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On May 16, 1975, Junko Ishibashi Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Tabei only measured 4’9’’ but she was a giant in many ways.   Born in Fukushima, Japan in 1939, Junko Ishibashi’s first mountain climbing experience was on a school trip when she was ten. Although she yearned to do more climbing her family couldn’t fund such an expensive hobby. After completing her studies in English and American literature at Showa Women’s University, Junko joined several men’s climbing clubs. She scaled all of the major mountains in Japan, including Mount Fuji. When she was 27, Ishibashi married fellow mountaineer Masanobu Tabei and the couple had two children. Displeased by the way she was treated by male climbers, Junko founded the first all-female climbing club in Japan. The club morphed into the Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition (JWEE). Tabei constantly flouted the norms in Japan’s traditional male-dominated society but people were still shocked when she headed to Mt. Everest, leaving her husband to care for their young children. Junko personally obtained funding from a daily newspaper and Nippon Television but even those sponsors told her that women should be at home raising children. In addition to the corporate funding, all fifteen team members needed to pay 1.5 million yen (US$5,000) to participate in the expedition. Tabei gave piano lessons to help raise her share. To save money, she made much of her own equipment from scratch- she created waterproof gloves out of a car cover and sewed climbing trousers from old curtains (inspired by Maria Von Trapp perhaps?). Epic Climb The fifteen intrepid Japanese women followed the same route that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Nogay had taken on their historic 1953 climb. On May 4,1975 the team was camping at 20,700 ft when an avalanche destroyed their tents. Tabei was knocked unconscious and was buried under the snow. Sherpa guides dug her out but Tabei could barely walk. After recuperating for two days, she resumed the climb. A bout of altitude sickness debilitated the Japanese team and the Sherpa guides. The original plan had been for two women to scale the summit but the remaining Sherpas could only carry enough oxygen bottles for one woman. Tabei was chosen to complete the historic climb. Despite the team’s meticulous planning, Junko was confronted with an unforeseen hazard as she neared the peak. She encountered a thin, treacherous ridge of ice that had not been mentioned in the accounts of previous expeditions. Junko managed to traverse the ridge sideways and later described it as the most dangerous experience in all her years of climbing. Twelve days after the near-fatal  avalanche, Tabei reached the peak with her sherpa guide Ang Tsering. More than 870 women have reached the summit since Junko blazed the trail.   Not content to rest her laurels, in 1980 Junko began her quest to climb the “seven summits”, the highest peaks on each continent. In 1992, she became the first woman to achieve that feat. Indefatigable In her “spare” time, Tabei wrote seven books and organized environmental projects to clean up trash left behind by climbers on Everest, which has become an enormous problem due the growing number of people attempting the climb each year After scaling the seven summits Taibi set a personal goal to climb the highest mountain in every country in the world.  She also led and participated in “clean-up” climbs in Japan and the Himalayas alongside her husband and children. Tabei was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2012 but continued with many of her mountaineering activities. In July 2016, despite her advancing illness, she led a youth expedition up Mount Fuji. Junko Taibi succumbed to her illness in 2016 but not before scaling the highest mountain in 70 separate countries. As the nuns sang in “Sound of Music”, “Climb every …… Oh, forget it. Have a great weekend. If you are in the Boston area on May 22, I will be hosting the Blue Bunny Book Store’s first ever trivia night. For more information and to reserve a spot at this free event go to: The Blue Bunny Bookstore Trivia Night Tickets, Thu, May 22, 2025 at 6:30 PM | Eventbrite

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On October 7, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died at Washington College Hospital in Baltimore. The forty-year-old author had been found four days earlier in a delirious condition wearing shabby clothes that were not his own. He never regained enough consciousness to explain what had happened to him. Poe crammed a great deal of living into his short life. Born into a thespian family in Boston, Poe’s alcoholic father abandoned the family soon after Edgar’s birth. The boy’s mother died of tuberculosis when he was three.   An uncle sent Poe to Virginia to live with John Allan, a wealthy merchant.  Edgar took his adoptive parents’ surname as his middle name and spent his youth attending schools in England and Virginia.  Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia where he studied ancient and modern languages. However, Poe claimed that the Allans had not given him sufficient money to support himself at UVA. The eighteen-year-old dropped out and enlisted in the army in 1827.  Within two years he attained the rank of Sergeant Major, the highest rank possible for a non-commissioned officer. Despite his success, the mercurial young man requested a discharge from his five-year commitment. After being discharged, Poe oddly decided to enroll at West Point.  Within six months at the Point, Poe was court martialed, a process he initiated by refusing to attend formations, classes, or church. His fellow cadets raised $170 to help Poe move to New York City where he published his first book of poems in 1831. Literary Life  Throughout the 1830s Poe worked as a magazine editor while making some questionable lifestyle choices. At age 27, Poe married Virginia Clemm who was just 13 years old.  The following year he was fired from his magazine because of his excessive drinking.  He became well known as a literary critic but became estranged from the literary establishment when he publicly accused Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism. Longfellow never responded to Poe’s allegations. In 1841, Poe published the short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, a crime thriller featuring detective C. Auguste Dupin. It was the first story of the detective genre and he followed that successful tale with “The Purloined Letter”. Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes credits Poe as a key influence.  Poe then began producing spellbinding short stories including “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and “The Pit and the Pendulum” that place the reader into the middle of the protagonist’s nightmarish experiences. In 1845, Poe became a household name with the publication of his dark introspective poem “The Raven”. Mysterious Death The iconic author’s mysterious death paralleled the type of macabre stories that made Poe famous. Newspapers at the time reported Poe’s death as “congestion of the brain”, a common euphemism for death from alcoholism. Investigative historians have attributed his death to everything from syphilis to rabies. One popular theory is that Poe was a victim of “cooping”, a fraudulent voting practice where victims were drugged and forced to vote for a specific candidate at multiple polling stations. That hypothesis is certainly possible given that Poe’s alcoholism made him easily manipulated and he was found in another person’s clothing. Legacy Where do we start? Poe was the first author of the detective genre and is considered “the Godfather of Gothic Horror.” Science fiction pioneer Jules Verne credits Poe as an important influence and best-selling horror author H.P. Lovecraft hailed Poe as his “God of Fiction”.  Alfred Hitchcock professed that he began making suspense films because of his love of Poe’s stories.  Perhaps nothing sums up Poe’s influence more than the fact that the Mystery Writers of America name their awards for excellence “Edgars”. And, oh, yeh – Baltimore named its NFL team after Poe’s most famous poem. In 2022, “The Pale Blue Eye”, a mystery starring Christian Bale was released and received mostly favorable reviews. Based on a 2006 novel by Louis Bayard, it is a fictional story about a detective investigating a murder at West Point in 1830. Frustrated by the cadets’ code of silence, the detective calls on cadet Edgar Allen Poe to help solve the mystery. Fittingly, the book was nominated for an Edgar.   Have a great weekend.

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Due to some unexpected time constraints this week I was unable to prepare my weekly blog. Fortunately, I was able to find this humorous list of actual complaints received by Thomas Cook Vacations from dissatisfied customers. Suffice it to say I’m happy to be retired from customer service. “They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax.”. “On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food.” “We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.” “We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price.” “The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room.” “We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow.”  “It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallarta to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during siesta time — this should be banned.”  “No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.” “Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers.”  “I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.” “The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide- book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun.”  “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair.” “I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends’ three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller.” “When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners.”  “We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning.”  “It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel.”  “I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes.”  “My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked.”   BTW, if you live in the Boston area, please mark your calendar for May 22 between 6:30-8;30 PM. I will be hosting the Blue Bunny Bookstore’s first ever trivia night. It will take place at the beautiful new TLC Studios in historic Dedham Square. More information to follow.   Have a great weekend.

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In a recent blog we focused on the top ten composers listed in Rolling Stone’s “Top 100 Songwriters”. They were in order: Bob Dylan, Paul  McCartney, John Lennon, Chuck Berry Smokey Robinson, Jagger and Richards, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Stevie Wonder. For the record, Bob Marley, Brian Wilson, and Bruce Springsteen finished just outside the top ten. Any Rolling Stone list can’t be taken too seriously but some of my readers who looked it up online took serious offense to many of the rankings. Here are some of my random observations on the list: #98 Otis Blackwell was a rather unsuccessful performer but his songs “Don’t Be Cruel”, “Return to Sender”, and “Great Balls of Fire” live on.   #88, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill wrote “On Broadway”, “We Gotta Get Out of the Place”, and “You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling” # 87 Khris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar and All-American rugby player wrote “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night”. Sam Cooke should be much higher than #86. He went from pop hits “Cupid” and “Twisting the Night Away” to subtle social commentary- “Chain Gang”. Then, after hearing Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” he wrote about the Black experience in America: the masterful “A Change Is Gonna Come” I never knew that #75 Issaac Hayes wrote  “Soul Man” and “Hold On – I’m coming”.   Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan should be much higher than 71. #61 Jerome Felder/Mort Shuman wrote “Save the Last Dance for Me”, “A Teenager in Love” and “Can’t Get Used to Losing You”. Talk about eclectic: #46 Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff wrote “Expressway to Your Heart,  “Me and Mrs. Jones” and “For the Love of Money”. Bob Dylan said about #65 George Harrison “If George had had his own group…. he’d have been probably as big as anybody”. #44 Jimmy Webb wrote Sixties hits like “Up, Up and Away”, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, and “Wichita Lineman” but his most popular song remains the bizarre “MacArthur Park”. Even Webb commented  “I don’t think it’s a very good song,” # 43 Johnny Cash once said to # 33 Merle Haggard, “Hag, you’re the guy people think I am”. Merle’s 38 Number One country hits include “Okie From Muskogee”, “Mama Tried”, and “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)”. Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia, the writing team central to the Grateful Dead, deserve to be much higher than # 36. #30 Dolly Parton has written a mind-boggling 3,000 plus songs. She has composed more than 20 Number One country singles and still makes mega royalties from Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you”. Before his untimely death at age 22,  Buddy Holly composed many great songs including  “Words of Love” and “Not Fade Away”. The Who’s mercurial Pete Townsend tied Buddy for 29th place.  “You Really Got Me” and “”Sunny Afternoon,” just scratch the surface of Ray Davies’ greatness (#27) #26 James Brown was a masterful arranger and composer. He often created songs on the fly, scrawling lyrics on a paper bag (“Sex Machine”) or a cocktail napkin (“Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud”). # 20 Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote “Jailhouse Rock”, “Love Potion #9”, and “Kansa City”. #19 Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry composed “Then He Kissed Me”, “Leader of the Pack”, and later — Ike and Tina’s “River Deep – Mountain High.” I had never heard of Holland and Dozier but they earned their #15 placement with hits such as “Stop! In the Name of Love”, “Reach Out, I’ll Be There”, and “Heat Wave”. Outrageous Omissions How could the great Warren Zevon be omitted from the top 100? Well, at least “his hair was perfect”. Another omission was the duo of Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield who composed  “Money (That’s What I Want)”, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”, and Elaine Benes’ favorite “War! What is it good for?”   “Absolutely nothing!”   Have a great weekend, If you enjoyed this blog you can find all sorts of music trivia in my book, Get Smarter-Be Amazed. Go to www.tedcurinstories.com to get direct links to Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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Recently, I was standing in my hotel lobby in The Dominican Republic when a staff member asked me where I lived. When I told him Boston, he reacted like most Dominican males do “I love The Red Sox, Big Papi, and Pedro Martinez”. I said that Pedro is my all-time favorite pitcher, but I also love Pedro’s role model, Juan Marichal. Immediately, four other dudes came over and we had a lively discussion about Marichal and the greatest pitching duel in history. Marichal was born in a small Dominican fishing village in 1937. Juan and his friends needed to improvise in order to play baseball. They wrapped thick cloth around stray golf balls to get them to baseball size. Tree branches served as bats and canvas tarps for gloves. Juan left high school to pitch for the United Fruit Company team. When he shut out a Dominican Air Force squad, Air Force officials ordered Marichal to join their team. Marichal was signed by The San Francisco Giants and opened his big-league career by tossing a one-hitter in 1960.  Going into the now-famous 1963 duel, he had a 12-3 record and had recently pitched a no-hitter. Opposing the 25-year-old Dominican was 42-year-old Milwaukee Braves legend, Warren Spahn. Born in 1921, Spahn was raised in Buffalo, NY.  His 363 career wins make him the sixth winningest pitcher in history. He would have been higher on the list, but he enlisted in the army during WWII.  Spahn served in the Battle of The Bulge, won a purple heart and earned a battlefield commission. Both pitchers faced future Hall of Fame hitters. Milwaukee had Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews while the Giants boasted Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Orlando Cepeda.  Two years earlier, Spahn had pitched a no-hitter against the fearsome Giants. Going into this game, Spahn’ record was 11-3 with five straight victories Both pitchers possessed excellent control, a confounding array of pitches, and a high leg kick that obscured batters’ sightlines July 2, 1963 The game was scoreless after nine innings. In innings 10-12, Marichal retired nine straight batters while Spahn yielded only a bunt hit. Marichal begged Giants manager Alvin Dark not to remove him saying,” He’s 42 and I’m 25 – you can’t take me out until that man is not pitching.” Marichal chewed gum furiously to help his concentration. Spahn also chewed gum and allegedly smoked unfiltered Camels between innings.   in the fourteenth, the Giants loaded the bases, but Spahn escaped. The 16th started around 12:20 A.M and Marichal only gave up a single. He then told Willie Mays that he couldn’t continue pitching. Willie said, “Don’t worry, I’m going to win this game for you.” True to his word, Willie homered and the Giants won 1-0. In the epic duel, Spahn threw 201 pitches and Marichal 227.  Spahn spent several hours in the clubhouse drinking beer while Marichal went home and collapsed into bed. The next day Spahn took Marichal aside in the visitors’ clubhouse. Spahn, the winningest pitcher of the ’50s passed on his wisdom to the winningest pitcher of the ’60s. The Dominican never forgot Spahn’s thoughtfulness. Marichal finished 1963 at 25-8, with a 2.41 ERA, His career record was 243-142 with  an eye-popping 2.89 ERA. Spahn became the oldest pitcher to win 20 games, finishing at 23-7, His career declined after 1963 and he retired after two losing seasons. Spahn managed several minor league teams and was the Cleveland Indian’s pitching coach. For many years he operated a ranch in Oklahoma. Warren died in 2003 at the age of 82. The 88-year-old Marichal owns a farm in the Dominican Republic. He previously served as the DR’s Minister of Sports and Physical Education. His charitable works are legendary. Then Versus Now The stamina displayed by the two icons is extraordinary. Today, franchises adhere to limited pitch counts to protect their pitchers. Rarely does a starter pitch nine innings. The average innings pitched by a starter continues to fall and now stands at only five innings per start. That sound you just heard is Ole Warren spinning in his grave. Have a great weekend

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April 5th is the 107th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Sobek, a professional tennis and handball player who invented racquetball in 1950. His new game incorporated aspects of paddleball, squash and handball. The popularity of Sobek’s game sport skyrocketed in the 1970s due to that decade’s fitness boom. Racquetball’s growth was aided by the existence of thousands of handball courts which could also serve as racquetball courts at YMCAs and Jewish Community Centers. As the game became popular, entrepreneurs started building racquetball clubs. By 1980, it seemed like everyone was playing the sport and the Olympic Committee recognized it as a “developing” Olympic sport. By the mid -1980s, investors realized that they could reap bigger profits by converting space reserved for two racquetball players into rooms that could facilitate aerobics classes or exercise equipment. Many players switched to other physical activities. This had a multiplier effect since racquetball enthusiasts started losing their partners.  Finding new participants had many obstacles including high membership costs and the fact that many people prefer outdoor sports. Another challenge was that many novices were intimidated by the speed of the game and potential for injury. The number of racquetball participants peaked at 12 million in the early eighties. Today there are supposedly 3.5 million players but if you find one, please let me know. New Phenomenon The newest craze is pickleball, a sport that is very appealing to former racquetball and tennis players.  Pickleball has less movement, a smaller court and is easier on aging bodies. The sport was invented in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington as a backyard game for children. Joel Pritchard and a couple of his golfing buddies created the game utilizing spare equipment from several sports: a badminton court, paddleball paddles, a net the height of a tennis net, and a wiffleball.  Pritchard’s wife, Joan, explains that “The name of the game became Pickle Ball after I said it reminded me of the pickle boat in crew where oarsmen were chosen from the leftovers of other boats.” Pickleball has been named the fastest-growing sport in the United States for four consecutive years. There are approximately 20 million participants in the U.S, an almost 50% increase from 2023. The 25-34 age group has the most players (4.6M) while seniors over 65 were the second largest bracket (3.8M). Major League Pickleball (MLP) and the Professional Pickleball Association (PPA) generate significant revenue from various television networks including Pickleball TV. Professional players with the MLP and PPA tours collectively earn in excess of $30 Million per season, more than the WNBA and the Premiere Lacrosse League. Contrast those numbers with the ill-fated, once extremely popular racquetball. Unlike pickleball which is played in bright sunshine, television networks found that racquetball didn’t translate to the screen because of the dark, confined space in which it was played. And as if racquetball doesn’t have enough problems, Kevin Klipstein, CEO of U.S. Squash has announced that his organization is going to “quickly and aggressively” cannibalize America’s racquetball courts in order to grow participation in squash. Using pickleball’s current threat to tennis as an example, Klipstein vowed to mount a similar takeover of an existing player base and court inventory. Klipstein stated, “Racquetball once did the same thing to handball” The Survivors Squash is as popular as ever due to organized programs at many high schools and colleges. There are approximately 20 million participants spread across 130 countries. An estimated 1.5 million players enjoy squash in the U.S. And what about the sport that was supposedly supplanted by racquetball? Surprisingly. handball’s popularity estimates are almost identical to those of Squash -an estimated 20 million participants worldwide, 1.5 million of whom live in the U.S. The good news is that if you want to stay physically fit and mentally alert there are plenty of sports from which to choose. So far, I have avoided the siren call of the pickleball court. However, I expect it will be around for a while because unlike racquetball it is outdoors (usually), inexpensive and relatively easy on aging bones. Now if I could only find an alternative to golf! Have a great weekend.   .

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