Getting from Swindon to Brighton required going through London. Why was I going to Brighton? Well, I watch various musician’s reels. One performer who I’ve found interesting over the past couple of years is Thomas Benjamin Wild and I saw that he was performing in Brighton the day after the Fforde Ffiesta. I’d never actually been to Brighton before, so I figured that going to his show there would kill two seagulls with one stone. (Er, yes, I do have something against seagulls. I grew up having to fend them off when picking berries and having to dodge flying clams that they were trying to crack on sidewalks.)

Anyway, I figured out the train connections. I had booked a room at the Ibis Hotel in downtown Brighton, which proved to be particularly convenient to the train station. (And, hence, to buses that run to other parts of Brighton, which proved to be convenient later on.) I’d paid for early check-in so was able to leave my bag in my room and study a map for a little while, before setting out to walk around the city a bit.

Brighton is quite hilly but, fortunately, I was able to meander mostly downhill to get to the Pavilion. Among the way, there was a lot of brightly colored graffiti.





I also window shopped at various artsy stores before going over to the Pavilion, which is a very striking building, surrounded by lovely gardens. It was a nice enough day out that I didn’t feel like paying to go inside to see the current exhibit, which focused on dragons.



Eventually, I meandered over to the seaside. During the day, there’s a GBP 1 admission fee for the pier, which I thought was worth paying for. There are lots of benches and free deck chairs - and lots of people. The beach itself is meh in my opinion. Personally, I prefer fine white sand to rocky beaches.



The pavilions were crowded and noisy and the rides were primarily oriented towards children. There were various food stands, selling the sort of junk food you expect at this sort of beach. Being England, there were also plenty of alcoholic beverages for sale. Toss in seagulls and jet skis to add to the noise and, overall, Point Lookout / Lido Beach / or even Jones Beach or Rockaway it ain’t. (By the way, it has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to this, but the most beautiful beaches in the world are along the Indian Ocean coast of Africa, e.g. in places like Zanzibar and Madagascar. I really need to get to Mozambique some day.)

As the sun went down, it began to cool off quite a bit. I got supper at a pub and found the venue for the show I was going to. There was some confusion about what time it started. If a show is at 8 p.m., but the doors open at 7 p.m., you should make that clear on the ticket, instead of just listing the opening time. The venue proved to be a gay bar and the only seating was a few rows of steps. It was crowded and uncomfortable and you had to stand if you wanted to see anything. Fortunately, Thomas Benjamin Wild was the first of the three performers. I am still struggling to understand why his web page advertised this as a solo show when there were two other performers, as well, but it’s not as if I’ve never gone to venues who don’t even mention the eight opening acts you have to sit through before hearing the main act you’re there for.



Anyway, he was pretty entertaining and did some of his more popular songs. Some of my friends might find this relatable.



And, of course, he closed with his best known song.



I should also probably mention that, while he is known for playing a (normal) ukulele, he did all of his accompaniment at this show with a banjolele.

I normally would have stayed for the other two performers, but the venue was so uncomfortable that I left after his show. It reminded me of the night one of my friends left a show at The Anthem (on the Wharf in Washington, D.C.) before the Dropkick Murphys. Luckily, the bus I needed to get back to my hotel was right across the street as I was leaving, so obviously I made the right choice.

Since the gentleman with whom I am conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling had meetings the next day, there was no real reason for me to rush back to London. I opted to spend some time at the Toy and Model Museum, which is on a steep street underneath the train station. The biggest collection involves model trains. There were some layouts where you could press a button to see the train move around.



But there were also exhibits of pretty much everything else you might want to see. For example, there were a few cases of board games. Note that “Cluedo” is British for the game Americans call “Clue.”



I bet you didn’t know that Legos were originally made of wood, not plastic.



And it wouldn’t be a toy museum without a collection of stuffed animals.



There were, of course, also dolls, puppets, dollhouses, toy cars, toy planes, etc. Overall, it was worth the GBP 8 admission price.

I had no problem getting a train to Victoria Station and taking the tube back to Earl’s Court Station. We went out to dinner at Reuben’s on Baker Street, which is an actual kosher delicatessen, allowing him to get his pastrami sandwich fix. (I had knaidlach soup, with a side of a small portion of chopped liver.) The interesting part of this is that I had eaten there before - on my first trip to London in 1980. Someday someone will have to teach the Brits how to make proper pickles.

The next day, I was off to LHR. My flight was okay, with a fairly empty plane. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a wait for a jet bridge and an even longer wait for a moon buggy to immigration and customs. So it ended up taking me almost an hour and 45 minutes from when we landed until I got home.

Overall, I had a great trip, seeing a lot of interesting things and having a lot of fun. Which is really about all you can expect out of travel.

As I mentioned before, the primary purpose of this entire trip was going to the Fforde Ffiesta, which is a celebration of the works of Jasper Fforde. The personal back story here is that from the late 1980s through 2002 I more or less commuted between Los Angeles and Boulder, Colorado. I discovered a mystery bookstore in Boulder (Rue Morgue Books, owned by Tom and Enid Schantz) and made regular trips there, especially when they had signings and, hence, stayed open late. A couple of my colleagues were also mystery fans and we spent many pleasant evenings at a Caribbean restaurant a couple of doors away, followed by book browsing. Anyway, they published a newsletter, in which they made book recommendations and one recommendation in 2001 was for a book titled The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I bought and read this and loved the originality of the concept, so I kept reading the Thursday Next series and many of the rest of his books. A couple of years ago, I had a conference to go to in London and learned of the existence of the Fforde Ffiesta, but the tickets were already sold out. I kept it on my list of things to do. And back in May 2025, I was able to register for the 2026 event, which happened the first weekend of this May (i.e. 2026).

I had a little preparation to do. For one thing, it made sense to reread The Eyre Affair as I had forgotten various things in the past 40+ years. I had ideas for the costume contest, but never managed to complete executing them. I also never quite got around to crocheting a dodo. (Dodos are popular pets in the Ffordean world.) I decided that it would be easy enough to join the Legion of the Danvers, so I did actually do what amounts to cosplay. Mrs. Danvers is the evil housekeeper in Daphne DuMaurier’s novel, Rebecca, and the prototype for evil housekeepers in other literature, e.g. Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein. Clones of her work for the Goliath Corporation in Fforde’s books. Dressing as her just requires a long black dress, a grey wig, and dark glasses. Here I am as Mrs. Danvers, standing next to a cardboard cut-out of Jasper Fforde, i.e. Flat Jasper. (I’ll explain more about this later on.)



While the Ffiesta officially started on Saturday morning, I arrived at the hotel in Swindon late in the afternoon on Friday. I ended up having supper at the bar and didn’t know that two of the people sitting across from me at a table were Jasper and his wife, Mary. (And I got to explain airag, the Mongolian fermented mare’s milk drink, to Mary. It’s actually not bad and, yes, I’ve done some weird traveling over the years.)

Anyway, I picked up my Ffiesta packet and joined a group of people to play the unofficial Friday night trivia. Our team was doing well until a question which required teams to match Shakespeare plays to the number of people who died in each one. I figured that people don’t die in the comedies, but I have pretty much no clue when it comes to the histories. I redeemed myself when it came to some geography related questions and, in particular, got us close enough on listing countries that have capitals starting with the letter “K” for the rest of the team to make a good guess and have us end up in 3rd place overall.

The official Ffiesta started on Saturday morning. There was a Ffordian Fete with several games to play. Two of them stuck in my mind. One involved guessing the contents of three cans with their labels removed. (I didn’t have a clue.) The other required fishing for magnetic word tiles and using them to write a poem. I came up with:

Chant sweet summer death
Her dragon eyebrows can shine.

Also on Saturday morning was a brief opening ceremony, which included singing the song “Leaning on a Lamppost.” The significance of that is that it was originally popularized by George Formby, who is President for Life in the Thursday Next books. But it has some personal significance for me, because it was used in the revival of the musical Me and My Girl in 1986. I saw the Encores production of this in 2018. “Leaning on a Lamppost” is the second stickiest song in its score (behind only “The Lambeth Walk,” which is as much of an earworm as “It’s a Small World” and the Oompa-Loompa Song from Willy Wonka. There is a special circle of hell for the writers of all of these.) There was also an opportunity to sign up for some activities and I signed up for Literary Karaoke, choosing Chapter 12 of The Eyre Affair, which involves Mycroft’s Prose Portal.

The first event of the afternoon was Jasper’s Tour of Swindon. Some people had spent the morning building a cardboard model of Swindon and Jasper pointed out various of the places and people in it. My favorite part of this involved Michelle, Swindon’s only jogger. There was also Michelle’s understudy, her understudy’s understudy, her stalker, her stalker’s stalker, etc.

That was followed by a Q&A. The most exciting thing Jasper said is that there will be a sequel to Red Side Story, which is itself the sequel to Shades of Grey. Yay!

After a brief break, there was Quiz Hour, with three games. I thought I would have been good at Name That Fruit, since I’ve eaten odd things like kiwano melon and tamarillo (tree tomato) but it turned out to include activities like making a face out of a coconut, which I don’t think I would do so well at.

Next was Evade the Question, in which contestants had to talk for a minute without mentioning anything relating to the given subject. For example, the first subject was “elephant” so one couldn’t mention anything like animal, Africa, trunk, grey, etc. My favorite challenge of that round came when one contestant said “I was painting my room” and was challenged because “elephants are notoriously in the room.” By the way, the last round is traditionally “Life, the Universe, and Everything,” and the challenges were fast and furious, on the order of one or two seconds. I may suggest playing a version of this at a Loser event. (For those who don’t know, Losers are devotees of the Invitational, a humor contest that used to appear in the Washington Post. For more information, see The Not Ready for the Algonquin Roundtable Society. Loserdom is a big part of my life.)

The final game was Fforde or Fraud in which two contestants had to guess whether or not characters appeared in The Eyre Affair. The catch was that they were separated by a whiteboard, so couldn’t see each other. The funniest part of this is how much trouble Jasper and Mary had with it.

I also spent some time hunting lobsters. There were various toy lobsters hidden around the public areas of the hotel, each with a tag on them. You had to find them and write down the name on each tag next to the number from the other side of the tag. I call shenanigans as some of them were actually crabs. (And some of us know the sad story of Herman the Lobster and Sally the Crab, immortalized by the Smothers Brothers in the lyrics “crabs walk sideways and lobsters walk straight and we won’t let you have her for your mate.”) I never did manage to find the last few crustaceans, alas.

The evening started with the Fancy Dress parade. (In case anyone doesn’t know, “fancy dress” is British English for “costume.”) My personal favorite was the two people who dressed as “Deleted Characters.”

The day ended with an auction, which was raising money for a literary charity in Swindon. There were several interesting items, but the prices got steep rather quickly. I was seriously tempted by a CD about Swindon and cheese, but wasn’t willing to spend GBP 40 for it. Overall, I think the auction raised about GBP 3000, which is impressive.

By the way, my favorite quip of the day (from Jasper, of course) was “I just learned that microbiologists are the same size as other biologists.”

Sunday morning started with Jasper reading from Dark Reading Matter, the last book in the Thursday Next series, which is scheduled to come out in October. I’m looking forward to being able to read it.

Then it was time for the Legion of the Danvers to meet in the hotel’s quadrangle. There were 81 of us, total, which is impressive given that there were 158 total attendees at the Fforde Ffiesta. There was an oath, a bit of “tutting” and “huzzahs,” drills, marching, and songs. Later on in the day, we got our service and pay books, which obviously need to be kept in a safe place for future events. Here’s a picture of extreme Dansvering. (I think you should be able to click on the picture on flickr to see the action.)



I did not stay around for Lobster Space Invaders, since I wasn’t in the mood for a water fight. I used the lunch break to catch up on my travel journal and puzzles and such other mundane activities. In the early afternoon, everyone reconvened to watch the production of Richard III. There were a few people who seemed a bit lost as to what they were supposed to be doing, but it was still entertaining, especially as we were provided with noisemakers to aid us with audience participation.

That was followed by Literary Karaoke. I think my reading went fine and someone did tell me I’d read well. The main thing I’d practiced was making sure I stayed within the time limit.

After a short break, there was a demonstration of dodo whispering. Because, as everyone knows, it does take some effort to train your pet dodo properly. That was followed by prize giving. There were elaborately designed plates for the winners of the big contests and bags or boxes of sweets for the more minor events. Even though there was a brief closing ceremony, there was another unofficial event later on. That was a race night. There were videos featuring races with dachshunds, Shetland ponies, marbles, pigs, sheep, babies, and Fforganizers (that’s the term for the volunteers who organize the Fforde Ffiesta). I used the same approach which I take to actual horse races - namely choosing the contestant whose name I like best. It worked about as well as it does for actual horse races, in case you thought that was a rational approach.

In the morning, I got a taxi to the train station and on to the next leg of my trip, which I’ll write about soon. The bottom line is that the Fforde Ffiesta proved to be ffabulous ffun and I’ll certainly try to go to it again in the ffuture.

The primary reason for this trip (and, in particular, the timing of it) was attending the Fforde Ffiesta in Swindon, England. That deserves (and will get) its own post. I had a brief interlude in London before heading to Swindon. I’ve been to London more times than I can remember and it’s an easy place to spend time. In particular, the gentleman with whom I’m conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling lives there. He’s a workaholic, so I go my own way during the day and we spend evenings together. The first night, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant which was okay, but located in a basement reached by a somewhat treacherous spiral staircase. The second night we walked over to the Kensington Marriott and had dinner at their restaurant. The food was fine, but the service was not particularly efficient. He also got to listen to me bore him with various details about my recent (and some older) travels.

I really had just one free day for sightseeing. I had contemplated going to the V&A East, but decided that was a bit too much out of the way. Instead, I decided to go the British Museum, which I had not been to in several years. Before that, I checked out a Jewish deli restaurant, Tongue & Brisket. (They have a few branches, but the Goodge Street one is the closest to the British museum.) I had a very good tongue sandwich and cole slaw, before walking over to the museum.



My primary goal was related to a previous trip to England, when I’d visited my friend, Diana, who lives in Ipswich and we went to Sutton Hoo. While they have a museum on site, the actual artifacts from the ship burial there are in the British Museum and I wanted to see them. In particular, there is this helmet.



The same section also has the remains of Lindow Man, the first well-preserved bog body found in Britain. The body was found in 1984 and has been referred to as the oldest murder mystery in the country, since the evidence is that he died a violent death.



There are, of course, dozens of other things to see at the British Museum, ranging from the collection of an Assyrian library to assorted mummies to timepieces to a room about money, which had this rather remarkable display.



The downside is that the museum does get quite crowded and, since it was a weekday, there were large groups of noisy schoolchildren. Still it was a good place to spend some time and I don’t have to go back for another 20 or so years.

I got back from New York on Sunday afternoon and was off to the UK late in the day on Tuesday. There’s no longer a daytime flight from IAD to LHR, so it was the agony of a redeye, which is, at best, just tolerable, even in premium plus. The e-gates at Heathrow worked fine, but I arrived on the day of a major transit strike. This was a somewhat complicated trip and the transit strike definitely didn’t help. I’d vaguely intended to leave my luggage somewhere convenient (e.g. either Paddington or Victoria Station) and do something for a few hours. But I was exhausted and decided it would be best just to go to the hotel I was staying at overnight and figure things out from there.

By the way, I had managed to forget to bring my Oyster card with me. But using my credit card to tap in and out of the tube worked just fine. And the Elizabeth Line and Thameslink were not affected by the strike.

That hotel was the Bloc Hotel at Gatwick Airport. Why? Well, I was flying to Jersey from LGW the next morning. As it happened, by the time I got there, my room was ready and the idea of a nap was more appealing than the idea of actually doing anything. The hotel was quite comfortable and amazingly quiet for a hotel that is inside an airport. It had somewhat complicated controls for the lighting, but I figured out enough to be comfortable. The only problem with the hotel was that the bathroom is of the “wet room” variety. That is, there is no actual shower stall (not even a curtain), so taking a shower just floods the entire bathroom. I’ve encountered that before and it still strikes me as a horrible design flaw. Anyway, after catching up on some things on-line (e.g. puzzles) and napping for a couple of hours, I got supper at Giraffe, mere steps away. I went back to the room, read for a while, and got an okay night’s sleep.

I should probably explain that I was leveraging off an event in England to finally get to the Channel Islands, a region I’d been interested in for several years. Jersey is the largest island of the group and definitely has the most developed tourism infrastructure, though there is still plenty of agriculture there, including both cattle and vegetable farming. It doesn’t hurt that both Jersey and Guernsey are on the Travelers’ Century Club list of countries and territories. Also, I’d met a woman from Guernsey when I was on the Queen Mary 2 in November and made plans to get together with her.

In the morning, I just had to check out and take the elevator downstairs, where I used a machine to print out a bag tag and send my bag off to my plane. My British Air flight (booked using Alaska Air miles) to Jersey was fine. After retrieving my bag, I took a bus to the main bus terminal in Saint Helier, from which I had a short walk to my hotel. I had booked a room at the Pomme D’Or Hotel largely for its location, right in the heart of St. Helier and across the street from Liberation Square. It proved to be a good choice - both convenient and comfortable.

My first sightseeing excursion started with walking over to Liberation Square.



After a stop for lunch, I walked around the waterfront, which has an interesting (but non-working) steam clock.



Then I went over to the Maritime Museum. I’m not particularly interested in shipping, so I opted to go just to the Occupation Tapestry Gallery. This has 13 tapestries (one for each of the 12 parishes on the island, plus a final one added later on) having to do with the Nazi occupation of Jersey during World War II. The work is quite detailed and I found this fascinating. Here are photos of a couple of the panels, so you can see for yourself.





There are also videos about the occupation and liberation and about the making of the tapestries. I found all of this very interesting, especially as it is something we never really learned about in school when I was growing up. (We spent almost all of European history on the French Revolution, with everything from World War I onwards covered in under a week.)

I wandered up to the Central Market, getting there about an hour before it closed. I suspect it would have been livelier a bit earlier in the day. I browsed briefly at a book stall and found a yarn shop, which was (alas) already closed. And there was this interesting fountain to look at.



I spent another hour or so wandering a bit aimlessly around St. Helier (and getting lost in the process). Eventually, I made my way back to the hotel and, after eating supper, had an early night to try to get my body clock back in sync.

One of the sights I was particularly eager to see was the Jersey Zoo, which had been founded by Gerald Durrell. I have to admit that I haven’t read any of his books, though I have read a couple by his brother, Lawrence. Gerald was a pioneer in conservation and founded the Jersey Zoo specifically to breed endangered species. Getting there is fairly straightforward, as there is regular bus service from the terminal in St. Helier. There are a couple of different routes and the one I took was quite scenic, making me wish I had more time to explore some of the places it passed.

The zoo itself is not really my sort of zoo, since it runs heavily towards primates and I am a lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) type of girl. Still, I did watch some gorillas and geladas (Ethiopian baboons) and (more briefly) orangutans and tamarins and a few lemurs. I will concede that this young gorilla was cute.



And I don’t think I’d ever seen geladas before.



There was also a good reptile house (poison dart frogs!) and a lot of birds. But I think the most interesting part of the zoo is the building devoted to Gerald Durrell’s life story. His grave (well, the site where his ashes were interred) is right outside that.



Overall, I was reasonably satisfied with my visit to the zoo.

I started my final day on Jersey by seeking out a statue I’d seen a photo of on-line. I did find it, but only after a brief diversion to listen to a ukulele club.



The story behind this is that, just as British people call the French “frogs,” the French decided to call the people of Jersey “les crapauds” meaning toads. The residents of Jersey responded by adopting the toad as a symbol for their residents. I’m not sure how old this story is, however, since the toad statue wasn’t actually erected until 2004. Still, it’s an interesting landmark.

There is a yarn shop a short walk from there and, alas, I was able to verify that there isn’t any local yarn available. So Jersey will not see a place in the long-standing knitting project that I call “the coat of many countries.”

Another priority for me was visiting the Jersey Museum. This includes a reasonably informative film about the island, a history exhibition (focused on the Nazi occupation, the liberation, and the aftermath, e.g. the marketing of Jersey as a honeymoon island), an art gallery, and a Victorian house. It was prety interesting and, best of all, admission was free.

There was a food festival going on nearby. I might have gone to it, but it was very crowded and there was an admission charge, so I opted just to sit on a bench across the street and listen to music for a little while. Then I decided to take “Le Petit Train,” which is a tourist ride (not a real train) that goes along the coast to St Aubin. It was scenic and the narration was entertaining enough, so it was a reasonable way to kill a little over an hour. After that I retrieved my bag from the hotel and headed over to the ferry port, to take the ferry to Guernsey,

The ferry ride should have been an hour and 10 minutes. But, as we approached St. Peter Port (the capital of Guernsey) the ferry began to vibrate and we pulled back out to sea. Eventually the captain announced that we had to abort landing due to a propeller problem. It turned out that a fishing bob had gotten caught in one propeller. They did eventually free it (so we were able to dock) but not before people were speculating that we might have to spend the night on the boat. I managed to find my way to my hotel (the Best Western Moores Hotel) where I collapsed for the night. While the hotel was at a convenient location, it was a bit weirdly designed. For example, there’s an elevator, which is very useful if you have a large rolling suitcase. But there was a flight of six steps down and another of six steps up in the middle of the hallway between that elevator and my room. And the bathtub was very deep, which is nice if you’re going to soak in it, but makes getting in and out to take a shower a bit treacherous.

I texted with my friend, Julie, and we made arrangements to get together for lunch on Monday. I had arrived on Saturday night and on Sunday there was a Seaside Sunday Festival event along the waterfront. There were craft stalls lining the quay and food stalls (and a stage with music) on the Victoria Pier. I did buy one crafts item (a felt hat). I enjoyed listening to a couple of singers. And I ate some tasty fish and chips and some particularly delicious gelato, especially the orange ricotta flavor. By the way, there was a surprising variety of ethnic foods, including West African dishes like jollof rice, and stalls selling Thai and Vietnamese food.

I also took Guernsey’s version of Le Petit Train, which had some interesting commentary. For example, at the bathing (i.e. swimming) beach, they had a story about a lifeguard who could only rescue people by throwing a rope towards them because he had never learned how to swim. There were also good views of the primary tourist attraction in St. Peter Port, namely Castle Cornet, which dates back to the 13th century.



On Monday, Julie met me at my hotel and whisked me off around the island. We had lunch at a restaurant called Coast (in the Imperial Hotel) with a lovely view of the sea. Our next stop was the Folk and Costume Museum. The “folk” part consisted largely of household items, e.g. an old-fashioned kitchen, and a display of a child’s room with toys, as well as a dollhouse and a collection of marionettes. The “costume” part included a selection of Dior dresses, as well as a collection of historic costumes, many of them hand-sewn. There were also some knitted Guernsey sweaters, which are notable for the use of steeking for creating necklines and armholes - a technique which, frankly, I find terrifying.

After that we went to Oatlands, a small shopping center. Alas, the crafts store there told us there was no local yarn, the chocolate store was closed, and the cafe didn’t have Guernsey gache, a fruit cake that I was curious about. Julie continued around the island, stopping at a few places with views across to Sark and Herm. Ideally, I would have had time for day trips to those islands, but I was at the mercy of ferry schedules, so it would have to be some other time. At any rate, there were lovely views from the places we stopped at.



Back in St. Peter Port, we did succeed in finding gache at Cafe Emilia, just a couple of doors from my hotel. This proved to be somewhat similar to the fruity bread my friend, Tim, makes, though not quite as sweet. At any rate, it was quite tasty, eaten with butter and accompanied by tea.

My major expedition on Tuesday was to the Guernsey Museum. This was actually not very far from the hotel, but I took a taxi because I found the idea of climbing the hill to get there to be intimidating. The museum is in a lovely park (Candie Park) which also has a library, gardens, and a statue of Queen Victoria. The museum was very interesting. For example, there was a display of paintings about nature, which included some relief casts of how the paint was applied. The Discovery Room was intended for children, but did have recordings of a storyteller performing Egyptian myths. The main museum had all sorts of odds and ends, including an embroidered sampler and a lock of Victor Hugo’s hair. (He had lived on Guernsey when in exile and you can tour his house if that sort of thing interests you.)

I was particularly interested in a display of glass reproductions of invertebrates because it was made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, who also made the glass flowers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History which is one of my favorite museum exhibits of all time. There is plenty of material about early life on Guernsey from neolithic times through the Romans. I especially enjoyed sections on Guernsey language (which included samples to listen to), folklore, and witchcraft. Me being me, of course I had to listen to all of the stories.



After a stop for a light lunch, I wandered around the Candie Gardens, which were lovely.





By the way, there is a Guernsey Tapestry, presumably similar to the Jersey one. But it is in storage, so I was unable to see it.

In the evening, Julie and I went to Saint James Assembly Hall for a poetry reading by Brian Bilston, which was part of the Guernsey Literary Festival. He has been one of my favorite poets for a while and his reading was phenomenal. He engaged well with the audience, making occasional side comments and enhancing his poetry with his deliberate pacing. If you have the opportunity to hear him read, go. Unfortunately, they ran out of books.

Overall, I had a good time in the Channel Islands, though I could have used a few more days. But I very much wanted to take the ferry versus flying back to the UK mainland, which I did the next day. The ferry from St. Peter Port to Portsmouth takes about 8 hours, so I’d opted to pay a little extra for lounge seating. That’s less crowded, but the reclining chairs were just okay. I read and napped for a lot of the trip. Fortunately, I didn’t get seasick, though several other people did. So, if you do this, you might want to bring your seasickness preventative of choice. (Mine is acupressure bands, with bonine as a backup for more extreme conditions.)

We docked at Portsmouth and I got a taxi to the train station. I boarded the first train from there to London, which took me to Victoria Station. That was convenient to get a District Line train to Earl’s Court - and the next part of this travelogue.

I got back from my series of trips on Tuesday evening and I’ve been wrestling with jet lag demons since then. I still have plenty of catching up to do, but I’ve at least: a) gotten my laundry done, b) bought some groceries and c) written a to-do list.

The first of the series of trips was just up to New York in mid-April for my 50th (!) High School Reunion. I have almost certainly mentioned before that my home town (Island Park, New York - a small island off the south shore of Long Island) was (and still is) absurdly small (maybe 5000 people on a good day) and, hence, did not have our own high school. We were bussed 8 miles away to West Hempstead. Yes, there were several towns in between, but this was the height of the later days of the baby boom and everywhere was overcrowded with their own students and didn’t want the likes of us. From my standpoint, West Hempstead was a good place to go to high school, since it was a more affluent and more professional community, with better educational resources (e.g. the ability to offer AP courses). And, at least for some of us, it was good just having a larger group to mingle and make friends in. There are many good things about small towns, but there is also one particularly horrible thing. Namely, nobody will ever let you forget something dumb or weird that you did.

I opted to stay in New York City for the reunion and took the train up on Friday afternoon. Given my hotel dissatisfaction on two previous, relatively recent trips, I tried another hotel. The Renaissance is on 35th Street, between 7th and 8th, which is a short walk from Penn Station / Moynihan Train Hall. It was reasonably comfortable and not too ridiculously priced. Breakfast isn’t included but it is right by a couple of decent bagel places and, more importantly, a reasonably cheap coffee shop (Andrew’s) that is fairly good.

There was a happy hour on Friday night, which had about a dozen attendees. There were some people there I remembered well and a few I remembered with prompting. It is probably odd that I remembered only one of a pair of (fraternal) twins. And it is decidedly odd that I failed to remember one of the Island Park people - and probably offended him by not remembering him. And, frankly, even with reminders, his name sounds vaguely familiar, but I have no specific memories associated with him. But, overall, we had a nice conversation, though the bar was noisier than optimal for that.

The only real New York thing I did on Saturday during the day was walk around some of my mid-town touchpoints, e.g. giving my regards to Patience and Fortitude (the library lions). In the late afternoon, I changed into dressy clothes and walked over to Penn Station to get the train to Island Park. I’d intended to walk to the venue (less than a mile away), but the twins were at the station picking up someone else, so they gave me a ride, too. We actually went first to another nearby bar, which was loud and crowded, so we ended up sitting outside, overlooking Reynolds Channel. It was unfortunately cold and windy, so we were happy to go over to Lambrou’s, where the reunion was being held. There was a reasonably good turnout. I think it was somewhere around 150 attendees, but I’m not sure.

I didn’t take pictures and I tend to be somewhat cautious about writing publicly about other people, so most of what I have to say is going to sound a bit vague. There were people who I wish had been there, e.g. one of our more colorful classmates, who lives in France but who had said he was going to come. There were people I was surprised to see, e.g. someone who lived down the street from me, but I never really spent much time with after our very young days playing with Barbie dolls together. (No particular reason, but the people on one end of the block just didn’t socialize much with the people on the other end of the block.)

The most interesting thing I found is what people did or didn’t remember. For example, one guy immediately remembered my story about our junior high math teacher not catching on that he was listening to Mets games on a transistor radio until he commented to another teacher about what a shame it was that Mike had to use a hearing aid at his age. And a girl who lived on the next block remembered our making paper mache trees for the set of our class production of Camelot, but didn’t realize that afternoon was also my introduction to Dark Shadows, which remains the only soap opera I ever watched regularly. On the other hand, another guy didn’t remember a bus ride from Roosevelt Field Mall during which an older guy threatened him, me, and another girl for being too loud. And someone else said he didn't know what I was talking about when I commented on our constant arguments in social studies class.

The biggest surprise was that a girl who lived two houses away from me (and was a few years younger than us) had married a boy from our class whose cousins lived in the house on the other side of mine.

The best thing was reconnecting with a few people I hadn’t seen in ages. I shared a Lyft back to the city with Grace, who was part of a group of us who hung out in the school library during free periods, playing word games. (Her mother was the school librarian.) And Norman and I were friends going back to 2nd grade or so, when we shared a box of crayons. The first thing he told me when we were catching up is that he’s gay, which I’ve known for at least 20 years (since he brought a date to a previous reunion). I was glad to hear that he’s happily married now. (I should probably mention that back in high school, my best friend, Debby, had a huge crush on him. There was only one boy who I’d had a crush on who was there and I’d gotten over that crush long before we graduated from high school.)

I skipped the Sunday brunch since I was leaving on my next trip just a couple of days later. As I have said numerous times before, my life is a schedule conflict.

At any rate, the class of ’76 has mostly aged reasonably well. There was, alas, a table to remember those who are gone. That used to be people who died in things like car accidents, but we’ve reached the stage in life where cancer or heart disease are the primary killers. I used to say that our memories stay alive forever, but, given what I (and other people) do and do not remember, I may be wrong about that.

Catching up on some other things, it’s been a while since I’ve done the ever popular celebrity death watch. (Early February to be exact)

Celebrity Death Watch - February 2026: Sir Nicholas White was a tropical disease researcher, specializing in malaria treatments. Daryl Hoole wrote books about homemaking. Myra MacPherson was a journalist, primarily for The Washington Post. Chuck Negron was a founding member of Three Dog Night. Dame Carole Jordan was an astrophysicist. Lamont McLemore was a founding member of The 5th Dimension, Mickey Lolich was a pitcher, primarily for the Detroit Tigers. Sonny Jorgensen was a Hall of Fame football player. Ed Crane co-founded the Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank). Andrew Ranken played drums for The Pogues. Bud Cort was an actor, best known for playing Harold in Harold and Maude. Ed Graczyk was a playwright whose most successful play was Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. James Van Der Beek starred in Dawson’s Creek. Karen Glaser was an underwater photographer. Eric Dane was an actor, best known for appearing in Grey’s Anatomy. Dan Simmons was a fantasy, science fiction, and horror writer. Iris Cantor was a philanthropist. Coleman Barks was a poet and responsible for popularizing the works of Rumi. Sondra Lee originated the roles of Tiger Lily (in Peter Pan) and Minnie Fay (in Hello, Dolly!) on Broadway. Lauren Chapin was a child actress, best known for playing Kitten in Father Knows Best. Bobby J. Brown was an actor, best known for The Wire. Colman McCarthy was a peace activist.

Robert Duvall was an actor, He won a best actor Oscar for his performance in Tender Mercies and had won several other acting awards. He’s been referred to as “the American Olivier.”

Jesse Jackson was an ordained Baptist minister, a civil rights activist and a politician. He appeared to have repented for some antisemitic comments he made during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984. I was once delayed at the Oakland airport while he and his entourage were there, but I don’t remember whether he was coming or going.

Isaiah Zagar was a mosaic artist, who created the Philadelphia Magic Gardens. This is my favorite thing in Philadelphia. I was introduced to it by artistic friends and I’ve gone back to see it multiple times since.

Bill Mazeroski was a second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who is best known for driving in a 9th inning home run in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series to defeat the Source of All Evil in the Universe.

Neil Sedaka was a singer and songwriter. Among the songs he is best known for are “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” and “Love Will Keep Us Together.” I find those two an interesting juxtaposition.

Ali Khamenei was the ayatollah, supreme leader, and president of Iran. The world (and Iran, in particular) may well be a better place without him, but it’s not like he’s been replaced with anyone better.

Celebrity Death Watch - March 2026: Gary Walker was the drummer and a vocalist with The Standells, whose song “Dirty Water” is a Red Sox tradition. Lyle Conway designed the Audrey II puppet used in the film version of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. Russell W. Meyer, Jr. was the CEO of Grumman in the late 1960’s to mid-1970’s and of Cessna after that. Sir Anthony Leggett won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on superfluidity. Alexander Butterfield revealed Richard Nixon’s White House taping system during the Watergate investigation. Tommy DeCarlo was the lead singer for Boston. Paul Ehrlich wrote about the consequences of population growth. Christopher Sims won a Nobel Prize in economics. William C. Dietz wrote military science fiction. Dolores Keane sang with De Dannan. Terry Cox was the drummer for Pentangle. Mike Melvill was a test pilot for SpaceShip One, becoming the first commercial astronaut. Chuck Norris was a martial artist and actor. Nicholas Brendon played Xander in the TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Robert Mueller was the director of the FBI from 2001-2013. Calvin Tomkins was an art critic who wrote for The New Yorker. Chip Taylor wrote songs, including “Angel of the Morning” and “Wild Thing.” Dash Crofts sang with Jim Seals and wrote songs, including “Summer Breeze.”

Lou Holtz was a football coach for Notre Dame (and other schools). He earned me 19 ghoul pool points.

Country Joe McDonald headed up a musical group with the Fish. He’s best known for the “I-Feel-Like-Im-Fixing-to-Die” Rag,” which he wrote and performed at Woodstock.

Len Deighton wrote spy novels, including The IPCRESS File. He also wrote cookbooks.

George H. Goble won an Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry for preparing a barbecue using a smoldering cigarette, charcoal, and liquid oxygen.

Tracy Kidder wrote a number of important non-fiction books, including The Soul of a New Machine and Mountains Beyond Mountains. His writing was vivid and absorbing and well worth reading.

Celebrity Death Watch - April 2026: Jim Whittaker was the first American to climb Mount Everest. Barbara Gordon wrote the book I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can, about her pill addiction. Nick Pope investigated UFOs. Davey Lopes played second base primarily for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ray Monette sang and played guitar for Rare Earth. Africa Bambaataa was a hip hop pioneer. Moya Brennan sang with Clannad. Kevin Klose was the president of NPR from 1998-2008. Don Schlitz wrote country music songs and was best known for “The Gambler.” Roger Adams invented Heelys. Garret Anderson played left field for the Los Angeles Angels.

Sid Krofft was a puppeteer who, along with his brother, Marty, created such television shows as H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost.

Justin Fairfax was the lieutenant governor of Virginia under Ralph Northam. During his term in office, he had faced multiple allegations of sexual assault. He murdered his wife, Cerina, and killed himself.

Desmond Morris was a zoologist. He was best known for his book The Naked Ape, which has been widely criticized for sexist assumptions.

Belated Celebrity Death Watch: I only learned recently that Lyle Feisel died in November 2025. He was known for writing a column in The Bent, the magazine published by the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi, about the people various scientific units are named after.

I have other things to write about, but I should attempt catching up on actual stuff I did and can let the rest wait a bit. So here is my write-up of the 2026 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Note that I will include some spoilers about puzzles, but I will put those in comments encoded with rot13. In order to decode them, go to rot13.com and copy the encoded text into the top box.

This was my 10th ACPT (non-consecutively) and, significantly, was the last time it was being held at the Stamford Marriott in Connecticut. I’ve missed several over the years, largely because my life is a schedule conflict. For registration, they opened it early to people who had competed before and, when they did open up registration for rookies, it sold out in 1 minute and 37 seconds! (There were more rookies who got in off the wait list, but many people were disappointed,) Next year (and, presumably, subsequent years) will be in Philadelphia, which is a city I like a lot, at the Sheraton (which is a hotel I’m not crazy about, but I’ll live.)

Anyway, I took the train up on Friday afternoon, which was fine. I had a quick salad for supper and settled into my room. You can tell that the Stamford Marriott has enjoyed hosting the ACPT, as they gave each of us this thermal mug as a gift.



I picked up my contestant packet and settled into a seat in the ballroom for the evening activities. The first game was “Mental Geog-ing” which was advertised as “a wordplay quiz on place names, solved in pairs.” But, actually, it was just two teams, i.e. the room divided in half. I had a quibble with the answer to one question, which called for naming three European countries which have a “z” in their names. Will Shortz didn’t allow Azerbaijan, saying that it’s in Asia. Well, most of it is, but part of northern Azerbaijan is in Europe.

After that was the usual competition where you chose from four puzzles. (I you have time, you can do more than one.) I’m not a fan of Split Decisions, so ruled that out. A quick glance at the Cryptic (which is usually my favorite) suggested it was a hard one, so I saved it for later. The Spiral was going fine, but I got bogged down on a couple of answers. I should have started with the Quote Boxes, since I was able to solve two of the three of them quickly, but ran out of time before doing the third. Oh, well.

I should note that a lot of my reason for going to the ACPT is socializing. I looked for several friends and found some, but with over 800 people there, it was impossible to find others. I gave up quickly on the wine and cheese reception, as it was just too crowded and noisy. I did catch up with a few others later in the weekend, but never found some other people who I know were there.

The actual crossword competition started on Saturday morning. I opted to go to one of the overflow rooms downstairs, which was a good decision as it was much less crowded than the main room upstairs. Puzzle #1 was by Ross Trudeau. This was straightforward and one could have solved it without getting the theme (though I did find the theme gettable and amusing enough). So far, so good.

Will Shortz said that some of the test solvers had found Puzzle #2 harder than the dreaded Puzzle #5, but I sussed out the theme fairly readily. Which surprised me since the puzzle was by Brendan Emmett Quigley, who I think of as my puzzle nemesis. I wasn’t particularly quick on solving it. I did take a minute to proofread, which was good, because I caught an error I’d made on one answer. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep proofreading, as I had a really dumb error in another place, essentially the handwritten equivalent of a typo. When the scores got posted, I kicked myself mentally for blowing what should have been a clean solve. (See spoiler below.)

Puzzle #3 was by Mike Shenk. I almost always enjoy his puzzles and I enjoyed this one, too. However, I have a bone to pick with him regarding one answer, which resulted in two wrong squares. (See spoiler below.) To be fair, I should have caught this from the crossings, but it still struck me as problematic.

I’d eaten a large breakfast so I just had yogurt up in my room for lunch. At that point, the scores had not come in yet, so I still felt pretty confident. (It turned out that there was a problem with the scoring system and I hadn’t discovered a workaround yet.) I went into the afternoon session believing (incorrectly) that I had solved cleanly.

Anyway, Puzzle #4, which was by Rena Cohen, was straightforward. I think this is another one where you didn’t really have to grasp the theme to solve this. I will, however, note that the revealer was not actually correct. (See spoiler below)

Then came Puzzle #5, something I have solved cleanly exactly once ever. Robyn Weintraub made a puzzle that lived up to its evil reputation, which is surprising since I used to think of her as a good person. I did, eventually, grasp part of the trick, but didn’t quite get it completely. And I certainly didn’t do so with enough time to finish the puzzle. My score on it was downright pathetic. (See spoiler below)

The afternoon ended with Puzzle #6, by Lynn Lempel. This was reasonably straightforward, with an enjoyable theme.

By this time, I’d figured out how to see not only the scores but, also, the scans of my puzzles. What worked for me was switching from looking using Safari to using Chrome. Other people had some success with clearing their browser cache or using an incognito window. Let’s just say that I was not in the top half.

Saturday night started with a celebration of the movie Wordplay, which is what made a lot of people aware of the ACPT. Not me, by the way. I had first learned of it from an A-hed in the Wall Street Journal. (That’s the human interest story that they put on the front page. The WSJ A-hed often has some of the best writing in American journalism.) I know that I did see the movie when it first came out, but I can’t remember where. There were various outtakes from the movie and director Patrick Creadon talked about its surprising success. That was followed by the presentation of the Merl Reagle MEmoRiaL Award to Lynn Lempel. I was particularly amused by her mentioning that she used to play jotto (a game that is, essentially, the forerunner to world). My 50th high school reunion is approaching and my friends and I used to play jotto (and some other games) in the library during our free periods. Yes, I was a word nerd back then, too.

Sunday morning finished off the tournament with Puzzle #7, by Sam Ezersky. I found this one pretty easy going and it did improve my standing somewhat. In the end, I finished 459th out of 803. That’s the 43rd percentile, which is the worst finish I’ve had. To compare, here’s how I’ve done each time I’ve competed:

2009 – 265 / 654 (55th percentile)
2012 – 241 / 594 (59th percentile)
2014 – 202 / 580 (65th percentile)
2016 – 171 / 576 (70th percentile)
2017 – 141 / 619 (77th percentile)
2018 – 254 / 674 (62nd percentile)
2019 – 220 / 741 (70th percentile)
2022 - 243 / 474 (49th percentile)
2023 - 301 / 774 (61st percentile)
2026 - 459 / 803 (43rd percentile)

Oh, well.

Anyway, there was a little more entertainment to be had, in the form of a live taping of a “Hello Puzzlers” podcast with A. J. Jacobs and Greg Pliska. They had several audience members come up to play a game in which they had to guess the most common clues for certain answers. That was followed by them grilling Sam Ezersky about his word list for the Spelling Bee, which often gets criticized for leaving out words many people think should belong. There was a cute story about someone sending a large box of raffia to Will Shortz to prove to the New York Times that “raffia” is a legitimate word. Here’s a photo of A.J., Sam, and Greg (from left to right).



After Puzzle 8 (the Championship puzzle) was distributed, I went up to my room to finish packing. (I had late check-out). Erik Agard was the big winner. I said goodbye to a few people and slowly made my way over to the train station. I stopped to take a farewell to Stamford photo, since I don’t expect to have much reason to go back there again now.



Next year in Philadelphia!

Spoiler for Puzzle #2: Bar pyhr jnf "Wrnaf phg" naq V vavgvnyyl jebgr "fyvz phg." Juvpu vf qhzo, orpnhfr gur jbeq "phg" jbhyqa'g unir orra ercrngrq. Jura V cebbsernq, V ernyvmrq vg unq gb or "fyvz svg." V pnhtug gung naq yrnearq gung Trbetvn B'Xrrssr unq gjb "S"f va ure ynfg anzr. V unir ab vqrn ubj V jebgr n "T" vafgrnq bs n "Q" va nabgure nafjre, ubjrire.

Spoiler for Puzzle #3: Gur pyhr sbe 47Q jnf "Fynatl 'haqrefgnaq?'" V jebgr va "pncvfpr" vzzrqvngryl. Juvpu vf gur pbeerpg fcryyvat bs guvf Vgnyvna jbeq. Zvxr Furax'f fcryyvat jnf "pncvpur." Tbbtyr fhttrfgf guvf na na Nzrevpnavmrq nygreangvir, ohg V'ir arire frra gung orsber. V unir frra gur rira zber nobyzvanoyr "pncrrfu" snveyl serdhragyl, fb gung zvtug unir yrq zr gb erivfvg gur pebffvatf gurer.

Ol gur jnl, "pncvfpr" jnf bar bs zl sngure'f snibevgr jbeqf naq V jnf nobhg 40 lrnef byq orsber V qvfpbirerq gung vg jnf, va snpg, Vgnyvna naq abg Lvqqvfu!

Spoiler for Puzzle #4: Gur gurzr nafjre sbe guvf chmmyr jnf "fcner gver." Gur cynvagrkg orybj gur gvgyr ernq "Rirel pne unf bar." Fcner gverf fgnegrq orvat cunfrq bhg va gur zvq 2000'f naq, nf bs 2025, ebhtuyl unys bs arj pnef ner fbyq jvgubhg gurz. (NNN pynvzf 60% naq Pbafhzre Ercbegf pynvzf 45% ynpx gurz.)

Spoiler for Puzzle #5: Lbh unq gb svther bhg gung lbh unq gb zbir n jbeq sbe na navzny sebz bar pyhr gb gur pyhr orsber vg. Sbe rknzcyr, 69N jnf "Nfgebabzvpnyyl, vg'f n yvggyr" naq 71N jnf "Oebja orne va gur pbzvpf." Zbivat gur jbeq "orne" tvirf lbh HEFN ZVABE (na nfgebabzvpny yvggyr orne) naq PUNEYVR (Oebja va gur pbzvpf), erfcrpgviryl. Vg'f irel pyrire, bs pbhefr, ohg punyyratvat gb svther bhg.

Continuing my catch-up, I did a theatre binge at the end of March. The impetus for this was City Center’s Encores, which was doing a production of Michael John LaChiusa’s version of The Wild Party. For those unfamiliar with Encores, this is a series that produces infrequently performed, often forgotten, musicals, with minimal staging (although it has gotten more elaborate over the years) and short runs (2 weeks). This was a show that I had wanted to see for ages. They had planned it for a previous season, but it got postponed and there was no way I was going to miss out when it did show up on the schedule. So I bought a ticket as soon as they went on sale - at full price, no less! I built the rest of this trip around that production, so let’s take things in order.

The first show I saw was on Friday night. The hot ticket of the moment was Giant, starring John Lithgow as Roald Dahl. I was able to find a ticket on TodayTix for Friday night. I was literally in the last row of the the theatre, but I had a perfect view. The show has to do with an incident in which Dahl wrote a highly antisemitic review of a book about Israel, leading his publisher to try to get him to issue a retraction. In addition to Dahl, the characters include his fiancee, his housekeeper, and representatives of his publisher (a British man who Dahl considers a friend and a woman from New York). The play was well acted and sadly relevant to our times. I’ve written before about the problem of separating the artist from the art, and Dahl joins people like Caravaggio and Neil Gaiman in my list of people who created some great works despite being terrible people. So this was an interesting look at a deeply flawed person whose works (that is, his children’s books) still endure. However, I didn’t find the play completely satisfying, since Dahl’s deliberate abrasiveness is unrelenting. The reason to see this is Lithgow, rather than the lines he’s been given.

The main event was Saturday afternoon, when I saw The Wild Party at City Center. The back story of why I wanted to see this show so much is that both LaChiusa and Andrew Lippa wrote musicals based on Joseph Moncure March’s 1928 narrative poem in 2000. I’d seen (and liked) Lippa’s version a while ago. But I think LaChiusa ia a better composer. The plot involves Queenie (a vaudeville singer) and Burrs (the vaudeville clown she lives with) who throw a party to try to stir up their disintegrating relationship. The party involves pretty much every vice imaginable, full of sex and drugs and jazz (since this was set in the 1920’s, long before rock and roll). The music was excellent and I thought the choreography was also notable, given the relatively small stage. It’s a show I would definitely see again.

I was back at City Center (this time at the Manhattan Theatre Club, which is their smaller venue) on Saturday night for Bigfoot. The plot involves the residents of the town of Muddirt, which is located between a chemical dump and a nuclear power plant. Bigfoot lives in the woods outside of town because his mother knows he wouldn’t be safe among the biased town residents. The mayor stirs up the townspeople against him to distract them from his plans to sell the town and turn it into a waterpark. Overall, I found the show funny and cute, but pretty silly. I felt like it was more appropriate for a fringe festival.

If you’re going to binge, you might as well go all the way. So I went to see About Time at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, which is in the YMCA on W. 64th Street, just a stone’s throw from Central Park. This is a follow-up to Maltby and Shire’s revues,Starting Here, Starting Now and Closer Than Ever and focuses on issues of aging. The six performers were all excellent and most of the songs were very enjoyable. My favorite was “Smart People” which included lines like, “It’s not a new idea, though to me it’s kind of newish / that when your cast talks really fast, it simply means they’re … smart people.” I also found “I’m Here” (which is about travel) very relatable. However, I’m in my mid-60’s and I was one of the youngest people in the audience. I suspect the show may not appeal as much to younger folks.

The final show I saw was a cabaret show by Joe Fox at Don’t Tell Mama. Anyone who knows me won’t be surprised that I couldn’t resist something with the title Don’t Cry for Me My Yeshiva. Fox combined his story about making a documentary about the fight for (and against) gay marriage in Maine with his personal experience as the gay son of an Orthodox rabbi. That he was adopted is also relevant to his story. I found this pretty entertaining though I thought it could use some editing. I should also note that one of the songs Fox used was based on the Maltby & Shire song “I Want It All” (from the musical Baby.

Overall, this was a good weekend. I should also mention that I stayed at the Sheraton on 50th Street and 7th Avenue, which was convenient, but disappointing. There was an absurdly long wait to check in, for example. The temperature control in the room didn’t work well, so I was too cold most of the time.

Also, I didn’t leave myself time to do much besides theatre going, though I did get in a nice walk around (part of) Central Park. I do have one more trip to New York scheduled, but I don’t think I have any free time on that one.

87 Days so far!

I finally had a chance to listen to the March guest poet presentation by Lauren Camp. She talked about and read from two of her nine books of poetry - In Old Sky and Is Is Enough. The former is about her residency in the Grand Canyon and focuses on darkness, while the latter has to do with her father and his descent into dementia. One comment she made that I liked was that poems can narrow in, rather than having to be about the whole. She also talked a little bit about revision. While I enjoyed her poems, I wished she’d had more practical advice about process.

Here are the titles of the poems I’ve written over the past month. As usual, I will not include the actual text of any poems I might ever try to get published, since most publications count blogs as prior publication.

Stafford Challenge Week 9:

14 March 2026 - Pi Day

15 March 2026 - The Ides of March

16 March 2026 - Road Trip

17 March 2026 - Black Hole Nightmare

18 March 2026 - Dancing at the Overcrowded Bar

19 March 2026 - Taking Another Friend for a Medical Procedure

20 March 2026 - Folklore

Stafford Challenge Week 10:

21 March 2026 - Book Club Irony

22 March 2026 - Emcee Challenge

23 March 2026 - Circumnavigation

24 March 2026 - Mary Talks About Names

25 March 2026 - Cynthia

26 March 2026 - Packing

27 March 2026 - Roald Dahl

Stafford Challenge Week 11:

28 March 2026 - Bigfoot

29 March 2026 - About Time

30 March 2026 - Pancakes

31 March 2026 - The Railroad Rhyme

1 April 2026 - Fools

2 April 2026 - Diana

3 April 2026 - Passover Haiku

Stafford Challenge Week 12:

4 April 2026 - More Living Room Archaeology

5 April 2026 - Pollen

6 April 2026 - Inaction Item

7 April 2026 - Zip Ode (22181)

8 April 2026 - Choosing Hotels

9 April 2026 - Taxes

10 April 2026 - Crosswords


Crosswords:

I’ll include the 10 April poem here, since an Acrostic is hard to find a market for. I wrote this on an Amtrak train on my way to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this past weekend.

CROSSWORDS

Constructors
rely
on
strange
synonyms,
wildly
obscure
rare
definitions.
Stimulating.

The Zip Ode

The Zip Ode is a poetic form that is new to me. The idea is to take your zip code and use each digit as the number of words per line. For example, my zip code is 22181. Here was my first attempt at this form:

Virginia days
in spring -
Weather
cannot make up its mind about the temperature.
Unsettling.

Books:
I read 11 books this quarter, which is not quite the pace I need to reach my goal of 80 for the year.

1. Herman Melville, Moby Dick (reread). I’m not sure if this counts, since I’ve read it several times. I went to my third Moby Dick marathon (my second in New Bedford; the other was in San Francisco.) It’s an amazing book, with a mix of adventure, social commentary, and humor. If you haven’t read it, you should in order to understand why so many people consider this THE Great American Novel.
   
   
2. Sujata Massey, Girl in a Box. The title refers to a young woman who is overly protected, mostly by her family, Re Shimura is undercover at a Japanese department store, investigating financial malfeasance. The issues she stumble upon involve the yakuza, money laundering, and, unfortunately, murder. There are a lot of interesting details regarding Japanese culture, e.g. a funeral for old sewing needles. While the ending is abrupt and implausible, I still enjoyed this for the most part.
   
   
3. Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship. Buckley has long been the master of humor about Washington, D.C. and this is no exception. The story has to do with a TV judge who gets appointed to the Supreme Court, largely as revenge against the Senate Judiciary Committee, after they reject two perfect candidates. She’s hardly an intellectual, but she’s plain spoken and able to use her common sense. The things that happen are wild - and wildly funny. Overall, this is a delightful romp.
   
   
4. Jasper Fforde, Red Side Story. This is the sequel to Shades of Grey. It started out rather slowly , but picked up as soon as Eddie and Jane set out on a mission to search for spoons in Crimsonalia. The world building is superb and the ending is extremely satisfying. Lots of fun.
   
   
5. J. J. Marric, Gideon’s Power. Commander George Gideon of Scotland Yard is dealing with a strong of power outages that appear to be sabotage. And there have also been cases of children kidnapped, molested, and murdered. I didn’t find all of it particularly plausible, but I think it was a reasonably good read as procedurals go.
   
   
6. Terry Pratchett, Making Money. I’ve always found Pratchett to be amusing, but inconsistent, and this book is no exception. Moist van Lipwick (whose name I find very off-putting) was a crook who was saved from hanging and put in charge of the post office, which he made successful. Now he’s put in charge of the bank and the mint. But all the gold has vanished. There’s some funny stuff, but, overall, I didn’t find this book very satisfying.
   
   
7. Boris Kester, The Long Road to Cullaville. I read this for the Travelers’ Century Club Book Club. Kester is one of many people who has been to every UN country. His stories cover some of his travels, including places like Yemen, Cuba, and Equatorial Guinea. The roughest story involves a near-fatal auto accident in South Africa. The writing (which was his own translation of the original Dutch) wasn’t brilliant, but it was still reasonably interesting.
   
   
8. Susan Branch, The Summer Book. I was given several of Branch’s books by one of my mother’s neighbors. This is a mix of household tips, recipes, and such. It’s hard to read because of the fonts, which are meant to resemble handwriting. While I did save a few recipes, overall, I found this (and other books by her) eminently skippable.
   
   
9. Rona Jaffe, Family Secrets. This lengthy novel traces three generations of a Jewish family. The patriarch builds a real estate empire. His children marry, have careers and children, and live in a large compound he’s built. One granddaughter is clearly based on Jaffe herself, who went to Radcliffe and had a successful writing career, starting with her first novel. An okay read, but dated.
   
   
10. Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts. I read this for Crones and Tomes and enjoyed it a lot more than I’d expected to. It’s the story of a road trip taken by an alcoholic older man, who has never recovered from the death of his older daughter, his younger daughter (who does the driving), and the two children of his estranged older brother, who he has become the guardian of There’s also a cat, who frequently steals the show. The premise sounds depressing, but there is surprising charm and humor throughout. Highly recommended.
    
    
11. Graham Greene, Journey Without Maps. This was another TCC Book Club selection. In the late 1930’s, Greene set out to cross Liberia on foot. Because maps were not available he consistently got conflicting information about the distances to towns along the way. He didn’t really know much about the people and, in general, didn’t seem to like them. There were also weird digressions, e.g. one abut an Estonian woman in Riga and another about his youthful episodes of depression. I thought, overall, it was fairly interesting, but a bit of a slog to get through. I wish it had been edited by someone neutral.
    

Movies:
I only saw one movie this quarter.

1. The Choral: This movie is set in 1916 and involves the choral society in a small community in Yorkshire. They’re putting on a production of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius but, because of World War I, there are not enough men available, so they make some changes in the story. Ralph Fiennes puts on an excellent performance as the chorus master. The stories involve the various members of the choral society, and touch on several topics, including sexual relationships. The music throughout is exquisite. Recommended.
   

Goals:

• I’ve got solid plans for one long distance train trip. In May. In Australia. The Ghan. I have an idea about another one.
  
• I’ve got tentative plans for 2 minor league baseball games.
  
• I’ve got solid plans for 2 new to me TCC countries / territories.
  
• I have ideas about national parks, but haven’t acted on them.
  
• I don’t feel like I am making much progress on reading Hangul.
  
• I am way behind on shredding household paperwork.
  
• I’ve read 12 books so far this year (the 11 discussed above plus one more in April) and should finish at least 2 more this month. So I am behind where I should be.
  
• Finished one crafts project (a needle felted penguin.) I am getting close to finishing my Tunisian crochet afghan.
  
• I have done nothing about getting rid of LP records.
  
• I have been keeping up with the Stafford Challenge.
  

In short, I am doing reasonably well on goals so far this year.