fauxklore

Scraps of Paper: I have a bad habit of scribbling mysterious notes to myself on any handy piece of paper. This is, in general, evidence of why I got C’s in penmanship in elementary school. Here are a couple of things I managed to decipher.

“Art mirrors the audience, not the teller.” The context is obviously storytelling, but I have no idea who said this and/or who they were quoting. I do, however, think it’s an accurate statement.

I think this is something that got mentioned during High Holiday services. Kafka wrote a story about a leopard that entered a synagogue and roared before leaving town. Three weeks later, the leopard’s roar had become part of the liturgy.

Celebrity Death Watch: Note that I am trying not to fall behind because I am going on vacation soon and would rather have less to catch up on.

Samantha Eggar was an actress who appeared in such movies as Doctor Doolittle, as well as several horror movies. Yang Chen-Ning was a Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist. Sam Rivers was the bassist for Limp Bizkit. Anthony Jackson is credited with the development of the modern six-string bass. Jackie Ferrara was a sculptor. Sirikit was the queen consort of Thailand from 1950 to 2016. J. William Middendorf was the Secretary of the Navy in the mid-1970’s. Hamilton Smith won a Nobel Pize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on restriction enzymes. Prunella Scales was an actress, best known for playing Sybil in Fawlty Towers. Alison Knowles was an artist whose work defies my descriptive abilities.

Susan Stamberg was an NPR journalist. She co-hosted All Things Considered for 14 years. She also hosted Weekend Edition Sunday from 1987 to 1989, introducing the Sunday puzzle and bringing the Car Talk hosts to the attention of all. She was considered one of the founding mothers of National Public Radio and interviewed too many prominent people for me to attempt to list them.

June Lockhart was an actress, best known for playing TV mothers, in Lassie and Lost in Space. She was on my ghoul pool list and earned me 4 points.

Things I’ve Been Doing - Medical: I finally got in to see my dentist, which I’d been postponing mostly because my schedule has been chaotic. They’ve gotten a new sort of x-ray machine which is much quicker. I also got around to getting my flu shot and this year’s COVID vaccine. My arm was particularly sore this time around. It also probably didn’t help that I was sleep deprived because I’d been woken up at 2 a.m. by a helicopter circling over I-66.

Things I’ve Been Doing - Travel Related:I went to a Travelers’ Century Club luncheon. One person had a horrific story about breaking his hip on a trip to Surinam and having to be evacuated by canoe. There was also a guest speaker who gave an interesting presentation on travel medicine.

I’ve finally gotten all my travel arrangements set up for my upcoming vacation. I do still have a couple of chores related to that to get through. Plus, of course, little details like packing.

I’ve also got three other trips to make arrangements for.

Storytelling: The Washington Folk Festival went well, though the storytelling tent was a bit closer to one of the music tents than I would have preferred. At least the morris dancers weren’t right next to us. (They’re cute, but they’re noisy.)



I also had time to look at some of the art exhibits in another of the pavilions.





My set was titled Spare Change and consisted of stories about transformation. I explained that characters in folk tales are always turning into something and that, on my way to the festival, I had turned into a parking lot. The stories I told included an Albanian story that has the particularly charming detail of the main character being forced to collect back taxes from the snakes in a church, a Mongolian story about a camel, The Neglected Princess (an original story, which started out when I was reading about the decline in frog populations in an article in Smithsonian Magazine), and The Princess Who Turned Into a Flower Pot, which I’d learned years ago from a friend and had told at my brother’s wedding to his first wife. I thought it went very well. And I also enjoyed listening to stories by several other tellers.

I made it to the Scary Stories swap at Quince Orchard Library the other night. The drive up was mildly annoying, since there is always roadwork on the inner loop of the beltway. The really horrible drive was going home, because the state of Maryland decided it made sense to close 3 out of 4 lanes of the outer loop of the beltway for roadwork. Not that there was any actual evidence of anybody doing any roadwork. I find it mildly terrifying to be driving my little car with so many huge trucks surrounding me, knowing that if there were an accident involving one of them I would almost certainly not survive it. Fortunately nothing happened beyond it taking me two hours for what should be a 45 minute drive. At any rate, there was a good mix of stories. I told “Ida Black,” which has to do with a woman getting revenge on the man who had her hanged for witchcraft. Some other highlights included Jennifer’s rendition of “Mr. Fox” and a story about an adoptive mother confronted with a vampire baby.

By the way, somewhat related to “Mr. Fox,” our Brothers Grimm discussion group talked about The Murder Castle, which is a rather unsatisfying version of the same theme, with the added detail of a female assistant and the confusion about whose two sisters had previously been murdered (the assistant’s or the would-be victims.) It’s no wonder that story didn’t make it into later versions.

Voting: I did early voting a week ago. The really challenging decision this time was what to do about the Virginia Attorney General race. The Democratic candidate (Jay Jones) said terrible things that can be interpreted as advocating for political violence. But the Republican party is, in general, behaving in repugnant ways. Jason Miyares is anti-abortion and pro-death penalty and opposes gender-affirming care. I considered abstaining but held my nose and voted for Jones. I was much more enthusiastic about the gubernatorial race because I think Abigail Spanberger is an excellent candidate. I’m also a big fan of my delegate (Holly Siebold), who is running for reelection.

Loser Brunch: I drove to Frederick, Maryland for a Loser Brunch at The Wine Kitchen this past Sunday. The drive up wasn’t too bad so I got there early enough to have a look around a craft market along Carroll Creek. I couldn’t resist temptation when I saw Blind Date With a Book. The idea is that the books are wrapped up, so you don’t know what book you’re buying, but they tell you what genre it is, as well as what year and what its rating is on goodreads. Kathleen took a picture of me holding up my purchase.



As for its contents, the book proved to be The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, which I had read recently but didn’t actually own. It also came with an eye mask, a tea bag, 2 bookmarks and 3 stickers. Such a charming purchase!

Re: the actual brunch, the potato and mushroom hash I got was pretty good. (I went with the vegan option because I don’t like fried eggs.) The coffee, however, was excellent. It is apparently from Dublin Roasters, which is local to Frederick. But the real point of these things is the company, not the food, and, while there were only six of us, the conversation was lively. Overall, it made for a nice morning / early afternoon.

Another Colleague Gone: I heard that Lance Newman passed away recently. I worked with him for many years, including being his manager for a few of those and having him support me from one of my program office jobs. The last time I saw him was a couple of years ago, when our former secretary organized a luncheon reunion of sorts. It was just after his picture had been in the Washington Post, in an article about the first four African American students at a school in Arlington. He was a good engineer and a nice guy, smart and easy to work with. I will miss him.


A Rant About Scheduling: I am trying to be a responsible adult and schedule a couple of routine medical things. Labs are no issue, because they don’t require scheduling, per se, but just a drop in. The problem is that the person who schedules mammograms is not the same person who schedules anything else. So I had to go through the scheduler to get to the mammogram scheduler and then go back to the regular scheduler to schedule the blood pressure check. (Mammogram slots are a rarer commodity so it made snese to schedule that first.) The fact that I couldn’t do this on-line is particularly annoying to begin with, given my feelings about telephones.

I still have to schedule an ophthalmology appointment, but that is even tougher because I need to do it in the afternoon and I have more afternoon conflicts.


Speaking of Blood Pressure: The Red Sox – and, specifically, Craig Kimbrel, seem determined to raise mine.

Roy Zimmerman: I went to Roy Zimmerman’s house concert in Derwood, Maryland on Friday night. The drive there was really irritating, with two accidents along the way. I noticed the engine temperature in my car rising as I was crawling along and was afraid it would overheat, but it dropped rapidly once I began driving at a faster speed. I probably need to get something looked at.

Anyway, I got to the house just in time for the concert. Fortunately, it was worth going to. Roy sings funny songs about politics and they went over well with the crowd. There were some I’d heard before and several I had not. If you want a sample of his material, my favorite song of the evening was Psychedelic Relic:



By the way, the drive home was only mildly annoying, as they start doing roadwork on the Beltway at 10 p.m. on Friday nights. I really prefer going out to places that are reachable by metro.


Richmond Folk Festival: My friend, Paul, invited me to come down to Richmond and go to their annual Folk Festival with him. I made life far less stressful for myself by taking the train down, instead of coping with the inevitable roadwork on I-95 on the weekend. The catch is that only a few trains serve the Main Street Station downtown, but Paul picked me up at Staples Mill, which also meant a drive along Monument Avenue (and his tour guide commentary) along the way.

The festival is in downtown Richmond, close to the James River. There were 8 stages, though we ignored the children’s area and the Virginia Traditions Stage (which had things like an apple grafting demo and an oyster shucking contest). I wanted to hear Josh Goforth (who tells stories, but focused on ballads for what we were there for) so we went over to the Lyft Stage. That meant we also caught part of Lulo Reinhardt, Django’s great-nephew. He’s an excellent jazz guitarist and I liked his performance so much I bought one of his CDs later in the day, when we found one of the sales tents. Josh’s ballads were more familiar and also worth a listen.

We walked down to Brown’s Island, where we listened to Leroy Thomas and the Zydeco Roadrunners at the Dance Pavilion. I thought they were just okay. Then we got some gelato and walked out on the bridge for Paul to take photos of how high the water was after last week’s storm.

We meandered back up to the Lyft Stage and listened to Tamburaski Sastav Ponoc (a Balkan tamburitza band), who I enjoyed. I wanted to check out the crafts marketplace, so we went back down towards the river. The crafts were, alas, not generally to my taste. Then we walked (slowly, as my knee was aching by then) up the hill to stake out some space within earshot of the Altria Stage, where Mavis Staples was performing. She was, in my opinion, one of the must-sees of the festival, though rather too many other people thought so as well.

By the time she was done, we decided we needed dinner. All the festival food areas were downhill and I didn’t want to have climb back up the hill, so we trudged up through town to Perly’s, a Jewish deli I had heard good things about. I thought it was quite good, which is surprising for Richmond. The matzoh ball soup had lots of stuff in it (chicken, carrots, celery) as well as a matzoh ball with a good texture, though there was rather more dill than I’d have preferred. The tongue sandwich I got was excellent. Paul got something called a Jewish Sailor, which had pastrami, chopped liver, beef sausage, and red cabbage. (Apparently, the Sailor sandwich is a uniquely Virginia and mostly Richmond thing, and normally has pastrami, knockwurst, and cheese, by the way. Supposedly it originated with sailors studying at the University of Richmond during World War II.) I also had potato salad (reasonably good) and Paul had French fries, which he said were light and fluffy. Bottom line is that I would eat there again.

We walked back to Paul’s car and he drove me to the Hampton Inn, where I was spending the night. It's slightly weird, as it occupies the upper floors of a building, with a Homewood Suites on the lower floors. I got a train in the morning from the Main Street Station (much more convenient and quite grand, though with only limited service). Overall, it was a good trip and I got home in time to get a few things done at home, though I always have more to catch up on.

This is intended to get me completely caught up here, a state that may last, oh, 15 minutes or so.

Frequent flyer meets business travel: I had a quick business trip to Denver a few weeks ago. I managed to arrange my flight out to be on a plane that Captain Denny Flanagan was piloting. It’s always good to be reminded that there are people working for the airlines who care about customer service. (And it was nice to chat with him before the flight.) I also used the trip as an opportunity to have dinner with friends who live out there, which is always nice. The work part was pretty intense, however.

Michael Chertoff: The former Director of Homeland Security gave a talk at an MIT-related reception I was at recently. I didn’t find anything he said particularly surprising, but I did think he completely dodged a question someone asked about the balance between security and privacy.

Domestic politics: Romney’s selection of Paul "Privatizing" Ryan as his running mate pretty much confirms my theory that the Republican Party no longer welcomes its former moderates. However, I doubt that the selection of a vice presidential candidate has much, if any, impact on who people vote for.

International politics: The first American company to open a franchise location in Libya is Cinnabon. This makes perfect sense if you think about local tastes. That is, of course, what makes it all the more surprising.

Women and the Olympics: There have been lots of stories this year about women and the Olympics. It was not until I read an article by Sally Jenkins in today’s Washington Post, however, that I learned a particularly appalling bit of history. In 1976 Margaret Thompson Murdock was the first woman shooter to make the American team. She tied with her team captain, Lanny Bassham. The rules prohibited a shoot-off, so Bassham was given the gold and Murdock the silver. To his credit, he pulled her up on the podium with him, but sheesh!

Story swap: There was a bonus story swap at Eve’s house Saturday night. We started outside around the fire pit, but moved inside when it began to rain. (The rain also prevented viewing the Perseids.) There were several travel related stories and lots of interesting conversation. This reminds me that I should someday put together a piece about places not to eat Chinese food, starting with Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. A particular highlight for me was Jake’s impassioned explanation of why donkeys might be chickens, which made his lawyer father proud of him and has the rest of us laughing hysterically.

Not laughing over traffic:: The Virginia Department of Transportation was doing their usual weekend work, otherwise known as how to screw up my drive home on the Beltway. What annoyed me the most is that the sign indicating that 3 of the 4 lanes were closed was after the exit I could have taken to avoid the mess. Of course, being Virginia, if they actually put up a useful highway sign, they would have to plant a tree immediately in front of it.

Pearl yarn: I got a notice from one of m local yarn shops that they had some of the Zealana pearl yarn, a limited edition created for the 30th anniversary of Vogue knitting. This is 50% crushed pearls, embedded in tencel, and only 500 skeins were made. Each skein is numbered and comes in a presentation box. If you think I could pass this up, you don’t know me very well. I was over there right when they opened. That was a good thing as they only had 20 skeins and I was number 18 in line. It is gorgeous and I think it was worth the 40 bucks. Not that I know what I am going to do with it. The best idea I heard from one of the other lucky purchasers was a bridal veil, but I am not exactly in need of one of those, alas.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: I’ve wanted to see this musical for some time, so took advantage of a production at Elden Street Players in Herndon. I found this very enjoyable. David Yazbek’s score suited the plot (based on the movie) well. In an earlier era, "Like Zis, Like Zat" would have gotten some radio play and "What Was a Woman to Do" would have had some life as a novelty piece. While the early set-up introducing the two con men is a bit longer than it needs to be, the book is funny, with several fairly subtle jokes. The performances were good, too, especially by Tom Flatt as Lawrence and Janette Moman as Muriel.

Travel planning, part 1: Helsinki: My annual birthday excursion this year is a long weekend in Helsinki. In the course of researching what to do, I have discovered a number of bizarre possibilities, some of them related to the city being the World Design Capital for 2012. Those include a walking map highlighting fonts on various signs (and, yes, I am enough of a geek to have downloaded the map), an exhibit titled "Flush: Design of Public Toilets," and an iron age market. There is also an event described as "urban festival brings together design and traditional Finnish rug washing piers." Even without the special events, Helsinki has some oddities, like a Hotel and Restaurant Museum. As someone who has driven out of my way to see things like the world’s largest towel (at the Cannon Towel Visitor Center in Kannapolis, North Carolina) and the water tower of the town of Joe, Montana, I expect to be in my element. (I’ve also downloaded walking tour brochures and directions to the largest yarn shop in town.)

Travel planning – part 2: Israel You may have read about the cheap fares that were available for a little while last week, due to a contractor failing to load fuel surcharges into an on-line system. Since I had already been looking at fares to Israel, I snagged a ticket. I have lots of planning yet to do, of course.

Travel planning – part 3: I also got frequent flyer tickets for Ozfest next year. This was fairly complex because I wanted to do a few things on the way to Perth and back. I’ve got one ticket (using United miles) to Singapore and back from Hong Kong. And I have another ticket (using American miles) from Singapore to Perth and Adelaide to Hong Kong. I’ll have almost a week in Singapore, which should allow me an excursion to Malaysia, too. I plan to take the Indian Pacific train from Perth to Adelaide. Finally, I will have a few days in Hong Kong, which should be enough time to eat lots of dim sum. Or maybe look for traditional Hong Kong rug washing piers.