fauxklore

And here’s the other set of February blog prompts with my answers. Note that the sometimes odd punctuation is from the author of these. I’m too lazy to fix it.

1 Feb: International Face & Body Art Day: Do you have tattoos? What’s the most memorable tattoo you’ve seen on someone else? I do not have tattoos and would never willingly get one. Some of the tattoos I saw on people in the Marquesas in December were interesting. But my mental association with tattoos is the numbers tattooed on the arms of some Holocaust survivors, which are memorable in a different way.

2 Feb: Crepe Day: What’s the best filling and/or topping for crepes? Sweet or savory? For savory crepes, mushrooms in a sherry sauce with a little cream is a good filling. For sweet crepes, a combination of strawberries and nutella would be nice. For something sort of in-between, sliced apples with a sharp cheddar cheese.

3 Feb: Feed the Birds Day: Do you have a bird feeder? Do you or do you remember feeding ducks? I do not have a bird feeder, though many years ago in Berkeley, I had a hummingbird feeder. I have vague memories of feeding ducks, but long enough ago that they’re very vague memories. And you do know that bread is bad for ducks, right? Frozen peas are recommended instead.

4 Feb: I Heart Horror Day: If you heart horror, what is your favorite horror story (film, literature, true crime, etc.)? I’m not a huge fan of the gory monster sort of horror. Psychological horror is more interesting. I like Stephen King, but the single creepiest book I ever read was Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon. It’s the only book which it was hard to go to sleep after reading.

5 Feb: World Nutella Day: Nutella, yay or nay? Definitely yay, especially as part of a continental breakfast in Italy.

6 Feb: International Frozen Yogurt: What’s your favorite topping on frozen yogurt? It depends on the flavor of the frozen yogurt. For something plain, like vanilla or that undefinable tangy flavor, I like berries. For something like chocolate, I like something along the lines of oreo crumbs.

7 Feb: Girl & Women in Sports Day: Do you follow any women’s sports? If you were a girl, did you play sports as a child? I’ve tried to get interested in women’s basketball, but just never managed to. When I was a girl, we played various ports in gym class. In general, I liked racket sports (tennis and badminton) and despised gymnastics and track.

8 Feb: Wear Orange Day: Is orange the new pink? [from the film Legally Blonde] I do not believe that I currently own any orange clothing, though I have owned a neon orange skirt in the past. I claim to be allergic to pink. As a northeastern, I see no reason to wear any color other than black most of the time.

9 Feb: Read in the Tub Day: Do you read in the bathtub? Ever dropped a book in the tub? I do read in the bathtub, most usually either mysteries or romance. I have dropped a book in the tub now and then.

10 Feb: Lunar New Year: Do you celebrate lunar new year? What do you hope the year of the Dragon will bring to your life? I do not really celebrate lunar new year. The only thing I really wish for out of the lunar new year is a good price on interesting Asian food.

11 Feb: Superbowl Sunday: Do you know anything about American football? Do you have a favorite team? I know American football exists. I can name at least a few teams. I know what a football looks like. As for a favorite team, if I cared about football at all, I’d root for the Baltimore Ravens, because I think it’s cool to have a sports team named after a poem.

12 Feb: Darwin Day: Do you believe in survival of the fittest? I believe in that in the biological sense, but am highly skeptical of social Darwinism.

13 Feb: Fat Tuesday: Have you ever celebrated Mardi Gras/Carnival? Sort of, since I once happened to be in Mazatlan, Mexico during Carnaval. I’d be interested in being a spectator at, say, the Sambadrome in Rio, but I’m leery of crowds.

14 Feb: Valentine’s Day: Do you remember your first Valentine? Hmm, I remember that everyone gave everyone else in their class Valentine’s Day cards when we were in elementary school.

15 Feb: Gum Drop Day: What’s your favorite sticky or chewy candy? I suppose classic caramels, but, in general, I prefer less sticky candies.

16 Feb: Almond Day: What is your favorite nut? That’s hard to choose. I like most nuts. I probably eat cashews or brazil nuts the most often. I like pignolias a lot, but they’re quite expensive.

17 Feb: World Pangolin Day: What’s your favorite unusual creature? Definitely the leafy sea dragon, which looks like kelp floating by.

18 Feb: Hate Florida Day: What has Florida Man ever done to you?! Florida man hasn’t done anything to me specifically, but then there was the 2000 U.S. Presidential election.

19 Feb: Chocolate Mint Day: What’s the best pairing with chocolate? Uh, more chocolate? Seriously, I like the combination of chocolate with hazelnut. Lake Champlain Chocolates makes the Five Star Chocolate Hazelnut bar, which is, aside from its price, about as sublime as a chocolate bar can get.

20 Feb: Hockey is for Everyone Day: Is hockey for everyone? Only if they’re Canadian. We had to play both field hockey and floor hockey in elementary school and I detested both of them.

21 Feb: World Kombucha Day: Have you ever tried kombucha? Favorite flavors? I’ve never tried kombucha. It just doesn’t sound appealing to me.

22 Feb: Supermarket Employee Day: Do you have a favorite worker at the place where you buy food? I buy food at several different stores. There’s one clerk at the Safeway near me who I like because she is both friendly and efficient. But, for the most part, I just want them to not bag all the heavy items together.

23 Feb: Dog Biscuit Day: Ever eat a dog biscuit by mistake? Or on purpose?! Never having had a dog, this hasn’t come up in my life.

24 Feb: Tortilla Chip Day: What’s the best thing to eat tortilla chips with: salsa, guacamole, bean dip, tequila? The best thing is to make Frito pie - a layer of fritos in the bottom of a bowl (though using the small bag is more authentic), topped with chili and cheese (and sometimes sour cream). Short of that, salsa is good.

25 Feb: Telecommuter Appreciation Week (Feb 25-Mar 2]: What are the pros and cons of working from home? Not having to deal with commuting crowds is a plus. But I never really liked working from home, because it was too easy to get distracted by household things I should have been doing. And there was some value in having other people around to bounce ideas off of.

26 Feb: Levi Strauss: Do you have a favorite pair of jeans? I used to really love y Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. Nowadays, I mostly wear stretchier, pull-on slacks.

27 Feb: International Polar Bear Day: If you saw a polar bear in the wild, what would you do? I would look for somewhere to take shelter. When I went to Churchill, Manitoba, I saw bears in the wild and was told that if you saw one in town, you could go into any house or car, because people were not allowed to lock either of those.

28 Feb: Public Sleeping Day: Ever fallen asleep in public? I’ve certainly fallen asleep on trains and buses if that counts.

29 Feb: International Toast Day: What’s the best thing to put on toast? What is the best kind of bread to toast? The best thing to put on toast is butter. Marmalade or nutella is also good. The absolute best thing to toast is an English muffin.

I’ve been busy with several things worth writing about, but first let’s look at the first group of last month’s questions.

1. Are We Becoming ‘Numb’ to School Shootings? I’m afraid it looks that way. There’s no longer the same level of news coverage and associated shock. I’m not sure I’d limit that to school shootings, however. I think the American public has become numb to mass shootings in general.

2. What Words Do You Hate? I’m not, in general, a big fan of casual cussing. That doesn’t mean I never use strong language, but I like people to know I really mean it.

3. What Recent Events Will Most Likely Be Featured in History Museums Someday? The Hamas massacre of Jews on October 7th. The MAGA Insurrection of January 6th. The Russian war on Ukraine. The collapse of the Haitian government.

4. When Do You Choose Making a Phone Call Over Sending a Text? It really depends who I’m talking to and what the context is. My brother doesn’t really text, nor does the Gentleman With Whom I’m Conducting the World’s Longest Running Brief Meaningless Fling. A couple of my friends are, however, text-a-holics.

5. What Temperature Do You Set the A/C or Heat To Be Comfortable? I set the heat to about 73 Fahrenheit in Winter and about 80 Fahrenheit in Summer.

6. What Are Your Favorite Works of Art? There’s really too many to list. But to name just a few, Van Gogh’s Starry Night has been high on my list since I first saw it as a child when my father took me to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase is the piece that revolutionized the way I think about modern art, because the verb “descending” is the key to understanding it. The Gobelin tapestries in the Grandmaster’s Palace in Valetta, Malta are simply beautiful, and while I’m in that city, I’ll also mention Caravaggio because there are a couple of his paintings in St. John’s Co-Catherdral that are masterpieces of realism. Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party is a great example of political art.

7. How Do You Remember What You Need to Remember? I write lots of things on lots of scraps of paper.

8. Have You Ever Stumbled Upon a Cool Public Performance? It depends on how you define “public.” I’ve sometimes heard something really interesting as part of free art show or street festival, for example, but I’m not sure if that counts. One example of that was my first introduction to The Bobs, who were performing at the KPFA arts fair in Berkeley umpty-ump years ago. I’ve also heard some interesting street musicians / buskers, e.g. After the Storm.

9. What Are the Animals in Your Life? I travel too much to have any animals. I have a few friends who do have very sweet cats, however.

10. What Did/Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? Mostly, I wanted to be an astronaut or a chemist. But other careers that interested me were acting, driving race cars (specifically, I wanted to be the first woman to win the Indianapolis 500), or pitching for the Mets.

11. What Are Your Favorite Viral Videos? I’m a big fan of The Kifness. And of the Try Channel.

12. Should a College Education be Free? In general, I don’t think people really value things they get for free. There are plenty of ways for talented students to get their education paid for and what we really need is better guidance on identifying those for particular students.

13. When Did You Last Have a Great Conversation? I play board games with two particular groups of friends (some from the Loser Community and some from the Puzzle Community) and both entail great conversations along the way.

14. How Do You Feel About Valentine’s Day? I have no particular feelings one way or the other about it. It’s nice to get recognition from someone you’re in a relationship with, but getting small acts of attention at random times is more important.

15. Is Shakespeare Too Hard? Not really. One does have to get used to some of the language, but the gist of the stories is actually pretty accessible.

16. Are You the Same Person on Social Media as You Are in Real Life? I think so.

17. Does Punctuation in Text Messages Matter? It can be helpful. I am part of the cult of the Oxford Comma, for example.

18. Where Do You See Yourself in 10 Years? At my age, I just hope I am still above ground and able to go places.

19. Do You Speak a Second, or Third, Language? I speak a little bit of a lot of languages, but I don’t speak anything other than English fluently. Fortunately, the words for “chocolate” and “coffee” are similar in almost every language, so I can get my most basic needs met.

20. Did You Like School? For the most part I did, though there were particular classes and/or teachers I disliked.

21. Is It Harder to Grow Up in the 21st Century Than It Was in the Past? I think every era has its own challenges.

22. Have You Ever Performed for an Audience or Shared Creative Work With Others? In elementary school, I was in choir and in orchestra and string quartet (playing viola). I was in the chorus for at least one summer camp show. I had minor roles in a couple of community theatre plays in my teens. Nowadays, I tell stories, which suits my talents much better.

23. Should Terminally Ill Patients Be Allowed to Die on Their Own Terms? Mostly yes, but with the caveat that my biggest concern is making sure it really is their own choice and they aren’t being coerced.

24. How, and by Whom, Should Children Be Taught Appropriate Behavior? Ideally by their families. In particular settings, any adult leading the children in that setting should demonstrate what is appropriate. For example, in school, children need to learn how to behave towards other members of their class. In religious settings, they should learn whatever is customary in that religion.

25. Do You Like to Exercise? I like certain types of exercise. I enjoy walking, for example. I love many types of dancing.

26. What Places Do You Remember Fondly From Childhood? The first one that comes to mind is the secret place my brother and I and one of my friends had, which was just a clearing deep in a whole block of empty lots in my neighborhood. The other two I thought of right away were the factory blocks that were right behind the street my house was on and a place called Wayside Chinchilla Ranch that was a candy store which also sold stuff like model airplane kits. Oh, and I can’t forget the seaplane port at the edge of town, which I went to after school almost every day.

27. Can Graffiti Ever Be Considered Art? I think it can, as long as it is done with the permission of a property owner.

28. Do You Believe in Ghosts? No.

29. Are Digital Photographs Too Plentiful to Be Meaningful? It’s handy to be able to take a photo whenever you happen to see anything you think is photo worthy and I see no reason why any particular means of doing so should be considered less meaningful.

From 29 February through 2 March, I was at RootsTech, which is a huge annual genealogy convention. It’s hard to tell how many people participate because they sell millions of tickets for the on-line event, which I’ve done the past couple of years. The problem with going on-line is that there is so much stuff that it’s hard to decide which presentations are worth watching, but there are also all the distractions of home, so I end up not watching a lot. Buying an in-person ticket includes access to all of the on-line presentations for an entire year. There’s also a huge exhibit hall, with all of the major genealogy companies (and many I’d never heard of) contributing. And there were a couple of hundred in-person presentations to attend.

Anyway, I flew in the day before (Wednesday) and my flight to Salt Lake City (via Los Angeles) went smoothly enough, though my arrival gate and departing gate were pretty much as far apart as any two United gates at LAX could be. United uses Terminal B at SLC and, to get out of the airport, you have to walk half the length of that terminal, walk through a half mile long tunnel, and then walk much of the length of terminal A. The signage to get to TRAX (the SLC light rail system) wasn’t great, but I found where I needed to go and was quite pleased to learn that the system was free for people attending RootsTech. It was also a bit of a hike to my hotel from the nearest station. In short, it was going to prove easy to get plenty of steps in during the convention. For what it’s worth, I stayed at the Residence Inn, which was okay, though the bed was too soft, so my back was aching after a couple of days. There are several hotels closer to the convention center, by the way. If I went again, I might consider one of the hotels right across the street.

There were three or four classes I was interested in during every time slot of the event. I marked all of them on my schedule and chose during the time between the sessions. I also spent time visiting the exhibit hall, but won’t really discuss that since I didn’t take notes there. But I will note that several (all?) of the major companies did have mini-seminars about using their products. And I did learn about a few products that could be useful, e.g. some of the archiving materials.

The first session I went to on Thursday was The Quest for Hidden Ancestors - Genealogy Tips from Nancy Drew by Ellen Kowitt. This wasn’t really focused on things I didn’t already know, but I like Nancy Drew and I’ve found Ellen to be an entertaining speaker before. Basically, she pulled out examples from the Nancy Drew novels that are relevant to genealogy research and listed plenty of resources. And that did include a few I had not been aware of previously, e.g. interment.net for burial records and Deep L for translation. She also had a particularly good list of resources for historical maps. Entertaining and informative was a good way to start the day.

The next session I went to was What’s the History in Your Family History? by Rachel and Matt Trotter. This was described as adding historical context to your family history and covered sources like oral histories, oral traditions, diaries, and timelines. While there were a couple of example, It wasn’t really what I was looking for, since it was largely U.S. focused and somewhat more recent history for the most part.

The hottest subject in genealogy these days seems to be artificial intelligence, so (after a mediocre and overpriced lunch in the exhibit hall), I went to a session on Using AI Tools to Expand Your Research Universe Part 1: Chat and Search Tools. by James Tanner. He described the goal as to help organize, analyze, and get insight from data to solve novel problems. He listed several subfields of AI, including cognitive computing, computer vision, machine learning, neural networks, deep learning, natural language processing, fuzzy logic, expert systems, and robotics. He also talked about practical uses of AI, including detecting illegal activity, business apps (e.g. digital personal assistants), generative AI, and data processing. He noted that large language models are what has changed recently and mentioned a few general purpose products, e.g. Microsoft Copilot. I found his talk way too general and would have liked some actual examples of using AI in genealogy. I had considered going to one or more of the talks in his series of presentations, but decided that they were unlikely to be worth my time based on this one.

The next top talk I went to was History, Family History, and Families From the Global to the Personal by Dr. Wanda Wyporska. Her main point was that genealogists are historians. She talked about geography as a genealogist’s worst friend, primarily in the context of forced and voluntary migrations. Her ethnicity is a mixture of Eastern European and Caribbean, which led to an interesting twist on this. The main point was that people connect with communities in various ways. Unfortunately, most of the discussion was centered on race, which is not of much interest to me. So, while her talk was reasonably interesting, I didn’t find much of it of any practical relevance.

The last talk I went to on Thursday was Squeezing all the Info Out of Your Matches by Kate Penny Howard. This was a fairly basic presentation on DNA and was focused on finding the Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) with a match. She talked about things like searching across as many platforms as possible ad then building out descendants of the MRCA. She also recommended using DNA Painter. Since her major emphasis was on things like looking for who an unknown parent is (either because of adoption or unexpected DNA results), I didn’t find this particularly relevant.

Overall, I thought that only one of the five talks I went to on Thursday was notable. Fortunately, I had somewhat better success with finding useful sessions the next two days.

The first talk I went to on Friday was Researching the Canadian Census and Early Census Substitutes by David Allen Lambert. Most of this was a review of what information censuses (some federal, some by province) contained in each year. For example, the 1901 census included complete birth date (not just year), year of immigration, and year of naturalization. He also listed where each census can be found, including Family Search, Ancestry, and Library and Archives Canada. The most recent one on Ancestry is 1931. This is useful for me, because of a great-uncle who I know went to Canada (and, later, entered the U.S. via Buffalo. There is a note on another immigration record (for someone who is almost certainly another member of that part of my family) involving an inquiry in Toronto. So, it looks like it may be possible to get more insight into that situation.

The next talk I went to was The High Five - Key Documents for Successful Records Retrieval at NARA by Cecilia McFadden. She talked about record locations and finding record set numbers. But I wish she had traced through some actual examples in detail, as I got rather lost in some other dry information.

One of the highlights of the conference was What’s New and Exciting at My Heritage by Gilad Japhet. He started out with an example of artifact DNA. In particular, he was able to have DNA extracted from stamps, which led to finding half siblings of his great-grandfather. I thought this was completely mind-blowing. Of course, it’s not yet ready for commercialization and is probably too expensive for people who aren’t the CEO of a genealogy company, but the potential is amazing. I definitely have postcards with stamps I assume were licked by my grand-mother and I probably have envelopes sealed by various other deceased ancestors.

He also talked about recent (AI-based) features that have been added to My Heritage. Photo Dater, which estimates when historical photos were taken, looks likely to be useful. AI Biographer, which converts facts into a narrative holds no interest for me, since I know how to write, but at least it includes sources. There’s also an AI Record Finder, which uses an AI chat to search historical records. I think that is probably most useful for beginners. OldNews.com is focused on historical newspapers. Unfortunately, it only covers eight countries initially and, other than the U.S. (and possibly Canada) has limited utility for me. There were several other things he mentioned, which were of less interest to me, but it was a very good presentation.

My most disappointing talk of the day was Why Should I Map My Chromosomes by Tim Janzen. The goal is to determine which portion of your DNA comes from which ancestor. It really only works for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins. And, more importantly for Ashkenazi Jews like me, endogamy is a problem. Aside from that, his presentation was hard to follow because he did things like referring to the 4th column in a dense chart on a slide, but really meant what was actually, say, the 8th column. Overall, this was pretty much useless for me.

The last talk I went to on Friday was Are You an Ethical Genealogist? by Dr, Penny Walters. This was interesting, but I’d have preferred a panel discussion to a lecture. She mostly focused on situations with genuine reasons pointing to two different sets of actions. For example, approximately 12% of DNA tests result in someone finding an NPE (which stands for either “not parent expected” or “non-parental event” depending on which you prefer.) An adoptee can obviously have good reasons for trying to find a birth parent, e.g. understanding their medical history, but there is also potential to hurt a parent who raised them who may not have known of the situation. There are also cases involving an individual vs. their community, truth vs. loyalty, individuals vs. the community, and justice vs. virtue. Any decision you make about privacy and confidentiality vs. transparency has consequences. Each person has to decide for him or herself what information to disclose about their family tree. (Since there are a few people on my tree with readily findable criminal records, this is of direct interest to me. On the plus side, those people are easy to research.)


I started Saturday with a presentation by Jarrett Ross on Success With Jewish DNA: How to Overcome Issues with Endogamy. This was probably the single most immediately useful session I went to at the conference. He also talked about double cousins and 3/4 siblings, e.g. the result of marriage to a sibling of a deceased spouse. He noted that as you get further back, the differences between endogamy and non-endogamy are greater. More importantly, he had several practical suggestions re: dealing with DNA results in endogamous communities. I already knew some of what he suggested about what level of centimorgan matches to investigate. But he had other tips I hadn’t really thought of before. For example, you can try to build out the tree of a potential match to a specific level. He also suggested looking for connections to towns within 30 miles. Overall, I came away with actionable information, which is always a good thing.


The next presentation I went to was AI-Assisted Genealogy: The Family History of the Future by Daniel Horowitz (from My Heritage). Some of the uses of AI he discussed were language translation, market research, key word research, and customization. Applying those to genealogy tasks, he talked about tombstone translations, summarizing and extracting information from documents, transcribing handwritten records , extracting information from newspapers (including locating OCR text). Within MyHeritage, some tools include an AI Record Finder (which lets people find data without filling in a form), Photo Tagger (which looks useful, but he did warn of its addictive potential), He also talked about some other tools I can’t imagine any reason I’d want to use (e.g. one to turn yourself into a historical figure). Still, it’s good to know what’s out there, even if you want to use only some of it.

After that, I went to Research Planning for Efficiency and Accuracy by Mindy Taylor. Most of her focus was on setting up research logs, including citations. That’s the sort of thing I know in theory but don’t do well with in practice, as I have found myself repeating searches multiple times. Something as simple as noting the date a particular search was made could be very helpful, especially since new sources become available frequently. Er, yes, I do need to get organized.

The final presentation I went to was Working with WATO (What Are the Odds) by Leah Larkin. WATO is a tool from DNA Painter and is intended to help identify an unknown parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent. Anything further back is beyond the limits of autosomal DNA. That means it is fairly unlikely to be of any significant help for me, since I know who all my ancestors in that range are. In addition, it doesn’t work well with endogamy. There’s a newer tool called Banyan DNA which might be more useful, so that’s something to keep in the back of my mind.

It had started snowing in the late morning and I had a nasty slushy walk back to my hotel. In the morning, I got a Lyft to the airport. My flight was delayed first because it was overbooked and they needed to get some volunteers to switch flights. And then it was delayed further for de-icing. Fortunately, United held my connecting flight at DEN long enough for me to sprint to that gate and I made it home on time.

Overall, I thought the conference was reasonably valuable. I came home with a fair amount of stuff to follow up on. And, of course, there are lots of on-line sessions I should try to find some time to watch.

Once I fall behind, it always gets tempting to procrastinate further. So, come on, let me buckle down and write an actual entry.

Celebrity Death Watch: Hinton Battle was a Tony Award winning actor and dancer. Carl Weathers was an actor, best known for playing Apollo Creed in the first four Rocky movies. John Walker was a co-founder of Autodesk, a CAD software company. Wayne Kramer was the lead guitarist of MC5. Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples, was the only son of the last king of Italy. Aston "Family Man" Barrett led Bob Marley’s backing band. Sir Anthony Epstein was one of the discoverers of the Epstein-Barr virus. Anthony George designed the flag of Grenada. Henry Fambrough had been the last surviving member of The Spinners. Jim Hannan pitched for the Washington Senators in the 1960’s. William Post invented Pop-Tarts. Bob Moore founded Bob’s Red Mill, an organic grain company. Jack Higgins was an editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Bob Edwards was a journalist and radio host, primarily on NPR. Randy Sparks founded the New Chirsty Minstrels. Rabbi Jules Harlow was one of the editors of Siddur Sim Shalom, a popular Conservative Jewish prayer book. Benjamin Lanzarote wrote music for television shows. Reuben Jackson was a poet and jazz historian. Marc Pachter directed the National Portrait Gallery from 2000 to 2007. Brian Stableford was a science fiction writer. Ramona Fradon was a comic book artist. Jacob Rothschild was a banker, duh. Richard Lewis was a comedian. Iris Apfel was a flamboyant fashion designer. Juli Lynne Charlot created the poodle skirt.

Chita Rivera was an actress, singer, and dancer. She won Tony Awards for her performances in The Rink and The Kiss of the Spider Woman as well as receiving a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2018. She was the first Latino American to win a Kennedy Center Honor (in 2002) and received a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Her most iconic roles included Anita in West Side Story and Velma in Chicago. The last time I saw her perform live was a production of the Kander and Ebb musical adaptation of The Visit at Signature Theatre.

Jean Malarie was one of the first two men to reach the North Geomagnetic Pole. (The other was an Inuk man named Kutsikitsoq.) He was a strong advocate for the rights of Arctic minorities. He wa son my ghoul pool list and earned me 19 points.

Toby Keith was a country singer. I had a colleague back around 2002 who played his song “I Love This Bar” constantly. I retaliated with Tuvan throat singing.

Sieji Ozawa conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra for many years. I first saw him conduct in the mid-1970’s when I went to Tanglewood several times on excursions from the NSF biochemistry program I spent a summer at. He was a very animated and energetic conductor and always interesting to watch. And he got bonus points for being a Red Sox fan. Which brings me to this story, which I should probably apologize for (but won’t):

Seiji was conducting Beethoven's 9th during a critical time in Boston. The Red Sox were fighting for a post-season slot and everyone - including the members of the orchestra - was excited. Well, there's a long section towards the end of that piece where the bass players have no music to play and they took to slipping across the street to a bar to watch the ball game. To make sure they'd get back in time , they tied a string to the page in the music a little while before they needed to return. They strung that to the bar so that they could feel a tug when Seiji turned the page.
One evening, the game was particularly exciting and the beer was flowing more freely than usual, so they missed the tug on the string and got back late. Seiji was furious. And justifiably so...

It was the bottom of the 9th, the score was tied, and the basses were loaded.

Mojo Nixon performed music that was a cross between rockabilly and punk. His songs included “Elvis is Everywhere” and “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child.” The late 1980’s were interesting times.

Alexei Navally was the opposition leader fighting against Vladimir Putin’s regime. I really hope you didn’t need me to tell you that.

Brian Mulroney was the prime minister of Canada from 1984-1993 and participated in the development of NAFTA.


Non-Celebrity Death Watch: Millie Loeb died in July 2023, but I didn’t find out until late January. Back in the late 1980’s I took a couple of writing classes through UCLA extension. One of those was Millie’s class, Our Stories, Ourselves. The women in that class became close as we wrote stories about our life experiences and we went on to continue for another semester outside of UCLA, meeting at one another’s homes. The work I did in that class led to some of the personal stories I still tell. In short, Millie was a great influence on my life and I’ll miss her.


Speaking of Storytelling: I have told my story about my sense of direction at two story swaps since the show at the beginning of February. I think that the last time (at the Community Storytellers zoom swap), it was pretty much where I want it to be.

I’m not performing in the Women’s Storytelling Festival this year, but I am volunteering and will be emceeing on Sunday morning, March 17th. Tickets are still available. For more info and to buy tickets see The Women’s Storytelling Festival Web Page. Note that, while we’d love to see you in Fairfax, Virginia, the festival is being live streamed so you can watch from home. And the recordings will be available through April 21st.


Assorted Medical Stuff: I had some catching up to do on routine medical stuff (and one less routine but inevitable item). So I had a regular dental appointment. The same week, I had a bone density scan, which was a bit uncomfortable because I don’t normally lie flat ton my back on a hard table. Alas, I have some bone density loss in my spine, though my neck and hip are fine. A few days later came my mammogram, which was negative. Finally, the non-routine matter, was an ophthalmologist appointment to prepare for cataract surgery. I've now got that scheduled for mid-June. I’m somewhat of a nervous wreck about it because I made the dubious decision to read the whole write-up of potential complications. By the way, I have an appointment with my primary care doctor this Friday to go over the usual test results and get a couple of more vaccines because I’m old.


TCC Book Club: The travel book of the month was I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson. She was just a teenager when she married Martin Johnson and they set off to photograph people and animals in the South Pacific and, later, in Africa. She certainly lived an interesting and unconventional life. The curator of the Osa and Martin Johnson Safari Museum in Kansas joined our meeting and it definitely sounds like a place I need to get to one of these days.


Travel & Adventure Show: Cindy and I went to the Travel and Adventure Show on the last weekend in February. I’d gotten the tickets free. I found info on a couple of things I’m interested in but, as usual, there were far too many things like time shares, cruises on megaships, and other things I have no interest in. On the plus side, I did also manage to resupply my stock of tote bags.


Genealogy Meetings: The February meeting re: Apple Users and Jewish Genealogy was particularly interesting because we had a lot of good discussion about organizing photos. Our local Jewish genealogy society meeting had a presentation on researching relatives in the UK. The speaker was very good, but the subject wasn’t particularly relevant to my family.

The bigger genealogy event I went to was RootsTech, but that deserves its a separate write-up.

This is from the other set of monthly questions. The full list is at stonepicnicking-okapi’s site.

1 Jan: Polar Bear Plunge Day: What’s the coldest you’ve ever been? What’s the coldest place you’ve ever been? It was about -26 Fahrenheit when I was in Churchill, Manitoba, where I went to see real live polar bears. Churchill was, in fact, significantly colder than both Antarctica and Svalbard.

2 Jan: World Introvert Day: How introverted are you? Does it change based on your surroundings? I consider myself an ambivert. I need introvert time to recharge my batteries, but I can enjoy being sociable at times, depending on the context.

3 Jan: JRR Tolkien Day: What’s your favorite Tolkien character? Historically, I would have answered with Gandalf. But I read something recently that argued for Sam Gamgee, on the basis of his unassuming friendship for Frodo. That seems as good as any other answer for this.

4 Jan: World Braille Day: Have you ever studied Braille? If you don’t require Braille, have you ever run your fingers over a sign instructions or a book page in Braille? My only real experiences with Braille are: 1) seeing the Braille chart in the children’s book Follow My Leader, which has to do with a boy who is blinded in a fireworks accident and 2) noticing Braille on elevator control panels

5 Jan: Whipped Cream Day: If you eat whipped cream, what’s your favorite way to eat it? I sometimes eat desserts that come with whipped cream on them, typically pieces of pie. But I pretty much never have whipped cream in my house.

6 Jan: Sherlock Holmes’ Birthday: If you have one, what’s your favorite adaptation of Sherlock Holmes? I can’t think of one. I pretty much just read the original stories.

7 Jan: Tempura Day: Do you like tempura? I like tempura quite a bit and sometimes get vegetable tempura at a Japanese restaurant.

8 Jan: Winter Skin Relief Day: What’s your favorite lotion, cream, moisturizer, skin treatment? I’m not at all fussy about moisturizers. I am still working my way through the vast number of bottles of Vaseline Intensive Care that I got as one of my lovely parting gifts from Jeopardy 35 years ago.

9 Jan: Shop for Travel Day: What (if anything) do you usually buy before a trip (travel-size toiletries, magazines, snacks)? I refill my toiletries bag so I’m sure that I have enough toothpaste, dental floss, sunscreen, chapstick, and the like. If I’m going somewhere in the less developed world, I check my medical kit to be sure I have a good supply of peptobismol, immodium, bandaids, iodine tablets, antiseptic cream, and bandages. If I’ll be at sea, I make sure I have my acupressure bands. I also make sure to have a good supply of pens and pencils and at least one crossword puzzle book. Packing lists are essential to my sanity.

10 Jan: Houseplant Appreciation Day: What kind of houseplants do you have in your home? I don’t have any houseplants. I have had succulents (cacti and jade plants) at some points in my life, but I don’t really like them. And everything else dies quickly. If anyone wants to give me a houseplant, I believe they are also obliged to give me a gardener to care for it.

11 Jan: World Sketchnote Day: Do you doodle? If there is a pencil in my hand and paper in front of me, I am doodling.

12 Jan: Hot Tea Day: Do you drink hot tea? If so, what kinds? I love tea. My favorite varietals are assam and lapsang souchong. I sometimes drink flavored black teas and, in particular, ones flavored with vanilla. While herbal teas are technically tisanes and not teas, I do drink mint tea from time to time and rooibos frequently.

13 Jan: Sticker Days: If you use stickers, how? Do you have favorite stickers? I used to use stickers to identify things on my calendar, but I got tired of them. So nowadays I use stickers only rarely, mostly to seal envelopes.

14 Jan: International Kite Day: Do you know how to fly a kite? I learned how to fly a kite back in the early 1980’s. The secret is to start with the right kind of kite. Deltas are, in general, the easiest to fly.

15 Jan: Bagel Day: Do you like bagels? What kind? What kind of toppings do you put on them? Toasted or not toasted? I like bagels if they are real bagels, not the bagel-shipped rolls that too many places try to foist off on us. My favorite is sesame, with scallion cream cheese and, sometimes, lox. Bagels should be served hot out of the oven and should never be toasted, which is something people do if the bagels are stale.

16 Jan: Quinoa Day: Have you tried quinoa? Do you like it? I’ve eaten quinoa but I’m not crazy about it

17 Jan: International Mentoring Day: Do you have a mentor? Have you mentored someone else? I did have a mentor in my early years at work. I’ve also mentored people later on. Currently, I mentor members of my genealogy group on Lithuanian research.

18 Jan: Winnie the Pooh Day: Do you have a favorite Winnie the Pooh character? Or story? I’m not a big fan of Winnie the Pooh, actually. I suppose that Owl is the most tolerable character.

19 Jan: Popcorn Day: If you like popcorn, what kind? Butter? Other toppings or flavors? I only eat popcorn once in a while and, when I do, it’s a small bag of the microwave popcorn with light butter.

20 Jan: Cheese Lovers Day: Do you love cheese? What kind(s)? I’m not really fond of cheese, for the most part. Mozzarella cheese on on pizza is an obvious exception.

21 Jan: International Sweatpants Day: How much time do you spend in sweatpants? In the winter, I wear them a lot around the house.

22 Jan: Answer your Cat’s Questions: If you have a cat, what kind of question(s) might they ask? What would be your answer(s)? I travel way too much to have a cat. So, I suppose, if I did have one, its major question would be, “why do you neglect me?”

23 Jan: Handwriting Day: How is your handwriting? Let’s just say that I got C’s in penmanship throughout elementary school.

24 Jan: Peanut Butter Day: Do you like peanut butter? I like it once in a while.

25 Jan: Robert Burns Day: Have your best laid plans ever gone awry? Has your love ever been like a red, red rose? The best laid plans of mice and Miriam gang oft agley.

26 Jan: Clashing Clothes Day: Have you ever accidentally or deliberately mismatched your clothes? I am a big fan of Chocolaticas, a brand of shoes that are deliberately mismatched.

27 Jan: National Geographic Day: Have you ever taken an amazing photograph? I sold a photograph of Asoro Mudmen in Papua New Guinea to Ripley’s Believe It or Not. (It’s on the cover of a book titled Weird World. And they paid me quite well for it.)

28 Jan: Data Privacy Day: How much do you do to protect your data or identity? I try to use good passwords and, when possible, two factor authentication.

29 Jan: Puzzle Day: Do you like puzzles? What kind? I love puzzles. I mostly do word puzzles (especially cryptic crosswords) and trivia games. I do jigsaw puzzles a couple of times a year. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but my mother always brought out a jigsaw puzzle after Thanksgiving dinner as a way to get us to clear off the dining room table.

30 Jan: Croissant Day: What is the best way to eat a croissant? Plain or with jam or butter or something else? The best way to eat a croissant is warm from the oven with nutella or marmalade.

31 Jan: Inspire your Heart with Art Day: What kind of art inspires your heart? I tend to favor abstract art, though I also like a lot of photorealism.

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It continues to be easier for me to answer blog prompts monthly than it would be to write every day. This set of questions is from Spiffikins. I am just OCD-ish enough to fix the capitalization. By the way, I have another set of 2024 questions, which I will do soon.


1. What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen in nature? I have lots of candidates here - polar bears, waterfalls (especially Iguacu), the sand dunes at Sosusvlei in Namibia. And, of course, I’ve seen 5 total solar eclipses and two annular eclipses. But I think I have to put the aurora borealis at the top of my list.

2. Could you stop shopping for an entire year? I need to buy a certain amount of perishable food, so not really.

3. What national or international events that you lived through do you remember best? Some things which came to my mind are John Glenn orbitng the earth, JFK’s assassination, the moon landing, the American bicentennial, and 9/11.

4. Are your eating habits healthy? I try, but I don’t always do well. I get lazy about cooking and it’s too easy for me to go several days eating mostly things like cereal and quesadillas.

5. How do you fight the winter blues? Traveling to the Southern Hemisphere is the ideal way. Otherwise, I wallow in misery and hole up at home reading trashy novels.

6. Does technology make us more Alone? It can, but it can also bring us together. I know some great people who I first met on-line. And there are people I’ve known for years who have scattered to far-flung places and technology helps us stay in touch.

7. What are the most important changes, in your life and in the world, in the last decade? The COVID pandemic led to a lot of changes, both good and bad. I lost a few friends to the plague, for one thing. The rise of zoom has been a blessing in many ways.

8. How do you greet your friends and family? I tend to say, “hey, so-and-so,: where so-and-so is replaced by the person's name

9. Would you want to be a space tourist? There’s a part of me that would, but I also understand the risks. So I’d want to wait until I was old enough that I wouldn’t mind dying.

10. Do you trust your government? I trust the basic structure of our government but not all of the people in various positions of power.

11. How much do you think about your weight? Way too much for my mental health. My primary issue is that people treat weight as if it’s a moral issue, despite everything we know about how little control we actually have over it.

12. How much do you trust online reviews? I don’t trust anonymous reviews in general. However, it can be helpful to look at reviews and get an idea of how much consensus there is about them. I use, say, trip advisor that way, i.e. I care less about the actual review but about how consistent the comments various people make are.

13. How do you feel about zoos? I have mixed feelings. Some zoos have done excellent work at conservation for endangered species. But it still bothers me seeing animals in unnatural environments.

14. What could you not live without? What could you live without? I couldn’t live without oxygen, water, and at least some amount of control over the temperature of my environment. I could theoretically live without coffee, chocolate, books, and music, but I wouldn’t want to.

15. What are your experiences with severe weather? Shortly after we moved into the house I grew up in, there was a huge storm. For years I thought it had been a hurricane, but I now believe it was a nor’easter. As a three year old, I was not reassured when my father said to my mother, “If the house stands through this, Bea, I’ll know we made a good purchase.” I’ve lived through a handful of hurricanes and blizzards since then, with the blizzard of ’78 in Boston being particularly memorable. I also had the roof of a makeshift shelter fall on me during a cyclone when I was volunteering on an archaeological dig in Fiji in 2008.

16. How close are/were you to your parents? I got along okay with my parents (well, after my teenager years) but I didn’t spend a lot of time with them. I think that is partly because they encouraged my independence. In her later years, long after my father had died, I called my mother once a week to check up on her, but I only visited about once a year.

17. What are your favorite commercials? There was an Israeli GPS commercial a while back that involved Moses and the Israelites wandering in the desert until the burning bush gave him a GPS receiver. (I may not remember the details exactly, but that’s the gist of it.)

18. How well do you sleep? I usually fall asleep fairly easily, but I don’t stay asleep for more than four or five hours. If I go right back to sleep, I’ll be fine, but I can almost never resist just going and checking my email or doing a crossword or something else. And then I’m up for three or more hours before going back to sleep for a few hours.

19. What would you create if you had funding? Time is much more of an obstacle than money when it comes to my creative endeavors. However, there is a part of me that would still like to have the perfect house built. I went through a period in my early teens when I drew blueprints of houses a lot. This was sort of tied to an art class project we had in junior high, if I recall correctly.

20. What movies, shows or books do you wish had Sequels, spinoffs or new episodes? Less than a week ago, I would have mentioned my desire fsr a sequel to Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde. But there is one coming out in May!

21. Do you like scary movies and books? I can handle them, but I can only think of one book I found so frightening that it disturbed me for a significant amount of time. That was Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon. I do like several of Stephen King’s books, however, but they aren't the same level of psychological terror to me.

22. What are the best things you’ve acquired secondhand? I suppose things I’ve inherited don’t count. I’ve gotten a few things I like a lot at thrift shops, e.g. a straw handbag. And, of course, I have bought many books secondhand. Oh, I know! I have a lipstick holder in the shape of a doll that I found at a rummage sale when I was a teenager.

23. Do you believe that everything happens for a reason? Sort of. It’s just that sometimes the reason is that you’re an idiot.

24. Do you believe in intelligent alien ife? I know most people will disagree with me on this, but I believe the probability of life arising is so low that we are alone in the universe.

25. Have you ever felt pressured by family or others in making an important decision about your future? My parents sort of tried to pressure me at times, but I was good at smiling and nodding and then doing whatever the hell I pleased. Specifically, my mother wanted me to become a medical doctor.

26. Would you like to ride in a car that drives itself? I’m not confident enough in the technology yet to do that on city streets, but it might be fun in a controlled environment.

27. Do your television viewing habits include ‘binge-watching’? Yes. I don’t watch much television. But sometimes I do go through some series that is streaming somewhere and then I do tend to binge watch. I did that with Schmigadoon and Schmicago for example. And, going back bit further, I think I watched both seasons of Better Off Ted in just about a week. (If you have never seen it, it is the funniest show about corporate America ever.)

28. What’s Your Sunday routine? It depends on whether or not there is anything on my calendar as I sometimes have events (get-togethers with friends or theatre tickets or genealogy society meetings or one of my knitting groups) to go to on Sundays. Whether or not that’s the case, I normally start the day with breakfast and coffee and do my daily puzzles, with the addition of the Washington Post Sunday crossword. I actually think I could use more routine in my life and you may expect to read some of my thoughts about that in the future.

29. Have you ever interacted with the police? When I was growing up, one of our next door neighbors was a policeman. And I have a friend who is a cop, though not near me. But to answer what the question is really asking, I got pulled over for speeding once in Hawaii, though the cop let me off with a warning. And I once had a policeman knock on my door asking if I’d heard a gunshot.

30. Should prostitution be legal? I think sex work should be decriminalized but there have to be some protective regulations. At least a minimum age needs to be part of the picture. I’d add some sort of periodic health check requirement, too.

31. Do you worry a lot about germs? I worry some but not obsessively. Mostly, I try to take reasonable precautions, such as vaccinations, hand washing, masking, etc.

Continuing last week’s New York trip…

Aside from some random walking around, most of Wednesday was spent going to the theatre.

Harmony: I had been a little hesitant to see this musical, because I generally prefer musical comedy to musical tragedy. And, while I don’t hate Barry Manilow (who wrote the music, with book and lyrics by Bruce Sussman, who is his long-time writing partner), he wouldn’t make my top ten list of songwriters. The reviews had been mixed but a couple of friends who had seen it did recommend it. And it was closing just a few days after my trip, so I decided it was worth trying.

The show starred Chip Zien, who does look his age (he’s in his late 70’s) but can still sing. He is looking back on his youth as part of a group called The Comedian Harmonists, who achieved success in Germany in the early 1930’s and toured the world. But three of their members were Jewish and the group had to disband due to the rise of Hitler. This is based on a true story, but several critics complained that it wasn’t very accurate. I don’t actually care about factual accuracy when it comes to musical adaptations. I’m looking for emotional truths and I felt that it worked at that level, for the most part.

The title song was lovely and something of an ear worm, as is “Stars in the Night,” which closes the show. Some of the songs the group sings are very entertaining, e.g. “How Can I Serve You, , Madame.” There are two beautiful love songs - “Every Single Day” and (especially) “Where You Go.” There’s a shocking moment in the first act, following a double wedding. While I understand why it didn’t end the act, it made the emotional arc a bit strange to go on from that to Carnegie Hall.

Neither of the female characters is fully developed. Mary fares better than the rabble-rousing Ruth. The latter was played by the other big star of the show (Julie Benko) who did fine with what she was given, but her character was not fully developed.

Anyway, I thought it was worth seeing, but I wish they’d handed out packets of tissues with the Playbills.

Once Upon a Mattress: This production was part of the Encores series at City Center, which puts on concert versions “forgotten” musicals. I’m not sure Once Upon a Mattress really qualifies, since it’s popular for schools and summer camps and other amateur groups. But it’s a fun show, with a lively score and a humorous book, and they always get great performers. For anyone not familiar with the show, it is loosely based on the fairy tale of “The Princess and the Pea.” I should also note that this was more fully staged than some of the other shows I’ve seen in the series.

The key here is that the show is a real star turn for the actress playing Princess Winifred the Woebegone (“Fred”). That was the role that launched Carol Burnett to stardom, of course. I don’t normally think of Sutton Foster as being that sort of performer, though she’s a solid dancer. So I was impressed by her willingness to go all out on the physical comedy. That was especially true in the scene where she tries to get to sleep on the stack of mattresses.

As for the rest of the cast, Michael Urie had great chemistry with Sutton Foster in his role as Prince Dauntless the Drab. Both J. Harrison Ghee and Harriet Harris were spot on as the Jester and the Queen respectively. Overall, while the show is somewhat dated and very silly, it’s also very entertaining. I am still humming several of the songs a week and a half later.

Fabric Flowers: I mentioned that I’d found something to do via the newsletter of the New York Adventure Club. This is a wonderful organization that has both virtual tours and in-person tours and I have done several of their events in the past. They periodically do a tour of M&S Schmalberg, the last remaining custom fabric flower factory in New York. I love crafts and I love factory tours, so this was right up my alley. Adam, the owner of the company is the 4th generation of the family business. First, we had time to browse the showroom. There are flowers of every description and every color, with some elaborately beaded examples. And, also, lots of butterflies. Here are a couple of the displays:





Adam told us some of the history of the company before explaining the process of making the flowers. Basically, fabric is starched and folded to create layers, then cut. The cut fabric is pressed into molds (which are surprisingly heavy). The pieces are then put together with things like brooch pins, lapel pins, or hair clips.

We went into the factory and watched all the steps of the process. I was amused that a salad spinner is used to get the moisture out after fabric is starched. Here’s Adam cutting out flowers, which will then be put into molds to be shaped.



At the end of the tour, he put out an assortment of small flowers and we each got to choose one to take home. Here's my selection.



That was followed by time to shop. The prices start at about $20. In addition to their etsy shop, they make custom flowers. I didn’t buy anything, but I will almost certainly buy a few things from them in the future, most likely for decorating hats. Anyway, this was an excellent way to spend part of an afternoon.

The Connector: The final show of my theatre binge was this new musical with a music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and book by Jonathan Marc Sherman. It was conceived and directed by Daisy Prince, who is the daughter of the late Hal Prince. The story involves a news magazine, celebrating its 50th anniversary. The Connector has been taken over by a large corporation but it appears that, aside from data analysis, all they’ve done is paint the offices. The editor-in-chief, Conrad O’Brien (ably played by Scott Bakula - yes, the guy from Quantum Leap) hires a kid named Ethan Dobson (played by Ben Levi Ross), who is fresh out of Princeton and who he views as a younger version of himself. In the meantime, Conrad ignores a copy editor, named Robin Martinez Iplayed by Hannah Cruz), who wants to become a feature writer. Ethan’s story about a Scrabble shark in Greenwich Village makes him an instant success, but what is he going to do to follow that? And will anybody ever read Robin’s work?

If you’ve ever seen the play The Lifespan of a Fact there are some natural comparisons, particularly with respect to the question of what is truth and what is sufficient proof. There are two other characters who play major roles in addressing this question - Muriel, a legendary fact checker, and Mona Bland, who writes letters to the magazine correcting minor details, leading her to be regarded as a crank. However, there are also other issues here, especially the sexism that Robin faces, even in 1996. I was surprised that potential racism (given her obviously Latina name) wasn’t suggested. After all, Linda Wolfe had been writing for New York magazine since the 1970’s. (I still remember her piece about the deaths of the twin gynecologists.)

As it stands now, the show is about an hour and 40 minutes long, with no intermission. I’d have liked to see it expanded a bit (with an intermission added) so some of the characters could be fleshed out more. In particular, I’d like to know more about Robin’s past beyond her singing “Everyone in Texas is an asshole” in a song titled “So I Came to New York.” There’s also a hint (in the form of a phone call to his brother) that there’s more to Ethan’s background than his time at Princeton. The bottom line is that this was funny and provocative, with an enjoyable jazzy score, though not entirely satisfying. Note that I saw it in previews, however, I hope that the creative team continues to develop it further. And I also definitely want there to be a recording of the music.

By the way, I read a couple of reviews which compare this to the real-life story of Stephen Glass. There is apparently a movie about him, titled “Shattered Glass,” which I should try to get around to seeing.

A Quick Note About Amtrak: The train I took home on Friday morning was the Carolinian, rather than a Northeast Regional. For future reference, this is a bad idea. For one thing, it was very crowded. But, more importantly, it doesn’t have a quiet car.

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

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

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

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

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



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





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



If Women Ruled the World was another fascinating piece.



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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The weekend before the one that just passed, I was home and fairly sociable.

tick. tick . . . BOOM1 On Friday night, I went to see this musical, which was part of the Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center. That means that the staging is fairly minimal, but they still had a video screen, providing parts of the setting. For those unfamiliar with this show, it was originally a semi-autobiographical monologue by Jonathan Larson and, after his death, was turned into a three person musical. This version (which was directed by Neil Patrick Harris) also had several other characters, with one of them who seemed to deserve as much credit as the three principals.

The plot involves the main character, Jon (ably played by Brandon Uranowitz) , turning 30 and debating whether he should abandon his goal of writing a musical in favor of making money in advertising. His girlfriend, Susan, thinks they should move to Cape Cod. As he says / sings “Johnny Can’t Decide.”

I mostly enjoyed the show, but some of the songs don’t do much to advance either the story or character development. For example, “Green Green Dress” is a fairly generic song Jon sings about Susan. On the other hand, “Sunday” is a brilliant pastiche of the Sondheim song of the same name (from Sunday in the Park With George) and was worth the price of admission alone. And “Why,” effectively summarizes the whole point of the show.

Loser Post-Holiday Party: Saturday afternoon was the annual Loser post-holiday party. My contribution to the pot luck was a mushroom quiche and, since I got requests for the recipe, I’ll include it below. Then there were some awards for people who’d reached certain invitational milestones. And, finally, the singing of various parody songs, mostly with political themes. Plus, of course, lots of interesting conversation, including some discoveries of mutual connections I hadn’t known of before.

Mushroom Quiche Recipe: Since I had requests for the recipe…

Ingredients:
1 deep dish pie crust (I admit I used a frozen one.) Bake in a pie pan according to package directions or recipe if you're less lazy than I was.

8 oz. white button mushrooms
half an onion, chopped
2 T. butter
8 oz. gruyere cheese, shredded (or you can buy cubed gruyere). Do not use smoked gouda.
1 c. heavy cream
4 large eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
a pinch of nutmeg
2 T. grated parmesan cheese, divided

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Salute the onions and mushrooms until browned.
3. Sprinkle the mushrooms and cheese into the bottom of the baked pie crust.
4. Whisk the eggs. Add the cream, seasonings and 1 T. of the parmesan cheese and beat together. Pour the mixture over the mushrooms and cheese.
5. Sprinkle the remaining parmesan cheese over the top.
6. Bake until the top is light brown and the center of the quiche is set, roughly 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool about 10 minutes before serving.


TCC Meeting: Finally, there was a lunch meeting of the Travelers’ Century Club DC chapter on Sunday. Lots of good conversation about travel, of course. It also looks like several of us will be in the Azores together.