The first year of my three-year term on the Hartford Bridge Club’s Board of Trustees has been posted here.
Ben Bishop.
The officers for fiscal 2023 were John Willoughby (president), Ben Bishop (vice-president), Eric Vogel (treasurer), and Ann Lohrand (secretary). The first three were new. The new trustees were Rob Stillman and Diane Tracy. The returning trustees were Nancy Calderbank, Carole Amaio, Bill Wininger, and myself.
I was unable to attend the first meeting on November 15, 2022, because I had committed to play in the first Spectacle Regional in Southbridge, MA, with Sally Kirtley. It was a pretty big mistake to schedule the meeting for the first day of the nearest regional tournament.
A new computer was purchased for the office. Ben installed it.
The mentoring program was again active. The Sunday High-Low game has been a successful adjunct to it.
The club decided to investigate holding a limited sectional in the Spring. Linda Starr was running it. I told her that I would help with publicity. The board also approved her idea for a game with a celebratory aspect on the afternoon of December 31.
December
1. My adventures at this tournament have been recorded here.
The first tournament of the year was held in Johnston, RI, on the weekend of February1-2. I had no interest in playing in the pairs game on Saturday. Abhi Dutta asked me to team up with him and his partner, Vipin Mayar. I was pretty certain that Eric Vogel would not want to play on Sunday, and so I asked John Lloyd again. The four of us had played in a sectional at the same location in September 2024. That adventure has been described here.
John and I again agreed to meet at the Park and Ride lot on Route 32 near I-84, this time at 8:45. Since John had driven from there to Johnston in September, I volunteered to drive this time. I was a little worried about the return trip. My cataracts had recently been diagnosed, and some kind of precipitation was expected.
I arrived at the lot seven minutes late. It was completely my fault, and I apologized. I left a minute or two after I planned. I planned on stopping at the McDonald’s in the Scitico shopping center, but I missed the turn from Taylor Rd., and when I passed it on Route 190 there was a line. So, I decided to keep going and stop at the one in West Stafford.
A feared sight in Somers and Enfield.
Unfortunately, I found myself two cars behind a NETTTS truck2. We only followed it as far as Somers, but its still cost us another five minutes or so as it poked along at 25-30 mph on Route 190.
There was also a slow-moving line at the West Stafford McDonald’s as well. I lost at least another five or ten minutes there.
No, thanks.
The worse news was that they messed up my order. Instead of the sausage biscuit with egg that I always ordered, they gave me a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. The bacon was tasteless, I don’t like McD’s cheese, and the biscuit had been hardened by time under the heat lamp.
I drove as fast as I reasonably could the rest of the way, but I did not arrive at the parking lot until 8:52. The rest of the trip was uneventful, but it was 9:55 by the time that we reached the Johnston Senior Center. I gave my credit card to John and parked the car. I then got my materials from the back seat. The lunch that I had prepared was there, but I could not find my convention card holder, which contained our convention card, old scoresheets, and my mechanical pencil. I was almost certain that I had remembered to place it there, but I could not find it, and I had no time to spend searching.
We were, of course, the last of the twenty-four teams to register. After a fair amount of effort I found our table, which was U12. John gave me back my credit card, and I then went back to the registration area to obtain a scoresheet and little golf pencil.
One opponent informed us that he had only played in one or two previous team games. His partner did not even know how to keep score. We were scheduled to play eight rounds of six boards. In the first round they bid and made several games that seemed unremarkable to me. Afterwards I told John to compare without me; I intended to search for my convention card holder. My scoresheet was unreadable anyway. I could not write legibly with that tiny pencil on bare paper.
I could not find the convention card holder. Our second assignment was at the same table. I was shocked to learn that we had decisively lost the first round. Usually I am a good judge of our performance. We did, however, win the second round in a close match.
I could not believe the team that we drew for our third round—a team of A players from the Hartford Bridge Club. John and I played against Tom Gerchman and Lesley Myers. Our teammates faced Doug Deacon and Bob Hughes. I did not think that we played well enough to win. I was shocked that our teammates had scored +1700 on the first hand. Evidently Doug and Bob had a disastrous misunderstanding that got doubled. So, after three of eight rounds we had two wins.
We lost the fourth match. I made a serious error in the play. I then ate lunch by myself.
We won only one match in the afternoon. We played against two ladies. John was late getting to the table, and I had painfully shuffled at least one deck at every table. I refused to shuffle again and left the deck for John. He arrived a minute or two later, during which time I had to listen to my LHO declaim about shuffling in spite of the fact that she had arthritis.
That one victory was taken away from us by the director, Tim Hill. On the crucial hand John opened 1♥. The lady to my right bid 2♣. I doubled. When the arthritic opponent asked what my double meant, John hemmed and hawed and then said, “I think that that was a support double for my hearts.”
They ended up playing in a notrump contract. After the play ended, I announced that they had received erroneous information. I had made a negative double showing at least four spades, not a support double showing three hearts. I told them that they could call the director if they felt damaged. They did. Tim took the board to see if their claim as being damaged was legitimate. This took such a long time that we ended up playing on five of the six boards. The ladies complained loudly about this.
Tim later explained to me that there were so many ways that the hand could have gone that he could not determine whether they were damaged. He said that the law said that in that case the party that gave the wrong information gets an average minus. We ended up losing three imps and the match.
At the end of the last frustrating mach I was just ready to hit the road immediately. Fortunately there was no bad weather for the drive back. I had no difficulty whatsoever.
Connecticut’s first tournament was scheduled for the last weekend in March, beginning on Friday the 28th, in Orange. I was on the tournament committee, chaired by Cindy Lyall, that planned and marketed this event. The marketing part was previously handled by the communications director, Ken Steele, who had resigned. Bill Segraves, the president of the Connecticut Bridge Association, said in an email that the communications committee, of which I was a member, was no longer functioning. That was news to me.
I did not really care what was sent to the players with more than 500 masterpoints. They were probably familiar with CBA sectionals. They just needed to know the dates and where to find the flyer. I volunteered to write an email to be sent to the players with less than 500 masterpoints in February. I composed them in HTML for my MailChimp account. I sent a test version (posted here) to the other members of the committee. They all seemed to like it a lot. Well, almost everyone liked ti. John Lloyd thought that it was too long, and Cornelia Guest did not like the phrase “less than 500 masterpoints”3.
Unfortunately, Bill wrote that “Mike is not authorized to send the email.” So, I had to rework the text to use Pianola to send it. Since I never received the email itself, I was not able to post it. The text is posted here. I asked for the photo of the playing area to be included. Even with that, I think that the final version was better than nothing, but it was a poor substitute for my original submission.
Early in the year Eric Vogel agreed to play with me in both pairs sessions on Friday and Saturday. I sent emails to the usual suspects concerning a partner and teammates for the Sunday Swiss. Joan Brault agreed to play with me, but the only nibble that I had for teammates was an email from Cornelia Guest, the CBA’s tournament coordinator, that Joel Wolfe was looking for teammates. I immediately sent him an email to see if he was interested in teaming up with Joan and me, but he never responded. That was quite disappointing. Prior to the pandemic I had always played in the team game on Sunday, and nearly always I had a very enjoyable time.
On Friday morning I fixed myself a sandwich of corned beef, Swiss cheese, and lettuce and inserted it into my backpack along with a bag of Utz potato chips. I left the house at 8:15. The traffic was lighter than I expected, and the construction area south of I-84 posed no difficulty. I made my usual stop at McDonald’s in Cromwell. The price was $.11 cheaper than in Hartford and much cheaper than at any of the three stores in Enfield. I arrived at St. Barbara’s Church in Orange, CT, at a little after 9:30. Eric was already in line to purchase our entries, the cost of which had risen to $18 per person per session.
Eric and I had recently revised our approach to slam bidding when we had a fit in a major suit. Previously we had leapt to game to show a minimal holding. Instead jumps in the major suits would show Picture Bids—a high honor in the trump suit and a strong side suit. Our approach to bidding of controls was also changed slightly. This approached was recommended by Vic Quiros in a series of columns in the Bridge Bulletin.
In the morning session on Friday we sat East-West. We had two opportunities within the first six hands to put our new methods into practice. On hand #12 I opened 1♦ in the West chair. Eric bid 1♥. I bid 1NT. Eric could have put in the game force by bidding 2♦, but he elected to bid 4♣. I was not sure what it meant. I bid 4♥, and he just jumped to six. This was exactly the kind of thing that we wanted to avoid. We got 79 percent of the masterpoints, but we could have done better.
If he had bid 2♦, I would have bid 2♥, and he would have known that we had nine hearts. Then after a couple of exchanged cue bids, he could have visualized thirteen tricks and bid the granny.
On hand #16 I opened 1♥, Eric bid 2♦. I rebid hearts. He used Kickback to determine that I had the three missing key cards. He then bid 6NT.
Since we were already forced to game, I think that he should have bid the cheapest control, which was in spades. I could bid 3♦ to show the ace. He has the ♣K to show, but he must bid at the four-level. I would bid 4♥ to show a control. After he bid 5♦, it would be time to put up or shut up. I have not yet told him about my other two heart honors, had he still seemed interested in continuing. I was in a bidding mood that day. I think that I would have bid 7NT.
The other interesting hand in the morning was #22. Eric and I got am undeservedly good score on it because not only did our opponents not find the game in spades, they also took only nine tricks. Don’t ask me to name the tricks that we took.
Shekhar Rao asked me how he and his partner, Shashank Srinivasamurthy, could have bid the spade game with the North-South cards. They had been playing in the limited point game. After examining the results I told him that only one of the fifteen N-S pairs in the open section accomplished that feat with 22 points and a seven-fit, and they were not considered one of the better pairs when it came to bidding.
I took advantage of the opportunity to explain to the guys that they needed to have an agreement about what a preempt in the fourth seat would show. It cannot be strictly preemptive because both of the opponents have passed. So, it should probably show a minimum opening hand with six pieces. Bidding at the one-level and then rebidding the same suit at the two-level would show at least one trick extra. So, if responder had invitational values, he should be looking for game after that sequence.
For the morning session Eric and I scored a little above 51 percent, which was rewarded with 1.14 silver points.
Eric also had brought a sandwich for lunch. We ate together and discussed a few of the hands. Joel Wolfe came by and asked if he could have some of my potato chips. I said, “Of course.” He did not say anything about playing on Sunday.
Bill and Linda Green, the Vice President of the CBA, announced the winners of some of the awards over the last year. Linda was actually standing on the chair at which I ate lunch. I found this method of distributing awards annoying, but, then again, I have become a real curmudgeon since the pandemic and especially since the last presidential election.
Our first two hands in the afternoon session were against Bill and Paul Proulx. I knew that they played an unusual system in which the 1♣ opening had multiple meanings and could be made with only one club. The responses were transfers. Eric and I had discussed this at lunch. We decided that our interference at the one level would be transfers, at the two level DONT for two-suited hands, and natural at the three-level.
As it happened, I, sitting South, opened the bidding on both hands, but Eric had two weak hands. On the first one Paul, East, played 3♣ and made it. On hand #6 I opened 1NT and Bill overcalled 2♥, which was followed by two passes. I probably should have just passed. If Eric had a suit, he would have bid.
Bill redoubled, but I did not see it. I rarely miss a bid, but I definitely missed that one. Eric took his time, but then passed, as did Paul. I was somewhat upset that the bidding was over and picked up my cards.
Before Eric Bill led, Bill asked to see Eric’s convention card. He asked Eric whether our doubles, which the card says are negative at the three level were also negative at the two level. Eric incorrectly stated that they were negative at both levels. I began to correct him, but Bill stopped me. The whole thing was embarrassing.
In the end Bill made the bid, we received another very bad score, and I was flustered. If I had seen the redouble card, I would have bid 2♥, and the result would have been better. It took me several rounds to regain my equilibrium.
I found out in the evening about the redouble, and I apologized to Eric on Saturday morning about my pass.
I made one other costly miscue in my opening lead against Mike Heider and Mark Blumenthal on hand #16. They had bid 3NT.
The standard lead in this situation was fourth from longest and strongest, which in this case would have been the ♣7. However, the stronger hand would be on my right. I did not want to give away what might be the setting trick. Also I did not have a likely entry outside of the spade suit.
Instead I selected the singleton ♥10. Since East did not use Stayman he was unlikely to have four hearts. So, my partner probably had at least five. My 10 might be good enough to set up the suit for him.
As you can see, my lead allowed them to take the first ten tricks. If I had led the spade, we would have taken the first five.
We did much better on the other hands. We finished with a 55 percent game and won 1.52 silver points. It had been a long time since I had scored above 50 percent on two consecutive sessions of Open Pairs at a CBA sectional.
The drive home was uneventful. I did not sleep too soundly. I found myself awake at 3am. I got up for a while, read a chapter or so of Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty, and went back to sleep.
On Saturday morning I fixed myself a sandwich of the remainders of a roast beef dinner before I left. I arrived at the tournament at about 9:30 and bought our entries.
Our results on Saturday were remarkably similar to what we did on Friday. In the morning our score was 51.74 percent, which left us just our of the money because the three top scores in our section were registered by B players.
We got off to an unbelievably good start on the first hand I somehow convinced myself that Eric, sitting East, had a very good hand. Since I held a six-loser hand with support for his clubs, I used Blackwood to ask for key cards. When his response indicated that he had 0 or 3, I figured that we had all the key cards and bid 6♥ without even asking about the queen of trump.
As you can see, Eric actually had a minimum opening bid. The opponents held three aces. Fortunately, South decided to lead the ♥A, which allowed him to pitch his spades on diamonds. He also led hearts from his hand, which allowed him to finesse the ten. So, we got 100 percent on this hand. Incredibly, one other pair stumbled into this horrible contract, but they were defeated by two tricks.
By our new method of bidding these hands our auction should have been 1♥-2♣; 2♥-3♥; 3NT (non-serious game try)-4♥ (very reluctant).
One of our worst hands was #8, played against two players whom I did not know, Paresh Soni and Justine Robertson. I was in the West chair declaring 4♠. The same contract was played by all of the other pairs in our section.
At trick 1 Paresh led the ♣4. I counted my losers—two possible in hearts and one in clubs. Then I thought again. What if South had four clubs? If I ducked, she could give him a ruff at trick 2, and I would be down if the hearts were poorly placed.
Then it occurred to me that North was leading fourth-best, I would still lose a trick to North’s king. The only times that playing the ace was wrong was if North began with the king and one or two others. Who would lead low from either of those holdings? No one that I played with. I would be willing to bet that no other North player selected that card to lead. Anyway, I played the ace.
Eric bought a lunch at the tournament. We ate together again. I explained why I only took ten tricks on hand #8. Bill gave out more awards.
Our best session was the last one. We scored 56.47 percent, which was good for fifth, but it was only 1.51 percentage points before the pair in first. We received 2.9 masterpoints.
The most astounding hand of the tournament occurred in the fourth round of the second session. We were sitting North-South. Eric was awarded the privilege of bidding the hand shown at the left. Our opponents were Victor Xiao and Lin Li.
After I opened 2♣ Eric bid 2♥. We played Kokish relays, and so his response indicated a bust—no aces, no kings, and at most one queen. I bid 2♠. Eric thought that his four trumps and a singleton was enough to raise to game. It wasn’t. I only made three. The field was pretty evenly divided between the game bidders and those who stopped at (and made) three.
When Eric lay down his 4-4-1-4 masterpiece I exclaimed “Wow! Eight high!” I then proceeded to count the pips in the center of of the cards: 17 (7+5+3+2) in spades, 19 in hearts, 7 in diamonds, and 16 in clubs for a total of 59. I told the table that this was the second-worst hand that I had ever seen.
After the hand Victor asked me about it. He was struggling to compute the lowest possible total. I explained that it was three sets of 2-3-4 combinations plus one 5 for a total of 41.
We bid and made one slam, but I thought that we might have bid another on hand #16. Eric, sitting north, opened 1♠. I had enough to bid Jacoby 2NT, but I was determined to take it slow. I bid 2♣. I don’t remember the details, but eventually Eric jumped to 4♠.
If he had shown his diamond singleton, I would have bid 2♠ to set trump. He could then show a club control. I would bid 2NT to show a high spade honor and no more controls. He could then bid 3♠ to show both a heart control and a club control. I would bid 4NT, and after he showed 0 or 3 key cards, I would know all fourteen of his points and have no worries about trumps. I would almost 4certainly have bid 6♠.
Afterwards, Eric asked why I did not just bid 2NT to start with. He would have shown his singleton by bidding 3♦. I would be forced to use Blackwood immediately or bid 4♦. The former is a big non-no with a worthless doubleton. The latter will probably induce him to sign off at 4♠.
I checked the results to see if this would have made a significant difference. We finished in fifth place, which was pretty good, but if we had bid 6♠, we would have vaulted past everyone in front of us, including the winners, who were the only pair that found the slam.
Cindy Lyall called for a “debriefing” meeting of the tournament committee. The only bad side to the tournament was the poor showing of the 499er group on Sunday. I volunteered to ask the director, Tim Hill, whether I could get a file of the results for specific events. He never responded, but I figured out how to “scrape” the web page that provided “recaps” of the events. I shared the information with the rest of the committee.
A big problem for the tournament in August is that no one on the committee wants to act as tournament manager. I remarked at the last meeting that I did not understand why anyone would want the position. I wonder what the other units do.
Since I was no longer on the HBC board, I tried to keep Linda Starr (who was) apprised of the board’s attempt to nail down dates for sectionals in 2025 and 2026. There were conflicts with the HBC’s annual meeting in the fall of 2024.
1. For the first time in recent memory the time for the Sunday Swiss event was moved from 9:30 to 10:00. So we arranged to meet a half-hour later than previously.
2. NETTTS is the New England Tractor Trailer Training School, which was the bane of drivers in northeastern Connecticut. Trucks driven by students are often seen struggling to reach the speed limit on heavily traveled roads. I once saw one that was in the first spot at a stoplight with its right turn signal blinking. When the light turned green the truck executed the turn successfully, but not one of the six vehicles behind it was able to enter the intersection before the crossing traffic had the green light.
3. My opinion was that the 0-500 group needed to be persuaded to attend. The other players merely needed information. Since we were essentially offering the same product as on previous recent occasions, presumably they would come if they wanted to. The phrase “less than” is stylistically appropriate for anything that is not countable, in the sense of 1, 2, 3, not in the sense that rational numbers are countable. Thus, one would say less than $50, but fewer than fifty one-dollar bills.
4. The worst was a 53-pointer that I held at the Simsbury Bridge Club back when I was playing with Dick Benedict.
In the composition of this entry I relied heavily on the minutes written by Ann Lohrand. I took my own notes at every meeting, but I did not save them.
The state of the club in 2021: Because of the pandemic the club had closed its doors in March of 2020 and did not reopen for face-to-face (F2F) play until the summer of 2021. In the interim the club had begun sponsoring online games on the website Bridge Base Online while it continued to pay rent on its headquarters near the border of Hartford and West Hartford. The revenue from the online games did not come close to covering the club’s overhead expenses.
It took several months for the attendance at the F2F games to reach a reasonable level. Only players who had been vaccinated were allowed to play, and they were also required to wear a mask. The quality of the masks was not enforced, but several players complained about being required to wear them. Some players were wary of being in close quarters with others even with the masks and vaccination requirements.
So, as of the autumn of 2021 the club was close to crisis mode. Although there was still quite a bit of money in the bank, the financial people warned that the club’s dues and game fees were bringing in about $2,000 per month less than it was paying in expenses.
John Willoughby.
During the summer of 2021 Trevor Reeves, who was the HBC’s treasurer and the most immediate past president, called me to ask if I would be willing to serve on the club’s Board of Trustees. I said that I would be happy to do so, and I did not mind committing for three years. At the club’s annual meeting, which was held via Zoom on October 24, 2021, I learned the complete list of the people on the board. The other officers besides Trevor were Felix Springer (president), John Willoughby (vice-president), and Ann Lohrand (secretary). There were three returning board members. Roger Pikor had one year remaining on his term. Carole Amaio and Bill Wininger had two years. There were only six board members at a time. Nevertheless, at the meeting Felix announced that four members had “departed” and three new ones elected, all for three-year terms.1 The other two newbies were Nancy Calderbank and Ben Bishop. I knew Felix, Trevor, John, and Nancy pretty well. I was much less familiar with the others.
Carole Amaio.
The board met once a month on a designated Tuesday afternoon. Since I played bridge at the club every Tuesday morning, this was quite convenient for me.
Bill Wininger.
Before the pandemic Felix had asked me to be on the Long-range Planning Committee. This group discussed how to prepare for the loss of any key people, especially Donna Feir, who had been the Club Manager for decades. We also discussed what could be done to improve the club in other ways. The necessity of educational programs was emphasized, and the nature of them was discussed. Use of special games available from the ACBL was a common topic, as well as the mentorship program that I had participated in every time it was offered. It no longer seemed to be flourishing.
Tom Joyce.
I have retained a few distinct memories from the first board meeting that I attended on November 9, 2021. The first concerned the report of the Policy Committee. I had not been aware of its existence. Apparently Tom Joyce and Pat Salve were the driving forces behind it. I had played against both of them countless times, but I had never worked with either one.
They proposed three motions. The first amended the by-laws to allow one board member to be a director. The second delegated authority to create the game schedule to the directors. The third reduced the number of past presidents on the nominating committee from three to two. All three items passed.
Pat Salve.
Evidently the primary focus of the committee was to negotiate a new lease for the existing property or a new one. Although many people supported the idea of finding an appropriate facility, Donna was clearly not in favor of considering the prospect of moving.
John Dinius.
The second thing that stands out in my recollection of that first meeting was the treasurer’s report. In previous years the treasurer’s report at the annual meeting basically just indicated how much cash the club had. Trevor and John Dinius had converted the club’s books to the accrual method. They had also taken the steps needed to be recognized as a 501(c)(3) exempt organization. What impressed me the most was that they had implemented a budgeting and planning system so that they could project the effect of changes in attendance and rates for both online and F2F games.
I also remember giving my own assessment of the state of bridge in general. I was convinced that Covid-19 had seriously wounded competitive bridge at all levels—club, unit, district, national, and even international. To me, however, the real enemy was online play for masterpoints. In my opinion this had broken the link carefully crafted to provide the incentives for advancement to sustain clubs, units, and districts. Trevor indicated that he agreed with me.
Roger Pikor.
I had never had any association with Roger Pikor. In this and subsequent meetings whenever any aspect of the pandemic was mentioned he made us aware of the fact that his wife had some kind of access to technical information about Covid-19 and how it spread. This only bothered me after the third or fourth time.
The Planning Committee, of which I was an original member, had not met since the pandemic closed the club. John Willoughby, as vice-president, inherited the committee and mentioned some topics that needed to be addressed. The focal one was to try to get prepared if we needed a new club manager.
A special meeting was held on December 30. The positivity rate for Covid-19 had risen to 20 percent. After a discussion that lasted for three hours and forty-five minutes. The only decision was to restore the mask mandate with an emphasis on N95 masks2.
2022 began with a Zoom meeting on January 4. Linda Starr, who had kept everyone informed of the club’s activities before, during, and after the pandemic, resigned from her post as composer and sender of emails through MailChimp. Lori Leopold took over that responsibility for a while. Eventually I sort of inherited it until Linda resumed doing it a few years later. In 2025 I was still acting as Linda’s backup.
Laurie Robbins.
Laurie Robbins had already enrolled thirty-six people for an introductory bridge class using an online service called Shark Bridge.
The water cooler leaked over the holidays. It was replaced. An effort to require Pure Health to reimburse the club was undertaken. A new photocopy machine was purchased.
At the next meeting on February 1 it was revealed that Pure Health paid the club $1,000, and Laurie’s lessons netted a total of $1900.
John Calderbank assumed control of the Gmail account that Linda Starr had previously managed.
John Willoughby took over as the club’s Partnership Coordinator, which basically meant that he agreed to play with people who had trouble finding partners. My wife Sue played with him a few times.
The property tax levied by West Hartford will be appealed.
2021 was the 90th anniversary of the club. A celebration that had been planned for the spring was postponed to the annual meeting.
I was unable to find the minutes for the meeting on March 15. Beware the Ides of March.
At the Zoom meeting on April 12 a lot of time was spent on Trevor’s successor as treasurer. Trevor had introduced accrual accounting, which provided the basis for reasonable budgeting. Some people expressed the opinion that it was overkill, but I could see the value.
The property tax appeal was denied, but another appeal was in the works.
Victor died his hair as a birthday tribute to his partner, Sheila Gabay.
Victor King, a Grand Life Master who had occasionally played at the club had been tragically murdered. The Board approved the idea of sponsoring an In Memoriam for him at the Nationals scheduled for Providence, RI, in the summer. . A donation jar was provided for member contributions.
One of my clearest memories of Victor was a 1NT contract that he played against Tom Gerchman and me. Tom had doubled for takeout and Victor redoubled. I passed and his partner, another very good player, also passed. I had eight hearts headed by the ace, king, and queen at the top. I took the first eight tricks, and Tom signaled to me what to lead next. We ended up writing the number 2200 in the PLUS column.
At the meeting on May 2 a good bit of time was dedicated to the subject of decreased attendance, both online and F2F. Some of the pain was offset by an anonymous donation of $5,000.
Donna announced that the membership number had reached 412 and that by table count the HBC was the 33rd largest club in the country. Two or three people had shown interest in the treasurer’s job. My Wednesday morning partner, Eric Vogel, ended up taking the job. The position of bookkeeper was maintained.
My idea of a Bracketed Swiss3 was endorsed by John Willoughby and the planning committee. Unfortunately, I later discovered that the ACBL did not authorize this event at the club level.
The meeting on June 14 was not terribly eventful. The success of Laurie’s lessons on defense was confirmed. There was no meeting in July because of the NABC in Providence4 that was attended by many members of the club.
Felix asked John Willoughby to run the meeting held on August 23. I don’t remember the precise reason for this. Perhaps Felix just wanted to give John some practice.
Even though July was, as expected because of the twelve-day NABC in Providence, a horrible month for attendance, the cash balance was still within sight of $100,000. The discrepancy between Donna’s figure and Trevor’s as to the number of members persisted.
A motion to raise membership dues to $40 for the coming fiscal year was passed. At the same time game fees would be raised from $7 to $8.
A committee was set up to negotiate the lease with Marjam, the current owners of the industrial park in which the club rented space, and to examine alternatives.
A 24-board open game was scheduled to start at 9:30 on Monday mornings.
Felix and Trevor have petitioned West Hartford for a grant to help cover the club’s Covid-19 losses.
Someone set up a Facebook page for the club.
Felix ran the meeting on September 13.
The cash account in the club’s treasury was back up to $100K. It was boosted by lesson fees and donations.
Donna’s final membership count for 2021-22 was 417. This seemed to me an incredibly high number. My gut feeling was that about half of the members from before the pandemic no longer played. That would indicate a membership of about 300. Who were all these people?
John Calderbank and Mary Sullivan, two people whom I had mentored in previous years, presented a plan to restart the mentorship program.
Since the discussion of the honoraria (money awarded by the board to individuals who did extra work for the club) was held in camera, I won’t discuss other people’s opinions. I argued that they all did superb work and were underpaid.
The last meeting of the fiscal year was held on October 18.
Trevor’s budget for the next year projected a $5,000 loss. Donna reported that 290 members had renewed at the new rate.
Fifteen mentors had committed to help the same number of newer players when the next three-month mentoring program started. I was one of the mentors.
The lease committee was operational. Felix encouraged them to be active, but Donna was clearly aghast at the idea that the board was even considering moving to a new building.
The annual meeting was scheduled for October 23. $1,000 was allocated for the luncheon items. Carole was in charge. The meeting would be held at the club, but members could also attend via Zoom.
Someone had been leaving Seventh Day Adventist literature on the table in the back room. This practice was expressly forbidden in the bylaws.
At the annual meeting on October 23 the cash account showed a year-to-year gain of a little over $1400. So, despite all of the hand-wringing, the club had actually prospered under very trying circumstances. The total donations for the year were over $26,000!
The bylaws proposed by the Policy Committee were all passed.
John Willoughby was elected as the new president. Ben Bishop took the VP slot. Eric Vogel succeeded Trevor as treasurer. The new board members were Rob Stillman and Diane Tracy.
The story of my second term on the board is recounted here.
1. Linda Erickson (introduced here) had been the vice-president. She resigned, and John Willoughby, who had been a trustee, took her place. So, three new trustees were needed.
2. Perhaps the most neglected story of the entire pandemic was the Center for Disease Control’s original position on masks. CDC statements indicated that any kind of face covering was good enough. In actuality the N95 masks were proven more effective against the type of aerosols that spread Covid-19 by a very large margin. Once I learned this I wore N95 masks any time that I was in the presence of strangers indoors.
3. A Bracketed Swiss is a team game in which the participants are divided into brackets based on the number of total masterpoints. Usually each team plays every team in its bracket and no teams in the other brackets. I envisioned two of three brackets of six teams each. Everyone would play five rounds.
4. My participation in the planning of this event is documented here. I played in ten of the eleven days. Details of that mostly miserable experience is described here. During the twelve days of the event a great many people were stricken by Covid-19, including four of my teammates and both of the co-chairs of the event.
In November of 2024 two dates were circled on everyone’s calendar. The presidential election that featured Kamala Harris (after Joe Biden was convinced to stay on the sidelines) and Donald Trump was scheduled for Tuesday, the fifth. It was difficult to imagine a pair of candidates any more different than they were. Most supporters of each considered that the election of the other would be disastrous. The experts judged it a toss-up.
The other big day was Thursday the 28th, Thanksgiving. Sue and I had been invited to Burlington, VT, to celebrate the occasion with the extended Corcoran family, but we had felt awkward at the previous such gathering that we had attended, and so we declined.
The last regional bridge tournament on the calendar in New England was scheduled for Monday the 18th through Saturday the 23rd at the Holiday Inn in Norwich, CT. The Nutmeg State had not hosted a regional tournament since February of 2019.1 I had amassed lot of hotel points for IHG, the company that owned both Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza. During the summer I had unsuccessfully tried to use them for the Ocean State Regional in Warwick, RI, in September. No such rooms were available. Since the dates for the Harvest Regional in Norwich had already been published, I immediately reserved a room for all five nights and paid for it with points.
Xenia Coulter.
Abhi Dutta asked me to play with him on the first three days. Jim Osofsky and Mike Heider were looking for teammates for the Swiss team games all week.2 My other three prospective partners were fellow members of the Hartford Bridge Club (HBC). John Lloyd agreed to play in the bracketed pairs on Friday, and Eric Vogel committed to the Get-Away Teams on Saturday.
Xenia Coulter, who grew up in Ann Arbor, attended U-M, and lived in a town near Norwich, volunteered to play with me in the open Swiss scheduled for Thursday. Xenia and I had never played together before. We spent quite a bit of time going over the convention card via email. The HBC scheduled a special game for Veterans Day, November 11. We played together in that event and finished third out of eight, which was worth 1.34 masterpoints. I added Xenia to my list of partners, which at the time totaled 151.
Here, then, is a snapshot of my calendar for early November.
In addition to what is shown above, I also played in my regularly scheduled bridge games on the first two Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays at the HBC as well as the Sunday afternoon game with Sue. I also played in the two Wednesday evening games at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC). In the week before the tournament I played Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (twice), and the following Saturday. All of my preparation was relegated to the remaining three days.
The latest iteration of Covid was spreading fairly rapidly through the HBC. YL tested positive for Covid after the game on Saturday the ninth. Mike Carmiggelt. tested positive after the game on the tenth. I played against YL, but Sue and I did not play against Mike. We both wore masks because we had the sniffles. Other regular players at the HBC who reportedly had contracted Covid were Jim Macomber, Laurie Robbins, Lesley Meyers, and Bill Watson.
Wednesday, November 13: I never felt even a little sick, and by Wednesday my congestion was no worse than usual. However, Sue was much worse. She told me when I returned from the evening bridge game at about 11:00 that she had trouble breathing and could not sleep. I was very alarmed at this development. For the last few years she generally slept with a CPAP machine and supplemental oxygen. She asked me if we had any Alka Seltzer Cold Plus packets. I remembered seeing one in a drawer in my bathroom. I fetched, and she dissolved it in a glass of water and drank it.
I was already in a very bad mood. After playing two nondescript bridge games it occurred to me that I had come to enjoy the game a lot less than most of the other players. Almost everyone talked about the hands at the table, a practice that annoyed me greatly. People made the same old jokes, such as Eric’s “best for last” comment in the last round of almost every session, just to have something to say. I would have laughed if the remarks were original or funny, but I could not remember doing so even once since the lockdown. So, I had become almost completely a silent participant in club games.
Thursday, November 14: In the morning I drove to CBS and bought Sue Package of Alka Seltzer Cold Plus. It seemed to help, but she complained that it tasted terrible. I also picked up some groceries.
I had nothing of great importance scheduled for either the 14th or 15th. I am almost always worn out after the Wednesday night game. On Thursday I planned to go walking at about 2:00, but between shopping, naps and preparing supper, I never managed to do it. I had heard from Charles Schwab that one of my Treasury bills would mature on that day.
Friday, November 15: I sent out an email to the regulars at the SBC at around 8:00. It announced that there would be no more games in November and erroneously stated that the next game would be on December 3, which was a Tuesday.
I also did my cash worksheet for the rest of the month. I transferred a few thousand dollars from the Schwab account to cover the cash needed rest of the year. I discovered that I could not afford any of the T-bills that were available. I decided to buy a CD from Chase instead.
I did not find time to walk on Friday either. For the previous six weeks I had been reading a massive novel, Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle that I had checked out from the Enfield Public Library. It was certainly one of the strangest books that I had ever read. It was published in 1969, when Nabokov was 90. The two main characters, who are siblings as well as cousins, converse in French, Russian, and English, with a little Italian thrown in. The main plot is about their torrid off-and-on sexual relationship, reportedly consummated more than one thousand times! There are also many subplots, and the setting is not on Earth (called Terra in Ada), but a similar place called Antiterra3. Despite the fact that Ada had been on the shelf for fifty-five years, no one in Enfield had ever filled out the little form provided for short comments at the back of the book. I rated it as 8. My comment was “Incomprehensible but awesome.”
I finished Ada on Friday and returned it to the Library. I checked out two new books, Pnin, a much shorter and more light-hearted novel by Nabokov, and Mrs. Osmond, the only “literary” novel by John Banville on the shelves that I had not read. I was surprised to see that Banville had also published a new crime novel called The Drowned. It featured both of his pathetic sleuths, Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford.
Before going to play bridge at the HBC on Saturday I took an antihistamine to assure that I did not need to cough or blow my nose much. I wore an N95 mask. My partner, as always, was Peter Katz.
I played pretty well throughout most of the game. We finished second for the third week in a row.
My most grievous error came on the hand shown at the right. I, sitting West, passed. If the vulnerability had been reversed, I might have tried 2♦. Tom Katsouleas bid 4♠, and everyone passed. Peter led the ♠A. I played my lowest club (encouraging). Peter continued with the king and a third club, which I ruffed.
I neglected to notice that Peter led the 10 rather than the 8. I had to decide between ♥10 and ♦A. Peter had, in fact, asked me to return a heart. If I had, we would have set the contract. It would not have helped us much because the only team that beat the contract also doubled, and we did not.
Sue finally felt better. She fixed Jambalaya for supper, but she complained that she could not smell it. I ate my serving, and I even had dessert. I had been constipated for a few days, but it in no way affected my appetite.
While we ate supper I washed three pairs of bluejeans and one sweatshirt. An hour or so later Sue moved the clothes to the dryer and set it for thirty minutes. I checked them when the dryer stopped. They were all still a little damp. I put them on for ten more minutes, and I noticed that the dryer’s drum was not rotating. I had to hang the garments on the shower rod and hope that they would dry by the time that I left for Norwich on Monday.
Juan Cole was a professor of history at the University of Michigan. His website was called “Informed Comment.” He specialty was the countries of the Mideast.
Sunday, November 17: I woke at around 6:00 on the morning after a good night’s sleep. Michigan’s football team had had its second bye week, and so I did not rush into my office to check the results on the Internet. I tried to think of everything that I needed to do before leaving the next morning for the tournament. Aside from packing, the most important item was to pay Cox Cable and the statement balance on my Chase IHG credit card. I had some tea and a red Delicious apple (4016) while I scrolled through the websites that I checked every morning—The New York Times and Washington Post, Doonesbury and Non Sequitur, Juan Cole, the Onion’s “opinions”, CNN, and Twitter.
I then sent out an email that corrected the date for the next game at the SBC. It was scheduled for December 4, not, as designated in Friday’s email, December 3.
After a while I had a hankering for some Bowl & Basket chicken noodle soup, an envelope of which was surely the best bargain available for $.495. Really! A box with two envelopes still cost only $.99. I always ate two bowls. On this morning, however, I could barely finish the first one. I felt a little woozy and very weak. At 8:30 I woke Sue up and immediately went back to sleep.
When I woke up an hour or two later I vomited. I drove to CVS and bought a box of ten pouches of Purelax, the store brand of polyethylene glycol 3350. I dissolved one in a glass of water, drank it, and lay down. I got up three times to go to the bathroom and each time I had a small bowel movement. I felt much better. However, the next time that I got up I vomited again. There was no way that I could drive to Norwich and play two sessions of bridge the next day if I could not keep any food down.
I called the hotel in Norwich and postponed my arrival until Tuesday. I let Abhi, Mike, and Jim know that I would not be there on Monday. For supper Sue fixed me a piece of chicken, some leftover vegetables, and two biscuits. I had no appetite. I had a few nibbles, but I uncharacteristically left most of it on my plate. I did not vomit.
My negative result is on top. Sue’s positive one is below.
Monday, November 18: I did not rise from bed on Monday, the first day of the tournament, until after 8:00. Sleeping that late was extremely unusual for me. When I woke Sue up she informed me that she had tested positive for Covid. I was not surprised. Her coughs had diminished only a little, and she was still quite congested. She also said that she could not smell the Jambalaya. Her doctor advised her that if I tested negative, I should get the Covid booster and the flu shot.
I ate two bowls of soup. I ate most of a sleeve of crackers over a period of a few hours. I took the second sleeve of Purelax. It seemed to work pretty well. I felt somewhat better, but I had little energy, and I could not concentrate. Although I did not vomit all day, I canceled my hotel reservations and let Abhi, Jim, Mike, John, Xenia, and Eric know that I would not be coming. So, I would be on a “staycation” until at least Tuesday the 26th.
Sue and I watched TV all evening. Our chairs are ten feet apart, and I wore my N95 mask whenever I was around her.
Tuesday, November 19: My energy was better, but I doubted that I could have mustered the power of concentration necessary for two sessions of tournament-level bridge. I slept most of the day, but I had no other symptoms.
In the afternoon I drove to ShopRite and Stop and Shop and bought almost $50 worth of groceries. The most important purchases were the restocking of my personal staples that I had allowed to get very low because I expected to be at the tournament—Caffeine-free Diet Coke, soup, brats, apples, and potato chips.
I tried to schedule an emissions inspection for Sue’s car for Wednesday, but no one answered the phone at The Mad Hatter at 4:45. They reportedly closed at five.
Wednesday, November 20: I tested myself for Covid right after I awoke. The result was clearly negative. Sue spent most of the day in bed, as she had been doing for a week or so. She could breathe OK, but she was still very stuffy and had even less energy than usual.
I drove Sue’s Subaru Forester to The Mad Hatter Auto Repair. Only one other customer was inside, and he was not there for an emissions test.
What a throwback this place was. Three very stoic guys came in and out. The one who took my $20 and key seemed to be in charge, but the other guy who stood at the cash register might have been a partner. There was no one under 40.
I began to suspect that I might have had a very light case of Covid when my nose was running constantly on Sunday. Sue’s case is certainly not light.
The seven remaining envelopes of Purelax.
Thursday, November 21: I still did not feel “regular”. I therefore drank a third sleeve of Purelax.
I made an appointment for a flu shot and a Covid booster at Walgreens at 3:30. However, the questionnaire that I filled in online asked if I had been in close contact with anyone with Covid in the last fourteen days. When I answered in the affirmative, the program said that I was not eligible for the shots.
The pharmacy it the all-brick area to the right of the last awning.
Sue called Jason, the pharmacist at Walgreens. He advised her to tell me to answer the “close contact” question in the negative and to then fill out and submit the rest of the form. Unfortunately, I could not find a way on the web page to add my patient info to the existing appointment, and so I made a new appointment for 4pm.I arrived at Walgreens shortly after 3:30. I explained the situation to the lady at the counter. About ten minutes later she administered one shot in each of my muscle-bound arm. I did not even feel the first one. This was different from the previous occasion in that she did not ask me to wait around afterwards for fifteen minutes to see if I had an adverse reaction, and she never asked for my insurance card.
It rained for the first time in several months, but Enfield received less than an inch.
The heater in my car was not working again. I had tried every combination of settings. Nothing seemed to work. This happened in 2023. On that occasion I took it into Lia Honda. After a few minutes they told me that there was nothing wrong with it. It functioned correctly for the rest of the winter.
Friday, November 22: I slept until 8:10. I awoke after a very vivid dream about driving in the snow. I was behind the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler that contained file cabinets. It crashed because someone tried to get an oversized load through a snow-covered narrow road and got stuck. After the crash someone drove off with my tractor-trailer. Incidentally, I have never driven a truck of any kind. I did drive a pickup in the army. I got into trouble when I moved it without fastening the seat belt. That maneuver involved a journey of less than 50 feet that began and ended in a parking lot. An Air Force captain chewed me out for fifteen or twenty minutes.
Both arms were a little sore when I woke up, but I was in no way impaired.
Sue ordered some food from Olive Garden. I drove there and picked up the bag.It cost a little over $50 with the tip. I parked in pick-up space #6. To my left was space #8. To the left of that was space #7. Go figure.
In the afternoon I received a phone message from Lynn Duncan, a bridge player from the Boston area, asking me to play in the Swiss in Norwich on Saturday. I wondered if a card for me was on the partnership desk. I was probably feeling good enough to play, but I could not risk attending when Sue was sick. She was feeling better, but she still spent a lot of time in bed.
Saturday November 23: I walked six laps (3.33 miles) in the Mall. Santaland was up set up very nicely in front of the old entrance to JC Penney, but there were very few walkers or shoppers. Haven Games was the only place that was busy. I probably could have done the remaining three laps, but I did not want to overdo it.
U-M defeated Northwestern 50-6. That gave the Wolverines a 6-5 record going into the final game with Ohio State. It also clinched a slot in a bowl game.
Sunday November 24: I walked 5 miles outside, two laps of my usual circuit. It was 51° when I started and 45° when I finished. I noticed that the pine tree behind the fence at the corner of School St. and North St. that suffered from the same disease as the one that had blown over in our yard had broken in two. A ten-foot tall stump remained.
It never occurred to me to examine the results from the bridge tournament that I had just missed.
Monday November 25: I walked 4 miles outside. The weather was very nice, but a bit of pain in the lower right section of my back led me to cut off one mile by turning onto School St. from Hazard Ave. Still, I managed to walk 12.33 miles in three days, a post-Covid record.
Tuesday November 26: The staycation was over. For the first time in more than a week I drove on the highway. There was not much sunshine. I resolved to make an appointment for my car’s heating problems when I returned. I was pleased to see that the price of a sausage biscuit with egg at the McDonald’s was still $5.25 (including tax).
Geof Brod.
I played bridge with John C. We did badly. I overheard Sally Kirtley tell Geof Brod that the attendance at the regional tournament in Norwich was not very good. She also mentioned that approximately 90 tables worth of people played in an online regional that ran from the 18th through the 20th. The tournament’s flyer has been posted here. Geof remarked that it had not occurred to him that the ACBL was competing with regionals. This had long been obvious to me. Incidentally, no other district had scheduled a regional during this period.
Just before supper I watched episode 7 of Reindeer Mafia.4
1. I started playing bridge at regional tournaments in 2006. For the next fifteen years a regional had been held in February in Cromwell, CT. One was scheduled for 2020, but only a week or two before the event the Red Lion Hotel was closed by the state for failure to pay taxes. The tournament was hurriedly moved to Sturbridge, MA, that year.
2. The flyer and schedule for the tournament have been posted here. It included no knockouts, and the only bracketed games—in which all participants played against people with similar levels of experience—were pairs games on Friday and team games on Sunday. I intended to complain about this when the Tournament Scheduling Committee reported at the Executive Committee meeting in Warwick in September. However, the TSC presented no report. So, I tried to make my point at the end of the meeting, but no one was paying attention because we were being pressured to play in the evening side game. I was just told that they wanted to emphasize the NAP and the bracketed pairs.
3. Antiterra was described as a sort of inside-out version of Terra. The two calendars were out of kilter a bit. Antiterra had banned electronic technology. The telephone system, which was invented by the deranged aunt of the two principal characters, was somehow based on water.
4. A description of this streamed series from Finland can be found here.
My activities for the first part of 2023 are chronicled here. On May 13 Neil Montague finally succeeded at using MailChimp to send out an email for the New England Bridge Conference! My travails in trying to turn over my … Continue reading →
My activities for the first part of 2023 are chronicled here.
On May 13 Neil Montague finally succeeded at using MailChimp to send out an email for the New England Bridge Conference! My travails in trying to turn over my responsibilities in these and other matters involving communications are detailed here. This was a great relief for me. Some of the emails that I had sent in the previous few months promoted online events that paid gold masterpoints. Each one made me cringe.
On the same day Dan Jablonski finally sent me an email casting the deciding vote in the Weiss-Bertoni award. You can read the details and discover who won the award in this blog entry.
On the 17th I mowed the lawn for the second time. The high pollen content of some areas of the yard made it somewhat difficult, as it has in every May for the last decade or two, but I completed the task without resting.
June
On June 1 I tried to beat the heat by departing for my 5-mile walk at 8:30AM. I nevertheless found it as much as I could bear,1 and there was precious little shade. I noticed that the SmartFuel gas station on the north side of Hazard Ave. near the South Road intersection had closed after only a few months of operation. It replaced the Shell station that had occupied the location for decades. Signs said that it would become a Big Y Express station.
Raveis Realty, located in a house a little bit to the east of of the station, has also apparently one year. A few years earlier a spectacular display of tulips appeared near the west side of the Raveis building.
Zillow’s photo of 2 Park St.
The corner house on Park St. (the street address is 2) is somewhat mysterious. It had appeared empty with no “For Sale” sign for months. I saw two girls there the previous week. It seemed empty again on this occasion.
In the last quarter-mile I was passed by a female walker. I was pretty sure that that had never happened to me before. I did not like it, but I was too exhausted and hot to try to hold her off. My speed and endurance both decreased noticeably as I got older.
It was still very hot on the 2nd, but then it turned much cooler with a misty rain. I attended both days of the sectional in Johnston, RI, and played with Abhi Dutta. Details have been recorded here.
On June 7 forest fires in Canada were causing in the local area thick haze from the smoke. It was quite eerie and absolutely unprecedented, at least in my lifetime. Two days later the air quality still poor.
I learned that day I should have closed my dad’s IRA account at Country Club Bank in Kansas City earlier. There was not much money in it, but it took weeks to get them to send me a check. .Deidra Tossato finally sent me the form fifteen days after I requested it.
The Hartford Bridge Club (HBC) scheduled an individual game for June 20, the first day of of the regional tournament in Nashua, NH. I played at the HBC, but I did not enjoy myself, and I did not score well. My adventures in Nashua are recorded here.
On June 28 I played with two new partners—Jim Macomber at the HBC in the morning and Barb Gallagher at the Simsbury Bridge Club (SBC) in the evening.
On June 29 and 30 my nose ran all day. Despite this I had no trouble sleeping. I had no fever or any other symptoms of Covid-19.
July
I woke up on July 1 after ten consecutive hours of sleep, close to my all-time record. I experienced a little dizziness when I arose from bed, but it disappeared shortly thereafter. I tested negative for Covid-19 using the rapid antigen test that the federal government supplied for free.
Sue’s cousin from Michigan (on the Locke side) was in town. Sue visited with her, but I did not go. We visited her, her parents, and her sisters on our trip to Michigan in 2008, as described here.
Up to nine inches of rain fell in sections of western Connecticut on July 10, but Enfield received hardly any. The weather definitely seemed more extreme in the twenties, but it is still rather mild in southern New England.
The next morning the temperature dropped to 66° at 4:30. It was the first time that it had been below 70° in weeks. It rose to 90° that day and much hotter on the next. There was no bridge game at the SBC on either the 5th or the 12th.
On July 13 at 5:44AM the bookshelf in my bedroom came crashing down. It missed my head by about two inches. If it had hit me, I would have been seriously injured. The shelf disappeared into the black hole of Sue’s “sewing room”.
On July 14 thunderstorms began at 2:30AM. Flooding wreaked havoc in the northwest part of the state. The Connecticut River was 6′ above the flood level. Damage, however, was minimal.
John Willoughby, the president of the HBC, died on July 14. Both Sue and I had been his occasional bridge partner. I worked with him on the Planning Committee when he was the vice-president.
On the following day I heard Steve Jarmoc, a local farmer and ex-politician, on the radio complaining that the flooding in Enfield had caused him crop damage. The land around our house, which was perhaps two miles from his farm, was absolutely dry. Furthermore, Jarmoc mostly grew tobacco—an addictive drug that caused cancer and other ailments. In the previous few years he had converted much of his land to fields filled with solar panels. I seriously doubt that he suffered much damage, and what if he did? Every business suffered occasional setbacks.
I had a horrible bridge day on July 23. Donna Feir reported that the HBC now had 415 members2. It was 89° and sunny when I left after the conclusion of the Board of Trustees meeting. Up to 91° on I-91. By the time that I reached home it had fallen to 68°, and it was raining buckets. I was very relieved to find that there was no flooding in our basement.
August
On August 3 I discovered a document with my notes about the San Diego vacation that Sue and I took with Sue in March of 2006. In the evening I also found a paper bag with flyers and souvenirs from the same trip. I deleted the 1,000+ words that I had previously written about this adventure and started the entry, which you can read here, anew. It was rather thrilling to relive that week.
On the next day I walked five miles in the Enfield Square Mall. A strange new store, Da Money Pit, had opened. They seemed to sell sneakers, ball caps, and sweatshirts.3 The sneakers on display were wrapped in plastic, for no obvious reason that I could see. My “ghost walks” in the mall have been detailed here.
On the 5th the HBC held a memorial to honor John Willoughby. One dog and lots of people, including a surprising number of children, who were relatives or friends of John’s attended.
The next day I learned that Maria Van Der Ree, who was over ninety, had Covid-19. She recovered within a reasonable period of time.
At the HBC John Calderbank and I had a 54 percent game on August 8. That was by far our best performance up to that time. On the next day I scored 58% at the HBC with Barb Gallagher. There was no game in Simsbury because we only five pairs registered to play.
On August 9 the big news was about the devastating fire on Maui. The most destruction was in my favorite town, Lahaina, where 217 buildings destroyed or damaged. The gigantic tree that was the symbol of the town was badly damaged, but there was hope that it would recover.
Mark Oettinger.
On the same day I learned that Mark Oettinger had “resigned” as vice-president of the New England Bridge Conference. I later learned that Peter Marcus and his friends had pretty much forced him out at a meeting of the Tournament Scheduling Committee that I was unable to attend. This news saddened me greatly. I liked and respected Mark.
On August 12-13 I played in the Western Mass sectional in Great Barrington. That adventure has been described here.
On my birthday I played with the woman whom I had been mentoring. Fran Gurtman (introduced here). We did not do well. Sue bought me three shirts and some shorts from Kohl’s. Sue and I ate supper at Francesco’s in Suffield. I ordered Linguini d’Alessandro, which was chicken, sausage, peppers, mushrooms in wine sauce. I really enjoyed it.
On August 23 Sue brought cake to Eno to celebrate my birthday, but she did not arrive until just after 6:15. We had 4 tables.
On August 24 Fran and I had a 52 percent game, which was an improvement of 18 percentage points in our previous game. I made a costly mistake on the last hand.
On August 26 fifteen pairs came to the HBC for the Saturday afternoon game. We played a Swiss with 7.5 tables. It was the biggest turnout on Saturday by far since the pandemic. Peter Katz and I had a 76.1 percent game, by far my best score ever. More details can be found here.
The Ocean State Regional tournament was held August 29-September 1 in Warwick, RI. My adventures there have been cataloged here.
September
September must have been a boring month. The only notes that I recorded concerned the loss of my Costco Visa card from Citi. The details of this remarkable event have been recorded here.
The University of Michigan football team, one of the favorites for the national championship, started the year with five easy victories. They defeated East Carolina 30-3, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas 35-7, Bowling Green 31-6, Rutgers 31-7, and Nebraska 45-7.
Coach Jim Harbaugh did not participate in the first three games because he had purchased lunch4 for a prospective player. Four interim head coaches were assigned. Jesse Minter coached the first game and Sherrone Moore the second. Jay Harbaugh (Jim’s son) and Mike Hart each coached for one half in the third game. A random co-ed could have coached for all three games, and Michigan would still have won them all easily.
October
On October 3 and 4 I moved all of my programs and data files from my Lenovo desktop that was running Windows 10 to the Asus computer running Windows 11. I documented the experience here.
On October 10 I discovered that Windows did not want me to use Shuffling, the Dutch program that I had downloaded to creates pbn files. I did anyway. However, I also received an error in Dealmaster Pro. I had to reconnect the Lenovo box and run it there. This problem was fixed, but I did not record how.
I decided not to play with Alan Godes at the regional tournament in Marlborough. It turned out that he could not play on the only day that I needed a partner. I asked Ros Abel to play in the sectional in Orange, but she was not available. .
As usual, I started my preparation for lunch by boiling water for ShopRite’s store brand of chicken noodle soup. I was shocked to discover that the package contained no noodles at all. I have opened hundreds of these packages over the years, but this had never happened before.
This box in question bore the ShopRite brand, but at some point in the year the store stopped selling the product. A short time later a new brand called Bowl & Basket appeared. The price of a box containing two envelopes of soup was $.99 before the pandemic. As of October of 2024 the price had not changed, and the quality and quantity of the contents remained the same, at least apparently. I could not name another food item of any description that maintained its pre-pandemic price.
I woke Sue up at 6:30AM on October 11: She was scheduled for jury duty in Hartford. She left the house at 8:08. When she arrived she learned that her service was not needed. That evening Kathie Ferguson returned to the SBC on that same evening after a lengthy illness..
Throughout the last few months my car had repeatedly flashed the message that one of my tires was low on air. In the past this had happened once or twice a year. On those occasions I had just brought my car into Lia (without an appointment), and told them about the message. They checked all four tires, filled whichever one was low, and I drove away. The process took perhaps fifteen minutes.
On October 23 I brought it in to Lia Honda again. Because it had happened several times in the recent past, I asked the mechanic to tell me which tire was low. He reported that one of the tires needed patching and told me to sit in the waiting area. After 2.5 hours the work was completed, but the attendant told me that there was a problem with the brakes. I made an appointment for three days later to address this problem, which necessitated spending another few hours in the waiting area.
On October 27-29 the Connecticut Bridge Association held its fall sectional in Orange, CT. The details are posted here.
After only one day of rest I attended the regional tournament in Marlborough, MA. It ran from October 31-November 4. My thoughts about this event have been recorded here.
The Wolverine juggernaut continued with three more easy victories. They defeated Minnesota 52-10, Indiana 52-7, and Michigan State 49-0.
November
On November 16 I sent a recap of the attendance at the sectional in Orange. I have posted it here. The only person who responded to it was Cindy Lyall, who agreed with my assessment.
From left: Jan, the drummer, Peggy, the bass player, and Patty.
On the next evening my wife Sue talked me into attending a concert by the Patti Tuite band at the public library in Ellington. Although I was not crazy about the music, which was mostly blues, I definitely appreciated the skill of the two main musicians—Jan on the synthesizer, flute, and key-tar and Peggy on the alto sax, violin, and harmonica.The band also had a guy on bass guitar and a female drummer. The one number that I really liked was an instrumental with a complex melody that was unlike anything else that they did. Sue liked the entire performance. Patti announced the name of it, but my notes did not record it.
On November 18 I emailed to members of the Executive Committee my attendance analysis for the tournament in Marlborough. It has been posted here. Both of these reports required quite a bit of work because I no longer had access to the ACBL’s files that provided attendance information in a comprehensive fashion.
On the next day Sue and I decided not to drive up to Burlington, VT, to visit with the Corcorans on Thanksgiving. They had invited us much earlier. However, their house would be full of relatives, and we would probably be “fifth wheels.” We felt our of place the last time that we joined them.
On November 22 my Honda warned me that the battery on the fob was low. Over the next two days Sue located a suitable batter. I managed to replace the old one without much difficulty.
November 23 was Thanksgiving. Sue cooked a turkey. We ate our meals on TV trays and tried to think of something that we should be thankful for. I did not record that anything occurred to us.
A very strange thing happened in the last round of the game at the HBC on November 29: Eric Vogel and I were playing against Tom Gerchman and Lea Selig. After the bidding Tom announced that his integrity was intact because his partner Lea Selig bid 6♥, not he. He then disclosed that he had previously overheard Mike Carmiggelt talking about the hand.
I put my cards in the carrier, said “I quit”, got in my car, and drove home. Tom later sent me an email in apology. I replied, “No harm, no foul.”
That same night Ken made many strange bids at the SBC game. He invited to game knowing that we had a maximum of 24 points and only 8 trumps. I recorded that I did not see how the SBC would be able to hold any games in December. I was right. All of the games for the month were canceled.
Michigan finished its Big 10 season with four more victories to finish the regular season undefeated and ranked #3. They defeated Purdue 41-13, Penn State 24-15, Maryland 31-24, and Ohio State 30-24. Sherrone Moore was the head coach on the sidelines for the last three games because Harbaugh was suspended because of a ludicrous sign-stealing incident engineered by a rogue staff member named Connor Stalions.
December
The new month was welcomed by the first flower on the larger Christmas cactus that had been in Denise Bessette’s office. The other one displayed its first flower on the 18th.
On December 2 Michigan shut out Iowa 26-0 in the Big 10 Championship game. It was U-M’s third consecutive win in that game, and the tenth consecutive win for the team representing the East Division. Michigan, now seeded #1, was scheduled to play Alabama in the College Football Playoff semifinals in the Rose Bowl on January 1. There was some controversy because Alabama was chosen to play over undefeated Florida State despite the fact that the Tide had lost to Texas in September.
The temperature on December 15 and 16 reached the fifties. I walked five miles outside on both afternoons.
I learned on December 17 that Eric Vogel had contracted Covid. I wore a mask at bridge all week.
On December 20 the electrical connection for my cellphone’s charger stopped working. I had to plug the cable into a USB port on Asus. This was only a minor inconvenience; Asus has many ports, four of which are in front. I was astounded to learn that Sue had no recollection of my previous phone dying while I was on the 2022 cruise that has been described in detail here. We went to the Verizon store together, and the salesman showed me that the Pixel 2 I had been using was swollen in the middle. He said that it was probably dead. A little later Sue bought me a refurbished Sony Galaxy. I found this lapse of memory quite concerning.
On December 29 I received an mail from someone named Frank Wilson5 asking about downloading a zip or pdf file of Stupid Pope Tricks. I tried to reply to his reply address, fdmw@gmail.com, but it was blocked because the address was not valid. I had no idea what that was about.
On the next day I (and many others) received a shocking email from Peter Marcus that indicated that he was resigning from all his posts in the New England Bridge Conference. This reportedly had something to do with scheduling conflicts with another district”s tournament.
1. At least once in the nineties I ran more than five miles when it was over 100°. When I was in my twenties I considered no temperature to be too hot for any athletic endeavor. Boy, has that changed!
2. It was incredible to me that the HBC did not actually know how many people were officially members. Eventually, I wrote a set of programs that would allow the club to keep track of the membership—dues, contact information, and other things. The story of that system is documented here. The number of members exceeded 500 in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.
3. The store is still open in October of 2024, but in all my trips to the mall I had seen fewer than a handful of customers.
4. This infraction was widely ridiculed by Michigan fans and called Hamburgergate. It was common knowledge that many large programs arranged for players to be paid under the table. By 2023 the NCAA had ceded the rights to the names, images, and likenesses (called NIL) of the players to the players themselves. By the next year some of them were earning upwards of $1 million to play their favorite sport for a few months out of the year.
5. Of course, I immediately thought that this might be J. Frank Wilson, who, with support from the Cavaliers, in 1964 recorded the remake of Wayne Cochran’s “Last Kiss”. It made it to #2 on Billboard.
