fauxklore | Entries tagged with museum

Sorry for the long delay in writing this. I was tied up with a few things, including a volunteer task for an upcoming event, working on a new story for an upcoming show, and a couple of decluttering rabbit holes. The latter may be a subject for a future post.

I went to Tucson the weekend before last. The reason for the trip was a FlyerTalk event, essentially a Sunday brunch. Since I had never been to Tucson before, I figured I could leverage off that as an excuse to spend a couple of days there.

I flew out on Thursday, which gave me an opportunity to use the newish silver line metro route to IAD. I had not thought to check the schedule, however, so arrived at East Falls Church to see a 40 minute wait. Since it was cold out, I continued on to Ballston to wait in more comfort. Fortunately, I had enough time to get to IAD for my flight.

Anyway, I flew via Houston, and managed to get upgraded on both flights, which was nice. I had less luck with the rental car. I had reserved a compact car with Budget, but, after a long wait, they stuck me with a full-size car. I stayed at the Towne Place Suites by the airport, which I chose only because hotel prices were very high, presumably due to the Gem and Mineral Show going on in town. The hotel was perfectly fine for what it was and was surprisingly quiet for an airport hotel.

On Friday, I got together with my friend, Joel. We’ve known each other on-line for decades, via a humor-oriented mailing list, but had never met in person before. He has a membership to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which is generally considered one of the top attractions of the area, so we headed there. We got there in time to see the Raptor Free Flight, which involved a talk and demonstration with several Harris’s hawks, that flew right over our heads. Most of them were, in fact, too close to photograph, but I did get this picture of one overhead.

We walked around much of the site, which is fairly large. Some of the things we saw were otters (hard to get decent pictures of) and hummingbirds. We failed to see a javelina. We did, however, see a big-horned sheep.

Right after I told Joel I doubted we would see a coyote, this guy decided to prove me wrong.

This being the Sonoran desert, there were, of course, lots of cacti.

There was also a boojum tree, which Joel described as “an upside-down carrot.” Of course, I had to make a snarky comment about it. (I hope at least a few of you know your Lewis Carroll well enough to understand this.)

Other things we did (in no particular order) included having coffee and lunch, looking at reptiles, walking through the aviary, and stopping at their art gallery, where I particularly liked these paintings by Diane Bennett done on old metal signs.

After several hours at the Museum, we returned to the car. Joel took a leisurely drive through the western part of Saguaro National Park (with a stop at the visitor center for me to stamp my National Park passport) before he dropped me off back at my hotel.

I am one of those people who always browses the racks of brochures at tourist info centers and next to hotel elevators and flips through the magazines that tell you of things to do. That led to me being reminded of the existence of Biosphere 2. Not many of you know this, but I had a traineeship in graduate school that was funded by NASA’s Closed Environmental Life Support Systems (CELSS) project. So this was something I felt more or less obliged to see. It’s now owned by the University of Arizona and is focused on more general environmental research, not oriented towards created closed systems for use in space. The history of it is interesting and somewhat bizarre and controversial, though the more salacious parts of the story were definitely downplayed at the site. I highly recommend reading the wikipedia page if you’re interested in how it went wrong.

Anyway, it was about an hour drive north of my hotel. You download an app that has various clips you can watch during the 23 stop self-guided tour, which takes you around several parts of the site. Here is an overview of the site.

You go through the human habitat, which includes a kitchen, library, labs, and apartments. The latter actually looked more comfortable than I expected.

This is the exterior of the domes with the controlled environments, which include coastal fog desert, thorn scrub, mangroves, lower savana, ocean, savana, and rainforest.

I wish I’d been able to get a decent picture of the ocean. It used to have a coral reef, but that has completely died and not been replaced yet. I did get a reasonable picture of the rainforest.

Another brochure I’d seen was for the Mini Time Machine Museum of Miniatures. I like dollhouses to begin with and the brochure featured a particularly intriguing one, so I couldn’t resist.

That’s right - the Addams Family Mini Mansion, made by Ara Bentley. It has wonderful detail and was alone enough to justify the price of admission to the museum. I mean, just look at Cousin Itt in the leftmost room on the second floor. It’s a brilliant piece of art.

There is, of course, a lot more normal stuff to see. Here, for example, is a Gone With the Wind diorama.

Another impressive piece was this sculpture carved out of a pencil point.

And, getting more topical, Remarkable Presence by Jen Urso commemorates people who died of COVID-19.

All in all, the museum had quite a lot to see and I recommend it to anyone who appreciates miniatures.

Moving on to Sunday, I lazed around in the morning for a while, reading and doing puzzles, before heading off to Micha’s to meet the Flyertalk crowd for brunch. The food was pretty good and the conversation was lively and amusing.

After brunch, I drove to the eastern part of Saguaro National Park, where I drove the loop road, with a few stops to take photos and/or hike short trails. Here, have some more cactus pictures:

I did stop in at the visitor center to look at their exhibits, get the other stamp, and ask a ranger a question. Namely, you sometimes see saguaros with arms pointing down, instead of up, and I wanted to know what caused that. The ranger said it was due to cold weather. Though he didn’t sound really confident of that.

I flew back early on Monday, with a longish layover in Houston. No upgrades on the way home, alas. A minor annoyance is that most restaurants at IAH have gone to the “scan a QR code” system, instead of having actual service. Which would be fine, if the app they used actually worked for payment, instead of taking ages to come back with a time-out error message. I did eventually manage to flag down a waitress and was able to pay her, but I was still annoyed. People at airports might actually have somewhere they are trying to get to and don’t necessarily have an extra half hour to futz around with buggy software.

Despite that, I did have a very good trip. I spent time with friends and saw some cool stuff, which is about what a weekend away should include. I still believe that people are mostly water and, hence, are not intended to live in the desert, but I do appreciate why some people like it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The main reason I am so far behind on writing here is that I’ve taken a couple of semi-local trips, each about a three hour drive away, this month.

Shenandoah Valley: The first trip was to the Shenandoah Valley the first weekend of the month. I drove out to Clifton Forge (a bit west of Lexington, VA) on Saturday, November 5th for the first Allegheny Highlands Storytelling Festival. The drive wasn’t too bad, even though I still hate I-81, which tends to have too many big, slow-moving trucks. Also, there were some rain showers off and on. The festival itself was worth going to, especially as it had been way too long since I’d seen Kim Weitkamp (who was headlining, along with Donna Washington). There were also a few regional tellers performing. It was, in general, quite entertaining. There was a story swap, too, which I emceed. Fortunately, everyone pretty much stuck to the time limit and I didn’t have to strong-arm anyone off the stage.

I stayed overnight at the Travelodge in Low Moor, about 4 miles away, which was adequate. There was heavier the rain the next morning, when the Virginia Storytelling Alliance annual meeting (including brunch) was held. If the weather had been better, I would have walked over to the Coffee Mill Museum to check that out. Maybe next year, since it looks like this festival will happen again. Fortunately the rain had let up by the time that was over.

I drove up to Staunton to see the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum. The $15 admission fee includes the museum and a guided tour of Wilson’s birthplace. My feelings about Wilson are complicated. I admire his intellectual abilities and think he has the primary responsibility for bringing the U.S. onto the world stage. But he had some repugnant positions, particularly regarding race. The museum displays have some level of apologistic tendencies there, but I can agree to some extent that he was a person of his time and place.

Anyway, the highlight of the museum is his car (a his 1919 Pierce-Arrow limousine.

Other exhibits include an underground reproduction of World War I trenches, Wilson’s office at Princeton, a number of displays about the times of his presidential terms (e.g. a lot of material re: women’s suffrage). I’d say it’s worth an hour or so.

The house tour really has more to do with his parents than with the President himself, since his family only lived there for 2 years and he was born during that time.

The tour guide did not seem particularly knowledgeable. For example, when I asked where they had moved there from, she didn’t know. (It turns out that Wilson’s father had been a professor at Hamden-Sydney College, which is roughly between Lynchburg and Richmond, before becoming the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Staunton). And there was a room with musical instruments (a guitar and piano) and she didn’t know if he played any instruments, though his mother and one sister were very musical. I’d say it was worth a stop, but as much because downtown Staunton is a pleasant place for a stroll than for its own merits as a museum.

I spent the night in Harrisonburg. The next morning, I went to Shenandoah National Park. I’d been to a little bit of the park before, but only briefly. Going early in the day was wise, as there were few cars on Skyline Drive. Also, this finally gave me a chance to get a lifetime Senior Pass for the National Park system. The weather was excellent, though a bit windy in a few places. I stopped at several overlooks and went to the visitor center, including hiking a couple of trails from there. It would have been prettier a few weeks earlier, but the fall foliage was pretty much gone. Here, have some pictures anyway.

I spent about 5 hours total at the park, at the end of which things had gotten more crowded. It’s only an hour and a half away, so I really have no excuse for not going there more.

Ocean City Knitting Retreat: A while back I saw an ad for a knitting week somewhere but the schedule didn’t work. It prompted me to do some googling and I found a retreat in Ocean City. Maryland the week before Thanksgiving. The hotel price was very good and it seemed to be a pretty informal thing - mostly time to sit around and work on projects and chit chat.

The drive was reasonably pleasant, except for the first mile or so from my house to the Beltway, which crawled due to construction. I’d gotten a later start than I’d hoped to, so I didn’t really have time to stop at any of the historic towns on the Eastern Shore. It would certainly be intriguing to spend a week or so driving around them, though, particularly some of the sites associated with Harriet Tubman.

Anyway, I had no issues finding the hotel. When I got up to my room, I saw this lovely view of the Atlantic. Alas, it was rather too cold and windy to enjoy sitting out on the balcony.

I found the ballroom where the retreat was and soon found that things were sort of weird. There were only a couple of other knitters there, while there were about 20 scrapbookers hard at work in most of the room. Oddly, there was another, (unrelated) scrapbooking event going on in the adjacent ballroom. Anyway, I had a bunch of yarn to get rid of (mostly from a friend who had been clearing out her stash of novelty yarn) and I put that out on the flea market table. Then I set out to spend some time knitting and crocheting and talking with the few knitters. I spent most of my time working on a Tunisian crochet afghan. In fact, I worked the same few inches of it twice, because I’d screwed up the edges the first time and had to frog it. A few more people arrived for various periods of time over the next few days. There were also a couple of people selling nice yarns, one of whom I would have bought from but she had only one skein of the colorway I liked.

I did take some time to walk around a bit of the town, which is really dead by mid-November. Walking on the boardwalk is a mixed experience - pleasantly uncrowded, but cold and windy for the most part. (I had brought enough warm clothing to make it reasonably enjoyable.) Still, I think Octoberish would be a better time to go to Ocean City - past peak crowds, but with more places open. I don’t feel the need to go back to this event in the future.

On the plus side, I won a very good door prize - $50 in gift cards for Joann.

And, as I said, I did have a nice view. Here, have a sunrise photo.

Hirshorn: After I got back from New York, I had one day where I had nothing scheduled so could run errands. On Saturday, I was off to the Hirshhorn Museum (which is the Smithsonian’s modern art museum) to see an exhibit of works by Yayoi Kusama from their collection. This was free but required tickets given out that day. We took the first Metro train into the city, so got in line for tickets at about 8:15. When they started giving out tickets (at 9:30) that enabled us to get in the first group.

The exhibit was actually pretty small - just 5 rooms, which included two infinity mirror rooms. The first room had this pumpkin sculpture.

Here is me in the first of the infinity mirror rooms. Only two people at a time could go in and you only got 30 seconds inside.

You got a minute and a half in the other infinity mirror room, where there was a path to follow through what seemed like a lot of disco balls.

The whole thing took only about a half hour to go through. So we continued on to the Laurie Andersson exhibit upstairs. There’s not much point in trying to photograph something which relies on multi-media so much, though I did get part of one of the graffitied walls.

The rest does have interesting stories and some rather strange conceptual art, e.g. a series of photos of her sleeping in various public spaces.

We adjourned for lunch at Jaleo, where we ordered too much delicious food. (This is a tapas place, part of the Jose Andres empire. It’s pricy, but he does such great work through World Central Kitchen that I don’t mind spending money at his restaurants.)

Washington Folk Festival: Sunday was the Washington Folk Festival in Glen Echo Park. I was telling stories at 3:30 in the afternoon, so I had time to get lunch (included for performers), browse the crafts tent, and listen to some other storytellers. Jane told a (slightly different version of) a story I had been planning to tell, so I made a last minute substitution. I mostly told stories from the U.S., Mongolia, Poland, and the deep twisty corners of my mind. The audience was very responsive and I had a good time. I left right after my set to minimize the amount of driving right into the sun I’d have to do to get home. (I have a lot of glare issues, alas, which can make for a headache trigger.)

Decluttering: Decluttering is an on-going process but has to be accelerated a bit when I have company coming. I have not made as much progress as I need to. But I have gotten rid of things like coupons that expired two or more years ago, newsletters from events five or more years ago, and assorted scraps of paper with mysterious notes to myself. Why on earth would I have written the phrase “artisanal (cobalt) mines” on a sheet of paper?

More Storytelling: Thursday night I went to the Auld Sheen for a storytelling show I was not performing in. Andrea Young and Jessica Robinson opened the night, with Andy Offutt Irwin from Georgia as the main attraction. Andy is extremely funny and I love his stories, particularly those about his (fictional) Aunt Marguerite who went to medical school in her 80’s. His work is full of character-based humor with insights into southern culture and is delightful. And, of course, there is no substitute for live entertainment.

By the way, there was also a Voices in the Glen story swap (over zoom) on Saturday night. I particularly liked Tim Livengood’s original story about why dogs howl.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Speaking of live entertainment, I went to see The Mystery of Edwin Drood, put on by The Britihs Players, on Friday night. This musical won several Tony awards in 1986, but that was not, frankly, a great year for Broadway musicals. It’s based on an unfinished novel by Charles Dickens, which provides an opportunity for the gimmick of having the audience choose the ending. Several of the performers were difficult to understand and there was little humor, aside from predictable jokes told by the chairman of the music hall. I thought the strongest performance was by Meghan Williams Elkin as Princess Puffer, the proprieties of an opium den in London. Overall, I thought it was too long and I drifted off several times during the first act. (The second act was, mercifully,, shorter.) I’ve enjoyed the Old Time Music Hall performances the British Players put on, but this show just didn’t work for me.

By the way, we had dinner at The Tombs beforehand. That’s a Georgetown University hangout and I thought the food was just so-so. The banh mi I got did have good papaya salad, but the baguette was bordering on stale. So, overall, a disappointing outing.

Party: One of my friends had a party on Sunday. He lives in a condo with an excellent view of National Airport, so the big attraction is hanging out on the balcony watching planes (and trains and boats). There was, of course, lots of travel related conversation. And lots of food. My contribution was white chocolate cheesecake in an oreo crust, which is an easy no-bake dessert. (You blend two packages of cream cheese, a can of sweetened condensed milk, a cup of melted white chocolate chips, and about 1/3 c. of sour cream. Then just pour into the oreo crust and refrigerate overnight.) It was good to see people I hadn’t seen in a while and the weather was lovely for sitting outside.

After my April trip to New York, I mentioned that I needed to go back up to see a couple of things. That trip happened last week.

Oh, Deer! I took the Acela up on Sunday afternoon. I usually just take the Northeast Regional, but this time the Acela turned out to be a little cheaper. What it did not end up being was actually faster. Things were going quite well until somewhere in New Jersey (between Trenton and Metro Park) when there was a bump and the train stopped. Amtrak was not particularly forthcoming with information. Their website just indicated a delay. There was an eventual announcement about a mechanical problem, claiming they were trying to figure out what was wrong. I was in the front car and it was fairly obvious what happened, as people pointed out the deer we had hit. (I suppose it is more correct to say that the deer hit us.) Something broke off as a result. Eventually, they decided they couldn’t fix it and they transferred everyone to another train. This was an interesting process - we all had to walk to the cafe car, where they had a bridge set up to the cafe car of another train. There went the Acela luxury as we took whatever seats we could find on a regional train, which also had everyone facing backwards going to New York. I think this was much worse for the passengers going on to Boston as the rescue train ended in New York.

In the end, we were about 2 hours late. The interesting thing is that this was the second time I was on an Amtrak train that had a deer collision. The previous time was a shorter delay as they pretty much just had to remove the dead body. I have had other deer issues in my life - notably, the deer which ate my map in Nara, Japan. I think I need to eat more venison.

Mets Game: Most theaters are dark on Sunday nights. So I had opted to get tickets to the Mets vs. Phillies at CitiField. I scurried over to my hotel and headed to the ballpark. I ended up missing the first inning, which was disappointing because the Mets had scored 3 runs. But I did get to see most of the game, including the eventual Mets victory in the 10th inning. I should mention that the tying run was Nick Plummer’s homer in the 9th inning, which was his first major league hit. (Eduardo Escobar’s walk-off hit in the 10th was the game winning one.)

By the way, I thought this sign was ironic in light of my delay getting there:

One other note. They apparently no longer have a sing-along of “Meet the Mets” in the 8th inning, which they still did the previous time I’d been to CitiField. Still, I had a good time.

Memorial Day Concert: I hadn’t really made any plans for Monday during the day and asked on Facebook if anyone wanted to do anything. A puzzle friend mentioned she was volunteering at the Memorial Day concert at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and we arranged to met for lunch before that. I had some time to walk around the cemetery, but it was very hot out, so after tracking down a couple of famous graves (DeWitt Clinton and Leonard Bernstein), I listened to the rehearsal, while she worked set-up. The concert was very nice. The ISO Symphonic Band @ Third Street is affiliated with the Third Street Music School Settlement and played a wide range of American anthems and some show music. There was also an excellent singer named Ezekiel Andrew. I particularly liked his performance of “The House I Live In” by Earl Robinson. (Robinson also wrote "Ballad for Americans", which was a favorite piece of my mother’s, from her high school glee club days.)

Hangmen: Monday night, I went to see Hangmen, which had been one of the major reasons for the trip. The play starts out with a rather shocking scene involving one of the last hangings in England. Even then, there’s a certain amount of dark humor as the prisoner complains (in response to bring told that if he’d cooperate, he could have been dead already), “I am about to be hung by a nincompoop” only to have his grammar corrected to “No, you are about to be hanged by a nincompoop.”

The rest of the play is set after hanging was abolished in England and takes place mostly in the pub owned by the former hangman and his wife. He insists he won’t talk about his opinions on the death penalty, but he does give a detailed interview to a newspaperman who shows up at the pub. There’s another stranger there, who talks about renting a room at the pub, but whose behavior turns menacing. A former assistant to the hangman shows up. And then the hangman’s daughter disappears.

This is all very dark - but it is also very funny. Which is exactly what I expected from a Martin McDonagh play. Whether or not you’d enjoy seeing this depends a lot on how you feel about his work. I am a big fan and thought it was well worth seeing. My one issue is that some of the characters spoke with rather thick Lancashire accents, which I had trouble understanding, so I missed some of the jokes. I also want to note Alfie Allen’s performance as the menacing stranger. He’s been nominated for a best supporting actor Tony, which I’d be happy to see him win.

Faith Ringgold Exhibit: The other major reason for the trip was seeing the Faith Ringgold exhibition at the New Museum. She’s an artist I’ve liked a great deal since I first saw her story quilt “Tar Beach” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts some years ago. I saw a retrospective of her work at Glenstone back in October, but I am fairly sure this exhibit had a lot more of her art than that one had. In particular, they had all 12 of the story quilts in the French Collection. They also had a website that you could access via a QR code that brought up the text of the stories (which are otherwise hard to read on the quilts). These take the form of letters written by Ringgold’s fictional alter ego (Willa Marie) to her family. Here, for example, Willa Marie writes to her aunt Melissa about her friend Marcia and Marcia’s three daughters taking her dancing at the Louvre:

My favorite of these story quilts was The Sunflowers Quilting Bee of Arles. In this one, the National Sunflowers Quilting Society of America puts on quilting bees around the world to spread the cause of freedom and Aunt Melissa has asked Willa Marie to accompany them to the sunflower fields in Arles. Vincent Van Gogh comes to see this group of black women (Madame Walker, Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Ella Baker) sewing in the sunflower fields. They explain that their real work is is “making the world piece up right.”

Of course, there were lots of other pieces, including Tar Beach, both in quilt form and as a picture book. The title refers to a rooftop in Harlem.

But Ringgold’s most powerful work is politically focused. That includes a series of pieces about slaves being raped. And this painting done in response to the Attica uprising:

And then there are some pieces that are just jaw-dropping. This says pretty much everything that needs to be said about the history of black people in America:

There is so much more in the three floors of the exhibit - including more quilts, soft sculptures, and paintings. Ringgold is still working (at the age of 91). I was astonished to learn that this was the first retrospective of her work in New York City. It’s a wonderful and powerful exhibit and I am really glad I got to see it.

Staten Island Ferry Hawks: I would normally have spent Tuesday afternoon walking around lower Manhattan, but the temperature was in the high 90’s, so I went back to my hotel and basked in air conditioning for a couple of hours. (Plus, I needed to finish reading my book club book.) In the late afternoon, I headed back downtown and took the Staten Island Ferry so I could go to another baseball game. The Staten Island Ferry Hawks were playing the Lancaster Barnstormers in the (independent) Atlantic League. I think the last time I took the ferry had been some time in high school, when I went to a picnic on Staten Island, possibly related to Dror, the socialist Zionist group that ran the summer camp I went to for a couple of summers. It’s still a nice ride - and it’s still free!

The ballpark is a short walk from the ferry terminal and has a good view over the bay. I was amused to see container ships going by as the game went on.

The ballpark was amazingly empty, by the way. They gave out rally towels, which they called Hawk Hankies. And the concessions are incredibly unimpressive. Still, it was a pleasant evening and worth checking off another ballpark. But I would probably recommend the Brooklyn Cyclones if you wanted to go to a Minor League game in New York City.

POTUS: When I was looking at what else was playing on Broadway that I might want to see, I read a review of a play called POTUS: or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying To Keep Him Alive. With a title like that, how could I resist? I caught the Wednesday matinee. The basic premise is that the president (who is never really seen during the play) has created an international incident by saying that his wife was “in a cunty mood” to explain her absence from an international meeting. His schedule is full and he has an embarrassing medical condition to deal with. His chief of staff and press secretary are trying to handle things. The situation is made more complicated by a meek secretary, a reporter, the President’s pregnant mistress, and his sister (a convicted drug dealer), as well as the FLOTUS (who tries to soften her image by wearing high-heeled crocs!). I’m not usually particularly fond of farce, but I was able to ignore how little of this makes sense because it was just so outrageously funny. You do have to have a high tolerance for foul language, but the very talented cast made up for that in my opinion. My overall reaction was “I am woman, hear me roar … with laughter.”

Other Travel Notes: I would normally have tried to squeeze in one more show on Wednesday night, but my book club was meeting over zoom that night. It was good to have an earlyish night anyway, since I was taking a morning train back on Thursday. That train ride went more smoothly than my trip up. No deer!

I should also mention that I stayed at the Fairfield Inn on 37th St. near Fifth Avenue, which was a lot cheaper than the one across from Moynihan Train Hall that I usually stay at. The location was good enough, but it is definitely not as nice. In particular, the breakfast was really mediocre. My biggest complaint was the lack of a toaster, so no bread, though they did have plastic-wrapped muffins and a few croissants. And the room did not have a refrigerator and microwave. I am unlikely to stay there again.

Rabbi Doctor Silver: I forgot to mention this play that I watched on-line in early May. It’s a new translation of a Yiddish play by Sholem Asch. The plot involves a well-respected rabbi, whose wife is having an affair with her music teacher. She ends up leaving her husband, but when things go wrong for her with the music teacher, the rabbi tries to take her back. This stirs up his congregation (and, especially, the board of directors). There is also tension with his mother who lives with him. I didn’t find the story particularly convincing, but the play was well acted.

The Flushies: Last weekend was The Flushies, the annual award ceremony / party for the Style Invitational Loser community. My contribution to the potluck meal was tabbouleh and, after chopping ridiculous amounts of parsley, I remembered why I don’t make that more often. At least it was successful, meaning I had only enough leftovers for one meal. I thought some of the award announcements went on a bit long, with Pat reading too many of the entries by a couple of the winners. The group singing of song parodies also seemed longer than usual. But my perception of length was probably influenced by the absurdly hot weather (90+ Fahrenheit). I, generally, handle heat well, so I imagine other people were also chomping at the bit. Still, it was good to see some people I don’t see frequently (and see some in person who I usually see over zoom). And, of course, it is always fun to meet new folks.

Transport Planning for the Exurbs: I went to an MIT-related webinar about transport planning this week. The speaker is a planner for the Fredericksburg, Virginia area. I didn’t find much of what he had to say surprising. For example, of course people are reluctant to use a bus service that runs only once an hour. I was also glad that he talked about integrating pedestrians and bicyclists into the complete picture of transit needs. But I was somewhat disheartened by the length of time to get improvements implemented.

Textile Museum: I went to the Textile Museum on Wednesday with a few people from my crafts group. They have an exhibit on Indian textiles, which included examples from the 14th century to the present time and ranging throughout the subcontinent. In general, I preferred the embroidered textiles to the block printed and dyed ones. One other interesting thing was that a lot of pieces had an unusual sort of symmetry, where, say, both sides had birds but each side had different birds.

The stitching on this piece was particularly detailed:

This piece is more modern with interesting stylized figures:

The exhibit also includes various garments.

This piece incorporates iridescent beetle wings, along with the stitching.

After looking through the exhibit (and browsing in the gift shop), we had lunch a the falafel place in Western Market. I couldn’t resist trying their vegan shawarma. It was tasty, but I think the falafel would have been a better choice. (There are a wide range of other food stalls at Western Market, by the way, ranging from arepas to lobster rolls, fried chicken to sushi. Someday I have to try the Guatemalan place.) All in all, it was a lovely excursion.

The Upstairs Department: On Thursday night, I went to see this new play at Signature Theatre. The story involves a young man who came out of a medically induced coma with the ability to hear dead people. His father died of COVID while he was in the coma - and that’s the one person he can’t hear. He and his sister go to Lily Dale (a real spiritualist community) where he hopes to learn how to control his power. His sister is a skeptic and the real gist of the play has to do with their relationship. The other character is the medium who they work with. The tone is much lighter than this description suggests and there were several moments of excellent character-driven humor.

By the way, I had dinner before the play at Tacos y Pina. The food was very good, as was the margarita I got. But I thought it was rather pricy for what it is.

Chavurah Barbecue: Yesterday afternoon, my chavurah had a cookout. The weather was beautiful - well, except for a brief rain shower. My contribution to the side dishes was a simple macaroni salad (elbow macaroni, scallions, pimentos, dill pickle relish, olives, and mayonnaise). It was good seeing folks and the conversation ranged from politics to movies to genealogy to books to baseball, etc. We will probably do another event for the Fourth of July.

A Little More About the ACPT: For those who want to know more about the crossword tournament, you could watch the 2006 documentary Wordplay.

Here is a run down of my results from all the years I’ve competed. It may make it clearer why I was disappointed. (But, then, I admit I was out of practice. And there were a lot fewer people participating this year.)

2009 – 265 / 654 (55th percentile)
2012 – 241 / 594 (59th percentile)
2014 – 202 / 580 (65th percentile)
2016 – 171 / 576 (70th percentile)
2017 – 141 / 619 (77th percentile)
2018 – 254 / 674 (62nd percentile)
2019 – 220 / 741 (70th percentile)
2022 - 243 / 474 (49th percentile)

But what’s done is done. I’ll aim to do better at other tournaments. (Next up is probably Lollapuzzoola in New York at the end of August.)

As I mentioned, I took the train from Stamford to New York on Sunday afternoon because I had plans. Here’s what I did.

Ari Shapiro’s Cabaret Show: Back in February, I had seen Ari Shapiro interview Fran Leibowitz at the Kennedy Center. He mentioned he had a cabaret show coming up at Feinstein’s / 54 Below in Manhattan on April 3rd and 4th. I realized that meshed perfectly with the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which was April 1st through 3rd. There were actually two Sunday night shows, but the later one was just too late for me, so I booked the 7 p.m. show. That gave me plenty of time to settle into my hotel room and relax a little before walking uptown to the club, which is a pretty well known cabaret venue.

I had been a bit apprehensive about going to what is, essentially, a supper club, alone. But they seated me at a table with a very personable gay couple and we had a lovely conversation while we ate. (You are required to spend at least $25 on food and drink. This is not a challenge. I went with the drink and appetizer approach and did succumb to dessert. My gin and tonic, crab cake, and gelato were all quite good.)

As for the show, Ari sang an interesting mix of songs in multiple languages (shades of Pink Martini) and told a few stories which touched on his journalistic experiences. For example, he talked about meeting with Ukrainian refugees in Poland and getting a text from his husband about their dog being sick and the dissonance of that. My favorite part involved a particularly evocative story he told about visiting a Yazidi shrine near the Iraq / Syria border, including a song. He had lines like “all around me was just sand. Sand and the sounds of the cello.” (He actually mentioned the cellist’s name, but I’ve forgotten it.) I enjoyed the show very much and it was worth missing the ACPT finals and some socializing time to see it.

MOMA: I hadn’t really made particular plans for Monday. There were several options, but given that the weather was chilly, I decided that museum going was the best thing to do. I chose the Museum of Modern Art largely because it had been a while since I’d been there. They are members-only on Monday morning, so I slept in a bit and took a leisurely stroll around midtown (mostly up Fifth Avenue), enjoying seeing several of my Manhattan touchstones.

I’ve never known which of the library lions is Patience and which is Fortitude. Whichever this is, he is magnificent.

The Chrysler Building is the most beautiful skyscraper in the world. This is not up for debate.

I was interested to see a new sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Brugge. It’s called Plantoir, Blue and was erected in 2021.

And it’s good to see that Atlas is still holding up the Earth outside Rockefeller Center.

As for MOMA, they were installing a couple of new exhibits, so some favorites (e.g. Van Gogh’s Starry Night) were not open for viewing. And it was a bit of a maze getting around parts of the building. There was still plenty to look at. For example, I was quite taken by Marta Minujin’s Minucode which consists of films she made of four cocktail parties she hosted at the Center for Inter-American Relations in 1968. It’s an intriguing look at how people interact in an unexpected social environment. (It is also pretty much impossible to photograph.)

Monet’s Waterlilies are more or less obligatory.

I like Matisse, but I don’t plan to take a dip in his swimming pool.

I was intrigued by Double Transparency by Venezuelan artist, Jesus Rafael Soto.

I like to include at least one work by a woman in every set of photos of art. So have The Family by Marisol.

And I might as well throw in this set of lithographs by Julia Wachtel, based on photos of crowds in various cities.

I also was intrigued by some of the pieces in a special exhibit of work by Kahlil Robert Irving, which I thought had some powerful messages abut the commercialization of art.

There was, of course, plenty of other art to look at and I spent pretty much all afternoon at the museum. There are also plenty of other museums in New York (and, for that matter, here in DC), but those will have to wait for another trip.

Funny Girl: A lot of Broadway theaters are dark on Monday nights. Looking for something to do, I was able to snag a ticket for one of the preview performances of the revival of Funny Girl, starring Beanie Feldstein. The show is very much a star turn and I thought Feldstein was competent enough as Fanny Brice. The book had been rewritten and did give a bit more to Nick Ornstein, played excellently by Ramin Karimloo. I should also note the spectacular tap dancing by Jared Grimes as Eddy Ryan.

But, frankly, the show doesn’t hold together very well. The story line is weak (and not particularly accurate, but, then, it was originally produced by Brice’s son-in-law.) It feels like Jule Style was trying to leverage off of the success of Gypsy. which is a much more satisfying show. I found it entertaining enough for an evening, but not worth going out of the way for.

Footnote: I took the train home Tuesday night, so I was able to call into one of my genealogy groups on Tuesday night from home. But I need to get back to New York in the next several weeks, since I very much need to see Hangmen, which is Martin McDonagh’s new play. And I want to go to the Faith Ringold retrospective at the New Museum.

I have been out and about quite a lot over the past couple of weeks. Here is an attempt at catching up. There’s some storytelling stuff, too, which I will write about separately.

Baseball: I am sleep deprived due to Red Sox Stress Syndrome. The playoff against the Source of All Evil in the Universe went well and, after the first game, the BoSox walked all over the Rays, which surprised and delighted me. The ALCS, did not go so well. After an excellent 2nd and 3rd games, my boys collapsed and the Astros are off to the World Series. See you next year.

Leading Jewish Minds at MIT: MIT Hillel runs an interesting lecture series in which Jewish faculty members talk about their work (and Rabbi Fisher provides some Jewish framework for the discussion). The early October talk was by Lotte Bailyn and discussed research on transition to retirement. The basic point is that people need to rearchitect their lives and find a new source of structure when they retire. Flexibility is very important in this. At any rate, I concluded I am mostly doing things wright, though I think I could be more mindful about time management.

IAJGS: The deadline for listening to recorded sessions from the Jewish genealogy conference in August was the first week in October. I didn’t manage to listen to everything I wanted to, but I had time for a few more presentations. The best of those had to do with finding unindexed records, creative methods for finding family members, early photography, and additional sources for death information.

Having Our Say: This play marked the reopening of Creative Cauldron. They are definitely doing things right with respect to COVID protocols - blocking out seats next to, in front of, and behind each ticket (or pod) and requiring proof of vaccination. The friend I went with and I actually bought two seats with an empty one in between, so we had the whole row on one side of the center section. Anyway, the play tells the story of Bessie and Sadie Delany, a pair of Black sister who are looking back from 100+ years. Bessie became a dentist and Sadie a high school teacher (in a white high school, which required some trickery on her part to get the job). Their book was a best-seller, but I admit to not having read it. (The play made me more interested in doing it.) Anyway, it’s a very cozy play. You really feel like you’re visiting their house, listening to them chat. Both Ayesis Clay as Bessie and Lisa Hill-Conley as Sadie were convincing. That is, I really forgot I was watching a play and, even when there were a few possibly fumbled lines (we were there on preview night), they could have just been the sort of slips of the tongue that people make in conversation. Creative Cauldron is one of my favorite venues and this work was well suited to its intimacy. I am glad to see them back.

RennFest: One of my friends is a big Renaissance Festival fan. I haven’t been to a Rennfast in many years, but thought it would be fun to go with her. So we did that a couple of weeks ago. It was rather crossed, but manageable. We spent much of our time shopping, which is not really something I need to do. But I did get a new hat, a stuffed dragon (with a Washington Nationals theme, and a wonderful piece of blown glass depicting a shark eating a mermaid. I also bought some fudge. (My friend bought a quilt as a baby gift, a hat, and probably something else I’ve forgotten about.) I should note that our hats came from the shop where the daughter of another friend was working. We also watched a show by The Danger Committee, who combine comedy with knife and axe throwing, which I enjoyed more than I expected to. We also had plenty of people watching and a stop for lunch. Overall, I enjoyed it but I don’t need to go again for five or more years.

Glenstone: Glenstone is a contemporary art museum in Maryland. It is free, but hard to get tickets to. They release them on the first of the month for two months out and they tend to sell out in a few minutes. Anyway, the MIT Club of DC got a block of tickets, so I was finally able to go. There is a huge pavilion, with several rooms of interesting art, of which my favorite piece was one that involved a number of rusted beams collapsed into a hole. The major attraction was a temporary exhibit of work by Faith Ringgold, including both paintings and the quilts she is more famous for. The quilts are particularly wonderful. All the MIT Club people gathered for lunch and conversation. There are also several walking paths around the grounds, though the weather was iffy, so I didn’t do the full path. I should also note that there are a number of outdoor sculptures, including a “living” one by Jeff Koons, that gets replanted with flowers a couple of times a year. Koons is not an artist I like and I thought the piece was pretty hideous.

Remember This: I had seen an earlier version of this one man show starring David Strathiirn, but a friend wanted to go and I was willing to see it again. It tells the story of Jan Karski, who was a member of the Polish underground during World War II. He was smuggled into a Jewish ghetto and a concentration camp and tried to report his observations to Western governments. He was able to speak to high ranking government officials, who basically blew him off. It’s a powerful work. It has closed here, but will be playing in Chicago in November and will be available on film later on.

Ari Shapiro and Alan Cumming: I went to see a cabaret show by Alan Cumming and Ari Shapiro at the Kennedy Center a little over a week ago. They started with a medley of Broadway duets - Bosom Buddies (from Mame), You’re the Top (from Anything Goes), Anything You Can Do (from Annie Get Your Gun) and The Grass is Always Greener (from Woman of the Year). They told various stories including their coming out stories and stories about same sex marriage. Ari sang Laughing Matters (a 1990’s Bette Midler song from the off-Broadway musical When Pigs Fly) and Alan sang Taylor the Latte Boy. All in all, it was a very entertaining show.

Memorial Service: Last Saturday was the memorial service for Merrilee and Bob Pallansch, who died about a week apart back in January. A few other storytellers were there and two of them told stories. Bob was well-known in the area for repairing brass instruments and played tuba and various tuba-adjacent instruments, including the serpent and the ophicleide (or, as one of their daughters said, the awfulcleide). So there were a few pieces played by a brass ensemble at the beginning. Anyway, I think their family took some comfort from the good turnout (despite the crappy weather, which made the people coming from Maryland late getting there).

Gettysburg: Last Sunday I drove up to Gettysburg for a Loser brunch and battlefield tour. The food at the Appalachian Brewing Company was pretty good. The tour included the Eternal Light Peace Memorial and views from Little Round Top. We were also supposed to go to the cemetery, but it was very cold and blustery out and getting late so we skipped that. As a result of running late, the traffic getting home was very heavy and it took me nearly an hour longer getting back than it had driving up there.

Used Bookstore Run: I had an appointment to take my car in for service on Thursday, so I was already in Manassas and stopped in at McKay. I got rid of 23 books and came home with 9 new ones (and still have $9 in trade credit left). So it was a successful trip.

Metro Note: Aside from the minimal service right now, since Metro has pulled all of the 7000 series cars out of service after a derailment a couple of weeks ago, I ran into a different problem on Friday when I went to Crystal City to have lunch with a friend. Namely, my SmarTrip card wouldn’t work to let me out of the turnstile. And there was no station manager around. I waited about 10 minutes and finally decided the only thing to do was jump the turnstile! It turns out that the new turnstiles can’t read old cards, so I have to go to Mero Center to exchange my old cards. (I do have two of the newer series cards I can use, but this is a pain in the neck.) You can supposedly transfer cards on—line but I think my old card is registered under my work email address I no longer have access to. Sight.

Silly Thing I Noticed Recently: The mother in the comic strips Zits and Baby Boom is the same person. I guess Jerry Scott can only draw one mom.