fauxklore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

and

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

and, especially,

I perform what I want to see in the world.

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

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

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

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

Celebrity Death Watch: Nick Kotz was a journalist who wrote primarily about politics. Peter Hunt directed the musical 1776. Robert May did significant work on chaos theory. Denis Goldberg was an anti-apartheid activist. Gale Halderman co-designed the Ford Mustang. Robert Park was a physicist and critic of pseudoscience. Sam Lloyd was an actor who was best known for appearing in Scrubs and Galaxy Quest. Gil Schwartz was a humorist, who wrote under the name Stanley Bing. Samuel Roger Horchow was a theatre producer and catalog purveyor. Don Shula was a Hall of Fame football player and coach. Michael McClure was a beat poet. Barry Farber was a conservative talk show radio host. Iepe Rubingh was the founder of chess boxing, a rather unlikely combination of the two forms of competition. Moon Martin was a a singer-songwriter, most famous for “Bad Case of Loving You.” Carolyn Reidy was the CEO of Simon & Schuster. Jorge Santana was a guitarist, who was a lot less famous than his brother, Carlos. Fred Willard was an actor, who worked on several Christopher Guest mockumentaries. Wilson Roosevelt Jerman was a White House butler, who spent over 50 years on the staff there. Lucky Peterson was a blues musician. Ken Osmond was an actor, best known for playing Eddie Haskell on Leave It To Beaver. Willie K was a Hawaiian musician. Annie Glenn used her role as an astronaut’s wife for activism regarding speech disabilities. Alan Merten was the president of George Mason University during a time of its significant expansion. Mory Kante was a Guinean singer and bandleader. Stanley Ho turned Macao into the Las Vegas of Asia

Irrfan Khan was an Indian actor. He is best known in the west for his Hollywood work, which included Life of Pi and Slumdog Millionaire. But I would particularly recommend The Lunchbox as an interesting movie he co-starred in.

Maj Sjowall was a Swedish mystery writer. Her Martin Beck series, co-written with her late husband, Per Wahloo, was a particularly good example of the use of police procedurals for societal criticism.

Jean Erdman was a dancer and choreographer, who incorporated myth into her dancing. She was also Joseph Campbell’s widow. She earned me 25 ghoul pool points (13 for her position on my list and a 12 point uniqueness bonus.)


Little Richard was a rock and roll legend. From the mid-50’s on, he influenced numerous other singers and pianists with his lively style.

Barbara Sher was a lifestyle coach and writer. I know several people who were devotees of her book Wishcraft. Later on, she tackled what she called “scanners,” i.e. people who have multiple interests and don’t want to focus on just one. I actually went to one of her day-long workshops on that subject and found it somewhat useful in my life, mostly as reassurance that I’m not alone.

Jerry Stiller was a comedian and actor. I have to admit I found his work with his late wife, Anne Meara, much funnier than his acting roles on TV shows like Seinfeld.

Phyllis George was Miss America 1971 and went on to a career as a sportscaster at a time when that was pretty much unknown for women.



Last week: Monday night I played board games with the usual group I play with.

Tuesday night was the kick-off for The Great Big Jewish Food Fest, with David Sax interviewing several deli owners about how things are going for them in these times. The answers were more hopeful than I expected, with a lot of take-out business, but it is still difficult, given that restaurants are low margin businesses. It was an interesting program. And, by the way, David Sax is very good-looking.

Wednesday night was book club. We had a lively discussion of My Mother’s Son by David Hirshberg. I liked the book, though it started out a bit slowly. Most of the group liked it, but one person didn’t care for it at all. It actually makes for better discussion when we have dissenting opinions.

Thursday night was a Better Said Than Done storytelling show. I particularly liked Anne Rutherford’s story. And, of course, Andy Offutt Irwin is always a hoot.

Friday night was a reading of my friend, Patrick Cleary’s play Parthenogenesis, which involves interesting questions about what fatherhood means. One nit is that a mother with Type AB blood cannot have a child with Type O blood.

Saturday included zooming into two virtual Balticon sessions - one on Amazons of the Dahoney Kingdom and one on Jews in Space. Both were good, but the latter was particularly entertaining. I zoomed into a session on Sunday about Weather Satellites, which was okay, but didn’t really cover anything I didn’t already know. And I zoomed into a session on Monday (Memorial Day) called The Left Fin of Darkness, which was an interesting attempt to find animal models for the sexual lives of the Gethenians in Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

Other things I did on Sunday evening were a story swap (hosted by Community Storytellers in Los Angeles) and a chavurah tag-up. And I played board games again last (Monday) night.

In between that, there was work and some errands on Sunday.


Cooking For the End of the World: I tried a new chicken recipe, which involved a marinade that had olive oil, lemon, garlic, ginger, and cumin. To go with it, I made tahini-glazed carrots, which involve olive oil, tahini, cumin, and curry powder. It was a nice change of pace, a good break from my usual stir fried random odds and ends. I have a slightly different tahini-glazed carrot recipe I want to try, which includes silan (date honey) so I bought some of that on this week’s grocery excursion.


Ink!: The most exciting
news of the past week was that I got an honorable mention in the Style Invitational (the Washington Post’s humor contest) for my “fictoid” about spring. Namely, “most tulips actually have four to six lips.” So I am no longer a one-hit wonder!


Don’t Analyze This Dream - Part 1: I was at a zoo and there were two large kiddie pools filled with whales. There were also creatures that were a sort of cross between whales and giant humanoids lounging in overhead bins above the pools. A child I was with was given a beeper to follow a red path around the zoo.


Don’t Analyze This Dream – Part 2: I was in Singapore for a job interview. The person interviewing me was upset when I refused to eat raw vegetables on the grounds of hygiene. He proposed that we should eat in Chinatown the next night. I complained that my hotel room had not been cleaned sufficiently, as I found noodles in the kitchen drain. Also, for some reason, Singapore was only an hour flight from Boston.

I have a lot of other stuff to write about, but I have a last minute document review I need to get through at work. So here is a quick entry with the obit poems I submitted to the Style Invitational, none which received ink, alas.

Abra Cadaver
Richard Jay Potash
Known to the world
As dear Ricky Jay
Sleight of hand master
Supersensational
But now he’s laid cards down
As he’s passed away.


Dorcas Reilly cooked some green beans
With French-fried onions, mushroom soup
Thanksgiving tables ever since then
Have been graced with Reilly’s goop.


John Bindernagel sought an apeman
known as Sasquatch, Bigfoot, too
Found some tracks but never caught one
Died with empty cryptozoo.

I still have entries to write about my trivia game and my genealogy updates. But I don't want to fall too far behind on things I am doing, so let's do that one first.

Celebrity Death Watch: John McMartin was a musical theatre actor, notable for performances in Little Mary Sunshine, Sweet Charity, and, especially, Follies, where he was the originator of the role of Benjamin Stone. Larry Bock founded the USA Science and Engineering Festival (which I have volunteered at a couple of times). Interestingly, even though I met him several times, I never realized he was legally blind until reading his obituary. Carolyn See was a writer, whose works included several novels, though her daughter, Lisa See, is arguably more famous. Alan Vega was part of a band named Suicide, though he died of natural causes.

Tapas: An old friend was in town for a NASA-related program she is involved in for the next year. We were able to get together early Monday evening for drinks and tapas at Jaleo, where happy hour is always a good deal. Afterwards, we strolled through TechSHop, the local Crystal City makerspace. I discovered that they have bookbinding classes. That could be handy, since it is certainly closer to my usual haunts than most other places that teach, say, Coptic stitch. Overall, a pleasant evening.

Going-Away Shindig: Wednesday night, I had a going-away happy hour to go to for an old friend who is changing jobs after 20+ years. It was a good opportunity to see a lot of people I hadn’t seen in ages. Unfortunately, I had only a couple of days’ notice, so was unable to acquire a suitable present. I also had to rush off since book club was that evening. That was slightly difficult, as I still had another 80 or so pages of the book to read (out of nearly 600) but there was still plenty of controversy and the spoilers didn’t really matter much. (I did finish the book the next day.)

Sunday Madness: I spent much of rest of the week trying to catch up on household odds and ends (not super successfully) and napping. Well, and working. Saturday was mostly filled with suspended animation, i.e. frequent naps in between bouts of reading and housework. But then came Sunday.

First event was the Style Invitational Loser Brunch. The service at Grevey’s was inefficient, as they were understaffed, but the food was okay. The conversation was wide-ranging, including topics ranging politics (of course) to bell-ringing. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I had my next commitment.

That second event was rehearsal for an upcoming storytelling show. (Saturday, July 30th at The Auld Shebeen. More shameless self-promotion to follow.) My story went well, but it is a bit on the short side. That is better than it being too long, of course, but I do wonder if there is anything worth adding.

Finally, my chavurah had an evening outing to see The Capital Steps do a free performance at Mason District Park. They are, of course, well known for their political humor, and the show was very funny. My favorite piece was probably the one in which a woman complained about transgender bathroom use on the grounds of making lines for women’s rooms even longer. I did wish there had been more Brexit humor, but it does take time to write appropriate songs. There was also one piece about Metro, but nothing about how bloody long it would take to get out of the park after the show.

A General Comment on Life: Oy.

I have lots to catch up on (so what else is new?). The most significant is the National Storytelling Conference, which will get its own entry. Or, more likely, two, because something I want to say will take some analysis and I don’t want to lose that in the clutter. I promise those will be more interesting than this entry is likely to be.

But, first, some other stuff.

Celebrity Death Watch: "Rowdy" Roddy Piper was one of the few pro wrestlers I’ve ever heard of. Alan Cheuse reviewed books for NPR (and wrote several of his own). Ainger Lynn Anderson never promised me a rose garden. Ann Rule wrote true crime books, the best known of which was The Stranger Beside Me about Ted Bundy. I’ve read many of her books, which fall into the guilty pleasure category.

Politics: Wit making its way around my circles is that the Washington Nationals are offering a season discount to the first 4000 presidential candidates.

Quick Genealogy Notes: I finally found where I’d put my library card, so was able to use the library edition of Ancestry. I found Max Lubowsky’s naturalization certificate, and it seems he can’t be Icek Chlebiocky, since the immigration dates don’t match.

The new social security application database, though, turned up a few things. Apparently my great-uncle by marriage, Ely Fuchs, was legally Elias. And his parents were Abraham Fuchs and Rebecca Heller. His birthplace is given as Kragow, Poland. That would seem to be Krakow, but there are some other possibilities.

More fun was the discovery that Athalia Lehrman (Mary Lubowsky Lehrman’s daughter) was using the name "Timmy Lee" at some point. A bit of googling turned up an entry in the copyright index of a book she wrote called Poems by Timmy Lee. It doesn’t look like the Library of Congress has that, but they do have a symphony she co-wrote. I see some fun research ahead.

Decluttering: I took advantage of the library excursion to drop Mom’s eyeglasses into the Lion’s Club donation bin there. I also dug out a few old pairs of mine and threw them in. I did keep one pair with frames I could see reusing.

Story Swap: The monthly Voices in the Glen swap was at Penelope’s, which was nicely convenient for me. I thought about walking over, but was concerned about the lighting (or lack thereof) on one street coming home. There was an excellent turn-out, including a few newcomers. And, of course, lots of great stories.

Sometimes You Only Need to Read the Headline: "Texas man injured as bullet ricochets off armadillo."

And Sometimes You Really Should Read On: I was disappointed that the story headlined "Bat Boy Dies from Swing" had to do with baseball, not that mythical West Virginia tabloid creature.

I really didn't intend to go so long without posting here, but life has been hectic.

Celebrity Death Watch: My notes on who to mention go back to Harry Morgan, who had a truly distinctive, immediately recognizable voice. I watched M*A*S*H regularly as a teenager and remember being sad when Col Potter's plane disappeared on his way home.

The literary world offered up the losses of essayist Christopher Hitchens and of Russell Hoban, who wrote some children's books but who I associate primarily with Riddley Walker. The political world has one sad death (Vaclav Havel, bridging the literary world) and one less sad one (Kim Il Jung). The more obscure deaths are those of Jerry Robinson, who created The Joker, and of Erica Wilson, who wrote needlework patterns.

The death I most want to highlight, however, is Cesaria Evora. The "barefoot diva" of Cape Verde had a phenomenal voice and brought a lot of attention to the traditional music of that nation. She was certainly one of the reasons I want to go there. (There are others - Cape Verdeans played a major role in the whaling industry and, hence, New England.) I'm sorry I never got to see her perform live.

Three Sighs for Transportation: I came home from an errand to discover that the right front tire of my car was flat. I'd gotten new tires in April and, thanks to the warranty, that meant getting it fixed at Sears would be nearly free. They told me it would be "an hour and a half to two hours." I came back after two hours (having had breakfast and picked up a couple of things at the adjacent mall) and they hadn't even started on it. In the end, I was there four and a half hours. Sigh.

I've also had a few occasions recently to take the red line of the metro. Single tracking before 9 p.m. on a weekday is annoying. I thought the argument for the weekend shutdowns they've been doing is that they would then not have to single track to do repairs. Sigh.

I also had a frustrating Amtrak trip to New York, with power problems that made the train about an hour late. The delay was not as annoying as the fact that there were no lights while they were doing repairs (at Baltimore). Sigh.

Work: The project that will never end hasn't.

New York: My trip to New York at the beginning of the month was for my 35th high school reunion. The gathering was small but it was good to see the people who were there. I also used the time to do two Volksmarch events in New York City. The midtown walk was, in general, predictable but pleasant enough. The Chelsea / Greenwich Village walk was more interesting, particularly as I had never actually been on the High Line before. It's a good thing I was time constrained as the route passed the Strand Bookstore, which is always potentially dangerous to my budget.

Theatre: I can't go to New York and not go to the theatre. So I saw The Book of Mormon on Broadway. It was lively and funny, albeit a bit crude. It did push some of my buttons about how Africa is portrayed in pop culture, but that is to be expected. I'll also suggest that it is a very bad idea to take a child under about age 15 to see this. But I highly recommend it for thick-skinned adults. (If you liked, say, "Avenue Q," you will enjoy this.)

On a related note, I saw Cannibal: The Musical at Landless Theatre. (It is related via Trey Parker, who also co-created South Park.) There is some lively music and some funny moments (particularly involving the encounter with the Indians) but it was a bit overdone. It turns out, by the way, that Parker got his history mostly correct, but I was still disappointed not to hear a reference to Alferd Packer having eaten the Democratic majority of Summit County.

On a very unrelated note, I saw Billy Elliot at the Kennedy Center on Friday night. As I said on Facebook, it was a good 2 hour musical but is, unfortunately, 3 hours. There is somewhat too much talk for the amount of music. And most of the music is unremarkable. I do think "Solidarity" is powerful and effective and both "Deep Into the Ground" and "He Could Go and He Could Shine" are well done. The piece I hated was "Angry Dance," largely because the volume was so high that my ears were actually ringing through the intermission. The dancing (by Kylend Hetherington the night I saw it) was notable, particularly in the dream sequence when Billy dances to Swan Lake with his older self. But the real show-stopper was Cynthia Darrow as Grandma, an earthy woman indeed.

Finally, I saw Hairspray at Signature Theatre yesterday. I had seen this on Broadway some years ago and wondered how it would be in this much smaller space. The answer is that Signature did their usual excellent job. The songs are catchy, the book is reasonably funny, and the performers looked like they were having fun. So was I.

MAD: There was a talk by Al Jaffee and Mary-Lou Weisman (who wrote a recent biography of him) at the DCJCC on Thursday night. His life was definitely not what one might have expected, having been brought from the U.S. back to her Lithuanian shtetl by his mother when he was 6 and living there until he was rescued by his father six years later. The High School of Music and Arts changed his life - and MAD Magazine made him famous. At age 90, he still writes "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" and does the fold-ins. I feel privileged to have been able to enjoy s much of his work.

Somehow I managed to miss these two clippings in my news wrap-up.

1) The crime section of a local free newspaper reported a story on a dog bite. The Animal Control Officer who responded is named Barker.

2) The Jewish Study Center is offering a cleverly named class. "Shir Havoc: Meshugah melodies for familiar prayers" is all about "fitting prayers to everything from Vivaldi to movie music to sea shanties and Irish drinking songs."

I found out this morning that I've been appointed to a new Presidential Commission ...

... on knitting addiction! President Obama formed this commission in response to a report that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had triggered a security investigation due to the clicking of knitting needles in the House chamber being misinterpreted as a possible explosive device. There have also been reports that Secretary of State Clinton's first stop on a recent European tour was La Droguerie, a Paris yarn shop.

He stated, "As the father of daughters, I am concerned about the damage being done to America's women by the plague of knitting addiction. I have heard from several families who claim to have no money for food because the household budget has been spent on accruing exotic yarns, many of which are never even used. I have only recently learned that there are at least half a dozen completely legal businesses spreading this addiction within just a few miles of the White House. This new commission will investigate regulatory actions to prevent the spread of addiction."

Possible actions being considered include prohibition on teaching anyone under the age of 18 to knit, maintenance programs using acrylic yarns as a substitute for runiously expensive natural fibers, and bans on the sale of such knitting paraphenalia as bamboo circular needles.

The past couple of days have been incredibly hectic. I went into work yesterday thinking that my calendar was reasonably empty. Just after I got in, I got a phone call asking me to attend a 9 o'clock meeting, largely on the grounds that I would be capable of being dispassionate on the subject. As it happens, thanks to my corporate network, I had some information that was useful for due diligence. I also seem to be the only person around on our floor who knows how to use a particular useful database, so could pull out some budget numbers we needed.

Then we had staff meeting and I got asked to see what I could find out about another subject. Telephone tag is the official Olympic sport of the circle-A ranch and that (with some follow-up emails) filled up the rest of the day. I still made it to game night, where I enjoyed playing Just Desserts followed by Plague and Pestilence with Emily and Michael (and another person whose name I don't remember). Alas, the Busboys and Poets at 5th & K is not really a good venue for game night, since the layout meant we were scattered among several tables. The food was good, though.

I knew today was going to be busy. I spent the morning following up on various odds and ends, as well as digging up information for a quick turn tasker. Then I went downtown to a particularly wonkish meeting, which turned out to be useful as I learned something that may help us mitigate the damages if we lose a battle we're currently waging. (And I also learned what tactic one of the other players is going to use, which may be even more useful.) After that, I had to go over to my corporate office and brief my grandboss on a study we've completed recently.

After work, I went over to the Kennedy Center to see the National Symphony Orchestra Pops with the Smothers Brothers. The first part was just the NSO Pops, with Emil de Cou conducting a salute to Valentine's Day. I haven't quite decided how I feel about de Cou as a conductor. His flamboyant style is interesting to watch, but I think he overdoes it a bit at times. I was amused when he used Lincoln's birthday as an introduction to "The Girl From Impanema," claiming that Lincoln used to dance around the Oval Office. But I thought that his bit of asking people to request Gershwin songs went on too long and was rather silly. (They played "The Man I Love" and "Embraceable You," by the way. The latter is my second favorite Gershwin love song, behind "Nice Work If You Can Get It.") Other pieces they played included "The Carousel Waltz" (which they had opened with), a medley of songs from Lerner and Loewe's Gigi and two pieces from Carmen Jones.

After the intermission, it was time for the Smothers Brothers. They started with a cute version of "Those Were the Days" - "Once upon a time we were on TV ..." Most of the show consisted of their usual routine of bickering as they would start out a song straight and Tom would do something silly that Dick would react to. For example, Tom switches from Spanish to German in singing "Quando Caliente El Sol" and Dick just stares at him for ages. They've been doing this sort of shtick for 50 years and it hasn't changed. There were a few cute jokes along the way, but nothing especially topical. They also did the "yo-yo man" bit, which I remember having started something of a fad when I was a kid. There was a sequence of clips from their TV show, also.

It was entertaining and there were some memorable jokes. For example, Tom went into a whole bit about flying and Dick said "no matter how many frequent flyer miles you have, they never upgrade you to pilot." And they certainly look quite for men in their 70's. I do still wish, however, that they had done something new, instead of relying so completely on nostalgia.