Friends of the Serpent

I’ve had a fairly busy couple of weeks since I got home from the New England trip.

Convergence: I am taking a three session class via New Lehrhaus called Convergence in Conversation: Music, Narratives, and History. This is a series of conversations led by Anthony Mordecai Tavi Russell focused on his 2018 recording which blends African-American and Ashkenazi Jewish music. I first learned of him when he appeared in a Pro Musica Hebraica program with Mark Glanville a while back and I was completely blown away by his bass voice. Anyway, Convergence is a remarkable musical accomplishment and each session focuses on some of the tracks and questions about them. For example, the second class talked about poverty and imprisonment and included a Yiddish song about a suffering Yeshiva student questioning why his life is so depressing along with the song “I am a poor wayfaring stranger.” The final class is this coming Tuesday and he sent out questions about lullabies and anthems. It’s interesting to hear his perspective on why he combined particular pieces. And I do highly recommend the album to anybody with an interest in either Yiddish music or American spirituals (or, of course, both).

Needle Felted Penguin: A week ago Thursday I took a two-hour class at a nearby brewpub on Making a Needle Felted Penguin. My friend, Tom, who I know from a knitting group and who loves penguins was also there. I think there were about 20 people total. Anyway, I’ve done wet felting over the years (including making felted slippers) but hadn’t done needle felting before. The class was fun and I came away with this cute little guy.



By the way, I have supplies for at least one more penguin.

Two TCC Activities: Last Saturday was busy with a couple of Travelers’ Century Club things. I’m now co-coordinator of the TCC Book Club and, since Ed was on a plane, I got to run the meeting. We discussed Married to Bhutan by Linda Leaming and I thought things went well. In the evening, I went to a local chapter dinner meeting at a Turkish restaurant in D.C. It was well attended and there was plenty of interesting discussion, focused on money saving travel tips. Alas, the metro was kind of screwed up on my way home, due to a disabled train at Virginia Square, so I got home later than I’d have preferred to.

JGSGW Meeting: Sunday was a Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington meeting. The speaker talked about how she traced one of her ancestors without knowing her name. The talk was okay, but I didn’t feel like I learned anything new.

Run-up to the Women’s Storytelling Festival: The Women’s Storytelling Festival is just about two months away. I have plenty of things to do, starting with editing my notes from our planning meeting on Wednesday night.

The Choral: I went to see the movie, The Choral, on Wednesday, which is old people’s discount day at Cinema Arts Theatre in Fairfax. I thought it was exquisite. The story is set in 1916 and involves the choral society in a small community in Yorkshire that is putting on a production of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Because of World War I, there are not enough men available and they end up making some changes to the story to suit the circumstances. Ralph Fiennes plays the chorus master, who is disliked for having spent several years in Germany. (And the reason they are doing an Elgar oratorio is to avoid German composers.) The various stories involve the members of the choral society and their relationships, so there is rather a lot going on. The music is spectacular. Two things that struck me were: 1) a quote from Goethe that says a person should hear music, read a poem, and look at a beautiful picture every day and 2) a speech about purgatory given by one of the performers, a soldier who lost an arm in the war. That speech was definitely a two-hanky one. Also, my current ear worm is “A Man Who Would Woo a Fair Maid” (from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard) because they used it in the closing credits.

Stafford Challenge - Week 1: I’ve made it through the first week of writing a poem a day. My major focus is related to the story of the wreck of the Congressional Limited in 1943, which was one of the deadliest train wrecks in U.S. history. I’m interested in it because one of 79 people who died in it was my grandfather’s sister, Mary Lehrman (nee Mariasha Chlebiotskaya). So some of what I wrote this week has to do with introducing some of the characters. Though I did have two unrelated poems - one haiku re: the metro woes of Saturday night and a topical haiku. I won’t include the poems here, but I will list the titles of them.

17 January 2026 - The Train, 1 - Mary wonders about the English language
18 January 2026 - The Train, 2 - Mary shares her daughter’s advice
19 January 2026 - A diversion into Haiku
20 January 2026 - A Haiku For Our Times
21 January 2026 - The boy notices the mysterious soldier
22 January 2026 - A Marine answers the boy
23 January 2026 - Mary sees Lin Yutang

I’m not sure how these fragments will fit together. But, for now, it doesn’t matter.

At least this time, I am starting my year in review while it is still January. I have an established format for that so here it goes.

I didn’t have any major household crises. I did have knee issues slowing me down much of the year, but I finally got to physical therapy which helped a lot. Overall, my life remains a schedule conflict.

Books: I read 47 books in 2025. That was 19 non-fiction and 28 fiction books, including 2 graphic books (one each of fiction and non-fiction). Also, two of the fiction books were anthologies. Favorites were The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde, David Lagercrantz’s three sequels to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, Alive by Piers Paul Read, The Third Daughter by Talia Carner, The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson, The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams, The Women by Kristen Hannah, and The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. I reread To Kill a Mockingbird and, with all due apologies to its fans, I still detest it. I think the worst book I read in 2025, however, was Dead on Target by M.C. Beaton with R.W. Green.

I made one used bookstore run, getting rid of 16 books. I also gave away 5 books (3 to friends and 2 to members of my neighborhood book exchange) and threw one out because it was falling apart. I have at least another 56 ready to go out.

As far as book clubs, my long-standing one is falling apart, but the one that had disbanded is trying to start up again. The Travelers’ Century Club Book Club is going strong and I have become co-coordinator of that.

Ghoul Pool: I finished 7th out of 14 players with 115 points. People I scored on were Agnes Keleti, Pope Francis, William H. Webster, Sister Jean (unique), Sophie Kinsela, Sam Nujoma (unique), June Lockhart, and Tom Lehrer.

Travel: I did two international trips in 2025. I spent a little over half of June in Greece, most of it on the island of Zakynthos in the Ionian island group for a paper conservation class. And I did an around the world trip, with time spent in Taiwan (mostly Taipei) and Germany (mostly Hamburg) before taking the Queen Mary 2 to New York.

As for domestic travel, I went to Las Vegas in March for my brother’s wedding. Closer to home, I drove down to Williamsburg, Virginia for the VASA gathering in April. I met up with Flyertalk friends in Kansas City in May to eat barbecue and see a few museums. Later in May, I drove to Baltimore for Balticon (a science fiction convention). Then I flew up to Boston (well, Cambridge) for my 45th college reunion, which included my giving a TIM Talk about my travels. In July I went to Minneapolis / St. Paul for the National Puzzlers’ League con. At the beginning of August, I went to the Denver area for Geostock, which is an annual party my friends in Superior host. Later in August, I went to Fort Wayne, Indiana for an annual Jewish genealogy conference, followed by a weekend in Chicago for Sporclecon (a trivia event). Loserfest (related to the Style Invitational humor contest) was in September in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area. I also took a trip up to New York in September. And I spent a little more time in New York after my transatlantic crossing in November.

And I went to the Travel show in D.C. in March.

Genealogy: I didn’t have any particularly notable genealogical breakthroughs this year. I did, however, continue to be the Litvak subject matter expert for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington and put together a guide to using Facebook for Jewish genealogy for that group. And, as mentioned above, I went to the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies annual conference (in Fort Wayne, Indiana) in August where I: a) gave a brief presentation about how my maternal grandparents met and married and b) had time to sit down with one of my Schwartzbard cousins. I also spent some time at the very impressive Allen County Library, which has a huge genealogy collection.

Baseball: I went to see my Red Sox beat up on the Nationals on the Fourth of July, which was very enjoyable though somewhat too hot out. I also went to two minor league baseball games - the Saint Paul Saints (who lost to the Worcester Red Sox, aka WooSox) and the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Tin Caps (who beat the West Michigan White Caps). While I was in the Minneapolis area, I also saw the home plate from Metropolitan Stadium in Minneapolis and the red chair bolted to the wall that marks the longest home run (hit by Harmon Killebrew) at that ballpark. (Both of those are at the Mall of America.)

Also, I went to a Profs and Pints talk about The Physics of Baseball, which was both interesting and enlightening. And, as noted below, I went to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City in May.

Culture: I went to 9 musicals over the year. I also saw the Dolly Parton retrospective at the Kennedy Center, which I’m not sure how to count. Nor do I know how to count the shows I saw on the Queen Mary 2, which also included one non-musical play. My favorites were Schmigadoon (which was part of the Broadway Center Stage series at the Kennedy Center), The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical at Signature Theatre, Damn Yankees at Arena Stage, Guys and Dolls at the Shakespeare Theatre, and Maybe Happy Ending on Broadway. I also went to two operas.

If I counted correctly, I saw 9 movies on airplanes and 7 in theaters this year. Favorites were The Penguin Lessons, Conclave, Coco, Rental Family, and Song Sung Blue.

Storytelling: The biggest storytelling event of the year for me was the Women’s Storytelling Festival in March, at which I both told a story and emceed the Story Swap. (Note that the 2026 WSF is coming up March 19 through 22nd and tickets are on sale now.)

Other storytelling shows I was part of were a Better Said Than Done Mother’s Day show in Elliott City, Maryland, the Washington Folk Festival (in October) and the Artists Standing Strong Together New Year’s Eve Blowout. I also went to several story swaps (both with Voices in the Glen and with Community Storytellers in Los Angeles. And I went to a Spooky Stories swap at a library in Maryland.

In April, I not only went to the Virginia Storytelling Association (VASA) gathering in Williamsburg but presented a workshop on Storytelling Ethics there.

I continued to participate in a discussion group centered on the Grimm fairy tales. However, this has ended, due to other commitments on the part of the organizer.

Museums and Art: During my trip to Kansas City, I went to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the American Jazz Museum, the World War I Museum and an exhibit about Snoopy and the Red Baron at the Crown Center.

I’m not sure whether or not to count it, but I did go to some exhibits about the Mechanical Engineering Department when I was at my M.I.T. Reunion in June.

Also, in June, while in Zakynthos, I went to the General Archives and Historical Library of Zakynthos, the Byzantine Museum, and the Ecclesiastical Museum of the Holy Monastery of St. Dionysius.

In July, I went to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

During my September trip to the Myrtle Beach area for Loserfest, I went to Brookgreen Gardens (which has a lot of sculptures and some indoor exhibits). I also visited Atalaya Castle, the Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum, Ripley’s Aquarium, and the surprisingly impressive (albeit small) Myrtle Beach Art Museum.

Later in September, I saw some exhibits at YIVO in New York but, more significantly, went to the Frick Collection.

In October, I saw a couple of art exhibits at Glen Echo Park in Maryland.

During my trip in November, I visited the National Palace Museum in Taipei, as well as the Observation Deck at Taipei 101, and the various exhibits at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. I also went to X-Park, a large aquarium in Taiyuan. Then, in Hamburg, Germany, I visited the German Emigration Museum, the excellent Achilles-Stiftung Glass Museum, an exhibit about the fall of Communism in one of the modern art museums, and a little over half of the museums in the Composers’ Quarter.

Other Stuff:
I went to a couple of MIT Hillel’s Leading Jewish Minds talks (held on-line).

I went to Balticon (a science fiction convention) over Memorial Day weekend. I could have put this under Books, but it’s somewhat broader than that.

As usual, I spent a lot of time doing puzzles and reading.

I played board games with two different groups of friends on-line, though not as often as I’d have liked to. Some day I may have my condo presentable enough to actually have people over for a games day.

I made a fair amount of progress on my Tunisian crochet afghan (mostly during my every other Thursday , but it is still not done, alas.

I have reached the point in my life where I go to way too many memorial services / funerals.


Goals: So, how did I do on my 2025 goals? I did do a westward circumnavigation of the world, so I get 100% on that goal. I got to 2 minor league baseball games (out of a goal of 4), so I get 50% for that. I had a goal of finishing 4 crafts projects and, while I didn’t finish any, I made enough progress on the Tunisian crochet afghan that I’ll give myself 20%. I read 47 books (out of a goal of 80) so I’ll give myself 59%. This is more subjective, but I’ll give myself a 50% on learning to read Hangul. And I did revisit my life list, with some updates. That deserves an entire post of its own. Again, this is subjective, but I’ll give myself a 60%. I made no progress on my parents’ photographs and slides, organizing genealogy files or sorting through cassette tapes. And did not go to any National Parks, so I get 0% on those 4 goals. Averaging things out, I’ll give myself a 34% for the year.

Looking over the past several years, that’s significantly better than the previous year, but is still on the low side.

2025 - 35%
2024 - 23%
2023 - 62%
2022 - 41%
2021 - 48%
2020 - 52%
2019 - 30%
2018 - 40%
2017 - 25-30%
2016 - 25%
2015 - 26%
2014 - 50%
2013 - 60%
2012 - 30%


Which brings me to goals for 2026:

• Take at least 2 long distance train trips
  
• Go to at least 4 minor league baseball games
  
• Go to at least 3 new to me TCC countries/territories
  
• Go to at least 3 National Parks
  
• Become comfortable with reading Hangul (Korean writing system)
  
• File or shred all household paperwork
  
• Read at least 80 books, with a stretch goal of 100
  
• Complete at least 4 crafts projects
  
• Get rid of at least 10 LP records
  
• Successfully complete the Stafford Challenge by writing a poem every day (Note: the 2026 challenge started on January 17th)