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September So Far
Sep. 20th, 2022 03:17 pmI am, as usual, behind on everything. Sigh.
Celebrity Death Watch: Marilyn Loden coined the term “glass ceiling.” Lamont Dozier wrote and/or produced a lot of Motown hits. Darryl Hunt played bass guitar for The Pogues. Olivia Newton-John was a singer and actress. Raymond Briggs wrote and illustrated British children’s books. Richard Caruso founded Integra LifeSciences, a successful manufacturer of artificial skin. Robyn Griggs acted in soap operas as a young adult. David Kay led American weapons inspection efforts in Iraq. Clayton Jacobson II developed the jet ski. John Wockenfuss played baseball, primarily for the Detroit Tigers. Tom Weisskopf was a golfer who won several PGA championships own the 1970’s. Jerry Allison was the drummer for The Crickets and wrote several songs, including “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.” Esther Cooper Jackson was a civil rights activist. Len Dawson was a football player, primarily for the Kansas City Chiefs. Kurt Gottfried cofounded the Union of Concerned Scientists. Roland Messier was the White House executive pastry chef from 1980 to 2004. Robert LuPone originated the role of Zach in A Chorus Line on Broadway and co-founded the MCC Theater, but was never as well known as his sister, Patti. Peter Eckersley was a cyber security activist. Frank Drake was an astronomer. Peter Straub wrote horror novels. Moon Landrieu was the mayor of New Orleans for most of the 1970’s. Earl J. Silbert was the first prosecutor in the Watergate case. Tina Ramirez founded Ballet Hispanico. Bernard Shaw was the lead news anchor for CNN for over 20 years. Rommy Hunt Revson invented the scrunchie. Lance Mackey was a four-time Iditarod champion. James Polshek was an architect, whose work included the Clinton Presidential Center and the Newseum. Lowry Mars co-founded Clear Channel Communications. Ramsey Lewis was a jazz pianist and composer. Ken Starr was a lawyer, probably best known for writing the Starr Report which led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Roxanne Lowit was a fashion photographer. Jean-Luc Goddard was a film director. Fred Franzia made cheap wine. Irene Pappas was an actress, probably best known for playing the widow in the film version of Zorba the Greek. Liam Holden was the last person sentenced to death in the UK, though his sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment and his conviction was overturned later in response to revelations about the torture used to extract his confession to killing a British soldier in Northern Ireland. Brian Binnie was one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, built by Scaled Composites. Nick Holonyak invented the red LED.
Norah Vincent died in early July, but her death was not publicly announced until mid-August. She was most famous for her book Salf-Made Man, in which she described her experiences living as a man for 18 months.
David McCullough was a historian. He won the Pulitzer prize for his books about Harry S Truman and John Adams.
Marc Lapadula taught film studies at Yale University. He also lectured as part of One Day University and I’d been to a couple of his lectures about significant American movies.
Anne Heche was an actress who died in a rather spectacular traffic accident. She was probably at least as well known for her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. I was able to use one of my ghoul pool trades for her, so she earned me 32 points (including the 12 point uniqueness bonus, which really only worked due to some convenient timing on the trade).
Barry Boehm was the founding director of the Center for Systems and Software Engineeringg at USC. He was something of a fixture in software engineering and systems engineering circles, and did important work on cost modeling, models for software development, and systems engineering processes. I scribbled down various words of wisdom from him at numerous conferences over the years, including, “the standards have been tailored so much that the suit has become a vest.”
Lily Renee was a comic book artist. She escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria to England as a teenager, before coming to the United States and becoming one of the first women in the comics industry. She was also the subject of a book by Trina Robbins which revived interest in her career. She earned me 25 ghoul pool points, which includes the 12 point uniqueness bonus.
I hope you don’t really need me to tell you who Mikhail Gorbachev was. He presided over the break-up of the Soviet Union peacefully and got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
Barbara Ehrenreich was a nonfiction writer, specializing in social issues. Her most famous book was Nickel and Dimed, which discusses trying to live on minimum wage jobs. I have been hearing the term “toxic positivity” quite a lot lately and a lot of her writing touches on that subject.
Marsha Hunt was pretty much the last actress of her generation left when she died at age 104. Her career was cut short by McCarthyism, leading her to become an activist. She earned me 14 ghoul pool points.
You really really don’t need me to tell you who Queen Elizabeth II was. For people of my generation, she was the one British monarch throughout our lives. I think the most interesting thing about her was her World War II service as a driver and mechanic. Whatever one might think of the monarchy, she fulfilled her role with dignity and grace. She earned me 20 ghoul pool points.
Non-Celebrity Death Watch: I only learned a week or so ago that Mort Rau died at the end of July. I knew him as spaceman on flyer talk and got to spend time with him at a few FT events, including OzFest. We had a mutual professional interest in space systems so had plenty to talk about. He was a nice guy and I’m sorry to see him join the ranks of FTers who’ve flown off into the sunset.
Baseball: I know the season isn’t actually over, but the Mets are the only team I follow who are still in it. The Nats were particularly pathetic, even worse than the Royals. (I follow the Royals because a guy from my home town used to pitch for them.) And I can’t even think about my Red Sox without distress, though they haven’t actually been eliminated from the wild card race yet.
National Book Festival: I spent the afternoon of September 3rd volunteering at the National Book Festival. They were a bit disorganized this year, sending out the info for the zoom training sessions rather last minute. And I got my email with my volunteer assignment early in the morning the day before the festival. That assignment turned out to be program distribution. I was stationed at the L Street South entrance to the Convention Center. People were surprisingly enthusiastic in their gratitude for being handed a program. Some people (mostly men) were astonished that the program was free. (As was the entire festival.) I was mostly able to direct people to where they wanted to go, but I did misdirect one person (in fact, one of my neighbors!) because it was still early and I had forgotten that, for some ungodly reason, the convention center map has north on the left. Standing for 5 hours was tiring, but I’m still glad I did it and I’ll do it again in future years, schedule permitting.
My Birthday / Storytelling Workshop: I’d had an early birthday celebration on the Friday night before my birthday, in the form of going out to my favorite Thai restaurant (Elephant Jumps in Falls Church) with a friend. Then on Sunday September 4th, I turned 64. I celebrated by going to a storytelling workshop (over zoom), having to do with tall tales and liars’ contests. Bi Lepp was the perfect person to lead this and it was a fun afternoon.
Getting Rid of Books: I made a used bookstore run on Friday the 9th, getting rid of 59 books and bringing home only 13 with my trade credit. (I still have 30 odd dollars of trade credit, however.) The next day I drove to Baltimore and donated 77 books to The Book Thing. There are still too many books in my house.
JGSGW: Tyler Ainbinder gave a very interesting talk about Jewish Immigrants in Urban America. He talked about several things that I hadn’t already known. For example, the Statue of Liberty was funded by French radicals who were protesting the monarchy. 1 in 100 immigrants were turned away at Ellis Island, generally for health reasons. When you see pictures of people climbing the stairs to the hall, that was a test to make sure their lungs and legs were healthy. One thing that struck most of us as weird was that immigrants had to answer that they did not have a job that they were going to. This was because of a concern that they would have accepted low pay, which would take jobs away from people already in America. I’ll take Things I Wouldn’t Have Imagined for $600, Alex.
The Usual: My usual routine includes lots of other things over zoom. I have a once a month session on Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) research discussion with JGSGW, for which I am the primary Subject Matter Expert. I go to a crafts group on Thursdays, which provides for time to work on projects (an on-going cross-stitch in my case) and good conversation, always including books. The discussion group on Grimm’s Fairy Tales started up again with “The Handless Maiden,” a story that poses a number of difficulties. And I play games (mostly Code Names) with friends several nights a week. As I like to say, I am retired from work, not from life.
FT Dinner: I had dinner a week ago with a couple of Flyertalk people at Farmers Fishers Bakers in Georgetown. The restaurant is at Washington Harbor, which is always a bit of a pain in the neck since, while it isn’t terribly far from the Foggy Bottom metro station, part of the route is rather pedestrian unfriendly. Anyway, I had a nice cocktail called a Southside, which had gin, lemon, mint, and clementine bitters. My seared tuna was just okay, as it was a little overcooked. I also had coffee ice cream for dessert, which was fine. The service was so-so, which is my usual experience at Founding Farmers affiliated restaurants. But the conversation (primarily about travel) was good and that’s the important thing.
No Place To Go: I saw this musical at Signature Theatre this past Thursday. It was written in 2012 and is somewhat dated given the rise in remote work, but the premise is that an “information refiner,” who is a “permanent part-time worker” has to decide whether or not to relocate when his employer announces they are moving - to Mars. It’s reasonably amusing and the music (played by a three-man band) was enjoyable. I was particularly impressed by Ben Boker, who played the saxophone at the performance I was at. But the whole thing works largely because Bobby Smith, who is well-known to all regular Signature attendees, is excellent. There are some ver funny moments, such as the song “Aging Middle Class Parents,” in which he considers moving in with his (or his wife’s) parents as a way to avoid moving. There’s also a running joke in which the last sandwich left in the conference room cries out to be eaten. There’s also a poignant song, “The Mighty Mench [sic],” which tells the story of a former employee who died. The key message is that people get more out of work than just a paycheck. Overall, this isn’t essential, but it was an enjoyable hour and a half.
The Color Purple: I was back at Signature on Saturday afternoon to see their production of The Color Purple. I’ve seen this show before (a touring production st the Kennedy Center) and thought it was just okay. But Signature made it outstanding, largely due to some excellent performances. I knew I was in for a treat when I saw that Nova Payton, one of the best actresses in the DC area, was starring as Celie. I was also very impressed by French Davis as Sofia and Danielle J. Summons as Shug Avery. There was also great choreography - especially for the song “African Homeland.” There are major holes in the book. I find Mister’s reformation completely impossible to believe, for example. But the show was both entertaining and moving. This type of performance is why I’m a long-time subscriber to Signature Theatre.
Story Swap: We had the monthly Voices in the Glen story swap on Saturday night. People are gearing up for Halloween. Myself included, as I did my first telling of a Russian folk tale (The Coffin Lid) that is, essentially, a vampire story. I also particularly enjoyed hearing a few stories from The Devil’s Storybook by Natalie Babbitt.
Bernstein’s MASS: On Sunday, a friend and I went to see Leonard Bernstein’s MASS at the Kennedy Center. This was commissioned by Jackie Kennedy for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971. Before the performance, we had lunch at the KC Cafe (overpriced and unexciting, but convenient) and checked out the new exhibit about JFK in the Gallery on the Terrace level.
As for the theatrical work (and it is theatrical, incorporating dance with the wide ranging music), it is very much a product of its turbulent times, which actually makes it relevant in these turbulent times. I’d only heard excerpts before, so was not entirely prepared for the complexity of the complete piece. I was glad for the supertitles (which translated the gist of the Latin mass portions, as well as English texts, which were sung clearly enough that I didn’t need the supertitles for them for the most part). Will Liverman gave an excellent performance as the Celebrant, which is a demanding role, given the emotional intensity of the piece, especially the Fraction. James Gaffigan conducted the orchestra and was less showy than some other conductors I’ve seen over the years (including Leonard Bernstein himself). I’d say my favorite section is the Credo, in which various members of the congregation sing about their conflicting beliefs. I’ll also note that the most memorable lyric is “half of the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election; half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction,” which was a gift from Paul Simon to Bernstein. (The primary lyricist was Stephen Schwartz.) At any rate, this was definitely worth seeing and it made me feel privileged to have access to the cultural life here.
Celebrity Death Watch: Marilyn Loden coined the term “glass ceiling.” Lamont Dozier wrote and/or produced a lot of Motown hits. Darryl Hunt played bass guitar for The Pogues. Olivia Newton-John was a singer and actress. Raymond Briggs wrote and illustrated British children’s books. Richard Caruso founded Integra LifeSciences, a successful manufacturer of artificial skin. Robyn Griggs acted in soap operas as a young adult. David Kay led American weapons inspection efforts in Iraq. Clayton Jacobson II developed the jet ski. John Wockenfuss played baseball, primarily for the Detroit Tigers. Tom Weisskopf was a golfer who won several PGA championships own the 1970’s. Jerry Allison was the drummer for The Crickets and wrote several songs, including “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.” Esther Cooper Jackson was a civil rights activist. Len Dawson was a football player, primarily for the Kansas City Chiefs. Kurt Gottfried cofounded the Union of Concerned Scientists. Roland Messier was the White House executive pastry chef from 1980 to 2004. Robert LuPone originated the role of Zach in A Chorus Line on Broadway and co-founded the MCC Theater, but was never as well known as his sister, Patti. Peter Eckersley was a cyber security activist. Frank Drake was an astronomer. Peter Straub wrote horror novels. Moon Landrieu was the mayor of New Orleans for most of the 1970’s. Earl J. Silbert was the first prosecutor in the Watergate case. Tina Ramirez founded Ballet Hispanico. Bernard Shaw was the lead news anchor for CNN for over 20 years. Rommy Hunt Revson invented the scrunchie. Lance Mackey was a four-time Iditarod champion. James Polshek was an architect, whose work included the Clinton Presidential Center and the Newseum. Lowry Mars co-founded Clear Channel Communications. Ramsey Lewis was a jazz pianist and composer. Ken Starr was a lawyer, probably best known for writing the Starr Report which led to the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Roxanne Lowit was a fashion photographer. Jean-Luc Goddard was a film director. Fred Franzia made cheap wine. Irene Pappas was an actress, probably best known for playing the widow in the film version of Zorba the Greek. Liam Holden was the last person sentenced to death in the UK, though his sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment and his conviction was overturned later in response to revelations about the torture used to extract his confession to killing a British soldier in Northern Ireland. Brian Binnie was one of the test pilots for SpaceShipOne, built by Scaled Composites. Nick Holonyak invented the red LED.
Norah Vincent died in early July, but her death was not publicly announced until mid-August. She was most famous for her book Salf-Made Man, in which she described her experiences living as a man for 18 months.
David McCullough was a historian. He won the Pulitzer prize for his books about Harry S Truman and John Adams.
Marc Lapadula taught film studies at Yale University. He also lectured as part of One Day University and I’d been to a couple of his lectures about significant American movies.
Anne Heche was an actress who died in a rather spectacular traffic accident. She was probably at least as well known for her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres. I was able to use one of my ghoul pool trades for her, so she earned me 32 points (including the 12 point uniqueness bonus, which really only worked due to some convenient timing on the trade).
Barry Boehm was the founding director of the Center for Systems and Software Engineeringg at USC. He was something of a fixture in software engineering and systems engineering circles, and did important work on cost modeling, models for software development, and systems engineering processes. I scribbled down various words of wisdom from him at numerous conferences over the years, including, “the standards have been tailored so much that the suit has become a vest.”
Lily Renee was a comic book artist. She escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria to England as a teenager, before coming to the United States and becoming one of the first women in the comics industry. She was also the subject of a book by Trina Robbins which revived interest in her career. She earned me 25 ghoul pool points, which includes the 12 point uniqueness bonus.
I hope you don’t really need me to tell you who Mikhail Gorbachev was. He presided over the break-up of the Soviet Union peacefully and got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
Barbara Ehrenreich was a nonfiction writer, specializing in social issues. Her most famous book was Nickel and Dimed, which discusses trying to live on minimum wage jobs. I have been hearing the term “toxic positivity” quite a lot lately and a lot of her writing touches on that subject.
Marsha Hunt was pretty much the last actress of her generation left when she died at age 104. Her career was cut short by McCarthyism, leading her to become an activist. She earned me 14 ghoul pool points.
You really really don’t need me to tell you who Queen Elizabeth II was. For people of my generation, she was the one British monarch throughout our lives. I think the most interesting thing about her was her World War II service as a driver and mechanic. Whatever one might think of the monarchy, she fulfilled her role with dignity and grace. She earned me 20 ghoul pool points.
Non-Celebrity Death Watch: I only learned a week or so ago that Mort Rau died at the end of July. I knew him as spaceman on flyer talk and got to spend time with him at a few FT events, including OzFest. We had a mutual professional interest in space systems so had plenty to talk about. He was a nice guy and I’m sorry to see him join the ranks of FTers who’ve flown off into the sunset.
Baseball: I know the season isn’t actually over, but the Mets are the only team I follow who are still in it. The Nats were particularly pathetic, even worse than the Royals. (I follow the Royals because a guy from my home town used to pitch for them.) And I can’t even think about my Red Sox without distress, though they haven’t actually been eliminated from the wild card race yet.
National Book Festival: I spent the afternoon of September 3rd volunteering at the National Book Festival. They were a bit disorganized this year, sending out the info for the zoom training sessions rather last minute. And I got my email with my volunteer assignment early in the morning the day before the festival. That assignment turned out to be program distribution. I was stationed at the L Street South entrance to the Convention Center. People were surprisingly enthusiastic in their gratitude for being handed a program. Some people (mostly men) were astonished that the program was free. (As was the entire festival.) I was mostly able to direct people to where they wanted to go, but I did misdirect one person (in fact, one of my neighbors!) because it was still early and I had forgotten that, for some ungodly reason, the convention center map has north on the left. Standing for 5 hours was tiring, but I’m still glad I did it and I’ll do it again in future years, schedule permitting.
My Birthday / Storytelling Workshop: I’d had an early birthday celebration on the Friday night before my birthday, in the form of going out to my favorite Thai restaurant (Elephant Jumps in Falls Church) with a friend. Then on Sunday September 4th, I turned 64. I celebrated by going to a storytelling workshop (over zoom), having to do with tall tales and liars’ contests. Bi Lepp was the perfect person to lead this and it was a fun afternoon.
Getting Rid of Books: I made a used bookstore run on Friday the 9th, getting rid of 59 books and bringing home only 13 with my trade credit. (I still have 30 odd dollars of trade credit, however.) The next day I drove to Baltimore and donated 77 books to The Book Thing. There are still too many books in my house.
JGSGW: Tyler Ainbinder gave a very interesting talk about Jewish Immigrants in Urban America. He talked about several things that I hadn’t already known. For example, the Statue of Liberty was funded by French radicals who were protesting the monarchy. 1 in 100 immigrants were turned away at Ellis Island, generally for health reasons. When you see pictures of people climbing the stairs to the hall, that was a test to make sure their lungs and legs were healthy. One thing that struck most of us as weird was that immigrants had to answer that they did not have a job that they were going to. This was because of a concern that they would have accepted low pay, which would take jobs away from people already in America. I’ll take Things I Wouldn’t Have Imagined for $600, Alex.
The Usual: My usual routine includes lots of other things over zoom. I have a once a month session on Litvak (Lithuanian Jewish) research discussion with JGSGW, for which I am the primary Subject Matter Expert. I go to a crafts group on Thursdays, which provides for time to work on projects (an on-going cross-stitch in my case) and good conversation, always including books. The discussion group on Grimm’s Fairy Tales started up again with “The Handless Maiden,” a story that poses a number of difficulties. And I play games (mostly Code Names) with friends several nights a week. As I like to say, I am retired from work, not from life.
FT Dinner: I had dinner a week ago with a couple of Flyertalk people at Farmers Fishers Bakers in Georgetown. The restaurant is at Washington Harbor, which is always a bit of a pain in the neck since, while it isn’t terribly far from the Foggy Bottom metro station, part of the route is rather pedestrian unfriendly. Anyway, I had a nice cocktail called a Southside, which had gin, lemon, mint, and clementine bitters. My seared tuna was just okay, as it was a little overcooked. I also had coffee ice cream for dessert, which was fine. The service was so-so, which is my usual experience at Founding Farmers affiliated restaurants. But the conversation (primarily about travel) was good and that’s the important thing.
No Place To Go: I saw this musical at Signature Theatre this past Thursday. It was written in 2012 and is somewhat dated given the rise in remote work, but the premise is that an “information refiner,” who is a “permanent part-time worker” has to decide whether or not to relocate when his employer announces they are moving - to Mars. It’s reasonably amusing and the music (played by a three-man band) was enjoyable. I was particularly impressed by Ben Boker, who played the saxophone at the performance I was at. But the whole thing works largely because Bobby Smith, who is well-known to all regular Signature attendees, is excellent. There are some ver funny moments, such as the song “Aging Middle Class Parents,” in which he considers moving in with his (or his wife’s) parents as a way to avoid moving. There’s also a running joke in which the last sandwich left in the conference room cries out to be eaten. There’s also a poignant song, “The Mighty Mench [sic],” which tells the story of a former employee who died. The key message is that people get more out of work than just a paycheck. Overall, this isn’t essential, but it was an enjoyable hour and a half.
The Color Purple: I was back at Signature on Saturday afternoon to see their production of The Color Purple. I’ve seen this show before (a touring production st the Kennedy Center) and thought it was just okay. But Signature made it outstanding, largely due to some excellent performances. I knew I was in for a treat when I saw that Nova Payton, one of the best actresses in the DC area, was starring as Celie. I was also very impressed by French Davis as Sofia and Danielle J. Summons as Shug Avery. There was also great choreography - especially for the song “African Homeland.” There are major holes in the book. I find Mister’s reformation completely impossible to believe, for example. But the show was both entertaining and moving. This type of performance is why I’m a long-time subscriber to Signature Theatre.
Story Swap: We had the monthly Voices in the Glen story swap on Saturday night. People are gearing up for Halloween. Myself included, as I did my first telling of a Russian folk tale (The Coffin Lid) that is, essentially, a vampire story. I also particularly enjoyed hearing a few stories from The Devil’s Storybook by Natalie Babbitt.
Bernstein’s MASS: On Sunday, a friend and I went to see Leonard Bernstein’s MASS at the Kennedy Center. This was commissioned by Jackie Kennedy for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971. Before the performance, we had lunch at the KC Cafe (overpriced and unexciting, but convenient) and checked out the new exhibit about JFK in the Gallery on the Terrace level.
As for the theatrical work (and it is theatrical, incorporating dance with the wide ranging music), it is very much a product of its turbulent times, which actually makes it relevant in these turbulent times. I’d only heard excerpts before, so was not entirely prepared for the complexity of the complete piece. I was glad for the supertitles (which translated the gist of the Latin mass portions, as well as English texts, which were sung clearly enough that I didn’t need the supertitles for them for the most part). Will Liverman gave an excellent performance as the Celebrant, which is a demanding role, given the emotional intensity of the piece, especially the Fraction. James Gaffigan conducted the orchestra and was less showy than some other conductors I’ve seen over the years (including Leonard Bernstein himself). I’d say my favorite section is the Credo, in which various members of the congregation sing about their conflicting beliefs. I’ll also note that the most memorable lyric is “half of the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election; half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction,” which was a gift from Paul Simon to Bernstein. (The primary lyricist was Stephen Schwartz.) At any rate, this was definitely worth seeing and it made me feel privileged to have access to the cultural life here.
