fauxklore

Shameless Self-Promotion: I am part of an on-line storytelling show this coming Saturday (February 25th) from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. EST. It’s free, with donations requested. The show is titled "Laughter and Humor, in Honor of Rubber Ducky Day” and you can register here.


Tucson Follow-up, Part 1: Because several people commented on the picture of the miniature sculpture done on a pencil point and I had not written down the artist’s name, I did some strategic googling. The artist turns out to be a 50-year-old Russian man named Salivat Fidai. There are many pictures of his work on-line for your viewing pleasure.

Tucson Follow-up, Part 2: I have no idea how I forgot to mention this, but it was late afternoon when I finished up at the eastern part of Saguaro National Park on Sunday. I decided I could check out the Desert Diamond Casino for a little while, I have probably said this before, but my attitude towards gambling is that it is entertainment. I expect to lose, so I just decide how much I am willing to spend on being entertained along the way. I like slot machines with certain types of themes, typically ones oriented towards either space or a movie or television show I like. This casino had few of the ones I like, but I did eventually find a group of Little Shop of Horrors themed ones. I was within about 5 bucks of reaching my allowed losses when I hit a jackpot that paid me $400. So I kept playing for a while. Eventually, the plant fed me to the tune of a little over $700. Which was enough to cover my plane ticket and rental car, but not my hotel.

NSO: Continuing on to what I’ve done since I got back (i.e. over the past week or so), last Friday night, Cindy and I went to see the National Symphony Orchestra. The program included three pieces, conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski. I had never seen him conduct before and I thought he did a good job. I especially appreciated that he made a point of having each section of the orchestra stand for final bows during the applause at the end of the evening.

The first piece on the program was Krzesany by Wojciech Kilar This was completely new to me and I really enjoyed it. It was very dramatic, especially the percussion section. Apparently, it was inspired by a mix of Polish folk dance and a bullfight Kilar had seen in Spain.

That was followed by a Prokofiev violin concerto, which I found comparatively dull. Francesca Dego is a big name violinist and I could appreciate her virtuosity. But, as a recovering violist, I’m not a huge fan of violins and, overall, the piece lacked the level of drama that the other two in the program had.

The final piece, which is why we had gone in the first place, was Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This has been a favorite of mine since I was in high school. The rawness and the emotional tension was radical at its time, but is still powerful for those of us to whom it isn’t quite as revolutionary. I have, by the way, also seen film footage of the original choreography. It’s all very weird. At any rate, the orchestra handled the mixture of frenzy and pagan energy very well.

All in all, it was a good evening.


Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner: The next day, Cindy and I went to see a play titled Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner at Woolly Mammoth. This is the American premiere of this work by Jasmine Lee-Jones and I admit we knew nothing about it, but the title was intriguing. I did warn Cindy that everything I had ever seen at Woolly Mammoth was weird. Anyway, we had lunch at Teaism (one of my favorite informal restaurants - and the only place in the area I know of to get okonimayaki) beforehand. Before the play, we read the Zine that they had available, which discussed Jenner having had lip augmentation, selected vocabulary from “the Internet & Black British Slang” (yes, the play is British), and (most interesting to me) Sara Baartman, an enslaved South African woman who was displayed in London and Paris, where she became known as “the Hottentot Venus.” There are a number of different threads here, leading to a general theme about appropriating blackness.

I am hesitant to write too much about the play because the playwright has said she doesn’t want reviews by white people. So this is a short synopsis and not a review. The gist of it is a series of conversations between two women, Cleo and Kara. Cleo tweets criticisms of white women who co-opt and profit from Black culture, but some of the things she says spill out into real life, including her getting death threats. Also, Kara can’t forgive her for some anti-gay things she has also tweeted. There is a lot of slang used and, while it may all be defined in the zine they gave out, it wasn’t as if I could reference that during the play, so I would say I understood maybe 2/3 of it. Overall, it was interesting, but I am clearly not the target demographic. Younger people might be able to make more sense of it.


Crones and Tomes: I joined a second book club, specifically for older women to read books about women. We started this past Monday night (i.e. the 13th) with Heartburn by Nora Ephron and had a good, wide-ranging discussion of it. I only knew two of the women before (they are puzzle people) and I’m looking forward to getting to know the others better.


Book Club 2 My long-standing book club met on Wednesday night to discuss French Braid by Anne Tyler. I will write more in my quarterly book wrap-up, but the short version is that the book is 241 pages long and I spent 240 of them waiting for something to happen. One person did like the book.


Dinner at Clyde’s: I went to dinner with a couple of visiting Flyertalkers at Clyde’s at Gallery Place last night. It’s not the most exciting menu in D.C. but it’s fine for typical American cuisine. The conversation was about various Flyertalk events we’d been to and upcoming travel plans and things to do in different places (including here.)

By the way, I find it very amusing that the beer menu includes brewery locations for all of the beers they sell. Which makes sense for the Port City Monumental American-Style IPA I got (Alexandria, VA) and other craft brewery offerings. But does anybody really care that their Budweiser and Michelob Ultra are from Williamsburg, VA?


Duolingo: I’m at the 111 day mark on studying Spanish. I think I’ve learned a lot, as evidenced by my ability to read ads in Spanish at various places. But I still have a long ways to go. I’m also sloppy with writing, since they let you get away with using an English language keyboard, lacking accent marks. I’ve also had a couple of times when I think a daily quest has changed after I’ve done it, e.g. something like “find Oscar 7 times” has changed to “find Lily 7 times.” They also added another achievement to work on - Nocturnal, which requires doing lessons after 10 p.m. and I have a few more levels to go on that one. At any rate, it’s still fun, although I don’t know how many occasions are likely to come up where I need to talk about an evil sheep who the lions are all afraid of. This is, however, marginally less ridiculous than my Russian vocabulary, which includes the phrase "talking cockroaches live in Asia."

I am way behind. So what else is new?

Let’s start the catch-up with Yiddish New York, which occupied pretty much all of the last week of December. Things started on Saturday night of December 25th with a concert and, while I thought I’d scribbled some notes about it, I must have scribbled them either on paper that has teleported to another dimension and/or in invisible ink. The only specific thing I remember is that somebody was playing the cymbalon (a sort of dulcimer-like instrument), which led me to google that and discover that they may not be too expensive, but, no, I will NOT buy one. Anyway, klezmer music is enjoyable, but I didn’t have anything particular to say about that event.

Sunday:

Sunday started with a lecture on Humor in Yiddish Proverbs. Bob Rothstein was knowledgeable, but not really a good speaker, as he spoke in what I refer to as “uh-um-ese,” which is grating to listen to. Still, I was amused by many of the proverbs he discussed, so it was entertaining. Some of the best ones included:

• He has as much sense as there are mezuzahs in a church.
  
  
• G-d, give me help, but, if not, I have a sister in America.
  
  
• They are in love - he with himself, she with herself.
  
  
• The only tailor who doesn’t steal material is the mohel.
  
  

I should also note that there are a lot of proverbs that equate cantors with fools, which I found surprising since my grandfather was a cantor and no fool. Well, except when it came to women, but that’s another story.

After that I went to hear Itzik Gotterman interview Lilli Rosen on the subject of Off the Derech which is a term used to refer to formerly Orthodox Jews. (And, most specifically, former Hasidim, though I think it can also apply to non-Chasidic haredim.) Rosen, who is transgender, left at puberty, but went back and joined Chabad, married, and left again in their 30’s. At 28, they had gone to law school, which was acceptable within the community. Discussions about religion with colleagues at their law firm were what led to leaving for good and getting involved in Yiddish theatre. Now they mostly consult for television programs. It was an interesting talk, though not really relatable for me.

The Sunday lunchtime concert was by Gica Loaning and Michael Alpert and featured a mixture of Yiddish and Scottish music.

After that I went to a program about Yiddish singing, called Chestnuts and Childhood, which mostly had to do with singing familiar songs. The person leading it had somebody who didn’t know each song learn it. Since they were doing familiar songs (starting with Oyfn Pripetchik), I don’t know how much value this had for me, and I skipped the later sessions in this series.

I’ve already written about the movies I watched as part of the film festival aspect of the conference, so I won’t repeat that.

Monday:

I started Monday with the first half of a talk on Ashkenazi Family Names. Binyamin Schaechter lectured almost entirely in Yiddish, but I was pretty much able to follow his talk, which centered on categories of names. The Monday lecture talked about Matronymic names (e.g. Rifkind, which is derived from the name Rivka), Patronymic names (e.g. Abramowitz from Abraham), Descriptive names (e.g. Kurtz meaning short, or, to bring my genealogy into it Schwartzbard meaning “black beard”), and Occupational names / metonyms (including Nadel, which means needle, for a tailor.) My one complaint is that he showed slides with some names on them and then talked about a lot more names in each category that weren’t on the slide.

The lunchtime concert was by Bob Cohen and Jake Shulmen-Ment, who performed music (primarily instrumental) collected in Romania.

The next talk I listened to was Wexology by Michael Wex, who is well-known as the author of Born to Kvetch. His talk was very entertaining, but a bit rambling. Some of the things he talked about were:

• Hebrew could sometimes be used in a pejorative way. For example, actors in Yiddish are actioren but if you want to imply that they are bad actors you could use the Hebrew plural and call them actiorim.
  
  
• He talked at length about the expression hock mir night kein chainik which literally means “don’t bang on my teapot,” but is used to tell somebody not to talk nonsense. He pointed out that the lid of a teakettle makes more noise the less water is in it, which is a really good explanation.
  
  
• He had a long semi-rant on the subject of the phrase lign in drerd und baken beygel which literally means “lying in the ground and baking bagels” and is something you might say as a curse. You can also use it as a way to say things aren’t going so well for you. Not only is it hot as hell, but everybody else around you is dead so there’s nobody to sell them to. He equated this to a Yiddish version of the myth of Sisyphus.
  
  
• He suggested “heartburn rampant on a bed of cholent” as the Israeli flag. (Cholent is a stew of beans and meat that is traditionally eaten on Shabbat, when you’re not allowed to cook. It’s mostly cooked beforehand and kept warm on a stove or in an oven - or, nowadays, in a crockpot.)
  
  
• There are some Yiddish terms that come from Biblical references. For example, “kiss me where the Jews rested” refers to setting up camp at Takhat (pronounced “b’tuchus” in Ashkenazi Hebrew) so the phrase means “kiss my ass.” Also, “asher yutzer” is Hebrew for toilet paper, from the blessing people say after using the toilet.
  
  

Tuesday:

The first program I went to on Tuesday was Memories of the Yiddish Kitchen. The preponderance of recipes discussed were for sweets, e.g. mandelbrot, rugelach, and hamentaschen (including a note that the yeast pastry version declined in popularity after the introduction of baking powder in the 20th century, even though the yeast kind are infinitely better). Other dishes talked about were chopped liver, gefilte fish, borscht, pierogi, and stuffed cabbage. I was particularly interested in the discussion of “farmer’s chop suey,” a dish I haven’t had in years, which consists of various chopped vegetable (cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, scallions) mixed with sour cream.

That was followed by the second half of Ashkenazi Family Names. The categories that got added in this half were Names referring to lineage (e.g. Cohen, Levi), Acronyms and Abbreviations (e.g. Katz = kohen tzaddik, meaning righteous priest), Geographic names / Toponyms (e.g. Wiener from Vienna, Berlinsky from Berlin, but not Moskowitz, which refers to the name Mosko, a form of Moshe, not to Moscow), House signs (famously Rothschild = red shield), and Fanciful / Ornamental / Wealthy names (e.g. Diamant = diamond or Golden, as well as prefixes like Hoff and suffixes like berg or feld).

The lunchtime concert was Susi Evans and Silvia Csaranko from Hanover, Germany performing pieces from the Klezmer Archive of tunes from Ukraine.

Next was the second part of Wexology. This time, Michael Wex, talked a lot about which Yiddish words might be offensive and which are especially polite.

• The etymology of certain words used to refer to non-Jews can be offensive. For example, sheigetz” (a derisive term for a non-Jewish man) comes from the Hebrew word “shkotz,” meaning “reptile.” (“Shiksa” has the same root, but is also used in other languages, notably Polish, to refer to a slut.)
  
  
• He also talked about how to refer to people respectfully, mostly by using the third person. So instead of asking, say, “can you tell me X,” you can say, “Can the Jew tell me …”
  
  
• Some euphemisms have become more objectionable than they were intended to weaken. “Achar” means “a person I prefer not to mention,” so “dover achar” should mean that you prefer not to talk about that. Instead it is used to refer to things like sodomy.
  
  
• ”Chad gadya,” which is the song that ends the Passover seder is slang for both “rear end” (from that usage), but also for jail because the Polish slang for jail is “chauza,” which literally means goat.
  
  

Wednesday:

The first presentation I went to on Wednesday was The Richtige Mikado: Poconos to MGM which had to do with a version of the Gilbert and Sullivan musical developed at Camp Tamiment in the Poconos in 1938. There was a later Hollywood version written in 1942 and both scripts are available. Camp Tamiment was a resort for adults, drawing a lot of singles, especially NYU and City College students. Apparently Jerry Bock (of Broadway Bock and Harnick fame) called it “the Club Med of Bushkill Falls.") Anyway, this was not a full production of The Mikado, but was a set of skits and was not related to the 1950’s Yiddish Mikado, which was recorded. Some of the people involved were Max Liebman (who later did a lot of television revues, including Your Show of Shows), Sylvia Fine, and Danny Kaye. Anyway, this was my favorite presentation of the whole conference, largely because it included a read-through of the script(s) by Eve Sicular and Allen Lewis Rickman. . For example, the song “Titwillow” became “tit gornit,” which means “doing nothing.” In the Tamiment version, it referred to politics (e.g. Neville Chamberlain), while the Hollywood version used it to make fun of Samuel Goldwyn.

After that, I went to a presentation on Yiddish Folklore: Questions and Inspirations. This included a short story (and associated play) by the speaker, Rokhl Kafrissen, which had to do with a woman who did a silent Shabbos in memory of her late husband. There were also discussions of traditions about demons and about Nittel Nacht (Hasidic customs associated with Christmas eve, including refraining from Torah study and, instead, playing cards.) But the main thing that I got out of that session was the formation of a mailing list to talk about Yiddish folklore.

The lunchtime concert was by Susan Watts and Rob Curto and consisted of compositions from a collection called Soul Songs, which is intended to inspire women to perform klezmer music. After that, I went to a talkback about on one of the movies I’d watched.


Thursday:

I started Thursday with a talk by Miriam Isaacs on Chronicle of the Yiddish Stage: Zalman Zylbercweig’s Leksicon which was a 7 volume project that included biographies, photographs, and Yizkor books (i.e. memorial books). One thing I hadn’t known is that there had been unions in the Yiddish theatre in New York - and had been actor’s unions in Poland, too. The chronicles were like a Who’s Who and people paid to be included.

The final presentation I went to was on How to Suppress Yiddish Women’s Writing by Faith Nomi Jones. This was based on Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing, with additions to refer to specific issues for Yiddish writers. For example, women who worked for Yiddish newspapers were relegated to answering reader’s letters or writing for the women’s pages, but not allowed to do real journalism. Women were also not allowed to go unescorted to various cafes were writers mingled. Interestingly, it was more common in Yiddish literature for men to use female pseudonyms than vice versa. This was an excellent talk and I particularly appreciated the inclusion of suggestions on how to fight back, e.g. by challenging instructors to include Yiddish literature by women and to point out assumptions when they occur.


Summary:

I didn’t make it to any of the evening programs, largely because I was mentally satiated by about 5 in the afternoon. But, overall, I thought this was worth my time and I felt that I learned a fair amount. I need to think about how much time I should spend studying Yiddish. And maybe I should look into buying a cymbelon.

Celebrity Death Watch: Ed Charles played third base, including a stint with the Mets, including their 1969 World Series. Louise Slaughter was the oldest member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Sammy Wilson won a Tony for playing Paul in the original production of A Chorus Line. Frank Avruch played Bozo the Clown in Boston through the 1960’s. Charles Lazarus founded Toys R Us. Louis Kamookak discovered the wreck of HMS Erebus. Wayne Huizenga founded Blockbuster Video. Zell Miller was the Governor of Georgia for much of the 1990’s. Seo Min-woo was a K-pop singer. Linda Brown was the subject of a Supreme Court case on segregation. Stephane Audran was an actress, best known for Babette’s Feast. Peter Munk founded the largest gold mining company in the world. Anita Shreve was a novelist. Stephen Reinhardt was a liberal judge. Connie Lawn was the longest-serving White House correspondent. Ron Dunbar was a songwriter whose works include "Band of Gold" and the execrable "Patches."

Rusty Staub played baseball as part of the original Montreal Expos. He came over to the New York Mets in 1972 and was one of the more notable players for them during my high school years. I have a bobblehead of "Le Grand Orange," acquired when I went to a game in Montreal. He was also the first Mets player to get over 100 RBIs in one season.

Steven Bochco was a television producer, most famous for ensemble shows like Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law. He also created Cop Rock, which is worth a look for the musical aspect.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist and the second wife of Nelson Mandela. She was a controversial figure, largely because of the human rights violations committed by her security detail. In addition to her praise of "necklacing," she is said to have ordered kidnappings. She also got involved in fraud related to a funeral fund.

Intern Reception: I went to a reception last week for MIT students looking for policy internships. This appeared to be the year of the economist, with nobody interested in space. I did enjoy several conversations, both with people I knew (including one from an unrelated and, hence, unexpected connection) and who I didn’t. But the most interesting moment of the evening was when a young woman leaned too close to a candle and her hair caught on fire. Nobody was injured, fortunately.

Pesach: As my father used to say to my mother, America is not as rich as they always told us. Here it is a major Jewish holiday and we don’t even have any bread in the house.

Interplanetary Addresses: I get a fair number of invitations to events, not all of which are anywhere near where I live. Not everybody remembers they are posting invitations to international websites or email lists. Therefore, it is not uncommon to get invited to something with the address being given only as, say, 2100 Main Street.

I have developed the mental habit of interpreting such things as 2100 Main Street, Mars.

Don’t Analyze This Dream, Part 1: I was taking a shared taxi to Island Park. I expected to be dropped at the train station, but the driver turned down Carolina Avenue. When we reached my house, I asked to be let out, but the driver wouldn’t stop. Instead, he continued to the corner and turned left onto Austin Boulevard – but in the oncoming traffic lane. I finally got him to stop by opening the rear right-side door, while he was still moving slowly. I threw $40 at him and left. Also, the house numbers were wrong. My house was 127, instead of 60, and the house next door was 241, instead of 66.

Don’t Analyze This Dream, Part 2: I was somewhere in China with my mother. I had arrived a day earlier, so had already taken the river cruise included in our tour package, but I went with her again. Everyone had to show their passports to be able to board the boats and an American man objected. Then we were in the apartment of a man named Anuku and his mother said he spoke such good English because he had studied at Virginia Tech. He had a tattooed Delta on his arm to prove that.

Commute Hell: There was apparently smoke in the tunnel near Virginia Square, so the Orange Line was shut down from East Falls Church to Clarendon. I was smart enough not to think that shuttle bus service would work, so I took the 29N to King Street, where I could get the Blue or Yellow Line to work. It was slow and crowded and reminded me of how much I prefer trains.

Weird Words: Some friends on facebook have been discussing words that they mispronounced because they've only read them, not heard them. I have to admit that I find myself wondering what sort of life people are living that words like "hegemony" or "antipodes" come up in conversation.

Celebrity Death Watch: First, a few celebrity obituaries to note. Peter O'Toole and Joan Fontaine were actors. Ronnie Biggs was a train robber. Al Goldstein was a pornographer. Janet Dailey was a romance writer.

There are two I want to note in a little more detail. Mikhail Kalashnikov designed the AK-47, the most widely proliferated firearm of all time. He appears to have died of natural causes.

Charles M. Vest was the president of MIT a bit after my time. He is notable for having actually listened and acted on the data re: discrimination against women faculty members.

A Brief Rant re: Coffee: Coffee is a magical substance, when treated properly. Being treated properly does not include being grown in bulk in unsuitable climates. Or being burned by overroasting. Most of all, treating coffee properly does not include adding flavoring agents to it. Coffee IS a flavor and should, therefore, not come in flavors.

A Brief Rant re: Winter Storms: Winter storms do not have names. I don't care if you think they should, but they don't and you do not have the right to change this.

A Brief Rant re: Midwestern Vowel Deficiency: Actually, this may be sheer ignorance, not the lack of distinguishing vowel sounds amongst people from the vast middle of the country, but it annoys the hell out of me. When you have the bare bones of an idea and you are elaborating on it, you are flEshing it out. FlUshing things out refers to exposing them, as in sendng the dogs after the grouses you are hunting, which is quite a different metaphor. (Interestingly, someone else at work was complaining about the same thing just last week.)

A Brief Rant re: Brief Rants: Frankly, life is pretty good when my grievances are about people abusing coffee, storm names, and vowels in metaphors.

I am, as usual, busy and behind. This is the general catch-up entry and will have a few teasers for things I have yet to write about.

Three Day Walk: In a fit of madness, I decided I could actually be somewhat prepared if I just delayed a couple of months. So, instead of cancelling, I just switched to the Philadelphia walk, which is in early October. You still have an opportunity to donate to help me reach the fundraising goal. (Note that the totals shown by this widget are not necessarily accurate.)



Celebrity Death Watch: There is lots to report in this category. Let’s start with Ernest Borgnine, who deserves a mention for his role in the classic movie Marty, a lovely little piece about an ordinary man finding happiness despite people around him. While I am on actors, there was Sherman Helmesley, who, in addition to his television roles, starred in the Broadway musical Purlie. Then there was Chad Everett. I watched Medical Center in the early 1970’s largely because of a crush on him.

Moving on to other categories of fame, Sally Ride was the first American woman in space, fulfilling the dreams many of us had. She also became an effective voice for women in science and technology. She was definitely one of my heroines.

Speaking of effectiveness brings me to Stephen Covey, who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I actually took the 7 Habits class when my (then) boss did, on the grounds that it is a good idea to know what your management is being taught so you can be effective at subverting it.

Finally, I want to mention Donald Sobol. He is probably most famous for the Encyclopedia Brown series of children’s mysteries. But I remember him primarily for the “two-minute mystery” puzzles that appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazines. Those provide a good example of the distinction between a pure puzzle and a full-up mystery novel, with character development. They aren't very satisfying reading, bt they are good exercises in mental development.

Other deaths (more conceptual): Weekly Highlights is ceasing publication. I always looked forward to reading this when I was in elementary school.

Matt Groening has stopped his Life in Hell comic strip. He is responsible for my most embarrassing celebrity encounter. Back when I lived in Venice, California, I would go to an occasional cocktail party at a local bookstore. At one party, I was looking at Life in Hell postcards and told a bearded man standing nearby how much I liked the strip. He replied, “Thanks, I draw it,” at which point I turned into a simpering idiot. He was gracious enough to not only autograph a book for me, but to also draw a cartoon in the inside front cover.

NOAA’s latest budget kills the Aquarius Reef Base, the only deep undersea base we have. I understand the budget realities, but I am deeply disappointed, especially as they are blaming increases in weather satellite costs for this.

Work annoyance of the month: They have rewickered the front door to our suite so that it closes by itself. However, it does so very very slowly. When nobody is at the front desk, whoever opened the door has to wait for it to close, which is a waste of time. I suppose that if this is the worst annoyance I’ve had at work all month, I am not doing too badly. (Or, more likely, I am just used to all the other annoyance.)

Weather words: While I was in Cincinnati, a massive line of thunderstorms and wind struck the D.C. area. This was officially referred to as a “derecho.” I am convinced that there is a special office of meteorology that creates words like this to make the rest of us feel dumb whenever there is some natural disaster that we might have referred to in ordinary English.

Speaking of words: Maybe it is just among the people I work with, but it seems like the expression “a couple three” has entirely supplanted “a few.” Please point it out to me should that abomination ever seep into my speech.

Awkward language: A news headline referred to homeless men being found “stabbed with notes.” I have, admittedly, gotten paper cuts from time to time, but I suspect that they were probably stabbed with more conventional sharp objects and notes were left with their bodies.

Fun with language: An advertisement from the DC Jewish Community Center for a Tu B’Av event referred to this Jewish celebration of love as “Valenstein.”

Unintentional fun with language: One of my colleagues had a slip of the tongue on the way out of the office last night and referred to the “HIV lane” on the highway. My immediate thought was that must be the truck lane on the Ukimwi Road. (“Ukimwi” is a Swahili word for AIDS. The reference is to the contribution of improved roads, along with the tendency of truckers to frequent prostitutes, in the spread of the disease in Africa in the 1980’s.)

Things I have yet to write about: I still need to write up the NPL con. I also need to do a big entertainment wrap-up as I saw six shows at the Capital Fringe, two other shows, and two movies. I’ve been planning for a while to write about dating. And I am going away this weekend so will have that to write about.

1) I should have mentioned that I also went to see the exhibit of Madeline Albright's pins in the Smithsonian Castle on Sunday, since it was closing that day. The story is that she used her choice of jewelry to send subtle (or not so subtle) messages to people she was meeting with. As someone who wears pins a lot, I was interested in seeing where my taste and hers overlapped. I generally like funkier, less traditional ones than she does.

2) My district has a particularly nasty Congressional race this time out. What makes it especially annoying is that we used to be represented by Tom Davis, a moderate Republican, who retired because he felt increasingly unwelcome within the Virginia Republican party. Gerry Connolly (a Democrat) won the office two years ago. As far as I can tell, he's done okay with it. I don't particularly like the man (and, yes, I've met him since he came down to my polling place the last couple of elections) but will vote for him given what an extreme right wingnut is running against him. (Where does the Virginia republican party get these people? We have an attorney general who wasted money redesigning award medals to cover up the breast of the goddess depicted on the state seal. And Keith Fimian, the candidate in question, who wants to ban not only abortion but contraception. Not that he has a chance in hell of that, but it reflects an attitude.)

But what bothers me is the campaign literature I've gotten. The Democratic Party of Virginia has sent me at least one and often two or three flyers a day - all of them with Keith Fimian's name and a summary of some of his more repellant positions on them. For a change of pace, they sometimes send out some about his various failed business enterprises. The kicker is that none of this campaign literature has Gerry Connolly's name on it!
If you know your candidate is so poorly liked that you feel you can't mention him, perhaps you should have looked for someone else to run?

3) One of my pet language peeves surfaced again yesterday. "To flush something out" comes from a hunting term and has to do with using the dogs to get the birds to fly up so you can shoot them. That is, you are creating a stimulus that gets that something out of hiding. If what you want to do is fill in the blanks in an outline, you want to flesh thing out.

I spent much of the week in Los Angeles at the annual Space Systems Risk Management Symposium. Because of how my company does travel booking, I had to do some manipulation to get reasonable flights, which means I ended up flying out Tuesday morning.

I went to take out the trash on my way out - and saw a bunch of junk spread on the floor of the trash room. It took a second for me to realize that part of that junk was a sleeping person. I threw my trash in the chute and left a message on the management office's answering machine. Normally, I'd have called the police, but I was running late and didn't want to risk missing my flight.

The flight out was fine (especially as I was upgraded) but there were strong headwinds so we got in about 45 minutes late. I made it to the afternoon tutorial I was signed up for on time, but it also strikes me that travel planning would be a really good example to use to explain probabilistic risk analysis and decision theory to people. We have a good idea of the on-time percentages for flights. And I'd contend we can come up with a reasonable idea of the consequences of various degrees of lateness, depending on what one's reason for travel is. The sort of people I deal with tend to travel a lot, so this is an analogy they should be able to relate to.

Anyway, the tutorial was about 45 minutes of useful material, buried in 4 hours of material. It was not well-structured and I was sure that it was going to be completely valueless, but the last section redeemed things. It reminded me of the importance of including examples all throughout a presentation, instead of starting with hours of theory.

The rest of the conference was somewhat mixed. My goal at conferences is to find a few gems a day, so it was a success in that respect. It also meant that I've reached my mandatory continuous learning hours for the year, which is also useful. However, I continued to be irritated by people who had poor microphone skills (hint: if you plan to walk around during your presentation, use the wireless lapel mike, instead of just wandering aimlessly away from the podium) and distressed by the abuse of apostrophes on briefing charts. When I rule the world, there will be retraining camps for people who use apostrophes for plurals and who have not learned that "its" is the correct possessive. I had time for a couple of other meetings (brainstorming with one person about an issue that I think will be important in the future and trying to do some replanning with one of my henchmen on the project he's working on).

The timing of the trip worked out nicely as this month started on a Thursday, so the first Wednesday was followed by the second Thursday. That meant I could go to Long Beach Storytellers on Wednesday night and Community Storytellers on Thursday night. Both were very enjoyable and I saw several people I haven't seen in ages. I told the new story I've been working on at Long Beach and concluded that Gafni the Gonif works as a name, but the ending isn't there yet. A particular highlight of last night at Community Storytellers was hearing Leonard sing his Passover song ("Sweet Whitefish and Pike" to the tune of "Sweet Betsy from Pike"), followed by his playing a new waltz with accompaniment by Dan on bass.

I flew back way too early this morning. I did get upgraded again, so I'm 2 for 2 as far as United's Unlimited Domestic Upgrades policy goes. Now I am home and rushing around to do things before flying to Boston tomorrow morning. I am also trying to decide whether I have enough energy to go over to the Library of Congress for tonight's Music and the Brain lecture. Sleep? What's that?

There are past tense verbs in the English language. Or, at least, there were. Some of them were used as adjectives. (I am sure there must be a grammatical term for this, but I can't think of it, nor have I found any helpful website on the subject.)

Hence, there used to be things like "whipped cream" and "iced tea." Apparently, this is a rather old-fashioned concept since I keep seeing menus offering things like "old-fashion ice tea."

This is sloppy English and will be cause for public humiliation when I rule the world.

South African English: I have probably mentioned my fascination with variant English vocabularies here before and none is quite so fascinating as South African English. My favorite term is "robot" (meaning a traffic light) since I was so completely baffled by a set of directions in Pretoria which told me to turn at the robot. Most other oddities are Afrikaans words that have crept into English, e.g. "braai" (meaning "barbecue" and a word you can't go more than about 48 hours in South Africa without hearing).

I'm in the middle of reading one of Arthur Goldstuck's books on South African urban legends and ran across two terms which were new to me. The first was "smalls," apparently to refer to classified ads. The other reference was to a commercial being "flighted" on television. Obviously, that means "aired," but it strikes me as a strange usage and possibly a translation back from Afrikaans.

Printing Error of the Week: Ryan Zimmerman (and, possibly other Nationals players) were seen at a game a few days ago wearing jerseys that read "Natinals" on the front. The company that makes the jerseys apologized. I suppose it wouldn't occur to a baseball player to proofread his uniform.

Movies: I saw Duplicity over the weekend. I liked it, though I thought a few plot points were improbable at best. I was particularly pleased with a love scene in which one gets to see that Clive Owens has chest hair. Yes, I am shallow.

Another Baseball Item: Every Major League Baseball team but one is selling single game tickets for their entire season by now. That one is the New York Mets. I'd really like to go up and see their new ballpark this summer, so I wish they would at least tell me when tickets will be on sale.

Airfare: As I may have mentioned, I bought a ticket to Lima for under $250 for later this year. Today, I bought a ticket for a quick excursion to Fort Lauderdale in June. That cost just about $200. Don't even try to figure out the logic. (And, no, it would not have been cheaper to fly into Miami. In fact, the fares to Miami were all around $350.)

I do still intend to write about the Mendelssohn bicentennial event (which was also part of the "Music and the Brain" series), but I want to have an early night, so it will have to wait. In the meantime, here's a linguistic tidbit from my work world.

At a meeting today my (government) boss said, "X said we're not going to peanut butter it." Meaning that the money would not be spread evenly over a bunch of programs.

I have no idea why peanut butter is assumed to spread more evenly than anything else. However, I was amused when a few minutes later (still on the same subject), he said, "X doesn't want to salami slice it."

I had never quite realized the equivalence of peanut butter and salami before.