One last movie....

We drove up to Sharon this morning and plan to spend the week here. We have a lot of plans with our family. Tomorrow Barry and I are taking Eliana and Maya to Disney on Ice. On Tuesday we are taking Joshua to an afternoon Celtics game. I am sure we will all get together on the 1^st. The children go back to school on Thursday but we figured we might as well stay through the weekend, especially since we haven’t been up here for two weeks.

With all those plans, we wanted to sneak in one more movie while we were still on our own, and we went to see “Saving Mr. Banks.” The movie is said to be based on a true story, although I have no way of knowing just how closely it follows the reality. The story focuses on two main characters: P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, written from 1934 – 1988, and Walt Disney, whose children wanted him to make the stories into a movie. The movie flips back and forth between the present (the early 1960s), with Walt Disney trying to convince Ms. Travers to allow him to make her book into a film, and the past, exploring the relationship between the young Ms. Travers and her adoring but troubled father, who lost his battle with alcohol and died when she was just a girl. It was a touching story, although we both found the flipping back and forth a bit annoying after a while and thought a few of those could have been cut, improving the flow without losing the needed details. Nonetheless, it was, as Disney movies always are, quite enjoyable.

Is this a movie for children? It has a PG-13 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America:

G-13 – Parents Strongly Cautioned

Parents are urged to be cautious as the motion picture contains some material that parents might consider inappropriate for children under 13 years.

I can see this as it relates to the father, whose alcoholism is not hidden and whose final decline is painful to watch, even for this adult. Perhaps when the children are older, we will remember this film and watch it with them.   

As I have been writing this, Barry has been listening to some recordings of old NPR programs. And for the past twenty minutes I have had to stop my work on this to listen to a fascinating interview with Graham Nash. You can find it here:

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/15/234683906/graham-nash-has-wild-tales-to-spare

Great listening for all you CSN fans out there!

The temperature is dropping. Stay warm!

Love,

Rebecca

Rethinking old ideas

A friend passed along a link to the article I have copied here. After sharing it with some Jewish friends and reading some of their reactions, I decided to post it here. While I am sure some would disagree, this piece does an excellent job of expressing some of the thoughts I have found myself having in recent years.

I was reminded of these thoughts when our daughter told us that her family went to see The Nutcracker. When our daughters were young, we never took them to a performance or even listened to a recording of this because I thought of it as part of a holiday we did not celebrate. Perhaps I was afraid that they would be too attracted to the festivities and lose the tradition we were trying to instill. So when I learned that two of our grandchildren had gone to see it, I felt both joy (for them) and some guilt (that we never took their mother). The latter, I guess, is a typical reaction of a Jewish mother.

Here is the piece.

An Attitude - and a Kiddush HaShem

Photo credit: Aish

Comedian David Steinberg (an alumnus of HTC) was a regular guest on the old Tonight Show back when Johnny Carson hosted it. He once told a humorous story about how his immigrant father would look out the window on Christmas day and hope it wouldn’t snow. When it did, he would say in resentful tones, ‘They got their White Christmas!’ Carson laughed.

I bring up this story to point out how some Jews view Christmas. They resent it. I can understand why. Until the mid twentieth century, and certainly prior to the Holocaust, Christians were not all that kind to us.  They considered the Jews to be eternally responsible for their god’s death. And Jews have suffered at Christian hands since the founding of their religion. Sufferings like pogroms, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust. The resentment is clear - but in our day misguided. Christianity has had an unprecedented about face in the 20^th century – starting with Vatican II. And their attitude has only improved since then. This includes not only Catholics, but Protestants as well. Especially Fundamentalist Christians who number in excess of 50 million people in this country. I’ve been though all this before. But never in the context of Christmas.

The truth is that in years past, I felt pretty much the same way.  As an American who loves his country and all that it has done for me, my family, and its Jewish citizens I have always felt like I was part of this great experiment in democracy called America. Except on Christmas. During this time of year with all the music, decorations, and “Christmas Cheer” in the air, I felt like I didn’t quite belong. Not that I ever agonized over it, but I did have this somewhat uncomfortable feeling about it.

Over time, I have come to realize that Christmas as it is now celebrated in this country is more about the warm fuzzies of family, big meals, good wishes, and gifts than it is about anything religious. The theme is one of brotherhood, good will, and peace on earth. Perhaps the biggest symbol of this day is a fictional character in a red suit that hands out presents to people who have been good. The religious aspects of this holiday are left inside the church. One hardly ever hears about these religious aspects outside of it.

So when I hear Christmas music now and see the department store Santas, it does not bother me at all. Nor does it bother me when I see a Christmas tree or houses adorned with Christmas decorations (otherwise known as Sukkah decorations, especially in Israel). I think my attitude can be summed up with the following rather famous anecdote. (video below)

During Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan’s confirmation hearings, Senator Lindsay Graham -knowing she is Jewish - asked her what she did on Christmas day. She responded “You know, like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.” 

This really is the kind of positive attitude we should all have. It is not our day and we all do our own thing on it without any sense of being lesser Americans. We ought to respect the fact that the vast majority of Americans are Christians and celebrate this holiday in the most positive of ways. Unlike pre- Holocaust Europe, there is no intent by any of them to blame us for anything. That the world around us celebrates this holiday and we don’t does not mean we are any less American. That is built into the constitution. We ought to recognize that.

In fact I would go a step further. I agree with Rabbi Benjamin Blech who actually sees Christmas as a positive day for Jews. And that we should actually feel good about this day! Even though we have separation of church and state - America is a religious country.  Most Americans believe in God (and the bible to one extent or another). ‘In God we trust!’ is printed on our currency. And as Rabbi Blech points out: 

The United States identifies itself as “one nation under God.” Belief in a higher power has been the source of our divine blessing. And as Jews I think we ought to recognize that today the greatest challenge to our faith is not another faith, but faithlessness. Our greatest fear should not be those who worship in a different way but those who mockingly reject the very idea of worship to a higher power…

Living among Christians who demonstrate commitment to their religious beliefs to my mind is a far better example to my coreligionists than a secular lifestyle determined solely by hedonistic choices. 

I think he’s right about that. It is long past the time to reject all the old notions about the ‘evils’ of Chrstmas and instead be happy that our Christian neighbors have religious values without any of the antiSemitism that accompanied it back in pre-Holocaust Europe. Instead of all those old negative feelings we should be happy that they still celebrate their religious beliefs.

In a somewhat related way, I want to conclude with a Berl Wein ‘Christmas story’ by Jonathan Rosenblum that was a huge Kiddush Hashem.

Rabbi Wein was once invited to meet with the Christian editor of the Detroit Free Press.  The editor proceeded to tell him about his immigrant mother’s experience as as a domestic maid for an Orthodox Jewish family where the father was the president of his Shul. The family had left her to take care of the house while they went on vacation during the Christmas season. 

Not knowing anything about Judaism the young girl noticed that there was no Christmas tree in the house. She was so bothered by this that she ended up spending her own money on a Christmas tree and other decorations for the house - inside and out. When the family came back, they were needless to say shocked by what they saw. How would they ever explain this to their Jewish neighbors?! Here is the rest of the story:

The head of the family entered the house contemplating how to explain the Christmas tree and lights to the members of the shul, most of whom walked right past his house on their way to shul. Meanwhile, Mary was eagerly anticipating the family's excitement when they realized that they would not be without a Christmas tree.

After entering the house, the head of the family called Mary into his study. He told her, "In my whole life no one has ever done such a beautiful thing for me as you did." Then he took out a $100 bill -- a very large sum in the middle of the Depression -- and gave it to her. Only after that did he explain that Jews do not have Christmas trees.

When he had finished telling the story, the editor told Rabbi Wein, "And that is why, there has never been an editorial critical of Israel in the Detroit Free Press since I became editor, and never will be as long as I am the editor."

The shul president's reaction to Mary's mistake -- sympathy instead of anger -- was not because he dreamed that one day her son would the editor of a major metropolitan paper, and thus in a position to aid Israel. (Israel was not yet born.) He acted as he did because it was the right thing to do.

That's what it means to be a Kiddush Hashem, to sanctify God's Name. It is a goal to which we can all strive.

Could not agree more.

Love,

Rebecca

Pet peeve

For all the understanding of the world that modern science and technology enables, I fear that we are losing an appreciation of the English language and the rules of grammar. For years Barry and I had a particular pet peeve that was often heard during conversations with our daughters and their friends. When recalling a joint trip to the mall with a friend, the speaker would say “Me and my friend went shopping” rather than “my friend and I went shopping.” We cannot be sure how much our hounding them helped, but as teachers of young students I am sure they find it helpful to be conversant in basic rules of grammar.

I started thinking about this this morning when we were listening to NPR and heard the host of the show say “join Dave and I for this discussion…” Would I ever ask someone to “join I (or we) for dinner?” If we cannot rely on NPR hosts to use proper English, there is little hope for the rest of us.

My ability to read has continued to improve, although I still require material to be in a large font, and the effort required makes it difficult for me to read very much in one sitting. Today something reminded us that Barry had long ago set up a Kindle account and purchased some e-books, which would provide a good source of material I could use to practice my reading.

It turns out that I had purchased a few e-books during the months before my diagnosis. I have a faint recollection of having done this in preparation for our annual trip to St. John in February 2012. We have always spent a lot of our time there lounging on the beach and reading. But by early 2012 I was having so much trouble reading that I never so much as looked at that Kindle during those ten days. You may wonder how that could have happened without loud and urgent alarms sounding. Believe me, it is a question I ask myself quite frequently. But it is much easier to think this way after the fact than it was before.

This afternoon we took a look at the books we had ordered a couple of years ago. I should probably be embarrassed to admit this, but I do enjoy light reading, and I had long been a big fan of Faye Kellerman’s Decker/Lazarus series. There were two books sitting on the Kindle server that I had never read. So today, after Barry downloaded her 2012 book, Gun Games, onto my PC, where I can view it in large font with my big screen, I was ready to go.  

And then, on the very first page, I read the following (emphasis mine):

They were coming his way: five of them—three guys, two girls—all of them looking older than him by a couple of years but probably still in high school.

Older than him? It is helpful to think about the meaning of this sentence. The narrator is describing five people who looked older than the unnamed protagonist (the “his” at the beginning of the sentence). What Ms. Kellerman was really trying to say was that the five people looked older than this unnamed “he” did by a couple of years. So I believe the sentence should have read

They were coming his way: five of them—three guys, two girls—all of them looking older than he by a couple of years but probably still in high school.

Instead of spending this past hour reading, I spent it venting about this, first to Barry and then in these words. I have finished now. Thanks for indulging my outburst. Now I can get back to trying to read!

Love,

Rebecca

  

More moview....

It is December 25, very little is open and it is quite cold outside. Our grandchildren are visiting their other grandparents this week, so we took advantage of the downtime and saw a couple more movies.

First, we saw “American Hustle.” This movie was loosely based on the FBI’s ABSCAM operation of the late 1970s and early 1980s that investigated public corruption among elected officials. The movie had received excellent reviews, and has been included on many critics’ “top ten” lists for this year. Despite all this, I probably should have known that I would not particularly enjoy this movie. Not only was it quite confusing, it is just not a topic that particularly captures my curiosity. I do remember talk of this operation when our daughters were young, but it was never something that particularly piqued my interest. My feeling about the movie was that it was a waste of what I am sure many would argue was an excellent cast. I just could not get past my dislike of the characters or the story.

So, on a much lighter note, today we saw “20 Feet from Stardom” which focuses on the (mostly female) backup singers behind some of the top singers of the 20^th century. Although much of the music was familiar, the names and faces were not. The music was terrific and uplifting, and the interviews with the stars, which included Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, and Sting, were fascinating and often heartwarming. But as lucrative as music was for these four, the same was not true for the women who provided such an integral part of their sound. The movie left us wondering how some people become big stars, while others who may be at least as talented just never make it. Like so many things in life, while talent and hard work do play a significant role, the formula for being in the right place doing the right thing at just the right time is much less well-defined. Gradually, by the 1980s or so, the role for these backup singers diminished. Although most bands that have succeeded may have a “lead singer” and even a lead composer, more often the lead vocals and composition are shared among the group.  It was an enjoyable, upbeat, and interesting documentary, which I needed after the previous film we had seen.

It being December 25^th, the City is rather deserted today. In the old days, people used to flock to Chinese restaurants on December 25^th because they were among the few open. Kosher restaurants are open, but tend to be quite crowded. But now New York has many other ethnic establishments, including many Indian restaurants, a good number of which are vegetarian. Like many things in Manhattan, they are all clustered together along Lexington between 27^th and 28^th Streets. Seems funny but this is something that has always been true in Manhattan. I can remember years ago being extremely impressed with Barry’s late father: if we needed to buy something, no matter how obscure, he could advise us on precisely where to find it in New York. We tried a relatively new Indian vegetarian restaurant called Bhojan. At first it looks like a little hole in the wall but when you walk towards the back it is a lovely room. Most of the Indian restaurants have similar menus, so we ordered our usual favorites and they were very good.

Stay warm, and enjoy the time off with your families and friends if you have it.

Love,

Rebecca

Time for movies

We will be in New York through this upcoming weekend because our children and grandchildren will be visiting their other parents/grandparents next weekend. We have a list of movies we hope to see, and we were able to get started on that yesterday.

The first movie we saw was “Philomena”. The film is based on a true story in Ireland that begins in the 1950s, as told in the book by Martin Saxsmith, Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search. Philomena was a sixteen year old high school student who became pregnant. Apparently it was not uncommon in those situations for girls to be sent off to live through their pregnancies and deliver their babies in convents. To “pay” for this, they were forced into menial labor at the convent for five years, and to sign a contract agreeing never to inquire into their children’s whereabouts. When the babies were born, the mothers were given limited access to them until they were adopted and simply taken away, often with no prior notice to the mothers. This part of the story is told in flashback. When we meet Philomena, she is looking for the baby boy she had been given up over 50 years earlier. Against all odds, and with an amazing amount of what you might call righteous dishonesty from everyone involved in the separation of mother and baby, she does eventually find her son while somehow maintaining a great deal of dignity and grace, even forgiveness. The movie, while portraying a rather dark subject, has some very light and funny moments.

Like all such stories, we watch this in 2013 through rather different lenses than the ones worn by those who lived during the period this occurred. It is simply inconceivable to us that there could be such a cruel separation of babies from their mothers. But I have to keep telling myself that it was a very different time and place, one we cannot appreciate through today’s definitions of good and bad. The nuns were not completely evil, although it becomes clear that there were financial benefits to the church from these arrangements, with the usual rules of privacy being bent for the “right” people. 

The second movie we saw was “Her.” We had seen previews for this movie quite a few times, and it seemed like a charming film, precisely what I was looking to see. I just re-watched the movie trailer (attached here), but now I am seeing it from a different perspective. While the film has many light moments, it is definitely neither a fluff piece nor a romantic comedy. In fact, it is a thoughtful look at relationships: what we seek in them and what makes them work.

The movie is set in California at an undefined future time, perhaps 10-20 years from now. Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is a young man who works as a sort of ghost writer, writing letters for people who have things to say but apparently cannot either say or write the words themselves. His wife has left him, and he is living a rather sad and lonely life when he learns about and begins running a new operating system on his computer and phone; imagine the voice of Scarlett Johannson as a sort of “Siri - plus,” who greets him in the morning, chats with him throughout the day, and has deep conversations with him at night, and you can see how his relationship with the voice quickly becomes romantic.  Manohla Dargis described this well in her New York Times review:

At once a brilliant conceptual gag and a deeply sincere romance, “Her” is the unlikely yet completely plausible love story about a man, who sometimes resembles a machine, and an operating system, who very much suggests a living woman. 

You know that this has to unravel, but I do not want to give away just how that happens. The end of the movie does not really tell you what the future will bring to Theodore and his (human) friend, Amy (played by Amy Adams, who is making more movies than would seem humanly possible), who also has one of these operating systems. Watch the trailer, and if you have a chance, go see the film. 

The temperature is dropping today; looks like our last brief flirtation with summer will be ending shortly. The heavy rain we have been having all day could have been snow, so it’s not so bad.

  

Love,

Rebecca

Settling in for a quiet weekend

We will be spending a quiet weekend in New York this week. Barry’s dental work went fine, but he is still recovering. I pureed the vegetable soup I had made a couple of days ago and that turned out to be delicious! I think I will serve it that way in the future.

I started a new project yesterday. Somehow, although I cannot for the life of me figure out how I managed to do something this stupid, I no longer have electronic versions of the pictures we took of our grandchildren from 2004 when Joshua was born through 2006. But I have literally hundreds of printed photographs, all in order, in three large albums that hold four 4x5” pictures in plastic sleeves on each page. My plan is to select a representative sample and scan them in. Yesterday, just to see how this would go, I scanned in a few. This in itself is not so simple, because if the picture is sitting on the glass just a bit crookedly, it is very hard to get the image straightened out on the page. I know you can rotate the image, but then you end up having to cut off a bit, and somehow it is difficult to get it just right. So after a few tries I had four pictures that I loaded onto Shutterfly and I started a book. The pictures don’t look quite as crisp as the pictures we have electronically do. Barry pointed out to me that I could try to increase the resolution on the scans. Unfortunately, when I tried to do just one picture, after being tied up for many minutes, an error message popped up and said that it could not do it. So I may just have to settle for the fuzzy images, which is odd when the images in my head are so clear!

I have another project upon which I hope to embark. Recently, one of my sisters took all the old home movies our father had taken while we were growing up and transferred them to DVDs. I am looking forward to sharing these with the grandchildren. Meanwhile, when Simmie was a baby, Barry and I bought a video camera that was advanced as home movie cameras were back in the 1970s. There are 27 reels in all, and at 3 minutes each that is almost an hour and a half: stay tuned for this at Sundance! Unfortunately, only about half are labeled. The images on the Super 8 tapes are very tiny, so there is no way to look at them and know what they are. If I send them off to one of the services that can transfer them onto a DVD, I have no good way to put them in chronological order. I’m still scratching my head about this one. If anyone has any suggestions they would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile, it looks like there will be one last blast of relatively warm weather this weekend before winter finally comes to stay. Maybe not warm enough for the Botanical Gardens, but at least not so wickedly cold!

Be well and have a nice weekend.

Love,

Rebecca

  

At last, a Final Jeopardy I knew!

In the category of Children’s Literature, last evening’s final Jeopardy answer was:

Joy, Nellie, and Aranea are three of the many children of this title character.

I knew this one almost immediately. Here is a recording of the author reading the last chapter of the book.

We watched the 1973 animated version of this book, which featured the voices of Debbie Reynolds as Charlotte and Henry Gibson as Wilbur, many times when our daughters were young. In the acknowledgements included in my PhD dissertation, I paraphrased the closing line of the book

She was in a class by herself. It is not often someone comes along who’s a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.

and wrote of my PhD advisor

He was in a class by himself. It is not often someone comes along who’s a true friend and a great statistician. Randy was both.

At the risk of embarrassing him, Randy has been a true friend and a great statistician for almost 30 years.

Love,

Rebecca

Are we sure it's not winter yet?

In February of this year, I posted a Judy Collins song called “The Blizzard.” We again find ourselves in a blanket of white. So I was not surprised when I began humming that beautiful song Monday as we drove back through wooded areas of Connecticut that “sparkled like diamonds.” It truly was a magnificent sight.

Again this week I had to skip my music class! I am afraid I have not learned all that much about Beethoven this term. We will not meet for the next two weeks, which leaves just one more session for this term in early January. The weather so far does not bode well for that session. Who says winter starts on December 22^nd? If all that white covering our yard is not winter, I fear what lies ahead!

But finally today the weather is showing signs of improvement. It is sunny outside and the temperature is headed to above freezing. Meanwhile, I made a big pot of vegetable soup, motivated by the weather and by the anticipated need following some dental work Barry is having this week.

At the end of the day we went to see the movie “Nebraska.” Woody Grant (played by Bruce Dern) is an older man whose brain is on the decline. Woody receives a letter telling him that he has won one million dollars in a sweepstakes which he must claim in Lincoln, Nebraska. Although his wife and two grown sons try to explain to him that this is not for real and beg him not to go, he refuses to believe them and begins making his way to Lincoln from his home in Montana. His younger son David (played by Will Forte, who some of you may remember as one of the Saturday Night Live regulars from 2002-2010) decides to join his father on this journey, primarily to try to help keep him safe.  

Along the way, they stop to visit Woody’s brother and sister-in-law and their two sons, and see many of Woody’s relatives and old friends. When they hear that Woody is traveling to claim his prize, one by one they begin making demands that he help them financially, even making up stories of how he “owes” them for money they in fact never gave to him. Eventually, the extended family and friends find out that Woody has fallen for a scam. Woody and David make it to Lincoln, and Woody must finally accept what has happened.

The movie was shot in black and white. There are no beautiful scenic vistas here; only a bleak open countryside filled with poor and unhappy people who might as well be living in the early 20^th century rather than the early 21^st. The ending is not quite as dark as this all sounds, but I do not want to spoil it for any of you who might have a chance to see this film, which we heartily recommend. The acting was superb. Bruce Dern makes Woody seem very real, and June Squibb (not at all a familiar face to us) is excellent as Woody’s wife, Kate. What makes this movie so compelling is the Bruce Dern character, Woody. Although there were some plot twists and circumstances that seemed contrived, Woody reflected a very real situation with which many families must deal.

If you are reading this on Wednesday evening before 9 pm on the US East Coast, you can tune in to a live 20-minute internet David Roth concert by clicking here

 Concert Window

Have a nice evening!

Love,

Rebecca

Our own modern family

We had a wonderful weekend, and got to spend lots of time with the children. Ella came over for dinner and a sleep-over on Friday night, and we even prepared something other than macaroni and cheese – blintz soufflé - that she liked! We bought food from the new kosher deli near Sharon and had Simmie and family for Sabbath afternoon. Then we stayed through Sunday and made dinner for the ten of us on Sunday evening. After dinner, we played with some of the gifts we had not had a chance to give the children during Chanukah. While Joshua played with his newest HexBugs set with Barry and Eliana, Ella and Maya helped Ronen and me put together a bed we had bought Maya for her American Girl doll. These girls know how to handle a screwdriver far better than their grandmother does! I’ve attached some pictures here.

One of the things we made last night is a very simple and yummy dish from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant called Saffron Butterflies (which sounds even better in Italian, Farfalle allo Zafferano). When we were packing to leave this morning, I found half of a half-pint container of cream in the refrigerator. I was puzzled by this, because we had doubled the recipe for the butterflies, which called for ½ cup of cream, so we should have used the entire container. It turns out that when Barry added the cream, he forgot that we were doubling the recipe. Fortunately he had remembered doubling the other ingredients, so it was still delicious. But I thought that it seemed a bit less creamy than I had remembered it. So note to family: we have to do this again soon!

Having all ten of us for dinner, with so much going on afterwards, brought to mind a television show of which we have become huge fans: Modern Family. For those who have never watched this show, let me fill you in. Jay Pritchett, the head of the family, is married to the gorgeous and much younger Gloria, who has a precocious 12-year-old son, Manny, from her first marriage, and she and Jay have now had a baby boy together. Jay has two grown children from his first marriage, Claire and Mitchell. Claire and her husband, Phil, are the parents of three kids with whom they want an open, healthy, honest relationship: Haley, a teenage daughter who's growing up a little fast, Alex, a too-smart-for-her-own-good middle daughter and Luke, a scatterbrained boy. Mitchell is raising an adopted daughter, Lily, with his long term partner, Cameron. Don’t worry if you did not catch all that, you will not be tested! I have a hard time remembering all the names but once you get to know these characters they do grow on you.

Like most television situation comedies, the antics of this clan are somewhat contrived and not especially believable. While the warmth of the interactions between these family members does feel believable, in real life it takes work to make that happen. There are significant differences in outlook and personality among the family members, but they are tied together by a collective force that is far greater than any single one of them. As parents of grown children, and grandparents of growing-up-so-quickly grandchildren, this is what we are hoping to achieve. And I think it is that feeling that has me hooked on this show. We are grateful to our friends Michal and Manny for telling us about it. Our timing was fortunate, because a variety of cable channels are showing all the old episodes, albeit in scrambled order. We have over 40 on our playlist at this point!

This is the time of year that I begin to wonder if it might be time to start thinking about relocating to a warmer climate. I guess this weather is the price I have to pay to be close to our children and grandchildren and continue my love affair with New York.

Have a good week and stay safe and warm!

Love,

Rebecca

 

Points of view

This video was posted on Facebook by a friend whose sister is undergoing treatment for a difficult-to-treat cancer. In the same way I attempt not to spoil movies, I do not want to bias your reaction to this, so for the moment I will hold my thoughts. But I would be curious to hear some points of view.

Have a great weekend.

Love,

Rebecca

Old memories, new memories

Visiting with my mother and sister dredged up an old memory. Actually, it was Barry who reminded me of this incident, which occurred shortly before I left for college.

I was the second of five children. When I graduated high school at 18, my older brother was almost 20, and my younger sisters were 15, 12, and 5. Our family had moved from St. Louis to West Hartford, Connecticut during the summer before my senior year. This move forced me to give up my friends, my top-10 high school academic rank, and many extracurricular activities. Despite this, I managed to have a pretty good senior year and made many new friends.

On a Sunday just after graduation, my parents planned a family day trip to the Catskill Game Farm, a zoo in upstate New York that has since closed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catskill_Game_Farm).

My brother and I, and perhaps my 12- and 15-year old sisters as well, were a bit old for this sort of thing, but I would have gone along willingly if not for the fact that one of my friends was hosting a big graduation party that day to which everyone was going. I can still remember the pleas and the tears. But my parents were insistent that I go with the family.

I remember very little of the place because, although I am sure it was lovely, and I might have enjoyed being there with my little sister had the timing been different, I refused to enjoy it. But clearly the memory of that day stuck with me so strongly that over a year later, when Barry and I started dating, I was still talking about it.

Barry and I were reminded of this because we were thinking about taking the family to a performance of Disney on Ice during the winter break. But we recognize that Joshua is probably a bit old for these sorts of activities now. He might be much happier getting together with friends than going to a show clearly targeted at younger children. This is exactly how it should be: children grow and their interests change, and we parents and grandparents have to shift our plans and expectations. We see this on a regular basis during our visits to Sharon. These days, the children’s plans with their friends often trump whatever the rest of the family is doing. This is especially true for the Sabbath daytime meal after synagogue, when the older children often invite friends or are invited to their homes. Although the selfish part of me misses having them around the table, I am thrilled to see that they are so popular!

Barry and I have had an ongoing discussion about this for a couple of years now, wondering if at some point our going to Sharon so frequently might not make as much sense as it did six years ago when we started spending most of our weekends there. Maya is only 5, so we had decided to table this discussion for another year or two. But as it turns out, we hope to table it for much longer. Some of you already know why: our daughter Dina and her husband Aaron are expecting a third child at the end of March. We are excitedly awaiting this new addition to our family.

It is quite cold outside, but I have an appointment with my pulmonologist today so I will be venturing out. I finally get to use the new scarf that Barry bought me when he was in the UK, along with the new wine-colored LL Bean Mad Bomber hat I bought to match it.

Stay warm!

Love,

Rebecca

Name that image

Other than my last quick “do not fear, I have not fallen off the planet” posting, it has been about a week, and a varied and busy one, since I last wrote.

We managed to squeeze in two movies last week. The first was “Dallas Buyers Club,” about the early days of the AIDS epidemic when, anxious to do anything and everything to extend their lives, patients mobilized and tried to take things into their own hands to obtain drugs that had not been approved for sale in the United States. I was interested in this film because when we moved to New York in 1991, my first job was at Lederle Laboratories where I was assigned to work on a new antiretroviral that was in the first stages of development. There was enormous excitement about this project, that this drug would be both more effective and less toxic than the only approved drug at that time, AZT. We got the trials up and running quickly. I had the opportunity to work with a terrific team and to attend fascinating meetings, many of which were attended by vocal AIDS activists. But about 8 months in, there were three deaths among patients in the trial. The patients were all late-stage AIDS patients, but there was concern that the drug was not working as had been hoped, was more toxic than had been anticipated, or perhaps both. While the jury remained forever out on precisely what caused these deaths, there was a decision to discontinue the development of the compound. It was just around that time that, by coincidence, I heard from someone at Pfizer, and the rest, as they say, is history. Still, it was a wonderful introduction to an exciting area of drug research. Some years later, a number of former Lederle colleagues ended up at Pfizer following a merger and reorganization.

A small afterthought to this story I have just told. You may be amazed, as I am, that someone who can barely remember what day of the week it is remembers this trial from over 20 years ago in such excruciating detail. This will remain forever the biggest mystery of this whole experience.

But back to the present…the movie was excellent, although intense and somewhat painful to watch. The acting was superb. There may well be some Academy Award nominations from this one.

The second movie we saw was “Inside Llewyn Davis,” the newest feature from the incredibly prolific Coen Brothers. This movie is supposed to be somewhat loosely based on folk singer/songwriter Dave Von Ronck, but can likely be viewed as a composite of many such artists who lived from hand to mouth trying to make music in the early 1960s. The movie told the story of a reasonably talented musician who could not quite get his act together sufficiently to be successful, and was ultimately so self-destructive that he even passed up an opportunity to join a group that clearly was intended to represent Peter, Paul, and Mary. The music was fantastic, and the audience were given free CDs of the soundtrack when we purchased our tickets. Growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis through the 1960s, this world is rather foreign to me. But Barry went to Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan in the 1960s, so the gritty streets of the Village are very real to him. I don’t know if there will be any recognition from the Motion Picture Academy, but Oscar Isaac, who plays Mr. Davis, was quite good. John Goodman, F. Murray Abraham, and Justin Timberlake are also in the film.

We had a quiet Friday evening and had Sabbath lunch at the home of friends who had also invited some other friends from our Riverdale circle. As so often happens on the short Sabbath afternoons of winter, we ended up talking and talking until Sabbath was over. The food was yummy, the company enjoyable, and the time just flew past.

Saturday night we finished packing and tried to get to sleep early because we had an early flight on Sunday. We flew down to Florida to visit my mother and sister who live there. My mother is no longer able to travel, and we had not been down to visit since the family Disney World trip in June of 2011, having been a bit preoccupied through much of 2012. It was good to have the chance to visit.

We were scheduled to fly back to New York late Monday morning. We started hearing about the terrible weather that has been moving up the East Coast for the past few days. But fortunately, our plane took off, albeit about an hour and a half later than scheduled, and the flight was less turbulent than we expected. As we started our descent, it was clear that there was a thick cloud cover over the City, but suddenly I saw something sticking out from under that blanket of white puffy cotton. Barry managed to snap a photograph with his iPhone. You can click on the image to make it larger and more clear. Can you see what it is? How cool is that? It was a delightful ending to a hectic few days.

It is snowing as I write this. Stay warm and dry!

Love,

Rebecca