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I am fairly sure this is the latest I have ever done a year in review. Let’s just say that I’ve been crazy busy. Anyway, here we go in the same format I’ve used for several years now.

The worst thing that happened in 2024 was the whole fiasco with the HVAC leak in late June / early July. Which turned out to be due to a blockage from a line in a unit above mine, so didn’t involve as much money as it might have, but it was still very stressful.

Beyond that, there was also some medical stuff. Having cataract surgery was actually a really good thing. It was quite miraculous the morning after the first eye was done when I could read titles of books across the bedroom without putting on my glasses. (The second eye also went well, but that was a less dramatic change.) The knee issues that I had later in the year were also a big deal. Let’s just say I have good days and I have bad days. Getting old sucks.


Books: I read only 36 books in 2024, which is pathetically few for me. That was 14 non-fiction books and 22 fiction books. Favorites were Sleeping With the Fishes by Mary Janice Davidson, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehotto Hindman, Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, and a couple of Dick Francis mysteries. The worst book I read during the year was The Naked Face by Sidney Sheldon, a suspense novel full of racism and homophobia.

I didn’t manage any used bookstore runs over the year, though I did give away 4 books. I have at least 60 waiting to go out.

I belonged to three book clubs, one of which has disbanded.

As for book-related events, I went to the Moby Dick Marathon in San Francisco in October and even read one chapter (Chapter 8, The Pulpit).

Ghoul Pool: I finished 6th out of 14 players with a final score of 117 points. People I scored on were Jimmy Carter, Daniel J. Evans (unique), Shannon Doherty, Janis Paige, Jean Malaurie (unique), Bud Harrelson (unique), and Faith Ringgold (unique).

Travel: My only international trip of the year was to Portugal (Porto and Lisbon) and the Azores in May / June. But I had plenty of domestic travel. I went to New York City in late January / early February. Then to Salt Lake City in late February / early March for Roots Tech. The total solar eclipse took me to Bruceville, Texas (near Dallas) in April, including an Israeli dance camp. Also in April, I had an overnight trip to Richmond for the Virginia Storytelling Alliance gathering. In May I went to Colorado for RhinoStock (a memorial for a friend) and also had a quick trip to Indianapolis to go to a baseball game, which unfortunately got rained out. I flew back to Dallas in July for the National Puzzlers League con, adding on a train trip to Oklahoma City to go to a baseball game. In August, I went to a Jewish genealogy convention in Philadelphia, and added in a couple of days in New York City for Lollapuzzoola (and theatre going, of course). And in October, I made a quick trip to San Francisco for their Moby Dick Marathon.

Genealogy: I’ve continued mentoring members of my local Jewish genealogy society on Lithuanian Jewish genealogy. As I’ve probably mentioned before, when I was starting to do genealogy research, other people helped me, so I feel happy to be able to help other people.

In February, I went to Roots Tech, which is a large genealogy conference held annually in Salt Lake City. The most interesting thing there was the presentation on using DNA from an old envelope - amazing, but not ready for the general public yet. I also went to the IAJGS convention in Philadelphia in August, at which I finally got to meet a cousin in person, as well as doing some volunteering.

Baseball: As I mentioned above, I had a failed attempt to go to a minor league game in Indianapolis (damn rain!) but a more successful game experience in Oklahoma City in July.

Culture: I went to 10 musicals and one non-musical play. My favorites for the year were Tick … Tick .. Boom at the Kennedy Center, Harmony on Broadway, Soft Power at Signature Theatre, and Suffs on Broadway.

I saw 7 movies in theaters and two on airplanes. Favorites were Next Goal Wins, Shari and Lamb Chop, and My Penguin Friend.

Storytelling: I performed in a Better Said Than Done show in February and emceed at the Women’s Storytelling Festival in March. I told a story at the Artists Standing Strong Together New Year’s Eve storytelling show. I went to several local story swaps (some in person, some over zoom), as well as zoom story swaps in Los Angeles and in Ottawa, Canada. I saw a friend’s storytelling show as part of Artomatic. And I participated in several discussions of Grimm fairy tales.

Museums and Art: I went to an exhibit of Dorothea Lange’s photos at the National Gallery of Art with a friend (and looked at some other art in the museum afterwards). I saw a Judy Chicago retrospective at the New Museum in New York City. I went to much of Artomatic. And I went to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas and the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City.

During my trip to Portugal, I went to a stained glass museum in Porto, the Museo Nacional de Azulejo (National Tile Museum) and Oceanario (aquarium) in Lisbon, and the Museum of Myths and Legends in Sintra.

Other Stuff:

I participated in Lollapuzzoola (a crossword contest) in August. I played board games, sometimes with the National Puzzlers’ League, sometimes with people I know from the loser community. I also went to other loser events, including a few parties and a couple of brunches.

I went to Kochavim, an Israeli folk dance weekend (in association with the eclipse).

I did a tour of M&S Schmalburg’s fabric flower factory (via the New York Adventure Club).

I attended a few lectures in the Leading Jewish Minds at MIT series (over zoom). And I went to a reception for MIT president Sally Kornbluth.

I’ve probably forgotten something or other among this, but it was a weird and stressful year. And I think that compared to normal people, I still did a lot of things.

Goals: So how did I do on my 2024 goals? Frankly, not very well. I did not circumnavigate the globe going westward, though I did map out about half of a general plan for doing it, so I’ll give myself a 5% on that goal. I didn’t make it to any national parks. I also did nothing about cleaning out my saved files of genealogy emails. I read 37 books out of my goal of 80, so I get only 45% there. I did make some progress on organizing my bedroom, but I don’t have a good metric for that. I’ll estimate that I accomplished about 50%. I finished just about 2/3 of one afghan (out of a goal to finish 3 afghans) so I’ll give myself 22% on that goal. I still haven’t found my parents’ slides. I made it to one AAA ballpark (Oklahoma City), and had an attempt at going to a game in Indianapolis, which got rained out. So I’lll get 25% on my goal of 4 AAA ballparks. I did fairly well on exercise the first part of the year, but my knee injury meant that I did very little from August on, so I’ll give myself a 60%.

So, overall, I’ll give myself a rather pathetic 23% for the year.

Which brings me to goals for 2025:


  • Circumnavigate the globe going westward. I think I have a plan for somewhere in the October / November time frame.

  • Go to at least 4 minor league baseball games.

  • Finish 4 crafts projects.

  • Read 80 books, with a stretch goal of 100.

  • Finish going through my parents’ photographs and slides.

  • Revisit / update my life list.

  • Organize genealogy files.

  • Go to at least 3 national parks.

  • Learn to read Hangul (Korean writing system).

  • Sort through cassette tapes.

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The genealogy conference schedule had turned out to be very convenient for me, since a crossword tournament I like a lot was conveniently in New York on the weekend after the conference in Philadelphia. So I had arranged to go to Lollapuzzoola on Saturday and throw in some theatre going on both Friday and Saturday nights.

The Outsiders: I’d gotten an okay price on a room at the Algonquin, which I like because I always feel wittier when I stay there. (It is also quite convenient for theatre going.) I had time for a nap before getting dinner on Friday night and wandering a few blocks west to see The Outsiders. I’d wanted to see this largely because the book it was based on had been one of my favorite books when I was in junior high. I don’t know how many times I read it, but it was a lot and I sobbed my way through it every time. The musical was reasonably true to the story (or, at least, as much of it as I remembered after some 50+ years). Unfortunately, the music did not work for me. And the choreography seemed very much out of place for 1967. The story is still a great one and I liked that a lot of the cast were new to Broadway. I just wished the music had grabbed me.

Lollapuzzoola 17: Lollapuzzoola is an annual crossword tournament, held every year on a Saturday in August in New York. The puzzles tend to be, let’s say, challenging, especially as I was definitely not at my best. I apparently made one mistake on the first puzzle, but, oh well, that happens. I solved cleanly on the second puzzle, which was (for various reasons) completely in my bailiwick. Alas, I was too slow to finish any of the other three puzzles, though I did come close. On puzzle 3, I got the theme for the most part, but just wasn’t fast enough. However, I was completely lost on puzzle 4 and somewhat lost on puzzle 5. So I finished embarrassingly badly for the day. I did, however, get to see several friends, which is really the point of the event.

Suffs: I wasn’t really sure how interested I was in this musical about the struggle for women’s suffrage, but I decided to take a chance on it because the subject is one I’m interested in. This turned out to be an excellent decision. The music was enjoyable - lively, suitable for the era, and entertaining. The characters were fleshed out reasonably well and the issues about divisions between the groups of women (based on political divisions and on race) felt realistic. I was only familiar with a few of the performers - Emily Skinner, Jenn Colella,and Hannah Cruz, for three. But the cast worked well overall as an ensemble. There was one casting note that nagged at me a bit. Namely, there are times when color-blind casting gets confusing and I kept being jarred by Dudley Malone being played by a black woman. My issue was that Woodrow Wilson was notorious for his racism so I couldn’t buy Wilson being willing to have a black person in various prominent positions. (In real life, Malone was white.) I just wish there had been a way to handle that more smoothly. By the way, I saw the show on August 24th, which was the 104th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and they had a “roll call” presentation at the end, highlighting each of the states that had voted for the amendment. Overall, I enjoyed this show and was glad I saw it.

And home: Back pain, alternating with knee pain, continues. I really need to make a doctor appointment.
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Errands: I have been been absurdly distracted on all attempts to get caught up on things here. The first half of August was just errands, with dealing with things like updating insurance (because the company I had used for years decided to pull out of Virginia) and trying to make some plans for where to focus some decluttering efforts. It doesn’t help that a couple of friends call me to chat when they are trying to procrastinate on doing their housework.

Local Theatre Going - Nine: The only halfway interesting thing I accomplished in the first half of August was seeing Nine (the Maury Yeston musical) at the Kennedy Center as part of the Broadway Center Stage series, which is a scaled down minimally staged series. I like the score for the most part, though there are some songs that annoy me. (Fortunately, one of the ones I really dislike, “The Germans at the Spa,” was omitted altogether. And my favorite song from the show, “My Husband Makes Movies,” was done well.) The two most interesting things to note were that: 1) nearly every time I go to the Kennedy Center, I run into somebody I know. In this case, there were 5 women from my Chavurah there. And, 2: I had decided to go last minute and got a rush ticket at the box office for $38.50 for a center orchestra seat, which was a great deal given that the list price was over $100.

Book Club: Oh, wait, I did also have a Crones & Tomes book club meeting. We discussed Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I think I had an advantage reading it since I’m familiar with Appalachian Virginia and a late friend was Melungeon so I felt like I knew more about the cultural milieu than some of the other people in the group. On the other hand, I’ve never read David Copperfield (and I am not really big on Dickens.) Overall, I found it interesting, but it was too long and my wrists hurt getting through it.

IAJGS Conference: Later in August, I took the train up to Philadelphia to go to the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies conference. This was supposed to start with going to a baseball game (Phillies vs. Nationals) but I had a stupid accident. The conference was at the Sheraton, but I had decided to spend Saturday night at the Marriott, which was a bit cheaper. I got out of a taxi, grabbed my backpack and was putting it on, when I somehow stepped backwards onto the curb and tripped and fell, injuring my back. This was very painful. It was also not helped by an alarm going off at the hotel at 12:30 a.m., though that proved to be nothing major (aside from sleep deprivation). Anyway, I moved to the Sheraton in the morning, which was more convenient for the actual conference sessions. I didn’t think
I was badly injured, so I managed to limp through the conference.

As for the conference itself, here’s a brief list of presentations I went to:
    Monday

  • The Mess of New York City Vital Records - I was already pretty familiar with the work that Reclaim the Records has been doing, but this was interesting.

  • Researching Small Landsmanshaftn Synagogues - this should have been interesting, but there wasn’t really enough detail.

  • JRI-Poland Luncheon / JRI-Poland Annual Meeting. The luncheon talk by Andrew Carroll about his activities collecting war letters was particularly intriguing, though not especially relevant for me. I also liked that they’d seated people by what part of Poland their families were from, so I could chat with other people who had roots in Lomza Guberniya.

  • BOF: Vinius District Research Group - good general discussion

  • Landscape of Dreams: Jewish Genealogy in Canada - I’m still trying to figure out some details on how my great-uncle got to Canada (and then on to crossing the border to Buffalo).

  • JewishGen Annual Meeting - mostly various awards. I was pleased to see that they named a new award series after Dick Plotz (who was a friend from both the puzzle world and the genealogy world).

  • The Ron Arons Game Show Night - Jewpardy! is always a fun activity, but I was exhausted halfway through.


    Tuesday

    I’d planned to go on (and paid for) a morning walking tour, but my back was not in any condition for that, alas.

  • The Importance of Memory in Building a Jewish future - Mostly an overview of the holdings at YIVO

  • Litvak SIG Meeting - the annual catch-up of what is new.

  • Holocaust Compensation and the United Restitution Organization - Since I am fairly sure both my father and grandfather got reparations money, I need to spend some time delving into these records

  • Genealogy Death Match - This is another game show, featuring two people competing over whose records go further back. Old people like me are at an obvious disadvantage.



    Wednesday

    I had again planned on another walking tour, but was still not up for that. Sigh.

  • Entering Eretz Israel: Getting Around Government Limitations - This covered legal possibilities during both the Ottoman Empire and the Britihs Mandate. I was particularly interested in learning about religious grounds for immigration, since I’ve been told my maternal grandfather studied at a yeshiva in Petah Tikva.

  • When Traditional Genealogy and Genetic Genealogy Collide - I think everyone gets frustrated over people who expect either one path or the other to “cousin hunting” to be the be all and end all to solving genealogy mysteries. Unfortunately, this talk didn’t really come to an answer.

  • BOF: Tracing the Tribe - Tracing the Tribe is definitely one of the better Jewish Genealogy groups on Facebook. This was an interesting and amusing talk by one of the moderators of it.

  • Jewish American Life Beyond New York: The Industrial Removal Office, 1901-1917 - Most of this was focused on the East Coast, Midwest, and Great Plains, so was not particularly relevant for me, though there was some discussion of cities like Atlanta (where a large branch of my father’s family settled). There was, alas, not really any discussion of the Pacific Northwest, where my earliest immigrants from Lithuania to America went. Still, there are some sources I should check out.

  • Gala Banquet - Arthur Kurzweil was the banquet speaker. He spoke well enough but didn’t really say anything I didn’t already know.



    Thursday

  • Letters Have Wings: Digitizing, Annotating, and Exhibiting Family Letters - I was volunteering as a session manager for this session. This had some good material about how to preserve and document family letters.

  • Jewish Gen Belarus Research Division Meeting / Jewish Gen Belarus Research Division Luncheon - There was some material about the history of Belarus in light of the 1905 Russian revolution, but not a lot on good resources.

  • Mentoring - I spent a couple of hours helping people find some Lithuanian data. I always enjoy doing this, since I benefited a lot from other people helping me when I first started doing genealogy.



Overall, the conference was reasonably useful though being injured was annoying. I traveled onward to New York on Friday. I will write about that in the next entry.
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I have actually done a bunch of things since late March. Looking back, I actually wrote about more of it than I thought I had (e.g. board games and some storytelling related things, including Grimm Keepers). So here’s an attempt to get up to date on everything except the Israeli Dance camp I went to in association with the eclipse, which deserves its own entry.

Storytelling: I went to an on-line story swap held by a group in Ottawa. I really enjoyed it, especially a ballad performed by one of the members. I told my original fairy tale, “The Three Sisters,” which went over well. All in all, it was a lot of fun and I plan to go again, schedule permitting.

Book Clubs: Crones and Tomes had an interesting discussion of Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. This was a rare case where I’d seen the movie before reading the book, though I found them pretty much the same. I liked the main character, Kiya, and hated the people who didn’t try to do anything to help her. I did have to suspend a lot of disbelief. Overall, I thought the book was worth reading, but I didn’t love it.

READ was supposed to discuss Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman last night, but the leader had issues with zoom, so we postponed a week. I loved most of this book, so I’m interested in hearing what other people thought of it.

FIOS Upgrade: Verizon sent out a notice that they were switching our FIOS service to an updated version. I got the upgrade installed a week ago. It took maybe an hour and a half and so far things seem more stable. (It’s hard to tell if it’s faster.) And the price is lower than it had been, with a five year price freeze.

Taxes: The other major adulting activity was doing my taxes. It is always a pain in the neck to find all of the paperwork I need. Due to having to do some searching, it took about twice the amount of time that TurboTax estimated, but it’s done, which is the important thing. Along with my annual resolution to do a better job of keeping track of everything.

Little Shop of Horrors: Since I was feeling a bit caught up on stuff at home, I bought a last minute ticket to go to the Saturday matinee of Little Shop of Horrors at Ford’s Theatre. This is a show I like more than I should, but, really, how can you go wrong with doo-wop music and a carnivorous plant? It wasn’t the best production of this show I’ve ever seen, partly because of sound and lighting issues. The performances were generally good, but (and I know this is unfair), I thought Derrick D. Truby, Jr. looked way too old as Seymour, who’s supposed to be maybe 20 years old but looks about 40. Still, it’s a fun show and was worth a couple of hours.

Nick Baskerville at Artomatic: After the show, I walked over to Foggy Bottom to see a bit more of what I hadn’t gotten to at Artomatic the previous time I was there. The only thing I took a picture of was this exhibit, called Wear Scene.

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Eventually it was time for Nick Baskerville’s storytelling show about African-American Firefighters.

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Nick told an interesting mix of stories, including true stories and a tall tale about a legendary woman. He was relaxed and entertaining and I enjoyed his performance. If you want to see this, he’s got one performance, on April 27th. And it’s free!

Adulting - Still to Go: The insurance company I’ve used for my auto and homeowner’s insurance for years is pulling out of the Virginia marketplace, so I need to start shopping around for a replacement.

I also need to make a bunch of travel arrangements. But, first, I’m going away for (part of) the weekend. And I have to finish getting ready for Pesach. Plus, of course, the rest of catching up here.
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I took a quick trip to New York last week. Late January / early February is a good time to go there, because hotel prices are fairly low. I was able to get a room in midtown for just over $100 a night. The primary purpose of the trip was seeing the Encores production of Once Upon a Mattress, but a little time browsing Time Out turned up three other shows I wanted to see, as well as a museum exhibit. And a quick look through the New York Adventure Club newsletter found a good way to fill in some of the rest of my time.

Anyway, I took the train up early on Tuesday morning. After dropping off my bag at my hotel, I headed down to the Lower East Side.

Judy Chicago Herstory: This exhibit, at The New Museum, was a must-see for me. Or course, I’ve been familiar with The Dinner Party for years, including seeing it both in book form and, in person, at The Brooklyn Museum. I also saw her exhibition Resolutions: A Stitch in Time at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles back in 2001.

I stopped quickly at Yonah Shimmel’s on the way there and had a disappointing kasha knish. They were never as good as my memories of Jerry’s on the boardwalk at Far Rockaway, a few blocks away from where Aunt Bernice and Uncle Ely lived, but they have definitely gotten worse the past couple of times I’ve been there and I think I may just have to give up on them. Oh, well.

Anyway, I was there for the Judy Chicago Herstory exhibit, which proved to be a fairly comprehensive retrospective. It made sense to follow it chronologically, so I started with her early work. The information placards were very informative, discussing things like how she took an auto body class to learn how to paint on pieces from cars. There were various video clips from her days doing performance art, the most amusing of which involved two performers dressed in body suits with large soft sculpture genitals attached arguing about roles in housework, e.g. “I have a cock. Therefore, I don’t wash the dishes. You have a cunt, so you have to wash the dishes.” But there was some less shocking artwork.

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One of my favorite exhibits had to do with the Birth Project, which was an early 1980’s collaboration with over 150 needleworkers from around the U.S. Here’s an exquisite tapestry from it called The Creation and an enlarged photo of one part of it.

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The picture below is from Resolution: A Stitch in Time, which I’d mentioned having seen at the Skirball. In that project, each of the works offered a contemporary interpretation of a traditional adage or proverb.

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If Women Ruled the World was another fascinating piece.

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There was plenty of other stuff to see, including an exhibition of works by various women who influenced Judy Chicago. This was called The City of Ladies and the accompanying brochure had biographies of over 80 women, such as Hima af Klint, Simone de Beauvoir, Hildegard von Bingen, Suzanne Duchamp, Georgia O’Keefe, etc.

One of my other favorites was the International Honor Quilt, a series of several small triangular quilts representing women throughput the world who had been unjustly forgotten. There are apparently over 500 quilts in the total collection and the museum exhibited only a small number of them. Here’s an amusing example. Note the blue triangle in the top row, between Mother Teresa and Agatha Christie.

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If anyone is going to be in New York, the exhibit runs through March 3rd and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in feminism and art.

Merrily We Roll Along: I took the subway back to Midtown and rested for a little while before getting a slice of $1 pizza before going to see Merrily We Roll Along. For anyone who doesn’t know, this was a 1981 Sondheim flop, based on a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It tells the story of three friends, whose youthful promise takes them in different directions. But it’s told in reverse chronology, so it starts in 1976 after they’ve had their falling out. The real focus is on Frank (Franklin Shepard, who has become a successful Hollywood producer, abandoning both his partner, Charley (with whom he collaborated on musicals) and their friend, Mary, whose career tanked after an early bestseller. As it works its way backwards, we see how Frank’s pursuit of monetary success led to his falling out with Charley, who embarrasses him in a television interview. And Mary’s unrequited interest in him leads her to decline into alcoholism.

The performances were impressive. A lot of people were there to see Daniel Radcliffe as Charley. His singing voice is okay, though not spectacular, but he does have a real gift for physical comedy. And he did very well with “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” which summarizes their separation.

Lindsey Mendez was an appropriately acerbic Mary. But the highlight of the cast was Jonathan Groff who made Frank less unlikeable than many other performers have. I also want to call out Katie Rose Clarke who nailed it as Beth (Frank’s first wife) who gets the best song of the show in “Not a Day Goes By” and Reg Rogers, whose comic timing as Joe was superb.

I have two serious problems with the show. For one thing, the backwards timeline makes it depressing. No matter how much early promise things show, we know that everything will go wrong. That also applies to the cabaret number, “Bobby and Jackie and Jack” about the Kennedy clan. It’s a very funny piece, but (again) we know how things go wrong for them.

My bigger issue is with the women in the show. Gussie (Frank’s second wife) displays every horrible stereotype about actresses. And Mary’s character is never fully developed. Sorry, but Frank just isn’t worth her throwing her life away for.

As a Sondheim completist, it’s worth seeing, especially for the excellent cast. But it will never be a show I love the way I love, say, “Company” or “Assassins” or “Pacific Overtures.” By the way, there is a running bit about songs not being hummable, which was, of course, a frequent criticism of Sondheim’s work. Anything you can sing you can hum, damn it. Just don’t go in expecting a Jerry Herman-esque ear worm.

This is getting long, so I’ll continue it in a separate post.
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The weekend before the one that just passed, I was home and fairly sociable.

tick. tick . . . BOOM1 On Friday night, I went to see this musical, which was part of the Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center. That means that the staging is fairly minimal, but they still had a video screen, providing parts of the setting. For those unfamiliar with this show, it was originally a semi-autobiographical monologue by Jonathan Larson and, after his death, was turned into a three person musical. This version (which was directed by Neil Patrick Harris) also had several other characters, with one of them who seemed to deserve as much credit as the three principals.

The plot involves the main character, Jon (ably played by Brandon Uranowitz) , turning 30 and debating whether he should abandon his goal of writing a musical in favor of making money in advertising. His girlfriend, Susan, thinks they should move to Cape Cod. As he says / sings “Johnny Can’t Decide.”

I mostly enjoyed the show, but some of the songs don’t do much to advance either the story or character development. For example, “Green Green Dress” is a fairly generic song Jon sings about Susan. On the other hand, “Sunday” is a brilliant pastiche of the Sondheim song of the same name (from Sunday in the Park With George) and was worth the price of admission alone. And “Why,” effectively summarizes the whole point of the show.

Loser Post-Holiday Party: Saturday afternoon was the annual Loser post-holiday party. My contribution to the pot luck was a mushroom quiche and, since I got requests for the recipe, I’ll include it below. Then there were some awards for people who’d reached certain invitational milestones. And, finally, the singing of various parody songs, mostly with political themes. Plus, of course, lots of interesting conversation, including some discoveries of mutual connections I hadn’t known of before.

Mushroom Quiche Recipe: Since I had requests for the recipe…

Ingredients:
1 deep dish pie crust (I admit I used a frozen one.) Bake in a pie pan according to package directions or recipe if you're less lazy than I was.

8 oz. white button mushrooms
half an onion, chopped
2 T. butter
8 oz. gruyere cheese, shredded (or you can buy cubed gruyere). Do not use smoked gouda.
1 c. heavy cream
4 large eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
a pinch of nutmeg
2 T. grated parmesan cheese, divided

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Salute the onions and mushrooms until browned.
3. Sprinkle the mushrooms and cheese into the bottom of the baked pie crust.
4. Whisk the eggs. Add the cream, seasonings and 1 T. of the parmesan cheese and beat together. Pour the mixture over the mushrooms and cheese.
5. Sprinkle the remaining parmesan cheese over the top.
6. Bake until the top is light brown and the center of the quiche is set, roughly 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool about 10 minutes before serving.


TCC Meeting: Finally, there was a lunch meeting of the Travelers’ Century Club DC chapter on Sunday. Lots of good conversation about travel, of course. It also looks like several of us will be in the Azores together.
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I think this will get me caught up on everything up until this month.

I’ve been using the same format for my year in review entries for several years now. It seems to work. Note that I took off the Volksmarch category this time since it’s been a couple of years since I managed to actually do anything there.

2023 started out stressful with mail being stolen, including a check which was washed and used fraudulently and a credit card which had to be replaced. It all got resolved, but I could have lived without the stress. There was a lot of stress later in the year, with the incompetence of the person at the local Social Security office who sat on my Medicare application for over two months without doing anything. That took way too many phone calls to get resolved. And, of course, there was the whole Middle East situation to make 2023 the Age of Anxiety.

Fortunately, things were otherwise good during the year.

Books: I read 53 books over the year. 39 of those were fiction, 3 were poetry, and the rest were nonfiction. Only 3 were rereads.

Favorites included Our Ancestors Did Not Breathe This Air (a poetry collection by Muslim women at MIT), Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozu Adichie, The Ghostwriter by Alessandra Torre, and The Caxton Private Lending Library and Book Depository by John Connolly. I also read 6 novels by Dick Francis, whose books provide a reliable antidote to ones in which not enough happens to keep me satisfied. Favorite non-fiction was The Best Strangers in the World by Ari Shapiro. Least favorite book was Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

I got rid of 39 books and have at least another 33 ready to go out.

In addition to my longstanding book club (called READ for Read, Enjoy, And Discuss), I joined another book club, Crones and Tomes, which was started by a friend from the puzzle world.

Other book events included the Moby Dick Marathon in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which was an amazing experience, and a talk by Ari Shapiro at Sixth and I.

Ghoul Pool: I finished 4th out of 14 players, with 220 points. People I scored on were Naomi Replanski, Steve Harrell, Bob Barker, Tony Bennett, Al Jaffee, John Goodenough, Robert Solow, Daniel Ellsberg, Sandra Day O’Connor, James L. Buckley, W. Nicholas Hitchon, and David Oreck.

Travel: In January, I went to New Bedford, Massachusetts for the Moby Dick Marathon. In February, I went to Tucson, which included going to Saguaro National Park and Biosphere 2, as well as winning some money at a casino. March included a trip to New York City to go to the symphony and the theatre and visit with a high school friend. April’s travel was to Connecticut for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

In May I took a river cruise, which included going to the Kentucky Derby. The Derby arrangements were kind of a fiasco, but the stops at various small towns were a lot more interesting than I expected.

June took me to Svalbard, which featured amazing scenery, though the wildlife (or, more accurately, lack thereof) was disappointing. This was somewhere I’d wanted to go to forever, so I am glad to have had the opportunity.

In July, I went to Montreal for the NPL con. That also included eating a lot of Montreal Jewish food and following in the footsteps of Leonard Cohen. Later in the month, I leveraged off a genealogy conference in London to take a trip to Ireland (including a day trip to Belfast) and the Isle of Man. That included fulfilling a life list item by having a beer at the South Pole Inn in Anascaul. After the conference, I did a few more things in London, including side trips to Canterbury and to Ipswich and Sutton Hoo. Soon after I got back, I took a quick trip to New York City for Lollapuzzoola and theatre going.

LoserFest was in Philadelphia in September. Highlights included the Masonic Temple and the Magic Gardens.

In October, I took a quick trip to San Antonio for the annular solar eclipse, which was awesome. While I was there, I also did a day trip to the Hill Country, where I saw several sites associated with Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as visiting the town of Fredericksburg. Later in the month I went to Boston, mostly to go to a concert by Jonathan Richman.

I’m not sure if taking a day trip to Harrisonburg, Virginia in November counts as travel. But my trip to French Polynesia (Austral Islands and Aranui cruise to the Marquesas) definitely does.

Virtual travel talks I went to included one on Jewish Barbados and a few Travelers’ Century Club zoom sessions. There were also a few in-person TCC meetings.

Puzzles: I participated once again in the MIT Mystery Hunt as part of Halibut That Bass. I think the team worked particularly well together, but we had some issues with the way the hunt was structured, which resulted in our seeing only about half of the puzzles.

I was disappointed in my performance in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I finished solidly in the middle of the pack and I wasn’t surprised to have trouble with Puzzle 5, but I left a blank square in Puzzle 3, which was sheer carelessness. I did worse at Lollapuzzoola 16 in August, because I failed to completely read parts of some clues in Puzzle 5 there. I blame jet lag from my trip just before that event.

As I mentioned above, I went to the National Puzzlers’ League Con in Montreal. Highlights included a couple of games by Cute Mage, as well as Rasa’s over the weekend cryptic.


Genealogy: I continued to volunteer as the Subject Matter Expert for a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington Litvak Special Interest Group. I also went to several JGSGW virtual meetings. And, of course, I went to the IAJGS conference in London at the end of July / beginning of August. Aside from several interesting talks, the highlight of that was meeting a distant cousin.

Baseball: I went to a little bit of a Nationals game in May, but it got rained out. In September I went to the new Texas Rangers stadium (Globe Life Field), putting me back at having been to a game at every Major League Ballpark. I also went to two minor league ballparks to see the Aberdeen Ironbirds and the Fredericksburg Nationals.

Culture: I’m not a big television watcher but I kept Apple TV+ long enough to watch Schmigadoon and Schmicago, both of which were tremendous fun for musical theatre geeks like me.

In terms of movies, I saw 18 overall, 4 of which were in theaters, with the rest on airplanes. Favorites were A Man Called Otto, In the Heights, Blackberry, Cocaine Bear, Searching for Sugar Man, Barbie, and Remembering Gene Wilder. Most disappointing was Weird: The Al Yancovic Story.

I went to 5 Gilbert and Sullivan operettas at the G&S International Festival in England, with the best production being of Ruddigore. I went to two other operas, both by Jeanine Tesori (Blue and Grounded). I also saw two ballets and one modern dance performance, with the ballet of The Crucible being the most satisfying. As far as classical music goes, I saw the National Symphony Orchestra twice and was privileged to see Michael Tilson Thomas conduct the New York Philharmonic. The only popular music concert I went to was one by Jonathan Richman, who is always wonderful.

I saw 14 plays and 9 musicals, assuming I counted correctly. Favorite plays were All Things Equal (about Ruth Bader Ginsburg), The Lifespan of a Fact at Keegan Theatre, Selling Kabul at Signature Theatre, and The Pillowman, which is a Martin McDonagh play I saw in London. I also loved The Enigmatist, which is a mixture of comedy. magic, and puzzles and, hence, I consider sui generis. Top musicals were In the Heights at Next Stop Theatre Company, Signature Theatre’s production of Pacific Overtures. and Shucked and Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway.

Storytelling: I went to several storytelling shows, including one by my Grimmkeepers group. I performed in two shows for Artists Standing Strong Together, and also told at the C&O Canal Visitor Center with Voices in the Glen, at the Washington Folk Festival, and in a Better Said Than Done show at the Stagecoach Theatre. Some other shows I particularly enjoyed were Ingrid Nixon’s show about Shackleton and several of the performances at the National Storytelling Festival. And, of course, the Women’s Storytelling Festival (which I also emceed at) os always a highlight of the year.

On a rather different note, the Grimmkeepers discussions about the Grimm fairy tales continue to be enlightening and enriching.

Museums and Art: I went to 32 museums over the year. Highlights included the New Bedford Glass Museum, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, two exhibitions of miniatures (the Mini Time Machine Museum in Tucson and the Small is Beautiful exhibit in New York), the MIT Museum, the Virginia Quilt Museum, and the Museum of Failure. I also really enjoyed seeing the Book of Kells, the Manx Museum, and Sutton Hoo during my travels in July. My absolute favorite for the year was the Museum of Broadway.


Other Stuff: On New Year’s Day, my friend, Cindy, and I went to the Winter Lantern Festival at Tyson’s, which was impressive.

I went to various Loser events, including the post-Post Loser Party, the Flushes, LoserFest. I should probably count Poetry and Punchlines (a poetry reading associated with Light, which is a magazine of light verse) as a Loser event, too.

My crafting group changed to meeting on-line every other Thursday and in person at one members house on the weeks in between. I make it when I can. Similarly, I occasionally managed to get to my other (mostly) knitting group, which meets at the police station twice a month.

I went to a virtual organizing conference in September, which was moderately useful.

I played board games a few times a week, when I was home. Yes, sometimes I was home.

Goals: So how did I do on my 2023 goals? I went through maybe 10% of the photos from my parents and realized I have no idea where I put the slides, so I’ll give myself a 10% there. I did go to some sort of lecture or other formal educational event, either in person or on-line, every month, so I get 100% there. I get full credit (i.e. 100%) for taking 4 international trips. I finished only 1 craft project, so only get 33% there, though I did make progress on two others. I read 53 books, out of a goal of 75, so get 71% there. I get 100% credit for going to three new (to me) ballparks. I made it to at least one museum each month so get 100% on that goal. I only went to one national park, so get 33% on that goal. And I averaged significantly less than a half hour every day on housework, so I’ll give myself 10% there. Averaging things out, I’ll give myself a 62% on the year, which is not great but not terrible either.

Which brings me to goals for 2024:


  • Circumnavigate the globe going westward. The backstory is that way back in 2000, I did an eastward circumnavigation, from Los Angeles to Russia via Germany by plane, overland through Siberia to Mongolia and to China, and back to Los Angeles by plane. I’ve got ideas for how I want to do the westward circle.

  • Go to at least 3 national parks.

  • Clean out my saved files of genealogy related emails.

  • Read 80 books with a stretch goal of 125.

  • Finish organizing my bedroom.

  • Finish 3 afghans.

  • Find and sort through my parents’ slides.

  • Go to games at at least 4 AAA ballparks.

  • Exercise for at least 20 minutes at least 3 times a week, with a stretch goal of at least 30 minutes at least 4 times a week.

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After getting home from Boston, I had a couple of my usual activities.

Standing Meetings: Our Brothers Grimm discussion was about “The Blue Light,” which I was unfamiliar with until getting ready for our meeting. We had our usual good discussion about the relationships to other stories and the implications of different versions. I’m not sure if it’s a story I would tell or not.

My needles and crafts group was having one of our in-person meetings and I drove to darkest Maryland for that. There was the usual annoying roadwork on the Beltway, which made it take twice as long as it should have. On the plus side, there was lots of fall color in Bethesda.

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Another plus was getting to meet our hostess’s new kitten, who is adorable. And so soft.

Museum of Failure: On Saturday, Cindy and I went to the Museum of Failure, which is a temporary installation in Georgetown. Cindy had a bit of a failure finding the entrance to the building and had to call me for directions.

There are several sections to the museum, but the exhibits all raise the question of just what makes something a failure. Some of the things they show were actually good products, but did not win out over their rivals commercially. For example, most experts would say the Betamax was technically superior to VHS, but it was more expensive and didn’t capture the market share.

Another example is this device, which was wildly successful in France. It was called the Minitel and was a terminal that enabled people to do things like check stock prices, make travel reservations, do their banking, and search for porn before the world wide web. It was very popular - and kept the French from getting onto the internet for about a decade.

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One I would argue wasn’t a failure was the Iridium phone. This was the first system that was truly world-wide, enabling telephone access at latitudes out of reach of geosynchronous satellites. (Molniya orbits do allow northern polar access, but not southern.) I once volunteered on an archaeological dig in Fiji and one of the people on our team used his iridium phone all the time to call his family. Besides, they had the coolest ads ever, with a San tribesman in the Kalahari, dressed in a loincloth, and carrying his bow and a quiver of arrows in one hand and his iridium phone in the other.

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There were lots of transportation related failures - the Edsel, the Delorian, the Segway (which is used a lot for tours and security staff), and grass skis. The reel of commercials for these things was a lot of fun.

Another section had lots of toys. We talked about ones we or our neighbors had had, like lawn darts. I also remember “growing up Skipper,” who grew boobs when you turned her arm. Which brings me to the porno room that included things like this magazine cover:

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There was a whole section on food and drink. In addition to things like a wall of odd oreo flavors, there were familiar things like New Coke and Crystal Pepsi.

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Other exhibits had to do with Donald Trump and with Washington, D.C. (including the failure of the Metro to have a station in Georgetown and the failures of the Washington Football Team.) There were also medical failures, e.g. thalidomide. Both of us also remembered Ayds candy (a diet aid), which was pretty successful until the AIDS epidemic.

My absolute favorite item was the hula chair. This was intended for you to be able to get exercise while sitting at work. You probably have to click through to flickr to watch the panic on my face as I try to figure out how to turn the damn thing off.

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Overall, I thought it was a pretty entertaining morning.

Avenue Q: On Sunday I drove to Reston to see the Reston Community Players production of Avenue Q. A woman I know from storytelling circles was playing one of the Bad Idea Bears. Anyway, it’s a show I’ve seen before, and, while some aspects are a bit dated, it’s still very funny.

Halloween Show: Our spooky story show was Monday night and went well. My contribution was a Russian vampire story, collected by Aleksandr Afanasyev in the Tambov Oblast. Overall, there was a wide range of stories from the different tellers and, wow, there’s a lot of creepy stuff out there.

The Borscht Belt: On Tuesday, I went to a zoom lecture about the Jewish Catskills. What I hadn’t actually known was that what I think of as the Catskills were actually another mountain range called the Shawangunk Mountains. I also learned that the Hudson River actually flows for another 100 miles under the Atlantic after reaching New York City. There was a lot of somewhat random information about the development of the Jewish resorts, which were mostly founded in reaction to the segregated policies of the other existing resorts in the “real” Catskills. I was also reminded of the term “populuxe” for the style of architecture of the resorts. It was an interesting talk, but there were a lot of digressions from the primary subject and, while it had been advertised as an hour and a half, it ended up being almost two and a half hours.

Did You Know?: If you eat a Reese’s White Chocolate Peanut Butter Ghost while drinking coffee, your coffee will taste like marshmallow. This was an accidental discovery yesterday morning and it took me a minute to realize what had happened since it was coffee from a different roaster the my usual one. I assume this works with non-ghost shaped white chocolate peanut butter cups, too. (I had the ghost shaped ones because I’d bought them for Halloween, but didn’t get any trick or treaters. So, obviously, I had no choice but to eat them myself.) Not that I’m sure why one would want one’s coffee to taste like marshmallow. One of my biggest rules in life is that coffee IS a flavor and should, therefore, not come in flavors.
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Lollapuzzoola was on Saturday, but I actually went up to New York on Thursday. That gave me four opportunities for theatre going (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon), as well as time to do something on Friday during the day.

I chose Some Like It Hot for my first show of this Broadway binge. It’s been a long time since I saw the movie, but I think they stayed fairly true to it. Except, they added a racial aspect (by making Jerry / Daphne black), because you can’t make it just about cross-dressing in this day and age. This is still a bit problematic since it isn’t as if San Diego was actually integrated in 1937, and certainly not at the Hotel del Coronado. When Jerry proclaims that being Daphne let him find his true self, that’s all fine - but he’s still black and still going to experience racism. Still, the score is nicely jazzy and the dancing is wonderful, so it made for an entertaining evening.

By the way, I had googled ice cream places in New York and had seem excellent reviews for Amorino on 8th Avenue at 45th. This is very convenient for theatre going and, given that it was hot out, I couldn’t resist. I tried the blood orange and lemon basil sorbets on that visit, and both were delicious and refreshing. I’d say they were comparable to my experience at Bertillon in Paris, which is extremely high praise.

I hadn’t made any specific plans for Friday, but I happened to see a Facebook ad for the Small Is Beautiful exhibit, which looked interesting. So I made my way downtown to check it out.

There’s a mildly annoying audio tour, as well as a bit of a scavenger hunt. But the real point is to look at a wide range of miniatures by several different artists. Here are a few examples.

You probably thought that raisins were made from grapes, but what if it’s the other way around?

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This is Candy Beach by Miniam. It’s 1:87 scale. Of course, either the polar bears moved south or the penguins moved north or one or the other is suffering from bipolar disorder.

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An early mobile phone by Frank Kunert.

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This piece by Vincent Bal was one of my favorites.

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This is part of something called the 1,000 Feathers Project by NV Illustrations. It’s less than an inch across.

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The incredible thing about this origami piece by Juho Konkkolais that it was made from one piece of paper, with no cuts or tears, just folds.

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All in all, it was an interesting exhibit and was worth about two hours.

Since I was already downtown, I walked over to Yonah Shimmel’s and had a kasha knish for lunch. Which was not nearly as good as they used to be, but better than nothing. Then I walked down to The Mysterious Bookshop and might have spent a little bit of money there. I made my way back uptown and rested for a little bit before theatre binge installment #2.

That was Just Like Us, Alex Edelman’s one-man show about his experience as a Jew going to a white supremacist meeting. I’d wanted to see this show since I first heard of it and, since it was closing the next night, this was my opportunity. A lot of his humor has to do with his family and growing up in Boston. My favorite joke was “I grew up in a particularly racist part of Boston. It’s called … Boston.” Anyway, there are more serious questions there about whether or not Ashkenazi Jews can be considered white. Overall, I thought it was an entertaining show, though the narrative structure could have been stronger.

I’ve already written about Lollapuzzoola. I licked my wounds and headed off to indulge in theatre binge, part #3, which was Good Night, Oscar. Apparently Oscar Levant really was let out of a mental hospital for a few hours in order to appear on the Jack Paar show. Sean Hayes gave a remarkable performance as Levant, including a stunning rendition of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. (Hayes was a classically trained pianist before becoming an actor. And it's a piece of music I love even without its mental association with United Airlines.)

I also want to note two other things:

1) I did not immediately recognize the name of playwright Doug Wright, but he wrote several other fine works, including I Am My Own Wife and the book for the interesting but underrated musical Hands on a Hardbody.

2) Lighting is not something I usually pay a lot of attention to, but it was used particularly effectively here in the scenes where Levant is wrestling with his mixed feelings about Gershwin.

I just spent some time Sunday walking around midtown Manhattan. In the afternoon, I had tickets for the fourth and final installment of my theatre binge. That was Shucked, which is an extremely silly but riotously funny musical. The premise is that there’s a small isolated community that is entirely based on corn, until the crop fails. One girl, named Maizy, sets out to get help and, in Tampa, finds a fake podiatrist when she sees an ad for a corn doctor. There’s a long history of shows in which a grifter comes to a small town and both saves the town and redeems himself (think The Music Man or 110 in the Shade) and this fits the pattern. But the jokes are so corny (come on, you know I had to say that) that the audience just can’t resist getting caught up in the fun. Plus there’s a powerhouse performance from Alex Newell as Lulu. Overall, this was a lot of fun.

Finally, I went back to Amerino and tried their signature cone, which gets you three flavors of gelato, sculpted into petals of a flower. Here, the outer layer is inimitable (chocolate hazelnut), the middle is strawberry, and the innermost is dark chocolate. It was delicious.

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My trip home went smoothly. Catching up from being away a lot, not so much, but that is something I’ll write about soon.
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It’s been a busy couple of weeks. So what else is new?

First, the gentleman with whom I’m conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling was here. Most of his visit is not for public consumption. But we did go to Signature Theatre to see their production of Sweeney Todd. We had dinner beforehand at Carlyle Grand Cafe. Their pecan crusted trout was delicious. As for the show, he had never seen it before and enjoyed it. I’ve seen a few productions of it before (including on Broadway in 1980) and I thought the performances were very good. I was particularly impressed by Bryonha Marie as Mrs. Lovett, who came across as truly demented. However, I disliked the set. They had meathooks, from which they hung various things - bird cages, for example, but worst of all, two rows of body bags. One thing I did like is that they included some of the music that is often omitted, e.g. Judge Turpin’s rendition of “Johanna” and Beadle Bramford’s performance of “Parlor Songs.” Overall, it was a nice night out.

By the way, I think it’s really sweet when old people (a category in which I include us) hold hands in public.

I had two Fourth of July events to go to. The first was a chavurah get together. It was supposed to be a barbecue outdoors, but it was very hot and humid, so we ate inside. I brought hummus and pita chips, but nobody ate them. (Mostly, the chicken and corn on the cob got eaten and some of the cookies.)

After that I went over to my friend Kathleen’s place in Crystal City. Her balcony overlooks the Potomac (and DCA) so is a good place for watching fireworks. Part of her building blocked the view of the fireworks on the National Mall, but we could see fireworks from 30 or so other places. Also, we played a few rounds of Blank Slate, which was fun. It was a fun evening, though the traffic coming home was terrible.

And Saturday, I went to see the touring company of the revival of 1776 at the Kennedy Center with Cindy. This production features “a company of artists who identify as female, trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming.” For the most part, the script appeared unchanged, but it’s not like I have it memorized. The fundamental problem I had with this show is that 1776 is one of the rare musicals for which the book is good but the score is so-so, with amateurish lyrics. Sherman Edwards never wrote another musical and the world is better for that. There are two songs I like. They did fine with “Mama Look Sharp.” “Molasses to Rum to Slaves” will never be entirely satisfying to me without John Cullum playing Edward Rutledge. (Admittedly, I would pay good money to watch John Collum open a supermarket, so I may be biased.) Overall, I thought the show was just okay.

Afterwards, Cindy and I went to meet up with a flyertalk friend of mine at Pisco y Nazca. This is an excellent Peruvian restaurant. I drank a classico chicano, which was delicious and refreshing. As for food, I ate ceviche dos temperaturas which consisted of marinated fish with choclo (a type of corn with large kernels) and sweet potatoes in a spicy sauce. That was also quite tasty. The others also seemed to enjoy their food. We had lively conversation, mostly travel related.

Now I am in minor panic mode regarding upcoming travels. I’ll be fine, but there are always last minute things to get done.
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I had a rather hectic weekend.

On Saturday, I went to Herndon to see NextStop Theatre Conpany’s production of In the Heights. While I had seen the movie, I hadn’t seen the stage musical before. There are a number of differences, starting with no mention of Vanessa attempting to become a fashion designer. And, if I remember correctly, in the movie, Usnavi didn’t know Abuela Claudia had the winning lottery ticket until after she died. At any rate, it was an enjoyable show, with very good performances. Graciela Rey, who played Vanessa, was an amazing dancer. And I really liked Bruni Herring as Abuela Claudia.

By the way, I took advantage of being out that way to stop in at Weird Brothers Coffee and stock up. In addition to Sumatra, I bought a bag of a coffee mixed with chocolate.


Sunday, I had a Travelers’ Century Club meeting. It’s always interesting to hear where people have been and what they’re planning on doing.

I had to run off to go to Maryland to perform at the Washington Folk Festival. I had time to socialize a little bit and listen to a few other storytellers before my set. I also rode the carousel, but I chose one of the chariots this time because I was wearing a long skirt, which would have made mounting an animal rather undignified. (No sidesaddles on that carousel.)

This doesn’t sound nearly as busy as it felt. Maybe the stress of getting ready to go on vacation was getting to me.

Speaking of which, I expect to have limited internet access for much of my trip, so don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for two weeks. Normally, I would have welcomed the chance to disconnect, but I am worried about breaking my Duolingo streak.
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Getting through some more of the catch-up:

I got home on Tuesday May 9th and immediately had things to do almost every night since. Here’s a run-down of the first week back.

Book Club: Our book this time was The Ghostwriter by Alessandre Torre. All of us liked it. The story involves a romance writer who is dying of cancer and hires her main rival to ghost write a final novel for her. There are plenty of twists along the way, which kept the book interesting. I found it a quick and enjoyable read.

Passing Strange: I saw this very accurately named musical at Signature Theatre on Thursday. It tells the story of a young black man who goes off to Europe to make music. He discovers sex and drugs in Amsterdam and radical politics in Berlin. The music was mostly not my sort of thing, though some of the songs were amusing. In particular, the song “We Just Had Sex” (in the Amsterdam section) was very funny. There was also some humorous material as the Youth exploits his black identity to get credibility with the radicals in Berlin. I was glad I saw it but I have no desire to see it again.

Nationals Game, sort of: On Friday, Cindy called me and asked if I wanted to go to a Nats game on Saturday afternoon. (She had free tickets from her job.) I agreed. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t work and a rain delay was announced in the top of the third inning. We sat out the delay - but, after four hours, the game was suspended. By the way, the tickets also included a food and concession credit. I used part of it for food, but with what I had left, I got a Screech plushie, which is really cute. By the way, the tickets from Cindy’s company have been rescheduled, but I’ll be out of the country.

Transformations: On Sunday, I went to see a dance performance at the National Portrait Gallery. This was by the Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company and was called Transformations. (The son of one of my friends is part of this dance company.) It was very modern and athletic and kind of weird. with some Asian, yoga-esque undertones. I enjoyed it but was glad it was just half an hour. I leveraged off being at the museum to see a couple of exhibits. I did a fairly cursory glance at “1898: U.S. Imperial visions and Revisions” before the dance show and a quick walk through “Portrait of a Nation: 2022 Honorees” afterwards. The former had to do with the U.S. acquisition of Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, largely as a result of the Spanish-American War. So there were portraits of people like Queen Liliuokalani and of Jose Marti.

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The latter has to do with various prominent Americans and included both Serena and Venus Williams. I was particularly pleased to see Jose Andres (of World Central Kitchen, as well as several of the best restaurants in D.C.) and Anthony Fauci among the honorees.

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Audrey: And then Sunday night, Cindy and I went to see a new musical about Audrey Hepburn at Creative Cauldron. This is a very small theatre in Falls Church, which produces a lot of new musicals designed for their intimate space. At any rate, I enjoyed the show, but Cindy didn’t like it as much because she thought that Rebecca Ballinger was inconsistent in the title role. There was another actress, Morgan Arrivillaga, who played young Audrey, who I thought was an excellent dancer. The dynamics between Edith Head (played by Bianca Lipford) and Hubert de Givenchy (played by Tyler cramer) were also fun. I liked some of the songs, e.g. “Woman of the World” and, especially, “The Go-Go Lightly Drag.”
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I finished a couple of things in the past couple of days, so it seems like a good time to catch up here.

Celebrity Death Watch: Royston Ellis wrote travel guides, particularly for south Asia (e.g. India and Sri Lanka) and rail travel. Charle Harrington Elster was one of the original hosts of A Way With Words. Leon Hughes was the last surviving member of The Coasters. Wayne Shorter was a jazz saxophonist. Tom Sizemore was an actor, best known for starring in Saving Private Ryan. Judith Heumann was a disability rights activist. Gary Rossington was the lead guitarist for Lynyrd Skynyrd. Ian Falconer wrote and illustrated the Olivia series of children’s books. Robert Blake was an actor, about equally well-known for playing Baretta and for being accused of murdering his second wife. Raphael Mechoulam was the chemist who (with Y. Gaoni) isolated THC from cannabis. Masatoshi Ito was the founder of Ito-Yokado which owns over 10,00 7-11 stores, as well as being a franchisee for several other brands in Japan. John Jakes wrote epic novels, including North and South. Dick Fosbury was a high jumper who invented the style of jumping known as the Fosbury flop. Jim Gordon was the drummer for Derek and the Dominos, wrote the song “Layla,” and later murdered his mother. Joe Peptone was a first baseman for the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Pat Schroeder was one of the most prominent women in Congress for over 20 years. Stuart Hodes danced with Martha Graham. Sean Burns was the administrator of Tristan da Cunha for many years. Fuzzy Haskins was one of the founding members of Parliament-Funkadelic. John Jenrette was a congressman from South Carolina, best known for being involved in the Abscam scandal. Lance Reddick was an actor, best known for his roles in The Wire, Bosch, and John Wick. K.C. Constantine was a mystery writer. Jerry Green was the only sportswriter to cover each of first 56 Super Bowl games. Keith Reid was a songwriter and lyricist, most famous for Procul Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” Dan Ben-Amos was a folklorist, who studied Jewish folklore among other subjects. D. M. Thomas was a writer, best known for the novel The White Hotel. Howie Kane sang with Jay and the Americans. Virginia Norwood designed satellite imaging systems, leading to her being called the “mother of Landsat.”

Klaus Tuber created the game “Settlers of Catan.” Kwame Brathwaite was a photojournalist and popularized the phrase “Black is Beautiful.” Seymour Stein co-founded Sire Records. Judy Farrell played Nurse Able on M*A*S*H. Roy McGrath was a former chief of staff to the governor of Maryland, who failed to show up for his trial for various corruption charges, leading to a manhunt and his death from a gunshot, though whether by the FBI or his own hand is unclear. Craig Breedlove was a five-time land speed record holder. Leon Levine founded Family Dollar. Hobie Landrith was a catcher and the first person to sign a contract with the New York Mets. Nora Forster was a music promoter, probably more famous as Johnny Rotten’s wife. Ben Ferencz was a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials. Ian Bairson was a member of The Alan Parsons Project. Pierre Lacotte was a ballet dancer and known for helping Rudolf Nureyev defect to the U.S. Meir Shalev was an Israeli writer. Ed Koren was a cartoonist whose work appeared frequently in The New Yorker.

Robert Haimer was a singer and songwriter, half of Barnes & Barnes and known for writing the song “Fish Heads,” which got a lot of airplay from Dr. Demento.

Chaim Topol was an Israeli actor, best known for playing Tevye in the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof.

Jesus Alou was an outfielder who played for a number of teams, including the Giants and the Astros. His younger brother, Matty, died in 2011, but the oldest of the Alou brothers, Felipe, who was the first Dominican to play regularly in the major leagues, is still alive.

Napoleon XIV was best known for the novelty song “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!”

Willis Reed played for the New York Knicks from 1964 through 1974 and went on to coach for several teams.

Gordon Moore co-founded Intel and was famous for Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years.

Mark Russell performed his unique style of political satire on regular PBS specials, as well as live. I was fortunate enough to be able to see him perform at Ford’s Theatre several years ago.

Mimi Sheraton was the food critic for the New York Times for many years. She also wrote several books, including From My Mother’s Kitchen and The Bialy Eaters.

Harry Lorayne was a memory expert. I once commented on The Memory Book as having been written by “Jerry Lucas and some author,” which may give you an idea of how effective I found his techniques.

Anne Perry was a mystery writer. She was several years into that career when the story came out that she had been convicted of murder as a teenager. It’s a complex story, involving what appears to have been an obsessive relationship with the friend whose mother she helped kill.

Al Jaffee was one of the greatest humorists of the 20th century. He invented two features for MAD Magazine - “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” and the fold-in. My Dad bought MAD regularly, allegedly for my brother and me, but we noticed that the fold-in was always done already by the time we got it. He also had an interesting family history, being dragged back and forth between the U.S. and Zarasai, Lithuania by his parents because his mother was unable to adjust to American life. He lived to 102 and credited his sense of humor for his longevity. Also, he earned me 23 ghoul pool points.

Mary Quant was a fashion designer, known for inflicting miniskirts and hot pants on society. And, yes, I wore those back in the day.


Puzzle Community Death Watch: Marc Spraragen, known within the National Puzzlers’ League as Marcus Asparagus, died suddenly of a ruptured aortic aneurysm. He was smart and kind and I always looked forward to seeing him at the NPL con. He was highly devoted to his family - his wife, Pauline, and their three-year-old son, Zachary. Such a huge loss to our community.

Ari Shapiro: The last Monday of March, I went to Ari Shapiro’s book launch event at Sixth & I Synagogue. He was interviewed by Audie Cornish. He had some interesting things to say about storytelling in the context of journalism and the value of encouraging people to tell their stories. Also, a storytelling friend, Cricket, was there, and it turns out she went to college with Ari’s father.

The Eleventh Plague: My friend, Teri, works at the Library of Congress and let me know about Jeremy Brown’s talk about Jews and Pandemics. Some of the things he talked about were the threat of execution for anyone violating quarantines in the Roman ghetto and exactly how a pandemic was defined by the rabbis. For example, only deaths by people who earned a living were counted, but deaths of animals and of non-Jews were included. It was an interesting talk and the library had various books and other reference documents on display.

Pacific Overtures: Pacific Overtures is my favorite Sondheim score, for a number of reasons. In particular, I think “A Bowler Hat” is an excellent example of how to use a song to illuminate character. “Chrysanthemum Tea” has my favorite Sondheim rhyme in “it’s an herb that’s superb for disturbances at sea.” I think “Please Hello!” is a great rebuttal to those who think of Sondheim primarily as a lyricist, since it takes a lot of musical talent to produce such on-the-mark pastiches of different musical styles. Sondheim’s own favorite of his songs was “Someone in a Tree.” Signature Theatre’s production was brilliant, as I expected, with excellent use of puppets and taiko drumming. Jason Ma was very impressive as the Reciter. All in all, it was a fabulous evening of theatre.

ACPT: The first weekend of April (and the Friday night before) was the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. The ACPT deserves its own entry, which I will try to get to soon.

Grimm Keepers: Our story for the most recent meeting was “The Nightingale and the Blindworm.” This is a particularly short story, which is only in the first edition and not later Grimm collections. The gist of it is that those animals had one eye each and the nightingale asked to borrow the blindworm’s eye for a party, but refused to return it afterwards. This got us talking about other stories with similar themes, e.g. an African dilemma tale about a couple who find eyes and have to decide who to give the last one to.

Pesach: I had a hard time finding a lot of Pesach food this year. Many years, I drive to the Baltimore suburbs, but I had too much going on this year. And most of my local stores didn’t have certain things I usually look for. For example, nowhere had kosher for Passover jam. So I ate a lot of matzoh with cream cheese, borscht, chremslach (matzoh meal pancakes), and fruit and was bored.

Ballet - Anna Karenina: Last Friday (April 7th) I went to see the Joffrey Ballet production of Anna Karenina at The Kennedy Center. Cindy and I had some miscommunication, so I had an extra ticket, which my friend, Teri, took. None of the three of us had ever read the book, so we were somewhat lost. At intermission, I did read the synopsis, but it didn’t help quite enough. For example, I never understood what the scene in Parliament where Anna’s husband rails against immigrants, had to do with anything else. Still, the dancing was impressive.

Afterwards, we walked over to The Reach (the newish extension to the Kennedy Center) and looked at some of the River Run exhibit there. The theme is largely environmental, so, for example, there is this scu[pture made out of plastic pulled from rivers.

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And here is an exhibit of “fabric” woven from fishing line.

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We also went outside and looked at this installation called Survivors by Cuban artist Roberto Fabelo.

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All in all, it was a nice afternoon, even if we didn’t completely understand the ballet.

Story Swap: The Voices in the Glen monthly story swap was last weekend. We had a small group, but an enjoyable evening. I told a Tuvan story about “How the Camel Lost Its Beauty.” I’d been thinking of it because it has some elements that are similar to those in “The Nightingale and the Blindworm.” It had been a long time since I’d told it, but I pretty much remembered it.

Crones and Tomes: This months book was The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. This was about her experiences when her husband died and her daughter was hospitalized in a coma for several months. I thought it was a good read but a lot of people had problems with her level of privilege that let her pull in impressive doctors for her daughter.

Counted Cross Stitch Project: I’ve been working on this counted cross-stitch project for two years and a few months and I finally finished it at my crafts group on Thursday afternoon. I still have to get it framed, of course.

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It was designed by Saifhon Borisuthipandit and I bought the kit in Bangkok in 2008. I can, of course, see all my mistakes, but I assume nobody else will notice them.

Taxes: I finished my taxes Thursday night. As usual, what takes time is finding all of the documents I need. The one thing that I had a hard time finding was how much I paid in property tax for my car. In the end, I had to look on the county tax administration website. I ended up having to pay a few hundred bucks because I’d owned shares in an American Depository Receipt which delisted itself from the New York Stock Exchange, triggering capital gains. It was kind of a pain to find my cost basis because I’d owned the shares for nearly 30 years. Anyway, it’s done.

Storytelling - The Musical: To continue the busy Thursday, I attended a virtual storytelling show. Carol Moore emceed and there were 6 tellers. Natalie Jones had a cute story about show piglets (as in “there’s no piglets, like show piglets”) putting on a production of “The Three Little Pigs.” Paul Strickland had a story about an enchanted apple tree with a cursed knife stuck in it. Mo Reynolds told a version of the folk tale “The Sword of Wood.” She was followed by Jack Scheer explaining his magic iPod. Jessica Robinson’s contribution had to do with her mother’s love of singing. And Sam Payne closed out the night with a story about going to church dances as a teenager. All in all, it was a very enjoyable evening and a nice way to transition out of my busy day to a more relaxed evening.
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I came back from New York on Monday the 13th - and felt a bit sniffly. By Tuesday, I had a raging cold - all the congestion and coughing I could handle. I did take a COVID test, which was negative, but canceled my theatre plans for Tuesday night in the interest of public health. I tried to give away my ticket, with no success, but Cindy (who did go) managed to persuade the box office at the National Theatre to let me move my ticket to another day. About which, more later. I was still sick on Wednesday, but was pretty much fine by Thursday. Apparently rest and drinking plenty of rooibos tea is effective.

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

Women’s Storytelling Festival: Much of what I was busy with had to do with the Women’s Storytelling Festival, which was this past weekend (i.e. March 24th through 26th.) I was coordinating volunteers, as well as emceeing one show. I will write about this fabulous festival in some detail, but I wanted to include it here, because you can still get access to the recordings. And you will want to watch them if you can. You have until Friday evening to buy a ticket, but you get an entire month to watch. See the WSF website for tickets.

Crones and Tomes: This month’s book Was Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I think we all found the story of a Nigerian woman seeking her place in both the United States and in Nigeria to be very interesting, though some of us had issues with her relationship decisions. I’m enjoying the discussions in this group and it serves the purpose of getting me to read things I might not pick up otherwise.

Grimm Keepers: Our most recent discussion was of “Fitcher’s Bird,” which is another story like “Bluebeard” or “Mr. Fox,” in which a woman outwits a murderous man. There’s a lot of interesting imagery involving an egg and a bird, and we had a lot of discussion about its implications about menstruation and sexuality. It’s a nicely creepy story and one I could imagine telling to the right audience.

Leading Jewish Minds at MIT: MIT Hillel has a series of talks by Jewish professors. The most recent one (on March 16th) was by Alan Lightman, who is an astrophysicist, but probably best known for his 1992 novel Einstein’s Dream. He has a newish PBS series called Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science. Mostly, he showed excerpts from that series. That included talking with Jack Szostok, who is trying to understand RNA to create artificial life, interviewing a humanoid robot (Bina 48, who is intended to look like its (her?) inventor’s wife), and discussing what consciousness is with the Dalai Lama. All of this raised a lot more questions than answers. I admit I didn’t stay for the Q&A, because I didn’t want to miss crafts group.

Blue: This is a new opera, which I saw at the Kennedy Center on Friday the 17th. It was one of several things I’d had tickets for in the spring of 2020, by the way. The music is by Jeanine Tesori and the libretto by Tazewell Thompson. The story involves a Black family - the Father, the Mother, and the Son. The Father is a policeman and, as the Son grows up, he becomes rebellious, creating tensions within the family. At the beginning of the second act, the Father is talking to the Reverend and we find out that the son has been killed by a white cop, but we don’t know the circumstances. There are some flashbacks in the final scenes, which make the story even more tragic.

Despite the subject matter, there was a surprising amount of humor in the show. For example, when the Mother’s girlfriends are gathering around her before the Son’s birth, they see pictures of the Father in his Navy uniform (before he became a police officer) and they talk about their love for men in uniform - Army, Coast Guard, Air Force, UPS. But, overall, the opera is intended to get people to think and talk about the plight of Black men in the United States and I felt that it satisfied its intention.

Story Swap: My friend, Eve, hosted a story swap at a library in Maryland on the 18th. It was nominally Irish-themed, but other folk tales were allowed. Leveraging off it being Women’s History Month, I told the Grimm story, “Clever Greta,” and a Mongolian story, “Two Foolish Old People.” I was particularly happy that Margaret told “McTavish,” which is one of her best stories. It was worth the annoying drive, due to an accident on the Beltway.

Jagged Little Pill: Last Tuesday, I saw Jagged Little Pill at the National Theatre, using my rescheduled ticket. In general, I am not really keen on jukebox musicals, and this reminded me of why. Bespoke songs, i.e. those written specifically to fit the story, just work better. This was (as one might expect given its use of Alanis Morissette songs) overloaded with angst. I like some of the songs, but they don’t really fit the context. There were some humorous moments in the book and some good acting (Heidi Blickenstaff as Mary Jane was excellent). But there was also the absolute worst choreography I’ve seen in ages. Just not my type of show.

Strange Coincidence: At last week’s crafts group, I discovered that another woman in the group and I had lived in the exact same apartment building in Berkeley. She was there from 1973-1974 and I lived there from 1983-1985. Yet another woman in the group currently lives on the same street.
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Moving on to Sunday …

Museum of Broadway: The Museum of Broadway opened up in mid-November and, to the complete lack of surprise of anyone who knows me, this was a must-do for me. It’s rather pricy, but so is Broadway theatre nowadays. I bought a ticket for as early in the day as I could on the grounds that figured it could be somewhere I would want to spend a lot of time at. Which did, indeed, prove to be a good idea.

The first part discusses the different Broadway theaters and their owners, which wasn’t super exciting for me. After a short film, there’s a room where there’s a map of every current Broadway theatre and a wall (maybe it was a separate room; my memory is fuzzy) with the Playbills for all the current shows. Then, they let you out into the Broadway timeline part of the museum, which was more interesting. This has panels with information about various shows (both plays and musicals) and performers for time periods ranging from a few years to over a decade. The information is dense and I admit I didn’t read every single word of it, but it was fairly interesting. There was a particular emphasis on black and female performers. Here’s a brief example, which I took a picture of because the Hilton sisters were also the subject of a much later Broadway show (Side Show). Note the unrelated quote below the picture of them, as well as other unrelated pictures at the side.

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A lot of the exhibits involve costumes. Here are some from the Ziegfeld Follies, which were apparently found in trunks when Disney was renovating the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street.

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There are rooms with tributes to various shows, playing music and, in some cases, recorded clips. Some of the shows highlighted include Show Boat, Oklahoma, West Side Story, Cabaret, Company, Wicked, The Lion King, etc. I particularly liked the excerpts from a documentary about Fiddler on the Roof. One minor complaint is that there’s a lot of “bleed” from one room to another, so you keep hearing a song from one show, while looking at info about another.

There are, of course, more costumes, such as these from Hair.

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And, later on, these from Hamilton.

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I was excited to see everyone’s favorite foul-mouthed puppets from Avenue Q.

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While it’s a show I don’t like, Phantom of the Opera has had a long run. This curtain has a bead for every performance, And, if you look at it from the correct position (marked on the floor), the phantom’s mask appears.

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This is a small sampling of what’s there. There is bound to be something for pretty much any theatre fan. There is a lot more emphasis on musicals than on plays for the most part, though there was a pretty good section on Neil Simon. My favorite exhibit (which doesn’t make a particularly compelling photo) was of an anagram puzzle by Stephen Sondheim. I also loved the interviews with various composers, lyricists, choreographers, costume designers, stage managers, etc. There’s even a room with Al Hirshfeld cartoons and computers where you can get a drawing of yourself in his style. (They didn’t have an option that really worked for my hair, however.) Overall, I spent over three hours there.

TL:DR - expensive but worth it for theatre lovers.

Kimberly Akimbo: Sunday afternoon’s entertainment was seeing Kimberly Akimbo. This new musical got great reviews. The story sounds like a terrible premise for a musical. Kimberly is a teenager with a disease that makes her age about 4 times faster than normal. So, while she is just turning 16, she looks like she’s in her 60’s. Her father is an alcoholic, her mother is a pregnant narcissist, and her aunt is a career criminal. They’ve moved to New Jersey because of something terrible that happened in Lodi. So where’s the comedy?

Well, this was quirky and very funny. The other teenagers are the four members of a show choir who will do anything to get the money for costumes so they can beat West Orange in a competition. Kimberly’s best friend is a boy, Seth, who is unashamedly nerdy - speaking Elvish, making anagrams of people’s names, and playing the tuba. Their relationship felt realistic for teenage romance - sweet and surprisingly innocent. Aunt Debra is a horrible person (we do find out what happened in Lodi), who sets the kids up in a check washing scheme,

The music (composed by Jeanine Tesori) was tuneful. And, really, you can’t go wrong with jokes about New Jersey. I think the song “Good Kid” (sung by Seth as he is contemplating whether or not to get involved in the crime) will become a go-to for boys of a certain age to sing. Justin Cooley,who played Seth, was making his Broadway debut and I think he has a long career in front of him. I heard good things about Victoria Clark as Kimberly, but we had the understudy (Colleen Fitzpatrick) who did fine. I also want to call out Bonnie Milligan as Debra, who made an unlikeable character fun. In case you can’t tell, I absolutely loved this show. I recommend it to people who were awkward teenagers, dealing with imperfect adults. Which is, frankly, pretty much everyone. Go see it if you can.
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Another busy year, with more in-person activities. The low point of the year came in late June when I got COVID and had to get my air conditioning system replaced. But most of the year was pretty good.

Books: I read 47 books this year, 27 of which were fiction. Seven were rereads.

Favorites included Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Last Summer at the Golden Hotel by Elizabeth Friesland, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. My overall favorite for the year was In Xanadu by William Dalrymple. Least favorites were House of Joy by Joanne Winters and Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, as well as various pop psych books that were part of a box I’d gotten years ago from a neighbor of my mother’s.

I got rid of at least 133 books. I have several more set to go out. I may do a used bookstore run next week.

Also, I went to see Randy Rainbow on his book tour. I listened to an on-line talk by Liana Frick about her new graphic novel. And I volunteered at the National Book Festival.


Volksmarch: Nothing and I am disappointed in myself over that. I have bought new walking shoes, which should help motivate me some.


Ghoul Pool: I finished fourth (out of 16 players) with 250 points. People I scored on were Queen Elizabeth II, Anne Heche, Pele, Carmen Herrera, Anne Hutchinson Guest, Ned Rorem, Marsha Hunt, Lily Renee, James Lovelock, Roger Angell, and Deborah James.


Travel: I went to New York (to go to an opera and to see an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum) and Philadelphia (for the Jasper Johns retrospective) in February. In March, I went to Boston mostly for a combination of a concert, museum going, and friend visiting. I spent a few days in New York in April (on my way home from the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Connecticut) for cabaret and theatre going and museum going. I took another trip to New York in May / June for museum going, baseball, and theatre going. In June I went to Alaska, where I went to both Kenai Fjords National Park and Denali National Park - and, alas, caught COVID. In July, I went to Nashville for the National Puzzlers’ League Convention and then to Niagara Falls for Loserfest. I had another trip to New York in August for Lollapuzzola and theatre-going. In September, I went to Cumberland, Maryland and Romney, West Virginia to take the Potomac Eagle train. In November, I went to the Shenandoah Valley for a storytelling event and some tourism, including Shenandoah National Park, as well as to a knitting retreat in Ocean City, Maryland. November / December included a Road Scholar trip to Costa Rica.

I also went to a few Travelers’ Century Club events, a happy hour with the Circumnavigator’s Club, and a few on-line talks about travel.

Puzzles: I did the MIT Mystery Hunt again (virtually), which was a bit overwhelming even the third time around. The National Puzzlers’ League Convention in Nashville was also tremendous fun. Since things have started to come back to happening in person, I went to both the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and Lollapuzzola. I was disappointed in how I did on the former. but was happy to solve cleanly at the latter.

And, of course, I have a long list of puzzles I do every day.

Genealogy: I didn’t have any huge research breakthroughs this year, but I did learn about several resources I need to spend time with. I made it to several talks and, in particular, participated in the IAJGS conference. But the biggest thing I did this year was mentoring members of my local Jewish genealogy society on Lithuanian research.


Baseball: I went to two major league games - one at home (Mets at Nationals) and one in New York (Phillies at Mets), I also went to games at four minor league ballparks. Those were Staten Island Ferry Hawks, Buffalo Bisons, Rochester Red Wings, and Syracuse Mets.


Culture: I went to 15 plays, 15 musicals, and 3 operas. A few of these were on-line but most were in person. A few favorites were We Now Declare You To Be a Terrorist at Roundhouse Theatre, Catch Me If You Can at Arena Stage, Once on This Island at Constellation Theatre, She Loves Me at Signature Theatre, and Guys and Dolls at the Kennedy Center. I also saw Come From Away again in New York and it was just as wonderful as before.

I went to 9 concerts. My favorites of those were Michael Tilson Thomas conducting the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, Jonathan Richman at the Lincoln Theatre, and Ari Shapiro’s cabaret show at 54 Below in New York. I also enjoyed the DC Cabaret Network show in the Capital Fringe Festival.


I saw 10 movies, all but two in theaters. Favorites were The Automat, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, The Banshees of Inisherin, and The Menu.

As for storytelling, I performed in the Women’s Storytelling Festival, the Washington Folk Festival, Beyond Barbarella: The Future is Female, and an ASST Intergenerational Storytelling evening. I also went to a lot of story swaps, including those from our local group, Voices in the Glen, and swaps put on by Community Storytellers in Los Angeles and San Diego Storytellers. (That is one positive of zoom - I can see old friends.) I went to a couple of in-person Better Said Than Done shows, including one by Andy Offutt Irwin. I watched several shows on-line, e.g. Elizabeth Ellis at The Grapevine. And I went to a couple of workshops on-line. And, oh, yeah, let’s not forget the Allegheny Highlands Storytelling Festival. I also wet to several meetings of a Kamishibai (Japanese paper theatre) special interest group.

Museums and Art:

I went to 14 museums and exhibits over the past year. Some of the things I particularly liked were Fragile Ecosystems by Mulyana at the Sapar Contemporary Gallery in Tribeca (in New York City), the second half of the Jasper Johns retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (note that I’d seen the other half of it at the Whitney in New York in 2021), The Great Animal Orchestra at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, Pixelbloom at Artechouse, the Faith Ringgold retrospective at the New Museum in New York, and the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.

I was very disappointed in the touring Sistine Chapel exhibition. And, while I liked the Yayoi Kunama exhibit at the Hirshorn Museum, it was pretty small and only took a half hour to go through.


Other Stuff:


  • I got one ink blot in the Style Invitational.

  • I went to several lectures on Jewish topics, including some in the Leading Jewish Minds at MIT series, a talk on Jewish magic, a talk on Jewish mustard, a talk on Jews and baseball, and Yiddish New York.

  • My friend, Frances, and I went to the Fall Festival at Cox Farms.

  • I went to miscellaneous other lectures, including one on the Paradox of Choice, an interview with Fran Lebowitz at the Kennedy Center, and the Faraday Prize lecture on-line.

  • I went to a chocolate tasting with my friend, Cindy. I also went out to dinner with various friends several times.

  • I participated in the Jewish Rally for Abortion Rights.

  • I did the open house tour at the Mormon Temple.

  • I went (virtually) to the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s annual mock trial.

  • Played board games (either with people I know from the Loser community or with NPL folks) frequently.




Goals:

So how did I do on my 2022 goals? I took 12 trips, while my goal had been 10, so I scored 100%. I only finished a bit over 5/6 of one embroidery project (versus my goal of finishing 2), so I get 42% there. I didn’t finish any afghans (though I did do a little work on a couple of them), so score 0% on that goal. I also didn’t do anything about organizing photos on my computer. I went through all of the non-crafts magazines around the house, so I’ll give myself 100%. I learned 3 new folktales (though I doubt I will tell one of them again) but I didn’t create a new personal story. However, I did create a science fiction story for a show. So I’m going to give myself an 85% on that goal. I didn’t really organize my yarn stash, though I did get rid of a few things I decided I wouldn’t use. I’ll give myself just 5% there. I read 47 books out of my goal of 75, so score 63%. And I didn’t start language study until November, but I did an average of about 10 hours a week. So if I figure on that being 80 hours and compare it to my goal of 2 hours per week, I’ll count that as 77%,

Adding all of that up, I’ll give myself a 41% on the year. That’s rather meh, but better than nothing.


Which brings me to goals for 2023:



  • Go through all of the photos and slides from my parents. I hope to be able to get rid of about 3/4 of them.

  • Do some formal educational every month. Things that count towards this are taking actual classes (e.g. there is an interesting adult education program in Arlington) or going to lectures (e.g. those put on by Profs and Pints). Both in-person and virtual activities count, but reading does not.

  • Take at least 4 international trips.

  • Finish at least three crafts projects.

  • Read at least 75 books, with a stretch goal of 100.

  • Go to at least three new ballparks.

  • Go to at least one museum exhibition each month.

  • Go to at least 3 national parks.

  • Spend at least a half hour every day on housework.

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I have a bunch of things to get caught up on writing about, and, of course, it will take a little time to write up my end of year summary.

Much of the past week was occupied with Yiddish New York, which will get its own entry. In the meantime I saw two shows at Signature Theatre in the past couple of weeks. The first one was Which Way to the Stage, which was a very clever show, as long as you are enough of a theatre geek to get the jokes. The story involves aspiring actors, their opinions about various shows and performers, sexual dynamics (especially between straight women and gay men) and drag queens. It was both funny and provocative, but you do have to be familiar with several shows, e.g. Rent, Avenue Q, Chicago, and Sunday in the Park With George.


The other show I saw there was their production of Into the Woods. There are a disturbing number of parents who think fairy tales = suitable for children. Which Sondheim is definitely not. I have to admit that this isn’t one of my favorite Sondheim musicals. For one thing, I find the title song to have all of the most annoying aspects of a commercial jingle. For another, I think it’s rather preachy. But it does have some pieces I like quite a bit, e.g. the wolf singing “Hello, Little Girl,” and the two princes singing “Agony,” including its reprise. And, of course, Signature always has top-notch performers, which is the main reason I’ve subscribed there for many years. I was disappointed that Nova Payton was not playing the witch at the performance I was at, but Maria Rizzo is no slouch either. As for other performances, I thought Alex De Bard was particularly good as Little Red RidingHood and Sheri Edelin was hysterical as Jack’s mother. Overall, it was enjoyable, but I prefer other Sondheim musicals.


And today was (well, still is for a little while longer) the ASST New Year’s Eve Story Blowout. The Voices in the Glen segment went very well, if I may say so myself. I told an Armenian folktale that I use the title “The Man Who Never Prospered” for. I was satisfied with the positive reactions to it.
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Celebrity Death Watch: James Wright was the president of Dartmouth College from 1998 to 2009. Dick Ellsworth was a pitcher, primarily for the Cubs. Michael Callan originated the role of Riff in West Side Story on Broadway. Charles Sherrod was a civil rights activist. Mary Adelia McLeod was the first female bishop of an Episcopal diocese. Lucious Jackson played basketball for the Philadelphia 76ers. James McDivitt was an astronaut who flew on Gemini 4 and Apollo 9. Jan Rabson was a voice actor who played the role of Leisure Suit Larry, among many others. Robbie Coltrane was an actor who got a lot of attention as Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies. Noel Duggan was an Irish musician who was part of Clannad (and was, by the way, Enya’s uncle). Benjamin Civiletti was Jimmy Carter’s last attorney general. Alan Halsey was a poet who managed The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye for 18 years. Carmen Callil co-founded the magazine Spare Rib and founded Virago Press, which publishes feminist works, including books by such authors as Margaret Atwood, Adrienne Rich, and Naomi Wolf.


You can’t possibly need me to tell you who Angela Lansbury was. She was such an iconic actress, whose career spanned film, stage (5 Tony awards, plus a special one for lifetime achievement!), and television. This Interview with the New York Times was recorded in 2010, under the condition that it not be released until after her death.

Bruce Sutter was a relief pitcher for the Saint Louis Cardinals. He was the first pitcher to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame without having ever started a game. He was also a pioneer of the split-finger fastball. Overall, he was one of those rare players who actually changed the sport.


Family Death Watch: I recently learned that my distant cousin, Aharon Schwartzbard, died in August of 2021. I’d never met him in person but we were connected on FaceBook. I guess it’s another reminder that I’m part of the older generation.


Faraday Prize Lecture: The Royal Society gives out the annual Faraday Prize to a scientist who excels in communicating to the general public. The winner gives a public lecture, which was available on-line. This year’s went to neuroscientist Professor Sophie Scott, whose lecture was titled Funny, peculiar? The Science of Laughter. Here are a few of the highlights:

  • She talked a lot about laughter in other animals, including apes and rats (who, apparently enjoy being tickled. Who knew?)
  • Laughter is associated with play. All animals play when juvenile.
  • In terms of the rib cage, laughter is prioritized over breathing, so laughter is literally trying to kill you.
  • Contagious laughter is a learned behavior and may be unique to humans. You are 30 times more likely to laugh if other people are around.
  • We all laugh more than we think we do. (As someone who laughs a lot, I find this slightly frightening.)
  • Laughter serves to de-stress situations.
  • There are no convincing examples of humor in wild animals, though they do laugh.
  • Humans are th only animals that produce emotional tears.


Overall, this was a fascinating and entertaining lecture. You can find a recording of it here


Book Club: My book club met Wednesday night and we talked about The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Overall, pretty much everybody liked the book and we had a good conversation about whether or not we’d want to have a similar experience of seeing how things would have turned out had we made other choices in the past. I admit to some curiosity about some decisions I made, but I don’t have regrets associated with them.


Storytelling: The Musical: On Thursday night, I watched Better Said Than Done’s virtual storytelling show. Storytelling: The Musical. The gimmick was that each of the six tellers had (primarily original) songs interspersed in their stories. Ed Stivender’s material was largely excerpted from his show (and book), Raised Catholic, Can You Tell? It was entertaining, but felt a little bit long. Gwendolyn Napier told a story about taking herself out to dinner and meeting a man who she fell in love with. Norm Brecke did songs based on “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and “The Three Little Pigs.” Lona Bartlett told about the songs she sang to her children and the struggle to find ones that weren’t full of death. Alton Chung talked about a community theatre production of Into the Woods. Saving the best for last, Anne Rutherford had a very funny version of The Princess and the Pea, somewhat along the lines of Once Upon a Mattress. All in all, it was a fun show.


Jonathan Richman: It is apparently Bostonian month at the Lincoln Theatre in D.C. I went to see Jonathan Richman on Friday night and will be seeing the Dropkick Murphys next week. Because it was open seating, I made a point of getting there early (after grabbing a quick bowl of vegan chili at Ben’s Chili Bowl, which is an iconic DC place) and ended up having a great, far-ranging conversation with a couple of other people who were there early. As usual, Jonathan was brilliant. He did several songs that drew on works by Rumi, including “He Gave Us the Wine to Taste.” There was a great mix of old and new, ranging from “That Summer Feeling” and “Dancing at the Lesbian Bar” (which had everybody singing along - and wishing we could dance along) to “Everybody Loves Dolly,” “People Are Shameless,” and an instrumental piece called “Guitar in Orange, Drums in Pale Purple.” I was particularly pleased to hear “The Fenway,” which I hadn’t heard in ages. And everyone enjoyed singing along to “Cold Pizza.” All in all, a great show, full of child-like sincerity and laughter.


Once On This Island: On Saturday afternoon, I went to see the Constellation Theatre Company’s production of Once On This Island at the Source Theatre. While I do own the original cast recording of this musical, I hadn’t listened to it in a long time and I admit I didn’t really know much about the show. I was very pleasantly surprised. The basic plot involves a French Caribbean island that is divided into two worlds, primarily along racial lines. A poor peasant girl rescues a member of the rich beauxhommes after he crashes his car and decides her fate is to save him. She offers her life to the god of death, in exchange for his. Throughout, the gods influence what happens, for better or worse. The story is interesting and the music is effective in moving it along and telling the audience how the characters feel. I was hooked right from the beginning, with the Afro-Caribbean beats of “We Dance.” I will definitely be listening to the cast recording more often!

After the show, we stopped by Ice Cream Jubilee, where I had a scoop of their maple rye pecan ice cream. I got home in time to eat a somewhat healthier supper and go to the monthly Voices in the Glen story swap, where I inflicted my seasonal story “Lyle and the Ghost” on my friends.


And now I am pretty much caught up.
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Last week, one of my friends commented that I was the busiest retired person he knew. I do a lot of things, but I also waste a lot of time and am kind of annoyed with myself over how much stuff I have not been getting done. I definitely need to spend more time on housework. And I need to cook real food and get more exercise. Sitting down to write this catch-up is at least something I can check off my to-do list, which is back up around CVS-receipt length.

Celebrity Death Watch: David Foreman was an environmental extremist who co-founded Earth First! Hilary Mantel wrote historical fiction about Oliver Cromwell, including Wolf Hall. Louise Fletcher was an actress who was most famous for playing Nurse Ratched in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Rita Gardner was an actress who originated the role of Luisa in The Fantasticks. Pharaoh Sanders was a jazz saxophonist. James Florio was the governor of New Jersey in the early 1990’s (and in the U.S. House of Representatives before that). Coolio was a rapper. Stephanie Dabney was a ballerina with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and was particularly famous for performing the role of The Firebird. Jim Lisbet wrote mysteries and poetry. Bill PLante was a long time senior White House correspondent for CBS News. Sachsen Littlefeather rejected an Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando. Audrey Evans cofounded the Ronald McDonald House Charities. Hector Lopez played baseball and went on to become the first black manager of a AAA minor league team. Al Primo created Eyewitness News. Tiffany Jackson was a basketball player whose career included three WNBA teams and 7 years with Maccabi Ashdod in Israel. Charles Fuller was a playwright, best known for A Soldier’s Play. Peter Robinson wrote detective novels. Lenny Lipton wrote the lyrics to “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” Judy Tenuta was a comedian. Jody Miller was a country singer whose signature song was “Queen of the House,” the comeback to Roger Miller’s “King of the Road.” Ivy Jo Hunter was a Motown songwriter, notable for cowriting “Dancing in the Streets” with Marvin Gaye and Mickey Stevenson. Robert I. Toll cofounded the housing developers Toll Brothers. Grace Gluck was an arts journalist.


Kevin Locke was a Lakota storyteller, flautist, and hoop dancer. He received a number of awards (primarily for music) and was a significant keeper of traditional culture.

Loretta Lynn was a country singer-songwriter and the subject of the movie Coal MIner’s Daughter. She won three Grammy awards.


LJ/DW Death Watch: I learned the other day that Howard Stateman, known on LiveJournal and Dreamwidth as howeird, died last week. He’d had numerous health issues recently and had had surgery in September, so it is not entirely surprising. I assume his sisters will be sorting out his estate. I hope his cat, Spook, and his aquarium fish are being well cared for.

Baseball: While I am on the subject of death, the New York Mets had been my one bright spot in a bleak baseball year. I will spend the post-season cheering for my second favorite team, namely whoever is playing the Yankees. (At the moment, that is the Guardians, who also have the plus of being managed by Terry “Tito” Francona, who led my BoSox to their 2004 and 2007 World Series titles.)

Yom Kippur: Yom Kippur was Wednesday. I did zoom services again, which is not really satisfying. But it did let me sleep later. I did fast, but, overall, I was not very into it this year.

Spaghetti and Matzoh Balls: This is a short film by Rena Strober, which I saw via an on-line screening from the Union for Reform Judaism, with a talk-back afterwards. The short version of the story is that she used to sing at a restaurant in New York called Rao’s. It was a mob hangout and one night one guy objected to her singing and someone else shot and killed him. This ended up in her reconnecting to some aspects of her Jewish upbringing. She wrote and performed a one-person show about this. The movie is based on but not identical to this. It’s an interesting story, with a lot of warmth and a surprising amount of humor, and I’m glad I saw it.

Thursday: Thursday was a completely insane day for me. I had my Global Entry renewal interview in the morning. It took me 45 minutes or so each way on the Metro to get downtown to the Reagan Building, but the actual interview took about 5 minutes. Anyway, I got the acceptance email less than an hour after I got home, even though they told me it would take up to 72 hours. I should get the new card in the mail within a week or two.

My Grimm discussion group is normally on Wednesdays, but moved to Thursday because of Yom Kippur. This session was about the Gold Children, which is an amalgamation of various folk tale tropes. We had an interesting discussion, particularly regarding the ability of children made completely out of gold to move around perfectly normally. As I pointed out, gold is pretty malleable.

That was followed immediately by another zoom meeting. That one was training for the Capital Jewish Food Festival, where I was volunteering on Sunday.

And, then, in the evening I went with my friend Cindy to see Ichabod at Creative Cauldron. We had dinner beforehand at Pizzeria Orso, which is right up the street. The mushroom and olive pizza was good. Their pizza crust is excellent. I also had tiramisu gelato for dessert.

Ichabod: This was a new musical, obviously based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Matthew Conner had a previous attempt at musicalizing this story, but The Hollow, which I saw at Signature Theatre in 2011 was a failure. This reworking (with book by Stephen Gregory Smith) was better, but I still didn’t care much for most of the music. It stuck fairly closely to what I remember of the story, but the music was meh. I might have liked the opening number (“Invocation”) but neither of us could understand the lyrics. I did like two songs - “Clippety, Cloppety” (in which Bram Bones tells the story of the headless horseman) and “Midnight Ride” (which tells the part where Ichabod Crane disappears). But I didn’t think the more romantic pieces worked particularly well. The performers were fine - especially Colum Goelbacker as Ichabod and Bobby Libby as Brom, but the whole thing just didn’t work well for me. I’d have more to say, but they don’t have printed programs and I accidentally deleted the electronic one. I tried to find a link to it on their website but failed. Grr.

Guys and Dolls: As you may have heard me say before, I consider Guys and Dolls to be the best musical of all time. It’s got a witty book, great music, and lively choreography. There was a production of it at the Kennedy Center, as part of the Broadway Center Stage series, which I saw on Friday night. While this was a scaled down production, the cast was, decidedly not scaled down. James Monroe Iglehardt, who played Nathan Detroit, has made numerous Broadway appearances, including winning a Tony for playing the Genie in Aladdin. Jessie Mueller, who played Miss Adelaide, won a Tony for playing Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, as well as originating the role of Jenna in Waitress (among other Broadway roles). Sky Masterson was played by Steven Pasquale who was in the recent CSC production of Assassins. And Sarah Brown was played by Philip Soo, who is most famous for playing Eliza Schuyler in Hamilton. By the way, Pasquale and Soo are married in real life, so it’s particularly nice seeing the chemistry between them. The most unconventional bit of casting was Rachel Dratch (of SNL fame and who I recently saw in POTUS) as Big Jule. I want to note the choreography for “Luck Be a Lady Tonight,” in particular, which was exciting and impressive. Anyway, it was an extremely enjoyable evening. And, by the way, the Kennedy Center has actual printed programs available. This is a very limited run (10 performances only), so if you want to see it, get your tickets now for this coming weekend.

By the way, I had dinner before the show at Bandoola Bowl, a new Burmese place in Western Market (a food hall in Foggy Bottom). I got a ginger salad with tofu and lemon dressing, which was absolutely delicious. I will definitely eat there again. Also, the weather was particularly nice, making for an especially enjoyable walk over to the KenCen.

Capital Jewish Food Festival: As I mentioned above, I volunteered at this festival on Sunday. It was the first time they were doing it and things were a bit chaotic. I was assigned to check IDs and give out wristbands (green for over 21, blue otherwise). I was on the first shift (10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.) and we pretty much ran out of green wristbands. In retrospect, it would have made sense to have wristbands only for people who were over 21. Volunteers got t-shirts and 3 tasting tickets. By the time my shift finished, several of the vendors had run out of the tasting samples, though there was still plenty of food for sale at most of the vendors. I did get samples of things like bagel chips with lox spread (and a salmon salad from another vendor. I’ve forgotten what my third sample was.) And I bought a turkey sandwich with cole slaw from Corned Beef King for lunch. Anyway, it was definitely crossed so I’d say the event was a success. Also, Michael Twitty gave an interesting talk. One disappointment was that there were only a few kosher-certified vendors.

Murder Mystery Weekend: No, I haven’t gone to one, but I’ve sort of decided I’d like to. I see a few companies that run them but, if anyone I know has done one, I’d love recommendations. Ideally, the venue should be either academic or country house / hotel (not urban). It should be friendly for a single attendee, since none of my friends are likely to want to go along for this. I’m looking for a weekend (Friday night through Sunday brunch looks typical). And I’d like it to be in (in order of preference) Ireland, the UK, or southern U.S.

Any suggestions?
fauxklore: (Default)
So what did I do during the second half of September? There was a certain amount of life maintenance (e.g. getting my car serviced, trying (not very successfully) to get some decluttering done, eye doctor appointment, travel planning). But I did actually go to a few things.

Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story: I went to see this musical at Theater J largely because I like klezmer music. The show (performed by members of a Halifax-based theatre troupe) tells the story of Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s immigrant ancestors. Chaya’s family left Romania for Russia and her husband died along the way. Chaim's family was all killed in a pogrom in Romania. They meet at the immigration center in Halifax and end up together in Montreal. They’re not very happily married, but they do manage to build a life - and a family. Their story is mostly narrated by The Wanderer, played by Ben Caplan (who co-wrote the songs.)

I had mixed feelings about the show. I did like a lot of the music. But I thought there was too much gratuitous profanity. And, while there were hints of hostility from “old stock” Canadians towards the immigrants, this wasn’t explored in enough depth. The most moving parts of the script were Chaim;s flashbacks to the discovery of his family after the pogrom. Overall, I’d say this was interesting, but unsatisfying.


Cumberland: Back in late April, my friend, Cindy, had gotten us half-price tickets (via Living Social) for the Potomac Eagle excursion train in Romney, West Virginia. The nearest place with what she thought were acceptable accommodations was Cumberland, Maryland (which also has an excursion train - as well as being served by Amtrak) so we met there last Friday at lunchtime. Cindy is a morning person, while I am a night owl, so I was happy to leave her to an early morning drive to Fallingwater, while I left my house at a much more civilized hour. Anyway, after lunch, we walked around Cumberland. The most dramatic building is the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, which is located on the site of the former Fort Cumberland. It is said to have Tiffany windows, as well as tunnels associated with the Underground Railroad, though the building was closed so we were unable to investigate further.

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Another interesting building is the Allegheny County Courthouse.

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The most famous building in Cumberland is probably George Washington’s Headquarters (from the French and Indian War). There’s a button you can press to hear about Washington’s activities there.

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A building of particular interest to me was Congregation B;er Chayim, which is the oldest synagogue in continuous use in Maryland.

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There are a number of other attractive buildings in the historic center, but the town seemed fairly faded, with a lot of closed businesses. Of course, we were there on Friday, so it might be livelier on the actual weekend. We did also walk a little bit on the C&O Canal Towpath, which terminates there and connects to the Great Allegheny Passage. This is a popular route for bicycle trips, as you can ride all the way from Washington, D.C. to Pittsburgh.

Potomac Eagle: As I mentioned, the purpose of our trip was to take the Potomac Eagle train. They only do the full-day trip from Romney,to Petersburg, West Virginia (and back) on the last Saturday of the month. There are three levels of dining cars, but they sell out far in advance, so we were just in the regular passenger car.Here I am nestled (well, sprawled) into my seat.

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The route follows the south branch of the Potomac River. Much of the scenery along the way is farmland, with historic sites along the way. Here, for example, is Sycamore Dale, which was the Civil War headquarters of General Lew Wallace, who is probably best known as the author of the novel, Ben Hur.

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One of the more interesting parts of the trip is what is called The Trough, which is a good area for seeing bald eagles.

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There’s an open car called “the gondola” which is opened up for passengers for the journey through the trough. Because we were in standard class, we got to do this on the way back. I saw at least 4 eagles flying, but was not fast enough to photograph them.

Anyway, we got to Petersburg (a bit late, because there was a PBS crew filming the trip for a special to air next summer), where there was a woman dressed as Civil War spy, Belle Boyd, to greet us.

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There was also a guy dressed as Sasquatch, but they stopped him from taking photos with people by the time I got off the train. I did later get a photo of him at his car before he took off his costume. Here he is combing his hair in the car mirror.

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We had booked a free tour to Fort Mulligan, which is a Civil War battleground. It would have been worth a couple of hours to read all of the signs along the self-guided tour, but we had only about 40 minutes there.
We did have a local guide who said that, when he was growing up in Petersburg, nobody talked about the local Civil War history. Anyway, here’s an obligatory cannon photograph.

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And here’s a photo of an officer’s quarters.

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We also had some time to walk around near the train station. There was a place that sold moonshine and a lot of people went to taste it, but that holds no interest for me. (Plus, it was very crowded.) The souvenir shop next to the depot was full of annoyingly scented stuff, and I had to get out after just a few minutes so as not to choke. Eventually we got back on the train and headed back to Romney.

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Cows have the right of way!

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Also, the state of West Virginia has planted corn for the local wildlife. In some places, the corn was as high as Miriam’s eye.

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Overall, I thought the trip was worth doing, but it made for a long day. I’d also suggest you bring your own food. We bought lunch from their snack bar, which was overpriced and unexciting. I’ll also note that they offer “meal bundles,: which are actually priced higher than the individual items that comprise them. For example, a hot dog is $5, chips are $2 and soda is $3 (so $10 total), while the bundle containing those three items is $12! I told Cindy that was a tax on people who can’t do arithmetic.

I drove home on Sunday morning, while Cindy went to Shanksville, Pennsylvania to see the Flight 93 Memorial (which I’d been to last year). All in all, it was a pretty good weekend.

TCC Meeting: I got back in time to go to a meeting of the Travelers’ Century Club. There were several people there for the first time, as well as people I’ve met before. I enjoyed the usual conversation about places to go. There was also a lot of discussion about language learning.

Rosh Hashanah: I had intended to go to services in person, but I slept late enough that I went to Fabrangen’s on-line services instead. That's less satisfactory in many ways, mostly because I find it harder to concentrate with all the distractions in my house. I’ll make more of an effort to get up early on Yom Kippur.

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