November was another month in which I didn’t do much. We did have a book club meeting to talk about The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, which had some interesting things early on, mostly having to do with the 8-year-old brother, Billy, and the adventure book he admires. But it completely fell apart in the last 60 or so pages, with an ending that ( Read more... )

Here’s an attempt at getting all caught up before doing too many things again.

Celebrity Death Watch: Steve Lawrence was a pop singer and actor, best known for his collaboration with his wife, Eydie Gorme (who died in 2013). David E. Harris was the first African-American to be a commercial pilot (for American Airlines). Barbara Hilyer wrote ( Read more... )

I Should Probably Insert Some Sort of Trigger Warning: I’ve been trying to write something about Israel for a while and can’t quite find the words I want. So this is a bit of a brain dump.

Where’s the Outrage: My main thought has to do with something I once read about news coverage. The thing I am thinking of was an analysis somebody did of the ( Read more... )

Elections: The Virginia elections went better than I expected. My area is not at all competitive so there were no surprises locally. (For example, our candidate for delegate was running unopposed.) And I can’t say that I was surprised that the candidate for county sheriff who had a long rant on his web page about why campaign contributions are ( Read more... )

I’ve got several things to write about, but I feel like I have to start with saying some things about Israel. There is a lot of significant misinformation out there about both history and demographics, which I think is important background to understanding what is going on now. I’ll write a more personal entry a little later on ( Read more... )

Shameless Self Promotion: I will be telling stories at the Washington Folk Festival on Sunday June 4th at 5:30 p.m. The festival is at Glen Echo Park and is free. There’s going to be plenty of other things to go to there - storytelling, yes, but also music and dance and crafts. And, of course, the famous Glen Echo Carousel.

Celebrity Death ( Read more... )

Moving on to 2023, my trip to New Bedford last weekend deserves its own entry. As does the MIT Mystery Hunt, which was this weekend. But I have done a few other things.

Celebrity Death Watch: Terry Hall was the lead singer of The Specials, a ska group I liked quite a lot back in the 1980’s. Franco Harris played football for the Pittsburgh ( Read more... )

Here is a quick final catch-up before I leave on vacation. American Airlines has already pissed me off, by the way, but that’s hardly news. Since I saved a ton of money by burning up some Advantage miles, I will kvetch only in an undertone.

Election: I was relatively satisfied with the election results. My district was no surprise at all. As I ( Read more... )

On Tuesday May 17th, I went to the Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice. I’d heard about this from one of the Jewish Facebook groups I follow, probably the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), but maybe Svivah, both of which were among the 100+ sponsors of the event. (The National Council of Jewish Women was the chief organizer.) At ay rate, I ( Read more... )

One quick follow-up. It turns out that the experience of starting to dream before falling asleep is not actually uncommon. It’s called hypnagogic hallucination and about 70% of people experience it. I am less unique than I thought.

Celebrity Death Watch: Steve Wilhite invented the GIF (and still managed to pronounce it incorrectly). Ralph ( Read more... )