fauxklore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sorry for the long delay in writing. I’ve been distracted by trying, not very successfully, to get caught up on stuff at home. I’ve also been getting ready for an upcoming storytelling show (live only and sold out, so I’ll spare you the shameless self promotion this time).

Celebrity Death Watch: Edwin Wilson was a theatre critic, primarily for the Wall Street Journal. Denny Laine co0founded both the Moody Blues and Wings. David Ellenson was a Reform rabbi, who headed Hebrew Union College for several years. Jacqueline Mesmaeker was a Belgian artist who worked in plastic, which is, indeed, a messy medium. Richard Kerr was a songwriter whose work was performed by singers such as Dionne Warwick and Barry Manilow (e.g. “Mandy.) Mort Engelbert was the advance man for Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign and Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Andre Braugher was a television actor, best known for appearing in Homicide: Life on the Streets ad Brooklyn Nine-Nine. William G. Connolly co-authored The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. Lee Redmond held the world record for longest fingernails on both hands (roughly 30 inches). Bob Johnson was a member of Steeleye Span. Colin Burgess was the original drummer for AC/DC. Amp Fiddler was a member of Parliament/Funkadelic. Irwin Cohen was the real estate developer responsible for Chelsea Market in New York. Ryan Minor played baseball for the Baltimore Orioles and started in place of Cal Ripken, Jr., breaking Ripken’s 2632 game streak. Ruth Seymour managed KCRW, a PBS station in Santa Monica, California and was responsible for, among other things, a lot of Jewish programming. Richard Bowes was a science fiction writer. Herbert Kohl was a co-founder of Kohl’s Department stores and owned the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team. Herman Raucher wrote Summer of ’42. Maurice Hines was an actor, dancer, and choreographer. Cindy Morgan was an actress, best known for appearing in Tron and Caddyshack. Tom Wilkinson was an actor, best known for appearing in The Full Monty and Michael Clayton. Shecky Greene was a comedian, who performed in Las Vegas for many years. Cale Yarborough was a stock car driver. Tall Ross played rhythm guitar for Funkadelic. Bridget Dobson was a soap opera writer.

Frank Ryan was a football player for several teams, including the Redskins, and also earned a Ph.D. in mathematics and became an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University during his playing career. Jack O’Connell wrote noir crime fiction. Avi Zamir headed the Mossad from 1968 through 1974. Joseph Lelyveld was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, who was the executive editor of the New York Times from 1994 to 2001. Sarah Rice was an actress who originated the role of Johanna in Sweeney Todd. Joan Acocella was a dance critic for The New Yorker. Edward Jay Epstein was an investigative journalist and political science professor who wrote about conspiracy theories. Terry Bisson and Howard Waldrop were science fiction writers. Bill Hayes sang “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” and became a soap opera actor. Jo-El Sonnier performed Cajun music. Tom Shales wrote about television for the Washington Post. Joyce Randolph played Trixie on The Honeymooners. Laurie Johnson wrote television and film music. Mary Weiss was the lead singer for the Shangri-Las, most famous for the song “Leader of the Pack.” Norman Jewison directed numerous movies, including In the Heat of the Night, Fiddler on the Roof. and Moonstruck. Frank Farian was behind Milli Vanilli and Boney M. Carl Andre was a minimalist sculptor.

Norman Lear was a television producer. All in the Family was revolutionary for its treatment of controversial topics and Lear followed it with other important TV shows such as Maude and The Jeffersons.

Ryan O’Neal was an actor, who starred in such movies as Love Story, Barry Lyndon, and Paper Moon.

Dan Greenberg was a humor writer, best known for How to Be a Jewish Mother, a book my mother thought was very funny. He was also Nora Ephron’s first husband.

Robert Solow was an economist who won the Nobel Prize in 1987, He scored me 21 ghoul pool points.

Tom Smothers was a comedian and musician, who performed with his brother, Dick. My family had all of their records and we watched their TV show regularly. He also performed as Yo-yo Man.

Niklaus Wirth was a computer scientist who won the Turing Award in 1984 and, among other things, created the Pascal computer language. There’s a funny story about him involving how people pronounced his name. He was Swiss and his compatriots pronounced his name “Nik-lous Virt” while Americans tended to say “Nickles Worth.” As he said, the Swiss called him by name and the Americans called him by value.

Glynis Johns was an actress whose roles included the mother in Mary Poppins and Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, winning a Tony for the latter. Stephen Sondheim wrote the song “A Little Night Music” specifically to accommodate her limited vocal range.

David Soul was an actor, probably best known for playing Hutch in Starsky & Hutch. But I remember him better from Here Come the Brides which we always use to run home to watch because of Bobby Sherman. Ah, the crushes of a 10 year old girl!

Bud Harrelson was a shortstop for the Mets for the Mets from 1965 through 1977. He was my mother’s favorite baseball player. He later became a coach and manager and part owner of the Long Island Ducks. He was my first ghoul pool score of 2024, earning me 18 points.

Peter Schickele was best known to most people as the “discoverer” of P. D. Q. Bach, though he did write serious compositions under his own name. He brought a lot of people to classical music with his humor and I have fond memories of listening to such pieces as “Eine Kleine Nichtmusic” and “The 1712 Overture.”

Charles Osgood was a television news anchor and radio commentator. He also wrote a couple of books of light verse on news subjects and I have fond memories of both Nothing Could Be Finer Than a Crisis That is Minor in the Morning and There’s Nothing That I Wouldn’t Do If You Would Be My POSSLQ. He was also known for his tag line, “See you on the radio.”

Melanie was a singer, known for such songs as “Brand New Key” and “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain.”

Jimy Williams managed the Boston Red Sox from 1997 through 2001.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Mark Baird was a former colleague. We worked closely together for a couple of years and had a running inside joke regarding his desire to go to Belize and mine to go to Mozambique. He was a nice guy, very devoted to his daughters, and a pleasure to be around. He died suddenly of a blood clot, possibly related to recent hip replacement surgery. (I’m also biased because he once called me a national asset.)

Linda Goodman was a storyteller. I got to know her fairly well when we were both on the board of the Virginia Storytelling Alliance at the same time. Her death was no surprise, as she’d been dealing with Parkinson’s disease and dementia for a while, but it is still sad.

Non-human Death Watch: The Jewish Center of Island Park (now the South Shore Jewish Center) was the synagogue I grew up in. My father was active in the Men’s Club, headed the building committee when they added an extension / social hall / ballroom, and edited the newsletter for several years. My grandfather was the cantor for High Holiday services for many years. The shul has been dying for several years, largely due to demographic shifts and exacerbated by Hurricane Sandy. So they’re now seeking to sell the building. I’m buying the memorial plaques for my grandparents and my father.

I know I’m supposed to view all synagogues in the Diaspora as temporary, but it’s still sad. I have a lot of memories from there. Sigh.

Obit Poems: I never got around to writing these up to enter them in the Invitational, largely because I decided they weren’t good enough to be worth entering. But I can inflict them on you.

Tom Terrific was not a reliever
The ’69 Mets left it to Seaver

Al Jaffee always drew the Fold-In
Now, alas, he’s just a moldin’

Normal Busy Life: I went to a Chavurah brunch on New Year’s Day. I’ve had meetings for several of my usual activities, e.g. a couple of genealogy related things, a Grimm Keepers discussion of “The Little Red Hen” (a particularly weird story), planning for some storytelling events, crafts groups, book clubs (which I’m now up to three of), playing board games on-line, a Travelers’ Century Club meeting, etc.

No wonder I keep falling behind!

Important Local News: Oakton High School, which is just up the street from my house, won Metallica’s Marching Band Competition. There are various groups from the school who put on fund raising car washes and I would definitely stop if they were doing one.

Weather: We got about 4 inches of snow on January 15th and another 5 on January 19. There were also several insanely cold days. And then we had a couple of days in the 60’s and it even got up to 72 on Friday. Fortunately,it looks like normal weather for the near future. That is, lows in the low 30’s and high in the mid-40’s.

National Gallery of Art: I leveraged off having an event to go to in the city last Monday night to go to see a couple of museum exhibits during the day on Monday. My friend, Jane, met me for lunch at Teaism and part of the museumage. Because we were running early, we had time to check out the 19th century French art first, which included pieces by several impressionists and post-impressionists, including Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, and Gauguin.

We managed to kill enough time there to rush through some coffee before going on the docent tour of their current exhibit of photos by Dorothea Lange. The docent talked some about Lange’s life and then talked in depth about some of the photos. Because she had time to discuss only a few of them, I think I need to go back and spend three or so hours looking at all of them.

This one, of a stenographer, struck me for the repairs to the woman’s stockings.

The most heartbreaking photo, in my opinion, was this one of a store that had been owned by Japanese-Americans. Note that I’d once had a boss who spent part of his childhood at one of the relocation camps that are such a shameful part of American history.

Jane was museumed out at that point, so she left, while I went over to the East Building to see the Mark Rothko on Paper exhibit. I’d gained a much greater appreciation for Rothko when I went to the museum dedicated to him in Daugavpils, Latvia nearly five years ago. I do, however, prefer his earlier works, such as “Undersea Cabaret.”

I always think the more familiar style of his paintings would make great designs for rugs.

Since I was there, I also looked at some of the rest of the modern art in the East Building. That included this wonderful case of pies by Claes Oldenburg.

“The Flag is Bleeding” is part of Faith Ringgold’s The American People Series. She remains one of my favorite artists.

No Accident: The primary reason I’d gone into the city was to go to a screening of a documentary titled “No Accident,” about the lawsuit against the August 2017 Charlottesville rioters. It was in the Congressional auditorium at the Capitol.

There were three senators who introduced the film - Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, and Cory Booker. I thought that Senator Kaine spoke particularly well.

As for the documentary, I found it very interesting. Roberta “Robbie” Kaplan and Karen Dunn led a team that successfully proved that the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville was planned. It was chilling - and, of course, the most frightening part is that most of the groups involved are still out there. By the way, Kaplan also represented E, Jean Carroll in her defamation lawsuits against Donald Trump.

Other Stuff: I still have to write about - a theatre outing and a Loser Party, (including a good recipe) - but I want to get this posted now because I have to leave the house early in the morning.

I have several other things to write about, which I will list below, but I want to clear off a few random odds and ends first.

Mostly Harmless: This article tells the story about a hiker who was found dead and the effort to identify him. I thought it was really interesting reading.

Another Lost Person: The story of somebody who shouldn’t have been allowed to travel alone was also amusing.

Vaccine! After a long and frustrating saga, I got my first Pfizer shot last week. I had registered with Kaiser back in January. Then Virginia decided to pull vaccines from everywhere except the Virginia Department of Health. There were some given to pharmacies but only for people over 65. Virginia waffled on registration, first doing it by county, then statewide, but Fairfax County (where I live) opted out of the statewide system. It took Fairfax County about a month to get through people who had registered the first day. Anyway, Kaiser then got an allocation from the CDC and I got a notice to make an appointment with them, which was successful. Of course, about 3 days later, I got a notice from Fairfax County. Such chaos.

At least they made the appointment for the second shot while I was there checking in for the first one. And, for those who are tracking side effects, my left arm was a bit sore for a couple of days, bt not a big deal.

Other Health Stuff: I had mentioned back in December that the bloodwork at my annual physical showed mild anemia. My doctor put in an order for additional lab work, which I did in January. That showed my vitamin B12 level to be quite low and my iron level to be somewhat low, so she told me to take supplements and get retested 6 weeks after starting them. I did that this week. The good news is that the supplements are working for the vitamin B12 and the test for intrinsic factor blocking antibody (which would prevent B12 from being absorbed) was negative. My guess is that the B12 issue was related to the known interference due to taking metformin (which I take for Type 2 diabetes). At any rate, continuing to take a tiny sublingual pill a day is no big deal.

The bad news is that my iron levels did not improve and, in fact, are somewhat worse. I have an upper endoscopy and colonoscopy scheduled in early April to see if there is any bleeding that could account for this. I am rather dreading the prep for this, which everyone says is far worse than the actual procedure. Hopefully, anything that is found will be easily treatable.

Other Stuff I Intend to Write About:

The rest of the celebrity death watch
Assorted storytelling events
The recorded sessions of the 2020 IAJGS conference (except I can’t find my notes from those)
Art history classes
Potential travel plans

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/488914.html

I have much lighter stuff to write about, but it’s more important to talk about current events. Let’s start with a couple of stories.

1992: In 1992, I lived in Los Angeles. My brother was visiting, at a conference downtown at the Biltmore. We joked about whether the Biltmore garage wanted a grand. We (me, him, and his girlfriend, who he later married and even later got divorced from) went to see a play in Westwood – a live version of a Brady Bunch episode. That night, the news about the acquittal of the cops who had beaten Rodney King came out and the city exploded.

The Biltmore is near what was then the Parker Center, L.A.’s police headquarters. The next day, the rest of my brother’s conference was cancelled and he was more or less trapped at the hotel. It was a couple of days before he could get out of downtown L.A. I thought things were nice and safe on the Westside. But at work, I heard from one of our admins about her husband being shot at during lunchtime. We got dismissed from work early. I had the sense to drive home via the 405 instead of La Cienega Blvd, and when I got home turned on the news,, where I saw stopped cars on La Cienega having their windows smashed.

The news was full of looting and arson. The fires would eventually reach to within about a mile of my apartment. People in my neighborhood were worried, but figured things would be okay as long as everything stayed east of Robertson Blvd.

Soon, there was a curfew and there were National Guard officers all over. For some reason, I found it particularly upsetting to see the National Guard outside a nearby convenience store. But, the bottom line, was that I was safe, albeit mildly inconvenienced. The LAPD did implement some changes and there was a lot of talk about community based policing and the good old days of beat cops, instead of officers who were cocooned in their patrol cars.

A couple of other things that may not be related to this: Some years later (maybe 2000?), I spent a day at a storytelling event in Watts. I had a great day, with nothing traumatic. I came home to my apartment. I was living further west by then, in Palms, a neighborhood filled with UCLA students and young professionals. I went out to return a video and, on the way, home stopped at the convenience store at my corner to pick up some orange juice. While crossing the street from the video store, I saw two boys running up the street, but didn’t really think anything about it. When I went to buy my juice, I learned those boys had just robbed the store at gunpoint. (By the way, I should clarify that I use the word “boys” because they looked about 13 or 14 years old to me.)

In 1998, the manager of a hostel in Harare, Zimbabwe told me that he thought Zimbabwe was not at all racist. But he didn’t understand why his dog barked only at black people.

In 2004, I was in Sofia, Bulgaria. On the train there from Thessaloniki, Greece, someone had warned me about Roma thieves. (Except he used the slur, “gypsies.”) He was not particularly receptive when I pointed out that, if you refuse to allow people to get an education and discriminate against them in jobs, it isn’t surprising if some of them turn to criminality.

Minneapolis: I have been to Minneapolis a few times. One of those times, I was taking a bus from downtown to the airport. (This was before the light rail was built). One seat on the bus was covered with a newspaper, apparently because someone had puked on it. A black woman commented that the city transport department wouldn’t send out a new bus because It was just the 100 bus, mostly ridden by Somalis. (I am not sure that is the correct number, but it doesn’t matter for this story).

Minneapolis is also where, in 2017, an Australian woman named Justine Damond called the police to report a possible rape in the alley behind her apartment. When she saw a police car arrive, she went out to talk to the cops. She was shot and killed by one of them, Mohamed Noor. He was convicted of 3rd degree murder and sentenced to 12.5 years in prison. Justine Damond was white. Mohamed Noor is black (a Somali-American). There was also a large civil settlement to her family.

I don’t know the geography of Minneapolis well enough to be sure, but I have heard that incident was in the same general neighborhood as where George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin, with three other police officers standing by. Minneapolis police training allows choke holds, which most police departments do not. Derek Chauvin had had numerous complaints against him. He’s been charged with 3rd degree murder and manslaughter. It will take a while, but I’d suggest that the same 12.5 year prison sentence would be appropriate for him at a minimum.

More generally: There are countless incidents of cops over-reacting to incidents involving black people, many of whom are not committing any crimes. I’ve heard endless examples, both from the news and from black friends. It is probably worse in some places than others, but racism is endemic in the United States. It goes back to the same problem as the Roma story I mentioned above.

As for protests and looting, I think there’s a mixture of things going on. Some is outside agitators. Some is frustration leading people to want to destroy things. Some is the police (and our President) doing everything they can to do exactly the wrong thing. Especially the latter, but that is completely in character for him.

I do want to add one thing that is often misunderstood about civil disobedience. You have to be willing to accept the punishment, even if you think the law is a bad one. Gandhi and Martin Luther King and many others served time.

So can we fix things? I like to think so. I believe that the majority of police officers join up wanting to do good for their communities. We can do a better job of getting rid of the ones with impure motives. We can train police on how to diffuse situations without violence. We can build a society which is not based on fear of the other. We can start with young children and teach them history and get them to learn about the rights and dignity of all people. As bad as things are, they’re not as bad as they were 200, 100, 60, 30 years ago. The pendulum will still swing up and down, but maybe we can dampen its amplitude.

Celebrity Death Watch: Charles Van Doren was a contestant on the quiz show Twenty-One in the 1950’s and was caught up in the cheating scandal, as he had been given answers by the producers. Earl Thomas Conley was a country music singer-songwriter. Scott Sanderson pitched for several baseball teams, including the Expos and the Cubs. Ian Cognito did standup comedy in Britain. Georgia Engel was an actress, best known for appearing as Georgette on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but she also performed in several musicals, including Hello, Dolly and The Drowsy Chaperone. Tony Buzan wrote several books popularizing mind mapping. Gene Wolfe was a science fiction writer. Bibi Andersson was an actress who appeared in several Ingmar Bergman movies. Les Reed was a songwriter whose works included "It’s Not Unusual."

Whew!:I had a very busy week at work last week, accompanied by a busy week at home. The latter was largely due to taxes. Almost all of the effort of doing taxes is in finding all of the paperwork. Every year it seems that one or more pieces of paper (a 1099 interest statement or a receipt for a charitable donation, typically) goes missing, resulting in much scrambling to find it or search for a replacement source of the relevant info. And every year I swear I will do a better job of filing. At any rate, it did get done. Only to get into the other annual whirlwind known as cleaning for Passover. If it weren’t for that, I’d probably never discover that my pantry has a jar of marshmallow fluff and a can of water chestnuts, not to mention an absurd number of bottles of vinegar. (Presumably each of those was bought with a different recipe in mind.) I still have to clean the oven, vacuum, and achieve total world domination.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t also have a busy weekend.

Grand Hotel: I went to see Grand Hotel at Signature Theatre on Saturday afternoon. I saw the movie long ago and, as far as I remember it, the musical is reasonably true to it. The plot revolves around several people staying in the hotel in Berlin during one day in the late 1920’s. Elizaveta Grushinskaya is an aging ballerina, accompanied by her companion, Raffaela, who secretly yearns for her. Flammchen is a secretary who wants to be a Hollywood actress. Otto Kringelein is a dying Jewish man who is trying to experience some of what has passed him by before the end. Baron Felix von Gaigern is an impoverished nobleman – and thief. The most passionate moment in the whole thing involves the romance that develops between Grushinskaya and the Baron. The Baron is easily the most appealing character in the ensemble, raising the hopes of several of the others, while ending up doomed himself.

The performers included a number of familiar faces. Natascia Diaz was excellent as Grushinskaya and Nkrumah Gatling, as the Baron, made a fine romantic foil for her. But the most striking performance was by Bobby Smith as Otto Klingelein.

Overall, this isn’t one of my favorite musicals, largely because I think it is rather shallow. Maury Yeston seems to have gotten involved with too many of these shows that try to follow too many characters at a superficial level. (I have the same issue with Titanic, for example.) Still, I liked it well enough to find it a diverting couple of hours.

Story Swap: Saturday night was a story swap. We had a small group, but it was still enjoyable. Eve had a long pourquoi story, which I think was from Guatemala. I told my father’s version of the crossing of the Red Sea. And there was a lot of general schmoozing.

One Day University: Sunday was One Day University. I was a bit annoyed that they did not include coffee this time out – unlike all the other times I’ve attended. I wasn’t going to pay four bucks just for a caffeine fix. (Instead, I went over to the nearby CVS and got a coke zero for 2 bucks.) Still, this really seemed pretty chintzy to me.

There were three lectures this time. The first talk was by William Burke-White of the University of Pennsylvania Law School on America and the World 2019: Where Are We Now (And where are we going?. His basic message was that, since World War II, the U.S. has led the global order with four pillars: 1) sovereignty (nation state as basic actor), 2) security (territorial integrity), 3) economic liberalization (currency convertibility, financial stability), and 4) open, rules-based system. What is changing now is the rise of China, leading to a trade war, along with a rise of populist nationalism, due partly to economic disparities. Information transparency and manipulation has led to a lack of secrecy in diplomacy. He also mentioned artificial intelligence and climate change as influencers, though he was less clear about their effects. I can’t say he really said anything I found startlingly new and original, but he was a reasonably interesting speaker.

The best lecture of the day was by Jennifer Keene of Chapman University on World War I: What Really Happened and Why It Matters. She emphasized the importance of the decision for conscription, which included public draft registration on particular days. Despite the public nature of registration, there was an almost 11% rate of draft evasion, which is higher than for Vietnam. While 95% of the men in the Civil War were combatants, only 40% were combatants in World War I. The work of those support troops was not as recognized and respected, which had a disproportionate impact on African Americans, who were overwhelmingly (89%) assigned to non-combatant roles like lading ships.

As for the importance of WWI, she noted that the German threat to the U.S. was real, including both the threat to shipping and sabotage within the U.S. But a more lasting impact was the rise of interest in Civil Rights, partly in response to the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act (which made it illegal to oppose the government and led to the founding of the ACLU). She had several stories related to issues like women suffrage, rights of African-Americans, rights of immigrants, and the peace movement that grew in the 1930’s, which made the U.S. reluctant to enter WWII. Overall, she was a dynamic speaker and held my interest.

I had expected to enjoy the final talk, by Mark Mazullo of Macalester College on Mozart and Beethoven: The Lives and Legacies of History’s Most Famous Composers. But I just didn’t buy his key premise that both composers were inherently tied to the revolutions of the era (both political and industrial) and to empathy as a road to democracy and human rights. Yes, they were entrepreneurial compared to, say, Haydn, who worked for Count Esterhazy, but I’d argue that gave them more freedom to write what they wanted, while also adding greater insecurity. Mazzullo brought up the point as the reason why Beethoven wrote only 9 symphonies while Mozart wrote 41 and Haydn wrote 104. But Haydn lived to 77 and Mozart died at 35, so you could argue they were roughly equally productive. (Beethoven is a bit more complicated – he never really composed quickly and modern scholarship suggests his lifelong poor health was due to chronic lead poisoning. But he also had plenty of patronage during his earlier years.) Overall, I don’t think I really learned anything new from this talk.

Notre Dame: I went to Notre Dame with Robert (the gentleman with whom I conducted the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling) during a weekend in Paris In 2009. It took some effort (and Berthillon ice cream) for me to persuade him to wait in line to get in, but we were both suitably impressed with its grandeur. I believe that grand works of art and architecture are proof of the value of divine inspiration. However, as I read about the large donations to restore the building, I can’t help wondering how much else could be accomplished with that money – education, job creation, etc.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/451689.html

Celebrity Death Watch: Boro Maa was the matriarch of Matu Mahasangha, a Hindu reformist sect in West Bengal. Carolee Schneemann was an artist. Charlie Panigoniak was an Inuit singer, best known for his version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in the Inuktitut language. Carmine Persico was the head of the Colombo crime family. Ralph Hall was the oldest person ever to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Dan Jenkins was a sportswriter, as is his daughter, Sally, who wrote a particularly excellent obituary of him in the Washington Post. Jed Allen was a soap opera actor. Raven Grimassi wrote books promoting an Italian form of Wicca. Asa Brebner was a guitarist who, among other things, performed with The Modern Lovers on a couple of their albums. Hal Blaine was a prolific session drummer.

Jerry Merryman was one of the inventors of the handheld electric calculator. I am old enough to remember when calculators were not ubiquitous. If I recall correctly, it wasn’t until 11th grade physics that we were allowed to use them for exams. And those early calculators just did addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and – if you had a really fancy one – exponents. That fancy one was, in my case, the Bowmar Brain, which cost $75. It was only a couple of years later, when I started college, that I got a Texas Instruments scientific calculator. I think it may have been a programmable one. It cost over $100 and had terrible battery life. By the time I graduated, I could buy a Sharp scientific calculator for about $20. That used AA batteries and lasted a couple of decades.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Another former colleague, Sy Horowitz, died last week. He was a really nice guy, always interesting to talk with during a lunchtime walk on business trips. I wasn’t completely surprised, given that he was over 90, but having lost so many colleagues over the years makes me feel old.

Mostly Better: However, the cold viruses grabbed my vocal chords with them on their way out. Sigh.

Daylight Savings Time: I think I have found all the clocks that need to be reset. I cannot, however, figure out how to reset the owl that is nesting in our courtyard.

For the record, I would favor staying on DST year round. I love lots of light late in the afternoon. Please don’t remind me I said that if you should happen to be in the car with me at sunset, when I am likely to be whining about glare.

Social Media Annoyance: I can’t update my facebook status for some reason. Nor can I see my timeline. So, of course, I have all sorts of clever things I want to say.

That College Admissions Scandal: What I really want to know is how much the students involved were told about what was going on. I don’t think that, in general, students care as much about the alleged prestige of various schools as their parents do. (And, by the way, there are only two schools on the list that I would consider actual elite colleges, but that’s probably my academic snobbery at work.) I know there are students who have unrealistic views of what their dream school is, but it isn’t doing them any favors to get them into somewhere that isn’t a good fit for their abilities and interests. Of course, It appears that in some cases, their interests are partying and skiing, so I can understand why parents might not want to finance their little darling's dream education.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/449706.html

Celebrity Death Watch: Alene Duerk was the U.S. Navy’s first female rear admiral. Ron Dellums was a Congressman from California for many years and later served as mayor of Oakland. Yaakov Elman was a Talmudic scholar. Mary Carlisle was an actress, primarily in B-movies.

Baseball News: I am inordinately happy that Ian Kinsler has been traded to the Red Sox.

Good News: For reasons involving some sort of statewide softball event, the NPL con next year is moving back to the original dates. Which means I can go. Yay!

Bad News: Metro is going to be doing major track work from August 11 through the 26th. This will screw up my commute for a week. I am hoping that the Fairfax Connector people will run bus service to the Pentagon like they did the last time that there was so little service. But I haven’t seen anything announced.

Just Gnus: Contrary to what I was taught by my 3rd Grade teacher, the "G" is not silent.

The Story of the Gun: You might note that GUN is an anagram of GNU. Which has nothing to do with this show, a monologue by Mike Daisey, currently playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. I saw it on Tuesday night.

Daisey likes to refer to himself as a storyteller, but he does use notes so some of us would question that. I don’t really care how he is characterized. He’s entertaining and thought-provoking, even when I disagree with him.

Anyway, Daisey starts out with talking about the history of guns in America and, specifically, makes the claim that guns were essential to the white European conquest of America and to the enslavement of Africans. There are a number of reasons why this is a simplistic claim, starting with the role of disease (both deliberately spread and otherwise) among indigenous populations. And the importation of slaves is intimately wrapped up with tribal warfare between various groups in West Africa. For example, the Abomey were waging war on and enslaving other African tribes long before Prince Henry the Navigator had set out from Portugal.

Suppose you do accept the historical premise. What does that have to do with debates about guns now? Daisey doesn’t really answer that question. Instead, he attacks Alexander Hamilton. One of my rules is that one should not attack what one is not familiar with, so his jibes at the current musical were annoying.

He’s better when he talks about the gun culture of northern Maine, where he grew up. That is tied in with hunting and his rant about deer, which he describes as fast cows, was actually pretty funny. I will, however, admit that I like venison, so his claim that our failure to domesticate deer is proof that their meat doesn’t taste good, is another point on which I disagree with him.

The real point came in a story about his father and the use of firearms for suicides amongst veterans. There was actual emotional resonance there. But there are still a lot more questions in what he had to say than any suggestion of answers. As I said above, Daisey is provocative, though I’ve preferred other of his monologues to this one. (To be fair, I was tired. And, while the show was advertised as 90 minutes, it was actually 2 hours.)

Airplane Kerfuffle: Alaska Air is being accused of anti-gay discrimination for allegedly moving a member of a gay couple because of a straight couple who wanted to sit together. Except, as usual, there is more to the story. For one thing, it does sometimes happen that glitches result in two people having the same seat. How that gets resolved involves a number of factors. For example, I was upgraded from business class to first class once under those circumstances. Why was I upgraded and not the other person, who showed up after I was seated? Presumably because of my frequent flyer status. I’ve also had people try to poach my seat and ask wouldn’t I mind a middle seat in the back instead of my aisle seat in a section of the plane with better seating so they could sit together? (I might be willing to move to keep a parent and child together on a short flight. But I will not budge if someone steals my seat without asking beforehand.)

In this case, there are several possibilities. For example, the two men could have had tickets that were not on the same passenger name record (PNR) making it less clear that they were traveling together. Only one of them could have been upgraded. Et cetera.

Bottom line is that there is no evidence of discrimination. And, in fact, Alaska has a particularly good reputation with respect to LGBTQ issues. They don’t, alas, have a good reputation with respect to using twitter effectively.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/424346.html

Last Week’s Entertainment: I went to see a documentary (Famous Nathan about Nathan Handwerker and his hot dog emporium) at the DCJCC Tuesday night. I’ll have more to say about that when I do my quarterly movie wrap-up.

Then, on Wednesday night, I went to the opening show of the new season of The Grapevine, which has moved more conveniently to Busboys and Poets in Takoma. I’d comment on it still being in darkest Maryland, but actually it is on the DC side of the line. And, most importantly, it’s easily metroable. There were two storytellers, followed by an open mike. The first teller was Shirleta Settles, who I had not heard of before. She did a folk tale, with excellent voices and strong singing, and was very animated and entertaining. She was followed by Jon Spelman, who did a couple of excerpts from The Prostate Diaries. One of those was quite timely since it had to do with his experiences on the Camino del Santiago, which

fossilfreakca had just started on. He did a good job of making the excerpts make sense while telling something less than half of the whole piece. As for the open mike, I told "Two Foolish Old People," a badly mistitled Mongolian story.

Speaking of Storytelling: I am part of the Better Said Than Done fundraiser for the Reston Nature Center this coming Saturday night (September 19th). The show is at 8 p.m. and doors open at 7:30. We had rehearsal on Sunday afternoon and the show (which has a theme of "Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire") is going to be hot, hot, hot! You should come if you are anywhere in the general vicinity.

Rosh Hashanah: I went to services at Shoreshim in Reston. Overall, I’d say I’m looking for something more traditional. In particular, I would have preferred a more complete Torah reading , rather than just the first Aliyah. I also prefer not to have musical instruments (though I can actually make an argument for including them) and very much prefer not having microphones (though that is a losing cause for the most part). On the plus side, the drosh (sermon) was both brief and relevant and the shofar blowing set a high standard.

I Despair for Our Future: The internet is exploding today with the story of Ahmed Mohammed, a 9th-grader in Irving, Texas, who was hauled off from school in handcuffs because a teacher and some cops were too dumb to be able to tell that his homemade clock wasn’t anything like a bomb. I’m proposing supporting him with a Bring Your Clock to Work Day.

At the same time, there’s an 11-year-old kid in Virginia who is serving out a year suspension (having to go to some special school as a result) for having what someone believed looked like a marijuana leaf in his backpack. Except it was actually a Japanese maple leaf. He (or someone else) may have joked that it was pot, but sheesh.

I suspect that if I were a kid nowadays, I’d end up in juvie over something similarly dumb.

I have lots to catch up on (so what else is new?). The most significant is the National Storytelling Conference, which will get its own entry. Or, more likely, two, because something I want to say will take some analysis and I don’t want to lose that in the clutter. I promise those will be more interesting than this entry is likely to be.

But, first, some other stuff.

Celebrity Death Watch: "Rowdy" Roddy Piper was one of the few pro wrestlers I’ve ever heard of. Alan Cheuse reviewed books for NPR (and wrote several of his own). Ainger Lynn Anderson never promised me a rose garden. Ann Rule wrote true crime books, the best known of which was The Stranger Beside Me about Ted Bundy. I’ve read many of her books, which fall into the guilty pleasure category.

Politics: Wit making its way around my circles is that the Washington Nationals are offering a season discount to the first 4000 presidential candidates.

Quick Genealogy Notes: I finally found where I’d put my library card, so was able to use the library edition of Ancestry. I found Max Lubowsky’s naturalization certificate, and it seems he can’t be Icek Chlebiocky, since the immigration dates don’t match.

The new social security application database, though, turned up a few things. Apparently my great-uncle by marriage, Ely Fuchs, was legally Elias. And his parents were Abraham Fuchs and Rebecca Heller. His birthplace is given as Kragow, Poland. That would seem to be Krakow, but there are some other possibilities.

More fun was the discovery that Athalia Lehrman (Mary Lubowsky Lehrman’s daughter) was using the name "Timmy Lee" at some point. A bit of googling turned up an entry in the copyright index of a book she wrote called Poems by Timmy Lee. It doesn’t look like the Library of Congress has that, but they do have a symphony she co-wrote. I see some fun research ahead.

Decluttering: I took advantage of the library excursion to drop Mom’s eyeglasses into the Lion’s Club donation bin there. I also dug out a few old pairs of mine and threw them in. I did keep one pair with frames I could see reusing.

Story Swap: The monthly Voices in the Glen swap was at Penelope’s, which was nicely convenient for me. I thought about walking over, but was concerned about the lighting (or lack thereof) on one street coming home. There was an excellent turn-out, including a few newcomers. And, of course, lots of great stories.

Sometimes You Only Need to Read the Headline: "Texas man injured as bullet ricochets off armadillo."

And Sometimes You Really Should Read On: I was disappointed that the story headlined "Bat Boy Dies from Swing" had to do with baseball, not that mythical West Virginia tabloid creature.

I mostly write about frivolous things, but I do think about what is going on in the world. If you want me being silly, go read yesterday’s entry.

Some years ago (2004 to be precise), I took a train from Thessaloniki, Greece to Sofia, Bulgaria. Bulgaria was not yet part of the EU and did not have a lot of tourism then. That was part of what made it interesting to me. It also meant that the handful of tourists found one another and exchanged tips. And part of those tips had to do with "gypsies" and watching out for them.

The problem I had was that I had actually broken bread with a Roma king and I didn't necessarily share that bias. There is certainly a crime problem in that community, but the problem is not one of inherent criminality but of discrimination that often leaves crime as the only option. The long term solutions have to involve removing that discrimination and providing opportunities for education and advancement. At the same time, I would have been a fool to ignore the risk of being robbed by kids trying to distract me by waving newspapers in my face and other similar tricks.

The situation with police and African-Americans here is similar. We really don’t live in a world of equal opportunity and some of those conditions lead to higher rates of criminal behavior in some communities. It is not surprising that police, who see the seamier side of things, get conditioned to expecting violence and it may well be unreasonable for them to ignore the risks. Again, the long term solutions involve creating opportunities and eliminating discrimination. Unfortunately, there are no good or obvious short term solutions. We’re in a vicious cycle.

This is intended to get me completely caught up here, a state that may last, oh, 15 minutes or so.

Frequent flyer meets business travel: I had a quick business trip to Denver a few weeks ago. I managed to arrange my flight out to be on a plane that Captain Denny Flanagan was piloting. It’s always good to be reminded that there are people working for the airlines who care about customer service. (And it was nice to chat with him before the flight.) I also used the trip as an opportunity to have dinner with friends who live out there, which is always nice. The work part was pretty intense, however.

Michael Chertoff: The former Director of Homeland Security gave a talk at an MIT-related reception I was at recently. I didn’t find anything he said particularly surprising, but I did think he completely dodged a question someone asked about the balance between security and privacy.

Domestic politics: Romney’s selection of Paul "Privatizing" Ryan as his running mate pretty much confirms my theory that the Republican Party no longer welcomes its former moderates. However, I doubt that the selection of a vice presidential candidate has much, if any, impact on who people vote for.

International politics: The first American company to open a franchise location in Libya is Cinnabon. This makes perfect sense if you think about local tastes. That is, of course, what makes it all the more surprising.

Women and the Olympics: There have been lots of stories this year about women and the Olympics. It was not until I read an article by Sally Jenkins in today’s Washington Post, however, that I learned a particularly appalling bit of history. In 1976 Margaret Thompson Murdock was the first woman shooter to make the American team. She tied with her team captain, Lanny Bassham. The rules prohibited a shoot-off, so Bassham was given the gold and Murdock the silver. To his credit, he pulled her up on the podium with him, but sheesh!

Story swap: There was a bonus story swap at Eve’s house Saturday night. We started outside around the fire pit, but moved inside when it began to rain. (The rain also prevented viewing the Perseids.) There were several travel related stories and lots of interesting conversation. This reminds me that I should someday put together a piece about places not to eat Chinese food, starting with Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. A particular highlight for me was Jake’s impassioned explanation of why donkeys might be chickens, which made his lawyer father proud of him and has the rest of us laughing hysterically.

Not laughing over traffic:: The Virginia Department of Transportation was doing their usual weekend work, otherwise known as how to screw up my drive home on the Beltway. What annoyed me the most is that the sign indicating that 3 of the 4 lanes were closed was after the exit I could have taken to avoid the mess. Of course, being Virginia, if they actually put up a useful highway sign, they would have to plant a tree immediately in front of it.

Pearl yarn: I got a notice from one of m local yarn shops that they had some of the Zealana pearl yarn, a limited edition created for the 30th anniversary of Vogue knitting. This is 50% crushed pearls, embedded in tencel, and only 500 skeins were made. Each skein is numbered and comes in a presentation box. If you think I could pass this up, you don’t know me very well. I was over there right when they opened. That was a good thing as they only had 20 skeins and I was number 18 in line. It is gorgeous and I think it was worth the 40 bucks. Not that I know what I am going to do with it. The best idea I heard from one of the other lucky purchasers was a bridal veil, but I am not exactly in need of one of those, alas.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: I’ve wanted to see this musical for some time, so took advantage of a production at Elden Street Players in Herndon. I found this very enjoyable. David Yazbek’s score suited the plot (based on the movie) well. In an earlier era, "Like Zis, Like Zat" would have gotten some radio play and "What Was a Woman to Do" would have had some life as a novelty piece. While the early set-up introducing the two con men is a bit longer than it needs to be, the book is funny, with several fairly subtle jokes. The performances were good, too, especially by Tom Flatt as Lawrence and Janette Moman as Muriel.

Travel planning, part 1: Helsinki: My annual birthday excursion this year is a long weekend in Helsinki. In the course of researching what to do, I have discovered a number of bizarre possibilities, some of them related to the city being the World Design Capital for 2012. Those include a walking map highlighting fonts on various signs (and, yes, I am enough of a geek to have downloaded the map), an exhibit titled "Flush: Design of Public Toilets," and an iron age market. There is also an event described as "urban festival brings together design and traditional Finnish rug washing piers." Even without the special events, Helsinki has some oddities, like a Hotel and Restaurant Museum. As someone who has driven out of my way to see things like the world’s largest towel (at the Cannon Towel Visitor Center in Kannapolis, North Carolina) and the water tower of the town of Joe, Montana, I expect to be in my element. (I’ve also downloaded walking tour brochures and directions to the largest yarn shop in town.)

Travel planning – part 2: Israel You may have read about the cheap fares that were available for a little while last week, due to a contractor failing to load fuel surcharges into an on-line system. Since I had already been looking at fares to Israel, I snagged a ticket. I have lots of planning yet to do, of course.

Travel planning – part 3: I also got frequent flyer tickets for Ozfest next year. This was fairly complex because I wanted to do a few things on the way to Perth and back. I’ve got one ticket (using United miles) to Singapore and back from Hong Kong. And I have another ticket (using American miles) from Singapore to Perth and Adelaide to Hong Kong. I’ll have almost a week in Singapore, which should allow me an excursion to Malaysia, too. I plan to take the Indian Pacific train from Perth to Adelaide. Finally, I will have a few days in Hong Kong, which should be enough time to eat lots of dim sum. Or maybe look for traditional Hong Kong rug washing piers.

Between Pesach and tax season I am behind on everything. So this is another of those catch-all bits of rambling.

First, there are several celebrity deaths to note. Earl Scruggs was a bluegrass musician. Thomas Kinkade was a commercial artist. Mike Wallace had a huge influence on the nature of television journalism. Adrienne Rich was a feminist poet. And Reed Whittemore was one of my favorite modern poets, whose work was filled with grace and wit. If you are not familiar with his work, let me offer this short example.

I also want to note that my first boss at the Circle-A Ranch passed away recently. Wayne retired and moved to Oregon back in the 1990’s and I had a few years in line management as his replacement. That gave me the opportunity to try out management in a safe environment and was a good way to find out it was not really what I wanted to do.

While I am on death and news, Bingu wa Mutharika, the president of Malawi died recently. The interesting thing there is that the Vice President, Joyce Banda, is now the second woman to become a head of state in Africa, after Ellen Johnson SIrleaf of Liberia. In other African news, the coup in Mali looks to be heating up, so it looks like having gone to the Festival Au Desert last year was good timing on my part.

Among the things I never got around to writing about were several receptions, three of them MIT related. A dinner at the Embassy of New Zealand provided an opportunity to see some interesting architecture, with a roof shaped to resemble the hull of a ship. That was enhanced by my conversation over dinner with an architecture professor and critic. A few nights after that, I was at an event with departing MIT President Susan Hockfield. The most interesting part of her remarks had to do with the cost of an education. My alma mater has made real strides in financial aid and she said the average debt of graduating seniors is just $14,000, which I find quite remarkable. The final MIT related reception I went to was the annual one for summer interns. I brought along a friend who works at NASA and has potential openings. It is always good to see the enthusiasm of students and to reconnect with fellow alumni. The non-MIT event I went to was a friend’s promotion ceremony. Aside from the usual military ceremony, which I always enjoy, the setting was particularly interesting. Roosevelt Hall, the site of the National War College, is a spectacular Beaux Arts building overlooking the Potomac, with a particularly dramatic rotunda. We got there early so had time to look around at the display cases, which included several having to do with General Colin Powell, including his diplomas. And the honoree was someone who particularly deserved his promotion, making the whole thing a lovely occasion.

The only other significant thing I did recently without having written about it was go to the most recent Pro Musica Hebraica concert, which involved Marc-Andre Hamelin playing works by Chopin and Alkan. Chopin was not, of course, Jewish, but Alkan was and the link was their friendship, based on both of them being outsiders in Paris. It was an excellent evening of solo piano. The highlight was definitely Alkan’s four-movement "Symphony for Solo Piano." However, I will note that, if one had not been told that the composer was an Orthodox Jew, there is nothing in the music itself that would suggest that.

The other main thing I failed to write about was doing the Month of Letters project, which involved writing a letter every day in February (except Sundays and postal holidays, i.e. President’s Day). That let me get a few things I’d been meaning to send to people on their way, as well as using some of my vast supply of note cards. I am, alas, now behind in answering letters (and emails) that I got in return.

Finally, the clippings file offered up a couple of amusing advertisements. One is for a razor that "hydrates your skin like no other razor." Personally, I’ve always found that drinking water and using lotion were more effective ways to hydrate my skin than shaving my legs is ever likely to be. The other is for a cheese and breadcrumb mix. Because, you know, it is just too hard to sprinkle cheese and breadcrumbs separately on the top of a casserole.

Before I write about the NPL con, I have some notes I scribbled about other things I meant to write about.

Celebrity Death Watch: Betty Ford was an interesting character, a feisty woman who spoke her mind. Her honesty about subjects like drug addiction and breast cancer made a real difference to our national dialogue.

Sherwood Schwartz, on the other hand, just created silly TV shows with earworm-infested theme songs.

Bears: I don't think I ever passed along the news story about the car accident in which one vehicle hit a bear, propelling it into the air and through the windshield of another car. The people in the second car were killed, as was the bear. That has to be a majorly unlucky way to go.

Today's news brings the story of a bear wandering into the area as a park ranger was giving a talk on bear safety.

Alaska men While I was in Alaska in June, one of the women who works out there told me that people think her social life should be great but "while the odds are good, the goods are odd." That reminds me of a friend who lives in Fairbanks telling me she treated the local men as being on a catch and release program.

Movies: I saw two movies recently, thanks to my flights to and from Zurich. Paul was very enjoyable since the story of two British nerds meeting an alien and trying to save him from the big bad government guys is exactly the sort of thing I'm the target demographic for. I watched Take Me Home Tonight largely on the grounds that the main character was supposed to be an MIT alumnus. Alas, it was silly teenage fare about rich kids with nothing better to do than obsess about their high school crushes.

The Washington Post has redesigned their website, making it harder for anybody over 40 to read and, more significantly, making it harder to actually find much of their content. I firmly believe that paper and on-line media function differently enough that it is a mistake to try to make the latter look more like the former.

On the plus side, John Kelly's column in the Sunday Post answered something I have wondered about pretty much since moving here. It's quite striking to see two headstones at the corner of a suburban shopping center. That shopping center is quite nearby and I run over there to the supermarket or the drugstore or the art supply store all the time.

I should probably read less news anyway, as it just ends up annoying me. From the Republican House Speaker in New Hampshire who wants to restrict voting rights of college students because they're "foolish," "lack life experience," and "just vote their feelings" (i.e. tend to vote for Democrats, but even he is smart enough not to say that explicitly) to the excessive attention paid to Charlie Sheen, the papers are full of vitriol and trivia. It's really better just to skip straight to the crossword.

Finally, there's yet another story of an ignorant flight crew panicking over tefillin. This time it was Alaska Air. (Previous incidents have involved Air Canada, US Air, and a New Zealand ferry.) Here's Alaska's version of the story (from their facebook page):

Shortly after Flight 241 departed from Mexico City bound for Los Angeles yesterday, flight attendants observed unusual behavior from three male passengers that continued during the four-hour flight. Out of concern for the safety of all of the passengers onboard, the crew erred on the side of caution and authorities were notified. The crew did not realize at the time that the passengers were Orthodox Jews engaging in prayer ritual in Hebrew.

They also have a rather bizarre and paranoid interpretation of what the men were doing. "The men prayed aloud together in a language unfamiliar to the crew while wearing what appeared to be black tape and wires strapped to their forearms and foreheads and wires on their chests." Uh, the straps hang loose from the head piece, but I can't see how anybody could interpret that as "wires on their chest."

Their story then refers to the passengers ignored instructions to stay seated and providing "very little information" about what they were doing. That's probably true, but one also suspects language barriers since AS flight attendants speak neither Spanish nor Hebrew. (AS flights to/from Mexico carry one interpreter.)

Before someone asks why they had to pray on the plane, flight 241 leaves Mexico City at 6 a.m. and gets to LAX at 8:55 a.m. if it's on time. The men were Mexican citizens connecting to an international flight. It often takes 1-2 hours for non-U.S. citizens to get through immigration at LAX. And their international flight presumably would get in long after sundown.

But the main thing I want to comment on is the sheer nastiness of so many of the comments on the various news stories about this incident. Most of those are along the lines of "prayer should be done in private or a church, not in a public place like an airplane." This is in relation to an airline that includes prayer cards (with psalms on them) on their meal trays / snack boxes. Sigh.

To their credit, Alaska Air seems to be trying to learn. Again, from their facebook note on the incident:

To help make sure this misunderstanding does not happen again, we plan to incorporate awareness training of Orthodox Jewish religious practices into our ongoing diversity and inclusion efforts. We’ve asked the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle for their assistance to help us better serve our Orthodox Jewish customers and employees alike.

My LJ site seems to be having some troubles. Yes, I submitted a support request.

First, four things that amused me this week:

1) Algeria has announced that they are going to end their state of emergency soon. That state of emergency was declared back in 1992.

2) I have talked previously about call signs (i.e. nicknames) that Air Force officers use. Right now I work with people who are called "Salt" and "Chili." I wonder if we should try to persuade our other officer to go by, say, "Oregano."

3) The headline on an article I saw about potential successors to the North Korean leader was "Next of Kim."

4) An Amtrak train hit a bald eagle outside Aberdeen, Maryland the other day. The eagle had, apparently, chosen the wrong time to be nibbling on a deer carcass on the tracks. The amusing part is that the Washington Post reported that "the train arrived at Washington Union Station two hours later with the bird stuck to the locomotive like an emblem." This reminds me that Ben Franklin despised eagles and wanted our national bird to be the turkey.

As for actually doing things:

I was surprisingly productive at work on Monday and finished writing a white paper I'd been futzing around with for a few weeks. I tend to spend a lot of time thinking before doing any writing, so the actual writing goes quickly. I only had to make minor revisions before sending it out for coordination. I'm sure I will get some comments back, but it's good to check off an item from my to-do list. Later in the week, I made some needed contacts for another project. There's still plenty of stuff I am spinning my wheels on, however.

On Tuesday, I finally got to the dentist. Not only did the weather cooperate, so did the traffic and I had time to stop at the good hardware store before my appointment. Unfortunately, I need to go back this coming week, as an old filling needs to be replaced. That's a good thing in the long run as I've had some temperature sensitivity in that tooth, but it means having to drive into work.

Speaking of driving into work, my life has gotten ever so much better since I learned that Arlington parking meters take dollar coins. I still prefer taking the metro, especially since it actually takes less time.

Thursday night, I went to see Anna Deveare Smith's play, Let Me Down Easy at Arena Stage. This is a compilation of excerpts from interviews she did with a wide range of people about health care, with a particular emphasis on dealing with death. Ms. Smith is a good mimic and captures the voices and mannerisms of her interviewees well, with minimal props and costume changes. I did find the entrance of her assistant, with those items somewhat distracting at times, so I understand why the items brought in are not removed. But I also found the discarded props and clothing lying around the set to be distracting. I have no idea how to solve that.

As for the interviews, they are a mixed bag. The funniest is Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas. The most moving are Hazel Merritt, who doesn't want to go on dialysis because of a horrifying incident with her daughter, who was on dialysis after contracting AIDS, and Smith's aunt, Lorraine Coleman talking about the death of her sister and finding comfort in a remembered gesture. Some of the more famous people were the least interesting to me. The piece on Lance Armstrong went on for too long and I'm not sure that Lauren Hutton really had anything to say that couldn't be summed up as "rich people get good doctors." Overall, I'd say the show was worth seeing because of the performance, rather than the material.

The metro was slow getting home, due to long waits for both the Green Line at Waterfront and the Orange Line at L'Enfant Plaza. I compounded my exhaustion by playing around with Seth's new took for tracking which World Heritage Sites you've been to instead of going right to bed. You can see the results at mhnadel has visited 89 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. See them & track yours here!

Last night I had dinner at Teaism with Margaret, who was here for a writer's conference. Good food - in my case, their tuna bento which had an especially notable broccoli salad with some sort of sesame dressings - and good conversation, mostly about art.

And then I came home and collapsed into a lovely bubble bath, followed by a cup of Aztec hot chocolate, a nice spicy brew from the Lake Champlain Chocolate folks.

I'm more or less over both jet-lag and the inevitable travel cold, which filled up most of my head last week. So this is one of those random round-up entries.

Celebrity death watch: I don't think I noted the death of Sargent Shriver, who I remember mostly for his having an interesting name and running for vice president. But his founding the Peace Corps was more significant than either of those. I'm not sure that most people realize that the Peace Corps has become very competitive these days. There was a part of me that was interested in it when I graduated from college and that part was completely shut down by my conventional side.

The other celebrity death I want to note is of Jack LaLanne. Since he made it to 96, I guess there is something to be said for that exercise thing.

Newspaper news: The Washington Post has redesigned their Sunday edition. The main change was to split out Arts & Style into two sections, with the new Sunday Style section in a tabloid format. I'm actually pleased with that change since it means that the Style Invitational is back in the Sunday paper where it rightfully belongs, instead of relegated to Saturday. As long as the Post still has two crosswords to do, I'll stay reasonably content.

Now, if they could only do something about the Travel section (which is incredibly bland) and actually write about the news ...

Storytelling: I drove down to Charlottesville Saturday for a VASA board meeting. It's going to be an interesting few years. My major soapbox is that we need to do things further in advance.

Food pornography: I made it back in good time to change clothes and head into the city for a restaurant week dinner with the flyertalk crowd at Ten Penh. I had spring rolls, seared tuna, and green tea cake with lemon for dessert. All was very good. The real highlight, however, was the cocktail I had. Called a Bombay fissure, it had gin, pineapple water, grenadine, and orange bitters and was served over dry ice, making it bubble.

Decluttering:I decided to dump out the box of shame to go through it. That was a mistake, as I am now overwhelmed by its contents. Sigh. I did, however, throw out things like hotel bonus offers from last March.

It decided to be winter overnight. I just walk across the street to get to the metro but that was bad enough, with a nasty coat of ice out there. (I do have cleats but, of course, had not realized what it was like out so had not taken them with me). And we are supposed to get more "wintry mix" tonight and tomorrow.

Then we had a suicide at the building I work in. The initial report is that someone had thrown himself off the roof, but that turned out to be slightly inaccurate (though the effect is the same.) Here's the story from Arlington Now:

A man died this morning after falling from a secure government office building in Crystal City. Initial reports suggest the man may have purposely jumped from a second floor balcony into an outside stairwell adjacent to Crystal Drive.

The building, which houses a number of Department of Defense offices, is located at the corner of Crystal Drive and 18th Street. Arlington County Police, Pentagon Police and other federal law enforcement officers were at the scene of the incident, which occurred shortly after 11:00 this morning.

Shortly before the incident, a Twitter user reported seeing a man in a suit jump onto the tracks at the Crystal City Metro station as a train was approaching. The man then jumped back onto the platform and ran out of the station, the user said. It’s currently not known if the two incidents are connected.

1) The major case of accidental death among hunters is falling out of trees. Personally, I suspect there is usually beer involved.

2) I am a bad influence. One of the guys from my company took a quick trip to Hawaii to maintain his United Premier Executive status. Over on Flyer Talk, we call that a "mileage run." And the guy who has the office next to mine went to Brazill for the weekend.

3) The only place I went over the weekend was Silver Spring for a story swap. It was a particularly good one, with a lot of people there and a wide range of stories. Jane's rendition of the story about why coyote has a puckered anus was a particular highlight.

4) Dear amazon.com: If somebody buys a Red Sox calendar, it is probably because they are a Red Sox fan. Sending them email every couple of days about the availability of calendars featuring other baseball teams is annoying.

5) Dear Washington Jewish Film Festival: It would have been nice if the film about Jews and baseball were on when Robert is going to be here, as that would easily top the list of possible entertainment events to go to. I will go see the film anyway, of course, but you could have sold two tickets, not just one.

6) I made a vegan version of sausage stew last night. Smoked sausage style soy sausage, vegan beef-flavored broth, potatoes, carrots, onions, seasoned with all-spice and bay leaf. It was reasonably good, but too obvious to be a keeper.

7) I'm not sure what I think of the proposal for one-way trips to Mars. I do know that I won't be signing up for one.

8) I'm sorry to see the parent / child teams eliminated from The Amazing Race. I was surprised that Michael and Kevin blew it by incurring penalties, instead of failing at a physical challenge. I was more surprised at how misled teams were by maps in Oman. And isn't Chad the luckiest bastard on the planet? I was so hoping that oversleeping would get rid of him and Stephanie.

This is one of my hodegpodge entries - basically everything but cake.

Follow-ups: Ron solved the mystery of my "303/357" note to myself. That's a battery size and I wrote it down when I needed to replace the batteries in two of my travel alarm clocks.

I solved the mystery of "3200-11" myself by (duh) googling it. It's a DoD Instruction having to do with test ranges.

I also did a bit of research on "boughten" and found it is northern U.S. dialect. I will note that I use it only as an adjective and almost entirely in relation to food items, though I could stretch to referring to a boughten sweater (as opposed to a hand-knit one).

Sometimes the headline says it all: "Car eating rabbits invade Denver airport." The story explains that the rabbits eat soy-based wiring found in some late model cars.

Weird thing to wonder about: Suppose a transsexual decides to convert to Judaism. What would an Orthodox rabbi do? I am, of course, assuming the person's history is known to the rabbi, but the question becomes harder in some ways and easier in others if it is not.

Fun with names: I was amused to learn that one of the largest manufacturers of glass for the defense industry (e.g. in night vision glasses) is Schott.

Celebrity death watch: I am slightly annoyed (though not at all surprised) that Barbara Billingsley (who played June Cleaver on Leave It To Beaver) got a lot more attention than Benoit Mandelbrot (who did much of the key mathematical research on fractals).

Story swap: I went to the Voices in the Glen story swap at Michael's on Saturday night. There was a reasonably good turn out and the swaps are always fun. A particular highlight was hearing Eve's son, Jonathan, tell "Birds of America." I also enjoyed Bill's story about Elizabeth Bathory.

Coral Reef Update: The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef Exhibit is open at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History! It was supposed to open on Saturday but there was a water main break on Constitution Avenue, so the museum was closed. I saw the reef yesterday afternoon and it is lovely. The community reef is the biggest part of the display and is huge. I was able to find some of my contributions. And my name is spelled correctly on the plaque, which is always a plus. The exhibit runs through April 24, so you have lots of time to check it out.

USA Science and Engineering Festival: The inaugural USA Science and Engineering Festival is next weekend. There will be booths on the National Mall and around Freedom Plaza and Wilson Plaza and in the Mellon Auditorium. I'm volunteering and will be at the Mellon Auditorium info booth all day Saturday, so stop by and say hello if you're there. And you should be there. It looks like there are a lot of cool interactive exhibits and plenty of performances on four major stages and several smaller ones. (In case you are wondering how I came to be involved, the call for volunteers went out to a local MIT email list. I went to the volunteer training yesterday, which is why I was already in the city to check out the coral roof.)

Amazing Race: I haven't been to Kiruna, Sweden, though I've been to Sweden and I've stayed at another Ice Hotel (in Quebec). My wrap-up is behind a cut since some people may not have viewed the episode yet.

( Read more )

I kept intending to post things during the past week and was just too busy and tired. So here is a catch-up.

Nude With Vioin: I saw Little Theatre of Alexandria's production of Noel Coward's Nude with Violin on Sunday. I figured that parking in Old Town is always a hassle, so took the metro and walked from the King Street station. It's a little over a mile and a pleasant stroll in good weather. It's a good thing I was running a bit late, as I would otherwise have stopped in a used bookstore. And, while I did peek in briefly at Fibrespace (a yarn store), I didn't have time to make the decisions that a real shopping expedition would have entailed.

As for the play, it's Coward's snide look at modern art. A famous artist has died and members of his estranged family (along with the art dealer who promoted him) have gathered at his Paris apartment. The butler, Sebastian, reveals a secret about the artist - and various people (a Russian countess, a Southern belle, a Jamaican evangelist) show up with their own revelations. All in all, it was pretty funny, helped along by a strong performance by John Barclay Burns as Sebastian. My one complaint was that the director seemed unwilling to let the dialogue carry itself and the members of the family were in constant unnecessary motion. People in a living room deciding what to do tend to sit in one place, in my experience, not get up and move to another chair every two or three sentences.

Audience demographics: I have probably mentioned this before, but I find it slightly disturbing that I am one of the youngest people present at a large number of the plays I go to. I'm 52, which is hardly a child. In this case, I figured out why after the show, as a van from a retirement community pulled up to collect more than half the audience. I suspect that part of the problem is that it is most convenient for me to go to weekend matinees, but I worry about the future of theatre.

Celebrity death watch: I'm sure everybody saw that Eddie Fisher died. I am fairly sure my parents must have had a record of "Oh My Papa," since that's the one song I associate with him. Obviously, he became a lot more famous for his failed marriages than for his work.

Baseball, Part 1: It ain't over till it's over.

Baseball, Part 2: It is pretty much over for the Washington Nationals this season, but there has been some improvement. Yes, they're again at the bottom of their division, but there are six teams with worse records this season. My office had an outing to Thursday's game, with about half the group going (along with some family members). It was a good game, with a few excellent fielding plays by the Nats. Danny Espinosa looks like a good addition to the team. I was also glad I got to see reliever Drew Storen pitch, albeit for just one inning. He's the kid who turned down the Source of All Evil in the Universe in the 2007 draft in favor of going to Stanford. The really cool part of his story is that he is going back to Stanford in the off-season, working on finishing his degree in mechanical engineering.

I was, by the way, deeply disappointed when my boss not only didn't sing along to "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," but didn't even stand up for the 7th inning stretch. That is just wrong.

Sexism: A nail salon in Maryland charged a man two bucks more for a mani-pedi than they charged his female companion. This is not acceptable. He filed a lawsuit and I am of two minds about that. On the one hand, it's silly to try to collect huge damages over that amount of money. But how else does one get the message arcross that discriminatory pricing is wrong?

Death penalty: Virginia executed Teresa Lewis on Thursday night. What bothers me about this case is that the two men who actually pulled the triggers got life sentences. (One of them committed suicide in jail.) There was at least some evidence that Lewis was manipulated by one of those men, who said he wanted to become a big hit man. Yes, she was guilty of murder, but it seems unfair that her sentence was harsher than that of the other two people involved.

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Entries tagged with news

Finishing Off April

How Does That Catch-Up Thing Go Again?

Odds and Ends (much of which is medical whining)

Racism, Police, Enmity

Grandeur

A Quick Catch-up

News, Gnus, Guns, Gays

Catching Up - Stories, Rosh Hashanah, Dumb Schools

Catchup 1: Pre-conference Edition

The "Gypsies" of Ferguson

And Even More Catching Up

Has It Been That Long Since I've Written?

Leftovers

News Annoys Me

LJ seems to not be working right so posting here ....

Non-travel round-up

Can I Go Back to Africa?

Catch-up Time!

Not Cake

The Past Week's Hodge Podge