fauxklore

Yesterday (Thursday) was very busy.

I met up with Jessica for coffee and conversation (and to pick up postcards for the Women’s Storytelling Festival) in the morning. Apparently the secret to getting a table at De Clieu (a very good coffee place in Old Town Fairfax) is to go there on a weekday at 10 in the morning. We also talked a lot about books.

Then I ran over to Wegman’s for groceries. I’d have liked to have picked up some inari for lunch but the sushi section was fairly empty that early in the day. I did get most of what I needed, but forgot to look for marshmallow fluff. By the way, they have their Chanukah candles on sale, so I bought a box of the taller ones I like.

I managed to get home just before crafts group started. Unfortunately, I discovered I’d made a mistake in my Tunisian crochet afghan, so I had to frog a row and redo it. I also learned that Mauritius is now apparently a hot spot for modern dance. (One of the coordinator’s sons is a dance teacher and has been offered a job there.) It was, in my opinion, one of the most boring countries I’ve ever been to, but I was there back in 1998. They do have nice botanical gardens and an interesting national museum, but they also have an overdeveloped resort tourism industry, in my opinion.

There are a bunch of household things I should have done and I should have taken a nap as I had gotten up too early and been unable to get back to sleep. But, somehow, I didn’t manage to do any of that. Oh, well, I did manage to sleep in a bit this morning.

You may recall that I had booked the Queen Mary 2 transatlantic crossing from Hamburg to New York City. About a week before departure, I got an email that there was an issue with the ship and it couldn’t dock in Hamburg. Instead, they would bus the passengers from Hamburg to Bremerhaven instead. This was a minor inconvenience, but I certainly would have liked more notice. And it was a bit annoying that they didn’t confirm the bus time until late afternoon on Friday when we were departing on Monday.

I had chosen the first bus time in the morning and took a taxi to the Central Bus Terminal. Several people were waiting around and there were two people from Cunard checking off passengers. There was a bit of a wait before we left and the ride was about 2 1/2 hours. We did have a brief comfort stop and I have to say that the facilities where we stopped didn’t reflect well on German infrastructure. We did, eventually, get to the Columbus terminal in Bremerhaven, where we had to go through assorted checks of our documents (for Americans, this meant passport, boarding pass for the ship, and UK ETA). Then we got on another bus to the ship itself. It turned out that they were supposed to have given me the ship ID card, but had failed to. There were two German men who had the same problem and they made us wait outside in the cold and windy weather before they made new cards and let us on. Apparently the people on the afternoon buses had even worse issues and some of them had to wait as long as three hours before their buses left Hamburg.

Fortunately, the actual voyage went more smoothly for the most part. I had booked an inside stateroom on the grounds that there would be plenty of places other than my cabin to hang out in. That was pretty much true, but I did get in an afternoon nap most days. While I had time for reading and doing puzzles and crocheting, there were enough activities that I didn’t have time for everything I wanted to do. Because I was traveling alone, I made a point of going to many of the twice daily solo travelers’ get-togethers, which were a great way to meet people. In fact, one of the first people I talked with turned out to be someone with whom I have a mutual friend. They have several lectures during the day and I went to some about nuclear energy (e.g. the Manhattan Project), cinema (one on Alfred Hitchcock and Daphne du Maurier and one on Busby Berkeley and Carmen Miranda), a couple of art talks (one on Banksy and one on art as an investment), and (a particular highlight) two by Marcel Theroux (son of travel writer Paul), who talked about making documentaries in Russia and North Korea and about his true crime books. Of course, I played trivia and, in fact, the team I was on for progressive trivia came in second and we won some Cunard-branded tchotchkes. There was also plenty of other entertainment available, especially all sorts of music. For example, I went to the afternoon tea one day, which had a harp player. I also listened to an Irish folk duo a couple of times and to a cocktail pianist who played a lot of show tunes. A couple of people I met sang in the passenger chorus and I went to their concert, too. I didn’t find time to work on the jigsaw puzzles that were set out among the game tables where a few people played board games. I also enjoyed the library which is claimed to be the largest one on any cruise ship.

The food was, in general, reasonably good. There was a wide enough variety to satisfy most tastes. I always ate dinner in the Britannia Restaurant. They had given me open seating, which meant I could show up any time from 6 to 9 p.m. If you want to sit alone, you can, but I always asked to share a table and, except for one night where there 7 people at a table for 12, making it hard to talk to anyone except whoever was right next to you, that worked out well. I met some very interesting people, including one of the lecturers (whose talk on police malfeasance I had missed) and a woman who had worked as a crystallographer. I sometimes ate breakfast or lunch in the restaurant, but more often went either to the Kings Court Buffet or to the Corinthia Lounge, which served “light fare,” e.g. fruit plates and pastries for breakfast or salads for lunch.

I was a little surprised by the demographics, by the way. Yes, there were plenty of older people. In my mid-60’s, I was probably close to the average age. But there also several younger passengers, e.g. a young man who had been studying in London for a couple of years who was returning to New Jersey. The largest number of passengers were (not surprisingly) British, followed by Americans and Germans. On Friday night, they offered a Jewish religious service and the attendees were from several countries, including the Netherlands, Spain, and Canada as well. (By the way, the guy from Germany who volunteered to lead the service had an excellent voice. And Cunard supplied kosher wine, challah, and gefilte fish.)

One other thing I should mention is that I have some friends who told me they would never take a trip on Cunard because they don’t want to dress up. During the day, you can wear pretty much anything. The general dress code for most evenings is “smart attire.” I generally wore one of two dresses I’d brought with me or a nice set of slacks with a twin set, i.e. pretty much what I used to wear to work. There were two gala nights and they tell you the theme long before sailing. I absolutely love getting dressed up, so for the Black and White Gala Night, I wore a full length black dress with an elaborate white neckline. I also had on my grandmother’s amethyst necklace and earrings.



The other gala night’s theme was Masquerade and a bit over half the people wore masks. I opted to wear my longish purple dress and my Mardi Gras themed Lunch at the Ritz earrings.



I got plenty of compliments on both outfits. And I enjoyed seeing what other people were wearing. (There were even a few men in kilts. Drool!)

But there are some people who never dress up and they were free to eat in the pub or the buffet on those evenings.

There was always a show (performed twice to accommodate both early and late diners). My favorite of the performers was a woman named Lorraine Brown who had an amazing voice. For one show, she did a Motown medley and a series of Shirley Bassey songs. Her other show was focused on Dionne Warwick. As far as the other shows, I was disappointed in the Broadway show, which started out fine with songs from West Side Story and South Pacific but ended up with several numbers from jukebox musicals. I don’t go to Broadway-themed shows to hear songs by Carole King, Tina Turner, Abba, and The Temptations. Nice dancing, however.

Overall, I enjoyed the transatlantic crossing much more than I’d expected to. I even got this iconic photo as we approached New York at the end of the trip.




Cunard offered bus service to the airports and to the train stations. I decided that, given my large suitcase, it was worth the 60 bucks to Penn Station (roughly what an Uber would cost) instead of coping with the subway. Marriott status proved useful again as I was able to get early check-in (without a fee) and take a nap. Overall, I would take the QM2 again, though I still prefer small ship expedition cruises.

The one flight I paid for with actual money (vs. frequent flyer miles) was from Washington Dulles to San Francisco. Because I had gotten compensation for a couple of flight delays over the summer, this cost me next to nothing. The catch was that the flight was at 6:30 in the morning, which meant taking a Lyft to IAD at oh-dark-thirty. As is all too typical when I have early flights like that, going to bed early didn’t really work and I got much too little sleep.

I first flew into SFO in August 1980, when I moved to the Bay Area to go to grad school at Berkeley. The airport was under construction. It has been under construction for the 45 years since. This time it was a particularly long walk to baggage claim and, from there, to the air train. I had decided that staying at the Grand Hyatt was a good use of Hyatt points and this proved to have been a good decision. They charged me $30 for early check-in, but that was a good deal since I’d gotten a $600 room for free. So, instead of going into the city and going to a museum or the like, I took a nap and spent some time reading and doing puzzles. You can avoid the high prices at the hotel restaurant if you realize that there’s a food court outside of security in the international terminal. I did splurge on breakfast in the morning, however.

The flight from SFO to TPE is nearly 14 hours, so it was a good thing that I’d had enough miles to do it in business class. I decided to splurge on a taxi when I arrived instead of trying to figure out the public transportation. That was a smart decision because, as I learned in the morning, Taipei Main Station is a bit of a maze and, while my hotel was a very short walk from the station, finding the entrance would have been challenging on my own. I stayed for three nights at White Space Design Hotel which was okay, but the room was very small and the bathroom was the sort that floods completely when you take a shower.

As for what to see, I had read the relevant sections of both the Fodor’s and Frommer’s guidebooks. I also found Nick Kembel’s Taiwan Obsessed website to be very helpful.

My first sightseeing excursion was to the National Palace Museum. I’d bought a three day pass for the transit system, which was convenient, but not really a great deal. Getting to the museum was easy enough (via metro and bus). The museum itself was completely overwhelming. I’m a big fan of calligraphy and manuscripts, so spent a lot of time looking at their book and scroll collection. Most of the displays had to do with books from the Song dynasty (roughly 1100’s through 1200’s) so I kept making mental jokes about there being a lot of songbooks.



I also looked at other things, e.g. clay and jade and bronze. I particularly liked several of the jade pieces.





I spent several hours at the museum (with a break to have lunch in their cafe) and found it completely overwhelming. I’d have liked to see their textile collection (which is in another building) but, at that point, I didn’t think I could absorb anything else.

I started Sunday morning with the Flower and Jade Markets, which are near Daan Park, which was a pleasant place to walk around. The jade market didn’t really engage me, alas. But the flower market was overwhelming and was one of the highlights of my time in Taipei.



There were several things I was interested in doing, but I decided it was important to take advantage of the weather being clear, as rain was predicted for the rest of my time there. That made it a good afternoon to go to Taipei 101, which had once been the tallest building in the world. There’s a huge food court there, which is a good (albeit crowded) place to get lunch. There’s also an upscale shopping mall. But the real reason to go there is to go up to the observation deck. I chose to go to the 89th floor enclosed area, instead of paying a lot more to go to the outdoor skydeck on the 101st floor. You get views over the whole area, including both the city, with a lot of tall modern building, and the surrounding mountains. By the way, you can also go down to the 88th floor and see the large damper that protects the building from earthquakes.



Overall, the experience is quite similar to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is what is currently the tallest building in the world.

The other site in Taipei that I considered essential was the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial Hall. Fortunately, that is one of the few things in Taipei that is open on Mondays. It is also free to visit. It was a rainy day, which was annoying, particularly because it meant they weren’t doing the famous changing of the guard. But there was still plenty to see.



Note that you can enter at one of the sides and take the elevator up, instead of climbing all of those stairs. The main thing to see inside is the bronze statue of Chiang Kai-Shek on the 4th floor.



There are also several exhibit halls with various art exhibitions. The parks surrounding the monument are lovely and, had it not been windy and rainy, I could have spent much of the day walking around them. Instead, I took the metro to some outlying areas, where I walked around a couple of malls without finding anything (other than a late lunch) that I wanted to buy.

Eventually, I went back to Taipei Main, walked back to the hotel, and retrieved my bag, before taking the commuter train to the Airport MRT Station in Taiyuan, which was a short walk through the Gloria Outlets to Hotel Cozzi Blu, where I’d spend that night and the next. This was a much fancier (and, hence, pricier) hotel, but the price was still fairly reasonable. The room I got was huge and the bathroom was equipped with a Japanese washlet toilet (as well as a shower that drained in the actual shower enclosure, rather than the middle of the floor.) They also provide free snacks, e.g. a packet of potato chips and a small can of coke.

The main reason for staying there is that it’s right next to XPark, which is the aquarium that had triggered this part of the trip. It was also conveniently close to the airport for my early flight on Wednesday.

Xpark did prove to be worth going to, especially if you like jellyfish. (And, yes, I know you are supposed to call them jellies, but old habits die hard.)



They do have a fairly wide assortment of other things, e.g. fish of all sizes (including sharks and rays, but none of my beloved sea dragons). They put the penguins near their cafe, with a tunnel for them to walk over the cafe, which is pretty cute. They also have an outdoor area (with umbrellas to borrow, if you didn’t have your own), but the weather was pretty unpleasant.

My intention had been to use a couple of hours that afternoon to shop. There was, however, a catch. The typhoon that had done some serious damage to the Phillippines was heading towards Taiwan which was why there was so much heavy rain. The city of Taoyuan had pretty much shut down, so both the Gloria Outlets and the nearby Landmark Plaza Mall were closed. There was allegedly a yarn store a short walk away, but it was closed. I retreated to my hotel room to do puzzles and read instead. I was also concerned about my flight the next day. So it was not exactly the best travel day ever. However, the nearby convenience store was open and provided food for supper. (Convenience stores in most Asian countries are, in general, far superior to any American 7-11 or, even, Wawa.)

In the end, my flight did go out in the morning. It was, however, a little over an hour late. Since I had only a two hour layover at BKK, I was concerned about my connection. You can only imagine my relief when I got off the plane and there was a woman standing there with a sign with my connecting flight info and my name. Yes, Thai Air had sent an escort to get me to the flight to Frankfurt. It was a long walk - and a bit confusing since it was going out from the satellite terminal. I got to the gate about 15 minutes before boarding started and collapsed for the next 11 1/2 hours. I’ll pick up the story in the next post.

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.

The first of the two trips I took in September was to South Carolina for LoserFest Grand Strand. For those who are unfamiliar with the Loser community, it’s essentially people who are involved with what used to be the Washington Post Style Invitational, which now has its afterlife via Gene Weingarten’s substack page, as well as a couple of related Facebook groups. There’s a lot more information on The Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society website. There are a number of Loser social events, with brunches roughly monthly and a couple of big parties a year (a post-holiday party around January and the Flushies award ceremony around June). Every year or two, a group of Losers get together to go somewhere for what is called LoserFest. I first went to one in Pittsburgh and have since been to Frederick (Maryland), Niagara Falls, and Philadelphia. My schedule worked out to enable me to go to this year’s LoserFest in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area.

Why there? Well, a long time Loser, Kathleen, moved to Surfside Beach a while back and lobbied for it. The primary organizer (known as the LoserFest pope), Kyle, published a “Fungenda,” and people signed up for which events they wanted to go to, including various meals and sightseeing events. He’s very good at finding things to do and I also appreciate that everything is optional.

Anyway, I flew down on Wednesday, early in the afternoon. It was easy to pick up my rental car and a short drive to my hotel, though it was a bit challenging to actually find the front desk since my GPS had outdated directions. (I’d gotten a good deal at the Grand Palms Resort, where am entire 2 bedroom villa cost slightly less than a room at the Holiday Inn.) I had time to settle in and take a short nap before going to Kathleen’s house for an informal dinner. She’s got a lovely little place, with a plant-filled backyard. There were probably a dozen or so of us there and we had the usual lively conversation, while nibbling on various goodies.

We had originally been scheduled to do a dolphin watching cruise on Friday morning, but the weather forecast was unfavorable so it got switched to Thursday morning. We had an excellent breakfast beforehand at the Golden Egg before driving to the Crazy Sister Marina, where we boarded a RIB (rigid inflatable boat). We saw a lot of dolphins, including some leaping right in front of us. Alas, I failed at dolphin photography, which is not surprising since every time I’ve been whale watching I’ve mostly gotten pictures of where whales were. It was really awesome watching them and an excellent start to the day.

Then we drove north to Myrtle Beach, where we had lunch at Margaritaville. That was followed by the Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum, which was fun, even though pretty much all the pinball machines were after my time. I thought the Munsters themed one was the most interesting machine, but most of them were fun.

From there, we went to Ripley’s Aquarium. This was a bit pricy for its small size, but they did have some interesting exhibits, starting with African penguins.



There were plenty of assorted fish, including at least one robotic one. There were also a lot of jellyfish. And sharks. They didn’t have any leafy sea dragons (my favorites at any aquarium that has them), but they did have weedy sea dragons.



And there was an axolotl, a creature I’ve been mildly obsessed with since I learned about it via a crossword puzzle.



That, of course, had me singing The Axolotl Song for days.

We finished the day with dinner at 42nd Street Bar and Grill. The food was good, but rather pricy.

On Friday, we started the day with breakfast at Blue Sky Restaurant. I suggested the Myrtle Beach Art Museum as a substitute for the dolphin cruise which had gotten shifted to Thursday. The museum proved to be small, but very good. There were two exhibits. The upstairs gallery had enhanced cyanotypes by Cora Ennis Morris.



The downstairs gallery was more to my taste, with an exhibition of winners of the Artfields competition. This piece by Brent Afford is titled Remember This as a Time of Day and pays homage to cast iron skillets.



The intriguing thing about this portrait by Stefanie Glen is that it was drawn in one continuous line.



I think most of us really liked Consume by Mike + Patz Fowle.



My very favorite piece was Mexicans in Canada, by Amira Hanafi. This is an interactive exhibit, which you can stop by touching the television screen. You can also start and stop the on-line version to see how clever it is.

We drove up to Brookgreen Gardens, a former rice plantation, where we started with a lovely lunch at the Austin Harvest Restaurant. After eating, we had a docent tour. Unfortunately, the docent started out by standing in one place and talking for over 20 minutes. We assumed he’d seen all the grey hair in front of him and thought we wouldn’t want to walk. But, actually, standing in one place is harder on most of us than walking.

It wouldn’t be South Carolina without a live oak allee and Spanish moss.



The main thing to see is the collection of American figurative sculpture, which is huge and impressive.



Our next stop was at Atalaya Castle. It would have been helpful if the directions had mentioned that the actual entrance is marked as Huntington Beach State Park, instead of claiming that it was “just across the street” from Brookgreen Gardens. The only sign that actually says “Atalaya Castle” is some ways down the state park road.

The castle was built as the winter home of philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. Frankly, I wasn’t particularly impressed with it. Apparently, they kept bears, horses, monkey, and a leopard in enclosures within the castle, which might have made it more interesting.





I was feeling rather grumpy. And the Red Sox were playing the Source of All Evil in the Universe, so I decided to skip out on dinner at the Gulfstream Cafe in favor of takeout food and watching the ballgame. Which, alas, my Bosox lost.

We had breakfast on Saturday at Johnny D’s Waffles, which had the advantage of being particularly close to my hotel. Then we went back to Brookgreen Gardens, where we did the Creek Excursion. This is a lovely and peaceful boat trip along the creeks of the property.



After that, some of the group went to the zoo, but I’m a lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) kind of gal and don’t feel the need to look at non-predators. The plan to have lunch at a barbecue restaurant followed by miniature golf and shopping for tacky souvenirs also failed to do anything for me. But Brookgreen had a Gullah Geechee Junkanoo Festival going on and music and dance and, especially, storytelling are very much my sort of thing. So I listened to a singer and a storyteller who had an Anansi story. Then I checked out the art exhibit and sampled jollof rice and delicious pound cake. There are also several recordings which you can listen to which feature local people of Gullah descent talking about their lives.

I finished the day by strolling around more of the gardens and looking at more sculptures. Here’s an interesting one relating to the Pledge of Allegiance.



There was a brief downpour, which started ironically just as I reached Rainey Plaza. I took refuge in the gift shop, but didn’t see anything I wanted. I drove back to my hotel and rested for a while before heading back down o Murrell’s Inlet for dinner at Dead Dog Saloon. We were rather crowded together and the food was just okay, but the atmosphere was fun, with lots of 1970’s music.

My travel home the next day went smoothly.
All in all, it was a fun trip with a lot of interesting activities and, more importantly, fun people (which is really the point of it) and I look forward to the next LoserFest. (I’ve been lobbying for New Orleans, by the way.)

My next trip was to Fort Wayne, Indiana from 9-15 August for the annual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). This was only the third time I attended the conference, though I had gone to bits and pieces virtually during the COVID shutdown. The two I’d gone to previously were in London and in Philadelphia. So why was it in Fort Wayne this time? Well, Fort Wayne has a small Jewish community, but it also has the Allen County Public Library, which has the second largest genealogy collection in the United States, behind the LDS Family History Center in Salt Lake City.

I flew in on Saturday, via Chicago. My flight to ORD left about 40 minutes late, so I was a bit concerned about my connection. But we did make up some time in the air. And I walked as quickly as I could through the unwashed hordes at ORD, arriving at the gate for the FWA flight slightly out of breath just before it started boarding. I forgot to look for the stand that allegedly gives out cookies to arriving passengers in Fort Wayne, alas. I did find where the van to the Hilton picks up and had a bit of a wait for that. The hotel check-in was on the slow side, but I got to my room just fine. I walked around a little and got some mediocre Chinese food for supper. Then I spent time in my room reviewing my plans for which conference sessions I wanted to attend.

On Sunday, I checked in at conference registration. Then I connected with a guy from my home town (who I didn’t know before, though I’d been friendly with his sister, who was in my Hebrew school class), connected with my cousin Fred who I hadn’t met in person before, and compared photos with a woman whose father had been in a DP camp in Italy with my father. I spent an exhausting amount of time in the exhibit hall, where I learned about some potentially useful resources. The opening session was that evening, with keynote speaker CeCe Moore, who spoke on The Power of Genetic Genealogy. Her most significant advice was to “fish in all four ponds,” i.e. have your DNA data on all of the major DNA sites. She also talked a lot about the use of genetic information in solving criminal cases, with an example of how finding DNA data for close relatives led to solving a murder.

Monday (day 2 of the conference) started with a breakfast with Jody Tzucker of LitvakSIG. For some mysterious reason, one person kept asking questions about Slovakia. After that I went to a talk by Rabbi Ben-Zion Saydman on Morris, Izzy, and Seymour: What’s In a Name, which was amusing, but rather sloppy about some details.

The luncheon for JRI-Poland (JRI=Jewish Records Indexing) had a talk by Halina Goldberg on Not Warsaw: Jews and Culture Beyond the Capitol. A particular line I liked was “let’s get the fiddler off the roof.” I followed that with Robinn Magid’s presentation on What’s New at JRI-Poland.org. They still need to unify systems to pay for things, e.g. membership is not handled through the shopping cart. It does look like they’ve added records for Tykocin (where my Chlebiocky family is from) so I need to spend some time on that. My favorite quote from that talk was “There was no one in 19th century Poland named Jennifer.” But I learned recently that there actually were women named Tiffany in medieval times, so you never know. Also, they have a new book club,although another book club is the last thing I need.

Small world department: I was washing my hands in the lady’s room in between talks when someone said to me, “Is your name Miriam?” When I said “yes,” she asked “did you go to West Hempstead High School?” She turned out to have been in my high school class!

I managed to find someone who could read the writing on the back of one photo and was able to verify that I was correct about who it was of. Then I spent about an hour and a half mentoring someone re: a ship manifest. I discovered that the person she was researching wasn’t traveling alone, but was probably with a son or nephew. (I did some other mentoring later on in the conference, but that was mostly answering quick questions, e.g. reading a name written in Russian.)

After that I went to the Family Journey Showcase talks, mostly to see what people were doing that I should keep in mind for my presentation on Thursday. The day ended with a presentation by Karen Franklin on JewishGen 2025, which had some info about who is filling what roles. The item of the most interest to me is that Shul Records America now includes Canadian and Caribbean records.

Which brings us to Tuesday, day 3 of the conference. I started it with another “Breakfast with the Expert” session. This one was with Curt Witcher of the Allen County Public Library. The table I was at had a lively discussion about how to get younger people interested in genealogy. My answer to that always has to do with emphasizing stories, rather than lists of names.

Next, I went to an excellent talk by Ellen Cassedy about Women of Lithuania. Something I learned from that talk was that Lithuania was the last country in Europe to become officially Christian. In 19th century Lithuania, Jews were the middle class, below aristocrats but above farmers and peasants. The first Lithuanian women’s conference was in 1907. Jewish women played the role of healers and non-Jewish women went to them for help with the evil eye, for example. Also, in 1926, the quota for Lithuanian immigration to the United States was 380 people. That explains why so many of my relatives who left Lithuania went to South Africa or to Argentina instead.

Continuing on that regional theme, the LitvakSIG meeting had updates about new records that have been added, as well as about changes in board members and leaders of District Research Groups. Afterwards, I talked to somebody who turned out to know part of my Atlanta family. That was followed by the LitvakSIG luncheon, where Dan Rabinowitz talked about The Strashun Library Ledgers Project. This wasn’t a lending library, but rather an annex to the Great Synagogue, with a reading room. There were 5 ledgers which have records of the reading lists of its members.

After lunch, I went to a talk by Anna Wiernicka about How to Learn Family Story from Crumbs - About the Value of Notary Records. I don’t know of my Polish ancestors having had any court cases that would have been handled in notarial courts, but who knows? Maybe somebody did own land and had a deed recorded or there was some issue with an inheritance.

Dan Rabinowitz gave his second talk of the day, this time on Vilnius: Traces of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. This is an almost 800 page book by Irina Guzenburg that is designed as a comprehensive guidebook to the city. There is a version in English, published in 2021,that includes several tours, with detailed information. This looks incredibly useful and I definitely want to try to get my hands on a copy.

The last talk I went to on Tuesday was titled My Mother’s Life in Cuba - In Her Own Words by Martin Fischer. Mostly, this had to do with poverty and moving from house to house because of it. While it had interesting material, the presentation annoyed me because I hate when people just read their slides verbatim.

A large group of conference attendees went to a baseball game that night. I pulled out my Hebrew language Nationals ball cap for the occasion. Here’s a picture of me wearing it, sitting next to a statue of Johnny Appleseed. who spent the last 10 years of his life in Fort Wayne and is allegedly buried there.



As for the ball game itself, the Fort Wayne TinCaps are the High-A affiliate of the San Diego Padres. They beat the West Michigan Whitecaps, who are affiliated with the Detroit Tigers. Here’s a picture of Parkview Field. which was nice enough but had very limited vegetarian food options. (I got a slice of cheese pizza for supper.)



Day 4 of the conference was Wednesday. I started with another Breakfast with the Expert. This one was with Jude Richter from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Our table had a good discussion on what resources you can use only on site.

The first presentation I went to was by Debra Kaplowitz on Using Pre-1826 Polish Parish Records in Jewish Research. The basic point was that there was no civil vital records registration in Congress Poland until 1826 and vital records were maintained by Catholic parishes. Those records also include things like manufacture and sale of alcohol, which was a a trade dominated by Jews. There may be some things in these records that are worth looking at.

I walked over to the Allen County Public Library where I watched a short movie, The Ice Cream Man about a Jewish ice cream parlor owner who was targeted by Klaus Barbie shortly after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. It was interesting and very moving.

I stayed at the library and did the (somewhat overwhelming) library tour, followed by some time using some of their resources. I spent some time looking at the 1896-1897 directory of Bulawayo (in present day Zimbabwe) but that appears to be too early to find information about my Meltser family who I have reason to believe went there.

I went back over to the conference center for the IAJGS annual meeting. The big (and disappointing) news was that next year’s conference will be virtual. They are also trying to plan some sort of events in association with the 250th anniversary of American independence. After the meeting, I sat down with my cousin, Fred, and we compared trees.

The day ended with the annual banquet. The banquet speaker was Daniel Horowitz, a retired Smith College professor (as opposed to the Daniel Horowitz of My Heritage). He gave an amusing talk about bears, primarily teddy bears and Paddington Bear.

Which brings me to Thursday, which was Day 5. I slept in a bit. The first talk I went to was by Banai Lynn Feldstein and had to do with Morse Code: Favorite Tools on Steve Morse’s web Site. Like many people, I most use stevemorse.org for searching immigration records and finding enumeration districts (EDs) for the U.S. federal census. The key new thing I learned is that there is now an interactive map of Manhattan on the ED finder.

Tammy Hepps gave a very entertaining presentation on The Dark Side of the Census No One Told You About. Her examples included an enumerator who didn’t understand exactly where his district was, so recorded the area on the wrong side of a major road and another enumerator who just made up at least 40 entire families. She also discussed several strategies which can help, such as searching by address instead of name, looking for names of other family members or neighbors, and using the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

Suzanne Fialkoff gave a talk titled Find Your Ancestors in These Little-Known Publications. Some of the resources she discussed include the American Jewish Yearbook, synagogue yearbooks, industry publications (such as Fur Trade Review), Who’s Who in American Jewry, and state and local historical societies.

Finally, it was time for my presentation His Own Teeth, which was part of the Family Journey Showcase. I didn’t have as many listeners as I’d hoped for, but those I did have were responsive and thought the story (which has to do how my grandparents met) was charming.

Overall, I enjoyed the conference and thought it was worth my time. I had some travel issues the next day, but I’ll write about that (and why I spent the weekend in Chicago) in another post.

After the conclusion of the NPL Con on Sunday morning, I got together with my friend, Melissa, who I’d met in December 2023 on the Aranui cruise to the Marquesas. We spent a lovely afternoon going to the Walker Art Center, which I had never managed to get to on my previous trips to Minneapolis.

Here’s a piece by Robert Rauschenberg, who is as famous for his relationship with Jasper Johns as for his art.



Edward Hopper is one of my favorite artists and I find his work instantly recognizable.




I had not heard of Gala Porras-Kim before, but I was quite intrigued by this series by her, which this is a small part of. These are all done with colored pencil, but they look 3-dimensional.



We did also go outside. The best known piece at the Walker is Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg, another artist whose work is easy to identify. We had to wait a little while to get a picture without a horde of people around it.



We also did plenty of non-art related talking, including reminiscing about the Aranui and talking about other travel things. And we had mocktails at the Cardamom Cafe at the museum. I had a very tasty drink called solea, which had pineapple, sumac, lime, and ginger beer. Overall, it was a lovely afternoon. Afterwards, Melissa drove me to the hotel near the airport where I was spending the next couple of nights.

I spent Monday going back to the Mall of America. Melissa had pointed out to me that it was previously the site of Metropolitan Stadium, which had been the home of the Twins (and the Vikings) from 1956 to 1981 when they moved to the Metrodome. In memory of that, there is a red chair bolted to the wall that marks the longest home run ever hit at that stadium (520 feet, hit by Harmon Killebrew).



There is also a marker showing where home plate had been.



I also did some general browsing. The only thing I was at all tempted by, however, was a yarn store, which had some high quality yarn, e.g. Malabrigo and Nori, but nothing I can’t get at home.

On Tuesday, I went to Saint Paul. I’ve been there before, so didn’t feel the need to go back to the state capitol and state museum. The weather was pleasant enough to spend some time walking around downtown. Another friend had mentioned the Peanuts statues in downtown Saint Paul, so I did photograph some of those. (Charles Schulz spent much of his childhood there.)





The main reason I went to St. Paul was, however, to go to a St. Paul Saints game. They’re the AAA affiliate of the Minnesota Twins and play at CHS Field. The ballpark was pleasant and I enjoyed the game, especially since the WooSox (BoSox affiliate, based in Worcester, Massachusetts) won. I also ran into two NPL people there.



All in all, I had a nice trip. My flight home went smoothly, too. I wish I could say the same about some of my travels in August.

I first became aware of the Balkan Heritage Society and their archaeological field schools several years ago, when I was browsing various listings of volunteer and field school opportunities on-line and saw a workshop they were offering on photographing Roman mosaics. I didn’t do anything about it at the time since I couldn’t have made it fit my schedule. But I would continue to browse their offerings every few years.

Being retired helps a lot with schedule flexibility and this time I saw they were offering a workshop on textile conservation, which would fit in nicely with my crafts interests. I was all set to register for that, but then I got invited to do my travel talk at my MIT reunion and - poof! My life is a schedule conflict! But I noticed that there was also a workshop on paper conservation that was a couple of weeks later. Since: a) that would fit my schedule and b) I do play with paper crafts (particularly bookbinding, but I’ve also made paper and done plenty of surface design, e.g. marbling, over the years), I thought that would be worth doing. So I signed up, and began devoting some time to figuring out how to get to Zakynthos, Greece, where the workshop would be held. I also tried to make a dent in the somewhat intimidating reading list they provided.

For those who don’t know (which is the vast majority of Americans), Zakynthos is in the Ionian Islands, off the west coast of Greece. There are flights there from a number of European cities and the least expensive route I could find involved flying to Athens and then going there by bus / ferry. Since I’d been to Athens before (way back in 2004, for the Olympics), I just spent a night there. I flew over via FRA, which is one of my least favorite airports, but it worked okay. I spent one night at the Hotel Mirabello, which is conveniently located near Omonia Square. The staff was friendly and helpful and there were plenty of reasonably priced restaurants nearby. I didn’t write down the name of the place I ate at, but I had a reasonably good moussaka. In the morning, the hotel had a particularly good breakfast buffet, by the way, with hot options that even included spanakopita. I would consider staying there again if I had some reason to be in Athens.

In the morning, I took a taxi to the Kifissos bus station, which is large and chaotic. By the way, buying my ticket on-line had been a bit stressful, because KTEL (the major bus company) apparently sells tickets on the route I needed only a couple of weeks in advance. Still, I had been able to get a ticket to Nea Manolada, which proved to take about an hour longer than Rome 2 Rio had claimed it would. It turned out that this was just a stop on the side of a road, not an actual bus terminal. There was a South African woman who was also heading to Kyllini Port for a ferry (in her case, to Kefalonia, which is the next island north) and we walked across the street to a kiosk where the proprietor called us a cab. I stayed overnight at the Glarentza Hotel, which was a short walk to the port and was reasonably nice. I had time to walk around the port a bit both that afternoon and the next morning, before boarding the 1 p.m. ferry to Zakynthos.

Our accommodations were at the Hotel Yria, which is decently central. However, the rooms are on the small side and the breakfast is just adequate. I was sharing a room with a young woman from France, by the way. This is probably a good place to note that most of the group were 20ish, i.e. young enough to be my grandchildren. Only four of us were there just for the paper conservation program, while the majority had been doing a three week program that included one week each of textiles, metal, and paper. Despite the age gap, I found them generally thoughtful and interesting people. (There were a couple of other older people, but I’m reasonably sure I was the oldest. Well, someone has to be.)

Anyway, the program started on a Monday morning and I’d arrived on Sunday. That evening I went with a couple of the other people to Solomos Square (the central square of Zante Town) to see an event called Giostra of Zakynthos, which was a sort of medieval parade, followed by a jousting tournament. It was colorful and interesting, but uncomfortably crowded. Note that there were groups from several countries - including Scotland!









I wasn’t able to get close enough to the jousting to get any pictures worth sharing of the horses and the riders, who included a young boy. Eventually, I decided I should go find something to eat. There is no shortage of restaurants in the area and I got a tasty supper before returning to the hotel and going to bed.

The workshop itself began on Monday after breakfast. We met our instructor, Dr. Nikolas Sarris (and his dog, Jimmy) and were transported in a minibus to Ionian University. The first day started with a couple of lectures (history of paper, causes of deterioration of paper) and a presentation about documentation of paper objects, before we set out to document the paper objects that had been distributed for us to work on. I had a 12-page set of what were essentially census records from 1959. There were extensive tears and cuts on the front cover, and folded edges and stains on every page, as well as rusted staples (which later on proved to be small nails / pins, not staples) and writing on the front and back covers.

We started out with a few conservation treatments and I brushed and vacuumed it. Later on, I would spend time cleaning with various tools, e.g. vulcanized latex sponges and patching with hollytex, which is a sort of paper made of non woven polyester. One of the other people in the workshop referred to it as “magic paper.” Here is a picture of the document with the pins removed and some cleaning done.



The edges of the front cover were patched but you can still see a lot of writing and stains.



Anyway, we continued to work on our documents during the subsequent days. There were some other types of (mostly Japanese) paper used in patching paper. We also spent time on humidifying and flattening paper. Our lab work was mixed in with lectures. We did have morning and afternoon coffee breaks and a lunch hour, where we ate at the student canteen, which was okay. I’d estimate that we were doing lab work maybe 6 hours a day. By the way, we had been told to bring lab coats, which gave me an excuse to dig out this personalized one, which I’d been given several years ago when I went to an event at the United Airlines catering facility in Denver.



On Thursday morning we had a field trip to the General Archives and the Historic Public Library of Zakynthos. There were lots of historic photos, many of them related to the 1953 magnitude 7.2 earthquake, which caused extensive damage throughout the southern Ionian islands. (By the way, there were a couple of smaller earthquakes at the end of my time on Zakynthos, the larger of which was magnitude 4.1. Having lived in California for 22 years, that didn’t even wake me up.)



There were also a couple of cases of dolls.



And, of course, there were shelves and shelves of books, many of which had significant damage, including tunnels from being insect eaten. Nikolas also talked about storage of books / documents. The next day, we made the most basic storage enclosures, essentially just folders.



Friday night, most of us went out to a fancy dinner at a restaurant called Manoo. You can get surprisingly good sushi in Greece (and, less surprisingly, a good gin and tonic). We bade goodbye to the people who were leaving on Saturday. The four of us who were left had the weekend free. I was fairly lazy, with some reading and puzzles to catch up on, but I did spend some time at the Byzantine Museum, which has a lovely collection. Here are a few examples.











On Monday, we were back to lectures and workshops. By the way, since we were down to 4 people, we went to and from the University in Nikolas’s car. We started learning about wet cleaning techniques and stain removal, including the use of suction tables. The rest of the week continued with paper deacification, paper sizing, removal of adhesive tape, and more advanced paper repair techniques. I’ll spare you the pictures of paper immersed in various chemical solutions. A local man had heard that there was a book conservator teaching our class and brought Nikolas some documents to look at and he had us work on them, too. I spent a fair amount of time cleaning and repairing this, for example.



On Thursday morning we went to see the Church of Agios Dionysios, followed by the Ecclesiastical Museum of the Holy Monastery of St. Dionysios. The church was elaborately decorated outside.



Inside, the architecture felt typical of Orthodox Christian churches I’ve seen, with an ornate iconostasis.



The museum had a lot of books on display, including some very old ones.



The workshop finished on Friday, which we spent making boxes to protect books. We also visited another room at the University, which had a nitrogen hypoxia chamber for killing insects. We also got our certificates for completing the course.

While I’d taken bus and ferry to Zakynthos from mainland Greece, I had opted to fly back to Athens. Sky Express was a new airline for me and I found their service reasonably good. Here’s an aerial photo of Zakynthos.




I stayed at the convenient but very pricy Sofitel Athens Airport overnight before my flights home on Swiss (via Zurich), which went smoothly. Airport hotels are always a good idea when you have an early morning (6:55 a.m.) flight.


Overall, I think the workshop was interesting and worth my time. I don’t expect to do much with what I learned, though you never know what may come in handy. I also enjoyed getting to know the other students, who generally made me feel more optimistic about young people nowadays. What more could I ask for?

I spent Memorial Day weekend at Balticon. I’d attended bits and pieces virtually before, but had never gone in person. The drive to Baltimore was slow and annoying and my GPS screwed up on where I needed to turn to get into the parking garage at the conference hotel, but I managed to figure it out. I had made my plans too late to get into the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, but it was a short walk to the Springfield Inn, which was perfectly adequate.

It’s been long enough since that weekend that I probably won’t remember every session I went to. On Friday night, I went to a panel on The Commercialization of Space, which included a friend of mine from storytelling. The focus was really on privatization, while I’d have preferred a broader view. After that, I walked around the art show and did a quick recon of things for sale. Then I decided that I needed sleep more than I needed to go to another session so walked up to my hotel and collapsed.

I started Saturday with I am the Very Model… which was a filk panel on patter songs. I was glad to see a mention of Sondheim’s “Getting Married Today” (from Company, which is one of the rare patter songs for a woman. I found the claim that patter songs are the forerunner of rap to be rather dubious, since I am fairly sure “The Signifying Monkey,” which is based on Yoruba folklore, predates Gilbert and Sullivan. Also, none of the panelists had an actual answer to my question on why the Major General’s song remains the most popular patter song for parodies, instead of, say, the nightmare song from Iolanthe or “Tchaikovsky” from Lady in the Dark. (Or, for that matter, Tom Lehrer’s “Lobachevsky.”) It was still an entertaining session and if you disagree with anything I’ve said, it really doesn’t matter

I went out for a short walk and lunch. After that, I know I went to a talk by Alan Doctor titled Wonderful News for Vampires - Synthetic Blood (True Blood?) is Being Developed. But I don’t remember anything specific about it. After that I went to hear Marc Aabrahams talk about Improbable Research and the Ig Nobel Prizes. That was the definite highlight of the con for me. I am, of course, familiar with the publication and the prize ceremony. I expected to laugh a lot and, indeed, I did.

Later in the afternoon, I went to a panel on My Favorite Monster. I did like that the panelists went beyond werewolves and vampires. Personally, I am particularly fond of the Hastrman, which is a Slavic water sprite that lives in rivers and eats children. The charming part is that it knits sweaters to keep the souls of its victims warm. I am reasonably sure that nobody has written about it in a science fiction or fantasy book. Yet. Later in the day, I couldn’t resist a panel titled Humorous Fantasy is a Serious Business. I think that the note I wrote on my phone which reads “The Cellphone Towers of Elfland” is probably a recommendation from this session. Also, I did buy Martin Berman-Gorvine’s book 100 Curses on Trump and Musk, which, alas, proved to be disappointing.


I started Sunday with a panel on The Folklore of Space. There were some interesting stories, but not really anything I hadn’t heard before. I followed that with a panel titled Ducks and How to Make Them Pay which was about as silly as the title suggests. (Note: I do not really have anything against ducks, although I do believe that eating duck increases the net intelligence of the universe. Geese, however, are the shittiest birds in the known universe.)

After a walk and lunch, I went to a panel on Non-European Folklore in SFF. This was fairly interesting and I was particularly glad that one of the panelists talked about African folklore - specifically, Nigerian folklore if I recall correctly. I followed that with a panel on Jews in Space: Jewish SF On and Off the Page. Of course, there was some discussion of Wandering Stars, a short story anthology that was revolutionary when it was published in 1974. The basic premise of the discussion was that there are a lot of Jewish SF writers, but few Jewish characters in their work. I don’t read enough SF to know how true that is, but I suspect that it could be because many of those Jewish authors are pretty assimilated.

Somewhere in there, I did a little bit of shopping. I’d been wanting to get Jasper Fforde’s Red Side Story (which is the sequel to Shades of Grey and I also bought a memoir I know a friend will want. (He may read this, so I am not giving more details.) I also couldn’t resist a bee-hive themed game tray. There were a few odds and ends I contemplated, but I am trying to declutter my life, so I restrained myself.

In the late afternoon, I went to a Classic Filk Sing-Along. I closed out Sunday with a talk by Brent Warner on A Fannish Introduction to Runes as a Writing System That was interesting, but there was a lot of distracting fiddling around with the presentation technology.

I think the only session I went to on Monday was a panel on Creation Myths, which was pretty interesting. There were other things I was interested in, but since it was Memorial Day, I was concerned about traffic driving home. It was slower than normal, but not as bad as Friday had been.

Overall, I enjoyed going to Balticon and was able to see a few friends who are regulars at it. I had my usual issue at all events, which is my inability to be in multiple places at the same time. I did a reasonable job of balancing things I wanted to go to without getting too exhausted. I would have liked to have checked out some of the game demos and watch some film screenings, but couldn’t make that work, mostly because I wasn’t staying in the con hotel.

But the biggest problem is the Memorial Day weekend is not really a great time for me to go to something like this, since it conflicts with other things I want to do. I’m likely to be traveling next year, for example. So, overall, going virtually and going to some events after the fact will have to do.

Moving on to April in my catch-up, let' start with the first weekend of the month.

I drove down to Williamsburg the first weekend in April for the Virginia Storytelling Alliance (VASA)annual gathering. The drive down was about what I expected for a Friday afternoon, with a few areas of heavy traffic (inevitably around Quantico and around Fredericksburg), but I didn’t have any trouble getting to the hotel where the event was being held. I had plenty of time to get dinner at a nearby Mexican restaurant before the informal story swap that kicked off the Gathering. Since this was just before Passover, I told a story that essentially combines two of my father’s jokes about the crossing of the Red Sea.

Saturday was a very full day. The first event was a workshop by Jeanna Lee on Persuasive Storytelling. She focused on the rhetorical triangle, which includes ethos (appeal to credibility and authority), logos (appeal to logic and reasoning), and pathos (appeal to emotion). The handout talked about these in terms of neurotransmitters. But the real tie-in to storytelling was an exercise where we were divided into groups and each got one of these approaches to use in telling the story of the three little pigs. I was in the logos group and we pointed out to the big bad wolf that he was supposed to be avoiding high cholesterol foods like pork. And then there was the matter of his criminal record … Overall, we had a lot of fun with this.

After an intermission, Gwendolyn Poole presented a workshop title Attention Please which had to do with practical tools for capturing the audience’s attention. This included voice inflection, call and response, and physical movement. That was followed by the first of two story swaps with feedbacks.

Then came lunch, which also included the annual VASA business meeting. That includes the financial report, membership report, and board of directors (including filling any vacant positions). I served on the board for several years a while back, but I’m committed to too many other things now to consider doing it again.

Next up was a workshop on Storytelling Ethics, led by yours truly. This is a topic that I’m passionate about. My handouts covered how to define ethics, basics of copyright protection, and several case studies. For example, what is appropriate to tell for a given audience? Can you tell a story from a culture other than your own? How should you deal with organizers of storytelling programs, including financial considerations? The discussion was lively and I think it went very well.

The second story swap with feedback followed that. The day ended with filling out evaluations and some closing remarks.

I could have driven home that evening, but I had decided it would be more relaxing to stay another night. That was, indeed, a good decision. I got dinner at a barbecue place that had been recommended to me and my drive home on Sunday was noticeably faster than the drive down had been. All in all, I’d say it was a successful event, though the attendance was on the low side.