Some of the events and activities described in this entry began before I stopped taking classes in 2006 (described here). Some of them continued after I resumed taking the advanced Italian classes in 2014. Also, I might be wrong about either or both of those dates. I can’t think of any good way to check either one. Nevertheless, it seemed appropriate to group all of the extracurricular efforts that I have undertaken to increase my mastery of Italian in one place regardless of whether I was also attending one of the classes when I performed them.
Boxed lessons: I had purchased the introductory Ultimate Italian set after the last session of the beginning Italian class in May of 2002. Almost as soon as I finished its last lesson I returned to Barnes & Noble and purchased the advanced set of Ultimate Italian. I was not under severe time pressure this time, but I used the same strategy as I had before. I read through the textbook in the order presented, and I did all of the exercises. I had a better attitude than I had when I was doing just enough in school to get by. I studied each lesson thoroughly. I planned to go to Italy more than once, and I did not want to sound foolish when I tried to converse with the locals.
Both Ultimate Italian packages contained eight one-hour tapes and a book of grammar lessons and dialogues. The tapes mostly consisted of Italian speakers reading the dialogues in the book. They left time for the listener to repeat the sentence out loud.
I listened to these tapes every time that I was in my car. My trusty Saturn came with a cassette player, and, when I bought my blue Honda in 2007, I insisted—to the amusement of the sales rep—that it too should have one. Cassettes were superior to CDs (or anything else) for this purpose because rewinding the tape back a sentence or two was very easy. I did this often, and I am happy to report that I never had an accident or even a close call while doing so.
My first issue.
Acquerello Italiano: I don’t remember how or when I heard of Acquerello Italiano, a subscription that released—originally every two months but near the end only occasionally—a small magazine accompanied by a cassette tape or CD. The left side of each pair of facing pages in the magazine contained Italian text with numbered endnotes and, in bold typeface, difficult phrases. On the right side were detailed explanations in English of the difficult or idiomatic phrases. At the end were the notes explaining—in English—historical or sociological background for the text. Each issue contained a pleasant diversity of materials. Since the subject of every article was Italy and/or Italians, almost every issue featured some music samples and something about food, often including recipes.
The last issue.
The tapes contained everything on the left-side pages as well as the music. The articles were read by actors, but there were also some real interviews.
I saved nineteen issues of those magazines. The oldest one had a copyright of 2004. The last date is 2009. I did not save any of the tapes. I had played each one countless times by the time that I bought a new Honda in 2018. Most of the tapes had eventually been damaged beyond repair because of the playing and rewinding. At any rate Honda no longer offered the option of a cassette player in their new vehicles.
Magazines: I was still doing quite a bit of travel for business in the early part of the “on my own” period of my Italian education. I discovered that one of the bookstores in Penn Station sold a few magazines in foreign languages. My favorites were Panorama and Oggi (which means “today”). Whenever I found one I purchased it and read it from cover to cover. Whenever I found new words I marked them in my Italian dictionary2. I also added them to my flash cards3.
I also found at least one bookstore in a strip mall that sold a few such magazines as well. I have a vague memory that it was in Pittsburgh. I went there to install and train the people in the advertising department at Dick’s Sporting Goods. Those adventures are described here.
Books of short stories: For quite some time Barnes and Noble stocked books of short stories that were written in Italian. I bought three of these books and read all of the stories. They all had similar formats: Italian on even-numbered pages (left) and English translation on odd-numbered pages (right).
Whenever I encountered new words, I added them to my flash cards and marked them in the dictionary.
I read every story and have even returned to ones that were written by people whom I had seen mentioned in other books or magazines.
Miscellaneous learning aids:I purchased quite a few books that addressed things that were not covered thoroughly by the books and magazines that I had read. For the most part these contained lists of words that were important for tourists. Since the need for food necessitated communication with someone more than once per day, many contained items one might find on menus.
The item displayed on the right only looks like a book. It is actually a set of two tapes designed strictly to help the listener converse with Italians about food and to order from an Italian menu. I am sure that there are many restaurants in Italy that have menus that do not also contain English descriptions and hire only waiters that do not understand a word of English. However, in the sixty or seventy days that I have spent in Italy I do not think that I ever encountered one.
I think that someone bought the tapes for me. I thought that The Savvy Traveler was the name of Rudy Maxa’s series on PBS, but apparently it was actually the name of his radio show for Minnesota Public Radio. I used to watch his television programs, but I don’t think that I ever heard him and Diana Nyad on National Public Radio.
Books: The first book that I read that was completely in Italian was L’Italia e i suoi invasori by Girolamo Arnaldi, a medieval scholar who studied at both the University of Bologna and La Sapienza in Rome. I found the book in a bookstore in Assisi on our second visit there in 2005. I was determined to find something that I could take home with me, and this volume was perfect. Parts of it were difficult for me, but I managed to get through the entire book. It broadened my understanding of how the fact that the Italian peninsula had been repeatedly invaded changed everything. Subsequently that has colored my understanding of every aspect of Italian history.
I read three other outstanding books. The first was Il Nome della Rosa by Umberto Eco. I had read the English version back in the eighties, and I had read quite a few of Eco’s other works. I had a good time becoming reacquainted with the plot, which was more meaningful since this time I was familiar with Pope John XXII and the two competing branches of Franciscans. I also was well aware of the power that the monasteries in the fourteenth centuries wielded. However, I was a little disappointed that very little was lost in translation.
That definitely could not be said for Il Gattopardo, the wonderful story of the Risorgimento in Sicily and southern Italy written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. The story itself is extremely compelling. The birth of the Italian Republic is very difficult to comprehend, and this insider view was very useful in helping me get a grasp on it.
It was made into a movie called The Leopard that starred Burt Lancaster TCM allegedly owns this movie. However, my wife Sue watches TCM almost every day, and she has told me that they never show it, not even when Burt Lancaster is the star of the month.
I slightly cheated on both of these books. I owned English translations of both of them—what we called in college “ponies”. Only occasionally did I need to consult the English translation to decipher the original text
I had heard about I promessi sposi, the classic novel of the Church, the nobility, the Italian side of the Thirty Years War, starvation, and the plague, from an article in Acquerello Italiano. Apparently all Italian children were required to read it, and almost all of them hated it. I decided that I had to try it. I don’t remember every having a printed copy, and so I must have purchased it on Kindle or downloaded it from somewhere. I am pretty sure that it was in the public domain.
The book was written by Alessandro Manzoni in the 1840’s. Reading it was a powerful experience for me! I would recommend it to anyone who wants to gain an understanding of the evolution of Italy. If it is not the greatest Italian work since Dante, all discussions of that designation must begin with it.
Andrea Camilleri.
I also read a handful of recent popular novels. One was an Italian translation of a historical novel written originally in English. I no longer have a copy, and I remember little about it. I also read a couple of the Commisario Montalbano novels by Andrea Camilleri on Kindle. They were highly recommended by Susanna Perrucchini, the guide on our tour of Sicily in 2016.4 I have seen all thirty-seven of the made-for-television Montalbano movies on the streaming service MHz Choice. I liked the first thirty-six a lot. The last one was very disappointing.
Camilleri’s novels are written half in Italian and half in Sicilian dialect. This frustrated me because most of the dialogue is in dialect. I often could not understand it, and I did not know where to find out what was going on. I guess that I could have also purchased an English version.
I bought one other massive tome, I papi; storia e segreti by Claudio Rendina. I cannot claim that I read all 864 pages, but I did consult his treatment—which was pretty thorough—of several popes in different eras of papal history. Knowing that the papacy was held in very low esteem in Italy in the nineteenth century, I suspected that Rendina might have access to some sources outside of the Church’s official party line. In the entries that I read, however, I did not find that to be the case.
CDs and DVDs: Over the year I collected a few CDs and DVDs that were supposed to help with conversational Italian. I found them lying around in my bookcase. I have only a vague recollection of most of them.
The “Who is Oscar Lake?” DVD in the lower right was an interactive story. It was a mystery about the a mysterious person named Oscar Lake. It was my introduction to the word “commisario”. I don’t remember much else. Maybe I should try it again when I get done with The 1948 Project.
Videos: For a year or two we were able to receive transmissions from RAI Uno, the primary Italian station owned and operated by the government, with our Cox subscription. After a year or two we abandon it in order to save $10 per month. Up until then I watched some news shows and a few other programs on RAI, but I did not get a lot out of it.
Shortly thereafter I discovered that some of the same shows were available for free on the Internet. This was far superior. If you missed something, you could back up the video and repeat a section.
Imma in high fashion inMatera.
Much later I began watching European television shows on MHz Choice. Thecaptions in English that they provided were ordinarily quite good. In addition to the Commissario Montalbano movies I have watched the prequel series Giovane Montalbano, I bastardi di Pizzofalcone, Nebbie e delitti, Barlume, Commissario Vivaldi, Commissario De Luca, and Imma Tataranni. I liked all of these except Vivaldi. In my opinion Imma was the best, and it is still in production. The action is set in, of all places, Matera. I only pay $8 per month for MHz Choice, and I have literally watched hundreds of good shows.
For me one of the most enjoyable activities when I heard what the character said, and the person who created the captions made a mistake. It did not happen often with MHz Choice.
Drills while exercising: When I was jogging in the evenings or on weekends I would sometimes spend the time counting (often out loud) in Italian from one to one hundred, first with the cardinal numbers: uno, due, tre, ecc. Then I would do the ordinal numbers: primo, secondo, terzo.
When TSI began to close down in 2014 I had time to rejoin the adult ed Italian classes. The semi-annual booklet listed the teacher at all three levels as Mrs. Trichilo. That period is described here.
1. Acquerello is the Italian word for watercolor. It always struck me as a strange choice for the title of a magazine.
2. In 2022 I am on my third Italian dictionary, Webster’s New World Italian Dictionary Concise Edition. The first one that I bought was from a different publisher. The second one was the same Webster’s edition as the third. I needed to buy new dictionaries because the previous ones were so worn out that they were unusable—covers missing, spines broken, pages falling out. I brought them with me on both vacations and business trips.
3. The flash cards were home-made. One side contained a single English word or phrase. The other side listed Italian words or phrases. The cards were sorted alphabetically by the English word or phrase. I created over ten thousand of these cards, which were split into dozens of decks, and I drilled myself on them at every opportunity—at home, on the road, and at lunch when at the office. When I stopped this process I threw away the cards.
4. You can read my journal of that entire memorable trip here.
When I was young I was obsessed with France and French, not Italy and Italian. I was barely in grade school when I nagged my parents into buying phonograph records that were designed to help people learn French. I learned … Continue reading →
I had this exact set of records!
When I was young I was obsessed with France and French, not Italy and Italian. I was barely in grade school when I nagged my parents into buying phonograph records that were designed to help people learn French. I learned to say “Bonjour, Monsieur Lenoir” but nothing else. So far I have never met anyone named Lenoir. So, the effort has not yet generated great benefits.
I think that I must have become interested in Italian because of operas. By the late nineties I had season tickets to the Connecticut Opera, which performed three or four operas per year at the Bushnell Auditorium in Hartford. I had purchased a Sony Walkman on which I listened to tapes while I was running. I bought several sets of tapes from the Teaching Company that helped me to learn about operas and composers. My car also had a tape player that allowed me to listen virtually any time that I was not working or eating. I purchased recordings of Italian operas and selections of operas on tapes and CDs.
The beginners class: In late 2001 we received a booklet1 mailed to us by the Enfield Adult and Continuing Education department. We had received these twice a year for several years, but I had little interest in them because I was so busy with work. On this occasion, however, I noticed that they were offering courses in several languages. In Italian they offered three courses that had prerequisites: beginning (continued), intermediate, and advanced, all taught by Mrs. Cherlong. They also offered an additional first course for beginners. I signed up for that one. It met for a few hours one evening per week for ten weeks starting in late January 2002. The sessions were held in a classroom on the ground floor of Enfield High, the Alma Mater of my wife Sue .
My expectation was that Italian would be similar to Latin. How could it not be? I soon discovered that English actually contains more words of Latin origin than Italian does. Furthermore, the Italian grammar is obviously based on Latin, but it has had many centuries to evolve deviations and exceptions. What I had not taken into account was that Italy had been invaded many times since the heyday of the Romans, and each of those invading groups contributed to what is now called Italian. I soon learned that the Tuscan dialect used by Dante had become the standard Italian used for nationwide communications such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. However, many local dialects still prevailed in daily life..
Enfield High before its expansion and remodeling. I entered through the door with the canopy. Lydia’s room was to the left near the end of the hall.
Our class consisted of between fifteen and twenty people. Most of them were empty-nesters, but a pair of girls who attended (or maybe recently graduated from) Enfield High also attended. They both had taken a few years of Spanish, and, it goes without saying, their memories still worked.
Our textbook reminded me of a coloring book. It was replete with line drawings with no shading.
Mostly we learned vocabulary that might be useful in describing things in a home, school, or office. We communicated only in English, which really surprised me. The teacher, whom everyone called Lydia2, tried very hard to make sure that no one was intimidated. This was a stark contrast to the Russian and ancient Greek classes that I had taken at the University of Michigan (described here). The former aimed at rapidly getting the students to the point where they could communicate with native Russian speakers. The goal of the latter was to enable the students to read the classics as soon as possible.
So, it was going to be difficult or impossible to learn to speak or even read Italian from the classes in Enfield. I enjoyed the time in the classroom, but I soon realized that I would almost certainly be dead before I could really speak Italian if I relied on these classes.
In the last of the ten sessions Lydia delivered the bad news. The class for the continuing beginners—that is, the second half of the beginners class—would not be offered in the fall. If we wanted to continue, we had three choices. 1) We could wait until next January for the next continuation class. 2) We could join the beginners class in September and repeat what we had studied in the last nine weeks. 3) We could work on our own to finish our workbooks and join the intermediate class.
For me this was an easy choice. I was easily able to finish the workbook on my own before the end of the summer. I also went to Barnes & Noble and bought the Ultimate Italian box set that contained a textbook and tapes that moved at a much more rapid pace than the class did. By the end of the summer I was quite confident that I could keep up with the students in the intermediate class.
Subsequent semesters: My first class with the intermediate group was a big disappointment. They were still using the workbook that I called the coloring book as their basic text. I later learned that some of those people—they were almost all women—had been in the intermediate class for years!
After four or five of these classes I approached Lydia and told her that I thought that this class was too slow for me. She said that she definitely agreed. She said that the advanced class had just been translating some text from Dante. She asked me if I would find that more interesting. I said that I definitely would. She told me that the class met on Tuesdays in the same classroom, and she invited me to attend the next week. I was quite excited.
According to the booklet that announced the classes, the participants in the advanced class communicated only in Italian. I had hardly ever composed even one sentence in Italian—written or spoken. It would definitely be a challenge for me to do so in extemporaneously in a group of people that had presumably been doing it for years.
It turned out that the information in the mailing was erroneous. Lydia taught in English (she had been in America for forty years), and people asked questions in English. We spent about half of the time on grammar and half on translating a few paragraphs from a handout that she provided. I never saw anything written by Dante, but it was much more fun and educational than the intermediate class.
This class was smaller—ten or fewer—than either of the other classes. Most of the students had attended for years, but none of them could really speak or even read Italian. From my first evening in the class my knowledge of Italian grammar was as good as or better than any of them.
This is actually my third dictionary. Despite my efforts to protect it, the cover is gone.
The one area in which I was way behind was vocabulary. I went back to B&N and bought a good dictionary and a book of short stories written in Italian. I also purchased hundreds of index cards. I cut them into quarters to use as flash cards—English on one side, Italian on the other. Every time I encountered a new word I looked it up, marked it in the dictionary, and either added it to an existing card or made a new one. I kept the cards in alphabetical order by the English word or phrase. During lunch or leisure time I went through my decks3 of flash cards to burn the words into my memory.
I remember a few students from those classes, but almost no names4. Most of them, but not all, were of Italian descent. One guy’s first name was Arnold. I remember that he said that his goal was to have a conversation in Italian with one of his relatives on a trip to Italy. He was a long way from that goal when I stopped attending Lydia’s classes. I remember that he was shocked that I could read Italian passages aloud with pretty good pronunciation without hesitation or verbal stops. Arnold only came to about half of the classes.
I remember only one other male in the class, and he missed more than half of the classes.
I don’t remember any names of any of the other students, and I know of no way to locate them. One lady was a librarian in Windsor, CT. She spoke to us once about a trip that she had taken to Italy. She stayed in a convent and reported seeing conical stone houses in Puglia5 in southeast Italy. She also said that there were towns nearby in which the people spoke classical Greek in the twenty-first century. Frankly, I doubted that Aristotle or Homer would understand a word that they said,6 but it may well have been that their dialect was closer to classical than to modern..
One lady, who was a few years older than I was, had been taking the class for more than a decade. It is hard to believe, but she was still in the class when I returned after an absence of several years. She had been to Italy several times.
The red balloon is where TSI’s office was. The lady’s apartment was, I think, at the end of Riverview Dr.
One lady lived in an apartment that was within a half mile of TSI’s office in East Windsor. I don’t remember much else about her.
On one occasion I saw one of the ladies at a gas station. We talked for a minute or two. She asked me if I really owned a company. I affirmed that I did, but I assured her that it was a small company, and I had partners. I had met quite a few people who owned companies; I never understood why this surprised her. It does not take much to get a DBA and even less to inherit a business.
I found these photos after I wrote this section. Lydia is handing a piece of paper to someone I don’t recognize in the first photo. In the second photo the woman in red is the lady who had been taking the class for years. The woman opening the book lived in East Windsor near TSI’s office. Sue on the left in the third photo. Across from her is the woman from East Windsor. On her right is the librarian. I recognize no one else.
At the end of the fall semester of 2002 Lydia hosted a Christmas party for all of her students in the cafeteria of Enfield High. I knew almost none of the thirty or forty attendees, and I have always been a guastafeste, especially when most of the partygoers were strangers. Lydia ordered pizzas. Each of us was supposed to bring a gift that cost less than $5. I brought a tape of Italian songs. Some people brought bottles of wine that cost much more than the limit.
Lydia made everyone form a circle. We each had to stand holding our gift. She then read a story that had the words “right” and “left” in it numerous times. When one of the magic words appeared we had to hand the gift we were holding to the person on that side of us. As I recall, the end result was that each gift ended up two people to the right. I don’t remember what I ended up with. It might have been wine.
At one point I tried to interest the other students into taking the train to New York, as I had often done, one Saturday. We could have brunch together, watch the performance at the matinee, and return on an evening train. The idea went over like a lead balloon.
At the end of at least two semesters we all went out to eat supper together. Once we dined at Figaro’s near the Enfield Square Mall. The other time we ate at a much less expensive place called Astro’s near the East Windsor line. Sue joined us on that occasion.
Lydia.
A few things about Lydia’s classes annoyed me. The first was the emphasis on Italian prepositions. I expected this subject to be easy. For the most part the Italian prepositions line up with the Latin ones with which I was familiar. Sometimes the spelling was the same (per, in); sometimes it was a little different (“con” instead of “cum”, “senza” instead of “sine”). However the prepositions that started with a and d did not line up with the Latin ones at all. In fact there did not seem to be any coherent rule as to when to use “a” and when to use “di”. You just had to memorize which preposition went with which verb. We spent a lot of classroom hours on this.
I later found a program on the Internet that I could use to drill myself until it seemed natural. That was much more efficient than wasting classroom time on it.
The other thing that I found strange was that Lydia avoided that the passato remoto tense, which was equivalent to the perfect tense in Latin, did not exist. She probably took this approach because the conjugations are difficult to remember, and there are many exceptions. However, almost any book of history or fiction will have dozens if not hundreds of uses of that form. So, it is critically important to learn it. Once again, her priority was not to intimidate any of the students.
On the first trip that Sue and I vacationed in Italy in 2003. I kept a journal.7 It had one chapter for each of the twenty-five days of the trip. I translated a few of the chapters into Italian and asked Lydia to check my work. I went over to her house in Windsor Locks a couple of times to go over the many mistakes that I had made. That was a very valuable experience.
Neal Cherlong.
At her house I met Lydia’s husband Neal8. He was also in the Russian language adult ed class that I took for one semester at Windsor Locks High School. I remember that he took at least one train ride all the way across Russia to the Pacific coast.
Lydia told the class one very interesting story. Her father was a diplomat for the Italian government. So, the place of birth on her passport was actually Alexandria, Egypt. One time she had visited some of her relatives in Italy. They had some children who were playing with some tools. For some reason one of them put a very long screwdriver into the carry-on bag that she brought back to the U.S. Fortunately, the screwdriver went undetected at the airport. She did not find it until she unpacked at her house.
Was there a big screwdriver in Mohamed’s carry-on?
This was shortly after the 9/11 panic. Can you imagine the reaction from authorities if they had discovered that a woman born in the same country as Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the attack on the World Trade Center, was trying to sneak that potentially lethal screwdriver onto an international flight?
Lydia actually tried out for a job with the TSA. She did not last a day. I don’t remember the details, but she hated the job.
Lydia often asked me to wait after class. It was completely dark by the time that the class ended, and the school was in the Thompsonville section of Enfield. There were rough neighborhoods nearby. So, she asked me, the only male member of the class, to walk her to her car.
I remember that on more than one occasion she complained that her feet always hurt. I guess that she had tried several different types of shoes without success.
Meno male! Almost extinct.
I also remember that she said that “ashtray” was the hardest word for her to pronounce in English. The notion of four consecutive consonants is anathema to Italians. The hardest word for me (and any other American) to pronounce in Italian was “ripercorrerebbero”, which has four trilled r’s surrounding one rolled double-r.
Lydia said several times that a good way to learn a language is to learn some songs in that language. One evening she led us in a rendition of “Santa Lucia“. That was the first time that I realized that the title character was a Neapolitan harbor, not a holy person.
I stopped going to Lydia’s classes when I started playing bridge on Tuesday evenings. I think that this was in 2006. During the entire period that I attended Lydia’s advanced class I think that no other new student joined the group, and we lost at least one or two.
I was not too disappointed to be leaving Lydia’s class. The format was a real drag. I would have continued attending if not for the conflict. My resolve to be at least somewhat fluent in Italian did not abate. If anything I studied harder during those years in which I was on my own. They are documented here.
1. The booklets were still being mailed to us twice a year in 2022, but all of the Italian classes have been dropped. In the last semester in which advanced Italian was offered, I was the only person who registered. In 2022 no foreign language classes were offered at all.
2. I was sad to learn that Lydia Cherlong died in October of 2019, one and a half months after her husband, Neal. Her obituary, which noted that she taught Italian for more than twenty years, is posted here.
3. By the time that I abandoned this activity I had amassed over 10,000 flash cards, and I had been through the decks cramming the words into my brain at least a dozen times.
4. In preparation for this entry I sent an email to the registrar of the adult ed program asking if the rosters for these classes still existed, but I did not receive a reply. I also sent an email to Mary Trichilo to see if she had any rosters. She at least responded.
5. I saw some of these houses, known as trulli, in Alborobello in 2011. That experience is recounted here.
6. I once recited the first two lines of the Iliad to Cris Tsiartas, who grew up in Cyprus speaking Greek. He did not understand any of it and did not believe that it was Greek.
7. The English version of the journal is posted here.
8. Neal Cherlong died in September 2019. At that time Lydia was still alive. Neal’s obituary can be read here.
In November of 2013 Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych rejected the agreement for a political association and trade agreement with the European Union that had been overwhelmingly passed by the Ukrainian parliament. Instead he opted for closer ties with Russia. Many Ukrainians were also upset with the lopsided favoring of the eastern provinces and the widespread corruption attributed to the “Yanukovych Families” that raided thousands of companies and extorted payments.A huge protest centered in Kyiv against the Azarov (prime minister) government.
On February 22 of 2014 the Ukrainian parliament, including Azarov himself voted to remove Yanukovich on the grounds that he had neglected his constitutional duties. At the time Barack Obama was President, and Hilary Clinton was Secretary of State. Two days later a warrant was issued for Yanukovich’s arrest. He fled to Russia. A provisional government was formed and elections were eventually held. Russia did not recognize any of these governments.
In late February Russia seized Crimea, which had been ceded to Ukraine in 1994, and surreptitiously sent troops in plain uniforms to fight in the eastern provinces.A low-scale war continued in that area until Ukrainian troops withdrew in February 2015. The situation was more or less “frozen” from that time until Russia launched an invasion on February 24. 2022.
Wolodymyr Zelensky was still president in 2024.
Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelensky, a big star on Ukrainian television and something of a media mogul, became the sixth president of Ukraine on May 20, 2019, with 73.23 percent of the vote in the second round. For the next year or so he was learning the ropes of the job that he had only pretended to hold on a television show.
Rudy Giuliani had used up all of his good will by 2024.
Meanwhile Trump had dispatched “operatives” to go to Ukraine dig up dirt on, of all people, the surviving son of his opponent in the 2020 election, Hunter.1 Congress had appropriated $400 million in military aid for Ukraine, but it was not immediately sent. On July 25 Trump had a phone call with Zelensky2. Trump asked for a “favor”. He wanted assurance that Zelensky would help Rudy Giuliani and Bill Barr in their investigations in Ukraine. Zelensky described how he intended to reform his company’s prosecutorial functions. A couple of hours after the call the Pentagon was told ny the budget office not to release the aid.
The administration’s activities were not widely known until September, when an anonymous “whistleblower” complained that Trump was using his executive powers to coerce a foreign country into intervening in the election. Several administration officials said that Trump had expressly asked them to use the aid money to persuade Zelensky to announce an official investigation into Biden’s role and the hacking of the servers of the Democratic National Committee.
Mick Mulvaney took a job at CBS om 2022.
The House of Representative launched investigations of whether Trump had abused his authority. The administration did not cooperate, but on October 17, Trump’s chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said in response to a reporter’s allegation of quid pro quo, “We do that all the time with foreign policy. Get over it.” Several current and former administration officials likewise testified that a great deal of effort was being directed toward foreign countries with the apparent goal of denigrating Biden or the evidence that Russia had tried to influence the election in Trump’s favor.
Two charges were leveled: abuse of power (including bribery and wire fraud) and obstruction of Congress. The votes in the committees and the House as a whole were almost completely along party lines.
Mitch McConnell froze up a few times in 2024.
The Senate at the time was controlled by the Republicans. Mitch McConnell said that the trial of the president was a political event, and he would not act as an impartial juror. He also would not allow any testimony or presentation of documentary evidence. Mitt Romney voted in favor of the abuse of power charge. Otherwise, voting was along party lines. Trump was acquitted.
1. I don’t think like a Republican, and so I cannot explain what they hoped to find. It mystifies me that they thought that something that the 50-year-old Hunter did would be so heinous that Biden’s supporters would abandon him and turn to Trump, not exactly the patron saint of family relations. Hunter was convicted in 2024 of—get this!—lying on an application for a pistol that he kept for eleven days. Biden had another son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.
2. CNN has posted a “transcript” of this conversation here. It is not the “perfect” call that Trump described, but neither is there an obvious “quid pro quo” unless you remember what “favor” really means from Don Corleone’s use of the word. Although Zelensky has said that he did not feel pressured, he surely knew about the $400 million that Congress had passed but the Pentagon had never delivered.
The tale of woe that describes the first five days that I spent in Rhode Island can be read here.
Wednesday July 20: I checked the Daily Bulletin to see if more COVID-19 cases had been reported. This was the alarming news:
The ACBL is modifying its COVID reporting policy, such that cases from the Providence NABC will be reported in the Daily Bulletin instead of by email.
Each of the following cases were reported by players to NABC@acbl.org. Anyone testing positive for COVID should follow the same protocol. For information on testing locations, visit providenceri.gov/vaccinate/.
The ACBL has received reports of at least eight players who have contracted COVID since the Sunday issue where previous cases were reported. These players and staff members have participated in contests in multiple playing rooms across several days at the NABC in Providence.
So, at least a dozen people were spreading the disease in many events across multiple days. I could not help but think that this was just the tip of the iceberg. The question was whether this sobering news would impel more people to wear masks while playing. I tended to doubt it.
Paul Burnham.
My partner for the next two days would again be Paul Burnham, who is a very good player. In boxing terms, he fights above his weight. Our miserable performance together on Monday did not discourage me. I liked our chances in the Bracketed Round Robins scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. The unknown variable was whether our makeshift teammates would hold up their end.
On Wednesday I had arranged to play with Abhi (AH vee) Dutta. His partner was, according to Abhi, “a good player, but he does not have much experience.” The young man’s name was Jaan Srimurthy. I did not know him, but I had met his father, Vik, who was a good player.
We did not yet have partners for the game on Thursday. I went to the Partnership Desk to fill out a card. Carol Seager told me that she and her partner, Michelle Blanchard, were looking for teammates. I had played against Carol several times and I actually had partnered with Michelle once at a sectional in Auburn or Watertown quite a few years ago. I quickly agreed.
Abhi Dutta.
We purchased an entry. We were the fourth seed (out of nine) in bracket #2 of the 0-3,000 Bracketed Teams event. The morning session was terrible, but we played better in the afternoon. In many of the matches our teammates were just overmatched.
The most interesting thing that happened was when we played against a woman whose nametag identified her as Terry Brooks. She revoked and then protested vehemently when Paul insisted on calling the director.
In the end we won three matches for a total of .57 red points. Jaan said almost nothing all day. It was not a good day.
I drove back to Warwick after another frustrating day. Paul and I would only have one more chance to accomplish something together.
For supper I ate the remaining half of the grinder that I had purchased on Tuesday at Stop and Shop. I received an interesting email that evening from Sohail Hasan, my partner for the final three days:
I have a pair to play teams with us on Friday and may have another for Saturday but not sure yet.
My experience with pickup partners is pretty negative.
So, I wasted no mental energy worrying about teammates for the weekend.
I really enjoyed the first half of Interlibrary Loan. It made me want to reread A Borrowed Man.
Thursday July 21: As usual, I started the day by reading the Daily Bulletin online. I was looking for news about COVID-19 when I saw an article about an award for best teaching tip that was presented to the same Terry Jones who complained so much when Paul called the director after she revoked. She must have known that the Bulletin was going to feature her in Thursday’s edition.
The article about COVID-19 was precisely the same as the one that had appeared in Tuesday’s edition.
Carol Seager.
Paul and I met up with Carol and Michelle. We bought an entry in the same event that we played in on Wednesday. This time we were the second-seeded team in Bracket #1. We ended up in fifth place with 80 victory points—exactly average. We needed to finish fourth to make the overalls, but we were 12 points short. I don’t know what happened at the other table, but it seemed to me that whenever our opponents did something stupid—and it happened several times—they would come out smelling like a rose.
So, I had to say goodbye to Paul on that rather bitter note. It was beginning to appear that my entire tournament would be a fiasco.
I picked up another pizza from Bertucci’s for supper. It was as good as the first one.
Friday July 22: By this time I had amassed a fairly tall stack of discarded food containers in my room at the Crowne Plaza. Fortunately, I had eaten everything that I bought. There was no noticeable (at least by me) odor.
I read in the Daily Bulletin that the last three days of the Summer NABC coincided with the Youth NABC. In Providence the Youth NABC was held in some rooms in the Omni Hotel that shared the garage with the RICC.
Exactly the same notice about numbers of cases that was in Thursday’s Bulletin was printed in Friday’s again.
Bob Lavin.
I munched on my breakfast sandwich on the way to Providence. I had to leave early. This was one of the days on which I was scheduled for volunteer duty. When I reported to Linda Ahrens, the volunteers co-chair, she said that they needed people at the Youth NABC. Bob Lavin, who had helped me with the bridge program at Duggan Academy in 2016, walked over to the Omni. Another fellow whom I did not know accompanied us.
After we located the designated area, we had to fill out some forms. Then they sent Bob and me to help with the registration. There was only one seat available behind the desk. Bob quickly seized it. The other seats were occupied by ACBL people. My job was to direct people to the registration desk. I stood around for about twenty minutes twiddling my thumbs. It was obvious to everyone where the registration area was. When I asked if I could leave, they told me that I could go back to the RICC.
People in Madison love this crittur.
After a few unplanned detours I found my way back to the Partnership Desk. They did not need me there either. So, I stood around and waited for Sohail to appear. I had only played with him once before—at the Harvest Regional in Mansfield in 2019. There I learned that he had attended the University of Wisconsin and then worked on Wall Street. He lived on the Cape, at least in the summer. He had asked me to play with him in the online regional qualifying for the North American Pairs in 2021, but I had no interest in that. Don’t get me started on the subject of online bridge.
Shazia has a very impressive LinkedIn page.
Sohail arrived at about 9:45. He told me that our teammates were already inside the playing area. They introduced themselves as Lauren Friedman, who had a lot of masterpoints, and Shazia Makhdumi. We found ourselves in the top bracket of the Open Bracketed Teams event. Both of our teammates were from California. I don’t know how Sohail linked up with them. There were twelve teams in our bracket, the worst possible number. Only four of them would place in the overalls, the same number as for a nine-team bracket. We were the #10 seed. Our work was definitely cut out for us.
The hard card to play is supposed to be the Jack.
I remember details from several rounds. We won our first round, but then we faced the team that ultimately won the event by twenty-four victory points. Three of them I knew very well from the Hartford Bridge Club: Trevor Reeves, Joel Wolfe, and Tom Joyce. The fourth was Mark Smith, who lived in Florida but directed online games for the HBC. We lost our match with them by 39 imps, but it could have been a LOT closer. On one hand Joel had bid a slam, and Sohail doubled. Sohail was on lead. He held the ♦A in his hand, and I had the king and a low one to signal with. However, he chose to make a passive lead, and Joel scrambled for twelve tricks in the other three suits. Afterwards Trevor asked me in private why Sohail did not lead the ace. I admitted that I did not know.
Tom Joyce
Joel Wolfe
Trevor Reeves
Ellen and Chris.
I also remember the match against Chris Apitz and Ellen Dilbert, a couple who lived in Arizona in the winter and Massachusetts in the summer. Sohail got into a tiff with Ellen. I don’t remember what the original disagreement was about, but it was not of much consequence. Most of the argument was about which of them was being obnoxious about it. At the time I thought that this was just a one-off.1
We only lost one other match. On one hand Lauren bid a little too aggressively. She jumped to an unmakeable slam. Sohail got quite angry at her and admonished her to read the article in that day’s Bulletin, which, he averred said never to bid slams in teams.
One of the teams that we played included Sally Meckstroth, a pro in her own right. Our foursome ended up tied with her team, but we won our match against them.
I don’t remember who our opponents were for the most memorable hand of the tournament. I actually wrote the hand up and sent it to the editors of the Daily Bulletin. Even though Saturday’s Bulletin solicited material from players, the email, which I sent Friday evening, said that it had been received too late to be included. Here is what I wrote:
The most amazing hand that I have ever seen was #2 in round 7 of the Victor King Bracketed Round Robin on 7/22. I held six hearts to the Q-10, six clubs to the J, and the ace of diamonds. No spades. My partner, Sohail Hasan, opened 2C. I responded 2D, which showed something better than a bust. Sohail bid 2S. I bid 3H. Sohail bid 4D. Aaaargh! He had bid twice in suits in which I had exactly one card in total. What should I bid–hearts again or that ragged club suit? I did not fancy either of those bids. We were past 3NT already, and all I really knew was that I did not like either of his suits, and he probably felt the same about mine. It was cowardly, I know, but I passed 4D.
Here was the hand Sohail set down: S: AKxxx H: AK D: QJxx C: AK. So I had accepted the invitation to play in a five-card fit at the four-level.
I somehow scrambled to nine tricks for down one, which was minus 50. I suspected that Sohail was peeved at me for putting us in such a hopeless contract. However, when we compared scores with our teammates, we actually won four imps on the board. Our teammates, Lauren Friedman and Shazia Makhdumi, had led a diamond to the 6NT contract, and the poor declarer never saw the board again. The result was down four.
It turned out that an unrecognized advantage of playing in a five-card fit was that the opponents were less likely to lead that suit at trick 1. In fact, I used my ace of trump to ruff a worthless spade, but not until I had unblocked the hearts.
A little later I gave our teammates ten guesses as to what our final contract was. They gave up after five or six incorrect attempts.
Tying for third was worth 11.53 gold points. Just think, though. If the ladies had somehow realized that their king, two queens, and two jacks could take five tricks in a notrump contract, they could have doubled. Then we would have gained thirteen imps on a non-swing hand. It would have been enough to put us alone in third place, within one victory point of second.
Sohail told me that he had secured partners for Saturday’s game just before I said goodbye to the ladies from California.
No drink, please.
My drive back to Warwick was much more pleasant than the previous six journeys on southbound I-95.
I went to KFC for the third time and ordered another four-piece dinner. I then wrote an email to Sue describing the hand in the same detail that I submitted to the editors.
Saturday July 23: The ACBL finally began to come clean about the extent of the spread of COVID-19 among bridge players in Saturday’s Daily Bulletin:
The ACBL has received reports of dozens of players who have contracted COVID at the Providence NABC. Many more have not reported becoming infected. These players and staff members have participated in contests in multiple playing rooms across several days at the NABC in Providence.
When I arrived at the RICC I overheard many players talking about others who had become ill. Several people from the Hartford Bridge Club were reportedly stricken. The percentage of people who had donned masks on Saturday might have been a little higher than before, but not much.
Our teammates in the 0-3,000 Bracketed Swiss Teams were from Ottawa, Lisa Hebert and Mark Lacroix. Mark was a Tournament Director and an employee of the ACBL. I was fairly certain that we would be in the top bracket, and I was right. There were nine teams in our bracket. Every team played four three-ways. We were the #5 seed, but the seeds did not mean much. The winning team was the #9 seed. They outscored us by twelve victory points, and we bested the third-place team by thirteen. It had been tight throughout, but the winners pulled away at the end.
We garnered another 9.83 gold points. We all agreed to try to return and play together on Sunday in the last Bracketed Round Robin. I saw no reason why we should not win our bracket.
I had another pleasant drive back to Warwick. I then ordered a combo supper from On the Border. I drove there, picked it up, and ate it in my room at the Crowne Plaza. It was very good. In fact, every supper that I had on this trip was good. The atmosphere of the dining room was not great, but the food was excellent.
Sunday July 24: The headline on Sunday’s Daily Bulletin was “Yu Wins Mini-Spingold”. This immediately sprung to mind:
Abbott: Yu won the Mini-Spingold!
Costello: What? I didn’t even play.
Abbott: No, no. Watt didn’t qualify, but Ai lost in the semifinals.
Costello: Then who won the event?
Abbott: Hu was disqualified. So Yu won.
Costello: How could I win if I didn’t play.
Abbott: Ai lost in the semis. Yu won!
Costello: Nonsense!
Abbott: Eliminated in the first round.
The Bulletin repeated the language about “dozens” of cases, but I now had the sinking feeling that the Providence NABC might have been a super-spreader event.
When I arrived at the tournament site my worst fears were realized. Sue Miguel found me in the exhibition hall that was used for teams. She told me that both Joe Brouillard and Lois DeBlois had COVID-19. On their behalf she gave me a swag bag that had a lot of nice little stuff in it as well as a $100 gift certificate for Amazon.
Sohail showed up only a few minutes before game time. He said that both Mark and Lisa also had COVID-19, and they had gone home. We would have to play in the Fast Pairs.
For the first time Sohail wore a flimsy mask, and he complained about one woman who was coughing.
I am not going to write about the rest of that experience. I had never played under those rules before, and we got behind. I made lots of mistakes. It was very cold. Somehow we won some red points in the morning, but at the end I just wanted to get out of there.
I arrived back in Enfield before 6PM.
Epilogue: It definitely was a super-spreader event. Both Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky got COVID-19 and had to leave early. Mike was quite sick for a while. He passed out, and Jim had to drag him into bed. Dozens of people from the Hartford Bridge Club were also stricken, including several people who were quite careful.
I was lucky, I guess, but I was also very careful. I wore an N95 mask at all times that I was not eating or drinking, and I almost always drank alone. The supper on Sunday evening with Mike and Jim was the only time that I was unmasked in a public place.
To tell the truth I don’t know if it was worth it. A lot of people got sick. I don’t know if anyone died of it, but almost certainly someone contracted the disease in Providence and spread it elsewhere. the BA.5 variant of the virus was extremely good at transmitting and avoiding defenses.
The one thing that this really proved was that the vaccination check was a joke.
1. I later played with Sohail in Warwick later in the summer. I found his behavior on that occasion intolerable.
The extensive preparations for the NABC in Providence are described here. Friday July 15: If there is no traffic, the drive from Enfield to Providence takes a little less than two hours. I packed up enough clothes for ten days … Continue reading →
The extensive preparations for the NABC in Providence are described here.
My bridge schedule for the Providence NABC.
Friday July 15: If there is no traffic, the drive from Enfield to Providence takes a little less than two hours. I packed up enough clothes for ten days and left the house at about 7:15. The trip got off to a terrible start. As usual, I stopped at McDonald’s in West Stafford for a sausage biscuit with egg and a large black coffee. The biscuit reminded me of a brick that had been sawed horizontally. The coffee was a couple of degrees above room temperature when it was handed to me, and it did not taste right. I cannot describe the taste, but it was definitely wrong.
The first 99.99 percent of the drive was otherwise blessedly uneventful. I had driven this route a few weeks earlier for the walk-through that has been described here. I remembered that the Rhode Island Convention Center (RICC) was very close to Route 146. The only tricky part was finding the correct entrance to the garage that was attached via a corridor on the fourth level to the third floor of the RICC. I had a distinct recollection that the right entrance was the first on the right. Therefore, I pulled in there and attempted to enter. The unmanned gate would not let me in. Evidently this was now designated as the entrance for monthly parkers. I tried to back up, but a jeep had pulled in behind me. He was understandably upset at me.
Eventually, I was able to back up and return to the street, but in the process the left side of my car scraped against something. The plastic cover for my left side-view mirror also came halfway off. I tried to push this mishap out of my mind completely until the first day of bridge was over, but it was not easy.
I found the correct entrance and drove up to the east side of the third level and parked near the stairs and elevator. It did not seem possible to get to the east side of the fourth level of the garage from where I had entered. I tried to reattach the cover to the mirror, but I did not have much success. I then climbed the stairs to the fourth level and walked across the sky bridge to the entrance to the RICC.
At the entrance to the third floor two people were checking for vaccination status. Players with an orange wristband could just walk in. Otherwise, players needed to show a vaccination card or the equivalent proof on a smartphone. Upon doing so they were presented with a stylish piece of bright orange plastic to wear on the wrist. When the band had been locked, it was very difficult to undo. I just kept mine on for all ten days that I was in Rhode Island. Then I cut it off with scissors. I don’t know what the people checking for vaccinations did if a person would not or could not show proof.
Very few people wore masks. I resolved to wear an N95 mask and to keep my distance from everyone, even teammates and partners, whenever possible. The fact that I was not staying in a hotel associated with the tournament gave me some optimism. The BA.5 variant had recently become dominant in both Europe and the Americas. Vaccines made it less lethal, but they did little or nothing to prevent transmission. Good masks worked, and the ones that I brought with me were the best available to the general public.
Donna and MW in 2019.
For the first two days I was scheduled to play with Donna Lyons, a long-time friend whom I had hardly seen since we had won the Mid-Flight Pairs at the Ocean State Regional in Warwick in 2019. Donna and her husband Bob lived in Granby in the summer and in Naples, FL, in the winter.
Donna was not at the tournament yet when I arrived. So, I went to the welcome desk and received my SWAG bag. It contained the restaurant guide and a gift. I don’t even remember what the latter was. I then went to the volunteers desk to talk with Linda Ahrens about my assignments. When I left I thought that I was clear about when I needed to show up.
Joe and Linda circa 2016.
Linda provided me with a stack of scrip for my entry fees1, and Joe Brouillard, the co-chair of the tournament, provided an exit card to pay for my parking.
I picked up a copy of the Daily Bulletin to see what had happened in the GNT championship. Most of New England’s representatives, including Felix Springer and Trevor Reeves, were still in contention.
I went to the partnership area and looked for a likely partner for Sunday. The only person available was Phyllis Bloom with 800 masterpoints. I called her five times, but the line was always busy.
Soon thereafter Donna appeared. We were scheduled to play in the Open Pairs on Friday and the Bracketed 0-3,000 Swiss on Saturday. Before the morning session we went over the convention card that we had used in 2019. If we made any adjustments, they were not significant. Our morning session was disappointing. We only scored a little more than 43 percent.
I don’t remember what Donna did for lunch. I bought a Diet Coke and a bag of nuts from a vending machine. I did this every day that I was playing so that I would not get sleepy in the afternoon. This also helped me avoid the COVID trap of the lunch area.
Our afternoon session was much better. We scored above 53 percent, which earned us 1.48 red points for finishing third in B in our section. If we had done that well in the morning, I would have been quite pleased.
That direct route across eastern CT was stressful.
Donna was commuting from Granby, even though she lived considerably farther away than I did. So, she was facing roughly five hours of driving both days. I advised her not to take the two-lane route back to Connecticut, despite the insistent advice from Google Maps. Instead I told her that driving on Route 146 and the Mass Pike was much less stressful, only slightly longer, and less subject to delays from construction and slow vehicles.
Right mirror for comparison
Left mirror after fixing.
After saying goodbye to Donna I went back to the garage to inspect the damage on my car. This time I was able to reattach the cover much more securely. I later tried to rig up a little more protection for the electronics by covering it with a plastic bag, but I failed to devise a way of keeping it attached. In the end I convinced myself that this arrangement was good enough to last through the rest of the trip.2
At some point on Friday Mike Heider and Jim Osofsky, my teammates for Saturday and Sunday invited me to have dinner with them on Saturday night at their favorite restaurant in Providence, Pane e Vino. I told them that I had already committed to attending the VIP reception on Saturday evening.
I then exited the garage. I had been led to expect that the entire parking charge would be covered by the exit ticket that Joe had given me. However, I was still charged $15. Evidently Joe gave me the wrong ticket.
I found my way from the RICC to the Hampton Inn in Warwick without any problem. I have stayed at dozens of Hampton Inns around the country, and it had never taken more than five minutes to check in to any of them. This time, however, only one person was on duty at the reception desk. A handful of people surrounded the desk offering advice to a woman who was trying to check in. She demanded to see the manager about whatever was impeding the process. The clerk abandoned her station for at least five minutes in order to summon him.
She returned with the unwanted news that the manager was on his “lunch break” at 6:30 in the evening. Eventually he did appear, and he succeeded at calming everyone down. All the people around the desk—except for me—went over to the lounge/breakfast area to wait for the room to be ready.
My room was very close to the entrance on the left.
I was impatient, no doubt, but there was no good reason to be. I had nothing planned for the evening. The clerk had no problems in finding a room for me. I had to provide my credit card, of course, but then she quickly handed over my key. My room was on the ground floor.
When I reached the hallway I was shocked to see trash piled there. I had never experienced anything like this before at a Hampton Inn. At least the pile did not impede my path to the room.
The room itself was fine, but it had one very peculiar trait. There was no closet! I looked everywhere that I could imagine. I mean, how do you hide a closet in a hotel room? I must have been mistaken, but I accounted in my head for every square foot of space, and there did not seem to be any place it might be.3 Because I was only staying two nights, this anomaly was of small consequence to me.
I had no trouble deciding where to eat. The hotel was within a mile of the KFC, and I had had more pleasant experiences dealing with the store than I had with the many other franchises that I had patronized over the years. This occasion was no exception. My four-piece meal was ready very quickly; it was hot and delicious.
About a week earlier I had misplaced my American Express card that awarded frequent-flyer miles on Delta. I hardly ever used that card, but it bothered me that it was missing. While I was at the KFC I noticed that it was hidden behind another card in my wallet.
I received a text from Phyllis Bloom. She was happy to play with Mike, Jim, and me on Sunday. So, my “dance card” was now completely filled for the tournament.
The book that I brought with me to Rhode Island was Newcastle Upon Tyne: Mapping the City. It was written by Mike Barke, a Professor of Geography from Newcastle. I had the pleasure of meeting him and his wife Vivienne on the European River Cruise that I took in May of 2022. That adventure is related here.
The book is a history of the Tyneside area from Roman days up to the present with maps of various types used as signposts. I really enjoyed learning about the development of the area not only because it was Mike and Vivienne’s stomping grounds, but also because it helped me to understand better what the characters on the television show Vera were dealing with. On this trip to Rhode Island I also discovered that the huge book could serve as an excellent mousepad when I was using my computer while in bed.
Saturday, July 16: My standard operating procedure at Hampton Inns had long been to hit the breakfast room early. I arrived at 6:15 and was surprised to see that it was already rather crowded. There were quite a few children dining with their parents. Most of the people wore shorts. One kid walked up to the orange juice dispenser and filled a gallon jug. I thought that this was somewhat outrageous, but no one said anything about it.
In addition to the families quite a few uniformed airline employees were among the early diners. This was not a surprise. The Hampton Inn is very close to the airport.
The drive from Warwick to the RICC was very easy. I worried about the left mirror, but the cover stayed on, and it seemed to function as well as ever.
I asked at the Partnership Desk if they needed me to help, but Jan Smola and Carol Seager said that they had it under control.
Mike and Jim.
Donna and I played in the 0-3,000 Bracketed Round Robin. Our teammates were Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider. We found ourselves in the top bracket. We were in contention until the last two matches. In one of those rounds Donna timidly passed my 5♥ bid, and we missed a slam that would have really helped us. So, we finished well out of the overalls and were awarded only .69 “pity points”.
Donna needed to rush home at the end of the last match. I said goodbye to her and thanked her for playing with me. I then walked over to Joe’s desk and asked him for directions to the WaterFire event.4 While I was standing there I was surprised to see a distraught Donna walking toward me. She said that she could not find the key fob for her car. She said that she had looked all through her purse several times.
Donna and I searched around the areas in which she had been. There was no sign of the missing fob. Upon Joe’s advice she went to the facility’s security desk on the ground floor and asked the man there. No one had turned in anything resembling a key fob.
She then went back to her car because she said that there was an emergency method of gaining entry and operating the car. She was pretty sure that her husband could talk her through it over the phone.
So, I went out on foot on my own looking for the VIP reception for the WaterFire. I went the wrong way several times5. I finally found the viewing area, but I saw nothing that looked like a reception. At about 7:00 it occurred to me that the WaterFire event always took place in the dark, and the sun would not be setting in Providence for nearly two hours. I decided that it was not worth the wait. I drove back to the Hampton Inn.
I was able to exit the garage without paying. Joe had given me enough tickets for the remainder of my days. Since I was not planning on coming to the tournament on Tuesday, I gave one of the tickets to Donna.
I was shocked by two things at the hotel. The pile of rubbish had grown considerably larger, and no one had cleaned my room. Since I was leaving in the morning, these developments hardly mattered to me, but my overall impression was that this must surely be the worst Hampton Inn in the country.
Because I had again skipped lunch, for supper I treated myself to a small Ultimate Bertucci pizza. It was absolutely delicious. I ordered takeout and ate it in my room.
Sunday July 17: As I made my way to the hotel’s breakfast area I could hardly believe how big the rubbish pile in the hallway had become. It was piled high with pizza boxes. I could barely get past it. I doubt that someone with a wheelchair could have done so.
Never on Sunday?
I was equally surprised that the breakfast area was closed. Evidently breakfast was no longer served on Sunday, or perhaps it was open much later than usual. I was not certain whether this was “the new normal” or just another indication of this hotel’s mismanagement.
I checked out, got into my car, and drove into Providence. I did not record in my notes what I ate that morning, but I think that it was part of the hospitality—a muffin or something like that—that the tournament provided. I picked up a Daily Bulletin and discovered that all three of the remaining GNT teams from New England had lost in the semifinals.
Mike and Jim told me that they had postponed their supper at Pane e Vino until Sunday. They asked me whether I wanted to join them. I happily agreed.
I met up with Phyllis Bloom, who was, as I suspected, Ken Bloom’s wife. We spent some time going over our card, which was rather simple. We were playing with Jim and Mike in the Mid-Flight Swiss teams. We were done in on the very last hand. Phyllis played 6♠. At the other table our counterparts bid the grand slam. Both went down one. Mike led the ♣, which enabled the declarer to finesse the 10.
So, we earned only .78 more red points. I had a good time playing with Phyllis. We did as well as a new partnership could expect. However, I think that she was a little frustrated with her mistakes.
After Phyllis left, II walked with Jim and Mike to their hotel, which was called The Graduate. We took the elevator up to their suite. Mike seemed to be a little embarrassed that some clothes were strewn about. Please!
At some point Mike also realized that he had lost his convention card. Presumably it was somewhere in the playing area of the RICC.
We picked up Jim’s car from the hotel’s parking garage and drove to the restaurant. Mike continually criticized the route that Jim took, and Jim repeatedly reminded us that Mike drove like an old woman. They do this sort of thing all the time. For years I thought that they were actually arguing, but, in fact, they almost never argued. Jim just talked all of the time, and Mike occasionally broke his vow of silence and vocalized his opinions, some of which contradicted Jim’s. However, it never went past that. Each has a lot of respect for the other, and they have been playing together for at least a decade that I know of.
The restaurant scared me. It was crowded, and no one—not even the staff—was wearing a mask. I kept mine on until we reached the booth, and I put it back on before walking to the door at the end.
I ordered the fettucine alla Bolognese and a glass of Barbera. After consulting with the waitress, Mike selected lasagna. Jim had the same veal dish that he always ordered there. The titles of all of the dishes were in Italian on the menu, but the descriptions were in English. I found it peculiar that our waitress was unfamiliar with the titles of the dishes.
I ate everything that I ordered, but the Bolognese was a little too rich for my taste. When Jim asked me if I would order it again if I ate there, I had to answer in the negative. Nevertheless, I had a good time with these guys. They are a lot more fun away from the table, but that is not uncommon for bridge players.
Randy Johnson.
So, we drove back to The Graduate. I went down the elevator to walk to the RICC garage. In the lobby of the hotel I ran into Randy Johnson. I talked with him for a minute. I asked him if his wife Ann (Hudson), one of my former partners, was also in attendance. He claimed that she was too busy working at home.
I walked over to the garage, found my car, and drove to the Crowne Plaza in Warwick, which, like the RICC, is in spitting distance of I-95.
Over the next week I often saw this logo.
I walked from the hotel’s huge parking lot to the revolving door. at the main entrance. To my surprise a young man and woman were greeting people as they entered. Neither of them wore masks. They were from the annual gathering of the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, which was held throughout that week in the Crowne Plaza. I wore my mask whenever I was in or near the hotel.
I checked in in a minute or two. The hotel employees also had no masks.
I went back to KFC for supper. It was as good as the first time.
When I checked my email I found one from Monday’s partner Paul Burnham. He reported that he had just arrived in Providence. I also received the following missive from Donna:
First of all, the key fob business was somewhat of a mess and more than somewhat had me spinning. When I got to the garage, my car would not open when I touched the handles, as usually it does. Of course, I tried and tried, tried the lift back, nothing. So, I searched in my bags for the fob, which I knew I had, but I could not find it. Panic began to set in. After too much wasted time running from the bridge info table who sent me to security who sent me back to the info table who sent me to another security man, I went back to the garage to see if I had dropped the key fob. I could not find it, so I emptied my bags again in the dark corner where I had parked, thinking it had to be there. No fob. I dug and dug, freaking out more and finally found it zipped in another pocket. But the car still would not open. Dead. I called Bob, and [after he calmed me down] he talked me through taking the fob apart to find some hidden skinny key. It was so dark in the garage where I was that I was near tears running over to some sunlight, worried that I would be sleeping over on 4 East. I did get the fob apart, got back to the car to try the hidden key, and, for some reason, once I had the fob apart, all the lights went on and the car just opened. Then I worried that all batteries had died, but Bob kept telling me to start the car and it would be fine. It was. But then …this story has a better ending…I was still so rattled [77-year-old women should not navigate Providence traffic when they are rattled] that of course I kept missing turns directed by my robot-voice navigator who was trying to get me home. I missed route 6 back to 84, and I ended up on 146 north driving home by the MassPike. This route was an infinitely better route, as you suggested. I am sure I lost another three years of heart life, but at least I was not stuck in the garage overnight.
The nicest part of the fiasco was that your kind gift of the validation card worked like a charm, and it was great to have that bonus in all of the mess.
Monday July 18: My room on the third floor of the Crowne Plaza was very nice. The bathroom had two sinks! It was a good thing, too. The stopper on the main sink did not work. So, I shaved at the one on the end.
I have walked there, but I drove every day on this trip.
I drove to McDonald’s for my usual sausage biscuit with egg, a breakfast that I consumed six of the seven mornings of my stay at the Crowne Plaza, which does not offer free breakfasts. I ate the sandwick on the car while I drove on I-95.
I worked at the Partnership Desk on Monday morning. While I was there I espied Mike Heider’s missing convention card lying on the table. I took it over to Joe and left it with him. When I spotted Mike later that day I told him that I had found it and let him know where it was.
I assisted a few people looking for partners in understanding how the cards were displayed: teams on one board and pairs games on the other. Each board was sorted by day of the event. Usually that was all that was needed. A player would find someone of about his/her level and call them.
One fellow did not have a phone. I offered to let him use mine, but he had no idea how to use a smartphone. I had to dial the number for him. This process was repeated a few times.
Judy Hyde.
Perhaps twenty-five minutes before 10:00, the starting time for all the games, Paul arrived at the Partnership Desk. To my surprise the ponytail for which he was renowned had disappeared. Shortly thereafter we saw Judy Hyde, with whom I have often been a partner or teammate and even more often an opponent. We talked for a bit, and both Paul and I came away certain that she had agreed to play in the Bracketed Round Robin Teams with us. Then she vanished to find her partner. We never saw her again.
At 9:59 Paul and I walked over to the Open Pairs game and registered. It was a nightmare. We were East-West in the morning, and we were between Robert Todd and his partner, who played a customized Big Club system, and a pair that played a Polish Club. The senior member of both of these pairs delivered a lengthy pre-alert speech explaining the unusual conventions that they used.
Thirteen rounds of listening to both of these dissertations would certainly have been enough to drive anyone to distraction. However, we had the completely unique distinction of playing North-South for the thirteen rounds in the afternoon session seated between the same two pairs. By the time that the last round had ended we could recite either speech with no pauses.
Paul played badly throughout, and I was worse. Our scores reflected it. Fortunately, he got to play with a different partner, his college roommate, Rob Stillman, on Tuesday. I, on the other hand, had already been planning on taking that day off.
The most amazing thing about our second session was that a guy with whom I had talked at The Graduate on the previous day came late to our table. On one of the two hands that we played against him he took at least—this is no exaggeration—five minutes to decide on a single play on defense. On every other trick he played in tempo. I suspect that he was astral traveling.
To add insult to injury Tom Gerchman came up to complain to me after the round was over that he was unable to obtain a parking pass. I simply said in a Chico voice “That’s not my chob.”
I picked up some tacos at the Taco Bell that was across the street from McDonald’s on Bald Hill Rd. in Warwick and consumed them in my room at the Crowne Plaza. Life is definitely romantic and exciting at bridge tournaments.
I was only slightly surprised to find that my room had not been made. Apparently that was the new normal, at least at chain hotels in Warwick.
I called Abhi Dutta and confirmed with him that Paul and I would team up with him and a young man named Jaan Srimurthy in the Bracketed Swiss on Wednesday.
Tuesday July 19: In 2019 I took a day off at the NABC in Honolulu, but that was only because my partner, Ann Hudson, refused to play with me any more.6 The idea of a voluntary respite was a new one.
The award was presented by Mark Aquino, the Regional Director.
I read the Daily Bulletin on the ACBL website. The first thing that I noticed was that Sue Miguel had been presented with a Special Goodwill award for her outstanding work with the Intermediate/Novice program in District 25 and at the two NABCs in Providence.
So, evidently I had missed another meeting of the Goodwill Committee. I have tried to attend them several times, but I have never succeeded.
I also searched the Bulletin for information about the number of COVID-19 cases that had been reported thus far, but the only reference was to the ACBL’s mask (not required) and vaccination (required) policies.
I went to IHOP and treated myself to a ham and Swiss-cheese omelette with pancakes. They were as good as I remembered. I was disappointed that the restaurant no longer played oldies on the intercom system.
Two very old ladies7 sat across the aisle from me. I could not avoid listening to much of their conversation. One of them was treating the other to breakfast because it was her birthday. I was tempted to wish her a happy birthday, but I did not want to disturb their illusion of a private conversation.
After breakfast I called the front desk to ask about the housekeeping regimen. They told me that they would bring me more linens. That afternoon a large bag appeared in my room. It contained towels.
On the way back to the hotel I stopped at Barnes & Noble and bought a copy of Interlibrary Loan, Gene Wolfe’s last book. It was a sequel to A Borrowed Man, which I had read a few years earlier. I only vaguely remembered the plot.
I then walked around the exterior of the hotel and then took advantage of the beautiful weather to read my new book while I sat on a bench for a half hour or so. Occasionally an employee would come out to smoke, but they stayed far enough away that it did not bother me. As I came back inside I saw Sally Kirtley and Helen Pawlowski. They were on site to check out the hotel for the regional tournament scheduled for the week before Labor Day. It would be held in the Crowne Plaza.
Helen asked me what I was doing there. I told her that I was staying at the Crowne Plaza and that I gave myself the day off after four days of frustration. She replied, “That makes sense.”
I then went up to my room and took a nap in my unmade bed. After I woke up I talked with Sue on the phone. I told her about how terrible the previous day had been.
Of course, I actually walked straight from the hotel’s door across the parking lot and field to the intersection of East Ave. and Greenwich Ave.
In the afternoon I walked to the Stop and Shop. The walk there was fairly easy. The only challenge was to cross East Ave., a major highway. There was a button to initiate the pedestrian crossing lights, but it only worked for the main part of the street. Crossing the entrance and exit required alertness and quickness.
At the grocery store I purchased a large roast beef grinder and four two-liter bottles of caffeine-free Diet Coke using my GO rewards card to qualify for the $4 price on the colas. The walk back was not quite as easy. I had brought a tote bag to carry the Cokes in, but I had to change it from one hand to the other several times. Eight liters weighs 17.6 pounds, and the burden was mostly borne by my fingers. I should have brought two bags; that would have been considerably easier.
When I got back to the hotel I slept for another hour. Then I ate half of the grinder and drank a considerable amount of Diet Coke for lunch/supper.
In the evening I read some more and fooled around with my laptop computer.
My plans for the last three days were still up in the air. I was scheduled to play with Sohail Hasan, but we did not have teammates lined up.
The report of the last five days of the tournament is a little more upbeat. It can be found here.
1. The fine printing on the bottom of each voucher clearly stated that only one could be used per entry, but I later realized that the directors did not enforce this limitation. They accepted as many vouchers as each person presented. I played in eighteen sessions at the tournament, but I spent very little cash on entry fees.
2. As of November 2022 I still had done nothing about the mirror. It has functioned admirably.
3. My inability to find things is legendary. It almost caused me to flunk first grade. That story was told here.
4. WaterFire was a spectacular event that was held periodically in Providence. It is difficult to describes. People rode in boats, and they used torches to light larger torches that are permanently in the water. I watched the event in October, 2014. On that occasion it was becoming dark by the time that the afternoon session ended, and volunteers had been stationed along the route from the RICC to the viewing area so that all the bridge players could find the event.
5. Towns and cities in New England felt under no obligation to provide street signs that identified every street at every intersection. I have complained about this since I first came to the area in 1972.
6. The adventures at that tournament and the week afterwards that we spent in Maui are documented here. Ann and I remained good friends, and I have played with her several times subsequently. She even volunteered to pick us up at the airport after we returned from Hawaii.
7. I long ago realized that women my age are very old.
