fauxklore

I was just too exhausted last night to write anything.

I’d had a pretty social day. I did do a bunch of household stuff in the morning. Then I went into the city to go to brunch and the theatre with a few Losers. (Losers are devotees of what had been the Washington Post Style Invitational, a humor contest that continues its afterlife on Gene Weingarten’s page.) We’d gotten about an inch of snow overnight but, other than crossing the street to the metro station which was a bit icy in spots, it was reasonably clear. It was, however, very cold and windy out. Normally, I would walk from Metro Center to Penn Quarter, but not with that wind. I had a long wait at Metro Center for the Red Line, but I’d left myself a lot of time, so I was still a little early for our reservation. We had a lovely meal - huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs) with salsa, tortilla chips, and avocado plus cafe de olla (spiced with cloves, cinnamon, and canela) - in my case. By the way, I am fairly sure that canela refers to true cinnamon, while what they refer to on the menu as cinnamon (and almost everything sold in supermarkets as cinnamon) is actually cassia. The food was all very good and the conversation was lively and far ranging.

We met up with the rest of the Loser group at the Shakespeare Theatre (Sidney Harmon Hall) where we were seeing Guys and Dolls, one of my all-time favorite musicals. I know every word and every note of every song from it and like most of them. I think the lyrics of “Adelaide’s Lament” are among the most brilliant comedy lyrics in any musical ever. (And Stephen Sondheim agreed with me on that.) While there are some rhymes I am not crazy about (e.g. in the title song, Biloxi doesn’t rhyme with Roxy, but hey, I’m pretty sure Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Benny Southstreet wouldn’t know that) and I’m fairly sure Frank Loesser never met anyone from Rhode Island given the accent he (and Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows) had Miss Adelaide use, the whole show works. My favorite song is “Luck Be a Lady Tonight,” but I also have a soft spot for “More I Cannot Wish You.” The combination of the book, music, lyrics, and choreography epitomizes everything I love about Broadway musicals.

This production had excellent performances. Julie Benko was note perfect as Sarah Brown and played well against Jacob Dickey as Sky Masterson. Hayley Podschun was spot on as Miss Adelaide. The whole show just worked for me. It isn’t the absolutely best cast I’ve ever seen for it - that would be Steven Pasquale as Sky Masterson and Phillipa Soo as Sarah Brown at the Kennedy Center Broadway Center Stage production a few years ago. (I’ve also seen the show on Broadway at least twice.) But it was still excellent and all of us enjoyed it.

By the way, I also ran into a storytelling friend who was seeing the show with a group of her friends. This sort of coincidence happens to me a lot. And I like that aspect of living in the D.C. area.

I got back from LoserFest on Sunday afternoon and on Tuesday afternoon I was off to New York for a few days. The official reason for my trip was the premiere of a Yiddish opera. But, me being me, I also had to throw in three musicals and a museum excursion.

When I got to New York, I walked over to my hotel. I had planned to go down to Little Italy for the San Gennaro festival. But it was drizzly and I was tired and, as much as I have fond memories of eating zeppoli at the Feast in my home town, I just wasn’t really in the mood for greasy overpriced food. I did stick to the Italian theme and got cheap pizza. For what it’s worth, $1 Pizza now costs $1.50 a slice, but they haven’t changed the name. (It does also cost extra to add toppings. I like my pizza with mushrooms and black olives, by the way.) It was perfectly adequate and filling, allowing me to collapse happily with a book.

On Wednesday, I had plans for seeing two Broadway shows. I didn’t really do anything touristy in the morning because I had a bit of storytelling business to attend to and I wanted to get further on with a book club book I was in the middle of. After getting a smoothie for lunch, I went to the first of the two shows I had tickets for - the matinee performance of Maybe Happy Ending. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, the premise sounds really strange. Two decommissioned helperbots (i.e. robots that act as domestic companions to people) live across the hall from each other in a complex for retired helperbots. Claire’s charger fails, leading her to beg to borrow Oliver’s charger. This eventually leads them to a relationship. Oliver believes that his former owner, James, will come for him some day, but when Claire expresses a desire to go to Jeju Island (where James now lives) to see the fireflies there, Oliver joins her on a road trip. I thought the show was really sweet and I liked the jazz music used throughout it. I also thought the issues it raised about whether robots can feel the same emotions as humans and the ethics of robot to human relationships were handled well. Overall, this is a clever and original musical and well worth seeing. As an aside, the bio of HwaBoon in the “who’s who in the cast” section of the program is almost certainly the best cast bio I have ever read in a theatre program. Highly recommended.

My evening theatre excursion was Heathers the Musical. I liked the movie it was based on and I have nothing against dark and violent musicals. Unfortunately this show has a fan base of shrieking teenagers who were never taught proper audience behavior. The constant screaming at any mildly amusing line and loud stomping of feet really detracted from the show. That’s a pity because there is some good material and some fine performances. In particular, Erin Morton was excellent as Martha. File this under shows I won’t go to see again, along with Wicked and Six for similar reasons.

I had a bit of shopping I wanted to do on Thursday during the day. An excursion to a dance wear store didn’t yield a brown unitard, but did yield a long-sleeved white leotard that can be died to the correct color for my costuming purposes. And I have a reliable source of tights in pretty much any color I might want. I still need a bunny tail and ears and an apron which I can cross-stitch. But I have a few months before I need this to be done. I could have bought the ears at a costume store one of my friends had mentioned, but the store was more crowded than I wanted to deal with.

I should also note that I’d never noticed the upside-down A in the Herald Square signs before. One of my Facebook friends solved the mystery. That A represents the shape of Herald Square which is really more of a triangle with extended legs.



Anyway, the actual purpose of the trip had been to see the opera The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language at YIVO. I had enough time to check out a few exhibits, including one about people who rescued Yiddish books in Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) during World War II and one on Jewish artists in Lithuania. The latter, alas, failed to mention any of my artistic cousins. As for the opera, it’s based on the true story of Yudel Mark’s attempt to write a complete dictionary of the Yiddish language, despite the insistence of Max Weinreich that it wasn’t essential to capture every Yiddish word. The conflict between the two men was interesting and provided some opportunity for comedy. I didn’t find the music particularly memorable, but the performances were good and I was glad I’d had the opportunity to see it.

By the way, on the way back to my hotel, I stopped at Aubi & Ramsa, which specializes in liquor-infused ice cream. I got the Old Fashioned, made with Woodford Reserve bourbon and Cointreau. It was very tasty and the place gives new meaning to the term “ice cream bar.”



I’d decided I should use Friday to go to a museum I’d never been to before. Several of my friends were enthusing over the recently renovated Frick Collection. The only place you can take pictures inside it is the courtyard.



For the most part, I found the decorative arts, e.g. the wallpaper and ceilings, to be more impressive than the actual art collection. But I generally prefer modern art to old masters. I will say that they have a nice app that lets you look up info on the endless array of portraits of rich people, shepherdesses, and/or rich women dressed up as shepherdesses. (The biblical scenes are a bit better or, at least, less fluffy.) I’m glad I went to see it, but there are other museums in New York which I prefer. I will also note that their cafe is one of the few places remaining anywhere that serves a Caesar salad with actual anchovies on it.

I decided to spend some time in the afternoon strolling around Central Park. Back in high school, I went to a Saturday science program at Columbia University, which is where I met my 10th grade boyfriend. We had classes in the morning and periodic afternoon special lectures. On the Saturday afternoons when we didn’t have a lecture, he and I would often go to Central Park. My funniest memory of that was that we had an obligatory stop at a store that sold telephones, which he collected. Even 50ish years later, that’s still my major mental association with Central Park. That store is, of course, long gone. So I settled for looking at people playing with remote controlled yachts on the lake and listening to various street musicians. I also had to take a photo of the Alice in Wonderland statue.



I had bought a ticket to see the musical This Is Not a Drill at York Theatre on Friday evening. I realized that the Upper East Side branch of Pastrami Queen is just a few blocks from there, so I decided to fulfill my periodic need for Jewish deli food. I got my standard order - a tongue sandwich, pickles, kasha knish, and Doctor Brown’s diet cream soda. It was delicious.



By the way, I posted that photo to the Save the Deli Facebook group and got over 300 likes for it! Plus, of course (and alas), people telling me I was doing it wrong because the rye bread is unseeded and I prefer tongue to pastrami and I like cream soda, not cel-ray. But most of the comments were positive.

As for This Is Not a Drill, the premise is that a group of people are at a resort in Hawaii when there’s an announcement over the radio about a North Korean ballistic missile alert. This is based on an actual event in 2018, by the way. Since this is musical theatre, all of the people at the resort have relationship issues, which they resolve in song during the 38 minutes between the announcement and the revelation that yes, actually, it was a drill. I liked a lot of the music and the performers were good. But I thought the story was rather thin and predictable.

I took a train home early on Saturday. I ended up calling into my travel book club from the food court at Union Station shortly after I got to D.C., then took the metro home. I finished off my theatre binging on Sunday with Damn Yankees at Arena Stage, but I already wrote about that. (Short version: it’s wonderful and you should go see it if you’re local-ish.)

The biggest thing I did in July was go to Minneapolis for the National Puzzlers’ League Convention, which will get its own entry.

As for other things in July, I had a few of my usual activities, including my Litvak genealogy mentoring group and playing board games over zoom. I also had a couple of other zoom meetings - one to get an introduction to the app for the Jewish genealogy conference I was going to in August and another for planning for the 2026 Women’s Storytelling Festival.

Physical Therapy: I finally had my first PT appointment. The PT said that my knee issues were actually due to having strained my patellar tendon and he gave me a series of exercises to help strengthen the surrounding muscles, as well as the tendon itself. The most challenging is the wall sit, largely because I don’t have an obvious smooth stretch of wall to use for them. My doors all have indented panels in them. And most of my wall space has things against it (either furniture like bookshelves or boxes of stuff).

Baseball: The Washington Nationals always play an early (11 a.m.) game on the Fourth of July. This year they were playing my Red Sox, so I couldn’t resist getting a ticket. It was very hot out and my phone overheated, so I didn’t get any pictures. Despite that I had a great time watching the BoSox demolish the Nats, with a final score of 11-2. By the way, this was just a few days after Wilyer Abreu became the first player since 1958 to hit an inside-the-park home run and a grand slam in the same game.

After the game, I stopped by Bereshovsky’s Deli (attached to Gatsby) and got a potato knish and a can of Dr. Brown’s diet cream soda. It’s not like a real New York deli, but the knish was decent and I would probably be willing to eat there again.

The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical: On Saturday of the fourth of July weekend, I went to see this show at Signature Theatre. It was created by Joe Iconis, who is best known for Be More Chill, which I had never seen but heard good things about. This was, sadly, politically relevant and very very funny. Eric William Morris starred as Hunter S. Thompson, but the really notable performance was by George Abud as Richard M. Nixon. There was also some very interesting use of puppetry. Overall, this was well worth seeing and a good reminder of why I love Signature so much.

Profs and Pints: A few days after that, I went to a Profs and Pints talk on The Physics of Baseball given by Scott Paulson, a professor at James Madison University. His lecture was both entertaining and enlightening, with topics related to pitching, batting, and fielding. I liked his explanation of why knuckleballs behave so strangely and what the real impact of things like corked bats and the thin air of Mile High Stadium in Denver were. By the way, the event was at Penn Social, which is huge and has a very extensive bar menu and reasonably priced food with large portions. (I couldn’t finish the grilled cheese sandwich I ordered.)

Please Don’t Analyze This Dream: I had a dream that involved a very elaborate grey hat, sort of like a huge saucer shaped fascinator grafted onto a brimless cloche. I am seriously tempted to try to make this if I can find the right color and weight of felt. By the way, I think this may have been inspired by a photo I saw of Princess Beatrice.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Stuff:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which brings me to goals for 2025:

• Circumnavigate the globe going westward. I think I have a plan for somewhere in the October / November time frame.
  
  
• Go to at least 4 minor league baseball games.
  
  
• Finish 4 crafts projects.
  
  
• Read 80 books, with a stretch goal of 100.
  
  
• Finish going through my parents’ photographs and slides.
  
  
• Revisit / update my life list.
  
  
• Organize genealogy files.
  
  
• Go to at least 3 national parks.
  
  
• Learn to read Hangul (Korean writing system).
  
  
• Sort through cassette tapes.
  
  

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

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

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

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

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

Monday


• The Mess of New York City Vital Records - I was already pretty familiar with the work that Reclaim the Records has been doing, but this was interesting.
  
  
• Researching Small Landsmanshaftn Synagogues - this should have been interesting, but there wasn’t really enough detail.
  
  
• JRI-Poland Luncheon / JRI-Poland Annual Meeting. The luncheon talk by Andrew Carroll about his activities collecting war letters was particularly intriguing, though not especially relevant for me. I also liked that they’d seated people by what part of Poland their families were from, so I could chat with other people who had roots in Lomza Guberniya.
  
  
• BOF: Vinius District Research Group - good general discussion
  
  
• Landscape of Dreams: Jewish Genealogy in Canada - I’m still trying to figure out some details on how my great-uncle got to Canada (and then on to crossing the border to Buffalo).
  
  
• JewishGen Annual Meeting - mostly various awards. I was pleased to see that they named a new award series after Dick Plotz (who was a friend from both the puzzle world and the genealogy world).
  
  
• The Ron Arons Game Show Night - Jewpardy! is always a fun activity, but I was exhausted halfway through.
  

Tuesday

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


• The Importance of Memory in Building a Jewish future - Mostly an overview of the holdings at YIVO
  
  
• Litvak SIG Meeting - the annual catch-up of what is new.
  
  
• Holocaust Compensation and the United Restitution Organization - Since I am fairly sure both my father and grandfather got reparations money, I need to spend some time delving into these records
  
  
• Genealogy Death Match - This is another game show, featuring two people competing over whose records go further back. Old people like me are at an obvious disadvantage.
  
  

Wednesday

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


• Entering Eretz Israel: Getting Around Government Limitations - This covered legal possibilities during both the Ottoman Empire and the Britihs Mandate. I was particularly interested in learning about religious grounds for immigration, since I’ve been told my maternal grandfather studied at a yeshiva in Petah Tikva.
  
  
• When Traditional Genealogy and Genetic Genealogy Collide - I think everyone gets frustrated over people who expect either one path or the other to “cousin hunting” to be the be all and end all to solving genealogy mysteries. Unfortunately, this talk didn’t really come to an answer.
  
  
• BOF: Tracing the Tribe - Tracing the Tribe is definitely one of the better Jewish Genealogy groups on Facebook. This was an interesting and amusing talk by one of the moderators of it.
  
  
• Jewish American Life Beyond New York: The Industrial Removal Office, 1901-1917 - Most of this was focused on the East Coast, Midwest, and Great Plains, so was not particularly relevant for me, though there was some discussion of cities like Atlanta (where a large branch of my father’s family settled). There was, alas, not really any discussion of the Pacific Northwest, where my earliest immigrants from Lithuania to America went. Still, there are some sources I should check out.
  
  
• Gala Banquet - Arthur Kurzweil was the banquet speaker. He spoke well enough but didn’t really say anything I didn’t already know.
  
  

Thursday


• Letters Have Wings: Digitizing, Annotating, and Exhibiting Family Letters - I was volunteering as a session manager for this session. This had some good material about how to preserve and document family letters.
  
  
• Jewish Gen Belarus Research Division Meeting / Jewish Gen Belarus Research Division Luncheon - There was some material about the history of Belarus in light of the 1905 Russian revolution, but not a lot on good resources.
  
  
• Mentoring - I spent a couple of hours helping people find some Lithuanian data. I always enjoy doing this, since I benefited a lot from other people helping me when I first started doing genealogy.
  
  

Overall, the conference was reasonably useful though being injured was annoying. I traveled onward to New York on Friday. I will write about that in the next entry.

I do actually do things when I’m home sometimes.

Whoops: Stories About Mistakes: I was part of this Better Said Than Done storytelling show at Clare and Don’s Beach Shack in Falls Church. The show was sold out, but that is mostly because it’s a tiny place. The show was wonderful. I was telling a new story about my terrible sense of direction. And, given the theme, it was appropriate that I left out two prime examples of this. The more notorious example among many of my friends has to do with the time I couldn’t find the rental car return at La Guardia Airport, so I drove to the airport terminal and followed an Avis bus. The other one involves why GPS does not actually help. Still, I got plenty of laughs with what I did remember to include. (By the way, I told the story again at the Voices in the Glen story swap this weekend and did better with it, though it still needs more refinement.)

I also got a photo of myself that I don't actually hate.



The Usual Stuff: Knitting Group. A Grimm Keepers discussion of The White Bride and the Black Bride, which Tim informed us is based partly on a story about Bertha Broadfoot, the mother of Charlemagne. My Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) mentoring session, in which I was able to help a couple of people with South African records. My on-line needles and crafts group. Two nights of playing board games. The afore mentioned Voices in the Glen story swap. The Crones and Tomes book club discussion of Lessons in Chemistry which the group was strongly divided about. (For the record, I loved it.)

Lots of Yarn: Last Monday, I went over to my friend, Kim’s, house to help her go through her yarn stash, which proved to be much larger than she thought it was. I explained to her how to calculate if she had enough of a given yarn for a pattern, which needs to be based on yardage of a skein, not weight. And I ended up taking four huge bags home, some of which I will use, but much of which I will give away.

By the way, going over to other people’s houses makes me feel better about my level of clutter at home.

Mindplay: Sunday night, Cindy and I went to see Mindplay at Arena Stage. This is a very weird one man show by Vinny DePonto that is a mixture of mentalism and his personal story about dealing with his grandfather’s dementia, which got him interested in how memory work. Much of the show involves audience participation. Before the show, everyone is asked to fill out a slip of paper with a question on it and put it into an envelope on which they write their first name, last initial, and seat number. We verified that we did not have the same question, though I don’t know how many different questions there are. The show opens with a phone ringing on the stage and a person coming up to answer it and relay things to the audience. When I saw a review of a previous production (in Los Angeles), it suggested that the person who did this was randomly chosen from the audience, but a slip in the program we got suggested it was the stage manager and gave her biography. She seemed to be unprepared for things that happened, but maybe she’s just a good actress. Anyway, much of the show consisted of DePonto’s interactions with random people in the audience and I was definitely in the “please don’t call on me” mode. He started with throwing balloons into the audience - and his first attempt at choosing someone that way was a failure since the person who caught the marked balloon clearly didn’t speak English well and he had to ask them to throw the balloon to someone else. He asked some questions and then had that person pop the balloon and reveal a paper inside that had exactly the answers they’d given. I found that to be a definite “how did he do that? moment.

There were other audience interactions that were along the same lines, where he asked someone a question and appeared to have predicted their answer. He also talked about memory and introduced the concept of a memory palace, which I was familiar with from the excellent book Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer. Incidentally, I have some issues with that technique because visual memory is much weaker for me than other sensory modes. For example, I am sitting in my living room right now and I cannot tell you what color my carpet is without looking. At any rate, he demonstrated his memory techniques by having a few audience members lead him to mnemonics for state capitals - and, apparently, couldn’t remember one of them, though I suspect (partly based on something at the end of the show) that this failure may have been contrived. It was more impressive that he could recite a random section from the complete works of Shakespeare verbatim. Incidentally, I was mildly annoyed that he mispronounced the word “mnemonic” as if it were “pneumonic.”

That was entertaining enough, but some of his other audience interactions made me uncomfortable. He said up front that he would not make any of the people he invited up on the stage uncomfortable or embarrassed, but I cringed at some of the things he elicited from them. He brought one woman to tears by getting her to talk about her deceased godmother. And, cringiest of all, had another woman talk about peeing her pants in public when she was small.

There were also a lot of complicated interactions with the set, which I don’t feel capable of describing. Overall, I was mostly entertained, but I hesitate to recommend this because of the cringe factor. And, of course, you can’t really know what to expect because so much depends on the audience members who get pulled on stage at any given performance.

WTF, Facebook: I was attempting to comment on a post about Samoa to note that, according to T-Mobil’s website, they do offer unlimited texting and data at 256 kbps in Samoa with many of their plans, but that American Samoa is not one of the 215 countries they include. And Facebook took down that comment as being against their community standards on spam because “it looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.” Huh?

Nielsen: I might not have opened this envelope, but I could see two dollar bills through the window in it. It turned out to be asking for an adult resident to fill out a brief survey in exchange for a $5 gift card. It’s not a lot of money, obviously, but it only took a few minutes and I got paid right away. I chose an Amazon gift card, on the grounds that there is always something I could use there.

I took a quick trip to New York last week. Late January / early February is a good time to go there, because hotel prices are fairly low. I was able to get a room in midtown for just over $100 a night. The primary purpose of the trip was seeing the Encores production of Once Upon a Mattress, but a little time browsing Time Out turned up three other shows I wanted to see, as well as a museum exhibit. And a quick look through the New York Adventure Club newsletter found a good way to fill in some of the rest of my time.

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

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

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

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



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





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



If Women Ruled the World was another fascinating piece.



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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is getting long, so I’ll continue it in a separate post.

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.
  
  

Shameless Self Promotion: I’m part of a Halloween show on Monday night, October 30th from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. EDT. You can find details and register at the Artists Standing Strong Together website It’s free, but donations are gladly accepted.

Celebrity Death Watch: James M. Hoge was a journalist and publisher, best known as the editor of Foreign Affairs. Katherine Anderson sang with The Marvelettes. Evelyn Fox Keller was a physicist and went on to write about gender and science. Terry Kirkman performed with The Association and wrote their hit song “Cherish.” Barry Olivier founded the Berkeley Folk Music Festival. Burkey Belser designed the nutrition facts label. Matteo Messina Denaro was the head of the Italian Mafia. Pat Arrowsmith co-founded the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Theresa Kuruor was the first lady of Ghana from 2001 to 2009. I met and shook hands with her husband, John Kufuor, when I was in Ghana in 2006. Thomas Gambino was the caporegime of the Gambino crime family. Loyal Jones was an Appalachian folklorist. Burt Young was a character actor, best known for playing Paulie Pennino in the Rocky franchise. Herschel Savage was a porno actor. Buck Trent was a country musician who appeared on Hee Haw. Steven Lutwak wrote the score of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Martin Goetz held the first patent ever issued for software. Mark Goddard played Major Don West on Lost in Space, which was the first television series I ever saw in color. (We went over to a neighbor’s house to watch it, before we got a color TV of our own.) Rudolph Isley was one of the founding members of the Isley Brothers. Phyllis Coates played Lois Lane in the first season of the television series Adventures of Superman. Lara Parker played Angelique on Dark Shadows. Louise Gluck was a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and Nobel laureate. Piper Laurie was an actress whose roles included Carrie’s mother in the movie version of Carrie. Suzanne Somers was an actress, best known for playing Chrissie on Three’s Company. Joanna Merlin originated the role of Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway. Don Laughlin was a gambling entrepreneur and the town of Laughlin, Nevada is named after him. Lee Elliot Berk was the president of Berklee College of Music, which was originally Schillinger house but was renamed for him by his father in 1954. Richard Roundtree was an actor, best known for playing Shaft. Robert Irwin was an installation artist. Richard Moll played the bailiff on Night Court

David McCallum played Ilya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Ducky Mallard in NCIS, as well as many other television and film roles. He also recorded four albums of instrumental music in the 1960’s and narrated spoken word recordings of literary stories.

Brooks Robinson played third base for the Baltimore Orioles. His record of 2870 career games at third base remains the most game played by any player in major league history at a single position. He is best known for his skill as a defensive player. He also played a significant role in developing the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball and, specifically, the York Revolution.

Diane Feinstein was a long-serving senator from California. She’d come into political prominence as the mayor of San Francisco after the assassination of George Moscone and appeared to be particularly effective in that role. She broke a lot of glass ceilings for women in politics and I really wish she’d left office as her health declined instead of sticking it out until her death.

Tim Wakefield pitched for the Red Sox for 17 years. He is the all-time leader in innings pitched by a Red Sox pitcher. It’s probably worth noting that being a knuckleballer contributed to his longevity. He died of brain cancer at the young age of 57.

Dick Butkus played football for the Chicago Bears for 8 years, followed by a successful career as an actor and television pitchman. I think people of my generation will always associate him with Miller Lite.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: Kek Robien died last week. I met her over 20 years ago, when we were both on a tour of Papua New Guinea and we stayed in touch via holiday cards and Facebook, as well as meeting for dinner in Chicago. She was over 90, so the news wasn’t terribly surprising. But I admired her for staying active and traveling for most of those years.

I also heard of the deaths of two people I grew up with. Matt McDermott was a year younger than me and lived next door while I was a kid. And Danny Goodman was a year older than me and was very friendly with my brother.

The Medicare Saga: I finally managed to successfully get into my Social Security account and change my password and, most importantly, update my phone number for two-factor authentication. I also discovered that they still haven’t finished reviewing my medicare application. It isn’t at all clear why, since it says that is normally takes 2 to 4 weeks and they started the review on September 22nd. Unless, maybe they are counting from when I brought in the documents they asked for (e.g. my birth certificate), which was October 2nd. At that time, the guy I worked with said it would take about one week. Yes, I am very frustrated and stressed over this.

The Tell-Tale Heart: Last Thursday night, my friend Cindy and I went to see Synetic Theatre’s production of The Tell-Tale Heart. This is a theatre that specializes in movement-based shows, sort of a cross between mime and ballet. This production also had a lot of narration and weird music. And, for some reason I can’t explain, vultures, including one on stilts. (That is, dancers dressed as vultures. Not actual birds.) I thought it was possible I’d forgotten something about Poe’s story, but I did go and re-read it and, no, there’s not even a crow or raven there. It was all very pretty, but too weird and too far from the source material for me.

Bazaar by Jose Andres: Before a concert on Friday night, my friend Kathleen and I had dinner at Bazaar by Jose Andres, which is in the Waldorf Astoria. (Which, by the way, I kept thinking was the Ritz Carlton.) It was a very extravagant meal. This is the sort of place with a lot of small dishes, many of them just one or two bites. My favorite was something called “Neptune’s Pillows” which was spicy tuna on some sort of sesame toast thing. There was a very interesting dish of brussels sprouts with grapes and apricots and lemon foam that looked like ice on top of it. There was also coconut rice and onion soup and tomato bread. I know Kathleen got a crab louie cone and a plate of different type of ham, and a taco which had gold leaf and caviar in it. There’s probably something else I’ve forgotten. The food and the service were exquisite, but it was quite pricy.

Randy Rainbow For President: The reason we were downtown on Friday night was to see Randy Rainbow’s show. For those who are somehow unfamiliar with him, he does parody songs on political themes, often based on show tunes. He’s very funny. I enjoyed the show, though I thought it was a bit longer than it needed to be.

Baseball: I don’t really care who wins the World Series this year. I feel sorry for the Phillies having had their collapse - and that was after Bryce Harper stole home in NLCS Game 5.

As for what really matters in baseball (namely, the Grand Unified Theory of Politics, Economics, and the American League East), I was pleased to see that the BoSox have given Craig Breslow the Chief of Baseball Operations job. The guy is smart - with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale. He was accepted to NYU Medical School but has postponed that a few times already, so I doubt that medicine is really his future career. I hope he’ll find them some depth in the pitching line-up.

To Be Continued: This is long enough for now, so I’ll put a write-up of my trip to Boston last weekend in a separate entry.

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.