fauxklore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

I looked at previous introduction posts I did for Holidailies and decided they were not particularly interesting. So you’re just going to get what I would normally be writing about and you can figure me out from there.


I have a list of things to do that is longer than your average CVS receipt. About the only productive things I did today were finishing reading the Sunday Washington Post and signing a contract for a storytelling performance. The latter involved a certain amount of wrestling with technology, as I can’t figure out how to get the scanner feature of my multi-function printer to work my Mac. In the end, it didn't matter because I did succeed in figuring out how to sign it electronically. (The major issue there was “writing” in a reasonably straight line on the trackpad.) I could have stuck a paper copy in the mail, but this was, obviously, faster.

Speaking of storytelling, I belong to a discussion group for the Grimm Fairy Tales. It was quite appropriate that the topic for a meeting shortly after Thanksgiving was “Clever Gretel,” which involves a cook and two chickens. That’s actually a story I tell, since it fits in two of my themed folktale shows - one on Fortune, Fools, and Fowl and one on Wise Women and Gutsy Girls. Interestingly, at least three people knew the story primarily from a Danny Kaye recording I had not been familiar with.

Speaking of food, I went out to dinner last night with a couple of friends at Mason Social in Alexandria. The mahi mahi sandwich I got was okay, but nothing really special. I had a drink called an Aviation, which was interesting. It had gin, creme de violate, maraschino liqueur, and lemon. Supposedly this is an old classic that has been revived with the past few years, but it was the first I ever heard of it. By the way I had good metro karma getting to Alexandria but not so much getting home, when I had a 20 minute wait at Rosslyn for the Orange Line.


I had another zoom presentation early this evening which, alas, was rather dull. (It was MIT related and had to do with an Equitable Resiliency Framework. There was a somewhat interesting example about the Seaport District in Boston, but, overall, I didn’t find the presentation exciting. I was happy when it finished and I could go play Codenames with my friends.

Back in October, fansee asked me (in response to my retirement) how I came to be a satellite systems engineer and, more specifically, about my experiences as a woman in that field. I have plenty of other catching up to do, but I’m in the mood to write about this.


As far back as I can remember, I was interested in science. As a child in the 1960’s, I had a particular interest in space. The first book I remember, from about age 5, was You Will Go to the Moon. Later on, I recall writing to NASA and getting pictures of spacecraft and planets. The first news story I remember was John Glenn orbiting the earth, And the moon landing was one of the major events of my childhood.


But, when I asked if girls could become astronauts, my mother said, “no, but maybe when you’re old enough...” For a while, after reading a biography of Maria Mitchell (part of a series my elementary school library had on childhoods of famous Americans), I thought of becoming an astronomer. Or, at least, going to Vasaar College, like she had. But then I read about Marie Curie in the back of a Classics Comics (possibly one about the story of the atom) and decided I wanted to be a chemist. I did go through other potential careers throughout elementary school and junior high, ranging from being an actress to becoming the first woman to win the Indianapolis 500. But I pretty much stuck to chemistry as the plan. For a while, I specifically wanted to be an analytical chemist for the police department, like Barry Allen (the alter ego of The Flash), which would also solve the problem of how I would get super powers without having been born on Krypton or being an Amazon princess. By high school, I was primarily interested in biochemistry and, specifically, neurochemistry.


That pretty much continued to be the plan. I did well in chemistry class (and other science classes). I also went to two National Science Foundation programs. The Columbia University Science Honors Program was held on Saturdays and I spent 3 years taking the train into the city (and the subway uptown) for it. I took a wide range of classes, not just biochemistry related. I remember one about statistics for psychology, one on elementary particle physics, and a biochemistry class where we extracted DNA - something far more exciting in 1975 than it would be now. There were also afternoon lectures a few times each semester, with the most memorable of those having to do with topology. There were also social benefits, including meeting my first real boyfriend. When there weren’t afternoon lectures, he and I hung out in the city and perpetrated public displays of affection in Central Park. But that’s a whole other story. (Before I met him, I sometimes went to the headquarters of the socialist Zionist group that ran a summer camp I’d gone to for a couple of summers and spent the afternoon handing out leaflets on the street.)


The other NSF program was the Program in Biochemistry (PIB), the summer after my junior year of high school. It was held at the Loomis-Chaffee School in Connecticut and was a mixture of lectures and research projects in small groups. I had actually spent the previous summer taking a summer school class (at my high school) on biochemistry research, which I remember as being almost entirely focused on individual projects, with a few field trips thrown in. I did a project in which I injected the nerves of clams (which are big red threads) with neurotransmitters. I don’t remember what I was trying to prove. As for the field trips. we did one or two to various institutions within a couple of hours of our school. I know we went at least once to Waldemar, which was a medical research facility that had its own summer program for high school students. And I know we went to the Coney Island Aquarium, but I don’t remember if that was an official event.


Anyway, PIB was a fun and intense summer. We took pride in sleep deprivation and people signed up for one hour naps on the sofa in the lounge, for example. We learned how to “sacrifice” mice and grind up their livers in a blender and an unlucky member of my team got a taste when mouth pipetting some of the resulting liquid. We did have papers to write and the various instructors (who were upperclassmen at prestigious universities; the head of my team was a junior at Harvard, if I recall correctly) graded them according to their own systems. There was one instructor who favored the use of classical compositions as grades. To this day, I have no idea whether “Glinka’s Summer Night in Madrid” was or was not a good grade. We also had various extracurricular trips. I know I went to concerts at Tanglewood a few times. There were tours of various colleges. And there was a trip to New York to see Equus on Broadway.


So, when I was applying to colleges, I was still planning to be a chemistry major. But my brother was busily setting a Michigan State record for changing majors and someone I knew from high school was rethinking his plan to major in math at Yale. I chose MIT over Yale largely because I figured that, if I did change my mind about my major, I would still want to do something scientific.


Freshman year included 5.41, which was an Intro to Organic Chemistry class. I was reasonably well prepared and went on the next semester to the next class, 5.42. (I was also taking a lab class.) I discovered that, while I could think of lots of reactions that could happen, I often had no idea which one would happen. More significantly, I was not enjoying either of those two classes. At the same time, I read about some work that people in the mechanical engineering department were doing on prosthetics that used the body’s nervous system. That sounded fascinating and I looked further at ME as a major. (Or, in MIT lingo, Course 2.) The biggest advantage is that it would give me a broad engineering background, meaning I didn’t really have to make up my mind. There was a program (2A) that let you design your own major within the ME department and I used that to design what was, essentially, a biomedical engineering major.


One of the first classes I took was 2.02, Introduction to System Dynamics. This was focused on modeling and it just clicked with my desire to view the world as simple. There were a few times that I rushed back to my dorm room after class to work on a problem set right away to see if it all made as much sense as I thought it did. (I assure you that was not normal behavior for me.) Anyway, people said that if I liked that class, I should take 2.14, which was Introduction to Control Systems. I did and it continued to click with me. So I kept taking classes in system dynamics and controls and enjoying them. And I pursued that into grad school (at UC Berkeley).


While I was in grad school, I got a fellowship from NASA, which came about mostly because one of my professors knew somebody and helped me write the application. When I was nearing completing my doctorate and was job hunting, I did look at things in various industries, but most of the interesting controls issues were in the aerospace industry. I went to work at The Aerospace Corporation (aka The Circle-A Ranch) largely because it offered the opportunity to work across a wide range of systems. And that worked out we’ll for me, obviously, since I stayed there (in various jobs) for 35 years.



This has been fairly long and I haven’t gotten to writing about the specific issue of being a woman in the field. The short version is that I certainly had to deal with individual assholes, but I was always able to find support. As an undergrad at MIT, I chose to live in an all-women’s dorm, partly to have other women to vent to. Most of that was in the form of mircroaggressions, e.g. the instructor who headed a research project I worked on who kept a ruler with Playboy pictures on his desk or another professor who would make comments like “those co-eds are always turning in things late.” The most egregious example was a professor who had started every lecture for years by addressing the class as “:Gentlemen.” I was the only girl in the class and he’d then start with “Gentlemen,…and Miss Nadel.” On the plus side, he definitely knew who I was and I did well in his class. (I am fairly sure he was entirely unconscious of why this was annoying.) I should also mention that my undergrad advisor was a woman.


In grad school, I remember a reception where our department head proudly announced that he had doubled the number of women on the department faculty. They’d hired one person. (They did hire a couple more while I was still there.) But there were a couple of other women working on Ph.D.s and, even though we were in different subfields, we often had coffee together.


Job hunting was another story. A few places made a point of having me talk with a token woman in their group. More than one interviewer expressed surprise at seeing a female job candidate. One organization even sent me a thank you letter addressed to “Mr. Nadel” after my interview.


Circle-A was pretty good from that standpoint. Yes, I often found myself counting the number of women in the room at meetings (which included government and contractor employees, too), but I can think of only a handful of inappropriate comments. I do know of one woman whose (female) boss told her she should wear makeup. And I’ve heard of a few incidents of sexual harassment. On the plus side, we did have an African-American woman as our CEO for several years.


Overall, I had a career that suited me well.

Continuing the catch-up, May finished on another busy note.

I went to a Story Swap the last Thursday of May. The next day (i.e. the last Friday) I went to a Profs and Pints lecture about cats in folklore, which was pretty entertaining, though a bit Eurocentric. (There was some material about Japan, but I don’t recall anything about Latin America or Africa. However, I was tired, and it is always possible I just zoned out.)

The weekend was occupied with my (virtual) 40th college reunion. Actually, I dialed into the graduation ceremonies on Friday, which was surprisingly moving,, with an especially good speech by Admiral McRaven. Saturday was Tech Day, with talks about current research and a theme of Geniuses and Game Changers. The most interesting talk was about food safety by Deborah Blum. She talked about some of the horrible history of food adulteration, e.g. “preserved milk,” which had formaldehyde added to it. Other talks had to do with nanoparticles, AI, and brain complexity. After that were several overlapping sessions and I chose one on experiential learning (including undergraduate research) in the time of COVID-19. I was, frankly, too tired at that point to really listen well. There really needed to be breaks between sessions to get up and move around, but the Q&As tended to un all the way to the end of the time slot and there was barely time for a bio break,

My class didn’t participate much in the Tech Challenge games. I usually enter a lot of haikus into the poetry competition, but only managed 3 this time:

My world’s moved on-line
Instead of face to face life,
I’m a box on zoom.


COVID-19 has
upended all our lives. Mask
wearing’s now routine.


Zoom's gallery view?
Or is it the opening
to Hollywood Squares?


That last one did get read out when they were reviewing results, which is about all one can really hope for in this sort of thing.


Later in the day, my class had a get-together, which featured a couple of space-related talks. One of my classmates was an astronaut and was quite entertaining. The other talk was about TESS, a mission to search for exoplanets. I’ve heard several talks before on that subject, so it wasn’t as interesting. We had a brief around-the-room catch-up for everyone after the talk, which was nice. It was a good event, but I really would have liked more social time.

The annual meeting of the alumna group (i.e. women graduates) was on Sunday. Aside from the business meting part, there was a keynote speaker, who talked about COVID-19 vaccine development. There were also break-out sessions. I went to one that had a topic about self-care, which proved to be rather too new age woo-woo for my tastes. Fortunately, the break-out sessions were short, and we reconvened for a closing ceremony, I should also mention that my freshman year roommate was on the call, but I didn’t talk with her. Which is kind of like our actual experience sharing a room. Let’s just say, we were remarkably incompatible roommates, but we got along okay by ignoring one another.

Dinner in Sweden: The MIT Club of Washington had its annual meeting at the House of Sweden last night. The buffet dinner had reasonable variety and everything was quite tasty. The menu included roasted vegetable grain salad, potato salad with herbs, green salad, turkey meatballs with lingonberry sauce, salmon with cucumber and tartar sauce, assorted breads, and cake with berries. There was also an open bar, though I limited myself to one glass of sauvignon blanc.

Susan Hockfield (former president of MIT) was the keynote speaker and discussed her new book, The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution. She gave examples of how biology is influencing development of technology for addressing several problems, including medicine (specifically cancer detection using nanoparticles), energy (virus-built batteries), and protein-based water purification. I’ve heard her speak a few times before and she is always informative and engaging.

We also got to go up to the roof deck of the embassy afterwards, which has amazing views over the Potomac. All in all, it was quite a lovely evening. There are times when I think about how nice a life I have and this was definitely one of those.

Sources of Stress: To make sure the evil eye doesn’t retaliate for my smugness about a good life, I just spent over an hour wrestling with our on-line tool for doing our end of week reports. And the only person who can help anyone with it is out today.

Also, a four game series between my Red Sox and the Source of All Evil in the Universe is starting tonight. In accordance with the Grand Unified Theory of Politics, Economics, and the American League East, the world is in considerable danger.

Celebrity Death Watch: Elder Roma Wilson was a gospel musician. Ntozake Shange was a poet and playwright, best known for For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf. Bernard Bragg co-founded the National Theatre of the Deaf. Whitey Bulger was a gangster. Roy Hargrove was a jazz trumpeter. Raymond Chow was a film producer in Hong Kong, credited with discovering Bruce Lee. Donna Axum was Miss America 1964. Francis Lai wrote the score for the film A Man and a Woman. Evelyn Y. Davis was an activist shareholder and corporate gadfly, who at least once made the list of 25 Most Annoying Washingtonians. Micheal O Suilleabhain was an Irish composer and musician. Wallace Triplett was the first African-American to play in the NFL.

Willie McCovey was a baseball great, primarily playing first base for the San Francisco Giants. He holds the National League record for grand slam home runs. There’s an inlet outside of Whatever Telephone Company It is Named For Today Ball Park in San Francisco that is known as McCovey Cove.

Little Shop of Horrors: Before going away, I saw Little Shop of Horrors at The Kennedy Center. This was part of their Broadway Center Stage series, which are concert versions, i.e. minimally staged, with actors sometimes referring to scripts. The most notable part of the staging was that, instead of using puppets for Audrey II, the person playing the plant wore a suit and gloves to represent it. That worked better than I might have expected, though I still prefer the puppetry. Anyway, it remains a fun show, with an enjoyable score. The performances were also quite good, with Megan Hilty doing an excellent job as Audrey, very much akin to Ellen Greene’s intonations. Josh Radnor was also good as Seymour. Lee Wilkof, who played Mr. Mushnik, was the original Seymour off-Broadway. And Michael James Leslie embodied Audrey II (the plant). Overall, it worth the late weeknight.

NYC Weekend – Part 1: Nancy Drewinsky and the Search for the Missing Letter I had a trip to New York already planned when I realized that I could just go up earlier on Friday and see this Fringe show, written and performed by my friend, Robin Bady. Robin is an excellent storyteller and this piece has to do with how the McCarthy era affected her family. She was too young to be really aware of what was happening as her father, an engineer, was suspected of being a communist, along with several of his colleagues. The answer is complex and her attempts to find out the story were met with reluctance to talk about what happened. It was an interesting story and well-told, though still somewhat of a work in progress. I hope to see how Robin develops it further as time goes on.

NYC Weekend – Part 2: Museum Going Saturday was a dreary day – cold, with heavy rain. Fortunately, New York has plenty of museums to spend such days in. I started with the Guggenheim on the grounds that I had never been there. The architecture is as much a draw as the artwork. The main exhibit was of works by a Swedish artist named Hilma af Klint. The most interesting of her work was from a series called Paintings for the Temple, which was based on her involvement in mystical philosophies like Theosophy, leading her to a mixture of abstract symbols and characters. They reminded me of the magical symbols I used to draw on the corners of my papers in school during a flirtation with witchcraft in my early teen years.

There was also an exhibition from the Thannhauser Collection, which included Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and other art, including several pieces by Picasso. Overall, I enjoyed the museum, but it was crowded and the admission fee is on the high side.

I walked a few blocks north to the Jewish Museum, which is free on Saturdays. I started with their permanent collection, which had several interesting pieces. I was particularly taken by a portrait of an Ethiopian Jew by Kehinde Wiley and by a sculpture called Venus Pareve by Hannah Wilke. I should also note that I was impressed with how much art by women was part of the collection. I also really liked an exhibit of excerpts from television shows having to do with psychotherapy.

But the main reason I had gone to the museum was to look at a temporary exhibit of work by Marc Chagall and other artists active in Vitebsk in the period just after the Russian revolution. Having been in Vitebsk in early September, I felt almost obliged to see this. And, of course, Chagall has long been one of my favorite artists. The exhibit also included works by Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky and others. There was a good mix of works and I thought the exhibit (which runs through early January) was well worth seeing.

By the way, I was just leaving there to meet a friend for coffee when I heard about the Pittsburgh massacre. I will write about that and other political matters separately.

NYC Weekend – Part 3: They Might Be Giants The actual reason for the trip to NYC had been to see They Might Be Giants at Terminal 5, a cavernous night club in the extreme western part of midtown, a land populated largely by auto dealerships. I think of them mostly as a novelty act, due to songs like Particle Man and Istanbul and Why Does the Sun Shine? All of those were part of the show. But there was a lot of other material, not all of it funny, and much of it too loud for me. I liked the second set better than the first, but I am really too old to go to concerts that don’t start until 9 at night. Also, I was completely earwormed by The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

NYC Weekend – Part 4: Restaurant Going Friday night a bunch of us had dinner after the show at Cowgirl in the West Village. I got Frito pie, which amused Robin, who was unfamiliar with this wonderful dish of chili (vegetarian in my case, though they also have beef) with cheese and sour cream and the like served over an actual bag of Fritos. I also had a very good IPA, but I don’t remember what it was and they don’t have their drink menu on-line. If you want Tex-mex food in Manhattan, this would fill the bill, but it was on the noisy side.


Saturday night’s dinner before the concert was at Inti, a Peruvian restaurant on 10th Avenue. I got a very nice grilled chicken dish, with garlicky vegetables. Surprisingly reasonable prices for mid-town Manhattan, too. I’d eat there again.

Before leaving on Sunday, I had brunch with friends at Pete’s Tavern in the Gramercy Park area This is one of several places that claims to be the oldest restaurant in New York. The fried chicken sandwich was very tasty. Overall, everyone seemed happy with their food and drinks (I went for Irish coffee) and the conversation was lively and entertaining.

Business Trip: I got home about 9 at night, which meant rushing around to unpack and pack for a business trip to Layton, Utah. Aside from being exhausted and having a fairly intense work schedule, there’s not really anything to say about that. I was originally supposed to come back Thursday night, but the trip got extended because our team had to outbrief in the late afternoon. I spent most of Saturday in a state of suspended animation.

WBRS Reception: I did drag myself out of the house on Sunday, first to go grocery shopping and later to go to a William Barton Rogers Society reception (related to giving to MIT) at the Spy Museum. There were heavy hors oeuvres (particularly good spicy tuna cones, as well as veggie tacos served in lime halves), along with lots of intelligent conversation. The main feature was a talk by Eric Alm, co-director of the Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics. His main point was that indigenous populations tend to have a more diverse microbiome population than people in the more developed world. He also had some interesting data on how quickly one’s microbiome can change in response to travel or illness. Fortunately, he didn’t mention any changes in response to dessert.


Things Still to Write About: Voting. Condo association annual meeting. How the Virginia Department of Transportation is going to screw us over. How Jeff Bezos is going to screw us over. Possibly a locked entry re: work.

Celebrity Death Watch: Nini Theilade was a ballerina. Morgan Tsvangirai was the leader of the political opposition in Zimbabwe. Gunter Blobel won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Billy Graham was an evangelist. Emma Chambers was a British actress. Sridevi was a Bollywood superstar. Nanette Fabray was an actress and singer and probably best known for her work with Sid Caesar. Shmuel Auerbach was an influential Israeli rabbi. Barbara Alston sang "Da Doo Ron Ron." Eido Shimano was a controversial Buddhist leader, who was forced to resign from his role in the Zen Studies Society after a sex scandal.

Cynthia Heimel wrote humor pieces for a wide range o publications. Her book, Sex Tips for Girls was a big influence on me

Prince Henrik was the Prince Consort of Denmark. He’s only significant because he scored me 20 ghoul pool points due to a quick trade. Since the rules this year let you reuse somebody after a trade, it was an easy way to get on the board. Instead of putting I.M. Pei back on the top of my list, I reloaded with Stirling Moss on the grounds that his retirement from public life probably means he is down to mere weeks. I have been known to be wrong about this sort of thing, however.

About Arming Teachers: I’ve already written my opinions about gun control and the latest massacre hasn’t changed them. I do want to say, however, that the idea of arming teachers as a countermeasure is a terrible one. If there is a school shooting, police who respond will have no way of identifying teachers and are likely to shoot anybody who is brandishing a weapon.

About Punishment and Civil Disobedience: I also have a quick comment about students getting suspended for participating in protests. I believe they should be punished as long as the punishment is exactly the same as for any equivalent action, e.g. other unexcused absences. Part of civil disobedience is being willing to accept those punishments to bring attention to the issues being protested. Compare to Gandhi serving jail time in South Africa for refusing racially-based registration.

Visiting Escribitionist: I met lillibet at Belga Cafe for cocktails and conversation when she was in town. I tried a cocktail called Yuzu Making Me Crazy which consisted of Untitled No. 2 Gin, balsamic, yuzu, beet syrup, and plum bitters. It was lovely, both in taste and appearance. The conversation was equally lovely, covering people and places and ideas.

Month of Letters: I have failed this year, though I have a couple of days left to write to people. I thought I could catch up and just never managed to. Which is about where I am on housework, too.

Election Security: Thursday night, I went to an MIT Club meeting on election security. There was good conversation beforehand. The talk itself was also interesting, covering mathematical techniques for ensuring accuracy of voting. But I do wish they did these things at a better location than Maggiano’s, which I think serves up vast amounts of mediocre food and overpriced mediocre drinks.

Storytelling: I did Saturday night’s Better Said Than Done show, which had a theme involving love, marriage, and commitment. My story had to do with DLL, a MUD I played on in the 1993 time frame and on which my character and another character had a rather unusual wedding. There was a wide mix of stories and a responsive, albeit smallish, audience. Overall, it was a fun evening.

Celebrity Death Watch: Vladimir Voevodsky was a mathematician. Tom Alter was in over 300 Bollywood films. Ralphie May was a comedian. Joseph Schmitt designed spacesuits for the earliest astronauts. Nora Johnson wrote The World of Henry Orient. Armando Calderon Sol was the first president of El Salvador after their civil war. Edna Dummerth played for the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. Connie Hawkins was a basketball player, whose career included the Harlem Globetrotters and the Phoenix Suns, among others. Herve Leroux was a fashion designer.

Embassy of Romania: Thursday night I went to a dinner at the Embassy of Romania, which was cosponsored by the MIT Club of Washington and the Harvard Club. You can tell events organized by the latter because they tend to be less organized. The ambassador talked about the history of Romania and was reasonably interesting, but the sound system was terrible. The buffet was quite good – a few types of dips, rice, vegetables, chicken, stuffed cabbage, mamaliga (i.e. polenta), and tiramisu and some sort of strudel-like things for dessert. It was a nice enough event, but I prefer there being tables to sit at when eating.

United Catering Operations: On Friday evening, I flew to Denver to go to a Frequent Flyer Giving event involving a tour of United Catering Operations. My flight out to Denver got delayed by a mechanical problem, so I didn’t get in until 11 at night and it took another half hour to get to my hotel. Fortunately,, the tour was worth it. We had to wear lab coats (personalized with our names, so we got to keep them) and hair nets. We went through various coolers and food preparation areas. United also caters for Frontier Airlines, British Air, Icelandair, as well as preparing food for the deli department at King Sooper and for the Air Force Academy. We had activities at some stations. For example, I put bread out on a conveyor belt for sandwich making for King Sooper and sliced cucumbers for a salad in the test kitchen. There were also trivia questions along the way, with chocolate coins as prizes. At the end, we got a tasty lunch (including rare bison on crostini, a salad with pears and acai and pomegranate dressing, a very tasty steak with asparagus, and triple mousse cake for dessert). There was also a charity auction, but I am trying to downsize. They gave everyone swag bags with a small Polaris pillow (which they discontinued because buttoning the pillowcase was too slow a process) and a couple of amenity kits. Then it was back to the airport and my flight home, which got in a half hour early. Overall, a fun but exhausting trip.

The Mistress Cycle: On Sunday afternoon, I went to see this show at Creative Cauldron. It’s more of a song cycle than a conventional musical, since there is a very minimal book. The piece tells the stories of five women, at different times and places in history. Ching (a composite character) was a 14-year old concubine in 12th-century China. Diane de Poitiers was the mistress of King Henri II in 16th-century France. Lulu White was forced into sex work at the age of 13 but went on to become a successful madam and the richest woman in New Orleans at the end of the 19th century. Anais Nin was the 20th century French writer of erotica. And Tess Walker was a composite of a modern 30-something woman.

I have some qualms about treating all of those characters as mistresses. I’d argue that there is a difference between the choices that some of the women (notably Anais Nin) made and being sold as a concubine. I also wish that the music had been more varied. Lulu White did get bluesy numbers (perfect for the vocal talents of Iyona Blake, who played that role) and Ching’s solos (especially "One in a Line") had a distinctive voice (and were well-performed by Justine Icy Moral), but the rest of the songs were a bit monotonous. That’s a pity since the performers were all quite good. Erica Clare was very expressive as Tess, so I wish she had had more interesting songs to sing. I thought the show was provocative and worth seeing, but the score didn’t excite me.

MIT School of Engineering Reception: Finally, Sunday night was a reception at the Willard for the MIT School of Engineering, in honor of selectees to the National Academy of Engineering. The food was pretty good (especially the desserts) and the conversation was lively and intelligent. The main talk had to do with increasing diversity in STEM. Overall, it was a pleasant evening out.

Celebrity Death Watch: Chuck Barris was a TV producer, responsible for The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show. Dallas Green played for several baseball teams (mostly the Phillies) and managed a few, including some success with the Phillies and remarkable lack thereof with the Mets. Lola Albright was an actress, best known for her role in the TV show, Peter Gunn. Pete Shotton played the washboard, but is better known for his friendship with John Lennon and for founding the Fatty Arbuckle’s chain of diners in England. Sir Cuthbert Sebastian was the Governor-General of St. Kitts and Nevis, but I wouldn’t have heard of him were it not for a couple of my ghoul pool rivals having him on their lists. (My picks are thriving, alas.) David Storey was, appropriately, a writer, and won the Booker Prize for his 1976 novel, Saville. Bernie Wrightson drew horror comics and is best known as the creator of Swamp Thing. Ahmed Kathrada was an anti-apartheid activist. Darlene Cates played the mother in the movie What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. William Powell wrote The Anarchist Cookbook, though he later tried to have it removed from circulation. Roland Schmitt was an executive at GE and president of RPI. Gilbert Baker created the rainbow flag as a symbol of gay activism. Richard Bolles wrote What Color is Your Parachute?, a frequently recommended book on job-hunting, though I never found it particularly useful. Lonnie Brooks was a blues singer. Gary Austin created the improv theatre troupe, The Groundlings. Yevgeny Yevtushenko was a Russian poet, best known for his work Babi Yar, which was set to music by Dmitri Shostakovich.

Quarterly Goals: I have been working on various projects, but haven’t finished any. I have not been reading things from the goals on my life list, alas. I treated myself to a pedicure, perfume, and a couple of extravagant meals out. And I have gotten in touch with the daughter-in-law of a cousin twice removed (in Israel) and a couple of the descendants of my great-grandfather’s brother.

MIT Reception: Monday night was the reception for MIT student in their policy internship program. It is always good to corrupt young minds, er, try to persuade students to: a) get involved with space policy and b) take advantage of all the non-work things to do in the D.C. area. Overall, it was a pleasant evening of decent food (heavy hors d’oeuvres) and intelligent conversation.

Loren Niemi House Concert: Storyteller Loren Niemi did a house concert in an apartment in Adams Morgan on Tuesday night. It was a nice intimate setting and he is always interesting to listen to. I particularly liked his story about re-encountering a woman he once knew under unexpected circumstances, which evoked a lot of memories for me about how life circumstances change. He also told an excellent ghost story.

Book Club: Wednesday night was book club. It was interesting because the person leading the discussion really disliked the book (Someone Will Be With You Shortly by Lisa Kogan, which is not really a typical book club type of book). I didn’t think it was a brilliant book, but it was typical women’s magazine humor and an entertaining enough read. The other news is that the person in the group who has annoyed me (because of not so hidden racism) is gone. I knew she was moving but it has happened a bit faster than I expected. I’m sure somebody else will grate on me – and that I irritate some people, too, but I’m still pleased.

Rasika: This modern Indian restaurant is generally considered one of the best restaurants in D.C. and, therefore, it is next to impossible to get a reservation there. A friend had managed to get a reservation for Friday night, with the catch being that it was on the decidedly early side. Alas, she got ill and couldn’t make it, but I decided it was worth taking advantage of the opportunity, even alone. The famous dish there is palak chaat, which is crispy spinach with yogurt and date and tamarind chutney. It is amazingly good and lived up to its reputation. That was followed by lamb achari, which was decently spicy and very tender, but felt a bit heavy. It came with rice and a mint paratha, which was good, but the flavor of the mint was kind of drowned out by the spices of the lamb. I also had a champagne cocktail, which was okay, but did not have as much ginger flavor as the menu had led me to believe. For dessert, there was excellent gulab jamun with amazing cardamom ice cream. Overall, it was a good meal, though I would order a different main course if I went again.

Out of This World: I had never actually been to the Ringling Brothers / Barnum & Bailey Circus and, this being their final tour, suggested this to the group of friends for whom I am Chief Entertainment Officer. So Friday night (after Rasika) found me with a couple of friends at the Verizon Center for the circus. The show is space-themed, which was a nice plus. There were impressive aerialists and superb horseback riding, but my favorite act was the guys riding motorbikes in a metal orb, with seven of them at one time. The lowlights were the clowns, who were mostly at the far end of the arena, so I couldn’t see what they were doing, and the big cats, who just looked too unhappy. I found myself wondering what has to go wrong in somebody’s life for them to think that a career yelling at lions and tigers is a good life choice. (Yes, I do know most circus performers are born to the life. Still…) I’m glad I went, but, overall, I’m not really sad that it’s ending.

Midwestern Gothic: This is a new musical at Signature Theatre. The book is by Royce Vavrek, who I was unfamiliar with, and Josh Schmidt, who wrote Adding Machine, a show I didn’t know quite what to make of. And that was more or less my reaction to this show. The plot centers around a sociopathic teenage girl named Stina, ably played by Morgan Keene. She sets up her friend to be St. Sebastian, tying him to a tree and shooting him with an arrow. She flirts with her creepy stepfather, Red, who takes semi-pornographic photos of her. Her mother is mostly absent, running a bar. Red picks up a woman, who Stina kills. So she and Red run off to an old, condemned house, where there is more blood shed. The music is a mixed bag, some of it operatic and some of it livelier. Overall, the show just didn’t work for me – and I like dark humor. I think the problem is that the likeable characters are nothing more than victims. Oh, well, it’s always worth seeing something new.

Knitting Group: And Sunday was knitting group. I am finally past the part of an afghan square that I'd had to tink because I'd forgotten the border on the sides.

Whew! What a hectic week. (And things had been busy at work, too, with a couple of big meetings to deal with.)