fauxklore | Entries tagged with opera

I started off 2025 with a lot of routine activities, e.g. playing Code Names (our favorite board game) over zoom with friends, the Grimm folktales discussion group, and my needlework group.

There was a Travelers’ Century Club meeting in early January, at which I happened to be sitting next to someone who was from the town where I went to high school (My home town still doesn’t have its own high school.) In February, there was an excellent Virtual Explorations presentation on Cybersecurity for Travelers, preceded by the Book Club discussion on A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks.

I was only able to go to part of Paul Joskow’s talk on Climate Change Policy in MIT Hillel’s Leading Jewish Minds series. The talks are recorded, but it is hard finding time to go back and watch recordings.

I made it to the February Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington meeting (over zoom), which focused on the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana. This was basically preparation for the upcoming IAJGS conference in Fort Wayne in August.

American Opera Initiative: My first excursion to the Kennedy Center this year was to see the annual American Opera Initiative, which consists of three 20-minute operas. The first one was Tati by composer Kyle Brenn and Librettist Lex Brown. The plot had to do with three people - an activist running from a criminal charge, a pregnant marine biologist who is the activist’s partner, and the investor who was responsible for the bioengineered blue whale the three of them are living in. The problem is that the whale is dying. The premise kept my interest and the music seemed to fit the theme well, so I thought this was fairly successful.

The second opera was Cry, Wolf by composer JL Marlor and librettist Clare Fuyuko Bierman. The plot had to do with a college student who wants a girlfriend. His brother is visiting and the two of them are influenced by an incel to be lone wolves. This was effectively creepy, particularly when they ended with a chorus of howling.

The final opera was Mud Girl by composer Omar Jajimi and librettist Christine Evans. The story has to do with two homeless women - one middle-aged (Maude) and one much younger (River) - who live under a bridge in a post-apocalyptic world. River creates an AI creature (named Poly) out of plastic trash. The gimmick was that Poly was played by 2 singers. This got the best reviews of the three, but I liked it the least. All three of the operas were dystopian, but this one had the least subtlety to it.

Stupid Accident: Early in February, I was meeting a friend who was visiting from out of town. We were going to have lunch at Immigrant Foods and go to Planet Word, which is an excellent museum about language. On the way there, after a detour because I was wrong about what street the museum is on, I face planted after tripping on a curb. I wasn’t seriously injured, but I sure looked beaten up. We did have a nice lunch and an even nicer chat, but I skipped the museum part.

Schmigadoon: In February, the Kennedy Center had a live version of Schmigadoon, which had been a 6 part series on Apple TV+. Since I am a hopeless musical theatre geek, of course I loved the series. Which meant that I had to see this on stage. Overall, it was reasonably true to the TV series, although Josh was played by Alex Brightman who, unlike Keegan-Michael Key who played the part on TV, is white. That meant that the interracial aspect of Josh’s relationship with Melissa (played by Sara Chase) was missing. There were also a few added songs. There are inherent differences between watching the show all in one piece versus over several weeks, so it felt a bit exhausting. But it was still a fun evening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think this will get me caught up on everything up until this month.

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

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

Fortunately, things were otherwise good during the year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which brings me to goals for 2024:

Circumnavigate the globe going westward. The backstory is that way back in 2000, I did an eastward circumnavigation, from Los Angeles to Russia via Germany by plane, overland through Siberia to Mongolia and to China, and back to Los Angeles by plane. I’ve got ideas for how I want to do the westward circle.
Go to at least 3 national parks.
Clean out my saved files of genealogy related emails.
Read 80 books with a stretch goal of 125.
Finish organizing my bedroom.
Finish 3 afghans.
Find and sort through my parents’ slides.
Go to games at at least 4 AAA ballparks.
Exercise for at least 20 minutes at least 3 times a week, with a stretch goal of at least 30 minutes at least 4 times a week.

Grounded: I went to see the opera, Grounded, at the Kennedy Center on Saturday night. The story involves a female F-16 fighter pilot who gets pregnant as a result of an affair with a rancher while on leave in Wyoming. She takes 8 years off, but returns to the Air Force and is shunted into being a drone pilot. She resents that at first, but she finds herself liking the job, which also lets her go home to her family every night. Then, she’s assigned a mission that may hit too close to home…

I thought this was effective, for the most part, though I had some qualms about the second act. Jeanine Tesori’s score was at its best when capturing the excitement of the battles - especially for the F-16 pilots. The staging, which used projections on LED screens also added a lot of excitement. And Emily D’Angelo was excellent in the starring role.

Overall, I thought this was worth seeing. The Washington National Opera production was the world premiere and it will be at the Metropolitan Opera in New York next season.

I should also note that I find Tesori to be one of the more interesting composers working nowadays. She’s done a lot of both opera and musical theatre and some of her material bridges the two genres. I first became aware of her via Caroline or Change and I also really liked both Fun Home and Kimberly Akimbo. It’s good to see a woman being so successful in those worlds.

Brunch of Losers: On Sunday, there was a Loser Brunch at Aditi, an Indian restaurant in Alexandria. It’s not a particularly convenient location for me, but their buffet is pretty good (especially a spicy okra, potato, and spinach dish) and there was plenty of good conversation. I really should get myself back into actually entering the Invitational. but I’ve just had too much else going on. I’ll have to think about it for next year’s list of goals.

Crones and Tomes: Monday night was this book club’s monthly meeting. We discussed State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, which I enjoyed reading. I loved tidbits like a description of a crested bird which noted that you could clean a pickle jar with that bird’s head. However, I did find the ending rather implausible. Also, I think I have to go to an opera in Manaus, Brazil.

Manassas Errand Running: I’d made an appointment to get my car serviced on Tuesday morning. It’s always kind of a pain in the neck scheduling service so, alas, this made me miss the pro-Israel rally on the National Mall. Anyway, I got the anti-theft software update done, as well as routine service. But they annoyed me by sending me way too many appointment reminders - several by email, at least 3 by text, and a phone call.

Anyway, I treated myself to breakfast at IHOP before the appointment. And, I took advantage of being out that way to stop at McKay’s Used Books, where I got rid of 33 books and came home with 14 new (to me) ones.

FlyerTalk Dinner: Wednesday night was a FlyerTalk dinner at Lost Dog Cafe in Dunn Loring. Once we got seated away from the area where the extremely loud karaoke was going on, it was fine. I satisfied a craving for spaghetti, as well as having a decent IPA. But, of course, the real point of going to things like this is the conversation, including discussions of last minute travel and great bargains (including mistake fares) we have found in the past.

Medicare: I called the Social Security office again. And this time the person I talked to told me that the person who called me to take the application just sat on it and hasn’t done anything - since September 22nd. So the person I talked to last time, who told me I should have the medicare card “any day now” was also lying to me.

This person said she was messaging my local office and marking it urgent. She also gave me a direct line to my local office and told me to call them if I haven’t heard anything in a week, so I have some hope. But this has been extremely stressful and annoying. My last resort will be trying to get some help from my congresscritter’s office.

Poetry and Punchlines: Last night (Friday), I went to a poetry reading downtown that was organized by Light a magazine of light verse. I knew most of the people reading from the Loser community. There was a reception with time for mingling and light snacks (e.g. cheese and crackers, little sandwiches, strawberries, and cookies) as well as drinks (including wine) beforehand. The readings started with Gene Weingarten reading several “pokes,” i.e. jokes in the form of poems. Among the Losers who read were Duncan Stevens with a selection of limericks among other things, Mark Raffman (who included his song parody about Putin, “If I Only Had Ukraine”), Claudia Gary (who had a lovely song parody to the tune of “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” about the pandas’ departure from the National Zoo), and Melissa Balmain, with pieces from her two books, The Witch Demands a Retraction and Satan Talks to His Therapist. The other “official” reader was J.D. Smith (who I hadn’t met before). There were also four open mike readers, one of whom had a wonderful piece about chemotherapy. Overall, it was a fun evening.

The last thing I did in England was go to a little bit of the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in Buxton. This is an event I’ve been aware of (and wanted to go to) for years. When I was planning my conference travel, I had the idea to look up when it was going to be and, when I saw it would work, it drove the planning of the rest of my trip.

Buxton is an old spa town at the edge of the Peak District, which was mostly developed in the 1700’s and 1800’s. It’s about two and a half hours from London by train. If you’re smarter than I was, you might have figured out that being in the Peak District means it is hilly. I recommend wearing good walking shoes. I stayed at the Palace Hotel, which is close to the train station and not very far from the opera house, but a bit of a climb getting back to, as you might be able to tell from this view of the town from the hotel.

The hotel was built in 1868 and I’d characterize it as shabby chic, with the emphasis on the shabby. However, it was also less expensive than the other hotels that were reasonably close tp the town center.

There’s also a surprisingly wide variety of places to eat in town. Pubs and tea shops are not surprising, but I didn’t really expect a reasonably good Thai restaurant in this sort of place. I didn’t try it, but there is also a Tex-mex place.

I do also recommend strolling around and looking at the architecture. The Opera House is fairly impressive itself.

And the Pavilion Gardens are a very pleasant place to stroll. By the way, you will see signs there for the River Wye. This is not the same River Wye as the one in Wales, where the town of Hay-on-Wye (known for its used bookstores) is located.

But I was there for Gilbert and Sullivan. One of my life list items had been to see all of the extant operas and I completed that several years ago. So I had chosen the dates for festival going entirely for convenience and just bought tickets for the ones that were on those days. That means that I ended up with five operettas in three days.

The first one I saw (on Tuesday night) was a production of Iolanthe by the Brussels Light Opera Company. This is my favorite G&S operetta overall (though I like the score of The Gondoliers a bit better, mostly because I am partial to dance music). A couple of the performers had trouble projecting their voices, especially the woman playing the Fairy Queen. And, since the fairies were wearing pointy ears (something I associate more with elves, personally), why didn’t anyone every notice that oddity about Strephon? Another annoying modernization was the Queen taking selfies with Strephon. Still, these are nits. The choreography was above average and, overall, I enjoyed it. If it weren’t for having seen some truly outstanding productions of it in the past, I’d have been completely satisfied.

On Wednesday afternoon, I saw the National Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company production of The Mikado. I have no particular issue with modernizing the lyrics to “I Have a Little List.” I can deal with modernizing the clothing, e.g. by having Ko-Ko wearing a suit. But why oh why would someone decide to dress the chorus in British school uniforms (with the girls carrying hockey sticks some of the time and fans the rest of the time) and dress Pooh-Bah and Katisha as their schoolmasters? Seeing blonde boys in ties and sweaters singing “we are gentleman of Japan” is a step too far for me. This is not one of my favorite operettas to begin with and, while the music was generally fine, the bizarre choice of setting and costuming was incredibly grating. Why? Why? Why/

Wednesday evening was again the National Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company, this time doing The Yeoman of the Guard. I had no complaints about either the performances or the costumes for that one. It’s one I had only seen once before and had only vague memories of, so my knowledge of it was weaker than of most of the operettas. It’s also unusual in not having a happy ending for at least three of the characters. I felt that this production gave me a better appreciation of the operetta, so it was well worth going to.

Thursday afternoon’s production was by the Oxford Gilbert and Sullivan Society and was of Utopia, Ltd. I’d seen a very entertaining production of this done by the Blue Hill Troupe in New York, which was based on leveraging off the Citizens United decision. Well, obviously that wouldn’t make sense at Oxford. I am assuming their script hewed closely to the original. Let’s just say that there’s a reason this is a rarely performed operetta. I think I dozed off in the middle of the first Act. The second act was better and “Society has quite forsaken” was particularly successful, including an encore. But, overall, this is never going to be anyone’s favorite. If you’re at a festival and this is on the program, that might be a good time to take a long hike. Or a nap.

The final production I saw was Ruddigore on Thursday night and was performed by The Savoynet Performing Group. This is one of the operettas I admit to not knowing particularly well, but I thought they did an excellent job of it. It also has one of my favorite lyrics, sometimes referred to as “the matter patter,” in which Robin, Despard, and Mad Margaret sing “This particularly rapid unintelligible patter / Isn’t generally heard, and if it is it doesn’t matter.” All in all this was an excellent way of closing out the festival for me.

I should also mention that Simon Butteriss played both Ko-Ko in The Mikado and Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard. He was quite good, but I was raised on Martyn Green’s recordings for the D’Oyly Carte and nobody else ever really measures up to that standard.

Overall, I thought the festival was worth a visit. But I don’t feel any particular need to go to it again.

The next day, I took the train back to London. Since I was flying home early in the morning, I stayed overnight at an airport hotel. My trip home was pretty much glitch free, although I got screamed at by a guy at the airport (not a United Airlines employee) for using a check-in / baggage tag kiosk before 5 a.m. despite there being several other people doing likewise. (And, in fact, United opened the baggage drop at 4:45 a.m.) I even got upgraded to business class for the flight to IAD.

I came back from New York on Monday the 13th - and felt a bit sniffly. By Tuesday, I had a raging cold - all the congestion and coughing I could handle. I did take a COVID test, which was negative, but canceled my theatre plans for Tuesday night in the interest of public health. I tried to give away my ticket, with no success, but Cindy (who did go) managed to persuade the box office at the National Theatre to let me move my ticket to another day. About which, more later. I was still sick on Wednesday, but was pretty much fine by Thursday. Apparently rest and drinking plenty of rooibos tea is effective.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another busy year, with more in-person activities. The low point of the year came in late June when I got COVID and had to get my air conditioning system replaced. But most of the year was pretty good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Museums and Art:

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

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

Other Stuff:

I got one ink blot in the Style Invitational.
I went to several lectures on Jewish topics, including some in the Leading Jewish Minds at MIT series, a talk on Jewish magic, a talk on Jewish mustard, a talk on Jews and baseball, and Yiddish New York.
My friend, Frances, and I went to the Fall Festival at Cox Farms.
I went to miscellaneous other lectures, including one on the Paradox of Choice, an interview with Fran Lebowitz at the Kennedy Center, and the Faraday Prize lecture on-line.
I went to a chocolate tasting with my friend, Cindy. I also went out to dinner with various friends several times.
I participated in the Jewish Rally for Abortion Rights.
I did the open house tour at the Mormon Temple.
I went (virtually) to the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s annual mock trial.
Played board games (either with people I know from the Loser community or with NPL folks) frequently.

Goals:

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

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

Which brings me to goals for 2023:

Go through all of the photos and slides from my parents. I hope to be able to get rid of about 3/4 of them.
Do some formal educational every month. Things that count towards this are taking actual classes (e.g. there is an interesting adult education program in Arlington) or going to lectures (e.g. those put on by Profs and Pints). Both in-person and virtual activities count, but reading does not.
Take at least 4 international trips.
Finish at least three crafts projects.
Read at least 75 books, with a stretch goal of 100.
Go to at least three new ballparks.
Go to at least one museum exhibition each month.
Go to at least 3 national parks.
Spend at least a half hour every day on housework.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As usual, my life is a flurry of activity.

LJ and DW: I am planning to continue posting to both sites. If you are concerned about the future of LiveJournal, feel free to add me on Dreamwidth (under the same name). There are things I like and dislike about both platforms, by the way, but that is neither here nor there under the current circumstances.

Ink!: I got ink in the Style Invitational contest for fictoids about the financial world. My entry (which got merged with another person’s similar one) had to do with the Susan B. Anthony dollar being 82% the size of the Eisenhower dollar that preceded it.

Jewish Mustard: I went to a talk about Jewish mustard on Tuesday. The speaker was Barry Levenson, director of the National Mustard Museum I went to the Museum when it was still in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, but it has moved to larger quarters in Middleton, Wisconsin. It;s an amusing place and he was an entertaining speaker. Mostly, he recommended specific mustards to eat with various Jewish foods, e.g. mustard with dill to accompany lox (smoked salmon) or horseradish mustard to go with gefilte fish. Despite his suggestions, I am not going to start putting even the fruitiest of mustards on my cheesecake.

Sistine Chapel Exhibition: I probably would not have gone to this on my own, but one of my friends wanted to go and, as she’s been having a rough time lately for several reasons, I thought it would be good for her to get out. The exhibit is set up in an unleased retail space in Tyson’s Corner Center, which is a large shopping mall not far from where I live. Basically, they have large reproductions of the panels from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, with explanatory plaques. The plaques are set up on easels, so they are not at eye level, and are, therefore, rather difficult to read for those of us who wear bifocals. More egregiously, the panels are not arranged in any particular order. They’re numbered, but they are not arranged in numerical order. That led to a lot of frustration as people were trying to find the next one in sequence. I suppose some people wouldn’t care if they see them out of order, but I am way too compulsive to do that. The advertising had led me to think there would be some immersive aspect (like the Van Gogh exhibit had), but that was not the case. They did show a few informative videos in the final room. Anyway, it was quite crowded and, between the crowds and the chaos, I was very disappointed.

We retreated to Coastal Flats (a good seafood restaurant in the mall) for lunch. After that, I did walk more around the mall, just to get some more steps in on a chilly day. It was more crowded than I’d prefer, but better than being cold.

Fairy Tale Variations - Little Red Riding Hood: Stories with Spirit did one of their Fairy Tale Variations storytelling shows on Saturday night. This one was based on Little Red Riding Hood. There were a couple of stories that portrayed her as a healer and mender. There was one in which grandmother and the wolf were long-time friends. My favorite of the stories was Cooper Braun’s version, which drew on Norse mythology.

Iolanthe: On Sunday afternoon, I drove to darkest Maryland (well, okay, Rockville) to see the Victorian Lyric Opera company production of Iolanthe which is my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. I love the political humor of it and there are several songs I end up humming for days after listening to it. They did quite a good job. I will note that Claudia Finsaas who played Phyllis is extremely tall and towered over almost all the rest of the cast, which looked a bit odd. (But she did have an excellent voice). There was also some particularly clever costuming.

Jewish Magic: This morning I went to a very interesting lecture by Yoel Finkelman on Jewish magic. The talk was part of Jewish Book Week and included a lot of discussion about amulets, including documents with texts directly appealing to demons to stay away and bowls with incantations intended to trap demons. He talked about contradictions in the Torah about what type of magic is permitted. There is also a concept of letters being the building blocks of creation, which led to instructions on how to make a golem (a Frankenstein-like creature made from clay. Bu the way "golem" is also the modern Hebrew word for "robot.") He also talked about the differences between magic and technology. (In short , if it works, it’s technology.) Finally, he talked about Kav Hayashor (which translates as The Straight Measure) which contains a story about the demons who live in the basement of a house and cause trouble for the homeowners because they claim to have a deed to the basement. So the Rabbinical court has to get involved in this supernatural real estate dispute. I found the whole talk fascinating and wished it had been more than an hour long.

Shameless Self-Promotion: Don’t forget to get tickets for the Women’s Storytelling Festival. We’ll be performing live at Old Town Hall in Fairfax, Virginia on March 18-20th, but it is being live streamed so you can watch from anywhere. And you get access to the videos for an entire month.

I took a brief trip out of town last week. I took the train up to New York on Monday afternoon. I’d been a bit concerned about the aftermath of their snow storm, but the streets and sidewalks had been mostly cleared. I stayed at the Fairfield Inn on 33rd Street, right across from Moynihan Train Hall, which was convenient and fairly good as hotels in that class go. They even had a hot breakfast buffet. However, they had the tables within the breakfast room closed off, which led to a lot of people gathering around one large table and several clusters of armchairs / coffee tables in the lobby, which seems to me to be less socially distanced than the breakfast room would have been.

Anyway, a lot of things are closed on Tuesdays. Looking at the options, I decided to check out the National Museum of Mathematics. This would be an excellent place to go if I were about 8 years old. But it is definitely geared to elementary school age children and I think I saw only one other adult who was not accompanied by a young child. There are a lot of interactive exhibits - but not a lot of actual explanation of the mathematics behind them. Also, a lot of exhibits were not working. Overall, I didn’t think it was worth the $25 admission. The museum shop does have a lot of interesting math-related toys, however.

Tuesday afternoon, I went down to Tribeca to see a gallery exhibit at Sapar Contemporary. The work, by an Indonesian artist named Mulyana, is called Fragile Ecosystems and consists of knitted coral and felted fish and the like. Having worked on the Smithsonian crochet coral reef (back in 2011) this was obviously right up my alley. It doesn’t take long to see, but was worth the stop.

It was a short walk from there to The Mysterious Bookshop, which was one of the (if not THE) first mystery bookstores in the U.S. and is always a delightful place to browse. I could easily spend quite a lot of money there, but I have way too many books to begin with, so limited myself to buying three thin volumes in their Bibolomysteries series of novellas and a few postcards of pulp covers.

I had a quick dinner, then meandered down to Battery Park to the Museum of Jewish Heritage to see Ricky Ian Gordon’s opera of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, which was a coproduction of the New York City Opera and the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. Ricky is from my home town, which was another reason for wanting to see this. I had seen the movie long enough ago that I remembered pretty much nothing about it, beyond it having to do with an Italian family during World War II. There are really two plot lines. One has to do with a love story - young Giorgio’s love for Micol Finzi-Contini, who pretty much thinks he is beneath her. There’s a second (gay) love story that is less developed. The other story, which was more successful for me, had to do with the rising anti-Semitism in Italy and I found that more satisfying musically. In particular, I found the scene in the second act of a Passover seder at Giorgio’s home which becomes confrontational about the future of Italian Jewry to be a dramatic highlight. I should also note the performance of Anthony Ciaramitaro as Giorgio, who has returned to Ferrara in his 40’s and is looking back at the events of his youth. Overall, it was worth seeing.

On Wednesday, I went to the Brooklyn Museum, primarily to see two exhibits. I started with the Andy Warhol exhibit, which was, frankly, weird. When I think of Warhol, I think mostly of things like Campbell’s soup cans and screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and so on. Instead, this exhibit emphasized the influence of the Byzantine Catholic Church on him.

They did point out the conflict between his religion and his sexuality, which didn’t stop them from showing a lot of semi-pornographic film, partly in the context of his shooting by Valerie Solanas. But, even there, they played up how much he went to church after recovering from the shooting. Overall, a very strange take on a well-known artist.

The other exhibit I went there for was about Dior, and that was more satisfying. There was plenty of footage of runway shows, which I could watch for ages. And there were luscious dresses. Of course, many of the accessories are especially beyond the reach of the average person. I don’t know where I could get a couple of elephants to set off any of my little black dresses, for example.

Some other parts of the exhibit felt a bit too much like advertising. That was especially true of the videos of perfume ads. I’d also have liked more material about the place of high-end fashion in our culture. But, overall, I enjoyed the exhibit.

While I was at the museum, I did also go through some of their permanent collection. (Well, okay, I ignored the Egyptian stuff. My mother was an archaeology major in college and, as a result, I was overexposed as a child, leading to a lifelong aversion to ancient Egypt.) The strongest part of their collection is contemporary feminist art. In particular, they host The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago.

In the evening, I went to see an extremely silly show called Space Dogs. This was written and performed by Van Hughes and Nick Blaemire. Blaemire is somewhat notorious in the D.C. area for having written music and lyrics for Glory Days, which was successful at Signature Theatre but closed after one performance on Broadway. Anyway, this show had to do with the Soviet use of dogs to prove humans could survive space and focused on the relationship between “the Chief Designer” and the dog, Laika, who was sent to space, but without a plan to return her to earth. There was some catchy music and clever use of video and puppets, but the show was far longer than it needed to be. And some of the historical inaccuracies drove me nuts, though I am sure nobody else in the audience noticed how badly they mangled info about the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Oh, well, it was a lot cheaper than a Broadway show would have been. But you’d be better off going to Los Angeles and checking out the exhibit about Dogs of the Soviet Space Program at the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

The other purpose of my trip was to see the Philadelphia half of the Jasper Johns retrospective and I did that on Thursday. (I had seen the New York part at the Whitney in November). This was definitely worth seeing. Seeing so many of his works in one place made me appreciate Johns more. I think what is particularly striking about his work is that he kept all of his studies (and signed them). But, mostly, I like how he played with his ideas, repeating the same themes over and over.

Another good example is here , in “5 Postcards.”

I did go an revisit other works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, too. There is plenty of American art, including Shaker furniture, for example. They have plenty of works by Monet, Van Gogh, and so on. But my absolute favorite piece there is Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” largely for the epiphany I had about it many years ago. Namely, that the key word in the title is “descending” and that it is really about the motion. This revolutionized how I look at modern art.

All in all, I had a good trip. I got back on Friday afternoon in time to make this cocktail of the week - a nutty African, which consists of brewed coffee, amarula (a South African liqueur made from the marula fruit), rum, and whipped cream, decorated with chopped pecans. It was delicious.

I didn’t get nearly as much done last night as I’d intended to, but any progress is good.

First, a quick depressing news item was a story from WTOP news about the most crash-prone stretches of road in the D.C. metro area. Number 5 is I-66 between my exit and the Beltway. I’m not particularly surprised, since people here are rude and not inclined to let people move over to the Beltway off-ramps,

On a cheerier note, one of the reasons I am behind on things is that I’ve been indulging in a certain amount of entertainment. In addition to my crafts group and my book club, I’ve watched various entertainment events on-line over the past couple of weeks.

Christine Lavin gave an excellent concert almost a month ago. Her songs often tell complex stories and tend to be riotously funny. There was also an opening act - Shanna in a Dress, who I had not been familiar with and also enjoyed.

A few weeks ago there was a virtual Q&A with Fran Lebowitz, an author whose work I enjoyed back in the late 1979’s or so. I didn’t find the questions particularly insightful as they were focused too much on politics. And the event was only a half hour long. But I did find out that she’ll be doing more of a comedy show at the Kennedy Center and am thinking of getting a ticket for it.

A couple of days ago, I watched a recorded One Day University lecture by Sean Hartley about Stephen Sondheim. I learned more than I expected to. For example, before Into the Woods, Somdheim and Lapine had been trying to develop a musical involving a number of TV sitcom couples. I don't agree with all of Hartley's opinions about the shows, as he is not a fan of either Pacific Ovetures (which is my favorite Sondhem score) or Assassins. But the lecture was still entertaining and informative.

Finally, I watched the movie version of Unknown, a short opera about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that was composed for its 100th anniversary. It mingled the stories of individual soldiers with footage of war and of the tomb and other memorials. I found it intriguing and quite moving. I have been a fan of Urban Arias (who produced this and recorded the music live at The Barns of Wolf Trap) and this sort of piece is part of the reason I’m putting them on my donation list.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/504618.html

Don’t Analyze This Dream, Part 1: My car had a warning light on, which was in the shape of an exclamation point.

Don’t Analyze This Dream, Part 2: One of my colleagues needed to renew his badge at work. I pointed out to him that he needed to take the elevator to the 8th floor in order to get to the 3rd floor.

Weather Whine: We got 10 inches of snow from sometime on Saturday through late last night. The schools are all closed. The government (the parts of it that were open, that is) is shut down. My company is open. Can I be forgiven for assuming our senior management wants to kill us?

They are predicting snow next weekend, too. Please, no.

Taking Up Serpents: I went out yesterday, despite the snow, to see the premiere of an opera called Taking Up Serpents at the Kennedy Center. This was written by Kamala Sankarem, with a libretto by Jerre Dye. The story involves a young woman, Kayla, who is summoned back to her dying father’s bedside. There is a lot of reminiscence about her relationship with her father, who turned from a rough drunk to a snake-handling preacher. Now, he’s dying of a snake bite, which liberates both Kayla and her mother, both of whom turn out not to be quite so "weak as water, weak as Eve," as Daddy had claimed.

The story is interesting and some of the music was. There was a frenetic scene of shoppers at Save Mart in the beginning, which provided a bit of comic relief. There were echoes of shape note singing (although that works better for me in the more traditional form, with people standing in a square, facing outwards). There was also some intriguing instrumentation, notably in the use of whirly tubes. However, Kayla has more music than anyone else and while I realize that Alexandria Shiner is a powerful soprano, I find those high frequencies annoyingly screechy after a while. I also found the ending unconvincing.

So, overall, this fell into the category of interesting failures. But you might like it better than I did if you have a higher tolerance for sopranos than I do.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/444765.html

I had a fairly busy holiday weekend. Thanksgiving itself was low-key, though I did go out to the supermarket in the morning, mostly out of a need to restock my tea supply.

Friday afternoon, I went to see Signature Theatre’s production of Billy Elliot. As expected, they did a good job with it. I particularly liked Catherine Flue’s performance as Grandma. And I thought the staging of the conflict between the striking miners and the police was quite good. I should also note the audience demographics. Namely, I don’t think I have ever seen quite so many young boys at a musical before.

Saturday night was the last Better Said Than Done storytelling show of the year. I was the last performer of the night and told "A Memorial For My Father," which went well. The audience was nicely responsive – especially after having been well-primed by the other storytellers. Overall, it was an excellent evening. Video to follow in the next several weeks.

To keep up the pace, I went to the opera on Sunday. This was the Washington National Opera production of Silent Night, with music by Kevin Puts and libretto by Mark Campbell. The story involves three groups of soldiers (German, French, and Scottish) who declare a Christmas eve cease fire, extending it the next day so they can bury their dead. There is an emphasis on an individual story in each of the three groups. The German soldiers include an opera singer who has been conscripted and pines for the female singer he is in love with. The French lieutenant is waiting for his wife to give birth. And a young Scotsman was dragged off to the war by his brother (who gets killed).

There was an interesting mix of music, but I found the staging somewhat dull. And I thought the libretto was a bit preachy, but that is more or less a consequence of anything about World War I, which really started out for a lot of the participants as a great adventure before turning so completely to horror. It was worth seeing on the grounds that this did after all win a Pulitzer, but I didn’t completely love it.

I also did a bunch of housework, but am nowhere near achieving condo nirvana. At least I don’t have anything in particular to do this week – well, aside from work.

Crossposts: https://fauxklore.livejournal.com/434211.html

I only went to four shows this year, which was a trade-off between the ticket discount for getting a show package and juggling other schedule things.

Show #1 – Do Not Disturb: I’m not really a big opera person and I actively dislike farce. So why did I go to see what appeared to be an operatic farce? Well, I am a fan of the Victorian Lyric Opera Company, who put on this show under the moniker "The Forgotten Opera Company," which they apparently use as an alter-ego for producing contemporary works.

Anyway, this 90 minute opera tells the story of a young lawyer, Ethan Rosenblum (played by the composer, Sean Pflueger), who calls in sick to take his girlfriend, Emma, to a resort, where he plans to propose to her. His boss, George Rosenburg, also shows up at the resort, where he is having a tryst with a judge named Virginia. His cover for the affair is that he is taking his niece, Roxanne, back to college. But Sandra, George’s wife has hired Roxane to try to get proof of the extra-marital affair. Throw in a desk clerk who spends all his time looking up trivia on his cell phone and, therefore, gets Rosenblum and Rosenburg confused, and you have classic farce, with guests being taken to the wrong rooms and so on.

The music was rather atonal and, frankly, not to my taste. But the lyrics were sufficiently Gilbertian to make this amusing. The real highlight was the quality of the performances. Sean Pflueger obviously wrote the role of Ethan to play up his strengths. Alexandra Friendly was impressive as an increasingly frustrated Emma, while John Boulanger did well as the unlikeable George and Stephanie Kruskol was a convincingly millennial Roxanne. The best performance was by Michelle Kunz, as the sultry judge, whose antics with a gavel were suggestively over the top. All in all, this was a fun show.

Show #2 – Perfect Liars Club: Four people tell stories. Three are true and one is a lie. The audience gets to interrogate them and tries to decide who the liar is. This was the fringe edition of a monthly D.C. event, which has featured several storytellers I know. The first teller was a Cambodian woman named Davine, who told a rambling and disconnected piece involving a potential arranged marriage, a fortune teller, and a sexually charged relationship with someone she reencountered after a decade. Then came Cait, whose well-told piece involved meeting a third cousin in Ireland and exploring a potential relationship with him, despite his interest really being in how marriage would enable him to get a house he wanted. A guy named Andre told a story about teaching in Hungary, getting invited to a pig roast, and possibly being coerced into smuggling over the Croatian border. Finally, a man named Mike told of an encounter with Donald Rumsfeld and what he wanted to say to him but didn’t.

The interrogation was pretty wide ranging, but, frankly, the tellers who were more polished (Cait and Andre) remained so, while Davine and Mike still came across as nervous. Given the impressions they made while performing initially, this didn’t really help with in figuring out who the liar was. I voted for Cait, largely on the grounds that it’s easier to be more polished with a lie. The audience went mostly for Mike, with a significant minority for Davine. Alas, the liar was Andre.

Overall, this show was reasonably entertaining, not least because of Cara Foran’s emceeing. But the quality of the storytelling was highly variable and I think this sort of thing works better in a bar environment than it does on a stage in a library basement.

Show #3 – Ready to Serve: This is the show I was more or less obliged to see, as Ellouise Schoettler is a friend and I know she is an excellent storyteller. This piece, one of many she has done for the Capital Fringe over the years, had to do with women who went to France as nurses in World War I. The conditions they worked in were deplorable, with freezing bunkers as wards (and dormitory) and no hot water. And, of course, there was the emotional stress of dealing with men who had had limbs blown off or were gassed or were just sick. (Remember, far more people were killed by disease in WWI than by the war itself.) Ellouise painted vivid word pictures through the eyes of one (composite) woman and frequently used simple repetition to emphasize the horrors of the conditions. Overall, a very well-done piece with stories that need to be heard more often.

Show #4 – Romanov: I will admit that I chose this show largely because it was a convenient location and time to fill out the four-pack of tickets I’d bought. Of the shows that met the time and location criteria, a pop musical about the end of the Russian dynasty sounded fairly appealing. The idea was that the 4 sisters (Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia) and their brother Alexei have come back for one night only to give a concert telling their story. I can’t say there was anything there I didn’t already know, but it did turn out to be pretty entertaining, with surprisingly catchy songs. Composer and co-lyricist Danny Baird played Alexei, the hemophiliac tsarovich, while his lyric-writing partner, Meghan Stanton, was Marie and directed the show. The other sisters were played by Catherine Purcell (Olga), Alicia Osborn (Tatiana), and Allie O’Donnell (Anastasia). This was pretty much an ensemble piece, though each performer did get a highlight number. The final song,"Romanov," was a bit of an earworm, though the real musical highlight was "The Next Room.”" This was decidedly fringy and not mainstream theatre, but I think they said that about Hamilton at first, too. Baird is clearly talented, though Lin-Manuel Miranda he’s not. Still, it was worth the investment of a little over 45 minutes.

Celebrity Death Watch: Vanity was a singer and primarily known as a protégé of Prince.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1992-1996. There were lots of questions about how effective he was, including the UN failure to act in the Rwandan genocide, but also inadequate responses in the former Yugoslavia and in Somalia. He was the only UN Secretary-General who was not elected to a second term in office.

Antonin Scalia was a Supreme Court justice and a major voice for conservative opinions. As much as I despise many of his judgements, I do admit to his intelligence and his literary skill. He was the subject of a play (The Originalist) and an opera (Scalia / Ginsburg). There is, by the way, no justification for Obama waiting for his successor to name a replacement and certainly no historical precedent. Pushing such a move should only hurt Republicans in the Senate who will be seen as obstructionist.

Business Trip: I spent much of last week in Los Angeles. The trip was largely for one meeting, but I also sat in on a review for an upcoming launch and got a firehouse of program info from my management. It also provided a good opportunity for me to meet a couple of customer folks and for me to get to know my boss better. So, as exhausting as it was, it was definitely worth the effort.

Other L.A. Stuff: I suffered a bit of weather shock. When I flew out on Tuesday morning, it was raining when I left my house, sleeting when I got on the bus to IAD, and snowing when we took off. When I arrived in L.A., it was in the 80’s. And I came home to extreme cold, with temperatures in the 20’s or below.

I also took advantage of the trip to go to Community Storytellers on Thursday night. There were a fair number of people there and some good stories, but we had to end early to avoid getting locked in. Of course, we then did the traditional stand and yak in the parking lot for ages afterwards.

Lost in the Stars: I got home, dropped my bags in my house, and ran off to the Kennedy Center to see the Washington National Opera production of Lost in the Stars. I’m not a big opera person, but this is Kurt Weill and it was an option on my theatre subscription. It does raise the question of where the barrier is between opera and musical theatre, but, frankly, I don’t think the line matters. If I enjoy something, why should I care how it gets characterized?

Anyway, for those unfamiliar with Lost in the Stars, it is based on Alan Paton’s novel, Cry, the Beloved Country. The plot involves a black preacher, Stephen Kumalo, who travels to Johannesburg to search for his son, Absalom. Absalom has fallen in with a bad crowd, which leads to him killing a white man (who is, in fact, a friend of his father’s). He refuses to lie about the matter and ends up sentenced to death. This being apartheid era South Africa there are various racial undercurrents, which are handled rather awkwardly, perhaps because the show was written in 1949. Even more awkward is Stephen’s crisis of faith, which gets resolved all too easily.

I was impressed with Eric Owens as Stephen Kumalo and with Sean Panikkar as The Leader. But the real scene stealer was Caleb McLaughlin as the child, Alex. Overall, this was worth seeing, but there are some tedious moments to sit through for things like the glories of the title song.

Jewish Genealogical Society: The JGSGW meeting on Sunday was part assisted research workshop (in which I made a bit more progress on Chaim Schwartzbard and his children, though there is still confusion due to things like his having one son named Harry and another named Harold) and part speaker program. The topic of the latter was Family Search and I thought the presentation was fairly basic, but I did learn a few useful tidbits.

Recurring Dream: Or, more accurately, recurring nightmare. Three times in the past week, I have awoken in a panic from a dream in which I was trying to check in for a flight only to discover I had left my passport at home.

Brunch and Travel Show: I took an early train back from New York after my minor theatre binge so I could go out to brunch with a couple of people from flyertalk before going to the Travel and Adventure Show. We ate at City Tap Room, which had a somewhat odd brunch menu. I had a frittata with potatoes, mushrooms, kale and gruyere, which was okay, though a bit too salty. Don't things like that usually come with toast or the like, though?

Anyway, the travel show has gotten smaller, but is still dangerous as I get ideas. In some cases, I have no interest in a tour, but I use itineraries to get an idea of what I want to do when I go somewhere on my own. In other cases, there are places with poor enough infrastructure that having things organized makes sense. The bottom line is that (as usual) there are more things I want to do than there is time or money for.

Pro Musica Hebraica - Evgeny Kissin: I continue to go to the Pro Musica Hebraica concerts of Jewish classical music when I can, i.e. when I am in town. This edition was pianist Evgeny Kissin playing 20th century music and reciting Yiddish poetry. The first piece was Moyshe Milner's Farn opsheyd (Kleyne rapsodie) which I enjoyed. It had a definite Jewish feel to it, partly through the rhythms as well as the folk-tune like melody. That was followed by Ernest Bloch's Piano Sonata. Op. 40, which was the most familiar piece of the evening. Unfortunately, I remain lukewarm towards Bloch, whose music seems like generic modernism to me, with no particular Jewish flavor. The first half of the evening concluded with Kissin reciting several poems by Haim Nachman Bialik, with supertitled English translations. Kissin taught himself Yiddish, so I'm not surprised by the formal sound of his accent, which sounds too Germanic to me. (Bear in mind that I am a biased Litvak and understand little Yiddish myself, so my opinion may not matter. I think it is supposed to sound like my father and grandfather and this didn't.) At any rate, Bialik's poems were not really to my taste. My maternal grandfather was a big fan of Bialik, but of his Hebrew poetry, so I don't feel as disloyal as I otherwise might.

The second half started with Alexander Veprik's Sonata No. 2, which was pleasant enough, but not especially memorable. Then came several poems by I. L. Peretz. I particularly liked "The World is a Theater." It's obvious that Kissin is passionate about reciting these poems, but I thought the segment went on a bit too long. The evening ended with Alexander Krein's Suite dansee, op. 44, which was my favorite piece of the concert, with strong echoes of klezmer styling.

Overall, it was an interesting evening and it's good to support the ability to hear some of the more obscure works that got played, especially in the hands of as expressive a musician as Kissin.

Opera - Moby Dick: I'm not really an opera person, but I love Moby Dick, so I was curious as to how it would be transformed to the stage. There was a lot of spectacle involved, with a tilting stage and supernumaries climbing ladders and ropes and so on. What surprised me was how well Jake Heggie's music fit the action. Gene Scheer's libretto did take some liberties with the novel, but it had to in order to make sense. The performances were excellent and I want to especially call out Matthew Worth as Starbuck and Eric Greene as Queequeg. All in all, this was interesting and well worth seeing and made me more likely to go to the opera in the future.

Beaches: Back on more familiar ground, I went to see Beaches at Signature Theatre on Saturday. This is a brand new musical and is an adaptation of the novel and movie. The story involves the bond between two women, Cee Cee and Bertie, who meet as children in Atlantic City and continue their friendship through various crises, culminating in Bertie's untimely death. This could be maudlin, but there was so much humor (largely due to the brassy Cee Cee, excellently played by Alysha Umpress) that it avoided that trap. Not that it was free of tearjerker moments, but the tone was more balanced. There was also a tuneful score by David Austin (plus "The Wind Beneath My Wings" from the movie, thrown in surprisingly unobtrusively). There was even some amusing choreography in the form of a 1970's disco number. And I can't resist mentioning what great eye candy Matthew Scott provided. Damn, he looks amazing with a beard.

I have had mixed feelings over the years towards the new musicals that Signature puts on, but I want them to keep producing new musicals, and this was a good example of why.