fauxklore | Entries tagged with obituaries

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.

Celebrity Death Watch: Jackie Lane was an actress, best known for playing one of Dr. Who’s companions. John McAfee wrote anti-virus software before becoming a libertarian political candidate and tax evader (and, possibly, a murderer). Jack Ingram was a NASCAR driver. Mike Gravel was a senator from Alaska. Hiroaki Nakanishi was the president of Hitachi. John Lawton sang with Uriah Heep. Sir Nicholas Godson was the chairman of the London Stock Exchange from 1976 to 1986. Robert Downey, Sr was a film director and actor. Dilly Kumar was one of the most successful Bollywood actors. Jean Sadat was the first lady of Egypt through the 1970’s. Esther Bejarano co-founded the International Auschwitz Committee. Dick Tidrow pitched for the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Charlie Robinson was an actor, best known for playing the clerk of the court on Night Court. Edwin Edwards was a three-time governor of Louisiana. Jerry Lewis was the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee from 2005 to 2007. William F. Nolan wrote Logan’s run. Biz Markie was a rapper. Tom O’Connor hosted the British version of Name That Tune, as well as other game shows. Chuck E. Weiss inspired the song Chuck E.’s in Love. Steven Weinberg won a Nobel Prize in physics. Bob Moses was a civil rights advocate. Louise Fishman was an abstract artist. Dusty Hill was the bassist for ZZ Top. Bent Melchior was the chief rabbi of Denmark from 1969 to 1996. Richard Lamm was the governor of Colorado from 1975-1987. Carl Levin was a senator from Michigan from 1979 to 2015. Alvin Ing performed in several musicals, including playing the role of the Shogun’s mother in Pacific Overtures, which means he sang the song, “Chrysanthemum Tea,” which has some of my favorite Sondheim rhymes. (“It’s an herb that’s superb for disturbances at sea.”) Paul Cotton was a singer-songwriter for Poco. J. R. Richard pitched for the Houston Astros in the 1970’s. Herbert Schlosser was an executive at NBC and responsible for creating Saturday Night Live. Jane Withers was a former child star. Markie Post was an actress, best known for playing a public defender on Night Court. Bobby Bowden was a college football coach. Tony Esposito played hockey for the Chicago Blackhawks. Nancy Griffith was a Grammy winning country folk singer.

Donald Rumsfeld was the Secretary of Defense from 1975-1977 and 2001-2006. His memos were known within the Pentagon as “snowflakes” because of the volume with which they fell.

Pete Teets was the Undersecretary of the Air Force and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office from 2001 to 2005. I briefed him several times when I first came to Washington. I found him intelligent and committed to improving how we acquire space systems. (He died in December, but I seem to have missed having read about that until now.)

Renee Simonot was an actress, probably better known as the mother of Catherine Deneuve. She was 109 years old when she died and earned me 13 ghoul pool points.

Jackie Mason was a comedian and actor. He started his career as a rabbi and then played the Borscht Belt. I never cared much for his humor, personally, but several members of my family liked him.

Ron Popeil was an inventor of interesting things nobody really needed but bought because of his marketing. Admit it - you know someone who had a vvegematic or a pocket fisherman or the in-egg scrambler. The latter was a particular favorite of the gentleman with whom I conducted the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling.

Neal Conan was an NPR correspondent. He was a producer of All Things Considered and was the senior host of Talk of the Nation from 2001 to 2013. I did not know until reading his obituary that he had been married to Liane Hansen from 1982 to 2011.

Storyteller Death Watch: Arthuretta Holmes Martin was an excellent Virginia-based storyteller and activist. She died in early July of COVID-19. Please, get vaccinated.

I only learned recently that Wanna Zinsmaster died in December. She was in her mid-90’s, so that isn’t particularly shocking. But she played a major role in my development as a storyteller, as she organized a weekend workshop with Doug Lippman and Jay O’Callahan that I went to shortly after I had first stumbled upon storytelling. And I went to a couple of other workshops with Doug at her condo. I wish she had pulled together a story I heard her work on about her service in the Navy during World War II. While it had been some time since I’d last seen her, she was someone I will always treasure having known.

Ex-coworker Death Watch: I finally had a chance to catch up on reading the obituaries in the monthly newsletter of my former employer. I have only a vague memory of Nancy Reber, though I have a definite mental picture of her. I have a stronger (and, alas, somewhat conflicted) memory of John Stubstad, who I worked with briefly (after he had left the company) on a project that went nowhere (justifiably so, in my opinion). I relied a lot on information Dolores Modolo gave me in one of my jobs. The person whose obit I read who I worked with most closely was Nate Rosenblatt, who I spent a lot of time traveling to Boulder with in the late 1980’s into the 1990’s. He once had me teach a three-part class on some of the technical material I worked on and wrote a very nice note to my management, saying something like “everybody who attended left as a better engineer.”

A Yiddish Renaissance: The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene put on an excellent on-line concert of excerpts from several of their shows. Adam B. Shapiro was as adorable as ever and there were several other prominent actors and musicians involved. The big news is that their upcoming productions include an adaptation of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis with music by Ricky Ian Gordon, a well-known modern opera composer who happens to be from my home town.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens: I went with a friend to try to see the lotus flowers and water lilies almost a month ago. It was beastly hot out and, because we went in the afternoon, most of the flowers were not in their full glory. Oh, well, it was still a nice walk. We went back to Virginia and retreated to frozen margaritas at a restaurant in Ballston.

TCC Meetings: The Washington chapter of the Travelers Century Club had an actual in-person meeting a couple of weeks ago. It was great seeing people and hearing about travels past and planned. There have also been virtual TCC meetings (over zoom). I went to one today about Greenland, which has been on my list for a while.

Storytelling: All three shows I was in recently went well. It was especially fun to perform in front of a live audience and I was pleased that a few non-local friends tuned in to the lifestream.

I also learned a few things about my process in developing stories from the two personal stories I told for the first time. For the Okay Boomer show, I knew where I wanted my story to go - essentially, to conclude that, despite my disdain for the way they dress, millennials have a lot of values I approve of. And I knew that a lot of the story would have to do with how clothing defined my identity over the years. But I went through a number of different ways I could start the story - from conversations with a friend where we mocked the clothes the younger generation wear to remembering how we had to learn to live with freshman when I was a junior in college to the futility of clothes shopping as an adult - before realizing I could bring in Julie Albright, the American Girls doll of the 1970’s to lead to my tween wardrobe.

In the case of the travel story I told (that was for the live show), I didn’t really figure out the ending until maybe 10 minutes before getting up on stage. So I found it interesting that a few people commented on how polished the story was.

IAJGS: I went to the virtual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. The best presentations I went to were one by Michael Morgenstern on using The Forverts (a Yiddish newspaper), even if you don’t speak Yiddish and one by Steve Morse on preparing for the 1950 census (primarily focused on how to find enumeration districts). There are several other presentations I need to watch over the next month or so. Also, it turned out that the problem with the mentoring appointments was that the appointment system was fundamentally broken and was sending requests to everyone, not to specific people, because it was really geared to the staff of the commercial booths. I was able to help a few people with Lithuanian records, so I felt like I was reasonably useful.

Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience: I went with a friend yesterday to see this show. We had a little trouble finding the venue, but we’d left plenty of time. I’ve been to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam a couple of times and seen various other of his paintings, including a large exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art a while back. I have also read his letters to his brother. So I didn’t expect to learn much from the exhibit, though I did enjoy several of the quotes from his letters that it used. Fortunately, the parts of the exhibit that animate the paintings were more worthwhile. There was one with a vase of flowers, morphing between the different floral paintings. And, at the end, there was a huge room with animations of several painting and accompanying music. I thought it was worth seeing, but still pales in comparison to the real thing. I was also rather disappointed that they repeated the discredited theory that he was color blind.

By the way, afterwards, we went to have lunch at Immigrant Food. They were ding restaurant Week so got a three course meal for $22 (plus tax and tip and, of course, whatever you spent on drinks). I had white sangria with my meal, which consisted of delicious harissa hummus, the Madam VP Heritage Bowl (coconut chicken curry with plantains, potatoes, pineapple, spinach, and chick peas), and flan. It was a nice change of pace, but I would order a different entree next time. (I’d had their Old Saigon sandwich the other time I was there - essentially a somewhat spicy banh mi.)

Still to Come: I took a driving trip around south central Pennsylvania. That merits its own post. I am going on another trip this week, so may end up combining the two.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/495880.html

I've been busy for most of the past week.

Celebrity Death Watch: Ara Parseghian coached football for Notre Dame and appears in crosswords fairly often. Judith Jones edited cookbooks. Ernst Zundel was a Holocaust denier. Darren Daulton played baseball, largely for the Phillies. Don Baylor also played baseball, including a stint with the Red Sox in 1986, during which he set a record for being hit by pitches. Haruo Nakajima was the first actor to portray Godzilla. Glen Campbell was a countryish pop singer, notable for songs such as "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Rhinestone Cowboy."

I want to particularly highlight Barbara Cook, who was one of the greatest Broadway stars of all time. Some of her more famous roles included Marian in The Music Man, Cunegonde in Candide (in which she achieved a tour de force with "Glitter and Be Gay"), and Amalia in She Loves Me. She had a fabulous voice and, unlike many great singers, she could also act.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Michael Cotter was a Minnesota farmer turned storyteller, who told stories of his farm life. He was a quiet and skilled teller, who I was privileged to hear a few times.

I am way behind on reading magazines, so I only just caught the news (via the MIT section of Technology Review) that Kathy Porter-Jordan, a friend from my undergraduate days died nearly a year ago. I particularly remember one year on Shavuout when she and I delved into the subject of leprosy in the Tanach.

Trip to Oregon: I made a quick trip last week to Portland, Oregon for the memorial service for my friend, Mary Joan. The travel was a bit stressful, as a thunderstorm struck just after we had been boarded (but before the plane was fully fueled). In the end, we got delayed about two hours. My decision to take a non-stop was vindicated as I figured I was fine as long as I got there some time on Thursday night. The delay was extended a little on arrival as a guy in the row behind mine had a medical emergency (significant enough for the flight attendant to be bringing him oxygen) and we had to wait for paramedics to take him off before we could disembark. But, I got there, so everything was okay.

My friend, Suzanne, was at the same hotel and, fortunately, has a compatible attitude towards timing. (Google maps says it’s a 22 minute drive, so let’s figure 45 minutes and then let’s add an extra half hour just in case we get lost ….) The ceremony was brief, with a few people (each of the two of us included) speaking, with a longer speech by Mary Joan’s husband. Then everybody went out to lunch, at which we learned that the day had been chosen since it would have been their 44th wedding anniversary.

The trip home went smoother, despite it involving a redeye too short for more than a nap. I also had a longish wait for the moon buggy from the D-gates to the main terminal at IAD, so it took longer to get to my car than to drive home. At least I had time to nap for a few hours before my next commitment.

Ben’s Bar Mitzvah: A friend’s son’s bar mitzvah was Saturday. The service was your standard Chabad service, which I won’t comment on. Ben did fine on the Torah reading and his haftorah and his mother did the expected job of bursting into tears during her brief speech afterwards. There was pretty good food at the Kiddush lunch. The big reception was in the evening at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. I only had time for a quick look through the museum, but it would be worth going back and spending half a day to see it all. There was reasonably good food and slightly odd entertainment, mostly oriented towards the kids, e.g. a sword swallower. Overall, it was a pretty nice event.

Embassy of Haiti: I went to an MIT Club of Washington event at the Embassy of Haiti last night. Actually, it was a joint event with the Harvard Club and they far outnumbered us. The embassy is beautiful, with a large art collection – practically a gallery. The ambassador was personable and gave a brief and entertaining speech. The food was okay – rice, chicken, fish, pork – and they had tasty rum punch and cake for dessert. The only problem was that it was very crowded and the food line was quite chaotic. Still, it is always worth going to these sorts of things.

Crossposts: http://fauxklore.livejournal.com/390091.html

Celebrity Death Watch: Richard Hatch was an actor in Battlestar Galactica among other things. Sir Peter Mansfield won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2003. Mile Ilitch owned much of Detroit or at least its sports teams (the Red Wings and the Tigers) and a mediocre pizza company. Damian was a British pop singer. Al Jarreau was a seven-time Grammy winner for his jazz and R&B music. Raymond Smullyan was a mathematician and wrote books about logic puzzles, e.g. What is the Name of This Book? and This Book Needs No Title.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: Howard Margol was a major force in Lithuanian-Jewish genealogy and responsible for a lot of the resources I use regularly. He was helpful in answering questions and teaching others how to do their research. May his memory be for a blessing.

Storytelling – The Grapevine: I made it to darkest Maryland (actually, come to think of it, Busboys and Poets might be on the DC side of Takoma / Takoma Park) Wednesday night to see Jeff Doyle and Anne Thomas tell. I also told "The Three Sisters" in the open mike. Jeff told two stories involving encounters with bears. Anne did a few personal stories about disability. Overall, an interesting night.

Storytelling – Short Story Slam: Thursday night had me back in darkest Maryland – Bethesda, to be precise – for the story slam that Michael puts on monthly. I have mixed feelings about this sort of thing, since a part of me objects to competitive storytelling. But there was plenty of good material on the theme of matrimony. Michael led off with a particularly funny piece about getting married in Communist China, including what he referred to as "emergency sex education." I told an abbreviated version of "Border Crossings." I actually tied for the third highest number of votes, but since the top two vote-getters went over the time limit, it came down to the tie breaker, and I had the shortest story so won first prize, which was exciting. Overall, it was fun and worth the exhaustion the next day.

JGSGW: I spent most of the weekend between suspended animation (i.e. catching up on sleep) and trying, not very successfully, to get some housework done. But I did make it to the JGSGW meeting on Sunday, which had a presentation on debunking myths about Jewish genealogy. I can’t say I learned much, but it was entertaining. And the time for networking was potentially useful.

Weather Whine: I would rather it were consistently cold than this annoying up and down we’ve been having. It got up to 70ish on Wednesday and then dropped to the 20’s on Friday but was back in the 60’s all weekend. This morning it was 30-something (but 25 with the wind chill factor) when I left for work. Just make up your bloody mind for a few days in a row, please.

Metro: Both storytelling events last week involved the Red Line, which meant changing to the Orange Line for the rest of the way home. That’s fine, but they were single-tracking around McPherson Square at night and things aren’t synchronized, so I had 15+ minute waits at Metro Center both nights.

Friday had a different annoyance as they turned the Orange Line train I was on into a Silver Line train. I was napping, so missed the announcement. Fortunately, I woke up at McLean, so only had to go back one station to switch, but they shouldn’t do this. Especially as they already run twice as many Silver Line trains as Orange, despite ridership on the Orange Line being several times higher.

Today started a new SafeTrack surge, which means no Blue Line service for 18 days. I had an early meeting at the Pentagon, so took a bus which was way more crowded than I’d ever seen it before. That worked, but was still annoying. In short, expect me to be grumpy for the next several weeks. It’s still better than driving.

Celebrity Death Watch: Bobby Breen was a child star of the late 1930’s and was one of the people depicted on the album cover of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Erwin Hahn was a physicist who was best known for his work on nuclear magnetic resonance. Jose Fernandez played baseball for the Miami Marlins, as well as having an inspirational personal story of his defection from Cuba. Arnold Palmer played golf and bears some responsibility for the particularly sickening non-alcoholic drink combining sweet iced tea and lemondade. Buckwheat Zydeco was a major figure in the Louisiana music scene. If you can listen to his music without dancing, you may be a zombie.

Non-celebrity Death Watch:Dunn Miller was a puzzle person. Her NPL nom was Loquacious. There’s an interesting obituary of her by Jon Carroll. I particularly recommend the last few paragraphs.

Naomi Feingold was one of my mother’s best friends. I thought they had been in school together, but her obituary says she was 4 years younger than Mom. She and her husband were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary by going on a safari in South Africa. Since she apparently died in Johannesburg, I hope they were on their way home and she got to see at least some of the grandeur of that beautiful country before her death.

Baseball: First, the Washington Nationals have clinched the National League East.

The Red Sox are 5 and a half games up on Toronto and their magic number is 2. They have been way hot lately, winning 11 straight games. I went to Thursday night’s game in Baltimore, which was very exciting. Orioles starter Chris Tillmnan only lasted 1 2/3 innings, giving up three runs. The O’s did tie it in the third, with a three-run homer by Trey Mancini, who just came up from the minors. But the Sox got a run in the fifth and Hanley Ramirez hit a homer in the 7th, so all was well.

By the way, I took the Marc train and stayed over. Because I was planning things last minute and there was some convention going on, the only nearby hotel I could get was the Holiday Inn Express at the Stadiums, which is marginally within walking distance. They do have a local shuttle, but it runs only hourly.

On the plus side, it is next to the Horseshoe Casino. I was hyper after the game, so not ready to go to sleep and that provided a way to kill an hour or so. I played a slot machine with a Big Bang Theory theme and won a little over a hundred bucks.

Used Bookstore Run: I did a used bookstore run this weekend. McKay’s took 27 of the 33 books I had brought in. I did use trade credit to come home with 14 new ones, including a Patrick Berry variety puzzle book. I was going to try bringing the rest to Reston Used Books, but there was some international festival going on by there and the normal parking was closed off. It was hardly worth it with so few, anyway. So I will hold on to those until a future run.

Celebrity Death Watch: Jay Lake was a science fiction writer. Jerry Vale was a singer. Arthur Gelb edited the New York Times and had a big influence on its direction. Ann B. Davis kept house for The Brady Bunch. Maya Angelou was a poet. Mona Freeman was the first Miss Subways, which will probably not mean anything to non-New Yorkers, but it meant her picture was on the trains.

Ruby Dee was an actress. I think I knew that she was the widow of Ossie Davis. I am pretty sure I didn’t know that she had a degree from Hunter College (in romance languages).

Don Zimmer was a baseball icon. Among the things he was notable for were being an original member of the New York Mets and managing the 1978 Boston Red Sox.

The more obscure person I want to note is anthropologist George Armelagos. His book, Consuming Passions, is one of the most interesting books about food ever written. I particularly enjoyed the section on cannibalism, for its utter lack of sensationalism.

Non-celebrity Obituary: Mack Smith died of a stroke just about as I was setting off on vacation. He told good stories – Jack tales and tall tales. If I recall correctly, he won the Virginia Liar’s contest at least once. He was good people and will be missed by our community.

Bat Boy: Last weekend, I went to see Bat Boy: The Musical at 1st Stage. It was about what one would expect of a musical based on a story from the Weekly World News. The basic plot involves a half-boy half-bat creature found in a cave, who is taken to the local veterinarian’s home, where he is taught to be civilized, but has to fight the local townsfolk’s prejudices. There was an impressive performance by Jimmy Mavrikes in the very demanding title role. Maria Rizzo as Shelly had good chemistry with him. Unfortunately, some of the cast lacked energy, possibly because of the demands that playing multiple roles made on most of them. The score was okay, but not especially memorable. So, overall, while it was entertaining, it was hardly an essential show to see.

The Tony Awards: As much as I like Neil Patrick Harris, I think Jefferson Mayes was robbed.

Washington Jewish Music Festival: This is one of my favorite events of the year. Monday night, I saw a movie as part of it - Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon. I will write about that more when I do my quarterly movie wrap-up. For now, I will just say it was very funny.

Last night, I went to see Kinky Friedman. He’s pretty much still doing the same shtick he’s been doing for 40 some odd years. He sang stuff like "They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore" and "Asshole from El Paso" and so on. And he told various jokes, many in questionable taste (which is part of his persona). My favorite was his comment about his will, which specifies that he be cremated and his ashes scattered in Rick Perry’s hair. He also had some serious notes, reading a story about his father from his book about Texas heroes. Overall, it was an entertaining evening.

Tonight, I am going to see Yemen Blues, which I expect to be more energetic, fusiony stuff. Which is exactly my cup of tea.

I’ll apologize up front for the length of this, but I have lots of things to catch up on. As I have said before, if you have more than two interests in life, you are doomed.

Celebrity Death Watch: Reubin Askew was a progressive governor of Florida, back in the days when such a thing was possible. Fred Phelps headed the Westboro Baptist Church, known for anti-gay bigotry. James R. Schlesinger held a number of government positions throughout his career, most notably as CIA director and as Secretary of Defense (and, later, Secretary of Energy.) After his government career, he was chairman of the board of Mitre. From my personal standpoint, his most notable position was as chair of the Position, Navigation and Timing board (which oversees GPS) and I have drafted at least a few white papers dealing with his recommendations.

Gene Feist founded the Roundabout Theatre Company, which has produced many notable performances, particularly revivals of musicals. David Brenner was a Canadian comedian. And Mitch Leigh wrote Man of La Mancha. His musical failures include Home Sweet Homer. He also wrote the Sara Lee jingle. Nobody doesn’t like Mitch Leigh. (Whose birth name was, by the way, Irwin Michnick, but that scans even worse.)

Non-celebrity Obituary: Kevin Brooks passed away last week. He was a storyteller who had a Ph.D. from MIT (via the Media lab) and worked at Motorola. I only met him briefly,, but I saw his dedication to storytelling and to Laura Packer, his widow. He was a bright, creative, and kind man and his loss will be sorely felt in both Boston and Kansas City.

Loveland: Loveland is Ann Randolph’s one-woman (plus an off-stage male voice) show, currently at Arena Stage. She plays Frannie Potts, whose talent is facial gesturing to sounds. Frannie is on a plane trip from California to her home town in Ohio and the story is a mixture of incidents on the plane with flashbacks involving Frannie’s relationship with her mother. This was billed as a comedy and it did have some funny moments. Unfortunately, most of the humor was a lot cruder than I’d prefer and I suspect thinner-skinned people would find a lot of the show remarkably offensive. I am sure Randolph knows this and is doing it deliberately. Or, at least, I hope anybody who would include a bit in which someone plays the harmonium to nursing home residents while singing, "listen to the drone, it will help you die," is being shocking intentionally. (I will admit I laughed at that bit. Then I went home and took three consecutive showers.) I didn’t stay for Randolph’s brief writing workshop after the show because her material was too far from anything I’d ever want to do.

House of Blue Leaves: I saw tickets on Goldstar for a production by the Providence Players of House of Blue Leaves, a play I remembered enjoying the previous time I saw it. They did a good job, with notable performances by Adam Downs as Artie and (especially) by Jayne Victor as Bunny. The play is a bit dated in some ways, but it is still an interesting dark comedy. I’m uncomfortable with the treatment of mental illness in it, but I recognize that one is supposed to be uncomfortable with that.

Chavurah Movie and Dinner Night: My chavurah had an outing to the Northern Virginia Jewish Film Festival. We saw a movie called Under the Same Sun, which I will write about as part of a movie wrap-up in a day or so. Afterwards we had dinner at Noodles and Company, which isn’t really the most congenial atmosphere for mingling and conversation, though I do like their Indonesian peanut noodle sauté (which I get with tofu).

MIT Summer Intern Reception: The annual reception for MIT summer interns who are interested in the blend of technology and policy is always interesting. Unfortunately, none of this year’s crop of interns was interested in space, so I don’t think I was very helpful to them. There were a couple who expressed an interest in energy, but the overwhelming majority this year were interested in health care. That’s not surprising, but it is disappointing. Still, there was a lot of intelligent conversation (including some with fellow alumni) so was worth going to.

Corcoran Tour and Reception: The MIT Club of Washington had a reception at the Corcoran Gallery and a tour of the collection. The reception was quite lush, with things like smoked salmon and chocolate truffles. Interestingly, they serve only white wine to minimize risk of damage to the artwork. The museum highlights tour was excellent. Our docent was both informative and entertaining. My favorite piece was a sort of pastiche of Van Gogh painted by Robert Colescott. That probably says more about my tastes (dark humor and modernism) than it does about the collection, which is heavy on 19th century American art.

Minor Yarn Frenzy: A friend cleared out her stash and gave me 15 pounds of yarn she didn’t want. In exchange, I gave her old towels to donate to the animal shelter she sometimes volunteers at. About half of the yarn was stuff I could use. The rest of the yarn included rather more novelty yarns (ribbon yarn, pompon, muppet fur, etc.) than I would do anything with, but I know other yarnoholics and most of it has been distributed to grateful crafters. I have someone to send the rest to, but need time to package it and mail it off.

Baltimore Rock Opera Society: Friday night, I went to see the Baltimore Rock Opera Society production of Grundelhammer at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria. Because it is easy (and free) to get to Old Town from my office, I had some time to shop beforehand. Shops along King Street include both a used bookstore and a yarn store, so you can imagine what happened. I also stopped at Mischa’s, because I had been running low on coffee. I am now restocked with some of Sulawesi’s finest. I also had time for dinner at Eammon’s, which has excellent fish and chips.

As for the show, it was somewhat over the top, but quite entertaining. The premise was a sort of medieval society where battle is fought with guitar riffs. The young son of the true king, Benedon, has to defeat the evil king, Lothario, who secures his power by feeding enemies to a monster (The Grundle). That way Benedon can save the kingdom (and, of course, get the girl). I’ll note the performance of Christopher Krysztifiak as Benedon, who showed a surprisingly wide range for this type of thing. This was also a complicated show technically, with elaborate puppetry (including some very amusing shadow puppets). The downside is that the scene changes took forever. Since they started almost a half hour late and the scene changes probably added up to an hour total, it made for a very late night.

Better Said Than Done – Into the Woods: I was part of a storytelling show on Saturday night. I told a story about our annual summer camp raft trip down the Delaware River. While I had told the story before, I reworked it a lot, which ate up a lot of my mental energy for a couple of weeks. One of the people I used to work on stories with used the phrase "kill your darlings" to refer to the need to cut out material that may be good but just doesn’t belong in that story. It was good advice to keep in mind and I was reasonably happy with how the story turned out. The audience reacted well, too.

I should also note that it was an excellent show, overall. It’s always interesting to me how many different ways a general theme can be interpreted and what a wide range of material and styles there are.