of shoes there trying to find her mother’s. There’s a total of 36 pictures, which are on exhibit, along with other artwork telling stories about immigrants. The talk was by her daughter, who runs a foundation focused on using art to tell these stories. It was an interesting talk and nice to see the pictures, though seeing them in person is better. (I saw them several years ago at the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles.) I should try to find time to see it again when I have something to do in Baltimore.

Speaking of Mark: We also set up a time to talk on the phone a couple of days later. Mostly we discussed things about adjusting to retirement and he picked my brain a bit about travel. He was rather amused when, as soon as he mentioned that his wife had signed up for a crafts class in western North Carolina, I knew exactly what school it was at. Anyway, we had a nice conversation and I’m glad to be back in touch with him.

Trader Joe’s is Evil: I am easily amused, so I got a kick out of going to Staples because I needed staples. I also bought a Spanish dictionary there, since it was on the clearance table for two bucks.

Anyway, Trader Joe’s is in the same shopping center, so I stopped in there for a couple of things. There are certain things I buy whenever I go there, e.g. strawberry vanilla yogurt, almond milk (cheaper than anywhere else), and green chile and cheese tamales. I made the mistake of also going to the nuts and dried fruit section. They have chili spiced dried pineapple again, after a long time without it being available. But the reason I say they are evil is that I also bought sesame honey cashews and pecan pralines. Both of those are delicious - and thoroughly addictive. Very much in the category of things I should not buy because I will eat way more of them at a time than I should. Sigh.


Living Room Archaeology: I’ve been spending a lot of time recently on what I refer to as “living room archaeology.” My biggest barrier to clearing out all this junk is dealing with memorabilia. This goes back to my mother having had me save the program from the very first show I ever went to in what she referred to as “my memory box.” Well, 55+ years later, what had been a small box has turned into multiple file drawers and more stuff overflowing into stacks on the floor. Throw in the current trend of many theatres not giving out printed programs anymore and printing out the programs takes multiple pages, those end up particularly thick.

Now, I keep a journal in which I write about every show (play, musical, concert, etc.) that I go to. And I know that, when my mother died, nobody wanted any of what was in her memory box. I had hoped her playbills would be worth something, but it turned out she had actually torn them apart and just saved the front cover and the list of cast members.

So I am on the verge of deciding to get rid of this stuff, but it’s a hard decision to make. I am postponing it until after I get through filing and discarding a bunch of other things. For example, I really have no difficulty shredding old credit card receipts - especially when I find one from a car rental in, um, 2009. And, no, I don’t need a bus ticket from Rimini to San Marino from 2014.

Why is this so bloody hard?

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: Isamu Akasaki was a physicist who worked on LEDs. Tony Pola was the drummer for Beasts of Bourbon. Arthur Kopit was a playwright who wrote the book for the musical Nine and is best known for the play Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad. B.B. Dickerson played bass for Eric Burden and War. Simon Bainbridge was a composer who set poems by Primo Levi to music. Paul Ritter was an actor, best known for the tv series Friday Night Dinner. Joey Hummel ghost-wrote over 70 Wonder Woman comic books in the 1940’s. Hans Kueng was a theologian. Albee Hastings was a Congressman from Florida. Howard Weizmann was a lawyer with a lot of famous Hollywood clients. John Naisbitt was a futurologist, whose book Megatrends was on the New York Times bestseller list for two years. DMX was a rapper and earned me 19 ghoul pool points. Ramsey Clark was Attorney General of the U.S. under LBJ. Rusty Young was one of the lead members of Poco. Bernie Madoff made off with a lot of other people’s money. Felix Silla was best known for playing Cousin Itt on The Addams Family. Helen McCrory was a British actress. Barry Mason wrote the song “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” among other things. Charles Geschke co-founded Adobe. Black Rob and Shock G were rappers. Jim Steinman wrote, among other songs, “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Tempest Storm was a burlesque star. Idriss Deby was the president of Chad, whose assassination should have gotten more news coverage. Joe Long played bass for The Four Seasons. Dan Kaminsky was a computer security researcher. Billie Hayes played Mammy Yokum in the Broadway musical, Lil’ Abner, but is better known for playing Witchiepoo on H. R. Pufnstuf. Eli Broad made a lot of money as a real estate developer and became a philanthropist, expanding the arts in Los Angeles and funding the Broad Institute for medical research at MIT. Bobby Unser won the Indy 500 three times. Yitzhak Arad directed Yad Vashem (a Holocaust memorial / museum in Jerusalem) for 20 or so years. Lloyd Pe=rice was an R&B singer. Lucinda Franks was the first woman to win a Pulitzer for national reporting. Geoff Crowther wrote for Lonely Planet.

Frank Jacobs was one of that usual gang of idiots, i.e. a writer for Mad. In particular, he wrote a lot of song and poetry parodies.

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was Queen Elizabeth II’s consort. He earned me 20 ghoul pool points.

Walter Mondale was Vice President under Jimmy Carter and lost the 1984 Presidential race.

Michael Collins flew the Apollo 11 command module, while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.

Olympia Dukakis was an actress, best known for Moonstruck, as well as playing Anna Madrigal in Tales of the City.


Non-celebrity Death Watch: Marvin Moskowitz died of COVID-19 in January. He and I had dated briefly in the 1980’s in Los Angeles and reconnected on Facebook. I lost saw him a couple of years ago, when we went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology together during my layover in L.A. on the way to Tahiti. He almost certainly contracted the virus from unmasked people on public transit. I am furious.

Both Merrilee Palansch and her husband, Bob, died abut a week apart in January. She was a talented storyteller and he was a great supporter of her storytelling, as well as a musician in his own right. They also collaborated over 60 or so years of marriage in performances, activism, and raising their family.

I knew Michael Loo from flyer talk. We had dinner together during some of his trips to Washington, D.C. and mine to New York. He was kind and generous and a fine violist. I particularly admired his efforts to continue traveling over the years, despite health challenges.

I hope to experience less loss during the rest of the year.


Non-human Death Watch: Amphora in Vienna closed in mid-January. This was a huge family restaurant, open 24 hours a day, and was the place everyone here went to, often after something like a concert at Jammin’ Java. Their Herndon diner is still open, but is considerably less convenient for me.


Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was at an airport and panicking because I couldn’t find my mask. Then I discovered I had a white paper mask in my pocketbook, but I couldn’t figure out how to put it on.


Mental Health: A few weeks ago, I went to a William Barton Rogers Society talk that had to do with student mental health services at MIT. While the talk was generally encouraging, one of the speakers kept talking about “the stigma of mental health.” Er, I know that she meant the stigma of mental health treatment, but I still found that annoying.


Leading Jewish Minds at MIT: This is a series that has gone virtual, which lets me attend. Over the past months, I’ve been to a couple of talks. One was by Jay Kayser about Modernism. His chief argument was that there isn’t a common language for understanding modern arts and everything depends on Easter eggs. My opinion is that’s a lazy position. It may take more effort but it is still possible to understand, say, that the key word in the title of Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase” is “descending” and that makes the painting about motion.

This week, there was a talk by David Autor about “The Faltering Escalator of Urban Opportunity.” This really came out of a study on the future of work. His key point was that the jobs that exist now often did not exist in the past and that this has led to increased inequality.


Ahhhscars: My friend, Paul, and I have gone a few times to the California State Society Ahhhscars party, which is a nice excuse to get dressed up, dance, have fancy food and cocktails, and have photos taken with Oscars-themed props. This year it was virtual and started with a trivia contest. Fortunately, most of the questions were not about movies, though there was a picture round which had to do with vampire movies. It turns out that Paul was really good at identifying those. I have seen a lot of vampire movies but have a terrible visual memory, so was pretty useless. (I was better at the other sorts of questions). Anyway, we were on the winning team. (And the other team was the one that had a congressman on it.) As for the other activities, both of us failed to correctly predict the Best Picture winner. I did enjoy some of the snacks they sent (cheese popcorn, sparkling wine, Oscar-shaped cookies) and gave away others. An in-person party would, of course, have been more fun, but this was still fun.

New Garbage Disposal: I don’t think I mentioned that I finally got my garbage disposal replaced. I have learned that if you google what something should cost, you can expect to pay 2-3 times that amount. I am okay with that as I am not interested in doing much beyond changing lightbulbs myself. At any rate, the new one is remarkably quiet. Next big household project is probably getting the ceiling lamp in my bedroom replaced, largely as part of my quest to get rid of things that have unique lightbulbs.

Earworm: For some reason, Jonathan Richman's "Here Come the Martian Martians" popped into my head the other day. And I can't get rid of it. At least it's a song I like.

I keep intending to write here more, but I have been absurdly busy at work. And, of course, I try to have a life other than work.

Death of a Friend: Bob Rovinsky, who I knew from Voices in the Glen and was privileged to have shared storytelling stages with from time to time, died Thursday of last week after a massive heart attack several days earlier. He was a good man, heavily involved in several local Jewish communities, and had been particularly helpful when my mother died. I will miss him dearly. I am sure his wife and daughters are devastated. I was at the funeral on Sunday and will be paying a shiva call this evening.

One Note re: Funerals: Well, two notes, actually. There were issues with the sound system. I was particularly frustrated not to be able to hear what Bob’s brother said. The other issue was that they asked people to sing along with a few things, but did not provide song sheets. I don’t know about you, but there are limits to my memory. I plan to leave instructions on these topics.


Alexander McCall Smith: Alexander McCall Smith spoke at the Library of Congress Thursday night. The event was nominally related to the most recent No. One Ladies’ Detective Agency book and the library had exhibits on animals of Botswana and on female detectives available to look at before the talk. His actual talk touched on a number of other topics and he was consistently warm and entertaining. It’s obvious that he genuinely likes his characters. I was reminded of why I find so many of his books so enjoyable.


Spooky Stories: Four of us from Voices in the Glen told spooky stories at the C&O Canal Great Falls Tavern Visitor Center in Maryland on Saturday afternoon. We had a small audience, but it was fun, anyway. I told one literary story ("The New Mother" by Lucy Clifford), an historic ghost story ("Ida Black") and a shaggy dog story ("Lyle and the Ghost").


Don’t Analyze This Dream: I slept really well last night, but I woke up in the middle of a dream involving an incredibly difficult crossword puzzle. I must have been at a competition because Will Shortz was in the front of the room and there was a clock counting down, but I still hadn’t made it out of the northwest corner. In real life, if I am stuck in one part of a puzzle, I try to find things I know in other parts of the puzzle. Dream Me is, apparently, not so good at this.