Waking up those neurons....

Barry reported for jury duty on Monday morning at the Bronx County Courthouse. The first case for he was called as part of a group of potential jurors involved medical malpractice. As soon as he said that he is a radiation biologist who has provided expert testimony in lawsuits relating to injuries from radiation therapy, they excluded him, but told him he had to come back on Tuesday. On Tuesday he was considered for a dispute involving an automobile accident and again, when they found out what he does, they excluded him. At the end of the day they gave him his walking papers and sent him on his way. Yeah! There is a part of me that feels a bit guilty about celebrating this. But, from a perfectly selfish perspective, having sat here with limited communication for two whole days, I was ready to have him back!

The music class I am taking this term is primarily focused on the works of Beethoven. Typically, the instructor, Louis Rosen, first lectures on the structure of the piece, sometimes playing brief segments to demonstrate his points, before having us listen to the entire piece. Sometimes he will do this one movement at a time, alternating lecture with listening.

This semester the focus is on Beethoven, and yesterday the topic was Symphony No. 6 in F major, known as the Pastoral Symphony. He presented his commentaries before playing the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd movements; the 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th run together without real breaks. As soon as he started playing the recording of the first movement, I knew this one was very familiar, but for the life of me I could not remember why. Even his explanations sounded vaguely familiar, and I was beginning to wonder if somehow he had discussed this in another class during the past year. But that seemed unlikely because last spring and summer focused on Haydn and Mozart.

When Barry picked me up, he asked, as he always does, what we studied. And I started humming the beginning of the first movement of Symphony No. 6. He immediately said “we heard that at Tanglewood this summer!” And lo and behold, he was correct, I wrote about it on the 12^th of August:

On Sunday….Barry and I had tickets for a concert at Tanglewood. The weather was just amazing – bright sunshine and comfortably warm with low humidity. It was an all-Beethoven program:

The Boston Symphony Association of Volunteers Concert

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Christian Zacharias, conductor and piano

ALL-BEETHOVEN PROGRAM

Coriolan Overture

Piano Concerto No. 2

Symphony No. 6, Pastoral

Why did last night’s lecture sound somewhat familiar? Because we had arrived early at the Tanglewood concert and I spent some of that time sitting on the Great Lawn trying to read the program notes. 

I must have managed to absorb a bit of the notes that day, because a number of things Louis said sounded quite familiar. In any case, one or both of the following are true:

1.  My memory is improving

2. The memory of music is in a different part of the brain than the memory of today’s date or how many teaspoons of basil are called for or where I left some important document

Either way, it was very reassuring to see this small glimmer of improvement.

I spent a good part of yesterday with the Pulmonary Rehabilitation group at Mt. Sinai. They have only so much space in their facility and there is a waiting list, so this may not start for a few months. It is a rather demanding program but I hope it will help me to regain some strength and balance.

We had been planning to go up to Sharon this weekend but I woke up this morning with a bit of a sore throat so we are going to stay put here in New York. It is just as well that the friends we had tried to invite (at the last minute because of the uncertainty around Barry’s jury duty) were not free this week. We will be here next weekend as well, because we have tickets for The Eagles “History of the Eagles” concert at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night.

Enjoy your week!

Love,

Rebecca