fauxklore

Esther Krinitz: A guy I used to work with, Mark, went to my storytelling show for rubber ducky day. He sent me a very nice email afterwards and mentioned an upcoming lecture being livestreamed by the American Visionary Art Museum about The Art and Story of Esther Nisenthol Krinitz. Krinitz was a Holocaust survivor who created fiber art pictures (appliqué and embroidery) depicting her life in Poland before the War, her life in hiding during the war, and events afterwards. For example, she went to the Majdanek Concentration Camp and looked through piles of shoes there trying to find her mother’s. There’s a total of 36 pictures, which are on exhibit, along with other artwork telling stories about immigrants. The talk was by her daughter, who runs a foundation focused on using art to tell these stories. It was an interesting talk and nice to see the pictures, though seeing them in person is better. (I saw them several years ago at the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles.) I should try to find time to see it again when I have something to do in Baltimore.

Speaking of Mark: We also set up a time to talk on the phone a couple of days later. Mostly we discussed things about adjusting to retirement and he picked my brain a bit about travel. He was rather amused when, as soon as he mentioned that his wife had signed up for a crafts class in western North Carolina, I knew exactly what school it was at. Anyway, we had a nice conversation and I’m glad to be back in touch with him.

Trader Joe’s is Evil: I am easily amused, so I got a kick out of going to Staples because I needed staples. I also bought a Spanish dictionary there, since it was on the clearance table for two bucks.

Anyway, Trader Joe’s is in the same shopping center, so I stopped in there for a couple of things. There are certain things I buy whenever I go there, e.g. strawberry vanilla yogurt, almond milk (cheaper than anywhere else), and green chile and cheese tamales. I made the mistake of also going to the nuts and dried fruit section. They have chili spiced dried pineapple again, after a long time without it being available. But the reason I say they are evil is that I also bought sesame honey cashews and pecan pralines. Both of those are delicious - and thoroughly addictive. Very much in the category of things I should not buy because I will eat way more of them at a time than I should. Sigh.


Living Room Archaeology: I’ve been spending a lot of time recently on what I refer to as “living room archaeology.” My biggest barrier to clearing out all this junk is dealing with memorabilia. This goes back to my mother having had me save the program from the very first show I ever went to in what she referred to as “my memory box.” Well, 55+ years later, what had been a small box has turned into multiple file drawers and more stuff overflowing into stacks on the floor. Throw in the current trend of many theatres not giving out printed programs anymore and printing out the programs takes multiple pages, those end up particularly thick.

Now, I keep a journal in which I write about every show (play, musical, concert, etc.) that I go to. And I know that, when my mother died, nobody wanted any of what was in her memory box. I had hoped her playbills would be worth something, but it turned out she had actually torn them apart and just saved the front cover and the list of cast members.

So I am on the verge of deciding to get rid of this stuff, but it’s a hard decision to make. I am postponing it until after I get through filing and discarding a bunch of other things. For example, I really have no difficulty shredding old credit card receipts - especially when I find one from a car rental in, um, 2009. And, no, I don’t need a bus ticket from Rimini to San Marino from 2014.

Why is this so bloody hard?

I have, as usual, been busy. I don’t really know how not to be.

Celebrity Death Watch: Howard Hesseman was an actor, most famous for playing Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati. Art Cooley co-founded the Environmental Defense Fund. Jeff Innes pitched for the New York Mets. Norma Waterson sang folk music with her family. Robin Herman was the first female sports journalist for The New York Times. Lani Forbes wrote young adult fiction. Mickey Bass was a jazz bassist - and that was his actual surname at birth. Jason Epstein was the editorial director of Random House for about 20 years and, more significantly, founded The New York Review of Books. Todd Gitlin was a sociologist, who wrote about (among other things) the Sixties. George Crumb was a Pulitzer Prize winning composer. Ian McDonald was a founding member of the bands King Crimson and Foreigner. Jeremy Giambi played baseball, primarily for the Oakland A’s, but was overshadowed by his brother, Jason. Betty Davis was a soul singer. Henry Danton was a ballet dancer. Ivan Reitman directed a number of movies, including Ghostbusters. Valerie Boyd wrote a biography of Zora Neale Hurston. Gail Halvorsen was an Air Force pilot, most famous for dropping candy to children during the Berlin airlift. Martin Tolchin was a cofounder of the D.C. newspapers The Hill and Politico. Stephanie Selby wrote A Very Young Dacer.

Lars Eighner wrote the book Travels with Lizbeth about his experiences being homeless. It’s an interesting work and made me more sympathetic towards street people, though I disagreed with his decision to prioritize staying with his dog over being housed. (Then again, I am a cat person.)

Herbert Benson was a cardiologist who studied the effects of meditation and prayer on the body. I heard him give a talk at MIT Hillel back in my undergraduate days. His book The Relaxation Response was a bestseller in the late 1970’s. While his research showed no significant beneficial effect of prayer on patients with coronary bypass surgery, there may be something to his ideas about the benefits of relaxation since he lived to 86.

Ashley Bryan was an author and illustrator of children’s books. I saw a wonderful exhibit of his work at the High Museum in Atlanta in 2017. He was, alas, on my backup list for the ghoul pool, so no points.

Nancy Berg was an actress who had a 5 minute a night TV show in New York in the 1950’s called Count Sheep with Nancy Berg. which, apparently involved her pretending to go to sleep as animated sheep jumped over a fence. There are, alas, apparently no recordings of this show available.

Carmen Herrera was an abstract painter. She wasn’t really discovered until she was nearly 90 years old, but enjoyed a fair amount of success in the next 16 years. (Yes, she lived to 106!) There is, in fact, an exhibit of her work coming up at the Lisson Gallery in New York in May. She earned me 30 ghoul point points - 18 for her position on my list and 12 for uniqueness.

P. J. O’Rourke was a humorist, probably best known for his books Parliament of Whores and Holidays in Hell and his libertarian politics. I had deeply mixed feelings about his work. I laughed, but felt bad about what I laughed at.

Institutional Death Watch: I realized the Capital Steps had stopped performing during the pandemic, but had not quite grasped that they actually folded and are not coming back. Their political satire was such a Washington institution that it's hard to imagine that they're really gone.

Bindaas: Before going to the Kennedy Center last Friday night, I tried Bindaas, a well-reviewed restaurant specializing in Indian street food, for an early dinner. Because it was Friday night, I had a cocktail - in this case, something called Fool’s Gold, that has rum, citrus soda, and various spices (cardamom, coriander, fennel seed, mac, and saffron). It was a bit too earthy for my taste, frankly, and I wouldn’t get it again.



As for food, I had samosas and vegetable korma, both of which were fine, but I can get better at half the price at a number of places closer to home. I would probably be willing to eat there again, but would order different things.

Fran Leibowitz: The reason I was at the Kennedy Center was to go to a talk by Fran Leibowitz. This started with her being interviewed by Ari Shapiro, who is still my biggest celebrity crush. (I mean the man looks like the groom doll on a wedding cake. And, yeah, he is young enough to be my son and is married to another man, so it’s entirely fantasy.) Anyway, the most memorable part of that was what he called Celebrity Lightning Round, in which he named various people and asked her for a brief anecdote about each of them. The most interesting tidbit there was that Toni Morrison didn’t eat pizza. The interview segment was followed by questions from the audience. There was a major failure there, in that they didn’t have microphones for the audience members to use. Fran did try to repeat the questions, but there were several she couldn’t hear all or part of. And some of the questions were truly inane. Still, she lived up to her witty and curmudgeonly brand. I thought she was spot on regarding New York, since the main thing I love about it (and other major cities) is that I can always find something there that I didn’t know existed. I do, however, disagree with her about algebra. Not learning mathematics cuts you out from a huge number of professions. But, beyond that, math provides discipline in thinking. Still, overall, I enjoyed her talk and was glad I went.

By the way, in an odd coincidence, someone I know was sitting right in front of me. I run into people I know at the KenCen all the time, but they are usually not sitting quite so close.

Don’t Analyze This Dream: I don’t remember much of this dream, but the key detail was that I was wearing non-matching shoes. I thought I was wearing a pair of sloggers (open toed garden clogs, which is what I put on to go take out the trash or bring in the mail). I didn’t understand why the one on my right foot kept slipping until someone else pointed out that I was wearing a sandal with the back strap unfastened,

Anthony Mordecai Tsvi Russell I went to Anthony Mordecai Tsvi Russell’s virtual talk on what he learned from Paul Robeson. I first encountered Russell as part of a concert I’d gone to because one of the other performers was Mark Glanville. He completely blew me away and I’ve been interested in his mix of African-American and Jewish material since. (Russell is a gay African-American Jew by choice, who is married to a Reform rabbi and specializes in singing Yiddish music.) It’s not surprising for Paul Robeson, whose voice his is somewhat similar to, to attract his attention. Anyway, he talked about moving from the Bay Area to Norfolk, Virginia as a child and being exposed to racist low expectations in school. He’s obviously a very smart (and well-spoken) man and used Robeson’s words to highlight the need to end white superiority and to talk about the role of performance. I particularly liked some of the Robeson quotes he used to emphasize those points:

In America, the most absurd results can be produced, not merely by prejudice itself, but by respect for prejudice.

and

It is not enough for one to be able to do it. I want everyone to have the chance.

and, especially,

I perform what I want to see in the world.

All in all, it was a good presentation, though I’d have liked to hear more of Russell’s singing.

Jewish Dublin: This talk, by Alexander Joseph Vard, was part of a series on various Jewish communities and was broader than just Dublin, also touching on Jews in Cork and Belfast. It was mostly historical and emphasized Jewish support for Irish nationalism. However, Ireland was not always quite so kind to Jews, with incidents including the cover-up of the murders of Jews by two members of the Irish Army and Ireland’s failure to take in Jewish refugees during World War II. The talk was worth an hour of my time.

Science Through Story: This talk by Sara J. ElShafie was part of an MIT Alumni Forum series focused on climate change. I have some issues with people who seek out storytellers by approaching film studios but we live in corrupt times and the use of the term “storytelling” to refer to all narrative (instead of oral presentation) is common enough that fighting it is probably a lost cause. Despite that annoyance, and allowing for the limitations of an hour-long talk over zoom,I thought her ideas about communication were mostly valid. I did wish she had an example that was deeper than a few versions of a single slide. I may get in touch with her later on to bring up some of these issues.

Living Room Archaeology: I have been engaging in a lot of sorting and shredding and so on. I think it is safe to get rid of things like a couple of Italian train tickets from 2014, for example. I cannot, however, figure out why I wrote “Burn Before ..” at the bottom of a to-do list from some time late last year.