fauxklore

My next trip was to Fort Wayne, Indiana from 9-15 August for the annual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). This was only the third time I attended the conference, though I had gone to bits and pieces virtually during the COVID shutdown. The two I’d gone to previously were in London and in Philadelphia. So why was it in Fort Wayne this time? Well, Fort Wayne has a small Jewish community, but it also has the Allen County Public Library, which has the second largest genealogy collection in the United States, behind the LDS Family History Center in Salt Lake City.

I flew in on Saturday, via Chicago. My flight to ORD left about 40 minutes late, so I was a bit concerned about my connection. But we did make up some time in the air. And I walked as quickly as I could through the unwashed hordes at ORD, arriving at the gate for the FWA flight slightly out of breath just before it started boarding. I forgot to look for the stand that allegedly gives out cookies to arriving passengers in Fort Wayne, alas. I did find where the van to the Hilton picks up and had a bit of a wait for that. The hotel check-in was on the slow side, but I got to my room just fine. I walked around a little and got some mediocre Chinese food for supper. Then I spent time in my room reviewing my plans for which conference sessions I wanted to attend.

On Sunday, I checked in at conference registration. Then I connected with a guy from my home town (who I didn’t know before, though I’d been friendly with his sister, who was in my Hebrew school class), connected with my cousin Fred who I hadn’t met in person before, and compared photos with a woman whose father had been in a DP camp in Italy with my father. I spent an exhausting amount of time in the exhibit hall, where I learned about some potentially useful resources. The opening session was that evening, with keynote speaker CeCe Moore, who spoke on The Power of Genetic Genealogy. Her most significant advice was to “fish in all four ponds,” i.e. have your DNA data on all of the major DNA sites. She also talked a lot about the use of genetic information in solving criminal cases, with an example of how finding DNA data for close relatives led to solving a murder.

Monday (day 2 of the conference) started with a breakfast with Jody Tzucker of LitvakSIG. For some mysterious reason, one person kept asking questions about Slovakia. After that I went to a talk by Rabbi Ben-Zion Saydman on Morris, Izzy, and Seymour: What’s In a Name, which was amusing, but rather sloppy about some details.

The luncheon for JRI-Poland (JRI=Jewish Records Indexing) had a talk by Halina Goldberg on Not Warsaw: Jews and Culture Beyond the Capitol. A particular line I liked was “let’s get the fiddler off the roof.” I followed that with Robinn Magid’s presentation on What’s New at JRI-Poland.org. They still need to unify systems to pay for things, e.g. membership is not handled through the shopping cart. It does look like they’ve added records for Tykocin (where my Chlebiocky family is from) so I need to spend some time on that. My favorite quote from that talk was “There was no one in 19th century Poland named Jennifer.” But I learned recently that there actually were women named Tiffany in medieval times, so you never know. Also, they have a new book club,although another book club is the last thing I need.

Small world department: I was washing my hands in the lady’s room in between talks when someone said to me, “Is your name Miriam?” When I said “yes,” she asked “did you go to West Hempstead High School?” She turned out to have been in my high school class!

I managed to find someone who could read the writing on the back of one photo and was able to verify that I was correct about who it was of. Then I spent about an hour and a half mentoring someone re: a ship manifest. I discovered that the person she was researching wasn’t traveling alone, but was probably with a son or nephew. (I did some other mentoring later on in the conference, but that was mostly answering quick questions, e.g. reading a name written in Russian.)

After that I went to the Family Journey Showcase talks, mostly to see what people were doing that I should keep in mind for my presentation on Thursday. The day ended with a presentation by Karen Franklin on JewishGen 2025, which had some info about who is filling what roles. The item of the most interest to me is that Shul Records America now includes Canadian and Caribbean records.

Which brings us to Tuesday, day 3 of the conference. I started it with another “Breakfast with the Expert” session. This one was with Curt Witcher of the Allen County Public Library. The table I was at had a lively discussion about how to get younger people interested in genealogy. My answer to that always has to do with emphasizing stories, rather than lists of names.

Next, I went to an excellent talk by Ellen Cassedy about Women of Lithuania. Something I learned from that talk was that Lithuania was the last country in Europe to become officially Christian. In 19th century Lithuania, Jews were the middle class, below aristocrats but above farmers and peasants. The first Lithuanian women’s conference was in 1907. Jewish women played the role of healers and non-Jewish women went to them for help with the evil eye, for example. Also, in 1926, the quota for Lithuanian immigration to the United States was 380 people. That explains why so many of my relatives who left Lithuania went to South Africa or to Argentina instead.

Continuing on that regional theme, the LitvakSIG meeting had updates about new records that have been added, as well as about changes in board members and leaders of District Research Groups. Afterwards, I talked to somebody who turned out to know part of my Atlanta family. That was followed by the LitvakSIG luncheon, where Dan Rabinowitz talked about The Strashun Library Ledgers Project. This wasn’t a lending library, but rather an annex to the Great Synagogue, with a reading room. There were 5 ledgers which have records of the reading lists of its members.

After lunch, I went to a talk by Anna Wiernicka about How to Learn Family Story from Crumbs - About the Value of Notary Records. I don’t know of my Polish ancestors having had any court cases that would have been handled in notarial courts, but who knows? Maybe somebody did own land and had a deed recorded or there was some issue with an inheritance.

Dan Rabinowitz gave his second talk of the day, this time on Vilnius: Traces of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. This is an almost 800 page book by Irina Guzenburg that is designed as a comprehensive guidebook to the city. There is a version in English, published in 2021,that includes several tours, with detailed information. This looks incredibly useful and I definitely want to try to get my hands on a copy.

The last talk I went to on Tuesday was titled My Mother’s Life in Cuba - In Her Own Words by Martin Fischer. Mostly, this had to do with poverty and moving from house to house because of it. While it had interesting material, the presentation annoyed me because I hate when people just read their slides verbatim.

A large group of conference attendees went to a baseball game that night. I pulled out my Hebrew language Nationals ball cap for the occasion. Here’s a picture of me wearing it, sitting next to a statue of Johnny Appleseed. who spent the last 10 years of his life in Fort Wayne and is allegedly buried there.

As for the ball game itself, the Fort Wayne TinCaps are the High-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres. They beat the West Michigan Whitecaps, who are affiliated with the Detroit Tigers. Here’s a picture of Parkview Field. which was nice enough but had very limited vegetarian food options. (I got a slice of cheese pizza for supper.)

Day 4 of the conference was Wednesday. I started with another Breakfast with the Expert. This one was with Jude Richter from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Our table had a good discussion on what resources you can use only on site.

The first presentation I went to was by Debra Kaplowitz on Using Pre-1826 Polish Parish Records in Jewish Research. The basic point was that there was no civil vital records registration in Congress Poland until 1826 and vital records were maintained by Catholic parishes. Those records also include things like manufacture and sale of alcohol, which was a a trade dominated by Jews. There may be some things in these records that are worth looking at.

I walked over to the Allen County Public Library where I watched a short movie, The Ice Cream Man about a Jewish ice cream parlor owner who was targeted by Klaus Barbie shortly after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. It was interesting and very moving.

I stayed at the library and did the (somewhat overwhelming) library tour, followed by some time using some of their resources. I spent some time looking at the 1896-1897 directory of Bulawayo (in present day Zimbabwe) but that appears to be too early to find information about my Meltser family who I have reason to believe went there.

I went back over to the conference center for the IAJGS annual meeting. The big (and disappointing) news was that next year’s conference will be virtual. They are also trying to plan some sort of events in association with the 250th anniversary of American independence. After the meeting, I sat down with my cousin, Fred, and we compared trees.

The day ended with the annual banquet. The banquet speaker was Daniel Horowitz, a retired Smith College professor (as opposed to the Daniel Horowitz of My Heritage). He gave an amusing talk about bears, primarily teddy bears and Paddington Bear.

Which brings me to Thursday, which was Day 5. I slept in a bit. The first talk I went to was by Banai Lynn Feldstein and had to do with Morse Code: Favorite Tools on Steve Morse’s web Site. Like many people, I most use stevemorse.org for searching immigration records and finding enumeration districts (EDs) for the U.S. federal census. The key new thing I learned is that there is now an interactive map of Manhattan on the ED finder.

Tammy Hepps gave a very entertaining presentation on The Dark Side of the Census No One Told You About. Her examples included an enumerator who didn’t understand exactly where his district was, so recorded the area on the wrong side of a major road and another enumerator who just made up at least 40 entire families. She also discussed several strategies which can help, such as searching by address instead of name, looking for names of other family members or neighbors, and using the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

Suzanne Fialkoff gave a talk titled Find Your Ancestors in These Little-Known Publications. Some of the resources she discussed include the American Jewish Yearbook, synagogue yearbooks, industry publications (such as Fur Trade Review), Who’s Who in American Jewry, and state and local historical societies.

Finally, it was time for my presentation His Own Teeth, which was part of the Family Journey Showcase. I didn’t have as many listeners as I’d hoped for, but those I did have were responsive and thought the story (which has to do how my grandparents met) was charming.

Overall, I enjoyed the conference and thought it was worth my time. I had some travel issues the next day, but I’ll write about that (and why I spent the weekend in Chicago) in another post.

The biggest thing I did in July was go to Minneapolis for the National Puzzlers’ League Convention, which will get its own entry.

As for other things in July, I had a few of my usual activities, including my Litvak genealogy mentoring group and playing board games over zoom. I also had a couple of other zoom meetings - one to get an introduction to the app for the Jewish genealogy conference I was going to in August and another for planning for the 2026 Women’s Storytelling Festival.

Physical Therapy: I finally had my first PT appointment. The PT said that my knee issues were actually due to having strained my patellar tendon and he gave me a series of exercises to help strengthen the surrounding muscles, as well as the tendon itself. The most challenging is the wall sit, largely because I don’t have an obvious smooth stretch of wall to use for them. My doors all have indented panels in them. And most of my wall space has things against it (either furniture like bookshelves or boxes of stuff).

Baseball: The Washington Nationals always play an early (11 a.m.) game on the Fourth of July. This year they were playing my Red Sox, so I couldn’t resist getting a ticket. It was very hot out and my phone overheated, so I didn’t get any pictures. Despite that I had a great time watching the BoSox demolish the Nats, with a final score of 11-2. By the way, this was just a few days after Wilyer Abreu became the first player since 1958 to hit an inside-the-park home run and a grand slam in the same game.

After the game, I stopped by Bereshovsky’s Deli (attached to Gatsby) and got a potato knish and a can of Dr. Brown’s diet cream soda. It’s not like a real New York deli, but the knish was decent and I would probably be willing to eat there again.

The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical: On Saturday of the fourth of July weekend, I went to see this show at Signature Theatre. It was created by Joe Iconis, who is best known for Be More Chill, which I had never seen but heard good things about. This was, sadly, politically relevant and very very funny. Eric William Morris starred as Hunter S. Thompson, but the really notable performance was by George Abud as Richard M. Nixon. There was also some very interesting use of puppetry. Overall, this was well worth seeing and a good reminder of why I love Signature so much.

Profs and Pints: A few days after that, I went to a Profs and Pints talk on The Physics of Baseball given by Scott Paulson, a professor at James Madison University. His lecture was both entertaining and enlightening, with topics related to pitching, batting, and fielding. I liked his explanation of why knuckleballs behave so strangely and what the real impact of things like corked bats and the thin air of Mile High Stadium in Denver were. By the way, the event was at Penn Social, which is huge and has a very extensive bar menu and reasonably priced food with large portions. (I couldn’t finish the grilled cheese sandwich I ordered.)

Please Don’t Analyze This Dream: I had a dream that involved a very elaborate grey hat, sort of like a huge saucer shaped fascinator grafted onto a brimless cloche. I am seriously tempted to try to make this if I can find the right color and weight of felt. By the way, I think this may have been inspired by a photo I saw of Princess Beatrice.

I was home just a few days before flying off to spend a little more than half of June in Zakynthos, Greece at a workshop on paper conservation. That deserves its own entry, which I hope to write in the next day or two.

Other than that, I had my routine annual medical exam before I left, the most significant part of which was getting a referral for physical therapy for my knee. I also had my monthly Litvak genealogy mentoring group, at which I gave a talk on Using Facebook for Jewish Genealogy.

After I got back from Greece, I had a couple of routine things, e.g. playing Code Names on-line with my friends and going to my needlework group (also on-line). The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington had a meeting at the Capital Jewish Museum with a presentation on updates to the Family Tree Maker software. One of the more interesting features is the capability to create custom fields, e.g. to add someone’s Hebrew name to their entry.

The final thing I did was go to the Kennedy Center with my friend Cindy to see the National Symphony Orchestra production of Dolly Parton’s Threads. Dolly herself appeared only on video. The program was conducted by Steven Reineke, with three women (Katelyn Drye, Hollie Hammel, and Blair Lamb) singing the songs. Many of the songs were familiar, e.g. “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You,” and “Nine to Five.” It was entertaining enough, but my taste in music is mostly edgier.

I am fairly sure this is the latest I have ever done a year in review. Let’s just say that I’ve been crazy busy. Anyway, here we go in the same format I’ve used for several years now.

The worst thing that happened in 2024 was the whole fiasco with the HVAC leak in late June / early July. Which turned out to be due to a blockage from a line in a unit above mine, so didn’t involve as much money as it might have, but it was still very stressful.

Beyond that, there was also some medical stuff. Having cataract surgery was actually a really good thing. It was quite miraculous the morning after the first eye was done when I could read titles of books across the bedroom without putting on my glasses. (The second eye also went well, but that was a less dramatic change.) The knee issues that I had later in the year were also a big deal. Let’s just say I have good days and I have bad days. Getting old sucks.

Books: I read only 36 books in 2024, which is pathetically few for me. That was 14 non-fiction books and 22 fiction books. Favorites were Sleeping With the Fishes by Mary Janice Davidson, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehotto Hindman, Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, and a couple of Dick Francis mysteries. The worst book I read during the year was The Naked Face by Sidney Sheldon, a suspense novel full of racism and homophobia.

I didn’t manage any used bookstore runs over the year, though I did give away 4 books. I have at least 60 waiting to go out.

I belonged to three book clubs, one of which has disbanded.

As for book-related events, I went to the Moby Dick Marathon in San Francisco in October and even read one chapter (Chapter 8, The Pulpit).

Ghoul Pool: I finished 6th out of 14 players with a final score of 117 points. People I scored on were Jimmy Carter, Daniel J. Evans (unique), Shannon Doherty, Janis Paige, Jean Malaurie (unique), Bud Harrelson (unique), and Faith Ringgold (unique).

Travel: My only international trip of the year was to Portugal (Porto and Lisbon) and the Azores in May / June. But I had plenty of domestic travel. I went to New York City in late January / early February. Then to Salt Lake City in late February / early March for Roots Tech. The total solar eclipse took me to Bruceville, Texas (near Dallas) in April, including an Israeli dance camp. Also in April, I had an overnight trip to Richmond for the Virginia Storytelling Alliance gathering. In May I went to Colorado for RhinoStock (a memorial for a friend) and also had a quick trip to Indianapolis to go to a baseball game, which unfortunately got rained out. I flew back to Dallas in July for the National Puzzlers League con, adding on a train trip to Oklahoma City to go to a baseball game. In August, I went to a Jewish genealogy convention in Philadelphia, and added in a couple of days in New York City for Lollapuzzoola (and theatre going, of course). And in October, I made a quick trip to San Francisco for their Moby Dick Marathon.

Genealogy: I’ve continued mentoring members of my local Jewish genealogy society on Lithuanian Jewish genealogy. As I’ve probably mentioned before, when I was starting to do genealogy research, other people helped me, so I feel happy to be able to help other people.

In February, I went to Roots Tech, which is a large genealogy conference held annually in Salt Lake City. The most interesting thing there was the presentation on using DNA from an old envelope - amazing, but not ready for the general public yet. I also went to the IAJGS convention in Philadelphia in August, at which I finally got to meet a cousin in person, as well as doing some volunteering.

Baseball: As I mentioned above, I had a failed attempt to go to a minor league game in Indianapolis (damn rain!) but a more successful game experience in Oklahoma City in July.

Culture: I went to 10 musicals and one non-musical play. My favorites for the year were Tick … Tick .. Boom at the Kennedy Center, Harmony on Broadway, Soft Power at Signature Theatre, and Suffs on Broadway.

I saw 7 movies in theaters and two on airplanes. Favorites were Next Goal Wins, Shari and Lamb Chop, and My Penguin Friend.

Storytelling: I performed in a Better Said Than Done show in February and emceed at the Women’s Storytelling Festival in March. I told a story at the Artists Standing Strong Together New Year’s Eve storytelling show. I went to several local story swaps (some in person, some over zoom), as well as zoom story swaps in Los Angeles and in Ottawa, Canada. I saw a friend’s storytelling show as part of Artomatic. And I participated in several discussions of Grimm fairy tales.

Museums and Art: I went to an exhibit of Dorothea Lange’s photos at the National Gallery of Art with a friend (and looked at some other art in the museum afterwards). I saw a Judy Chicago retrospective at the New Museum in New York City. I went to much of Artomatic. And I went to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas and the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City.

During my trip to Portugal, I went to a stained glass museum in Porto, the Museo Nacional de Azulejo (National Tile Museum) and Oceanario (aquarium) in Lisbon, and the Museum of Myths and Legends in Sintra.

Other Stuff:

I participated in Lollapuzzoola (a crossword contest) in August. I played board games, sometimes with the National Puzzlers’ League, sometimes with people I know from the loser community. I also went to other loser events, including a few parties and a couple of brunches.

I went to Kochavim, an Israeli folk dance weekend (in association with the eclipse).

I did a tour of M&S Schmalburg’s fabric flower factory (via the New York Adventure Club).

I attended a few lectures in the Leading Jewish Minds at MIT series (over zoom). And I went to a reception for MIT president Sally Kornbluth.

I’ve probably forgotten something or other among this, but it was a weird and stressful year. And I think that compared to normal people, I still did a lot of things.

Goals: So how did I do on my 2024 goals? Frankly, not very well. I did not circumnavigate the globe going westward, though I did map out about half of a general plan for doing it, so I’ll give myself a 5% on that goal. I didn’t make it to any national parks. I also did nothing about cleaning out my saved files of genealogy emails. I read 37 books out of my goal of 80, so I get only 45% there. I did make some progress on organizing my bedroom, but I don’t have a good metric for that. I’ll estimate that I accomplished about 50%. I finished just about 2/3 of one afghan (out of a goal to finish 3 afghans) so I’ll give myself 22% on that goal. I still haven’t found my parents’ slides. I made it to one AAA ballpark (Oklahoma City), and had an attempt at going to a game in Indianapolis, which got rained out. So I’lll get 25% on my goal of 4 AAA ballparks. I did fairly well on exercise the first part of the year, but my knee injury meant that I did very little from August on, so I’ll give myself a 60%.

So, overall, I’ll give myself a rather pathetic 23% for the year.

Which brings me to goals for 2025:

Circumnavigate the globe going westward. I think I have a plan for somewhere in the October / November time frame.
Go to at least 4 minor league baseball games.
Finish 4 crafts projects.
Read 80 books, with a stretch goal of 100.
Finish going through my parents’ photographs and slides.
Revisit / update my life list.
Organize genealogy files.
Go to at least 3 national parks.
Learn to read Hangul (Korean writing system).
Sort through cassette tapes.

Errands: I have been been absurdly distracted on all attempts to get caught up on things here. The first half of August was just errands, with dealing with things like updating insurance (because the company I had used for years decided to pull out of Virginia) and trying to make some plans for where to focus some decluttering efforts. It doesn’t help that a couple of friends call me to chat when they are trying to procrastinate on doing their housework.

Local Theatre Going - Nine: The only halfway interesting thing I accomplished in the first half of August was seeing Nine (the Maury Yeston musical) at the Kennedy Center as part of the Broadway Center Stage series, which is a scaled down minimally staged series. I like the score for the most part, though there are some songs that annoy me. (Fortunately, one of the ones I really dislike, “The Germans at the Spa,” was omitted altogether. And my favorite song from the show, “My Husband Makes Movies,” was done well.) The two most interesting things to note were that: 1) nearly every time I go to the Kennedy Center, I run into somebody I know. In this case, there were 5 women from my Chavurah there. And, 2: I had decided to go last minute and got a rush ticket at the box office for $38.50 for a center orchestra seat, which was a great deal given that the list price was over $100.

Book Club: Oh, wait, I did also have a Crones & Tomes book club meeting. We discussed Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I think I had an advantage reading it since I’m familiar with Appalachian Virginia and a late friend was Melungeon so I felt like I knew more about the cultural milieu than some of the other people in the group. On the other hand, I’ve never read David Copperfield (and I am not really big on Dickens.) Overall, I found it interesting, but it was too long and my wrists hurt getting through it.

IAJGS Conference: Later in August, I took the train up to Philadelphia to go to the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies conference. This was supposed to start with going to a baseball game (Phillies vs. Nationals) but I had a stupid accident. The conference was at the Sheraton, but I had decided to spend Saturday night at the Marriott, which was a bit cheaper. I got out of a taxi, grabbed my backpack and was putting it on, when I somehow stepped backwards onto the curb and tripped and fell, injuring my back. This was very painful. It was also not helped by an alarm going off at the hotel at 12:30 a.m., though that proved to be nothing major (aside from sleep deprivation). Anyway, I moved to the Sheraton in the morning, which was more convenient for the actual conference sessions. I didn’t think
I was badly injured, so I managed to limp through the conference.

As for the conference itself, here’s a brief list of presentations I went to:

Monday

The Mess of New York City Vital Records - I was already pretty familiar with the work that Reclaim the Records has been doing, but this was interesting.
Researching Small Landsmanshaftn Synagogues - this should have been interesting, but there wasn’t really enough detail.
JRI-Poland Luncheon / JRI-Poland Annual Meeting. The luncheon talk by Andrew Carroll about his activities collecting war letters was particularly intriguing, though not especially relevant for me. I also liked that they’d seated people by what part of Poland their families were from, so I could chat with other people who had roots in Lomza Guberniya.
BOF: Vinius District Research Group - good general discussion
Landscape of Dreams: Jewish Genealogy in Canada - I’m still trying to figure out some details on how my great-uncle got to Canada (and then on to crossing the border to Buffalo).
JewishGen Annual Meeting - mostly various awards. I was pleased to see that they named a new award series after Dick Plotz (who was a friend from both the puzzle world and the genealogy world).
The Ron Arons Game Show Night - Jewpardy! is always a fun activity, but I was exhausted halfway through.

Tuesday

The Importance of Memory in Building a Jewish future - Mostly an overview of the holdings at YIVO
Litvak SIG Meeting - the annual catch-up of what is new.
Holocaust Compensation and the United Restitution Organization - Since I am fairly sure both my father and grandfather got reparations money, I need to spend some time delving into these records
Genealogy Death Match - This is another game show, featuring two people competing over whose records go further back. Old people like me are at an obvious disadvantage.

Wednesday

Entering Eretz Israel: Getting Around Government Limitations - This covered legal possibilities during both the Ottoman Empire and the Britihs Mandate. I was particularly interested in learning about religious grounds for immigration, since I’ve been told my maternal grandfather studied at a yeshiva in Petah Tikva.
When Traditional Genealogy and Genetic Genealogy Collide - I think everyone gets frustrated over people who expect either one path or the other to “cousin hunting” to be the be all and end all to solving genealogy mysteries. Unfortunately, this talk didn’t really come to an answer.
BOF: Tracing the Tribe - Tracing the Tribe is definitely one of the better Jewish Genealogy groups on Facebook. This was an interesting and amusing talk by one of the moderators of it.
Jewish American Life Beyond New York: The Industrial Removal Office, 1901-1917 - Most of this was focused on the East Coast, Midwest, and Great Plains, so was not particularly relevant for me, though there was some discussion of cities like Atlanta (where a large branch of my father’s family settled). There was, alas, not really any discussion of the Pacific Northwest, where my earliest immigrants from Lithuania to America went. Still, there are some sources I should check out.
Gala Banquet - Arthur Kurzweil was the banquet speaker. He spoke well enough but didn’t really say anything I didn’t already know.

Thursday

Letters Have Wings: Digitizing, Annotating, and Exhibiting Family Letters - I was volunteering as a session manager for this session. This had some good material about how to preserve and document family letters.
Jewish Gen Belarus Research Division Meeting / Jewish Gen Belarus Research Division Luncheon - There was some material about the history of Belarus in light of the 1905 Russian revolution, but not a lot on good resources.
Mentoring - I spent a couple of hours helping people find some Lithuanian data. I always enjoy doing this, since I benefited a lot from other people helping me when I first started doing genealogy.

Overall, the conference was reasonably useful though being injured was annoying. I traveled onward to New York on Friday. I will write about that in the next entry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I already wrote about RhinoStock. So what else has been going on in May?

I had my usual Jewish genealogy mentoring session on the first Wednesday of the month. It was pretty productive because I was able to help someone find some of her ancestors in the 1897 All Russia Census.

I went to Ottawa Storytellers for the second time. It’s really a nice group of people and I especially like that they have a couple who do ballads. For what it’s worth, I told “Berel the Baker,” which is my most popular Chelm story.

We had a Grimm Keepers meeting to talk about The Three Ravens. Actually, the number of ravens varies depending on which version you look at. There are a lot of Grimm stories involving people (usually brothers) who get turned into birds and having to get rescued by a sister. In this case, the sister loses the chicken bone she is supposed to use to get into the glass mountains where her raven brothers live and cuts off a finger instead. My comment was, “well, haven’t you ever heard of a skeleton key?” Also, it might actually be fun to imagine a Grimm aviary.

Over the weekend, I went to two movies as part of the JxJ Festival. This is what used to be two separate Jewish festivals - one for films and one for music. Saturday night was The Catskills in Bethesda, which was a bit of a pain because of Metro track work and local road work walking from the metro to the theatre. Despite that, I did enjoy this documentary. I particularly liked that they included material about bungalow colonies, as well as the resort hotels. And they didn’t focus excessively on the Borscht Belt comedians at the resorts. The scenery they showed was quite attractive, too. Overall, it brought back some good memories. We didn’t go for the whole summer, though my grandparents did have a bungalow at Rabinowitz’s Bungalow Colony in Parksville. But we did go for long weekends every now and then to various hotels. I remember playing miniature golf and pinball with other teenagers and rowing on the lake at the Homowack.

On Sunday, I went to see Shari and Lamb Chop which was at the Smithsonian American History Museum. Someone had asked Mallory Lewis (Shari’s daughter) if Lamb Chop was at the Smithsonian and she explained that the Smithsonian only has retired puppets, but Lamb Chop still has an active career. (One of the museum staff members did say they are getting a Lamb Chop puppet next year.) Anyway, the movie was both informative and entertaining. For example, I’d had no idea that Shari’s father had been the official magician of New York City, using the name Peter Pan the Magic Man. They emphasized that she did use her puppets as a way to communicate, not only to entertain, with Mr. Bearly a means to discuss relationship issues with her husband, Jeremy Tarcher. But really the main point was how amazingly talented Shari Lewis was, e.g. being able to voice two puppets (Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse) while also singing. And, of course, Lamb Chop was just delightful. At one point late in her career, Shari learned Japanese. When she toured Japan, people would come up to her and say, “Lamb Chop speaks very good Japanese. You, not so much.” I’ll have to see if I can get this movie on DVD to play at the annual Shari Lewis Memorial Lamb Chop Dinner, which I host during National Ventriloquism Week. (Yes, really.) By the way, another ventriloquist was particularly big in our family. My mother had known Paul Winchell while she was growing up and one of my favorite family photos is of her, as a teenager, at Jerry Mahoney’s birthday party.

Incidentally, I knew a guy in college who was a ventriloquist. His roommates started tossing his dummy around in their dorm room one night, and he got hit in the eye. They took him to the infirmary and he explained, "a dummy hit me in the eye." And the nurse told him that name calling wasn't going to help. (This is an absolutely true story.)

As for this week, my Crones and Tomes book club met on Monday night to talk about Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner. I think most of us liked the book, though some aspects of it were pretty gut wrenching. The idea of using food as a basis for a memoir was appealing, though it would never work for me since my mother just wasn’t really interested in food. (She would have happily eaten boiled chicken for supper every night of her life.) Anyway, it was an interesting book and an interesting discussion.

On Tuesday afternoon, I flew to Indianapolis. I had a ticket to a minor league baseball game. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate and the game was postponed. Oh, well, the best laid plans of mice and Miriam ... I can use the ticket for another game, but I have to figure out when I can get back to Indianapolis. On the plus side, I ran into a former colleague on the plane. And I had a particularly delicious Asian chicken salad for dinner, (I flew back on Wednesday morning. Yes, that is pretty ridiculous.)

And tonight was playing Code Names with friends over zoom.

I’ve also made good progress on making travel arrangements, both for the trip I am leaving for on Monday and for a trip in July. I still have planning for August to put in place.

From 29 February through 2 March, I was at RootsTech, which is a huge annual genealogy convention. It’s hard to tell how many people participate because they sell millions of tickets for the on-line event, which I’ve done the past couple of years. The problem with going on-line is that there is so much stuff that it’s hard to decide which presentations are worth watching, but there are also all the distractions of home, so I end up not watching a lot. Buying an in-person ticket includes access to all of the on-line presentations for an entire year. There’s also a huge exhibit hall, with all of the major genealogy companies (and many I’d never heard of) contributing. And there were a couple of hundred in-person presentations to attend.

Anyway, I flew in the day before (Wednesday) and my flight to Salt Lake City (via Los Angeles) went smoothly enough, though my arrival gate and departing gate were pretty much as far apart as any two United gates at LAX could be. United uses Terminal B at SLC and, to get out of the airport, you have to walk half the length of that terminal, walk through a half mile long tunnel, and then walk much of the length of terminal A. The signage to get to TRAX (the SLC light rail system) wasn’t great, but I found where I needed to go and was quite pleased to learn that the system was free for people attending RootsTech. It was also a bit of a hike to my hotel from the nearest station. In short, it was going to prove easy to get plenty of steps in during the convention. For what it’s worth, I stayed at the Residence Inn, which was okay, though the bed was too soft, so my back was aching after a couple of days. There are several hotels closer to the convention center, by the way. If I went again, I might consider one of the hotels right across the street.

There were three or four classes I was interested in during every time slot of the event. I marked all of them on my schedule and chose during the time between the sessions. I also spent time visiting the exhibit hall, but won’t really discuss that since I didn’t take notes there. But I will note that several (all?) of the major companies did have mini-seminars about using their products. And I did learn about a few products that could be useful, e.g. some of the archiving materials.

The first session I went to on Thursday was The Quest for Hidden Ancestors - Genealogy Tips from Nancy Drew by Ellen Kowitt. This wasn’t really focused on things I didn’t already know, but I like Nancy Drew and I’ve found Ellen to be an entertaining speaker before. Basically, she pulled out examples from the Nancy Drew novels that are relevant to genealogy research and listed plenty of resources. And that did include a few I had not been aware of previously, e.g. interment.net for burial records and Deep L for translation. She also had a particularly good list of resources for historical maps. Entertaining and informative was a good way to start the day.

The next session I went to was What’s the History in Your Family History? by Rachel and Matt Trotter. This was described as adding historical context to your family history and covered sources like oral histories, oral traditions, diaries, and timelines. While there were a couple of example, It wasn’t really what I was looking for, since it was largely U.S. focused and somewhat more recent history for the most part.

The hottest subject in genealogy these days seems to be artificial intelligence, so (after a mediocre and overpriced lunch in the exhibit hall), I went to a session on Using AI Tools to Expand Your Research Universe Part 1: Chat and Search Tools. by James Tanner. He described the goal as to help organize, analyze, and get insight from data to solve novel problems. He listed several subfields of AI, including cognitive computing, computer vision, machine learning, neural networks, deep learning, natural language processing, fuzzy logic, expert systems, and robotics. He also talked about practical uses of AI, including detecting illegal activity, business apps (e.g. digital personal assistants), generative AI, and data processing. He noted that large language models are what has changed recently and mentioned a few general purpose products, e.g. Microsoft Copilot. I found his talk way too general and would have liked some actual examples of using AI in genealogy. I had considered going to one or more of the talks in his series of presentations, but decided that they were unlikely to be worth my time based on this one.

The next top talk I went to was History, Family History, and Families From the Global to the Personal by Dr. Wanda Wyporska. Her main point was that genealogists are historians. She talked about geography as a genealogist’s worst friend, primarily in the context of forced and voluntary migrations. Her ethnicity is a mixture of Eastern European and Caribbean, which led to an interesting twist on this. The main point was that people connect with communities in various ways. Unfortunately, most of the discussion was centered on race, which is not of much interest to me. So, while her talk was reasonably interesting, I didn’t find much of it of any practical relevance.

The last talk I went to on Thursday was Squeezing all the Info Out of Your Matches by Kate Penny Howard. This was a fairly basic presentation on DNA and was focused on finding the Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) with a match. She talked about things like searching across as many platforms as possible ad then building out descendants of the MRCA. She also recommended using DNA Painter. Since her major emphasis was on things like looking for who an unknown parent is (either because of adoption or unexpected DNA results), I didn’t find this particularly relevant.

Overall, I thought that only one of the five talks I went to on Thursday was notable. Fortunately, I had somewhat better success with finding useful sessions the next two days.

The first talk I went to on Friday was Researching the Canadian Census and Early Census Substitutes by David Allen Lambert. Most of this was a review of what information censuses (some federal, some by province) contained in each year. For example, the 1901 census included complete birth date (not just year), year of immigration, and year of naturalization. He also listed where each census can be found, including Family Search, Ancestry, and Library and Archives Canada. The most recent one on Ancestry is 1931. This is useful for me, because of a great-uncle who I know went to Canada (and, later, entered the U.S. via Buffalo. There is a note on another immigration record (for someone who is almost certainly another member of that part of my family) involving an inquiry in Toronto. So, it looks like it may be possible to get more insight into that situation.

The next talk I went to was The High Five - Key Documents for Successful Records Retrieval at NARA by Cecilia McFadden. She talked about record locations and finding record set numbers. But I wish she had traced through some actual examples in detail, as I got rather lost in some other dry information.

One of the highlights of the conference was What’s New and Exciting at My Heritage by Gilad Japhet. He started out with an example of artifact DNA. In particular, he was able to have DNA extracted from stamps, which led to finding half siblings of his great-grandfather. I thought this was completely mind-blowing. Of course, it’s not yet ready for commercialization and is probably too expensive for people who aren’t the CEO of a genealogy company, but the potential is amazing. I definitely have postcards with stamps I assume were licked by my grand-mother and I probably have envelopes sealed by various other deceased ancestors.

He also talked about recent (AI-based) features that have been added to My Heritage. Photo Dater, which estimates when historical photos were taken, looks likely to be useful. AI Biographer, which converts facts into a narrative holds no interest for me, since I know how to write, but at least it includes sources. There’s also an AI Record Finder, which uses an AI chat to search historical records. I think that is probably most useful for beginners. OldNews.com is focused on historical newspapers. Unfortunately, it only covers eight countries initially and, other than the U.S. (and possibly Canada) has limited utility for me. There were several other things he mentioned, which were of less interest to me, but it was a very good presentation.

My most disappointing talk of the day was Why Should I Map My Chromosomes by Tim Janzen. The goal is to determine which portion of your DNA comes from which ancestor. It really only works for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins. And, more importantly for Ashkenazi Jews like me, endogamy is a problem. Aside from that, his presentation was hard to follow because he did things like referring to the 4th column in a dense chart on a slide, but really meant what was actually, say, the 8th column. Overall, this was pretty much useless for me.

The last talk I went to on Friday was Are You an Ethical Genealogist? by Dr, Penny Walters. This was interesting, but I’d have preferred a panel discussion to a lecture. She mostly focused on situations with genuine reasons pointing to two different sets of actions. For example, approximately 12% of DNA tests result in someone finding an NPE (which stands for either “not parent expected” or “non-parental event” depending on which you prefer.) An adoptee can obviously have good reasons for trying to find a birth parent, e.g. understanding their medical history, but there is also potential to hurt a parent who raised them who may not have known of the situation. There are also cases involving an individual vs. their community, truth vs. loyalty, individuals vs. the community, and justice vs. virtue. Any decision you make about privacy and confidentiality vs. transparency has consequences. Each person has to decide for him or herself what information to disclose about their family tree. (Since there are a few people on my tree with readily findable criminal records, this is of direct interest to me. On the plus side, those people are easy to research.)

I started Saturday with a presentation by Jarrett Ross on Success With Jewish DNA: How to Overcome Issues with Endogamy. This was probably the single most immediately useful session I went to at the conference. He also talked about double cousins and 3/4 siblings, e.g. the result of marriage to a sibling of a deceased spouse. He noted that as you get further back, the differences between endogamy and non-endogamy are greater. More importantly, he had several practical suggestions re: dealing with DNA results in endogamous communities. I already knew some of what he suggested about what level of centimorgan matches to investigate. But he had other tips I hadn’t really thought of before. For example, you can try to build out the tree of a potential match to a specific level. He also suggested looking for connections to towns within 30 miles. Overall, I came away with actionable information, which is always a good thing.

The next presentation I went to was AI-Assisted Genealogy: The Family History of the Future by Daniel Horowitz (from My Heritage). Some of the uses of AI he discussed were language translation, market research, key word research, and customization. Applying those to genealogy tasks, he talked about tombstone translations, summarizing and extracting information from documents, transcribing handwritten records , extracting information from newspapers (including locating OCR text). Within MyHeritage, some tools include an AI Record Finder (which lets people find data without filling in a form), Photo Tagger (which looks useful, but he did warn of its addictive potential), He also talked about some other tools I can’t imagine any reason I’d want to use (e.g. one to turn yourself into a historical figure). Still, it’s good to know what’s out there, even if you want to use only some of it.

After that, I went to Research Planning for Efficiency and Accuracy by Mindy Taylor. Most of her focus was on setting up research logs, including citations. That’s the sort of thing I know in theory but don’t do well with in practice, as I have found myself repeating searches multiple times. Something as simple as noting the date a particular search was made could be very helpful, especially since new sources become available frequently. Er, yes, I do need to get organized.

The final presentation I went to was Working with WATO (What Are the Odds) by Leah Larkin. WATO is a tool from DNA Painter and is intended to help identify an unknown parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent. Anything further back is beyond the limits of autosomal DNA. That means it is fairly unlikely to be of any significant help for me, since I know who all my ancestors in that range are. In addition, it doesn’t work well with endogamy. There’s a newer tool called Banyan DNA which might be more useful, so that’s something to keep in the back of my mind.

It had started snowing in the late morning and I had a nasty slushy walk back to my hotel. In the morning, I got a Lyft to the airport. My flight was delayed first because it was overbooked and they needed to get some volunteers to switch flights. And then it was delayed further for de-icing. Fortunately, United held my connecting flight at DEN long enough for me to sprint to that gate and I made it home on time.

Overall, I thought the conference was reasonably valuable. I came home with a fair amount of stuff to follow up on. And, of course, there are lots of on-line sessions I should try to find some time to watch.

Once I fall behind, it always gets tempting to procrastinate further. So, come on, let me buckle down and write an actual entry.

Celebrity Death Watch: Hinton Battle was a Tony Award winning actor and dancer. Carl Weathers was an actor, best known for playing Apollo Creed in the first four Rocky movies. John Walker was a co-founder of Autodesk, a CAD software company. Wayne Kramer was the lead guitarist of MC5. Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples, was the only son of the last king of Italy. Aston "Family Man" Barrett led Bob Marley’s backing band. Sir Anthony Epstein was one of the discoverers of the Epstein-Barr virus. Anthony George designed the flag of Grenada. Henry Fambrough had been the last surviving member of The Spinners. Jim Hannan pitched for the Washington Senators in the 1960’s. William Post invented Pop-Tarts. Bob Moore founded Bob’s Red Mill, an organic grain company. Jack Higgins was an editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Bob Edwards was a journalist and radio host, primarily on NPR. Randy Sparks founded the New Chirsty Minstrels. Rabbi Jules Harlow was one of the editors of Siddur Sim Shalom, a popular Conservative Jewish prayer book. Benjamin Lanzarote wrote music for television shows. Reuben Jackson was a poet and jazz historian. Marc Pachter directed the National Portrait Gallery from 2000 to 2007. Brian Stableford was a science fiction writer. Ramona Fradon was a comic book artist. Jacob Rothschild was a banker, duh. Richard Lewis was a comedian. Iris Apfel was a flamboyant fashion designer. Juli Lynne Charlot created the poodle skirt.

Chita Rivera was an actress, singer, and dancer. She won Tony Awards for her performances in The Rink and The Kiss of the Spider Woman as well as receiving a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2018. She was the first Latino American to win a Kennedy Center Honor (in 2002) and received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Her most iconic roles included Anita in West Side Story and Velma in Chicago. The last time I saw her perform live was a production of the Kander and Ebb musical adaptation of The Visit at Signature Theatre.

Jean Malarie was one of the first two men to reach the North Geomagnetic Pole. (The other was an Inuk man named Kutsikitsoq.) He was a strong advocate for the rights of Arctic minorities. He wa son my ghoul pool list and earned me 19 points.

Toby Keith was a country singer. I had a colleague back around 2002 who played his song “I Love This Bar” constantly. I retaliated with Tuvan throat singing.

Sieji Ozawa conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra for many years. I first saw him conduct in the mid-1970’s when I went to Tanglewood several times on excursions from the NSF biochemistry program I spent a summer at. He was a very animated and energetic conductor and always interesting to watch. And he got bonus points for being a Red Sox fan. Which brings me to this story, which I should probably apologize for (but won’t):

Seiji was conducting Beethoven's 9th during a critical time in Boston. The Red Sox were fighting for a post-season slot and everyone - including the members of the orchestra - was excited. Well, there's a long section towards the end of that piece where the bass players have no music to play and they took to slipping across the street to a bar to watch the ball game. To make sure they'd get back in time , they tied a string to the page in the music a little while before they needed to return. They strung that to the bar so that they could feel a tug when Seiji turned the page.
One evening, the game was particularly exciting and the beer was flowing more freely than usual, so they missed the tug on the string and got back late. Seiji was furious. And justifiably so...

It was the bottom of the 9th, the score was tied, and the basses were loaded.

Mojo Nixon performed music that was a cross between rockabilly and punk. His songs included “Elvis is Everywhere” and “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child.” The late 1980’s were interesting times.

Alexei Navally was the opposition leader fighting against Vladimir Putin’s regime. I really hope you didn’t need me to tell you that.

Brian Mulroney was the prime minister of Canada from 1984-1993 and participated in the development of NAFTA.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: Millie Loeb died in July 2023, but I didn’t find out until late January. Back in the late 1980’s I took a couple of writing classes through UCLA extension. One of those was Millie’s class, Our Stories, Ourselves. The women in that class became close as we wrote stories about our life experiences and we went on to continue for another semester outside of UCLA, meeting at one another’s homes. The work I did in that class led to some of the personal stories I still tell. In short, Millie was a great influence on my life and I’ll miss her.

Speaking of Storytelling: I have told my story about my sense of direction at two story swaps since the show at the beginning of February. I think that the last time (at the Community Storytellers zoom swap), it was pretty much where I want it to be.

I’m not performing in the Women’s Storytelling Festival this year, but I am volunteering and will be emceeing on Sunday morning, March 17th. Tickets are still available. For more info and to buy tickets see The Women’s Storytelling Festival Web Page. Note that, while we’d love to see you in Fairfax, Virginia, the festival is being live streamed so you can watch from home. And the recordings will be available through April 21st.

Assorted Medical Stuff: I had some catching up to do on routine medical stuff (and one less routine but inevitable item). So I had a regular dental appointment. The same week, I had a bone density scan, which was a bit uncomfortable because I don’t normally lie flat ton my back on a hard table. Alas, I have some bone density loss in my spine, though my neck and hip are fine. A few days later came my mammogram, which was negative. Finally, the non-routine matter, was an ophthalmologist appointment to prepare for cataract surgery. I've now got that scheduled for mid-June. I’m somewhat of a nervous wreck about it because I made the dubious decision to read the whole write-up of potential complications. By the way, I have an appointment with my primary care doctor this Friday to go over the usual test results and get a couple of more vaccines because I’m old.

TCC Book Club: The travel book of the month was I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson. She was just a teenager when she married Martin Johnson and they set off to photograph people and animals in the South Pacific and, later, in Africa. She certainly lived an interesting and unconventional life. The curator of the Osa and Martin Johnson Safari Museum in Kansas joined our meeting and it definitely sounds like a place I need to get to one of these days.

Travel & Adventure Show: Cindy and I went to the Travel and Adventure Show on the last weekend in February. I’d gotten the tickets free. I found info on a couple of things I’m interested in but, as usual, there were far too many things like time shares, cruises on megaships, and other things I have no interest in. On the plus side, I did also manage to resupply my stock of tote bags.

Genealogy Meetings: The February meeting re: Apple Users and Jewish Genealogy was particularly interesting because we had a lot of good discussion about organizing photos. Our local Jewish genealogy society meeting had a presentation on researching relatives in the UK. The speaker was very good, but the subject wasn’t particularly relevant to my family.

The bigger genealogy event I went to was RootsTech, but that deserves its a separate write-up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think this will get me caught up on everything up until this month.

I’ve been using the same format for my year in review entries for several years now. It seems to work. Note that I took off the Volksmarch category this time since it’s been a couple of years since I managed to actually do anything there.

2023 started out stressful with mail being stolen, including a check which was washed and used fraudulently and a credit card which had to be replaced. It all got resolved, but I could have lived without the stress. There was a lot of stress later in the year, with the incompetence of the person at the local Social Security office who sat on my Medicare application for over two months without doing anything. That took way too many phone calls to get resolved. And, of course, there was the whole Middle East situation to make 2023 the Age of Anxiety.

Fortunately, things were otherwise good during the year.

Books: I read 53 books over the year. 39 of those were fiction, 3 were poetry, and the rest were nonfiction. Only 3 were rereads.

Favorites included Our Ancestors Did Not Breathe This Air (a poetry collection by Muslim women at MIT), Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozu Adichie, The Ghostwriter by Alessandra Torre, and The Caxton Private Lending Library and Book Depository by John Connolly. I also read 6 novels by Dick Francis, whose books provide a reliable antidote to ones in which not enough happens to keep me satisfied. Favorite non-fiction was The Best Strangers in the World by Ari Shapiro. Least favorite book was Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

I got rid of 39 books and have at least another 33 ready to go out.

In addition to my longstanding book club (called READ for Read, Enjoy, And Discuss), I joined another book club, Crones and Tomes, which was started by a friend from the puzzle world.

Other book events included the Moby Dick Marathon in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which was an amazing experience, and a talk by Ari Shapiro at Sixth and I.

Ghoul Pool: I finished 4th out of 14 players, with 220 points. People I scored on were Naomi Replanski, Steve Harrell, Bob Barker, Tony Bennett, Al Jaffee, John Goodenough, Robert Solow, Daniel Ellsberg, Sandra Day O’Connor, James L. Buckley, W. Nicholas Hitchon, and David Oreck.

Travel: In January, I went to New Bedford, Massachusetts for the Moby Dick Marathon. In February, I went to Tucson, which included going to Saguaro National Park and Biosphere 2, as well as winning some money at a casino. March included a trip to New York City to go to the symphony and the theatre and visit with a high school friend. April’s travel was to Connecticut for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

In May I took a river cruise, which included going to the Kentucky Derby. The Derby arrangements were kind of a fiasco, but the stops at various small towns were a lot more interesting than I expected.

June took me to Svalbard, which featured amazing scenery, though the wildlife (or, more accurately, lack thereof) was disappointing. This was somewhere I’d wanted to go to forever, so I am glad to have had the opportunity.

In July, I went to Montreal for the NPL con. That also included eating a lot of Montreal Jewish food and following in the footsteps of Leonard Cohen. Later in the month, I leveraged off a genealogy conference in London to take a trip to Ireland (including a day trip to Belfast) and the Isle of Man. That included fulfilling a life list item by having a beer at the South Pole Inn in Anascaul. After the conference, I did a few more things in London, including side trips to Canterbury and to Ipswich and Sutton Hoo. Soon after I got back, I took a quick trip to New York City for Lollapuzzoola and theatre going.

LoserFest was in Philadelphia in September. Highlights included the Masonic Temple and the Magic Gardens.

In October, I took a quick trip to San Antonio for the annular solar eclipse, which was awesome. While I was there, I also did a day trip to the Hill Country, where I saw several sites associated with Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as visiting the town of Fredericksburg. Later in the month I went to Boston, mostly to go to a concert by Jonathan Richman.

I’m not sure if taking a day trip to Harrisonburg, Virginia in November counts as travel. But my trip to French Polynesia (Austral Islands and Aranui cruise to the Marquesas) definitely does.

Virtual travel talks I went to included one on Jewish Barbados and a few Travelers’ Century Club zoom sessions. There were also a few in-person TCC meetings.

Puzzles: I participated once again in the MIT Mystery Hunt as part of Halibut That Bass. I think the team worked particularly well together, but we had some issues with the way the hunt was structured, which resulted in our seeing only about half of the puzzles.

I was disappointed in my performance in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I finished solidly in the middle of the pack and I wasn’t surprised to have trouble with Puzzle 5, but I left a blank square in Puzzle 3, which was sheer carelessness. I did worse at Lollapuzzoola 16 in August, because I failed to completely read parts of some clues in Puzzle 5 there. I blame jet lag from my trip just before that event.

As I mentioned above, I went to the National Puzzlers’ League Con in Montreal. Highlights included a couple of games by Cute Mage, as well as Rasa’s over the weekend cryptic.

Genealogy: I continued to volunteer as the Subject Matter Expert for a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington Litvak Special Interest Group. I also went to several JGSGW virtual meetings. And, of course, I went to the IAJGS conference in London at the end of July / beginning of August. Aside from several interesting talks, the highlight of that was meeting a distant cousin.

Baseball: I went to a little bit of a Nationals game in May, but it got rained out. In September I went to the new Texas Rangers stadium (Globe Life Field), putting me back at having been to a game at every Major League Ballpark. I also went to two minor league ballparks to see the Aberdeen Ironbirds and the Fredericksburg Nationals.

Culture: I’m not a big television watcher but I kept Apple TV+ long enough to watch Schmigadoon and Schmicago, both of which were tremendous fun for musical theatre geeks like me.

In terms of movies, I saw 18 overall, 4 of which were in theaters, with the rest on airplanes. Favorites were A Man Called Otto, In the Heights, Blackberry, Cocaine Bear, Searching for Sugar Man, Barbie, and Remembering Gene Wilder. Most disappointing was Weird: The Al Yancovic Story.

I went to 5 Gilbert and Sullivan operettas at the G&S International Festival in England, with the best production being of Ruddigore. I went to two other operas, both by Jeanine Tesori (Blue and Grounded). I also saw two ballets and one modern dance performance, with the ballet of The Crucible being the most satisfying. As far as classical music goes, I saw the National Symphony Orchestra twice and was privileged to see Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the New York Philharmonic. The only popular music concert I went to was one by Jonathan Richman, who is always wonderful.

I saw 14 plays and 9 musicals, assuming I counted correctly. Favorite plays were All Things Equal (about Ruth Bader Ginsburg), The Lifespan of a Fact at Keegan Theatre, Selling Kabul at Signature Theatre, and The Pillowman, which is a Martin McDonagh play I saw in London. I also loved The Enigmatist, which is a mixture of comedy. magic, and puzzles and, hence, I consider sui generis. Top musicals were In the Heights at Next Stop Theatre Company, Signature Theatre’s production of Pacific Overtures. and Shucked and Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway.

Storytelling: I went to several storytelling shows, including one by my Grimmkeepers group. I performed in two shows for Artists Standing Strong Together, and also told at the C&O Canal Visitor Center with Voices in the Glen, at the Washington Folk Festival, and in a Better Said Than Done show at the Stagecoach Theatre. Some other shows I particularly enjoyed were Ingrid Nixon’s show about Shackleton and several of the performances at the National Storytelling Festival. And, of course, the Women’s Storytelling Festival (which I also emceed at) os always a highlight of the year.

On a rather different note, the Grimmkeepers discussions about the Grimm fairy tales continue to be enlightening and enriching.

Museums and Art: I went to 32 museums over the year. Highlights included the New Bedford Glass Museum, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, two exhibitions of miniatures (the Mini Time Machine Museum in Tucson and the Small is Beautiful exhibit in New York), the MIT Museum, the Virginia Quilt Museum, and the Museum of Failure. I also really enjoyed seeing the Book of Kells, the Manx Museum, and Sutton Hoo during my travels in July. My absolute favorite for the year was the Museum of Broadway.

Other Stuff: On New Year’s Day, my friend, Cindy, and I went to the Winter Lantern Festival at Tyson’s, which was impressive.

I went to various Loser events, including the post-Post Loser Party, the Flushes, LoserFest. I should probably count Poetry and Punchlines (a poetry reading associated with Light, which is a magazine of light verse) as a Loser event, too.

My crafting group changed to meeting on-line every other Thursday and in person at one members house on the weeks in between. I make it when I can. Similarly, I occasionally managed to get to my other (mostly) knitting group, which meets at the police station twice a month.

I went to a virtual organizing conference in September, which was moderately useful.

I played board games a few times a week, when I was home. Yes, sometimes I was home.

Goals: So how did I do on my 2023 goals? I went through maybe 10% of the photos from my parents and realized I have no idea where I put the slides, so I’ll give myself a 10% there. I did go to some sort of lecture or other formal educational event, either in person or on-line, every month, so I get 100% there. I get full credit (i.e. 100%) for taking 4 international trips. I finished only 1 craft project, so only get 33% there, though I did make progress on two others. I read 53 books, out of a goal of 75, so get 71% there. I get 100% credit for going to three new (to me) ballparks. I made it to at least one museum each month so get 100% on that goal. I only went to one national park, so get 33% on that goal. And I averaged significantly less than a half hour every day on housework, so I’ll give myself 10% there. Averaging things out, I’ll give myself a 62% on the year, which is not great but not terrible either.

Which brings me to goals for 2024:

Circumnavigate the globe going westward. The backstory is that way back in 2000, I did an eastward circumnavigation, from Los Angeles to Russia via Germany by plane, overland through Siberia to Mongolia and to China, and back to Los Angeles by plane. I’ve got ideas for how I want to do the westward circle.
Go to at least 3 national parks.
Clean out my saved files of genealogy related emails.
Read 80 books with a stretch goal of 125.
Finish organizing my bedroom.
Finish 3 afghans.
Find and sort through my parents’ slides.
Go to games at at least 4 AAA ballparks.
Exercise for at least 20 minutes at least 3 times a week, with a stretch goal of at least 30 minutes at least 4 times a week.

I've had a pretty sociable week.

Storytelling Show: Saturday night’s storytelling show went well. We had a good and responsive audience. The venue was easier to get to than I expected it to be. And they had an excellent sound system. My story went okay, but I left out a couple of things I had planned to say, but so it goes.

Medicare: I had my appointment on Monday to go down to the Social Security office to show them my proof of age. I am sure that I clicked the “I have an appointment” button on their check-in kiosk, but somehow it gave me a number for a drop-in, instead of an appointment. Which meant that I ended up waiting much longer than I should have. But I got everything sorted and should have my Medicare card any day now. I still need to get my Social Security account on-line sorted. They could reset my password, but not my cell phone number for two-factor authentication. So I had to fill in the stuff on-line that has them send me something to fix that. (Last night, I stumbled upon the piece of paper on which I’d written down my password, but the old cell phone number would still have been a problem.) What is particularly annoying is that, if I hadn’t set up the account a long time ago, I could have circumvented all of that, because I could have logged in using my login.gov account, which I set up to get global entry.

Knitting Group: We normally meet at the police station, but the community room gets used for early voting, so we were at Wegman’s instead. We had a good group, with two new people. I’m making progress on my Tunisian crochet afghan, but it may not be completely done by the end of the year. It’s still a good project for social crafting as it is pretty brainless. Also, I brought some knitting pattern books from the 1950’s to give away and Tom took two of them.

Needles and Crafts: My other crafting group, which meets on line, had been on hiatus over the summer and just started up again yesterday afternoon It was great seeing everyone and I got some more done on the afghan. We’ll actually be meeting at a member’s house on alternate weeks, which is, of course, less convenient, especially because she lives in darkest Maryland.

Buy Nothing: I got rid of three things last week. So far this week, I got rid of one item (two furnace filters that were the wrong size) and am waiting for someone to pick up another thing (a trivet made of wine corks.)

Baseball: I had been rooting for the Marlins, primarily because I think Kim Ng is cool, but, oh well. (She is being talked about for the BoSox GM job.) I find the Dodgers the most tolerable of the teams who are left. The Twins are okay, I suppose. I wouldn’t mind the Phillies so much (I do like their GM, Sam Fuld), but I hate mascots in general and the Phanatic is the worst of the worst of them. I detest the Orioles because of all the effort their leadership put into trying to keep Washington from getting a team, as well as their failure to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the 7th inning stretch.

Genealogy: Wednesday night was the Litvak genealogy group I am the subject matter expert for. One of the good discussion topics had to do with what resources are worth paying for. My opinion is that it is perfectly fine not to renew relatively expensive sites like Ancestry and My Heritage until you need to use them. They don’t delete your account, so you can start up again when it makes sense to.

The annual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) was held in London, England from July 30th through August 3rd, 2023. I’ve gone to the virtual conference the past couple of years, so I was very excited to be able to attend in person. In addition to going to several talks, I volunteered as a mentor, session host, and on the hospitality desk.

The conference was at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel. It was easy enough to take the tube to Waterloo Station, but my map application managed to mislead me from there to the hotel, leading me around St Thomas Hospital. Well, yes, I could use the steps, but my luggage got heavier and heavier. I did get to the hotel, eventually, where I settled into my room and went down to the hospitality desk for my volunteer shift there. Mostly that involved giving out conference bags and maps of the hotel facilities, but some people wanted travel advice. Having just been to Ireland proved helpful when one person asked about going there as a post-conference trip!

The opening session started with a brief talk by Robert Voss, the Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, who brought greetings from King Charles and talked a little about his genealogy story. There is a lord lieutenant for each county (essentially a personal representative of the monarch) and he is the only Jewish one. He’s a child of Holocaust refugees and is a patron of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain. He was a fairly entertaining speaker

The main keynote speaker was Dr. Blaine Betting who talked about The Adventures and Lessons of 20 Years of Genetic Genealogy. His DNA experiences were a lot more dramatic than mine have been, including discovering an unknown half-brother and half-sister. His talk was interesting, but I can’t say I learned anything. However, as I was leaving the room, a guy came over to me and asked if I was researching Schwartzbard from Ostrow Mazowiecka, Poland. See, the conference had a family finder feature and the smart way to use it is to search the towns you’re interesting in, instead of focusing on names. Then you can see if you have any names in common. We were able to sit down later on and found that we do have connections. And he just sent me some information files that I need to find time to go through.

I started Monday with a talk by by Alan Shuchat on History of Jewish Migration, the Diaspora, and Changing Natonal Borders. The most interesting part of this involved showing the growth (and decline) of the Jewish population in several cities over the years. I can’t say that I learned a lot that I didn’t know, but it’s always good to refresh your knowledge.

After that I went to Aleksandrs Feigmanis’s talk on Sources for Jewish Genealogical Rsearch in Lithuania and Latvia (archives, web, books). I knew about some of the archives, but he talked about a number of other types of records and how to use them. For example, for residence books (mostly in Latvia) you need to start with finding the address and working from there. He also talked about school and university files, directories, the balticgen.com cemetery database (which includes all Jewish cemeteries in Latvia), and several other resources. One interesting thing that may be relevant to my Briskin family is that there was regular transport of lumber from Polotsk (now in Belarus) to Daugavpils, Latvia. A lot of his material looks useful to me, but he wasn’t a particularly dynamic speaker.

Next up was the JRI-Poland luncheon. They’re reworking their website and everyone needs new user accounts on the new system. The speaker was Professort Antony Polonsky who talked about The Jews in Poland and Russia. This was another long list of what sorts of records are available and, while it is probably useful, it was rather dull to listen to.

The final talk I went to that day was Digital Traces: Creating a Personal Digital Archive While Insuring Your Privacy by Elana Brach and Ron Arons. This was lively and interactive. They talked about various options for things like backups and cloud storage and managing your on-line and off-line identity. One thing that had never occurred to me is the need for a digital asset clause in your will. I also liked the reminder on Keeping Found Things Found, i.e. documenting and following your own rules on file naming. As someone who struggles with organizing my research, this was a very useful session.

After that, I had some mentoring time set up. The mentoring area had not been well[-publicized so few people showed up. I was able to help one person by explaining to her what a journeyman is. (It’s a status for a skilled worker, in between an apprentice and a master.) At least, I wasn’t entirely useless. I also spent some time comparing family trees with the guy I’d met the previous night. We discovered some connections and exchanged contact info for further research.

Tuesday was LitvakSIG day. However, the first presentation I went to that day was by Aviva “Sherlock” Cohn about Clued In: More Case Studies. She is an expert on photo analysis and went through 6 examples of her work, giving tips on how to identify people in photographs.

Then I went to a presentation on The Jews of Canada by Bill Gladstone. One potentially useful thing I learned is that the 1931 census is now available on Ancestry and Family Search. Ancestry also has Ontario Vital Records. (The reason these may be of use is that I know my grandfather’s younger brother came to the U.S. via Canada later in the 1930’s. But I don’t know when he went to Canada and how long he was there. I also don’t know if he married in Canada or Cuba, though I do know he was married when he crossed the border into Buffalo.) He discussed various other records that may be available. Unfortunately, with the exception of Montreal, naturalization records are available only to Canadian citizens. I also learned that there’s a museum at Pier 21 in Halifax, which was, essentially, the Canadian equivalent to Ellis Island. That sounds like it would be worth a visit.

There was a LitvakSig meeting, which was interesting for finding out what new records are coming up. That was followed by the LitvakSig luncheon. The speaker at that was Egle Bendikaite, who spoke on Inhabitant but not a Citizen; Citizen, but a Foreigner. This had to do with the various situations that people found themselves in during the interwar period in independent Lithuania. This was very relevant to my research because of the difficulties my great-great-grandfather, Simkha Fainstein, had getting his internal passport. A couple of other notes of interest: 1) permission to resume citizenship was more easily given to women and 2) “everything is possible until it turns out to be impossible.”

After that, Rhoda Miller gave a talk on Litvaks - Here, There, and Everywhere. Most of what she talked about was familiar to me, though I hadn’t really though about the impact of the 1848 cholera epidemic. Also, she mentioned transmigration from Lithuania to Latvia in the context of Courland, but left out the large number of Jews from the Zarasai region who went to Vitebsk Guberniya, particularly Daugavpils, Latvia.

The last presentation I went to was on Emigration from German Ports in the 19th and 20th Century - Causes, Conditions, and Certificates by Andrea Bentschneider. Some of the things that I learned were that: 1) Hamburg was considered friendlier to Jews than Bremen was, so was a more popular port, 2) Ancestry has departure lists from Hamburg for 1850-1934, except for World War I. Bremen passenger lists from 1920-1938 are available on their own website, 3) Hapag (a major shipping company) was Jewish owned, and 4) children born on a ship often had the name of the ship as part of their name.

I spent a couple of hours in the resource room with one of my mentees from my local JGS, helping her with some records from Jonava. I ended the day with Genealogy Death Match. This is a contest between two people to see who can do a better job of documenting their family going back several generations. It’s always interesting and fun to see what records people can find. I will note that younger people have an advantage, since they’re more likely to have at least two or three more generations who are well-documented. I also met somebody from Los Angeles with whom I have a mutual friend.

I started Wednesday with the BialyGen Sig meeting. This is a group for people with an interest in the Bialystok (Poland) region. Interestingly, there were several other people there with roots in Tykocin, which is where my Chlebiocky family is from. My main takeaway was that the group hasn’t really been active in several years and that there hasn’t been any attempt at translating records. However, there are notary records on genealogy indexer, so that would be worth a look.

The next presentation I went to was Standing Where They Stood by Caitlin Hollander Waas. She talked about her travels to ancestral places and emphasized the power of place and the value of google. The coolest story she had was finding a document related to her family that had been used as a bookmark in an archive.

After that I went to Alex Calzareth’s talk on Enhance Your Data Analysis Skills. He talked about several tools, e.g. Gigahex, Google Tables, and AirTable. Frankly, I didn’t really follow what he actually uses these tools for.

I had my final volunteer stint as a session manager for Judith Silver’s talk on Emigration and Identity: combining records from Brzeziny, Poland and Cardiff, Wales to track the emigration and dissemination of a family group. This mostly involved keeping track of timing while she talked. The talk itself had to do with things she learned from comparing Brzeziny lists of residents with UK census records. While the particular places are not relevant to my research, the basic concept is useful.

While there were a few presentations in the afternoon that I was interested in, I decided a nap was a better use of my time. I did make it to the banquet. Helen Fry gave a talk about German Jews who volunteered in the British military in WWII. This was based on her book, The King’s Most Loyal Enemy Aliens. It was reasonably interesting though not especially relevant to my research.

The conference ended Thursday morning. The last talk I went to (or, at least, the last one I took notes at) was Introduction to the Jacobi Papers by Emanuel (Ami) Elyasaf of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy. Paul Jacobi devised a method for an “absolute generations scale” which counts backwards, rather than forwards so, for example if generation 1 is 1965-2050, generation 2 might be 1935-2020. Anyway, he documented 100 elite families from central and eastern Europe. These monographs (and other information) are available on the IIJG website. Since the papers focus on rich people and rabbinical families, they’re not likely to be very useful to someone like me whose ancestors were cucumber farmers, tailors, and so on, with the odd brewer or coffee merchant thrown in.

All in all, the conference was reasonably useful. And, of course, I came home with a long long list of things to do, including watching several other presentations once they’re available on-line. Next year’s conference is in Philadelphia, which is much less of a travel commitment. And 2025 will be in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

I still had about another week in England, so I’ll get back to writing travel posts next.

Celebrity Death Watch: Cynthia Weil was a songwriter who, along with her husband, Barry Mann, was responsible for a lot of popular songs, such as “You’ve Lost That Loving’ Feelin’” and “On Broadway.” Roger Squires was a prolific crossword compiler, who used the pseudonym Rufus in The Guardian and set Monday puzzles for the Daily Telegraph. Michael Batayeh was an actor, best known for appearing in Breaking Bad. Ronald L. Baker was a folklorist who wrote extensively about place names in the American midwest as well as collecting midwestern humorous folk tales. Bob Bolin pitched for the San Francisco Giants and, later on, the Red Sox. Byron Barton wrote and illustrated children’s books. George Winston was a pianist, mostly noted for new age music. Norma Hunt owned the Kansas City Chiefs football team. Roger Craig was pitcher and later, as a manager led the 1989 San Francisco Giants to a National League championship. Francoise Gilot was an artist and was Pablo Picasso’s partner from 1943 to 1953. The Iron Sheik was an Iranian-born professional wrestler. Wade William Goodwyn was the national desk correspondent for NPR. Julie Garwood was a romance novelist. Firouz Naderi was the program manager of NASA’s Mars exploration mission at JPL and later became the director for Solar System Exploration. Roger Payne was a biologist who recorded humpback whale songs. Treat Williams was an actor, who was notable for playing Berger in the film version of Hair. Carol Higgins Clark was a mystery writer who followed in the footsteps of her mother Mary Higgins Clark, with whom she coauthored several novels. Cormac McCarthy was a novelist, primarily of violent Westerns. Christy Digham was a singer with the Irish group Aslan. Robert Gottlieb was the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf, and The New Yorker, as well as being on the board of directors of the New York City Ballet. Luisa Gander was the first lady of Puerto Rico from 2005 to 2009. Donald Triplett was the first person diagnosed with autism. Glenda Jackson was a movie actress. Paxton Whitehead was an actor who appeared on Broadway, as well as in movies and television shows. Gus Newport was the mayor of Berkeley, California during the time I lived there, though I remember nothing about him. Gregory Klinishov was a co-creator of the Russian hydrogen bomb. Teresa Taylor played drums for the Butthole Surfers. Dick Hall pitched for the Baltimore Orioles, as well as other teams. Isabel de Costa Ferriera was the first lady of East Timor from 2012 through 2017. Max Morath was a ragtime pianist. Frederic Forrest was an actor, noted for playing opposite Bette Midler in The Rose.

Robert Hanssen was an FBI investigator who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the U.S. for over 20 years. He was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. The park where he was arrested is only about 2.5 miles from my home.

Astrid Gilberto was a samba and bossa nova singer. She recorded with Stan Getz and Antonio Carlos Jobim, but is best known for her hit recording of “The Girl From Ipanema.”

Pat Robertson was a televangelist and Republican politician. He founded the Christian Broadcasting Network and Regent University and played a significant role in turning the Republican party toward Christian conservative ideology.

Ted Kaczynski was the Unabomber, a mathematician who isolated himself and set out on a terror campaign with several bombings, which he claimed were to bring attention to environmental issues. Two of those bombings were at Berkeley during my time there, by the way.

Silvio Berlusconi was an Italian media tycoon who became a three-time prime minister.

Henry Petroski was a cvil engineering professor who wrote several books about industrial design and the history of common objects. His book To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design is a good read as is The Pencil.

Daniel Ellsberg was the whistleblower who released The Pentagon Papers, classified documents about U.S. decisions regarding the Vietnam War, parts of which were published by the New York Times and the Washington Post. He earned me 10 ghoul pool points.

Sheldon Harnick was one of the greatest lyricists to write for musical theatre. The shows he worked on with Jerry Bock include Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello!, She Loves Me, The Rothschilds, and The Apple Tree. But he also had several other collaborators. I also recommend his early song, “The Boston Beguine,” from New Faces of 1952. I met him a few times, since he often went to the York Theatre, and he was always amiable. Even though he was 99, I was surprised by his death, since he always seemed so vigorous.

John Goodenough was the oldest person ever to win a Nobel Prize, having won the Chemistry Nobel at the age of 97. He was responsible for the development of lithium ion battery technology. He was on my ghoul pool list, earning me 22 points, which puts me in second place for now.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: Elden Carnahan was a stalwart of the Loser Community. In fact, he was pretty much the founder of the Loser community, having started up the regular brunches and the nrars.org website. He had been diagnosed with glioblastoma about a year ago, so his death was no surprise. I’ll still miss his unique sense of humor and his dedication to bringing people together. Also, the origins of our regular on-line sessions of (mostly) codenames have their origin in a games night he started with members of his family.

The Enigmatist: I went with a few friends to see The Enigmatist at The Kennedy Center on Saturday. I was excited to see this come to D.C. because several of my NPL friends had seen and enjoyed it in New York. Anyway, Squonk from NPL organized the outing and got the tickets. My friends, Cindy and Teri, came along. Cindy is very much not a puzzle person and, when she saw that we had to solve some puzzles to get in, she thought she would hate the show. But I got her through those and helped her understand them. There were also some puzzles throughout the show and Teri even got selected to give the answer to one of them. Anyway, David Kwong has created a unique mixture of magic, humor, and puzzles for a unique and very entertaining show. I admit that I have absolutely no idea how several of his magic tricks worked. Highly recommended for those who can get to it (and, if you aren’t local, go see it if he comes to your area).

JGSGW Meeting: This month’s meeting was about Shul Records America, which is attempting to identify where genealogical records from American synagogues can be found. It isn’t digitizing records itself, just pointing to what archives hold them. Right now it doesn’t look to be of a lot of immediate utility to me, but there may be some opportunities to get involved in some of their projects.

Money, Money: Between having bought a few plane tickets, insurance for two trips, and various other travel-related things, my bill for the credit card I use for travel expenses was more than twice what it normally is. And I still have to pay the balance for my December trip, as well as needing to buy two more plane tickets (one of which might end up on a different card, because it will probably be on American). I’ll have the costs of several hotel nights, too. Sheesh, I also have a New York trip in August. I have the money, but I basically spent two months of pension payments on travel last month. Good thing my short term savings account has the equivalent of about two years of income in it. Whew!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was trying to catch-up on what I did during the rest of April before going on a vacation. Obviously, I didn’t succeed in doing that, so I am writing this now that I am back from my trip.

Celebrity Death Watch: Ed Koren was a cartoonist for The New Yorker. Charles Stanley was a televangelist. Barry Humphries was an Australian comedian, best known for his portrayal of Dame Edna Everage. Robert Forrest-Webb was a British writer who wrote a book with the intriguing title And to My Nephew Albert I Leave the Island What I Won off Fatty Hagan in a Poker Game. Carolyn Bruant Donham accused Emmett Till of whistling at and/or touching her, leading to his lynching. Ralph Humphrey was the drummer for The Mothers of Invention. Pamela Turnure was Jackie Kennedy’s press secretary. Tim Bachman played guitar for Bachman-Turner Overdrive. LeRoy Carhart was one of the few physicians who continued performing late term abortions after the murder of George Tiller. Vincent Stewart directed the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2015-2017. Mike Shannon played for the Saint Louis Cardinals in the 1960’s. Ralph Boston was an Olypmic champion long jumper. Newton Minnow was the FCC Chairman in the early 1960’s and is famous for calling television a vast wasteland. Sean Keane played fiddle for The Chieftains. Don January was a PGA champion golfer. Heather Armstrong was a blogger, known as Dooce, mostly famous for losing her job for blogging about her coworkers and company and then becoming one of the first successful mommy bloggers. Jacklyn Zeman was a soap opera actress.Chris Strachwitz founded Arhoolie Records, a major specialist in roots and folk music.

Rick Riordan was the mayor of Los Angeles from 1993-2001. He was a Republican but he went on to back Democrat Antonio Villarigosa in the 2005 general election. He was also well known for owning the Original Pantry Cafe downtown and Gladstone’s in Malibu.

I hope you don’t need me to tell you about Harry Belafonte. He popularized Calypso music in the United States, but was equally significant as a civil rights activist.

Harold Kushner was a reconstructionist rabbi and is best known for his books, such as When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Jerry Springer hosted a tabloid television show, as well as having been the mayor of Cincinnati in the late 1970’s.

Gordon Lightfoot was a singer-songwriter. I particularly remember his songs “If You Could Read My Mind” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Vida Blue was a pitching phenom for the Oakland A’s in the early 1970’s. I particularly remember him as a nemesis against the Mets in the 1973 World Series.

Storyteller Death Watch: Michael Parent died last week. It wasn’t a big surprise, as he had been dealing with Parkinson’s Disease for some time. I first saw him perform back when I lived in Los Angeles and I found his stories of his French-Canadian heritage warm and enjoyable. He was also a kind and generous man and I have a particularly fond memory of him seeking me out at the National Storytelling Conference in Richmond and his coming to see me tell my Jeopardy story there. I am glad that our mutual friend, Katy, was able to be with him in his final moments.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: I just heard that Faith Klein died on April 11th. I knew her from the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington, where she managed the genealogy library at Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria. She was in her late 80’s and led a rich and productive life.

I knew Charles Kunz from FlyerTalk and saw him at numerous events over the past 12 or so years, most recently in February in Tucson. He and I shared several interests besides travel, such as atrocious puns and baseball. I was completely shocked to learn he took his life in mid-April. I thought he seemed happy with his wife and daughter. I guess you never know what demons someone is wrestling.

Angels in America: I saw Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches at Arena Stage on April 21st. For those unfamiliar with this play, it is a chronicle of the early years of the AIDS crisis, told primarily through the eyes of a few people. Louis is a Jewish man whose mother has just been buried and who is in denial about the failing condition of his partner, Prior Walter. Joe Pitt is a Mormon man, married to a woman with a drug problem. He is in denial about his homosexual feelings and works for the closeted politico Roy Cohn. The script is interesting, with more humor than one would expect given the subject matter. The performances were quite good, with Edward Gero as Roy Cohn being particularly notable. I had debated seeing it mostly because I have some issues with Tony Kushner and, indeed, I found the depiction of the rabbi at the funeral at the beginning to be somewhat offensive. But I’m glad I did go.

Hexagon: On April 22nd, I braved a horrible rainstorm to drive to darkest Maryland to see this year’s Hexagon show. This is political satire and their annual show is a long-standing Washington tradition. The theme this year was The Sedition Edition and songs included “Mine is Bigger Than Yours” (with Trump. Biden, Pence, and Santos singing about the size of their piles of classified documents), “Pickleball U.S.A.” (to the tune of “Surfin’ USA, about nude pickleball in Florida), “AARP” (to the tune of “YMCA”) and so on. Some of my favorite jokes included:

I got a Life Alert bracelet. It’s set to go off if I get a life.
Conservatives want to get rid of taxes. Liberals want to get rid of Texas.
Donald Trump was just indicted for tearing off a mattress tag in 1997.
What do Winnie the Pooh and Alexander the Great have in common?

They have the same middle name!
95% of all electric cars ever sold are still on the road. The other 5% made it home.

National Museum of African American History and Culture: On April 23rd I went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture with an old internet friend. Sharon and I didn’t pin down exactly where we knew each other from, other than it would have been somewhere on Usenet back in the late 1980’s. But we did get along just fine in person. She’s a digital nomad these days, largely for political reasons, and was in D.C. for a little while. We only had enough time to cover maybe 80% of the History Galleries, and none of the Culture and Community Galleries. We thought the information was interesting, though it wasn’t particularly well laid out. For example, most of the text was placed low enough to require people to crowd in to read it. And there should have been arrows showing the best flow through the galleries, as we had to backtrack a few times. Still, it was worth a few hours. Afterwards, we met up with her partner and had lunch at the Elephant and Castle.

iPhone Battery Replacement: On April 24th, I got my iPhone battery replaced. It hadn’t been holding a charge well for a while and I thought it best to have that taken care of before going on vacation. It wasn’t too painful, but it took about a half hour longer than they’d said it would. The main thing I wanted to mention was that the tech who worked with me is deaf and he used a phone line which connected him to a sign language interpreter. He signed and she talked to me. Then I talked to her and she signed to him. I thought this was fabulous - a great example of how to accommodate a worker with a disability.

Grimm Keepers: The April discussion was on The Singing Bone. There was a lot to think about. But my main takeaway was that this theme of magical objects (bones or reeds or whatever) revealing a secret, often a murder, is surprisingly common. And I think it might be interesting to play with the idea of an orchestra of such instruments. Yes, I am weird.

NYPL - Yiddish New York in the 1900’s: This was a lecture put on by the New York Public Library. It mostly had to do with the Yiddish Daily Forward and the rent strike of 1917-1918. It was fairly interesting, but a bit too brief.

JGSGW Meeting: On Sunday April 30th, there was a hybrid meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington. I would normally have driven to Rockville for it, but the weather was crappy and I had another meeting later that afternoon (kind of a post mortem on the Women’s Storytelling Festival, i.e. what worked and what didn’t and what we want to change for next year). Jennifer Mendelssohn gave an excellent talk on DNA and how to get around some of the problems associated with endogamy. As usual, there is more that I need to find time to work on.

Still to Come: April prompts, my Kentucky Derby cruise, things I’ve done since I got back

Here’s a run-down on other things I’ve done so far this month, focused on the good things. (I’ll save the stressful stuff for another post, which will probably be a non-public one.) But first, an announcement of an upcoming event

Shameless Self-Promotion: I am going to be part of a show of an on-line storytelling show of Fractured Fairy Tales on Thursday February 9th at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Tickets and more information are available here. If you can’t make it live, it will be recorded and you can watch the replay.

Routine: I have a lot of standing meetings. Book Club is every 6 weeks. My Lithuanian Jewish genealogy mentoring session is monthly. I have a standing crafting get-together every Thursday afternoon. And I play board games with a couple of different groups regularly. I have another book club starting up, too.

Three Genealogy Things: I went to a genealogy talk last week specifically for grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Since both my father and grandfather were survivors (of the Kaunas Ghetto and Dachau), I qualify as both a 2G and 3G. I don’t think I really learned anything new from the talk, but they sent out a good list of resources.

I submitted a proposal for a talk about Telling Family Stories at the IAJGS conference in London. I have no idea whether or not it will be accepted. I plan to go to the conference anyway, since it has been way too long since I have been to London.

And I got a reply from a cousin who I contacted a couple of years ago. Now I need to get back to her. I am hoping she has some info about my grandfather’s mother’s family.

Two Jews Walk Into a War: I went with my friend Cindy to this play at Theatre J last weekend, i.e. a week ago Saturday. The play is very loosely based on the actual story of the last two Jews in Afghanistan, who loathed each other. I am reasonably sure that neither of them was descended from a concentration camp survivor, however, since the Soviet Jews who came to Afghanistan in the 1930’s and 1940’s were from Central Asia. And they certainly would not have spoken any Yiddish. Nor was the klezmer music played between scenes at all appropriate. I can’t imagine why they didn’t even try to find something mizrahi to use.

On the plus side, much of the play was funny, albeit a bit cruder than I’d have preferred. The biggest plus was the actors. Bobby Smith and Sasha Olinick both gave excellent performances.

Bit of historical trivia is that after Ishaq Levin died and Zablon Simintov emigrated to Israel, it turned out that a distant cousin of Simintov’s, Tova Morandi was still living in Afghanistan. But she left (to Albania!) a month after he did.

Museum of Illusions: On Friday, Cindy and I went to the pop-up Museum of Illusions in downtown D.C. A lot of the exhibits are familiar optical illusions, e.g. things where two lines look different lengths but are the same or staring at something makes it seem to move and so on. But there are some fun interactive exhibits. You really need someone else there to take pictures of you playing with them.

For example, here is a picture taken from a short distance:

But, if the picture is taken from the right spot (marked on the floor), I turn into Edith Ann:

In some cases, you have to manipulate the photo, e.g. by rotating it to get the effect, as in this one:

And here I am, just beside myself because I’m playing cards with untrustworthy sorts:

Overall, it was a fun way to spend about 45 minutes, but it was pricy and rather more crowded than was optimal. The museum is there until late March if you want to check it out for yourself.

Post-Post Loser Party: This past Saturday night (i.e. a couple of days ago) was the annual Style Invitational Loser post-Holiday party. The WaPo may have dropped us, but Loserdom lives on and we’re continuing on Gene Weingarten’s substack page. There were about 75 people there and we ate and mingled before the obligatory sing-along of loser-written songs. Usually there’s a certain amount of topical (i.e. mostly political) humor in the songs, but this year’s were all focused on the Post having canceled the contest. Overall, I had a pretty good time.

Two Minor Triumphs: I got Redactle #287 in 1 guess. That falls in the category of things that are unlikely to happen ever again.

And, yesterday, I reached #1 in the Diamond League on Duolingo. So I’ve gotten all of the achievements except the ones for playing consecutive games. That satisfied my competitive spirit since I can reach that remaining achievement independent of what anyone else does.

Another busy year, with more in-person activities. The low point of the year came in late June when I got COVID and had to get my air conditioning system replaced. But most of the year was pretty good.

Books: I read 47 books this year, 27 of which were fiction. Seven were rereads.

Favorites included Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Last Summer at the Golden Hotel by Elizabeth Friesland, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. My overall favorite for the year was In Xanadu by William Dalrymple. Least favorites were House of Joy by Joanne Winters and Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, as well as various pop psych books that were part of a box I’d gotten years ago from a neighbor of my mother’s.

I got rid of at least 133 books. I have several more set to go out. I may do a used bookstore run next week.

Also, I went to see Randy Rainbow on his book tour. I listened to an on-line talk by Liana Frick about her new graphic novel. And I volunteered at the National Book Festival.

Volksmarch: Nothing and I am disappointed in myself over that. I have bought new walking shoes, which should help motivate me some.

Ghoul Pool: I finished fourth (out of 16 players) with 250 points. People I scored on were Queen Elizabeth II, Anne Heche, Pele, Carmen Herrera, Anne Hutchinson Guest, Ned Rorem, Marsha Hunt, Lily Renee, James Lovelock, Roger Angell, and Deborah James.

Travel: I went to New York (to go to an opera and to see an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum) and Philadelphia (for the Jasper Johns retrospective) in February. In March, I went to Boston mostly for a combination of a concert, museum going, and friend visiting. I spent a few days in New York in April (on my way home from the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Connecticut) for cabaret and theatre going and museum going. I took another trip to New York in May / June for museum going, baseball, and theatre going. In June I went to Alaska, where I went to both Kenai Fjords National Park and Denali National Park - and, alas, caught COVID. In July, I went to Nashville for the National Puzzlers’ League Convention and then to Niagara Falls for Loserfest. I had another trip to New York in August for Lollapuzzola and theatre-going. In September, I went to Cumberland, Maryland and Romney, West Virginia to take the Potomac Eagle train. In November, I went to the Shenandoah Valley for a storytelling event and some tourism, including Shenandoah National Park, as well as to a knitting retreat in Ocean City, Maryland. November / December included a Road Scholar trip to Costa Rica.

I also went to a few Travelers’ Century Club events, a happy hour with the Circumnavigator’s Club, and a few on-line talks about travel.

Puzzles: I did the MIT Mystery Hunt again (virtually), which was a bit overwhelming even the third time around. The National Puzzlers’ League Convention in Nashville was also tremendous fun. Since things have started to come back to happening in person, I went to both the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and Lollapuzzola. I was disappointed in how I did on the former. but was happy to solve cleanly at the latter.

And, of course, I have a long list of puzzles I do every day.

Genealogy: I didn’t have any huge research breakthroughs this year, but I did learn about several resources I need to spend time with. I made it to several talks and, in particular, participated in the IAJGS conference. But the biggest thing I did this year was mentoring members of my local Jewish genealogy society on Lithuanian research.

Baseball: I went to two major league games - one at home (Mets at Nationals) and one in New York (Phillies at Mets), I also went to games at four minor league ballparks. Those were Staten Island Ferry Hawks, Buffalo Bisons, Rochester Red Wings, and Syracuse Mets.

Culture: I went to 15 plays, 15 musicals, and 3 operas. A few of these were on-line but most were in person. A few favorites were We Now Declare You To Be a Terrorist at Roundhouse Theatre, Catch Me If You Can at Arena Stage, Once on This Island at Constellation Theatre, She Loves Me at Signature Theatre, and Guys and Dolls at the Kennedy Center. I also saw Come From Away again in New York and it was just as wonderful as before.

I went to 9 concerts. My favorites of those were Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, Jonathan Richman at the Lincoln Theatre, and Ari Shapiro’s cabaret show at 54 Below in New York. I also enjoyed the DC Cabaret Network show in the Capital Fringe Festival.

I saw 10 movies, all but two in theaters. Favorites were The Automat, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, The Banshees of Inisherin, and The Menu.

As for storytelling, I performed in the Women’s Storytelling Festival, the Washington Folk Festival, Beyond Barbarella: The Future is Female, and an ASST Intergenerational Storytelling evening. I also went to a lot of story swaps, including those from our local group, Voices in the Glen, and swaps put on by Community Storytellers in Los Angeles and San Diego Storytellers. (That is one positive of zoom - I can see old friends.) I went to a couple of in-person Better Said Than Done shows, including one by Andy Offutt Irwin. I watched several shows on-line, e.g. Elizabeth Ellis at The Grapevine. And I went to a couple of workshops on-line. And, oh, yeah, let’s not forget the Allegheny Highlands Storytelling Festival. I also wet to several meetings of a Kamishibai (Japanese paper theatre) special interest group.

Museums and Art:

I went to 14 museums and exhibits over the past year. Some of the things I particularly liked were Fragile Ecosystems by Mulyana at the Sapar Contemporary Gallery in Tribeca (in New York City), the second half of the Jasper Johns retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (note that I’d seen the other half of it at the Whitney in New York in 2021), The Great Animal Orchestra at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, Pixelbloom at Artechouse, the Faith Ringgold retrospective at the New Museum in New York, and the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.

I was very disappointed in the touring Sistine Chapel exhibition. And, while I liked the Yayoi Kunama exhibit at the Hirshorn Museum, it was pretty small and only took a half hour to go through.

Other Stuff:

I got one ink blot in the Style Invitational.
I went to several lectures on Jewish topics, including some in the Leading Jewish Minds at MIT series, a talk on Jewish magic, a talk on Jewish mustard, a talk on Jews and baseball, and Yiddish New York.
My friend, Frances, and I went to the Fall Festival at Cox Farms.
I went to miscellaneous other lectures, including one on the Paradox of Choice, an interview with Fran Lebowitz at the Kennedy Center, and the Faraday Prize lecture on-line.
I went to a chocolate tasting with my friend, Cindy. I also went out to dinner with various friends several times.
I participated in the Jewish Rally for Abortion Rights.
I did the open house tour at the Mormon Temple.
I went (virtually) to the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s annual mock trial.
Played board games (either with people I know from the Loser community or with NPL folks) frequently.

Goals:

So how did I do on my 2022 goals? I took 12 trips, while my goal had been 10, so I scored 100%. I only finished a bit over 5/6 of one embroidery project (versus my goal of finishing 2), so I get 42% there. I didn’t finish any afghans (though I did do a little work on a couple of them), so score 0% on that goal. I also didn’t do anything about organizing photos on my computer. I went through all of the non-crafts magazines around the house, so I’ll give myself 100%. I learned 3 new folktales (though I doubt I will tell one of them again) but I didn’t create a new personal story. However, I did create a science fiction story for a show. So I’m going to give myself an 85% on that goal. I didn’t really organize my yarn stash, though I did get rid of a few things I decided I wouldn’t use. I’ll give myself just 5% there. I read 47 books out of my goal of 75, so score 63%. And I didn’t start language study until November, but I did an average of about 10 hours a week. So if I figure on that being 80 hours and compare it to my goal of 2 hours per week, I’ll count that as 77%,

Adding all of that up, I’ll give myself a 41% on the year. That’s rather meh, but better than nothing.

Which brings me to goals for 2023:

Go through all of the photos and slides from my parents. I hope to be able to get rid of about 3/4 of them.
Do some formal educational every month. Things that count towards this are taking actual classes (e.g. there is an interesting adult education program in Arlington) or going to lectures (e.g. those put on by Profs and Pints). Both in-person and virtual activities count, but reading does not.
Take at least 4 international trips.
Finish at least three crafts projects.
Read at least 75 books, with a stretch goal of 100.
Go to at least three new ballparks.
Go to at least one museum exhibition each month.
Go to at least 3 national parks.
Spend at least a half hour every day on housework.

First, a quick personal genealogy note. I got a hint from one of the genealogy websites which claims that my grandmother’s brother died in Auburn, California. The interesting thing is that the date of death given is what I now believe to be the death date (in Lithuania) of one of their sisters. I suspect that this confusion is related to a similar (fairly common) name and may have arisen from a cousin who is: a) not sufficiently skeptical and b) not entirely fluent in English. But it is still something I need to spend time looking at.

Now, for what I’ve been trying to write about for a while …

Back in August, I went to the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies conference. I wrote about that at the time. Everyone had two months to watch as many remaining presentations as they could find time for. Which was, of course, fewer than I wanted to given that I tend to be a bit, er, busy. Anyway, here is a run-down of the presentations I did manage to watch.

American Jewish History Through the Lens of Literature: Cookbooks. This talk, by Jonina Duker was interesting, though I am not sure how useful it is to my research. The key point was understanding how people lived and using cooking as a window into the lives of our female relatives. Jonina talked a lot about what makes food Jewish, e.g. foods that have particular ritual significance like dates and olives. She also discussed certain products being marketed to Jews, e.g. Crisco being advertised in Yiddish. She also talked a lot about the history of Jewish cookbooks, including several types, like community fundraisers and product promotions. I was interested to learn, for example, that Gold Medal Flour had a recipe contest in Yiddish in 1921.

Bubbie, Who Are You? Finding the Maiden Names in Your Family Tree: Janice M. Sellers talked about various sources for the names of female relatives who weren’t recorded in many family records in Europe. Those included things like funeral cards, scrapbooks, nameplates in books, and diaries. Some other records that may have maiden names listed include marriage license applications (which often have more information than the license itself), affidavits to address destroyed records, and newspaper announcements. She also suggested looking for all siblings. Other possibilities are probate records, guardianship records for property, and social security applications.

Discovering My Litvak Ancestry: David Ellis is well known in Lithuanian Jewish genealogy and his talk focused on how he identified 146 direct ancestors, including 48 from Lithuania. He emphasized collaboration with other researchers as being crucial. Other key takeaways were: 1) need to repeat searches periodically, 2) records may not be accurate, and 3) family given name patterns may be helpful, particularly for the period before people took on surnames. There wasn’t really anything new to me in this, but it would be helpful for beginners.

Citing Your Sources in Genealogical Research: Janice M. Sellers gave a very brief overview of various ways to attribute prior or unoriginal work to sources, including potential style guides to use. She emphasized consistency and completeness and noted that if you are being published, the publisher will tell you what style guide to use. This whole presentation was only 11 minutes long, by the way.

Dos Gesl: The Kheyders at the Center of East European Jewish Life: This was a really interesting talk by Dan Oren about Jewish education, primarily in Poland. “Kheyder” literally means “room” and was where children spent all day being taught the basics of Jewish religion and culture, starting at the age of 3 until about the age of 12 or 13. There were big changes in the 19th and 20th centuries, including government regulations requiring teachers to be credentialed, as well as teaching the local language. However, most of the Russian that children were taught was the national anthem and the names of the tsars. There were various types of schools, depending on social status, including home schooling and private kheyders, as well as the Tamud Torah for poor children. In som cases, students were taught one-on-one, sometimes by assistants, and spent the rest of their time playing.

Researching Argentinian Jewish Families: This was a panel discussion, led by Hatte Blejer and Yoni Khpchik. There was a lot of background about Jewish immigration to Argentina, starting in 1889-1912 with agricultural communities, although many of those immigrants eventually moved to the cities. What made this presentation useful was the discussion of available archives (including information on work in progress) and the pointer to a Facebook group which I have now joined I have some work I need to do.

Witnesses at Birth, Marriage and Death Records: An Often Neglected Tool in Genealogical Research: Thomas Furth discussed what he called “social based genealogy” vs. the more common “pedigree-based genealogy,” i.e. focusing on Family, Friends, Associates, and Neighbors. In short, witnesses on vital records could be synagogue officials, relatives, or business associates. He suggested using spreadsheets to track these relationships.

Were Your Family Members Telling the Truth? And Other Inaccuracies: Steve Stein’s presentation emphasized using the Genealogy Proof Standard as the key to resolving discrepancies. His basic tips were to: 1) Get as many records as you can, 2) Use original documents when possible, 3) Evaluate sources, 4) Interview many people, asking the same questions of multiple people, and 5) Re-search (i.e. search repeatedly to find newly available information). I don’t think he said anything I didn’t already know, but he organized his information well.

Utilize Indirect Evidence to Discuss and Prove Relationships: Sydney F. Cruise also emphasized the Genealogical Proof Standard. She talked about the need to understand sources, in terms of why, when, and where they were created, who wrote or created them, whether they could have been altered, and what knowledge sources had and what their motivation was. She also suggested creating spreadsheets to track documents with timelines and using those to find connections.

Testimonies Carved in Stone: This was a film about Alba Iulia. a town in the Transylvania region of Romania, and a project to document its cemetery. While it didn’t have any direct relevance to my research, I thought it was interesting and worth watching.

Genealogy Goes to the Movies: This was another film, consisting of genealogy-related film clips from various movies. It was definitely amusing, but I would have liked to have heard Jordan Auslander’s live session chat discussing it to see if there was more to it than the humor value.

Alien, Enemy, Declarant, Grief: The focus of Emily Garber’s presentation was changes in the naturalization process and their impact on what records exist (and what information is in them). Before 29 June 1906, everything was done in local courts, with no centralized record keeping. The Naturalization Act of 29 June 1906 (which was effective 17 September) federalized and standardized the process. There were later acts which impacted aliens who served in the military in World War I, as well as further changes in 1926 and 1929. She recommended keeping a timeline for the person whose naturalization you are investigating. She also noted the value of looking at manifest markings.

Finding the Missing Piece of the Puzzle: This was presented by Eli Rabinowitz, who met the rabbi at a synagogue in Talinn, Estonia, and was able to help find a connection between him and a woman who found out, due to DNA evidence, that her father was switched at birth. I remember reading about that story. The short version is that she thought she was Irish and DNA testing revealed she was half Jewish. Eventually, she found a DNA match that solved the puzzle.

Finally, there was a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington meeting on Sunday. It was a hybrid meeting and I managed to make it in person. They are closing their library for various reasons and had a number of books for sale. I picked up one on The Jewish Communities of Long Island (where I grew up) at a very good price. Anyway, the speaker talked about records (mostly, but not entirely Holocaust related) from Ukraine which are now on-line, but mostly remain unindexed, and showed some examples of using finding aids for them. While my family is not from Ukraine, I actually do have some interest in Ukrainian records because the Jews were expelled from Kaunas Guberniya (in Lithuania) during World War 1 and I know at least two cousins were born in Ukraine in 1916. Well, one was born in Crimea. He was not sure if there were any relevant records and also did not know if the record sets included Crimea. But he told me to email him and he’d look into it.

I’ve barely been out of my house this week, partly because I felt rather sniffly for a couple of days, but mostly because I have been on a minor decluttering binge, primarily involving shredding a bunch of old credit card receipts, some dating back as far as, um, 2016. I’m still working on that project, though I also need to do some serious cleaning off of my dining room table, which tends to act as a staging ground for things I should do something about.

Also, I’ve been busy with trying to watch as many of the on-demand presentations from the IAJGS (Jewish Genealogy) conference from August. I have only a couple of days left to watch them. I’ll write details about that when that is over.

The one thing I did go out for was a field trip by the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington to go to the special exhibit on Americans and the Holocaust at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. This was related to the recent Ken Burns series (which I have not yet watched) and was worth a couple of hours. I don’t think that there was a lot that I didn’t know about, but it brought some things into focus for me. In particular, they showed information about various public opinion polls, some specific to what Americans should do about Jewish refugees, some about immigration in general, and I found the overwhelming numbers of Americans opposed to helping anyone brutal and frightening. (And, of course, we see the same thing now.) I was interested to learn more about Peter Bergson (aka Hllel Kook), whose name I was only vaguely familiar with and who shares an exhibit section with Jan Karski, who I do know a fair amount about thanks to David Strathiirn’s portrayal of him. Anyway, it’s an interesting exhibit and was worth the time.

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Page generated Jan. 6th, 2026 12:30 pm

Entries tagged with genealogy

IAJGS Conference

July 2025 Miscellany

What I Did in June

2024 Year in Review

Distraction and Genealogy

Eye, I, Ay

I May Have Done a Few Things

RootsTech 2024

The Rest of February

Back to Real Life

2023 - Year in Review

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

IAJGS 2023 Conference

Getting Back to Normal Life

Last Week

I Am Back and Trying to Catch Up

Catchety-Uppity

2022 - Year in Review

Genealogy Catch-Up

Americans and the Holocaust Exhibit