fauxklore

I’ve been fairly busy over the past few weeks. The biggest thing was the Women’s Storytelling Festival, which deserves its own entry. In the meantime, you can still buy a virtual ticket through April 1st and listen to 16 hours of recorded stories. Go to the WSF ticketing page.

In terms of other stuff I’ve been doing, here is what I can decipher from what I scribbled on my calendar and notebooks.

Leading Jewish Minds at MIT: Emily Pollock gave a talk on Continuities, Contradictions, and Carmina Burana: The Problem of Carl Orff. The short version of the problem with Carl Orff is that he used nationalistic language to get his teachings (primarily about pedagogy and primitivism) accepted. He was interested in the medieval, ancient Greek, and Baroque pasts, which led to him using simplified, repetitive rhythms, for example. As a result he did things like write music to replace Mendelssohn’s for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His best known work is, of course, Carmina Burana, which is a scenic cantata (not an opera) and was based on medieval Latin poems. It premiered in Frankfurt in 1937.

That led to the question of whether or not music is political. Professor Pollock noted that, while his music was praised by Hitler, Orff was not a member of the Nazi party. The nuances have to do with historiography, i.e. how we tell the tory and music as a cultural phenomenon. She didn’t have any real answers to this. Orff is played in Israel, while Wagner is, in general, not.

Incidentally, in talking about other German music of the time, Pollock talked a little about Winfried Zillig's opera, Das Opfer, which has to do with the fatal Terra Nova expedition of 1912, during which Robert Falcon Scott and 4 of his companions died on their return from the South Pole. (By the way, the opera apparently does not include Evans, who died earlier than the others.) The intriguing part of this is that the chorus is dressed as killer penguins, who surround Oates and perform a victory dance as he walks into the storm to die. I have not actually heard this opera, but I do think the world needs more music with evil penguins gloating about human deaths.

MIT Presidential Tour: Sally Kornbluth, who has been the president of MIT for about a year, has been doing several trips to meet with alumni (and other community members) and it was Washington, DC’s turn on March 7th. This started out with drinks and hors d’oeuvres for Leadership Circle members (which has to do with how much you donate). The room where that was held was a bit awkwardly shaped, making it a bit hard to mingle, though I did have a few interesting conversations. Then we moved to the general reception area, where they had several food stations, as well as a photo booth and a 3-D printer making coasters. I liked the photo they got of me.



Eventually (after more eating and socializing), we were herded into a conference room for President Kornbluth’s talk. Well, actually, she was interviewed by Annalisa Weigel, who is a member of the MIT Corporation (and a big name in the aerospace world). I was glad they started off with the elephant in the room. Namely, we’d had an opportunity to write in questions beforehand and I am pretty sure I am not the only person who asked about safety of students in light of the Palestinian situation. I thought she had a reasonable reply, mostly focused on enforcing existing rules re: campus protests. There was a lot of stuff about how MIT will address other little issues, like climate change, before getting to some more frivolous subjects, e.g. her hobbies, which include a capella singing and making felted flowers. Eventually, we went back into the main room for coffee and dessert (which included chocolate-dipped strawberries). There was also more swag, e.g. ballcaps and tote bags. All in all, it was a nice evening out.

Book Clubs: R.E.A.D. discussed Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland, which is a novel based on the life of Clara Driscoll, who designed almost all of the famous Tiffany lamps. Crones and Tomes discussed The Thread Collectors by Shauna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman. (You might recall that R.E.A.D. had done that book previously. I did not reread it, since it had been recent enough that I remembered the gist of it.) I should probably also mention that I took some time out from the Women’s Storytelling Festival to call into the TCC Book Club for our discussion of The Places In Between by Rory Stewart, which is about his walk across Afghanistan.

Medical appointment: The last of the catch-up on medical appointments was pretty routine. Mostly, I got the updated pneumonia vaccine that they give to old folks, as well as the final Hepatitis B booster and the RSV vaccine.

Artomatic: I leveraged off being in the vicinity already (for my medical appointment) to go to opening day of Artomatic. This is an art show (including visual art and performance art and films and pretty much anything, since it’s unjuried). On the way there, I stopped at Call My Mother for lunch and, while I know it’s popular, I still find it disappointing and a crime against bageldom.

Anyway, I started at the top floor and worked my way down, managing to look at about half of the displays at Artomatic before fading out. I did take a break to look at a couple of short movies, the best of which was a cartoon about a support group for cats, which resulted in all of the cats moving in with an elderly woman.

This is called “Pink Compass, True North" and is by Sarah Jane Rodman.



Unfortunately, I didn’t capture the name and artist for this sculpture, but I admired the balance and the use of shapes and colors.



This painting by Giovanni Zelaya is called “The Dream is Alive” and depicts Mae Jemison, Sally Ride, and Ellen Ochoa.



There was also a whole wall of little paintings and what looked like refrigerator magnets. depicting books with titles like “Everything I don’t like is WOKE: A book for basic dickheads” and “How to talk to your dog about The Fall of Constantinople.”

I need to get back and see the other three (maybe four) floors of art. One of my friends is doing a storytelling show there, so I hope to get there for that.

Other Stuff: The Saturday before the Women’s Storytelling Festival, we had a Voices in the Glen story swap. I told “Clever Greta,” which is a Grimm story and quite suitable for women’s history month. That Sunday, we had our annual business meeting. And the Sunday after the festival, the Better Said Than Done board had a postmortem of the festival.

We’ve also had three Grimm Keepers meetings because one had had to be postponed due to conflict. “The Children of the Two Kings” is one of the weirder stories, which is saying a lot since my immediate reaction to most of the stories is that they’re really strange. What made it weird is that, while several things are similar to incidents in other stories (e.g. impossible tasks that have to be done for the prince to marry the princess), there’s a recurring image in it involving the use of glass tools, which nobody had any reasonable explanation for. Our discussion of “The Little Donkey” has inspired me to think of trying to do something with the idea of a support group for people who have been turned into animals (or, who were born as animals, but became human.) Finally, we just talked about “The Turnip,” which needs a certain amount of fleshing out to be satisfactory, but I think I could make it tellable. By the way, this is not the same as the Russian story about the giant turnip that takes several people working together to get out of the ground. It’s a tale of sibling rivalry and revenge.

Also, I’ve played board games several times, including managing to make it to NPL Game Night the past three weeks. I had a stupid accident this past Thursday in which I tripped over a concrete parking stop in a supermarket parking lot, ending up with various bruises, including a black eye. At least, so far as I can tell, I didn’t break anything. And, I went to see the William Shatner movie. You Can Call Me Bill with my friend, Kim, this past Sunday, which was interesting but decidedly not what I was expecting.

I still need to do a lot more housework. And do my taxes, the hardest part of which is always finding all of the statements I need.

Elections: The Virginia elections went better than I expected. My area is not at all competitive so there were no surprises locally. (For example, our candidate for delegate was running unopposed.) And I can’t say that I was surprised that the candidate for county sheriff who had a long rant on his web page about why campaign contributions are unconstitutional, quoting from George Mason (who actually never mentioned campaign contributions since such a thing didn’t exist in his time) got nowhere. In the shooting yourself in the foot department, Democratic section, Susanna Gibson, the Henrico county candidate for delegate who live streamed sex videos with her husband, also lost.

But the important thing is that Democrats both kept the Senate and won the House of Delegates, which will keep Glen Youngkin’s more theocratic Christofascist tendencies at bay.

By the way, it was only on Friday (i.e. three days after election day) that I realized I slightly know the (losing) Republican candidate for state senator in my district.

Pandas: The National Zoo pandas are gone. They had special crates for their transportation to China, along with a FedEx truck with a panda picture painted on its side. (I’m not sure if their plane had a panda livery). The cuteness factor at the National Zoo is down by at least 50%.

Major Disappointment: Michael Tilson Thomas has withdrawn from the National Symphony Orchestra concert next weekend on his doctor’s advice. I can’t say I’m totally surprised, since he isn’t expected to live much longer. (Glioblastoma is really nasty.) There was the option to go to the concert with the replacement conductor, but the whole point of buying tickets was to see MTT. I’ve requested a refund from Goldstar, who are not great at customer service.

At least I got to see him conduct the New York Philharmonic in March.

Deli Food: This afternoon we had a Chavurah luncheon at Chutzpah deli. The tongue sandwich I got was fine. Their cole slaw is just okay, since I prefer mine more vinegary. And their potato salad is also a bit bland. In other words, it’s fine for deli food in Virginia (though Perly’s in Richmond is better), but my answer to the best Jewish deli food in this area is still to go to Union Station and take a train to New York.

Still, I was really there for the camaraderie and conversation and that was excellent.

Grimm Discussion Groups: This week’s Brother’s Grimm discussion was on Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty. We had a wide ranging and interesting discussion. At the end, we were discussing spindles and, as a result of a comment someone made about the phrase “spindle, fold, or mutilate,” I have an interesting idea for a twist on the story, involving her fate depending on a spindle file, i.e. the spike used to store receipts at a diner.

My Animal Obsessed Neighbors: Today on next-door, somebody claims to have seen a hawk swoop down and grab a black cat. They wanted to know what kind of hawk it was.

First, a bit of shameless self-promotion:

Saturday night (tomorrow!) I’m part of a storytelling show at The Stagecoach Theatre in Ashburn, Virginia. The theme is Wild West and stories about frontiers. It’s being live-streamed, so you don’t have to be local to attend. Tickets and more information are at
the theatre’s website.

Speaking of which, did you know that Mr. Spock had 3 ears?
There was the back left ear, the back right ear, and the final front ear.

I’m also going to be part of a Halloween show on Monday October 30th. More details on that to follow.


So, let’s see, what I have done over the past couple of weeks?

Globe Life Field: I’m now back to having gone to a game at every major league ballpark. The coolest part of this is that, when I posted to the Ballpark Chasers Facebook group to ask about transportation options, a women there (Jenn, which must stand for Jenn-erous) offered to pick me up and take me with her and her daughter! My flight into DFW was delayed by weather and I then had to deal with the confusion of getting to the Hyatt, which is a short walk from Terminal C, but lacking in signage until you’re halfway there. Apparently driving there is equally confusing. But we got to the game in plenty of time.

We walked around before the game, including Texas Live, a busy entertainment district. I had to have a photo with Nolan Ryan’s statue, since I remember his days as a relief pitcher with the Mets.



Here’s the obligatory clock photo.



And the obligatory picture of the field.



Overall, I’d say it was a middle of the road ballpark. I understand the weather problem in Texas, but baseball is not intended to be an indoor sport. And the weather was perfectly comfortable, so there was really no excuse not to have the roof open. I also thought that the concessions were rather weak, emphasizing quantity over quality. Blue Bell ice cream is a good nod to local tastes, at least.

As for the game, at least the people around me were actually paying attention to the game and talking about baseball, instead of texting everyone in creation telling them how cool they were to be at a game. (That was my experience at the previous Rangers’ ballpark.) I do wish that more people sang along to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” however. And I really wish the Rangers hadn’t beaten up so badly on my Red Sox, who lost in a 15-4 rout.

After the game, we walked up to the Rangers Hall of Fame plaques, so I could take this picture. I knew my father had a namesake who was a sportscaster, but I was still amused.



My trip home went smoothly. My next baseball focus will probably be on going to all the AAA ballparks. I also want to go to next year’s season opener in Seoul. I need to research how to get tickets for that.

NSO Gala: I went to the 2023 season opening gala of the National Symphony Orchestra. I just went to the concert part, but it was fun seeing people dressed to the nines for the reception beforehand. The reason I braved the rain to go was that the main feature was Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Before that, there were short works by Gioachino Rossini, Edward Elgar, and Carlos Simon. Simon’s piece, Fate Now Conquers was intended as an homage to Beethoven - essentially, a response to his Seventh Symphony. It was also interesting to see him come out for a bow at the end. Wow, is he young!

As for Pictures at an Exhibition, they did the Ravel orchestration. I actually prefer the solo piano version, but I realize that’s a slightly eccentric preference. At any rate, it’s one of my favorite pieces, largely because it is so evocative of how I react to walking around art exhibitions. I don’t think Mussorgsky knew what a great suite of music it was and I have this imaginary conversation in my head in which Rimsky-Korsakov tells him it’s a masterpiece and, when Mussorgsky protests, Rimsky-Korsakov says, “oh, don’t be so modest, Modest.”

The Medicare Saga: My phone appointment with the Social Security people was a little stressful, since they called about 15 minutes late. And, midway through, the fire alarm in my condo complex went off. I was able to get through the call by going out to my car for it, but it was stressful. And I still have to go down to their office to provide them with some documentation. Er, no, I am not going to put my birth certificate and such in the mail. My appointment for that is Monday. That may get seriously screwed up if the government shuts down.

On the plus side, I got the benefit payments site working for me, though it took nearly 40 minutes on the phone, roughly 30 minutes of which were trying to persuade the person I was talking to that I was getting an error message when I tried to reset my password. Eventually, she tried it herself and she realized she needed to transfer me to the person who could send me an email to reset it.

I also succeeded in creating an account with a company they’ve now contracted with that has something to do with Medicare open enrollment. But, fundamentally, I still need to get my medicare card in order to move forward.

Other stuff: Other things I’ve done included Yom Kippur services, one of my book clubs, and a Travelers’ Century Club meeting.

Also, a friend posted a copy of this wonderful painting by Phil Lockwood on Facebook.

The Office at Night. It’s an amazing homage to Edward Hopper. I see new details every time I look at it.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

All in all, it was a good evening.


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

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


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


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


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

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


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

Someday I will remember how long it takes me to write up posts on multi-day events.

This past week was Yiddish New York, which was done as a hybrid conference this year. The lectures were entirely on-line, while music / concerts were live-streamed. As is typical of this sort of thing, I didn’t have time for nearly everything I wanted to see, but the recorded sessions will be available until mid-February, so I should be able to catch up some.

I went to all four sessions of Vayberishe Zabababones: The Forgotten Rituals and Minhagim of Eastern European Jewish Women presented by Annie Cohen. (Note: “minhagim” is Hebrew and Yiddish for “customs.”) She discussed several types of women’s religious roles, ranging from prayers to midwifery and more. For example, women created religious objects like the curtains around the Torah ark and the gartel (belt) wrapped around the Torah scroll. The major emphasis was on life events, e.g. birth, marriage, and death, all of which are points of transition. She talked a lot about people making a distinction between folk practices and formal religion.

Some of the rituals she talked about were really interesting. One was the “plague wedding,” which was a wedding (often between a poor bride and groom) held to ward off disease. Instead of the normal white chuppah (wedding canopy), a black chuppah was used. Apparently there was at least one example of a plague wedding being held in the context of COVID.

She talked at more length about measuring graves (or entire cemeteries), which was done with string, which was then used to make candles. This was done either during the month of Elul (the month before Rosh Hashanah) or at times of crisis. The idea was a mixture of calling on the dead to intervene on behalf of the living and setting boundaries. Apparently this practice goes back to the 12th century and was practiced at least through the 19th century.

Another major role was the "zagerin,” a female prayer leader. She knew how to read Hebrew and could translate to Yiddish, as well as call out prayers for other women to follow. There was a certain expectation that she would capture the emotional connection to prayer. She also worked with people visiting cemeteries and her first question to them would be “with tears or without,” which would influence how much money people should give her for her prayers.

Another role was healing, including acting as a midwife. Various healing practices were used, including passing an egg over the sick person, the cemetery measuring that was already mentioned, and placing grass from the cemetery at the head of a sick person. There was some discussion about whether Jewish law allows communication with he dead, but there was also a comment that the more Jewish texts forbid a practice, the more common that practice is.

Overall, this was a really interesting series of talks. I also watched a related 15 minute video, “di Zagerin,” (i.e. The woman Prayer Leader) which has to do with a woman who is angrily yelling that all the success the other women in town have is due to her efforts, but she has nothing. She vows to pray only for their downfall and for revenge. Her grandson is trying to soothe her, but fails.


There were related lectures on Reenchanting American Judaism: The Search for Ashkenazi WOmen’s Folk Magic & Ritual and Its Modern Day Potential by Rokhl Lafrissen. I only went to the first of those (on Sunday) because there was another talk I wanted to hear at the same time on Monday. One of her major points was that, in general, American Judaism is in harmony with American values, with an emphasis on the synagogue and life cycle events and tends to be hostile to the supernatural.

She talked about “The Curious Case of the Dybbuk Box,” which was the subject of two movies (and possibly some newspaper articles) around 2001. The story has to do with an antique dealer in Oregon and is a typical haunted object story. One movie was a Hollywood production (“Possession”) but the other is an Indian movie set in Mauritius, called “Dybbuk Box: The Curse is Real.”

In general, she divided folk magic and folk ritual into a few categories - divination, communication with the dead, and magical protection / healing rituals. One particular divination practice she discussed was the Chabad practice of choosing a random passage from the Rebbe’s letters in answer to a question or problem, i.e. bibliomancy. There is apparently at least one website that will do this for you. She also talked about a blog about “Jewitches,” i.e. Jewish women who also practice witchcraft.


The final talk I went to on Sunday was Off the Derekh by Malky Goldman. This is a term that refers to formerly religious people leaving (primarily) Chasidic communities. The lecture was in Yiddish, so I only followed about a third of it. She talked about her background, growing up in a Chasidic family before coming to Boro Park (part of Brooklyn), where she learned English to be able to deal with stores and doctors. She went on to study art at Hunter College. The biggest step into American culture was realizing it was okay to be an individual. If I followed this correctly, her husband is a scientist and basketball player. When she married him, she had to choose everything. She changed how she dressed and got involved with acting, which she said gave her inner child a good feeling. At the same time. she had to deal with her family, who took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy towards her, just telling other people that she was “in Manhattan.” She also had to fight for individuality with other people who assume everyone who is Off the Derek is the same. Overall, this was an interesting talk, or at least what I understood of it.


There were several music performances. The only one I listened to in real time was by Kateryna Ostrovsky, a Ukrainian Jew based in Hamburg, Germany, who performed a mix of songs, including some Brazilian ones. She was accompanied by Leandro Pellegrino on guitar. Pleasant enough, but nothing revolutionary. I will go back and listen to some of the other music segments, however.


I listened two talks by Vivi Lachs that had to do with the Jewish East End of London. The first of those was Where’s the Goy in the London Music Hall. Yiddish music halls were generally small venues, e.g. the back rooms of pubs. The audiences were almost entirely working class. While there were attempts to put on more serious theatre, those were not successful. The word “goy” to refer to a non-Jew was rarely used and, when used, was considered neither positive nor negative. Instead there were references to people like the Russian tsar, old retired men in Victoria Park, coal men, gamblers, and British police. There were a lot of songs with references to pogroms, Russia, and the tsar. Other songs had to do with London streets, e.g. a woman complaining that her British husband beats her or a man complaining about police enforcing vagrancy laws. (There were also Jewish gangs, by the way.) Other song topics included politics and sexual relationships. The best part of the presentation was her singing a few of the songs.

The other talk by Vivi Lachs I went to was Where’s the Goy on the London Yiddish Stage. She mostly focused on fictional slice-of-life newspaper stories, rather than actual plays. A lot of these seemed to have to do with conflict between new immigrants and the more established Anglo-Jewish community. For example, the Anglo-Jewish community supported the World War I draft, but few immigrants signed up until the draft became compulsory in 1916.


Amanda Miryem-Khaya Siegel gave a talk on Women on the Yiddish Stage. This is related to a publication and translation project that is not just about actresses, but also writers, directors, choreographers, etc. The work, done along with Dr. Alysa Quint started with a summer conference on Women, the City, and Yiddish Theater in 2016 and has progressed to include a collection of scholarly articles and translations of plays by women. Some of the performers who were discussed included Sophia Karp, who was the first woman to join the Yiddish theater and was forced to marry another member of the troupe to be considered respectable, Regina Prager who was mostly an opera singer, and Bertha Kalich, who was the first Jew to perform on the stage of the Romanian National Theatre and the first woman to perform Hamlet on the English stage. There was also a mention of an article (maybe a book) about women in the Lithuanian Yiddish Theatre in Kovno, which I should probably look for given thats where my roots are.

A very different presentation was Am Yisroel High: The Story of Jews and Cannabis by Eddy Portnoy. (This is a pun on the phrase “Am Yisroel Chai,” which means “the people of Israel live.”) This was related to a current exhibit at YIVO in New York at the Center for Jewish History Building. For those who are not familiar with YIVO, it was founded in Lithuania and moved to New York in 1940 and is sort of the Ashkenazi Jewish equivalent of the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress. Some of the things the exhibit discusses are documents relating to cannabis, e.g. a 1911 novel titled “Hashish,” the entry for “hemp” in the Yiddish Encyclopedic Dictionary, and various historic texts, including some found in the Cairo Gneza (a repository of Jewish religious books buried in a cemetery). Hashish was generally accepted by both Jews and Muslims in North Africa and some people think cannabis may be the “aromatic cane” used in making the fragrant mixture used for anointing and for burning in incense. Some of the people who were regular cannabis users include the revisionist Leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the poet Alan Ginsburg, and the astronomer Carl Sagan. Rafael Meshalem at Hebrew University was one of the first people to research medical marijuana and isolated both THC and CBD. Another point he made was that Jews often got involved in risky (i.e. illegal) businesses because of restrictions that kept them out of the legitimate economy. I was amused that he included not just cannabis and alcohol in this, but also comic books! This was an interesting talk and I might check out the exhibit the next time I am in New York, even though I have no intention of using cannabis.


One area of particular interest to me is novelty songs so I really enjoyed Uri Schreter’s talk on Micky Katz: Yinglish Comedy and the Continuity of Klezmer. For those who don’t recognize the name, Mickey Katz did a number of shows and records incorporating Yiddish and a broken English dialect into American music, but is probably best known these days as the father of Joel Gray. He played the clarinet in swing bands and started performing with Spike Jones in 1946, leading him to move to Los Angeles. Before that he had published a book of Yinglish parodies with stories like “Little Red Rosenberg” and “Yoshki and the Beanstalk.” He went out on his own in 1947, doing klezmerized versions of American songs. Some examples include “The Baby, the Bubbe, and You,” clearly based on “Bibbidy-Bobbidi-Boo. (“Bubbe” is Yiddish for “grandmother, by the way.) He also did shows like Borscht Capades. Anyway, the best part of this presentation was listening to all the clips. His work was played frequently in my house when I was growing up (though not as much as Allen Sherman) so I have fond memories of songs like “The Purple Kishke Eater,” “Duvid Crockett,” and “16 Tons of Delicatessen.” I liked the description of him as “the hyphen in the middle of American-Jewish culture.” However, he was controversial and some people were embarrassed by his dialect comedy and thought he was too crass.


Mickey Katz was also one of the people discussed in a talk by Miriam Isaacs on Language in Yiddish Vaudeville and Radio. Note that this talk was almost entirely in Yiddish, but was fairly easy for me to follow. But before him, she talked about the Rechnitzer Rejects who did songs like “Mein Boro Park” to the tune of “New York, New York” and “Balabustas” to the “Ghostbusters” theme. (A balabusta is basically a perfect housewife.) Other people who were mentioned include Sophie Tucker and Eli Basse. There were also diversions into subjects like what is called the “gefilte fish divide” and other differences between Litvaks and Galitzianers, e.g. Litvaks make money while Galitzianers make children. This was, again, fun mostly for the music clips.


The final presentation I went to was Yiddish Songs of Drunkenness by Bob Rothstein. Most of the folk songs he talked about are either sung by drunkards or about drinking, while Slavic folk songs often deal with people dealing with drunks. One interesting thing he mentioned was that in 1863 Russian Empire laws changed from tavern leases to state monopolies on taverns, which some people disliked because Jewish tavern keepers gave credit, while the government didn’t. The only song I particularly noted was one about a drunkard’s testament in which he wants to be buried with liquor.

Overall, there was a lot of interesting material here. And there are still several talks (and music performances) I want to go back and watch/listen to the recordings of. Definitely worth my time (and the conference fee.)

I have a bunch of things to write about. The biggest one is the rest of the presentations from the Jewish genealogy conference, but that really demands its own longer entry.


Shameless Self-Promotion: Artists Standing Strong Together puts on an intergenerational storytelling event on the first Friday of the month. I am part of the show on Friday November 4th, from 7-9 p.m. Eastern time. I’ll be telling one of my most popular stories, my adaptation of a folktale about the wise men of Chelm. It’s free (with donations requested) but registration is required at tinyurl.com/Nov2022TGIF.



Dropkick Murphys: I went to see the Dropkick Murphys at the Lincoln Theatre on Tuesday night. They had two opening acts. I liked Jesse Ahern’s music quite a lot, but he could use some lessons on talking to audiences, since he kept his song intros to things like “is everybody having fun?” Someone I know used to coach folk singers on storytelling and he could definitely use lessons from her. The second opener was Jaime Wyatt, who has a nice enough voice but, overall, was too country for my tastes.

The Dropkicks have a new album out (“This Machine Still Kills Fascists”) and did a mix of songs from that and older stuff. The story behind the album is that they were invited by Woody Guthrie’s daughter to go through the archives of his music and lyrics and they wrote songs using some of Woody’s lyrics. This sounds odd at first, since they are mostly thought of as a punk band, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about their political leanings, which are liberal in the Bostonian working class style. (For example, they’ve sued Republican politicians to keep them from using their songs.) Anyway, there was great energy in the theatre and I had a good time.

Here, have a sample. Two 6’s Upside Down.

Medical Stuff: I got my bivalent COVID booster on Wednesday. I had some soreness in my arm, but nothing significant. I also was somewhat tired, but that could also be related to having been up late the night before. I also got blood drawn for various tests. And I ordered my new glasses.

Intimate Apparel: A Facebook friend who I hadn’t met in person before invited me to join her at this play by Lynn Nottage at Theatre J. (We are connected through the Style Invitational Losers, as well as having another mutual friend.) She had gotten tickets as part of a two-for-one deal, so it was free. I had mixed feelings about the play, which tells the story of a black seamstress named Esther who gets involved with a man named George (played by Manu Kumasi, who I thought gave the best performance of the show). He writes her letters from Panama and she agrees to marry him sight unseen. The other characters are the owner of the boarding house she lives in, the Orthodox Jewish man she buys fabric from, and a wealthy white woman and a black prostitute (apparently a long-time friend), both of whom she makes garments for. The marriage doesn’t turn out quite how she hopes, which isn’t particularly surprising. There was one shocking moment in the play, but there wasn’t much follow-through on it. And the thread involving Esther’s relationship with the fabric merchant was unconvincing. There was a talkback with the costume designer afterwards, which was moderately interesting. I’m glad I saw the play, but I hesitate to recommend it.

I am, as usual, behind on everything. Sigh.

Celebrity Death Watch: Marilyn Loden coined the term “glass ceiling.” Lamont Dozier wrote and/or produced a lot of Motown hits. Darryl Hunt played bass guitar for The Pogues. Olivia Newton-John was a singer and actress. Raymond Briggs wrote and illustrated British children’s books. Richard Caruso founded Integra LifeSciences, a successful manufacturer of artificial skin. Robyn Griggs acted in soap operas as a young adult. David Kay led American weapons inspection efforts in Iraq. Clayton Jacobson II developed the jet ski. John Wockenfuss played baseball, primarily for the Detroit Tigers. Tom Weisskopf was a golfer who won several PGA championships own the 1970’s. Jerry Allison was the drummer for The Crickets and wrote several songs, including “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.” Esther Cooper Jackson was a civil rights activist. Len Dawson was a football player, primarily for the Kansas City Chiefs. Kurt Gottfried cofounded the Union of Concerned Scientists. Roland Messier was the White House executive pastry chef from 1980 to 2004. Robert LuPone originated the role of Zach in A Chorus Line on Broadway and co-founded the MCC Theater, but was never as well known as his sister, Patti. Peter Eckersley was a cyber security activist. Frank Drake was an astronomer. Peter Straub wrote horror novels. Moon Landrieu was the mayor of New Orleans for most of the 1970’s. Earl J. Silbert was the first prosecutor in the Watergate case. Tina Ramirez founded Ballet Hispanico. Bernard Shaw was the lead news anchor for CNN for over 20 years. Rommy Hunt Revson invented the scrunchie. Lance Mackey was a four-time Iditarod champion. James Polshek was an architect, whose work included the Clinton Presidential Center and the Newseum. Lowry Mars co-founded Clear Channel Communications. Ramsey Lewis was a jazz pianist and composer. Ken Starr was a lawyer, probably best known for writing the Starr Report which led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Roxanne Lowit was a fashion photographer. Jean-Luc Goddard was a film director. Fred Franzia made cheap wine. Irene Pappas was an actress, probably best known for playing the widow in the film version of Zorba the Greek. Liam Holden was the last person sentenced to death in the UK, though his sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment and his conviction was overturned later in response to revelations about the torture used to extract his confession to killing a British soldier in Northern Ireland. Brian Binnie was one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, built by Scaled Composites. Nick Holonyak invented the red LED.


Norah Vincent died in early July, but her death was not publicly announced until mid-August. She was most famous for her book Salf-Made Man, in which she described her experiences living as a man for 18 months.

David McCullough was a historian. He won the Pulitzer prize for his books about Harry S Truman and John Adams.

Marc Lapadula taught film studies at Yale University. He also lectured as part of One Day University and I’d been to a couple of his lectures about significant American movies.

Anne Heche was an actress who died in a rather spectacular traffic accident. She was probably at least as well known for her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. I was able to use one of my ghoul pool trades for her, so she earned me 32 points (including the 12 point uniqueness bonus, which really only worked due to some convenient timing on the trade).

Barry Boehm was the founding director of the Center for Systems and Software Engineeringg at USC. He was something of a fixture in software engineering and systems engineering circles, and did important work on cost modeling, models for software development, and systems engineering processes. I scribbled down various words of wisdom from him at numerous conferences over the years, including, “the standards have been tailored so much that the suit has become a vest.”

Lily Renee was a comic book artist. She escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria to England as a teenager, before coming to the United States and becoming one of the first women in the comics industry. She was also the subject of a book by Trina Robbins which revived interest in her career. She earned me 25 ghoul pool points, which includes the 12 point uniqueness bonus.

I hope you don’t really need me to tell you who Mikhail Gorbachev was. He presided over the break-up of the Soviet Union peacefully and got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

Barbara Ehrenreich was a nonfiction writer, specializing in social issues. Her most famous book was Nickel and Dimed, which discusses trying to live on minimum wage jobs. I have been hearing the term “toxic positivity” quite a lot lately and a lot of her writing touches on that subject.

Marsha Hunt was pretty much the last actress of her generation left when she died at age 104. Her career was cut short by McCarthyism, leading her to become an activist. She earned me 14 ghoul pool points.

You really really don’t need me to tell you who Queen Elizabeth II was. For people of my generation, she was the one British monarch throughout our lives. I think the most interesting thing about her was her World War II service as a driver and mechanic. Whatever one might think of the monarchy, she fulfilled her role with dignity and grace. She earned me 20 ghoul pool points.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: I only learned a week or so ago that Mort Rau died at the end of July. I knew him as spaceman on flyer talk and got to spend time with him at a few FT events, including OzFest. We had a mutual professional interest in space systems so had plenty to talk about. He was a nice guy and I’m sorry to see him join the ranks of FTers who’ve flown off into the sunset.

Baseball: I know the season isn’t actually over, but the Mets are the only team I follow who are still in it. The Nats were particularly pathetic, even worse than the Royals. (I follow the Royals because a guy from my home town used to pitch for them.) And I can’t even think about my Red Sox without distress, though they haven’t actually been eliminated from the wild card race yet.

National Book Festival: I spent the afternoon of September 3rd volunteering at the National Book Festival. They were a bit disorganized this year, sending out the info for the zoom training sessions rather last minute. And I got my email with my volunteer assignment early in the morning the day before the festival. That assignment turned out to be program distribution. I was stationed at the L Street South entrance to the Convention Center. People were surprisingly enthusiastic in their gratitude for being handed a program. Some people (mostly men) were astonished that the program was free. (As was the entire festival.) I was mostly able to direct people to where they wanted to go, but I did misdirect one person (in fact, one of my neighbors!) because it was still early and I had forgotten that, for some ungodly reason, the convention center map has north on the left. Standing for 5 hours was tiring, but I’m still glad I did it and I’ll do it again in future years, schedule permitting.

My Birthday / Storytelling Workshop: I’d had an early birthday celebration on the Friday night before my birthday, in the form of going out to my favorite Thai restaurant (Elephant Jumps in Falls Church) with a friend. Then on Sunday September 4th, I turned 64. I celebrated by going to a storytelling workshop (over zoom), having to do with tall tales and liars’ contests. Bi Lepp was the perfect person to lead this and it was a fun afternoon.

Getting Rid of Books: I made a used bookstore run on Friday the 9th, getting rid of 59 books and bringing home only 13 with my trade credit. (I still have 30 odd dollars of trade credit, however.) The next day I drove to Baltimore and donated 77 books to The Book Thing. There are still too many books in my house.

JGSGW: Tyler Ainbinder gave a very interesting talk about Jewish Immigrants in Urban America. He talked about several things that I hadn’t already known. For example, the Statue of Liberty was funded by French radicals who were protesting the monarchy. 1 in 100 immigrants were turned away at Ellis Island, generally for health reasons. When you see pictures of people climbing the stairs to the hall, that was a test to make sure their lungs and legs were healthy. One thing that struck most of us as weird was that immigrants had to answer that they did not have a job that they were going to. This was because of a concern that they would have accepted low pay, which would take jobs away from people already in America. I’ll take Things I Wouldn’t Have Imagined for $600, Alex.

The Usual: My usual routine includes lots of other things over zoom. I have a once a month session on Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) research discussion with JGSGW, for which I am the primary Subject Matter Expert. I go to a crafts group on Thursdays, which provides for time to work on projects (an on-going cross-stitch in my case) and good conversation, always including books. The discussion group on Grimm’s Fairy Tales started up again with “The Handless Maiden,” a story that poses a number of difficulties. And I play games (mostly Code Names) with friends several nights a week. As I like to say, I am retired from work, not from life.

FT Dinner: I had dinner a week ago with a couple of Flyertalk people at Farmers Fishers Bakers in Georgetown. The restaurant is at Washington Harbor, which is always a bit of a pain in the neck since, while it isn’t terribly far from the Foggy Bottom metro station, part of the route is rather pedestrian unfriendly. Anyway, I had a nice cocktail called a Southside, which had gin, lemon, mint, and clementine bitters. My seared tuna was just okay, as it was a little overcooked. I also had coffee ice cream for dessert, which was fine. The service was so-so, which is my usual experience at Founding Farmers affiliated restaurants. But the conversation (primarily about travel) was good and that’s the important thing.

No Place To Go: I saw this musical at Signature Theatre this past Thursday. It was written in 2012 and is somewhat dated given the rise in remote work, but the premise is that an “information refiner,” who is a “permanent part-time worker” has to decide whether or not to relocate when his employer announces they are moving - to Mars. It’s reasonably amusing and the music (played by a three-man band) was enjoyable. I was particularly impressed by Ben Boker, who played the saxophone at the performance I was at. But the whole thing works largely because Bobby Smith, who is well-known to all regular Signature attendees, is excellent. There are some ver funny moments, such as the song “Aging Middle Class Parents,” in which he considers moving in with his (or his wife’s) parents as a way to avoid moving. There’s also a running joke in which the last sandwich left in the conference room cries out to be eaten. There’s also a poignant song, “The Mighty Mench [sic],” which tells the story of a former employee who died. The key message is that people get more out of work than just a paycheck. Overall, this isn’t essential, but it was an enjoyable hour and a half.

The Color Purple: I was back at Signature on Saturday afternoon to see their production of The Color Purple. I’ve seen this show before (a touring production st the Kennedy Center) and thought it was just okay. But Signature made it outstanding, largely due to some excellent performances. I knew I was in for a treat when I saw that Nova Payton, one of the best actresses in the DC area, was starring as Celie. I was also very impressed by French Davis as Sofia and Danielle J. Summons as Shug Avery. There was also great choreography - especially for the song “African Homeland.” There are major holes in the book. I find Mister’s reformation completely impossible to believe, for example. But the show was both entertaining and moving. This type of performance is why I’m a long-time subscriber to Signature Theatre.

Story Swap: We had the monthly Voices in the Glen story swap on Saturday night. People are gearing up for Halloween. Myself included, as I did my first telling of a Russian folk tale (The Coffin Lid) that is, essentially, a vampire story. I also particularly enjoyed hearing a few stories from The Devil’s Storybook by Natalie Babbitt.

Bernstein’s MASS: On Sunday, a friend and I went to see Leonard Bernstein’s MASS at the Kennedy Center. This was commissioned by Jackie Kennedy for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971. Before the performance, we had lunch at the KC Cafe (overpriced and unexciting, but convenient) and checked out the new exhibit about JFK in the Gallery on the Terrace level.

As for the theatrical work (and it is theatrical, incorporating dance with the wide ranging music), it is very much a product of its turbulent times, which actually makes it relevant in these turbulent times. I’d only heard excerpts before, so was not entirely prepared for the complexity of the complete piece. I was glad for the supertitles (which translated the gist of the Latin mass portions, as well as English texts, which were sung clearly enough that I didn’t need the supertitles for them for the most part). Will Liverman gave an excellent performance as the Celebrant, which is a demanding role, given the emotional intensity of the piece, especially the Fraction. James Gaffigan conducted the orchestra and was less showy than some other conductors I’ve seen over the years (including Leonard Bernstein himself). I’d say my favorite section is the Credo, in which various members of the congregation sing about their conflicting beliefs. I’ll also note that the most memorable lyric is “half of the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election; half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction,” which was a gift from Paul Simon to Bernstein. (The primary lyricist was Stephen Schwartz.) At any rate, this was definitely worth seeing and it made me feel privileged to have access to the cultural life here.

Celebrity Death Watch - May / June: Lee Lawson was a soap opera actress. Andy Fletcher played keyboards for Depeche Mode. Ray Liotta was an amor whose movies included Something Wild and Field of Dreams. Alan White played drums for Yes. Ronnie Hawkins was a Canadian singer-songwriter. Joel Moses was a computer science professor at MIT and responsible for Macsyma, which was an early symbolic manipulation program. Lester Pigott was an English jockey. Paul Vance wrote “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini,” among other songs. Barry Sussman was an editor at the Washington Post and oversaw much of the Watergate coverage. Ann Truner Cook was the model for the Gerber baby. Alec John Such played bass for Bon Jovi. Jim Seals was half of soft rock duo Seals and Croft. Ranan Lurie was a political cartoonist, primarily for news magazines (e.g. Life, Newsweek, US News and World Report). Joel Whitburn was a music historian, who published books on record charts. Arnold Skolnik designed the poster for Woodstock. Anita Ekstrom was a Swedish actress. Clella Rorex issued the first same-sex marriage license in the U.S. (in Boulder, Colorado). Brett Tuggle played keyboards for Fleetwood Mac. James Rado co-wrote Hair. Bruce Katz co-founded Rockport Shoes. Sonny Barger cofounded Hell’s Angels.


Derva Murphy was one of my favorite travel writers. She was best known for Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle. I’ve also read several of her books about her travels in Africa.

Baxter Black was a cowboy poet and storyteller, who was frequently heard on National Public Radio. As everyone who listened to him knew, he was also a large animal veterinarian. His voice was uniquely American and always interesting.

Deborah James was an English journalist, best known for writing about her struggle with bowel cancer. She earned me 9 ghoul pool points.


Celebrity Death Watch - July / August: Susie Steiner wrote crime novels. Robert Curl was a chemist who won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of buckminsterfullerene. Tony Sirico was an actor who played a number of gangster roles. Luis Echeveria was the president of Mexico in the 1970’s. Shinzo Abe was the prime minister of Japan from 2012-2020 and was shockingly assassinated. Nelson Pincer was a civil rights activist. Gerald McEntee was the president of AFSCME for 30+ years. Monty Norman wrote the James Bond Theme and contributed English lyrics to the musical Irma La Douce. Sean Kelly wrote for National Lampoon. David Dalton was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine. Ivana Trump was a serial courtesan, whose most notorious marriage was to Donald Trump. Matt King co-founded Meow Wolf. William Hart sang with The Delfonics. Delia Giovanola cofounded the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo which kept attention on the children of mothers who were disappeared from Argentine prisons during the junta of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Taurean Blaque was an actor, best known for playing Detective Neal Washington on Hill Street Blues. Stuart Woods was a novelist. Dwight Smith played outfield, primarily for the Chicago Cubs. Bob Rafelson directed movies, including Five Easy Pieces. Diane Hegarty co-founded the Church of Satan. Tim Giago founded the Native American Journalists Association. Paul Sorvino was an actor who played both cops and robbers. Burt Metcalfe was an actor and television producer, best known for producing seasons 6 through 11 of M*A*S*H. Tony Dow played Wally on Leave It to Beaver. Archie Roach was an Australian musician and indigenous activist. Pat Carroll was an actress who is probably best known as the voice of Ursula in The Little Mermaid, but also dd a lot of work in early television and won several awards for her one-woman show about Gertrude Stein. Ayman al-Zawahiri led al-Qaeda since 2011. Mo Astin was an executive for Warner Records. Fidel Ramos succeeded Corazon Aquino as president of the Phillippines. Melissa Bank wrote the novel, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing. Richard Tait co-invented the game Cranium.


James Caan was an actor who played a number of significant roles, including Brian Piccolo in Brian’s Song, Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, Billy Rose in Funny Lady, and Paul Sheldon in Misery among others.

Larry Storch starred in F-Troop, a TV show I remember liking a lot when I was a child.

Claes Oldenburg was a sculptor, known for his giant versions of everyday objects. I first encountered his work when I saw Lipstick on Caterpillar Treads on the Yale campus when I was touring colleges. Coincidentally, the person I stayed with when I visited MIT a few weeks later took me to see a short documentary about him. His work is instantly recognizable. I particularly love the giant badminton shuttlecocks outside the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City.

Diana Kennedy was a food writer who wrote the definitive cookbooks on Mexican cuisine.

James Lovelock was an environmentalist who was best known for the Gaia Hypothesis, which has to do with the interconnections between living things and surroundings. He earned me 23 ghoul pool points (11 for place on list, plus 12 for uniqueness).

Mick Moloney was a musician and folklorist. He influenced pretty much every modern Celtic musician. He also played a major role in promoting women in traditional Irish music.

Nichelle Nichols played Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek. She went on to promote hiring of women and ethnic minorities for NASA.

Bill Russell was the center for the Boston Celtics for several years, leading them to 11 NBA championships. He became the first black superstar in the NBA. He was also a civil rights activist and was awarded the Presidential Medal of of Freedom for his accomplishments.

Vin Scully was the voice of the Dodgers, both in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. He spent 67 years as their play-by play announcer, which was the longest of any broadcaster in a major sport-


Non-celebrity Death Watch: I knew Mark Early from storytelling. In particular, he had organized a liar’s contest out in the Roanoke area that I participated in years ago. Cancer sucks.

Non-human Death Watch: The very last Howard Johnson’s restaurant closed. (I believe there are a handful of HoJo branded motels left). HoJo was an institution in my childhood, primarily for ice cream. We also stopped there regularly on the handful of long driving trips we took. I suspect that they were another victim of the rise of fast food / drive-through culture, as well as changes in how chains operate with the growth of franchising and so on. I feel old.

Beyond Barbarella - Science Fiction Storytelling by Women: I was part of a science fiction storytelling show, along with five other women. This is very much not the sort of thing I normally do, which was part of the reason for doing it. Namely, it is good to stretch my creative muscles. I came up with an idea bout what I called “The Auntie Brigade,” which relies on a group of women whose role is to indoctrinate the children of a space colony with earth culture. The other important aspect of this was that the colony (Planet Sophia) was made up of women, with contact with men limited to brief periods for breeding purposes. The story went over reasonably well, though I think I was too focused on world building and not enough on an actual plot. Still, it’s something I can play with in the future.

There was also a little weirdness related to how the backgrounds between stories were handled. The story before mine was prerecorded, but there was a lag between the YouTube lifestream and the Zoom feed I was performing on, which made it a little hard to figure out exactly when I was supposed to start telling. When I looked at the recording, it all looked much smoother than it felt for me. As I said, it’s good to do things that are something of a stretch.


Capital Fringe - I’m Just Doing My Job: I went to see this fringe show because it was being done by Diana Veiga, who is part of our local storytelling community. Some of the stories were about various jobs she’s had, including working at a strip club (not as a stripper), being a personal assistant, working for the girl scouts (with a notable camping episode and an even more notable car theft), and working at “the libury” (vs. the library). In between, there were stories about other aspects of her life as a black woman, including a piece about helping her best friend give birth. It was funny and moving and well worth seeing.


Capital Fringe - This is Cabaret: The only other fringe show I made it to this year was this showcase by the DC Cabaret Network. (Normally I go to at least 6 fringe hows, but my calendar was crazy and there were also fewer shows to choose from.) All 7 performers were good and the selections included several standards, e.g. Maureen Kerrigan’s performance of the Sondheim song “I’m Still Here.” I particularly liked Heather Frank’s two original songs, especially “Her Majesty Regrets” and I hope she makes her material available on YouTube in the future. This was a thoroughly delightful show and I will keep my eyes open for other performances from this organization.

Global Entry: The other thing I accomplished before leaving on my trips was finally doing my global entry renewal application. I had screwed up here and not carefully read the email from some moths ago that offered to extend my enrollment. What I’d missed was that I had to do the renewal application before my enrollment expired (which was back in September). Anyway, I got through doing the application part, but I am still waiting for an interview. (I have an appointment for early November, but am hoping to get something earlier. If I do any international travel before then, I can do enrollment on arrival.)

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.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I was sharing a condo with the friends I play Codenames with several times a week. For some reason, one of them had set up some sort of puzzle / game / competition in the public areas of the condo (i.e. everywhere except the bedrooms and bathrooms). This involved various figurines and plushies, e.g. a ceramic snake with a tiny little Winnie the Pooh nest to it. One of these arrangements had a note suggesting that the contest would start in April.

The Devil’s Tree: There is consensus among my friends that the particular source of the vast clouds of pollen irritating all of us right now is that insidious monstrosity known as the Bradford Pear. These invasive trees are pure evil for other reasons - crowding out native plants, creating vast thickets of thorns, hosting non-native insects, and having weak branches prone to breaking off and obstructing paths and roads. But their greatest evil is their insistence on having sex outdoors, releasing highly allergenic pollen which, not coincidentally, smells like semen. Oddly, almost all of us who are allergic to this substance find it especially troublesome in our left eyes. Nobody has been able to explain this particular phenomenon. Weird but true.


Purim: Among the things I didn’t get around to writing about was Purim, which fell on Saint Patrick’s Day this year, leading to two excuses for drunkenness. (One of the things we do on Purim is get so drunk we can’t tell Haman - the villain - from Mordechai, the hero.) I actually limited myself to a couple of shots of amarula. I did also tune in to a virtual Purim Party but on by Jewish Gen, with a genealogy themed game of Family Feud, which featured a lot of confusion over the actual rules of the game. Even more fun was the Purim Cabaret put on by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, hosted by the always adorable Adam B. Shapiro and with a wide range of Yiddish songs and skits, plus the recipe for a special cocktail, the Hava Tequila, which is essentially a Tequila Sunrise with Manischevitz wine instead of grenadine.


Written in Stone: This is a set of four operas which I saw at the Kennedy Center last Monday. The first one was Chantal by Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran. That had to do with a surveyor assessing the condition of a monument and reflecting on what monuments are. I have to admit that this piece didn’t work at all for me. The libretto felt repetitive and I didn't care for the music.

The second opera was Rise with music by Kamala Sankaram and Libretto by A.M. Homes. The story involves a young girl who gets lost in the Capital Rotunda. There’s some humor as she searches for a bathroom and is aided by a powerful woman who is more interested in showing her the sites than addressing that need. After that situation is resolved, she reflects on the lack of any statues that resemble her, which leads, eventually, to the Portrait Monument of three women involved in the fight for women’s suffrage.

The third opera was, by far, my favorite. it all falls down has music by Carlos Simon and a libretto by Marc Bamuthi Joseph. I loved the music and I thought the story of a young man, slated to take over leadership of a black church from his father, who reveals that he is gay, resulting in division between the church members (including his father) and culminating in the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage was interesting and thoughtful.


The final piece was The Rift with music by Huang Ruo and libretto by David Henry Hwang, who is, of course, famous for his plays, including M. Butterfly. This had to do with the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial and the controversies about its design. I thought it was most effective when it dealt with the effect of the finished monument on visitors to it. Including Robert McNamara as a character (as well as architect and monument designer Maya Lin) was also interesting. But I wasn’t crazy about most of the music.


Overall, this wasn’t particularly my sort of thing, but I was glad I saw it and I would look out for other work by Carlos Simon.


Michael Tilson Thomas: I was back at the Kennedy Center on Friday night to see Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the National Symphony Orchestra. I think I’d only seen him conduct the orchestra for the San Francisco Ballet previously, and I particularly enjoyed his introductions to the three pieces the orchestra performed. Those were interesting and informative and I felt that they really enhanced the performances for me.

First up was Angels by Carl Ruggles. This is a short piece (about 4 minutes long) and MTT talked about Ruggles, who was not a likeable man and about angels more generally. He pointed out that classical paintings show hell at the bottom and heaven, with angels, at the top, with musicians at all levels. However, the musicians at the top have the most pained expressions because they have discovered that G-d likes dissonance. And, indeed, the piece was fairly dissonant, but still interesting.

The second piece was MTT’s own composition, Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind. This is based on a poem by Carl Sandburg, which MTT described as “a honky-tonk Ozyymandias. He read the poem during his introduction. There were also supertitles for the parts of the composition during which the poem was sung. And those were interesting for the use of fonts to enhance the words. I found this piece enthralling.


The final piece was the most familiar one - Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring. Even here, there was something new, as MTT included a section that is usually omitted, in which a fire and brimstone preacher appears to caution a young couple about what lies ahead for them. That section definitely put a different tone to the piece as it returns to the variations on the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts.


All in all, this was a wonderful evening of American music and was definitely worth going to.


Crafts Fair: On Saturday, I went to the Capital Arts and Crafts Festival at the Dulles Expo Center with two friends. They were both designated as shopping discouragers and the only non-consumable I bought was a pin, which I insist was to honor the memory of Madeline Albright. I also bought some chocolate and some honey. And it was fun browsing and discussing potential purchases with both of them.


Still to Come: I still need to write up the Women’s Storytelling Festival and my trip to Boston (which was in between the two visits to the Kennedy Center). And I am behind on various other things.