fauxklore | Entries tagged with transportation

Rabbi Doctor Silver: I forgot to mention this play that I watched on-line in early May. It’s a new translation of a Yiddish play by Sholem Asch. The plot involves a well-respected rabbi, whose wife is having an affair with her music teacher. She ends up leaving her husband, but when things go wrong for her with the music teacher, the rabbi tries to take her back. This stirs up his congregation (and, especially, the board of directors). There is also tension with his mother who lives with him. I didn’t find the story particularly convincing, but the play was well acted.

The Flushies: Last weekend was The Flushies, the annual award ceremony / party for the Style Invitational Loser community. My contribution to the potluck meal was tabbouleh and, after chopping ridiculous amounts of parsley, I remembered why I don’t make that more often. At least it was successful, meaning I had only enough leftovers for one meal. I thought some of the award announcements went on a bit long, with Pat reading too many of the entries by a couple of the winners. The group singing of song parodies also seemed longer than usual. But my perception of length was probably influenced by the absurdly hot weather (90+ Fahrenheit). I, generally, handle heat well, so I imagine other people were also chomping at the bit. Still, it was good to see some people I don’t see frequently (and see some in person who I usually see over zoom). And, of course, it is always fun to meet new folks.

Transport Planning for the Exurbs: I went to an MIT-related webinar about transport planning this week. The speaker is a planner for the Fredericksburg, Virginia area. I didn’t find much of what he had to say surprising. For example, of course people are reluctant to use a bus service that runs only once an hour. I was also glad that he talked about integrating pedestrians and bicyclists into the complete picture of transit needs. But I was somewhat disheartened by the length of time to get improvements implemented.

Textile Museum: I went to the Textile Museum on Wednesday with a few people from my crafts group. They have an exhibit on Indian textiles, which included examples from the 14th century to the present time and ranging throughout the subcontinent. In general, I preferred the embroidered textiles to the block printed and dyed ones. One other interesting thing was that a lot of pieces had an unusual sort of symmetry, where, say, both sides had birds but each side had different birds.

The stitching on this piece was particularly detailed:

This piece is more modern with interesting stylized figures:

The exhibit also includes various garments.

This piece incorporates iridescent beetle wings, along with the stitching.

After looking through the exhibit (and browsing in the gift shop), we had lunch a the falafel place in Western Market. I couldn’t resist trying their vegan shawarma. It was tasty, but I think the falafel would have been a better choice. (There are a wide range of other food stalls at Western Market, by the way, ranging from arepas to lobster rolls, fried chicken to sushi. Someday I have to try the Guatemalan place.) All in all, it was a lovely excursion.

The Upstairs Department: On Thursday night, I went to see this new play at Signature Theatre. The story involves a young man who came out of a medically induced coma with the ability to hear dead people. His father died of COVID while he was in the coma - and that’s the one person he can’t hear. He and his sister go to Lily Dale (a real spiritualist community) where he hopes to learn how to control his power. His sister is a skeptic and the real gist of the play has to do with their relationship. The other character is the medium who they work with. The tone is much lighter than this description suggests and there were several moments of excellent character-driven humor.

By the way, I had dinner before the play at Tacos y Pina. The food was very good, as was the margarita I got. But I thought it was rather pricy for what it is.

Chavurah Barbecue: Yesterday afternoon, my chavurah had a cookout. The weather was beautiful - well, except for a brief rain shower. My contribution to the side dishes was a simple macaroni salad (elbow macaroni, scallions, pimentos, dill pickle relish, olives, and mayonnaise). It was good seeing folks and the conversation ranged from politics to movies to genealogy to books to baseball, etc. We will probably do another event for the Fourth of July.

I have thoughtful brilliance to write, but this ain't it. However, I have done a few things lately...

Celebrity Death Watch: William Peter Blatty wrote The Exorcist. Alan Jabbour was a fiddler and founded the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Dick Gautier is best known for having played Hymie the Robot on Get Smart, but I want to note he was also Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway (and, in fact, won a Tony for that role.) Anthony Armstrong-Jones was better known as Lord Snowden, a photographer and the one-time husband of Princess Margaret. He was, by all accounts, better as a photographer than as a husband. Vicki Lansky wrote the cookbook, Feed Me I’m Yours. Brenda C. Barnes was the CEO of Sara Lee for several years. Loalwa Braz was a Brazilian singer-songwriter. Maggie Roche was a folk-rock singer, who performed primarily with her sisters. Yordano Ventura and Andy Marte were both baseball players from the Dominican Republic, who died in car accidents on the same day. Eugene Cernan was an astronaut and, notably, the last man to walk on the moon. Mike Connors was an actor, best known for playing Mannix. Bob Holiday was an actor and played Superman more than any other actor, including starring in the musical, It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman. John Hurt was an actor, most famous for starring in The Elephant Man. Mary Tyler Moore was an actress, most famous for her television roles (especially as Mary Richards on The Mary Tyler Moore Show) but also on Broadway and in film. In Minneapolis, there is a statue of her tossing her hat in the air. Harold Rosen led the team that built the first geosynchronous communications satellite. Etienne Tshisekedi was the head of the opposition party in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for many years, including a couple of brief stints as Prime Minister. David Axelrod was a jazz / fusion musician, composer, and producer.

Professor Irwin Corey was an interesting comedian, parodizing a certain sort of intellectual and billing himself as "the world’s foremost authority." More importantly, he was on my ghoul pool list, so his death earned me 15 points in the game.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: John Shipman, known to many as Groot, passed away on January 31st after a short battle with an aggressive cancer. He was a kind and generous man, a lover of good music and good food, and proud of his influence on students at New Mexico Tech. I don’t get to Albuquerque often, but will miss having dinner and conversation with him when I do.

Storytelling: I told Border Crossings, a story about travel and weddings and the like last Saturday night as part of the Better Said Than Done show at The Auld Shebeen. It went well. You can watch the video and see for yourself.

A Visit to Lebanon: The most recent embassy event I went to (via my alumni association) was last Monday night at the residence of the Ambassador of Lebanon. The food was tasty, with a wide mix of dishes, including particularly notable fattoush. There were also good Lebanese wines. The talks were by the charge d’affaires and by the president of the MIT Alumni Association and were quite positive about the future of Lebanon. Good food, an interesting setting, and intelligent conversation always makes a nice evening out.

Business Trip: I went out to California last week for a meeting in San Diego. I took advantage of the trip to spend part of a day at the corporate mothership in Los Angeles, which was fairly productive, as were the discussions I actually took the trip for. The travel was rather annoying since it got set up a bit last minute, meaning I ended up with window seats, instead of my preferred aisles. (On short flights, I like windows, but not disturbing people in order to get up is a higher priority.) The flight to LAX was particularly cramped. And the wifi wasn’t working, so there was no entertainment. The drive to San Diego was not as bad as it might be, but there were some rough spots, especially since I left later than I’d planned to. Mostly, I got held up by an accident around San Clemente and then things just crawled through La Jolla getting to my hotel. The main result was that I concluded that the same person who designs United’s economy class seats designed the seat in the Kia Forte I had. That is, poor padding and no lumbar support. I flew back from SAN, with a connection at LAX. Actually, I didn’t fly back – I flew to EWR, since I had pre-existing plans in New York. About which more in a minute.

I was also able to get together on Thursday night with an old friend for dinner and a nice, far-reaching conversation.

Jewish Soul Food: Since I got to New York after midnight, I slept in on Saturday morning. That meant skipping breakfast and having an early lunch. The matzoh ball soup at the Second Avenue Deli is fairly good, though since when does chicken soup have dill in it? The half a tongue sandwich I also had was sheer perfection. Add in a full sour pickle and this addict got her fix for the next several months.

Milk and Honey: The purpose of the trip was seeing York Theatre’s mufti (i.e. semi-staged, street clothes) production of Jerry Herman’s first musical, Milk and Honey. I was familiar with only a couple of the songs from this show and concluded the score really needs to be known much better. It’s lively, very clearly Jewish music (since the object was to make a sort of Israeli equivalent to Oklahoma), and simply a delight. The performances were wonderful too, especially Alix Korey as Sylvia Weiss, the role originated by Molly Picon. I also really liked how they handled the parts of the staging that involved animals. The show is probably unrevivable for a number of reasons, but I still enjoyed it immensely. I’ve seen several shows at York and I continue to be impressed.

Not That Jewish: This is Monica Piper’s one-woman show at New World Stages. It is billed as comedy, but it’s really storytelling. I was expecting something of a comic rant about Judaism, but this was a more serious and deeper exploration of what being Jewish means if someone is not particularly religious. There are dark areas – failed relationships, parents dying, single parenthood, breast cancer. But there is a lot of humor along the way. And the piece got pulled together well at the end. Overall, I’m glad I saw it.

Trains: Amtrak was surprisingly efficient going home. The Washington Metro, not so much, as they had scheduled track work that shut down the Orange Line from Eastern Market to Foggy Bottom. Normally, I’d get off Amtrak at New Carrolton and just ride the entire length of the Orange Line, which is slow, but means I don’t have to shlep luggage. This time, I took the Red Line from Union Station to Gallery Place, Yellow Line from Gallery Place to Pentagon, Blue Line from Pentagon to Rosslyn, and then the Orange Line home. I’m exhausted just typing that. And the next Safe Track surge approacheth, sigh.

Celebrity Death Watch: Gary Dubin was an actor who, among other things, voiced Toulouse in The Aristocats, a movie I am slightly embarrassed to admit how much I like. Peter Allen hosted the broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera. Robert Bateman was a songwriter, probably best known for "Please Mr. Postman." Ray William Clough was one of the founders of finite element analysis (a technique used in structural engineering, for those who are not as geeky as I am). Leo Baranek was an acoustic expert and one of the founders of Bolt, Beranek and Newman. Dario Fo was a playwright and Nobel laureate, with his most famous work being Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Edward Gorman write a lot of mysteries, as well as The Fine Art of Murder, which is a fine piece of critical writing. Valerie Hunter Gordon invented the world’s first disposable diaper, or, given she was British, nappy.

Bhumibol Adulyadej was the king of Thailand for over 70 years. He was actually born in the U.S., in Cambridge, Massachusetts to be precise. (His father was studying public health at Harvard.) His brother inherited the throne from their uncle at the age of 9, but was killed under circumstances worthy of a novel. (A couple of palace aides were convicted of regicide, but there seems to be some evidence that Bhumibol accidentally shot his brother.) I don’t pretend to understand Thai politics, which involved a number of coups over the years, but I do understand that the king was vastly popular. He did accomplish quite a lot economically, including a number of water and soil improvement projects. He held patents on a waste water aerator and on a couple of rainmaking techniques. He was also an accomplished jazz saxophonist. Overall, an interesting guy.

The Gulf: I went to see The Gulf at Signature Theatre on Saturday afternoon. This play, by Audrey Cefaly, has to do with a lesbian couple spending an afternoon on a boat. Kendra (played by Rachel Zameplli) just wants to spend her life fishing, watching football, and drinking beer. Betty (played by Maria Rizzo) wants Kendra to be more ambitious. It’s actually mostly incidental that the relationship here is between two women, which is a plus. Unfortunately, I found both of them fairly unlikeable, which is a big minus. Overall, I thought this was well-acted, but it didn’t really capture me.

Story Swap: Saturday night was the monthly story swap. Given the continuing hell of metro track work, I drove and was lucky enough to find a spot right in front of our host’s house. There were a few random neighbors there, who were friendly enough, but one did fall asleep and snore. I was pleased that a woman who I had heard tell at an open mike showed up and told a lovely African folktale. And Tim had a great Halloween twist on a Jewish folktale.

Sunday: I went out to brunch with a friend and then stopped by her house to meet her new kitten, who proved to be less sociable than she expected. Still, it was good to get out for low-key conversation and such.

Too Much Driving: I had meetings in far-flung locations this week, which meant driving at rush hour. Tuesday’s meeting, in darkest Maryland, was especially annoying, as I gave a lift to a colleague, who drives an electric car with insufficient range. It is bad enough when people eat in my car, but when they leave their trash on the floor mat instead of throwing it in the garbage bag, I am particularly peeved. Wednesday was annoying only because I-66 was absurdly slow, making me nervous about making my late afternoon meeting on time. It did work out and the meeting was a reasonably good one, though it created a bunch of follow-up work for me. But I was still glad to be back to my public transit commute on Thursday. And weekends are even better because, even if I do drive all over creation, there tends to be less traffic.

Celebrity Death Watch: Pete Fountain was a jazz clarinetist. Joani Blank was the founder of Good Vibrations, the San Francisco store that made vibrators mainstream. Michel Richard was a celebrity chef and one of the people most responsible for making Washington, D.C. a major culinary destination.

Fyvush Finkel is probably better known nowadays for his television roles but, of course, he was a huge star in the world of Yiddish theatre. And he showed up in movies all the time – more or less whenever somebody needed an old man with a Yiddish accent.

Glenn Yarbrough was a folksinger and, in particular, the lead singer of The Limeliters. I grew up listening to their albums and some of their songs, especially some of the comic ones, were major influences on my musical tastes.

I should note that I make no claim to be comprehensive in these items. They happen to have caught my attention for one reason or another, which is not necessarily correlated with how famous or how important they were. I usually write a little bit more about people who I felt more of a personal connection to for whatever reason, but there’s no guarantee.

Non-celebrity Death Watch: My evil twin, Holly Stowe, passed away last week. We got friendly back in the early usenet days largely over shared viola-associated trauma. (That is, the whole bit that lets you play only three notes every ten measures.) We met in person at a weekend event in Indianapolis that included a Halloween party in which we did a tandem costume as Velcro. Her death was not a surprise as she had been dealing with late-stage kidney disease for some time. But I’m still sad.

Another Death Story: I had a reminder that depression is all too often a fatal disease. It isn’t my story to tell, so I will not elaborate, but I will plead that if you are having issues with depression, please, please, please, do all you can to get help.

New York Gelato Tasting: I was up in New York over the weekend, primarily for Lollapuzzoola 9, which I will write about separately. In the evening, I went down to the Village to go to the theatre (which will also merit its own write-up) and, having asked for ice cream advice on facebook, sampled two places. The first was Victory Garden, whose gimmick is that they use goat milk. I tried a flavor called Black Magic, which consisted of a black tahini (i.e. sesame) and cocoa base with salted caramel and chocolate chips. It was quite good, with a nice creamy texture, but possibly a bit too intense in flavor. At any rate, I would certainly go there again and try other flavors of their ice creams.

I also tried a place called Cones, where I got a small cup with two flavors (and, also, sampled a taste of their mascarpone which also had some sort of berries). The two flavors I opted for, however, were the zabayone [sic] and ginger. I was a bit disappointed in the former, though that may have been the influence of their spelling failure. It’s zabaglione, damn it! The ginger was, however, excellent. (Bear in mind that I have a particular fondness for ginger, so may be biased.) I’m actually less inclined to go back there than I am to go back to Victory Garden, mostly because it wasn’t necessarily any different than gelato I can get at lots of places.

The Waldorf-Astoria: Due to some Hilton Honors promotion, it was actually cheaper to stay at The Waldorf-Astoria than it was to stay at a normal chain hotel like a Hampton Inn. So why not? In fact, they upgraded me to a room in the Waldorf Towers, which mostly meant that the room was huge. Given how little time I spend in hotel rooms for anything but sleep, that wasn’t significant. Anyway, it was perfectly fine, but if you are going to stay somewhere fancy in NYC, I preferred the time I stayed at The Algonquin. Even better (but much harder to get a deal at) is The Library Hotel, where they ask you "fiction or nonfiction?" when checking in.

Trains: I had good train karma getting up to New York with snort waits for both the yellow and red lines and Amtrak being on time. Although Union Station was its usual Friday night chaos, made worse by most of the info signs being out. (I now know they use Windows XP for their displays. That is not a reassuring thing.)

The train karma did not, alas, continue for the trip home. Amtrak was having various delays due to a train stuck in an East River tunnel. So we started out a half hour late. And then there was a power outage affecting signals in part of Maryland, so we were moving very very very very very very slowly. A 10 minute wait for the Red Line wasn’t too bad. But, of course, Metro had a screw-up on the Orange Line, so I had almost a 20 minute wait at Metro Center. So, overall, I got home too late to really do anything but collapse.

Celebrity Death Watch: Janet Waldo was the voice of Judy Jetson and Penelope Pitstop, among a large number of acting roles. George Voinovich was the governor of Ohio through pretty much all of the 1980's, after which he became a U.S. Senator.

Metro: Surge #1 is over and was not too annoying, thanks to the temporary bus service from Fairfax Connector. Except that last night I was coming from the city and had the usual lengthy wait for a train at Foggy Bottom, complete with inadequate information. It didn't really affect tme, but they were announcing a train as being a Blue Line one, when it was actually Silver. The exact same thing happened this morning at Rosslyn, which was more irritating as I was already in a bad mood and running late due to multiple Orange Line screw-ups. To wit: 1) despite there allegedly being no track work, there was still single tracking between East Falls Church and Ballston, 2) the announcements only were addressing a different (and supposedly resolved) track issue, 3) none of this info was on the rail alerts, and 4) the two trains before mine skipped Ballston, so my train ended up with Tokyo-level crowding.

The next surge includes two weeks of no service between Rosslyn and Arlington Cemetery. They are suggesting people stay on the Orange (or Silver) Line to L'Enfant Plaza and then take the Yellow Line south. Which only adds about 35-40 minutes to the trip. There are a couple of alternatives I know of, but the most useful one is that I am actually going to have to deal with that mess for two days, due to a mixture of travel and a conference.

Kinky Boots: I went to see Kinky Boots at the Kennedy Center last night (which is why I was waiting for the metro at Foggy Bottom in the first place). Anyway, the show has a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper. It tells the story of a young man, Charlie Price, who inherits his family's shoe factory and decides to save the livelihoods of the long-term factory workers by entering a niche market. And what niche market is that? High heeled boots for drag queens. See, he had met Lola, whose footwear needs inspire ideas that will be just the thing for this upcoming show in Milan. Winning over the workers, who aren't necessarily comfortable with Lola, is only part of the problem. See, Charlie has to convince himself, too.

You know that everything is going to work out just fine, including Lola's father issues, Charlie's love life, and, of course, the factory. This is pretty much your average feel-good, everything works if you just accept everyone musical, with some gorgeous shoes thrown in. And I say that as a devotee of flats. The score is also fairly predictable. Lola gets some big, showy numbers, while there's a little more thoughtful material about what being a man is ("Not My Father's Son"). The music was pleasant enough for the most part (though the production numbers weren't really my style), but not really memorable.

Adam Kaplan did well as Charlie, but was (of course) overshadowed by J. Harrison Ghee as Lola. I did find myself wondering if the casting was intended to be color-blind or whether Lola being black was supposed to add even more to the whole lack of acceptance vibe. The performer I need to especially single out is Tiffany Engen as Lauren, the factory worker with a crush on Charlie. She was a phenomenal dancer and really conveyed the emotions behind her apparently hopeless feelings.

The most interesting thing about this show is that it's touring here right now, while La Cage Aux Folles is playing at Signature Theatre. Drag queens, self-acceptance, Harvey Fierstein - do I see a pattern here? And that apparent coincidence is why I found myself wondering whether Kinky Boots is anything more than a rehashing of the same old same old. It's not a bad show, but why bother when Jerry Herman's music gives you something to inflict an ear worm on yourself with? (To be fair, I've never really seen the point of drag shows and I've been accused of being the straightest person on the planet. Stilettos don't make me feel good - they make my feet hurt.)

Celebrity Death Watch: Joe Fleishaker appeared in several Troma films, e.g. Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. Mell Lazarus drew Miss Peach and Momma. Actress Beth Howland actually died in December, but her death was only announced on May 24. She was best known for her role in the sitcom Alice, but I think she was more significant for being the original Amy in the musical Company, singing the patter song "Getting Married Today." Dave Swarbrick played the fiddle with Fairport Convention. Theresa Saldana was an actress, who is probably most famous for surviving being stabbed by an obsessed stalker. Peter Shaffer was a playwright, whose work included Amadeus and Equus. Gordie Howe was a hockey player. Muhammed Ali was a boxer and a poet. You didn’t really need me to tell you that, but what you might not know is that I won a bet on the first Ali-Frazier fight when I was in junior high. I bet on Frazier only on the grounds that Ali had been out of the game for so long.

JGSJW: The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington had their annual potluck luncheon on Sunday. The event started with an interesting talk on Jews in China, covering both historical and modern communities. Then there was a brief business meeting, before lunch. I had been assigned to the dessert group and baked blondies, with a new recipe that I found disappointing. There was an after-lunch game show, but I couldn’t stay for it, since I had another commitment. Anyway, it was a nice event, with plenty of good conversation.

Washington Folk Festival: That commitment was to tell stories at the Washington Folk Festival, in Glen Echo Park. My set was titled "Calculating Women," and I advertised it as stories of real, imaginary, and complex women who face the world with cleverness, with, and a touch of mathematics. I told mostly folk tales (including Maltese, Jewish, German, and American ones), plus the story of Sophie Germaine. I realized afterwards that I had completely forgotten about one of the stories I intended to tell. No wonder I finished a few minutes early. Anyway, it went reasonably well.

SafeTrack: The metro hell that started Saturday was tolerable during the work week, largely because the Fairfax Connector added on a temporary express bus from the Vienna Metro to the Pentagon. So far the bus has not been absurdly crowded, i.e. nobody has been forced to stand on it. It’s fairly chaotic at the Pentagon station at the end of the day, however. And they don’t actually appear to adhere to their schedule very accurately, though it’s still better than the metrobus I used to ride.

MIT Club Annual Meeting: Wednesday night, I braved the metro to go the MIT Club of DC Annual Meeting, which was at Maggiano’s. It’s not a restaurant I care for – large quantities of mediocre food – but the conversation was good, and I even made a potentially useful work-related connection. The featured speaker was Dava Newman, the Deputy Director of NASA. She emphasized Mars, but did speak a fair amount about uncrewed missions and even mentioned some of their work on aviation. The questions were, alas, too focused on Mars, but I’m not surprised about that.

By the way, I had very good Metro luck getting home, with just a four minute wait at Friendship Heights and a two minute wait at Metro Center.

I have other things to write about, but let me drop a quick note re: how miserable this week has been for commuting. Monday was tolerable, but the metro was running on a holiday schedule, which meant long waits at Rosslyn for connecting trains.

Tuesday, the cold weather caused a different problem. But it is best to say it in my preferred poetic form:

Cracked rail outside East
Falls Church this morning. Single
tracking. Late to work.

And, of course, I just missed my connection, so:

It is as cold at
Rosslyn station as it is
outside. Brr, brr, brr.

Was it any better going home? Well, I had an errand to run near Union Station. I got on the Yellow Line at Crystal City and then:

Someone unconscious
on train at Archives. Single
tracking, long delays.

So yesterday I had a meeting for which it made sense to drive in. (I can get to where it was by bus, but that eats up a lot of time and is only worth it if meeting is at beginning or end of the day, not in the middle.) Things were slow coming in, for no particular reason. Going home was the issue. It wasn't even snowing until I was halfway home, but it was still slow. And, once there was a bit of sticking snow, it was just a slippery, nasty crawl.

Note that we got a whopping 1.2 inches of snow and it messed things up badly enough that it took me twice as long as normal to drive home. We are expecting 24-30 inches in the storm that is going to clobber us this weekend.
I am not going more than about 200 feet from my bed.

Please, buy me a condo in Punta del Este, Uruguay?

Celebrity Death Watch: Kyle Jean-Baptiste was a theatre actor. Wayne Dyer wrote self-help books. Marvin Mandel was a former governor of Maryland, whose tenure in office was marred by his conviction (later overturned) for mail fraud and racketeering. Personally, I think the more interesting scandal is the one in which his wife refused to move out of the governor’s mansion when he took up with another woman and filed for divorce.

Wes Craven was a film director, best known for horror films (e.g. Nightmare on Elm Street). Oddly, he died of natural causes, though brain cancer is a pretty horrible death as I understand it.

The death I most want to highlight is that of Oliver Sacks. To say he was a neurologist and a writer is inadequate. His writing spanned a range of topics, but I think the key is that he always focused on the humanity,, whether writing about neurology, travel, or his family. I was privileged to hear him give a talk at Sixth and I, as well as to read several of his books, which were always informative and highly readable. His death was no surprise but was still a major loss.

Kin Davis: For anybody who has been living in a cave for the past couple of weeks, Ms. Davis is the court clerk in Kentucky who is refusing to issue marriage licenses because she has religious objections to same sex marriage. My take on this is that if one has religious objections to doing one’s job, the only proper response is to resign from that job.

I do want to note, however, that I am disturbed by the people who are citing her hypocrisy because she has been married 4 times. Her statement is that she converted after the divorces and I find no reason to doubt that, especially since this was apparently due to a deathbed wish. Her past is not relevant to the current situation and I believe it is not appropriate to harp on it.

And, of course, the people who are criticizing her based on her appearance (and, specifically, her hair – apparently her church does not permit women to cut their hair) are also way out of bounds. The point is that she does not meet one of the basic job requirements (that is, willingness to comply with the law on issuing marriage licenses) and should, therefore, not be in the job.

Plymouth (Michigan) Volksmarch: I have to admit that I had not actually heard of Plymouth, Michigan until a couple of weeks ago. I was flying into Detroit for a trip to Toledo and had time to kill during the day, so looked for nearby Volksmarch events that would satisfy some of the special programs I am trying to complete. It was an easy drive to Plymouth and the walk proved quite pleasant. The downtown area has a number of attractive historic houses (as well as some interesting specialty shops, though there is the creeping chainification that one finds everywhere nowadays), while the second half of the walk followed a path along the Rouge River and around what they called a lake, but I would consider a pond. I wouldn’t say there was anything essential from a tourist perspective, but it was a good way to spend my time.

Toledo – the Corporal Klinger Tour: For those who remember M*A*S*H, Corporal Klinger (played by Jamie Farr) was from Toledo (as was Farr). That led to some ad libs that immortalized a couple of Toledo institutions to those of us of a certain generation – namely, Tony Packo’s Café and the Toledo Mud Hens, the AAA minor league affiliate of the Detroit Tigers. I love baseball, so when I saw plans for a Flyertalk Do that would involve both of those, I figured it was worth the trip. I flew to Detroit late Friday night, spent Saturday morning doing the volksmarch mentioned above, then drove to Toledo. It’s an easy drive, but there was a lot of road work. Anyway, I went to my hotel, rested a bit, then headed downtown.

We were actually not at the original Tony Packo’s, but at the branch by the ballpark. The food is Hungarian and runs to things like chili dogs and dumplings and such. Not exactly light fare, nor are what they call dumplings what I think of by that name (i.e. not like either knaidlach or Czech bread dumplings, but more pasta-ish), but the food was tasty enough (especially some sort of potato side dish) and the atmosphere was great. The Great Lakes IPA was more bitter than I prefer, so was just okay. There was, of course, plenty of flyertalkish talk, i.e. frequent flyer miles and tricks associated therewith.

We walked across the street to the ballpark and found our seats. And rain. Fortunately, the delay was not very long and the game was on. It was an exciting one, with some decidedly questionable calls (in my opinion). After being behind for most of the game, the Mud Hens did win in the end. By the way, we had very good seats (in the club section) and I thought it was a nice little ballpark. I liked that they had everyone sing the national anthem, instead of treating it as a performance piece. (People were, alas, considerably more pathetic for the 7th inning stretch. My treatise on the relationship between the decline of Western civilization and the failure of people to sing along is available on request.) Anyway, the fans seemed reasonably into the game and I thought it was worth the trip.

I had vague plans to do another volksmarch on Sunday morning, but the weather was dreary and I was tired, so I just had a late and lazy morning. For complicated reasons (less money, more miles), my flight home was via EWR so I got to spend some time rereading the index to Dante’s Inferno to figure out which circle of hell Newark Terminal A is.

Speaking of Transportation: If you change the route of a shuttle bus and, in the process, eliminate a stop that has been in use for at least 10 years, it might be helpful to put up a sign at that stop to let people know.

Celebrity Death Watch: Eroni Kumana was a fisherman in the Solomon Islands who rescued John F. Kennedy after the sinking of PT-109. Dorothy Salisbury Davis was a mystery novelist and one of the founders of Sisters in Crime. James Brady was Ronald Reagan’s press secretary and became a gun control advocate after being shot during John Hinckley’s failed assassination attempt against Reagan. Raymond Berthillon made ice cream in France (and I can highly recommend the raspberry rosewater sorbet at Berthillon in Paris, which is the best fruit sorbet I have ever had.)

Moving on to bigger names, Lauren Bacall was a model and actress. She co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in several major movies, including To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Key Largo. I also want to note her significant Broadway roles and her Tony awards for starring in Applause and Woman of the Year. Apparently her trademark husky voice arose from her attempts to conceal her Brooklyn accent.

Robin Williams has gotten the most press, of course, not the least because of the shocking nature of his death. It’s a good opportunity to remind people that depression is all too often a fatal disease. He was clearly a major talent, even though his comedy was not particularly to my taste. I did, however, appreciate much of his film acting, including his roles in Good Morning, Vietnam and Dead Poets Society. Let’s hope that his death gets some people the help they need to deal with depression and the substance abuse that is all too often an attempt to self-medicate for that condition.

Trip Home From Phoenix: The hotel had claimed the taxi company they recommended offered a fixed price to the airport, but that didn’t stop the driver from using the meter and charging me a few bucks more than that alleged fixed price. My flight back from the NSN conference had a mechanical delay of about an hour, apparently to fix an armrest.

The bigger annoyance was that the Silver Line metro started running the day before my return. Why is that annoying? Because the Washington Flyer bus now runs to Wiehle Avenue, rather than West Falls Church. The bus ride is cheaper than it used to be (and would be cheaper still if one were to take a Fairfax Connector public bus) but takes only about 5 minutes less and leads to a metro ride that is 25 minutes longer and costs three times as much, washing out the bus savings. I realize that there are 4 or 5 people in the Tyson’s area who may actually benefit from this (and, actually, the eventual metro all the way to Dulles is the right thing to do, even if they have been and continue to implement it incorrectly) but they have screwed over the several thousand times more people who live in civilization, i.e. my neighborhood.

Speaking of the Silver Line: They took away half the Orange Line trains. They are supposed to run every 6 minutes during rush hour, but they actually run more like every 8-10 going home. (It is harder to tell in the morning, since the info displays at Vienna never show more than one train at a time.) Combined with the every 12 minute service on the Blue Line, expect more metro haikus and whining about my commute.

It is still better
Than driving on the beltway.
At least I can read.

Milo’s retirement: I spent one night at home, before turning around and flying to Los Angeles. The occasion was Milo’s retirement. Since I’d worked for him directly for 6 years and supported him for several years before that, I felt semi-obliged to be there. Finding an appropriate retirement gift was a challenge. In the end, I went with legos and duct tape, with an explanation to appeal to his creative spirit. It was good to see so many old colleagues (including some who had retired years ago) and worth the hassle of the quick trip, which did violate my normal travel rule that one should always spend three times as long somewhere as it takes to get there and back.

Carrie: The musical adaptation of this Stephen King novel is notorious, having managed to play only 3 performances on Broadway and garner universally atrocious reviews. So, of course, I had to go and see the Studio Theatre production of it. It has been revised to remove some of the most offensive material. My take is that it isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great either. The score is fairly unmemorable. The book has some fundamental flaws, notably giving more of the good material to secondary characters than to Carrie herself. But the depiction of the sheer horribleness of teenage girls rang true (though I thought Chris, the meanest of the mean, was overdone) and the dynamics between Carrie and her mother were handled well. Barbara Walsh was excellent as her mother. Maria Rizzo was convincing as Sue, the girl who is somewhat conflicted over her treatment of Carrie. The male characters are drawn rather too thinly. Overall, I have to characterize this as an interesting failure.

I will write separately about my trip to New York last weekend because NYC always deserves its own entry.

I may have misled people a bit with my protein query. I'm not looking at anything particularly radical - just something to be somewhat more conscious of when grocery shopping and meal planning. For example, I can choose a higher protein alternative for, say, breakfast cereal (or, for that matter, Greek yogurt over regular yogurt).

My biggest event of the week was the change in my commute. We had a nice cushy private bus from West Falls Church to the Mark Center. Key word is "had." On Tuesday, it switched to a metro bus. Not only is it less comfortable, it is just an "express" not a non-stop. Apparently "express" means it stops only every 3 blocks instead of every single block. It takes 20 minutes longer. There is much grumbling.

I did a minor experiment on Wednesday and took advantage of excellent, spring-like weather. I walked from the Mark Center to Ballston Metro. If I figured correctly, that is just under 5 miles, which is a nice distance for a weeknight mind clearing walk. Most of it was pleasant and I noticed a couple of potential route alternatives that might be even nicer. Given that it still gets dark early and I have a terrible sense of direction, I was loathe to deviate from the route I'd planned. As the sun returns, I plan to see what happens if I pick up some of the trails, instead of sticking to streets.

Finally, my knitting group had a yarn frenzy last week and this. One of Tom's coworkers inherited a large quantity of yarn (and related books) and, after keeping half of it, passed the rest along to him. He picked over things and kept some, but he still had 13 some odd tubs of yarn and 3 boxes of books to share. Free yarn doesn't count as stash accumulation, right? And free books don't take up bookshelf space. I even know what I intend to do with some of the yarn I took.

Most of this delay was because one of the things I did this past weekend was take some pictures. See, there was a Volksmarch to celebrate the National Cherry Blossom Festival and I braved the unwashed masses of tourists to walk around D.C. with a camera for a change. It was a particularly enjoyable walk, across the mall, around the tidal basin, and up to the Botanic Gardens and the Capitol.

After that route, I made my way over to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and (finally) took some pictures of the completed Smithsonian Community Coral Reef. I added them to my coral reef set on Flickr.

I was intending to insert some photos here, but that function doesn't seem to be working, presumably due to the DDOS attack.

I came home and got some errands done, then went to a story swap in the evening. I used that as an opportunity to rehearse one of my stories for the Kensington Row Story Salon. There was the usual wide range of material and good conversation over snacks afterwards. Ralph is championing the need to revive the art of narrative poetry and we discussed that, which led to talking about sequels. That, in turn, led to a discussion of Flanders and Swann.

The major event of Sunday was seeing And the Curtain Rises at Signature Theatre. This is the most recent product of the American Musical Voices Project, which funds the development of new musicals. The story involves the development of the first American musical, The Black Crook in 1866. The show starts as a dreadful melodrama, Return to Black Creek but the producer takes advantage of a ballet troupe (living in the theatre after being burned out of their own venue) to create a spectacle. There are a few love stories woven in. The show was reasonably diverting, with a few genuinely funny moments, but the music was utterly forgettable. Still, it's good to encourage new musicals to be written and, with some work, this could be a nice second tier show, i.e. the sort of thing that gets done by summer stock companies and high schools.

By the way, I renewed my subscription to Signature for next season.

As for the week, I've been surprisingly productive at work during most of it. Yesterday was the exception. Because I was telling stories in Kensington after work, I drove in to work. And Neptune decided he needed new shoes about halfway to the office. That is, my car (called Neptune because it's a blue-green Saturn and I am a space geek) got a flat. Fortunately, I was reasonably near Sears. And I knew I was going to need new tires soon, so I just got all 4 replaced. Given that Neptune is 17+ years old and the previous tires were only the second set, I can't complain too much. (I also got new front brake pads, while I was at it. I knew that was coming up soon and I figured it was easiest to do it while the tires were already off.) This is why I have a reserve in my budget for contingencies.

I also had a return of my phone issues at work. In short, our building manager has now managed to disconnect my phone twice. While there is an advantage to the phone not ringing, there are times when I need to call people and it is a lot more convenient to do it from my own desk. At least this time, she knew how to fix it herself and didn't have to wait three days for Verizon to come out.

Then there was the joy of driving to Kensington after work. I have finally figured out how to get there without getting lost. (Let's just say that Arlington road signs leave something to be desired.) But there was an accident on the GW Parkway and another slog on the Beltway. All of the times I've gotten lost getting to Jane's house actually helped me there, since I knew how to get across Bethesda on surface streets. That was important since it also let me buy gas. And I got to Kensington on time.

The storytelling went fine. Liz started, with a mixture of personal stories and Hindu myth, plus other snippets about creating stories. I attempted to be seasonal, with a bad pun involving baseball. I followed that with my piece about my father's less than literal translations of the Passover Haggadah. Then I did some material from my "Fortune, Fools, and Fowl" program. That included an Armenian folk tale, a Bill Greenfield story, "Why I'm Not a Millionaire" and a couple of short poems about chickens. And, yes, I had my rubber chicken out, as sort of a prop, though there was not really a good place to put it. Overall, I had lots of fun and got laughs in the right places (and groans in appropriate ones).

I have decided that I am not going to apologize for these round-ups of odds and ends. I have never denied having a short attention span.

Celebrity Death Watch: Edwin Newman died. He was an influential newsman and his book, Strictly Speaking was a nicely curmudgeonly tome on the English language. I often disagreed with him, but I found his writing interesting. And I appreciated his fondness for puns. (In one essay, he included the line, "Quoth the Reagan, 'nevermore.'")

I'll also note the death of Irwin Silber, founder of Sing Out! magazine.

Why I Love Engineers: At work, I sometimes have occasion to track down the expert on some obscure technical subject. Apparently, not a lot of people ever talk to these people, because they always seem so eager to educate me on their subject. Despite being a big picture person myself, I actually enjoy this.

Quote of the Week: The context was how long it would take to coordinate some document or other. The guy whose office is next to mine said, "It's been like that since the Pentagon had three sides."

Things That Are Free: September is Library Card Sign-Up Month. Here in Fairfax County, you can sign up on-line and they will mail the library card to you.

Next Saturday (25 September) is Free Museum Day. That is less significant here, where many museums are already free. But it is useful in other places. (Note: you have to download a ticket from the site, which gets you free admission for two.)

Transportation: I bought a charter membership in Capital Bike Share. I'm not sure how useful it was actually be, but I wanted to support the idea. The location map is a bit odd. There are several stations in Crystal City (including two within a block of a my office) but the distances between them are too short to really make sense for a bike. But there are none in Rosslyn, which would actually be good biking distance from Crystal City. There are none in Alexandria, either, but I assume that is because of political boundaries. My most likely use is to go to a matinee at the Atlas Theatre (which would be a quick ride from Union Station and is not a particularly pleasant walk). But, as I said, I like the idea and a charter membership is just $50.

Thugs, I Say. Thugs: The New York Times had an article on the link between criminality and the Source of All Evil in the Universe. Okay, just their caps, but it is still a sign of identifying with thuggery.