Back in 1990, I discovered storytelling more or less by accident. I lived in Los Angeles and I got the regular course / event catalogues from the University of Judaism. One catalog listed a full day Jewish storytelling event, a mixture of workshops and performances. I decided to go, largely because I’d had a conversation several months before (at a wedding, if I recall correctly) in which somebody had mentioned storytelling to me.

Aside from the official learning activities, I heard stories from all of the people leading the event. One of those people was Doug Lipman, who told a Jewish story called “The Sword of Wood,” which made a big impression on me. I also met a lot of people and learned that there were storytelling groups throughout the L.A. area, including one that met quite near where I lived. I took flyers about those groups. I also took a flyer about a weekend workshop Doug and Jay O’Callahan were doing a few months later somewhere in the Inland Empire and decided to sign up for it.

Not long after, I gathered my courage and went to Community Storytellers. I don’t remember if I told a story that first time there, but I know I did fairly soon and before long Community Storytellers was on my monthly calendar of things to do. I met great people there and I remember feeling relieved when I went to Doug and Jay's workshop and one of those people was also there.

The stories I had been telling up to then were largely original fairy tales and my takes on folklore. But the workshop emphasis was on personal stories. At any rate, there was one exercise that had to do with a memory about a place. And a place that I had not thought about in 20 some odd years immediately popped into my head, in amazing detail. It’s the basis for the story I’m telling in the upcoming New Year’s Eve event.

I ended up signing up for another workshop (and another and another) with Doug. His coaching style, which started out with appreciation for the teller, was very effective. And his reactions were full of unrestrained joy. His spontaneity was also a delight. When he led workshops at Wanna’s house in Pasadena, we’d all go out to lunch at Souplantation (a soup and salad bar restaurant) and he wrote a song that included lyrics about “working hard at the soup plantation.” I also remember driving home from his workshops so full of what I'd learned that I missed my exit on the freeway two nights in a row.

Overall, Doug was someone who had a huge influence on my storytelling - and my life. And I can’t count how many other storytellers I’ve met who have said the same thing. He was a special person and I will always be grateful to have known him. He died today but he will always be a part of so many of us.

I am not doing brilliantly at getting things done. I still need to finish holiday cards, for example. And, in particular, I need to find where I put the stamps I am sure I have.

I also need to finish finalizing some travel plans. There are tickets to various events that I need to buy, too.

And I am nearly out of clean clothes.

I could, theoretically, be getting some of this done tonight. But, I think I am going to prioritize the book I’m in the middle of.

Oy, I forgot to post this last night.

For several years, I’ve posted a Chanukah song to Facebook every day of the holiday. Here is what I found for this year:

Night 1: We Are Lights. This is Cantor Avi Schwartz of Park Avenue Synagogue and Mira Davis, with the New York Children’s Chorus. The song was written by Stephen Schwartz, who wrote the songs for Wicked among other things.

Night 2: I am a big fan of Ari Lesser, a Chasidic rapper. I was amused by his piece, Hanukkah Diet.

Night 3: There are several Jewish a cappella groups who do Chanukah songs every year. The Maccabeats are one of the best known. This year’s selection features a K-pop Demon Hunters medley. There’s another version with video, but it was a bit AI-dominated so I chose the version with the lyrics.

Night 4: Nani Vazana is an amazing singer, who sings primarily in Ladino. Ocho Kandelikas, written by Flory Jagoda is probably the best known Ladino Chanukah song.

Night 5: We’re back to another a cappella group who also chose K-pop Demon Hunters for their Chanukah song this year. Here’s Six13 with Golden

Night 6: I had to include a Yiddish song. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out who the singer is from the Facebook reel. It’s from a facebook group called Yiddish music lovers.

Night 7: This took me to the late great Ofra Haza with a 1974 song about Hannah and her seven sons.

Night 8: The last of the a cappella groups this year was Y-Studs, who used the Jonas Brothers as their inspiration for A Very Jonas Hanukkah.

Bonus song: I couldn’t resist including this bit from Couplet Comedy. Here's a medley about what would happen if Chanukah had weirdly sexual songs like Christmas.

For anyone who is not a long-time reader, I periodically do run downs of celebrity deaths, with comments on the ones that I find personally meaningful. I make no effort to be comprehensive; these are just people who I found interesting for some reason. My last celebrity death watch entry was right at the beginning of November, so this is a bit overdue.

Celebrity Death Watch - November 2025: Beverly Burns was the first woman to captain a Boeing 747. Martha Layne Collins was the governor of Kentucky from 1983-1987. Lieutenant General Kenneth Minion directed the Defense Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency during the Clinton administration. Duane Roberts invented the frozen burrito. Donna Jean Godchaux sang with Grateful Dead. Diane Ladd was an actress, most famous for playing Flo in the movie, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Elizabeth Franz won a Tony award for playing Linda Loman in the 1999 revival of Death of a Salesman. Paul Ignatius was the Secretary of the Navy from 1967 to 1969 and later became president of the Washington Post. Louis Schweitzer was the CEO of Renault form 1992 to 2005 and the chairman of AstraZeneca from 2004-2012. Bill Ivey was a folklorist and chaired the National Endowment for the Arts from 1998 to 2001. Jeanette Winter wrote children’s books about famous women. Fern Michaels wrote romance novels and thrillers. Alec Wong was a disability rights activist. H. Rap Brown was a civil rights activist, including serving as chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960’s, despite which he advocated for violence and was convicted of murdering two police officers. Dave Morehead pitched a no-hitter for the Red Sox in 1964, the last BoSox no-hitter until 2001. Viola Fletcher was the last survivor of the Tulsa race massacre. Fuzzy Moeller was a golf champion.


Archie Fisher was a Scottish folksinger and songwriter, who produced a number of recordings with other Celtic performers and hosted a radio show. One of my favorite songs of his was “The Witch of the Westmorland,” which was also recorded by Stan Rogers.

Dick Cheney was the Vice President under George W. Bush. He had earlier served as Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush.

James Watson shared a Nobel Prize with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins. Though they were credited with discovering the double helix nature of DNA, the most important thing he discovered was Rosalind Franklin’s notes.

Jimmy Cliff was a reggae singer-songwriter. His movie, The Harder They Come was a cult classic and played at a movie theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts for ages. It was also the first English language movie in history to be subtitled in the U.S. The soundtrack is phenomenal.

Leslie Fish was a filk musician. Her song “Banned from Argo,” was well-enough known that even I know it.

Tom Stoppard was a playwright and screenwriter. I have not actually seen any of his plays, but I have seen a couple of the movies he wrote the screenplays for, e.g. Shakespeare in Love and Brazil.


Celebrity Death Watch - December 2025 (so far): Steve Cropper played guitar with Booker T. & the M.G.’s and write the song “In the Midnight Hour.” D.L. Coburn won the Pulitzer prize for his play The Gin Game. Peg Kehret wrote children’s books. Ian Douglas-Hamilton was a conservationist who specialized in elephants. Joanna Trollope was a novelist. May Britt was an actress but is more famous for having been married to Sammy Davis Jr. from 1960 to 1968. Paul Wiggin was a Hall of Fame football player for the Cleveland Browns. Peter Greene was an actor best known for portraying villains, e.g. Dorian Turell in The Mask. Robert J. Samuelson was a conservative economist who wrote for The Washington Post. Anthony Geary played Luke on the soap opera General Hospital. Carl Carlton sang “Everlasting Love.” Norman Podhoretz edited Commentary and became a prominent neocon. Ruth Bourne was a World War II codebreaker. Peter Arnett was a war correspondent, primarily for Associated Press. Jim Hunt was the longest serving governor in the history of North Carolina. Robert Mnuchin was an investment banker and art dealer, best known for his association with Willem de Kooning. Lou Cannon was the senior White House correspondent for the Washington Post during the Reagan administration and went on to write 5 books about Reagan. Mick Abrahams was the original guitarist for Jethro Tull.

Frank Gehry was one of the most famous architects of the modern era. Some of the buildings he was noted for include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Biomuseo in Panama, the Luis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, and the Stata Center at MIT. I consider the latter the ugliest building in Massachusetts. At least the more monstrous of his buildings do generally serve as good landmarks. He did design some buildings that are more conventional and I’m fine with his renovations to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for example.

Sophie Kinsella wrote chick lit. I enjoyed the Shopaholic series, but I thought her other books, e.g. The Undomestic Goddess were weaker. She was on my ghoul pool list (since she had announced she had glioblastoma) and scored me 10 points.

You can’t possibly need me to tell you about Rob Reiner. I watched All in the Family back in the day, but I think his work as a film director was even more significant. This Is Spinal Tap pretty much birthed the mockumentary genre. In case you were living under a rock, he and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were stabbed to death by their son, who had suffered with mental health issues and drug abuse for many years. We really don’t know how to deal with the people who don’t respond to the standard treatments. The Reiner case reminds me a lot of what happened with Creigh Deeds, who was stabbed by his son (but, fortunately, survived) during his gubernatorial campaign in 2009. That case led to some improvements in mental health care here, but there is a long ways to go.

Very belatedly, Sue Bender, who wrote the book Plain and Simple: A Woman’s Journey to the Amish apparently died in early August, but her obituary was just published in the New York Times a few days ago. This was one of the books that influenced the voluntary simplicity movement and I thought it was worth a read back in the day.

Non-Celebrity Death Watch: George Leitmann was a professor of mechanical engineering at Berkeley while I was a grad student there. I studied Optimal Control and Game Theory with him.

A couple of obits from the company I spent my career at were Bill Sinclair (died in June 2024) and Linda Vandergriff (died in June 2025). More significantly, Jack Kinsey died in April 2025. He was the person who brought me to the East Coast to support the office of the Undersecretary of the Air Force.

Finally, two members of the Washington D.C. branch of the Travelers’ Century Club have died over the past few months. Both Terry Wharton and Bill Ashley were both in their 80’s, so it wasn’t a huge surprise. But I will miss them and their travel stories.

Yesterday (Thursday) was very busy.

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

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

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

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

For complicated reasons (mostly involving travel), I have often had some Chanukah candles left over. I’ve saved them in a plastic bag in what I think of as not quite a junk drawer, which also has matchbooks, batteries, toothpicks, and pie weights. This year, I saw that I had a full box of the cheap sort of candles, but also that I had almost enough of the taller fancier candles. I’m trying to use those up, but I’m not sure that I have quite enough for the entire holiday. I also just realized I should really have separated the assorted leftover ones by height. I did part of that already and have now used up the last of the beeswax candles I bought one year. I didn’t particularly like those, because I think they burn too quickly.

I need to remember to put candles on my shopping list under the assumption that they’ll be on clearance sale just after Chanukah is over.