Ron Newman

The biggest thing I did in July was go to Minneapolis for the National Puzzlers’ League Convention, which will get its own entry.

As for other things in July, I had a few of my usual activities, including my Litvak genealogy mentoring group and playing board games over zoom. I also had a couple of other zoom meetings - one to get an introduction to the app for the Jewish genealogy conference I was going to in August and another for planning for the 2026 Women’s Storytelling Festival.

Physical Therapy: I finally had my first PT appointment. The PT said that my knee issues were actually due to having strained my patellar tendon and he gave me a series of exercises to help strengthen the surrounding muscles, as well as the tendon itself. The most challenging is the wall sit, largely because I don’t have an obvious smooth stretch of wall to use for them. My doors all have indented panels in them. And most of my wall space has things against it (either furniture like bookshelves or boxes of stuff).

Baseball: The Washington Nationals always play an early (11 a.m.) game on the Fourth of July. This year they were playing my Red Sox, so I couldn’t resist getting a ticket. It was very hot out and my phone overheated, so I didn’t get any pictures. Despite that I had a great time watching the BoSox demolish the Nats, with a final score of 11-2. By the way, this was just a few days after Wilyer Abreu became the first player since 1958 to hit an inside-the-park home run and a grand slam in the same game.

After the game, I stopped by Bereshovsky’s Deli (attached to Gatsby) and got a potato knish and a can of Dr. Brown’s diet cream soda. It’s not like a real New York deli, but the knish was decent and I would probably be willing to eat there again.

The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical: On Saturday of the fourth of July weekend, I went to see this show at Signature Theatre. It was created by Joe Iconis, who is best known for Be More Chill, which I had never seen but heard good things about. This was, sadly, politically relevant and very very funny. Eric William Morris starred as Hunter S. Thompson, but the really notable performance was by George Abud as Richard M. Nixon. There was also some very interesting use of puppetry. Overall, this was well worth seeing and a good reminder of why I love Signature so much.

Profs and Pints: A few days after that, I went to a Profs and Pints talk on The Physics of Baseball given by Scott Paulson, a professor at James Madison University. His lecture was both entertaining and enlightening, with topics related to pitching, batting, and fielding. I liked his explanation of why knuckleballs behave so strangely and what the real impact of things like corked bats and the thin air of Mile High Stadium in Denver were. By the way, the event was at Penn Social, which is huge and has a very extensive bar menu and reasonably priced food with large portions. (I couldn’t finish the grilled cheese sandwich I ordered.)

Please Don’t Analyze This Dream: I had a dream that involved a very elaborate grey hat, sort of like a huge saucer shaped fascinator grafted onto a brimless cloche. I am seriously tempted to try to make this if I can find the right color and weight of felt. By the way, I think this may have been inspired by a photo I saw of Princess Beatrice.

Continuing the catch-up ...

1. What's your favorite charitable cause and why? The charity I give the most money to is the MIT Alumni Association, much of it earmarked for my class’s scholarship fund. MIT opened a lot of doors for me and funding scholarships allows it to do so for other people.

2. What is the most important aspect of your life and why? Storytelling is something I devote a lot of my time to. Aside from getting a lot of pleasure out of performing (and, specifically, hearing positive reactions to my stories), I enjoy the variety of other people’s stories I get to hear.

3. When did you first realize you would someday be old or someday die? I’m not sure, largely because my ideas of what being old is have changed so much over the years. I am roughly the same age now that my grandmother was when she died, for example. And I thought of her as much older than I think of myself now.

4. When was the last time you lied and why? I don’t lie very often, but I do sometimes say that I have something I have to do when I just don’t feel like talking to somebody.

5. Which would you choose: immense wealth in obscurity or poverty and fame (think "starving artist”)? This reminds me of the board game, Careers, which was very popular in my family. You chose a goal that involved assigning how many Fame, Happiness, and Money points you needed to earn. Most people divided things up evenly, with maybe a slight imbalance. I think I usually went with 30 points each for Fame and Money and 40 for Happiness, which is what is missing from this question and what I would still choose. But I do know one person who says she always went for Fame, thinking that it would bring both money and happiness.

6. How would handle life in an arctic climate? I’ve spent some time in the Arctic (e.g. Churchill, Manitoba and Svalbard) and I could handle it if I had to, but the winter darkness would probably trigger depression after a while. So I would want to leave after a couple of weeks.

7. If you found a suitcase full of money in the middle of the street, what would you do? Bring it to the police station.

8. What is an unusual form of transportation you have used? Probably the most unusual (and uncomfortable) form of transportation I’ve used was the zebu cart I rode in on a tour in Madagascar. When I booked the tour from Ifaty to Reniala Nature Reserve, I had expected that I’d get there by car. For the benefit of anybody who thinks this would be a great cultural experience, zebu carts don’t have shock absorbers.

9. Which decade of clothing fashion was your favorite and least favorite? I really liked the padded shoulders of the mid to late 1980’s since they helped to make my waist look smaller. One particular item I am grateful has never made a comeback is the elephant bell bottoms of the early 1970’s, particularly worn with platform heels. That look flatters absolutely nobody.

10. Who is one of the most courageous people you have ever met? Why? My first thought was someone who didn’t let severe disability due to a car accident in her late teens stop her from having a successful law career and traveling extensively. But I could also go with my father, who survived the Kaunas Ghetto and Dachau and made it to the U.S. after a few years in Displaced Persons’ Camps.

11. Tell about a time when you shocked someone. I think I shocked people at work on the rare occasions that I cussed. And bear in mind that I worked among some people who had no sense of restraining their language, e.g. a guy I once heard use the f-word 8 times in a 12 word sentence.

12. Who is the best laundry folder in the family? I’ve always been good at folding laundry.

13. When was the last time you extended kindness to someone else? I try to be kind to others whenever possible.

14. What hobby or interest would you like to try, but haven’t? I've done wet felting but I haven’t done needle felting.

15. What is your birth order? Do you think it affected your childhood? Why or why not? I am the younger of two. It had mixed effects on my childhood. I generally got to do things just a few months after my brother did, even though he is a year and a half older than me. But it’s also hard to say whether the differences in our privileges were more related to age or to the idea that girls mature faster than boys do.

16. Do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real” you? I think my outward appearance is often more conservative than I actually am. But that wasn’t always the case and there were years when I dressed quite flamboyantly, despite being more introverted than people would expect.

17. If you could be any other being (other than human) what would you be and why? I’d want to be an alpha predator. So, probably, a bear.

18. What occupation do you think would be fascinating? I had a pretty fascinating career, actually. But I do think I’d have enjoyed being in the diplomatic corps.

19. What is the first movie you remember seeing in the theater? I’m not entirely sure what was the first. It was either Fantasia (those dancing hippos! And Mickey Mouse as the Sorceror’s Apprentice!) or Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.

20. Who taught you how to drive? I took driver’s ed in high school.

21. What seemed unusual on your morning commute today? I don't have a morning commute. For one thing, it’s the weekend. And, for another, I’ve been retired for almost five years.

22. If you could take home any animal from the zoo, which would it be, and what would you do with it? I wouldn’t take a zoo animal home. I don’t really have the room to keep anything interesting and it’s not fair to keep animals locked up in cages.

23. What do you think about as you are falling asleep? Mostly about the things I need to get done the next day.

24. Where would you most like to watch the sun come up? Why? I like watching both sunrises and sunsets from deserted beaches. I suspect that Mozambique would be an excellent place to watch a sunrise.

25. Which photo of yourself do you hate the most, and why? I went through a period in my 20’s of cutting my own hair. I think I’ve destroyed most of the evidence of that, but I know that a few friends may still have pictures.

26. What is the earliest memory you have of a sibling? Since my brother is older than me, he was always there. I have a vague memory of him helping me escape from my crib.

27. What is the best thing and the worst thing that happened to you this week? Well, I got a lot of birthday wishes, which is nice. None of them were from either my brother or the gentleman with whom I’m conducting the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling.

28. What is a convenience you wouldn't want to do without? When I was traveling overland in Africa, I sometimes went without hot running water, which is no fun. I also went without freshly ground and freshly brewed coffee for a few months, which I never want to do again.

29. At what age did you learn to ride a bicycle? I don’t really remember. Maybe 6 or 7 ish? I know our next door neighbor taught me since neither of my parents knew how to ride a bike.

30. Tell a memory that you have with one of your grandfathers. I have a vague memory of my paternal grandfather reading to me from the Forward (the Yiddish newspaper.) As for my maternal grandfather, I have several memories. I loved going to his jewelry store. He’d close up the store early sometimes and we’d ride the subway to the Bronx Zoo.

31. How have you adjusted your eating habits to be healthier? Sadly, I think my eating habits were actually healthier 30-40 years ago. I do try to avoid junk food, but I cook less and don’t eat as wide a variety of vegetables as I used to.

I first became aware of the Balkan Heritage Society and their archaeological field schools several years ago, when I was browsing various listings of volunteer and field school opportunities on-line and saw a workshop they were offering on photographing Roman mosaics. I didn’t do anything about it at the time since I couldn’t have made it fit my schedule. But I would continue to browse their offerings every few years.

Being retired helps a lot with schedule flexibility and this time I saw they were offering a workshop on textile conservation, which would fit in nicely with my crafts interests. I was all set to register for that, but then I got invited to do my travel talk at my MIT reunion and - poof! My life is a schedule conflict! But I noticed that there was also a workshop on paper conservation that was a couple of weeks later. Since: a) that would fit my schedule and b) I do play with paper crafts (particularly bookbinding, but I’ve also made paper and done plenty of surface design, e.g. marbling, over the years), I thought that would be worth doing. So I signed up, and began devoting some time to figuring out how to get to Zakynthos, Greece, where the workshop would be held. I also tried to make a dent in the somewhat intimidating reading list they provided.

For those who don’t know (which is the vast majority of Americans), Zakynthos is in the Ionian Islands, off the west coast of Greece. There are flights there from a number of European cities and the least expensive route I could find involved flying to Athens and then going there by bus / ferry. Since I’d been to Athens before (way back in 2004, for the Olympics), I just spent a night there. I flew over via FRA, which is one of my least favorite airports, but it worked okay. I spent one night at the Hotel Mirabello, which is conveniently located near Omonia Square. The staff was friendly and helpful and there were plenty of reasonably priced restaurants nearby. I didn’t write down the name of the place I ate at, but I had a reasonably good moussaka. In the morning, the hotel had a particularly good breakfast buffet, by the way, with hot options that even included spanakopita. I would consider staying there again if I had some reason to be in Athens.

In the morning, I took a taxi to the Kifissos bus station, which is large and chaotic. By the way, buying my ticket on-line had been a bit stressful, because KTEL (the major bus company) apparently sells tickets on the route I needed only a couple of weeks in advance. Still, I had been able to get a ticket to Nea Manolada, which proved to take about an hour longer than Rome 2 Rio had claimed it would. It turned out that this was just a stop on the side of a road, not an actual bus terminal. There was a South African woman who was also heading to Kyllini Port for a ferry (in her case, to Kefalinia, which is the next island north) and we walked across the street to a kiosk where the proprietor called us a cab. I stayed overnight at the Glarentza Hotel, which was a short walk to the port and was reasonably nice. I had time to walk around the port a bit both that afternoon and the next morning, before boarding the 1 p.m. ferry to Zakynthos.

Our accommodations were at the Hotel Yria, which is decently central. However, the rooms are on the small side and the breakfast is just adequate. I was sharing a room with a young woman from France, by the way. This is probably a good place to note that most of the group were 20ish, i.e. young enough to be my grandchildren. Only four of us where there just for the paper conservation program, while the majority had been doing a three week program that included one week each of textiles, metal, and paper. Despite the age gap, I found them generally thoughtful and interesting people. (There were a couple of other older people, but I’m reasonably sure I was the oldest. Well, someone has to be.)

Anyway, the program started on a Monday morning and I’d arrived on Sunday. That evening I went with a couple of the other people to Solomos Square (the central square of Zante Town) to see an event called Giostra of Zakynthos, which was a sort of medieval parade, followed by a jousting tournament. It was colorful and interesting, but uncomfortably crowded. Note that there were groups from several countries - including Scotland!









I wasn’t able to get close enough to the jousting to get any pictures worth sharing of the horses and the riders, who included a young boy. Eventually, I decided I should go find something to eat. There is no shortage of restaurants in the area and I got a tasty supper before returning to the hotel and going to bed.

The workshop itself began on Monday after breakfast. We met our instructor, Dr. Nikolas Sarris (and his dog, Jimmy) and were transported in a minibus to Ionian University. The first day started with a couple of lectures (history of paper, causes of deterioration of paper) and a presentation about documentation of paper objects, before we set out to document the paper objects that had been distributed for us to work on. I had a 12-page set of what were essentially census records from 1959. There were extensive tears and cuts on the front cover, and folded edges and stains on every page, as well as rusted staples (which later on proved to be small nails / pins, not staples) and writing on the front and back covers.

We started out with a few conservation treatments and I brushed and vacuumed it. Later on, I would spend time cleaning with various tools, e.g. vulcanized latex sponges and patching with hollytex, which is a sort of paper made of non woven polyester. One of the other people in the workshop referred to it as “magic paper.” Here is a picture of the document with the pins removed and some cleaning done.



The edges of the front cover were patched but you can still see a lot of writing and stains.



Anyway, we continued to work on our documents during the subsequent days. There were some other types of (mostly Japanese) paper used in patching paper. We also spent time on humidifying and flattening paper. Our lab work was mixed in with lectures. We did have morning and afternoon coffee breaks and a lunch hour, where we ate at the student canteen, which was okay. I’d estimate that we were doing lab work maybe 6 hours a day. By the way, we had been told to bring lab coats, which gave me an excuse to dig out this personalized one, which I’d been given several years ago when I went to an event at the United Airlines catering facility in Denver.



On Thursday morning we had a field trip to the General Archives and the Historic Public Library of Zakynthos. There were lots of historic photos, many of them related to the 1953 magnitude 7.2 earthquake, which caused extensive damage throughout the southern Ionian islands. (By the way, there were a couple of smaller earthquakes at the end of my time on Zakynthos, the larger of which was magnitude 4.1. Having lived in California for 22 years, that didn’t even wake me up.)



There were also a couple of cases of dolls.



And, of course, there were shelves and shelves of books, many of which had significant damage, including tunnels from being insect eaten. Nikolas also talked about storage of books / documents. The next day, we made the most basic storage enclosures, essentially just folders.



Friday night, most of us went out to a fancy dinner at a restaurant called Manoo. You can get surprisingly good sushi in Greece (and, less surprisingly, a good gin and tonic). We bade goodbye to the people who were leaving on Saturday. The four of us who were left had the weekend free. I was fairly lazy, with some reading and puzzles to catch up on, but I did spend some time at the Byzantine Museum, which has a lovely collection. Here are a few examples.











On Monday, we were back to lectures and workshops. By the way, since we were down to 4 people, we went to and from the University in Nikolas’s car. We started learning about wet cleaning techniques and stain removal, including the use of suction tables. The rest of the week continued with paper deacification, paper sizing, removal of adhesive tape, and more advanced paper repair techniques. I’ll spare you the pictures of paper immersed in various chemical solutions. A local man had heard that there was a book conservator teaching our class and brought Nikolas some documents to look at and he had us work on them, too. I spent a fair amount of time cleaning and repairing this, for example.



On Thursday morning we went to see the Church of Agios Dionysios, followed by the Ecclesiastical Museum of the Holy Monastery of St. Dionysios. The church was elaborately decorated outside.



Inside, the architecture felt typical of Orthodox Christian churches I’ve seen, with an ornate iconostasis.



The museum had a lot of books on display, including some very old ones.



The workshop finished on Friday, which we spent making boxes to protect books. We also visited another room at the University, which had a nitrogen hypoxia chamber for killing insects. We also got our certificates for completing the course.

While I’d taken bus and ferry to Zakynthos from mainland Greece, I had opted to fly back to Athens. Sky Express was a new airline for me and I found their service reasonably good. Here’s an aerial photo of Zakynthos.




I stayed at the convenient but very pricy Sofitel Athens Airport overnight before my flights home on Swiss (via Zurich), which went smoothly. Airport hotels are always a good idea when you have an early morning (6:55 a.m.) flight.


Overall, I think the workshop was interesting and worth my time. I don’t expect to do much with what I learned, though you never know what may come in handy. I also enjoyed getting to know the other students, who generally made me feel more optimistic about young people nowadays. What more could I ask for?