Where to begin? It
has been a very full few days and I have quite a bit to share. I suppose the
best place to start is from where I last left off, last Wednesday.
Barry spent Thursday
morning in his lab and office, and then came home in the early afternoon for
our drive up to Tanglewood. Some of you who have been following my blogging
since last summer may recall that we had bought tickets for three James Taylor
performances at Tanglewood the first week of July 2012 that we were unable to
use because I was still undergoing chemotherapy. We also had reservations at a
nearby bed and breakfast for which we had made a deposit of one night’s stay. At
the time, Barry did not tell the owner why we cancelled, but she did say that
if we rescheduled within six months she would honor that deposit. But there was
not an opportunity to do that. Nonetheless, we figured that since we had wanted
to check out this place, we should see if the room was available for last
Thursday. We contacted the owner and explained the reason for our cancellation
last summer, and she insisted on extending the ordinary six month time limit
and considering the room paid. It turns out that her mother had been treated
for lymphoma many years ago, and died only recently of other causes. So we had
a nice place to stay near Tanglewood. Actually it was a very good location
because it seemed to be in the opposite direction of the bulk of the traffic
leaving Tanglewood after the show.
The show was
incredibly great fun, and apparently one of the largest audiences ever
assembled for “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me,” with 8000 folks in the shed and on the
lawn! And they were clearly a very loyal and enthusiastic audience. When you buy
tickets in advance to see a taping of WWDTM, hosted by Peter Sagal, you do not
know who the co-hosts and the special guest will be. The co-hosts last Thursday
were voices very familiar to WWDTM fans: Amy Dickinson, Tom Bodett, and Charlie
Pierce. The guest was something of surprise: the classical pianist Emanuel Ax.
He turned out to be quite a personable and amusing fellow, not necessarily
attributes you expect from a classical musician. He talked about a proposal to
form the Lizzie Borden Trio, with Emanuel Ax on piano, Yo-Yo Ma on cello, and
Anne-Sophie Mutter on violin, whose three names shorten to the phrase Ax Yo
Mutter. He then added that he is not an automatic axe, he is Emanuel
Ax (you need to pronounce this out loud to make it work). Who would
have thought to hear this sort of humor, delivered so well, by a classical
pianist?
After staying over in
the B&B, we wanted to see some Berkshires sites before heading back to New
York. So we went to the Berkshire Botanical Garden, small compared to our
beloved NYBG but actually quite a lovely place.
Then we went to the Norman
Rockwell Museum. We had been there once some years ago, but they had two
special exhibits that were quite interesting. The first was art by Norman
Rockwell’s son, Jarvis Rockwell,
called “Maya, Illusion, and Us,” an interesting exhibit of work
very different from that of his father. This was not our own Maya, of course, whose
name is Hebrew for a spring or brook, but we learned that Maya is (also) a
Sanskrit word meaning “illusion.” The second special exhibit was “Snow White
and The Seven Dwarfs: The Creation of a Classic,” celebrating
the 75th anniversary of Walt Disney’s first feature-length animated
film, released in 1937. Apparently Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney had been
close friends, and Norman Rockwell’s offspring wanted to do this tribute to
that friendship.
We
left the Rockwell Museum in the early afternoon and headed back to New York.
The traffic was quite surprisingly light and the ride went smoothly. We had a
quiet dinner at home. We went to synagogue on Saturday morning, where there was
a guest speaker, Rabbi Jeremiah Wohlberg. The title of his discourse was “Standing
on the Edge of Life and Faith as the New Year Begins.” He told about his
experience last spring of collapsing and coming close to death due to a problem
with his heart, and of the surgeries and therapy that brought him back to
health. His main focus was on the effort to find an answer to why God allows such
things to happen to us. He ultimately reached the conclusion that God is not
determining all of these physical maladies, but rather can be a source of
strength to help us get through them. I am truly not doing this justice, but
what I will say is that I was pretty much reduced to tears listening to words
that resonated so clearly. After services I was not able to speak with him but
I did go over to his wife and chatted with her, and I hope she relayed my
message of gratitude for one of the most uplifting talks I have heard in a long
time. I am going to try and see if I can obtain a copy of this talk to share
with all of you.
The weather is not
great here, and most of our holiday preparations that can be done in advance
are done; we are completely out of freezer space so I could not cook any more
even if I wanted to. So we went to see the film “In a World,” that is playing
at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center and had received very
good reviews. It is a romantic comedy about a struggling vocal coach who
strikes it big in the cutthroat world of movie-trailer voiceovers, only to find
herself in direct competition with the industry's reigning king - her father. It
was written and directed by Lake Bell, who won the Sundance 2013 Waldo Salt
Screenwriting Award for the script. The cast includes a number of familiar
faces, actors whose names you may not know but you have undoubtedly seen in
many other roles. I recognized Dmitri Martin from the 2009 film “Taking
Woodstock,” and Barry pointed out to me that Nick Offerman from the NBC series “Parks
and Recreation” was also in the film.
I received a touching
request from a Pfizer colleague whom I did not know well. Her daughter, who was
born 10 weeks premature with a very low birth weight, is about to celebrate
becoming a Bat Mitzvah. She is trying to put together a collection of pictures
of other premies to show how well they are doing. Apparently another colleague
remembered that I had told him about our first child being very premature, and
hooked us up. So now I have another fun project, to find some old pictures. Of
course, Simmie was born in the days before digital cameras. But for my 60th
birthday celebration, our daughters and sons-in-law had put together a photo
collage Powerpoint presentation, so they had scanned in many old pictures.
Have a nice Labor Day
and back to work and school week.
Love,
Rebecca
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