My blogging history:
2012: diagnosed with and underwent treatment for Primary CNS lymphoma in my brain.
2012-2013: blogged on Caring Bridge.
2013: moved to Blogger.
2017: diagnosed with bladder cancer and blogged through 14 chemotherapy treatments and 37 sessions of radiation therapy, each with its own t-shirt and musical selection.
2018 to February 2020: Treated every 3 weeks with pembrolizumab for spread of bladder cancer to lymph nodes. As of June 2020, continue to be cancer free.
Sometimes it happens that you read or hear or see something
that is shockingly on the mark for how you
are feeling at the moment. My dear friend Ellen sent me just such a piece
yesterday.
TODAY
WAS THE ABSOLUTE WORST DAY EVER
AND
DON’T TRY TO CONVINCE ME THAT
THERE’S
SOMETHING GOOD IN EVERY DAY
BECAUSE,
WHEN YOU TAKE A CLOSER LOOK,
THIS
WORLD IS A PRETTY EVIL PLACE
EVEN
IF
SOME
GOODNESS DOES SHINE THROUGH ONCE IN A WHILE
SATISFACTION
AND HAPPINESS DON’T LAST
AND
IT’S NOT TRUE THAT
IT’S
ALL IN THE MIND AND HEART
BECAUSE
TRUE
HAPPINESS CAN BE ATTAINED
ONLY
IF ONE’S SURROUNDINGS ARE GOOD
IT’S
NOT TRUE THAT GOOD EXISTS
I’M
SURE YOU CAN AGREE THAT
THE
REALITY
CREATES
MY
ATTITUDE
IT’S
ALL BEYOND MY CONTROL
AND
YOU’LL NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS HEAR ME SAY THAT
TODAY
WAS A GOOD DAY
Now reread
the passage line by line from bottom to top
Of course we cannot turn everything into daffodils and
butterflies, but perhaps trying to see the good things more clearly is not such
a bad idea.
The sadness of the last few days kept me from writing about
something happy that occurred last week. After we took the girls to see “The
Nutcracker Suite” in Boston on Sunday the 14th, my original plan was
to stay in Sharon while Barry went back to New York for a few days. On Saturday
evening after Sabbath, we ran out to a small nearby toy store to pick up a few
additional Chanukah gifts for the children. I had my walker, and had put my
purse and my oxygen in it while I went around the store. After Barry paid for
the toys and we headed out to the car, I suddenly realized my purse was not
sitting in the walker. Barry frantically ran back into the store and looked all
around, but it was nowhere to be found. We drove back to our apartment,
thinking maybe I had not taken it in the first place. No luck. We returned to
the store and it had not been turned in.
We went back to our apartment where Barry got on the phone
and had my cell phone disconnected and cancelled all of our credit cards. Instead
of my original plan to stay in Sharon, I returned to New York with Barry on
Monday morning so that I could go through all my files and get busy
reconstructing my life. We spent the following few days shopping to replace
items and ordering replacements for the contents of my wallet and purse,
including rather expensive orders we were forced to place to change the locks to
our house and on our new car. We had done all we could on Thursday so we
decided to drive back up to Sharon to salvage what we could of Chanukah with
the children. Somewhere in there I even managed to make potato latkes, both plain
and spicy sweet potato, and was determined to share them with the family.
At some point after we settled in to our Sharon apartment, I
picked up the phone to check voice mail. The first two messages were from a
friend who had ultimately reached me in New York. I assumed the third was
likely a robo-call since we seldom use that phone. Fortunately I had the good
sense not to push the “delete” key too quickly. The caller was an employee of
the supermarket that is in the same strip mall as the toy store, and she believed
she had found my purse. We were incredulous! Of course I dropped whatever else
I was doing and called the supermarket. They were quickly able to confirm that
I was the owner of the purse that had been found.
We practically flew over to the store. When they handed me
the purse, I immediately started going through it. Here is where the story
becomes quite odd: the only thing that was missing was a pair of prescription
sunglasses, an old pair that needed to be replaced anyway. All of the money,
all of the credit cards, all of the IDs, everything was there.
Here is our theory. While at the toy store, we both noticed
a group of teenagers roaming around. It is a small store that stocks toys
primarily for babies, toddlers, and elementary school children, and seemingly does
not have security cameras. To see teenagers milling around struck us as a bit
odd, but we didn’t think much of it until after this happened. Barry wondered
if perhaps one of them grabbed my purse on a dare, just to prove that she
could. We will never know.
Lesson #1: couples should not both carry all the same credit
cards. Since we had always done that, we were left without any credit cards for the few days it took to receive a new one. As
the replacements have arrived, we are each taking different ones. Lesson #2:
try to keep track of every automatic payment you have linked to a credit card,
so that you can enter the new credit card number when you receive it. Moral of
the story: we really do depend quite heavily on credit cards!
Whether you are on winter break, have snow or rain, or are
celebrating a holiday, just be safe and warm and well!
Due to the wonders of modern technology, we joined a few
hundred others yesterday for an on-line simulcast of the funeral service for
Cookie, may she rest in peace, in Sharon. Although it was a bit of an odd
feeling, and without a doubt we would have preferred to be there in person had
we been able, this was a heartwarming use of technology.
Perhaps as a distraction, last night we settled down for our
daily “Jeopardy” fix and were completely shocked to see that one of the contestants
was Avishai Gebler, a son of Cookie, may she rest in peace, and her husband
David. I know the shows are filmed well in advance, and the participants must
be sworn to some high level of secrecy, so we had no idea he had been a
contestant. How heartbreaking to have this broadcast on the day of his mother’s
funeral! Each show is apparently taped about two months before it is aired. I
remember a couple of months back I heard that Cookie was going to California and
had to admire her for trying to have some fun during such a difficult time. But
now I can see why she must have taken that trip, so that she could be there for
her son.
Avishai won handsomely last night, but rather than feeling
excited for him I was overwhelmed with sorrow. May he cherish the memory of his
mother’s love and support.
I have written about our Sharon friend Mark, who was
diagnosed with a brain tumor about a month after I was in 2012. In the fall of
2013, a third member of our Sharon synagogue community was diagnosed with linitis
plastica, a cancer of the stomach. For about a year following the
diagnosis, Cookie was treated with the standard chemotherapeutic regimen for
this disease, which kept her condition “stable,” meaning that the lesions
neither grew nor shrank significantly. The hope was that by the time the tumor
might develop resistance to this regimen, something new would have come along.
Unfortunately, a few months ago, the lesions began to grow. She was enrolled in
a phase I clinical trial of a new drug, but despite the best efforts of an
outstanding team at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Cookie died last evening,
leaving behind her husband, four children (the first of which was recently
engaged to be married), sister, and father.
An hour or so before Cookie breathed her last, the seventh
day of Chanukah began. Jews traditionally light candles each night corresponding
to the day of the holiday, with an additional candle (the “shamash”) used to
light the others. I could not help but think last evening that Cookie was playing
the role of the “shamash,” doing her best to provide a light for these seven
mourners that will undoubtedly continue to shine in their hearts for the rest
of their lives.
On hearing of a death, the Jewish tradition is to respond “Baruch Dayan Emet,” “Blessed is the True
Judge.” I must admit that I am having a difficult time with this sentiment for
a person who should have had so much of life ahead of her. Like decisions
reached by the human judicial system, mere mortals must come to accept the heavenly
judgments, even though we may not always understand them.
We had a most enjoyable weekend in Sharon. Maya came over
after morning synagogue services to have lunch and spend the afternoon. She had
not yet lost any of her baby teeth but had a very loose upper one right in the
front. As the afternoon progressed, she spent more and more time “playing” with
it, running off to the bathroom to look in the mirror. Fortunately she did not
seem to want Barry or me to pull it for her, since neither of us was much
inclined to do so. Just a few minutes before the end of Sabbath, when she had
again retreated to the restroom, she came bouncing out saying “I pulled it! I
pulled it!” And there it was, that little tooth in her hand. It was not
bleeding much, so we had her rinse her mouth and then she started running in
circles - practically flying - around our table. It was just the most adorable
thing to watch! I managed to snap one quick picture after Sabbath, not a
terrific one but she was just glowing. When her father came to retrieve her
after Sabbath, we quietly passed along an additional donation for the tooth
fairy.
I spent Sunday morning wrapping the children’s’ Chanukah
gifts, going through over 5 rolls of wrapping paper. Because the older children
are all able to read, I can no longer scribble what is in each box on the
package, so I had to number them and then we put together a spreadsheet to
organize which gifts go to each child on each night. I think we’re all set now.
On Sunday we had bought tickets for the Boston Ballet
performance of The Nutcracker Suite. To the best of my memory, I have never
seen a live performance, although I have seen it televised and I am certainly
familiar with the music. We took the three girls; Julia is a bit too young and
Joshua was quite clear that the one time he saw it, with his family last year,
will be his last. Eliana and Maya had never seen it. The girls really enjoyed
it, Eliana so much so that she just wanted to know why we could not just stay
for the next performance!
Barry had to come back for work and I decided to head back
with him for the next few days. So we will be celebrating the first couple of
nights of Chanukah here in New York before we head up to Sharon to distribute
all those gifts.
Have a wonderful week, and for those who are celebrating, a
Happy Chanukah!
I was thumbing through some of the many catalogues we
receive this time of year when my eyes caught what looked like a terrific baby
item, the Mozart Magic Cube. I ordered it and set it aside to give it to Julia
for Chanukah. Of course she is just a baby and it does not much matter when we
give her things, but the older children will enjoy “helping” her open her gifts
while they open their own.
But when we arrived at their house on Sunday, sitting on the
floor just inches from where Julia was playing was a Mozart Magic Cube! At
first I was confused. Did Barry forget we were planning to save it for Chanukah
and instead brought it over to Julia on one of his errands earlier in the day?
No. It turned out that Dina and Aaron had just
purchased a Mozart Magic Cube because - and here is where the story becomes rather
amazing - we had bought this for Joshua
when he was a baby and he, and later Ella, loved it! Like so many of the
toys Joshua and Ella had as infants and toddlers, it had long ago moved on to
other families, too many to be tracked. But they remembered how much Joshua and
Ella loved it and went ahead and purchased a new one on their own. I, on the
other hand, have no recollection whatsoever of the two older children with this toy.
I truly thought I had discovered a neat new baby toy and was quite proud of
myself.
So now we have an extra one, and either I can send it back
or wait until the next one of their friends has a first child and they give it
as a gift. The moral of the story is that even when great minds think alike, that
is no guarantee that both of them will remember what they thought.
Often when I write about things like this, friends who have also passed that milestone birthday will write and tell me similar stories of their own memory lapses. I know they are just trying to feel connected, but believe me, it is really not the same thing. However, I had shown Barry the Mozart Magic Cube in the catalogue before I ordered it and he agreed that it looked like a great toy. Never did he say “didn’t we buy that for Joshua?” because, like me, he did not remember. So if I can just keep myself from getting much worse over the next few years, friends who are around my age will catch up with me, and we will all be sitting here with our little devices, which of course we will barely know how to use, having to look up EVERYTHING!
We had a very nice Shabbat. The fourth through sixth grade students at Striar Hebrew Academy, where our grandchildren attend school, were having a group Shabbat dinner that the children had prepared (with the help and guidance of teachers, of course) and the parents and grandparents were invited to join for an after-dinner program of music and sketches. We do not usually like going out in the cold on Friday evenings but this was very much worth the effort, not only as Joshua’s grandparents but as the parents of Mrs. Saks (aka our daughter Dina), who spearheaded the event as part of her professional role as Curriculum and Instruction Coordinator for the school. Seeing her standing up front, Julia in tow, I was reminded of the final verse to a Carole King song from her 1972 album, Rhymes and Reasons,
Missing you the way I do You know I'd like to see more of you But it's all I can do to be a mother (My baby's in one hand, I've a pen in the other)
You know my love is always there for the taking
Eliana joined us for lunch on Shabbat and stayed through the afternoon. We have accumulated a fairly large collection of Lego kits. We have been buying plastic bins onto which I have affixed labels, keeping the Lego tiles and instruction manuals in each bin. Eliana was able to select the one she wanted, we took it apart, and she is now working to build it again. And then there is the table tennis. We bought a collapsible tennis table to keep there as well. It is a bit smaller than a standard table, but it is still great fun. Eliana had never played but we were able to get her to a point where she could fairly reliably hit the ball, even if not often where it needed to go. The afternoon went by very quickly.
On Sunday we had bought three tickets for the Celtics vs. the Washington Wizards at TD Garden in Boston. I have gone to a number of sporting events with Joshua, and I have to say this one was particularly enjoyable. Perhaps it is because I am learning more about the sport, but likely it was because for once we also had a chance to see the home team win what turned out to be a very exciting game! By the second quarter the Celtics had pulled out over 20 points ahead, but somehow by the fourth quarter they lost that lead, leaving the game quite close until the last couple of minutes, and the Celtics won!
It has been raining quite heavily here, but here is a bit I read on the website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):
How many inches of snow equals one inch of rain?
On average, thirteen inches of snow equals one inch of rain in the US, although this ratio can vary from two inches for sleet to nearly fifty inches for very dry, powdery snow under certain conditions.
It seems funny that this government agency uses the acronym “NOAA,” pronounced like the name “Noah,” a fellow who knew quite a bit about floods!
The bottom line is that I am far happier with this rain than I would be with that much snow! It has to happen sooner or later, but later is just fine for me.
For many years, my feelings about Bob Dylan could best be
summarized as “love the music, cannot stand the performer.” But perhaps both
Mr. Dylan and I have moved toward someplace in the center. He is still a stiff
and aloof performer, still has a rather grating voice, still garbles most of
the lyrics. After 73 years of what appears to be fairly intense living, it is
nothing short of miraculous that he is still the travelling troubadour. From my
place in the audience, after all of these years I can finally more deeply
appreciate his genius. I may not love all the directions his musical path has
taken, but I am in awe of how he continues to reinvent himself, writing vast
amounts of new material as well as reworking some old standards like “Blowin’
in the Wind.” While only one or two of the songs he performed last night were
familiar, they were all very much Bob Dylan, and I was quite surprised at how
much I enjoyed them.
We had purchased accessible tickets just moments after sales
began in the first row just slightly left of center, so we were able to see him
quite clearly. One thing I found somewhat surprising was that he never picked
up a guitar. He primarily sang, played his harmonica and occasionally sat at
and played the piano, but no guitar. I wondered if he is no longer able to
play.
Dylan opened his run at The Beacon Theater last week, but I
only just now read Jon Pareles’ review in the New York Times. We definitely saw
the same show! Pareles wrote:
Mr. Dylan has replaced the fluidity and
arrogance of youth with a more genuine, lived-in sense that he has nothing to
lose and no one but himself to please.
It has been quite a busy week, so I will start where I last
left off and work my way through. I had started this post last Friday, writing
about the New York Times crossword puzzle from Thursday.
31
Across Clue:
Highest-paid
TV star of 2014, by far (9 letters)
31
Across Answer:
JUDGEJUDY
I was incredulous so I googled and found that Judge Judy is
far and away the highest paid person on television, according to TV
Guide's fifth annual list. Judge Judy Sheindlin gets paid $47 million per year to negotiate petty
disputes on the daytime show that bears her name.
Then I learned something else surprising: "The Daily
Show's" Jon Stewart is the second highest paid TV star, although he lags
far behind Sheindlin at $25-30 million per
year. Stewart apparently attracts a young, professional demographic that is
sought by advertisers, and is the top-paid star of night-time television.
These figures simply boggle the mind.
We drove up to Sharon on Thursday morning and had a
wonderful Thanksgiving dinner: all the traditional dishes prepared and served beautifully
by our daughters and sons-in-law.
We had a delicious and enjoyable Friday evening dinner with Dina and family who had also invited a young family who are relatively new to Sharon. On Sabbath day, Joshua and Ella joined us for lunch while their parents and little sister went over to friends who have younger children. Since we were just preparing that one meal, we were able to relax and see a movie Friday afternoon.
We chose “The Theory of Everything,” which was playing on The Lux Level at the nearby Showcase Cinema. I was not expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised. The film was interesting and quite heartwarming, perfect end-of-year fare. This biographical film tells the story of Steven Hawking, a brilliant scientist who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a motor neuron disorder) in his early twenties. Given two years to live, he completed his doctorate and married a fellow graduate student (in European literature) with whom he had three children. The film is based on Jane Hawking’s memoir, “Traveling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen.”
We were not familiar with the cast, which included Felicity Jones as Jane and Eddie Redmayne as Stephen. The two roles presented interesting challenges. For Mr. Redmayne, the physical limitations provided special challenges. The only part of his body over which he had any control was his eyes, which had to embody all of his emotions.
Ultimately, Stephen’s illness tested Jane’s resourcefulness, pulling her away from her own work and causing her much stress and worry. The movie is poignant and honest in showing how Jane and Stephen’s marriage leaves both of them exhausted and unfulfilled. Their marriage amazingly survived this unfathomable stress for thirty years, and Stephen is still alive at the age of 72.
Sabbath had been an exhausting day. We stayed at the Kiddush (refreshments) quite a while after morning services, socializing with friends. Usually I try to find someplace to sit but I stood for quite a while. Then we had the Joshua and Ella with us all afternoon, and Ella stayed on with us for a while after Sabbath ended. She was watching something on TV and I had gotten up to find a recipe I was planning to prepare on Sunday. I am still not sure just what happened, but the next thing I knew I was on the floor. I quickly noticed blood was dripping, and it turned out that I had gashed my lip. Barry helped me get settled with some ice and took Ella home. The bleeding just did not want to stop, and we debated going to a local emergency room but decided it was too late and too cold to venture out, so I continued icing it, put my pillow in a large plastic bag with an old towel on top, and tried to get some sleep. Fortunately, my lip stopped bleeding but we still thought it might be a good idea to go to urgent care on Sunday morning to have it looked at. The doctor there told me that I did exactly the right thing icing it, and since the cut was on the inside of my lip it could not be sutured. It is still healing, and I would not be surprised if someone were to ask me how the other guy looks! I have since discovered quite a bit of stiffness in and bruising on my right arm, which I must have used to try to catch myself.
What is funny is that we do not often stay for Kiddush. The room tends to be very crowded and stuffy, and I have had some breathing difficulties there. But for whatever reason, everything seemed fine this week. It is not a mistake I will make again soon. This is an activity best left to the younger folk.
Looking forward now…Bob Dylan is in New York this week doing some shows at The Beacon Theater. It is a long story, but we ended up with tickets for two of the shows, the one least night and the one tonight. We had no intention of going to both, and tonight’s seats were the better ones, so we decided to sell last night’s. We put them onto a site called StubHub. We were not looking to make money on them, but we started at a high price just to see how it would go. We lowered it a couple of times and then about a week ago we realized that, if we wanted to sell them, we needed to price them as low or lower than the others for sale in that section at that moment. Once we did that, they sold very quickly. We even made some money, although I plan to donate it to charity because that was not the point. However, it became a sort of game, with Barry going on every couple of hours yesterday to see how the remaining tickets were going. Once the concert time (8:00 pm) had passed, all remaining tickets were removed from the site. The truth is that Dylan did not seem to be quite the draw we expected him to be. So we should be pleased we were able to sell the tickets at all.
I will report back on Dylan. Meanwhile, stay warm and dry and be well.
Addition for
Thanksgiving: Maya made this at school today. Notice the pattern, very
carefully thought out, with interesting symmetries. That’s my girl!
We often find ourselves correcting our elementary school grandchildren’s
use of the English language. Among the incorrect phrases they are often heard
to say is “me and my friend played a game.” Our corrections motivate them to
practice rolling their eyes.
We were a bit surprised to hear President Obama say the
following last week (emphasis mine):
“To those members of Congress who question my
authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of
me acting where Congress has failed,
I have one answer: Pass a bill.”
The use of “my” or “me” in this sentence is actually rather
complicated. A non-finite verb form that can function as
a noun is called a gerund. The gerund is the form that names the action of the
verb (for instance, “acting” is the action of "to act"). So in the sentence
quoted here, “acting” is functioning as a noun, which would suggest that “my”
would be the better choice. Another choice is to rework the sentence a bit, and
say
“To those members of Congress who question my
authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the action I took when Congress failed to act, I have
one answer: Pass a bill.”
But here is a somewhat less flattering thought. The phrase
"me acting where Congress has
failed" might seem as though the Congress does not object so much to what
Mr. Obama did but rather simply does
not like Mr. Obama personally. Is it possible that the President is a stickler
for grammar and said precisely what he was trying to say?
I sit here listening to an endless stream of bad news from
my home town of St. Louis. I am not sure I was ever in Florissant but I just
took a look at Google Maps and it is only about 15 miles from where I lived as
a girl. The pain of the family and community is very sad indeed.
For some years after our daughter Simmie was born 12 weeks
prematurely, I found myself amazed at every full-term healthy baby born among
our friends. Of course everyone knows
that a healthy baby is a miracle, but fortunately most of us do not have to
experience this feeling in such a stark way. That same sort of feeling has come
over me quite a few times during the past 2½ years as I have seen a number of
friends receive cancer diagnoses. But the latest is especially poignant: one of
Barry’s students, a radiation oncology resident at Mt. Sinai, is now undergoing
cancer treatment.
One of the really nice things that comes from being part of
a traditional Jewish community is the way that people pitch in to help families
in need. Not surprisingly, the primary activity revolves around food. Whether
it is providing meals for families sitting shiva
(the week of mourning) for a loved one or for families welcoming a new baby,
there never seems to be a lack of volunteers. For some years I coordinated this
activity for our synagogue in Riverdale. These days there are web sites that
help to organize the meals and communicate the recipient family’s preferences
and allergies, much easier than all those phone calls I used to make! What I
never realized until now is that this is also done outside the traditional
Jewish community. A couple of the other residents set up a page on Care
Calendar, and we were honored to have an opportunity to prepare a dinner for
the resident and her father, who has come to take care of her during treatment,
and look forward to doing this again.
We are planning to head up to Sharon tomorrow morning. Let’s
hope the weather cooperates, and the snow ends this evening with plenty of time
to clear the roads.
Once again, a week has passed since my last post, but I sit
at the computer feeling overwhelming sadness. Whatever I may have planned to
write has been overshadowed by the news from Israel, the murder of four
innocent men saying the morning prayers at a synagogue in Jerusalem. There are never
many degrees of separation between traditional Jews. Even if we are not
personally acquainted with the victims, it is not unusual for us to know
someone who is related to or friends of the victim’s family. Last week, a young
woman was killed whose family is well known to friends of ours. Today, one of the
four victims of the attack was the brother of a woman who lives with her family
diagonally across the street from us.
We had been anxious to see Jon Stewart’s directorial debut, “Rosewater,”
and were able to squeeze it in when we returned to New York. Given the recent
events, this seemed an appropriate film to see. Although the reviews were not
overwhelmingly positive (a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes), as fans of The Daily Show
we just had to see it. Having said that, I have always had some trouble
watching movies with violence, and at this point I generally try to completely
steer clear of them. So I went into this with some trepidation, and I did have
to close my eyes during some scenes.
Rosewater is based on The New York Times best-selling memoir
"Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and
Survival," written by Maziar Bahari. Bahari was born and raised in Iran
but moved to the UK as an adult, where he worked for the BBC. In 2009, he returned
to Iran to interview Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who was the prime challenger to President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After sending the BBC film footage of the street riots
that followed the obviously rigged election, Bahari was arrested by police.
What followed was a nightmarish 118 days during which he was interrogated and tortured
by a man who frequently sprayed himself with rosewater. Unbeknownst to Bahari, as
well as to moviegoers until the very end, his wife lead an international
campaign to have her husband freed, and Western media outlets kept the story
alive. Iranian authorities finally released Bahari on $300,000 bail and the
promise he would act as a spy for the government.
Although I almost assuredly would never have seen this movie
if not for Jon Stewart’s role in bringing it to the screen, I thought it was
extremely well done. If you are able to watch such films, I highly recommend
it, but it is definitely not a fun date night.
It is not yet winter, but the way it feels outside it might as well be. So stay warm and have a good week!
A week has passed since my last post, busy with relatively
mundane activities. Dina was attending a workshop out of town for a couple of
days, so we went up to Sharon to be grandparents. The older children had school
and Julia went to her regular daycare while Barry worked I prepared dinners and
Sabbath meals. The three days flew by, and somehow I never even got around to
taking any pictures. We are heading back to Sharon this weekend. We will spend
Shabbat with Simmie and family, and then on Sunday Barry and I are taking Joshua
and Ella to a hockey game, the Providence Bruins (the development team for the
Boston Bruins) vs. the Portland Pirates, the beginning of a bunch of tickets to
sporting and theatrical events we have bought as Chanukah presents.
A few years ago I “friended” singer/songwriter Carole King
on FaceBook. Although I only look at FB occasionally, she (or, more likely, her
representatives) appears to post quite frequently. A few days ago I caught a
blurb about an upcoming episode of the PBS series; “Finding Your Roots” called “Our
People, Our Traditions” featuring Carole King, playwright Tony Kushner, and lawyer
Alan Dershowitz. Something reminded me
about it yesterday, and I found it on-line. It is long (an hour) but is interesting
and really quite moving. With the storm on its way to these parts, having
already hit our Midwestern friends with snow and frigid temperatures, it is a
good chance to fix yourself a cup of hot tea or cocoa and sit back and enjoy
this.
We also found a couple of hours to sneak out and see the new documentary, Citizenfour. The making of this movie is a pretty amazing story. In January 2013, filmmaker Laura Poitras was several years into making a film about surveillance in the post-9/11 era when she started receiving encrypted e-mails from someone identifying himself as "CITIZENFOUR," who was ready to blow the whistle on the massive covert surveillance programs run by the NSA and other intelligence agencies. In June 2013, she and Glenn Greenwald, a reporter for The Guardian, flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with the man who turned out to be Edward Snowden. The film that resulted from this series of tense encounters is a 100% real-life thriller unfolding minute by minute before our eyes.
There are many difficult questions raised by this story. How worried should we all be about the massive amounts of our personal information available to so many people? It goes without saying that much of the answer to this question depends on how the individuals accessing this data intend to use it. Most of us would agree that the lack of a repeat of September 11th, 2001, is a very good thing, even at the cost of sacrificing some privacy. But do we need this much surveillance to prevent a repeat of that horrific event? How will we ever know? How worried should we be or do we have to be if we know we have not done and do not intend to do anything wrong? At the end of the day, Barry and I did not find Snowden all that much of a hero. I am in no position to judge how much damage he might have done to our national security, but I am not convinced that he found out anything we all needed to know about the overwhelming majority of citizens both here and abroad. As I have discussed about airline security, we need to become smarter and more focused in this work. Still, it is an incredibly well done documentary and worth seeing.
I should read movie reviews more carefully before I go to
see movies. An approval rating of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes does not guarantee
that I will enjoy or appreciate a film. We did not want to go into the City on
Sunday because of that little group of 50,000 runners participating in The New
York City Marathon, so we chose a film that was playing at a small art-house
theater in Westchester not far from here, “Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of
Ignorance.” I am hard pressed to call my relative ignorance “virtuous;” this
was one very strange film. To be honest, I spent much of the two hours
completely lost, and was only able to piece things together with some help from
movie reviews read as I sat down to write this.
The main character is Riggan Thomas (played by very
different Michael Keaton than “Mr. Mom” over thirty years ago), a once known but
now washed up iconic super hero called "The Birdman" who had recently
turned down a fourth installment of the franchise. Now washed up, he attempts
to reinvent himself as a director by staging a new retelling of a classic
Broadway dramatic play called "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love."
The days leading up to the premier find the cast suffering one disaster after
another, including an on-set injury of the lead actor and a scramble to find a
replacement. Riggan gives the role to a method actor who takes the job quite
seriously. But Riggan has a hard time juggling between the set, his replacement
actor, his troubled daughter, and a host of other disasters that prevent a
proper staging of the play. Meanwhile, a New York Times critic who Riggan has
to woo threatens to shut down production of the play before it even starts with
a scathing review of the opening night performance. All of this is told going
in and out of disturbing hallucinations Riggan experiences. Does Riggan have a
hit on his hands or will he even make it past opening night? I do not want to share the ending lest any of you wish to see this film. But you might think about saving your time and money.
There is a quintessential New York City grocery store on the
Upper West Side (Broadway and 91st Street) called Barzini’s. It is not an entirely kosher
store but they happen to carry many kosher items, and they are located across
the street from Kosher Marketplace, a
kosher grocery and prepared food emporium that we tend to frequent. Some months
ago Barry noticed that Barzini’s sells
Chocolat Bonnat, a line of certified
kosher chocolates from France. There are at least eight types of chocolates,
with names like Ceylan, Madagascar, and Trinite (you can check these out at
When Barry is in that neighborhood he often stops in and
buys them for me, even stockpiling them in some hidden place to whip out a new
one when I have finished the previous one (yes, I can hear all the sighs and “what
a sweet guy he is”).
The wrappers on this chocolate all say “Pour Croquer.” I was
curious what this meant, so I (1) put it into the Google translator and (2) asked
my friend who teaches French to high school students, and both gave the same
answer: it means “to chew,” which I assume means that it is chocolate for
eating rather than cooking/baking. In addition, in searching around about this
I found that there are some chocolates that specifically instruct not to chew, rather to just let them
melt in the mouth. As far as I can see, these Bonnat chocolates are amazing
either way.
A side note: we can testify that young children do not seem
to appreciate these very dark chocolates, which is just as well!
Here is a little about the company that I found on-line:
Given
that many tourists pass through Voiron on their way to the mountains, many of
our foreign customers often stop off en route to see us. Our products are sold
in Paris and in sixty other departments of France thanks to our network of
sales representatives. Bonnat was dispatching its products out to the French
colonies as early as 1919 – Africa, Indo-china, Asia. Because our business has
always taken us to far away countries, having an affinity with and understanding
the diverse mentalities of different continents is something which comes
naturally. And of course our travels have also given us a real taste for the
high seas.
In
France, as abroad, our priority is to preserve the chocolate- making traditions
which have made the Bonnat name so famous. We believe that: "What is good
to the taste is great for the soul"
Chocolat
Bonnat's 100% Cacao is made from 100% pure dark chocolate chocolate.
I LOVE that last line, “what is good for the taste is great
for the soul.” How very true!
Even at a relatively young age, you begin to have an idea of
where children may be headed. Joshua is passionate about watching and participating
in sports, and somehow he may well find a way to have that interest play a
major role in his life. Both Ella and Eliana say they want to be teachers, but
that is, after all, the main working women they see. Maya says she wants to be
an artist, and I posted one of her drawings here last week. Julia may be a bit
young, but watching her determination on the following video, we may finally be
watching a budding musician.
Tuesday evening we went to the 92nd Street Y to
see Amy Poehler interviewing Seth Meyers. As expected, this was over an hour of
endless laughs. Although some of it was too rapid-fire for me to absorb, what I
did catch was really funny. The catalyst for this speaking engagement was that Ms.
Poehler has recently published a memoir, Yes Please, which I believe was
released for general sale the next day. Along with the tickets came two signed
first editions. We are anxious to read it.
Wednesday afternoon I had to go into the City for my monthly
injection, so Barry and I met when that was done and decided to take in a
movie. We saw “Dear White People.” Here is what A.O. Scott had to say:
“Dear White People” is the name of Justin
Simien’s first feature film, and I’ll say right away that it is as smart and
fearless a debut as I have seen from an American filmmaker in quite some time:
knowing but not snarky, self-aware but not solipsistic, open to influence and
confident in its own originality. It’s a clever campus comedy that juggles a
handful of hot potatoes — race, sex, privilege, power — with elegant agility
and only an occasional fumble. You want to see this movie, and you will want to
talk about it afterward, even if the conversation feels a little awkward. If it
doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong. There is great enjoyment to be found here, and
very little comfort.
Reading this today (I had not before) I have to say it is really
on the mark. There were many characters and I had a bit of trouble keeping them
all straight, but the messages were quite clear, and at the end they showed
newspaper clips and pictures of groups of students from universities across the
country demonstrating that the issues the movie raises are still very much a
part of campus life. Blacks constituted only a small minority of the students
at the University of Rochester in the early 1970s, and they largely kept to
themselves for reasons I could not entirely understand. So this movie was
interesting for me.
It began to rain as we were leaving the movie theater and
driving up the West Side Highway, but the sun was trying to shine through, and
a beautiful rainbow formed over the Hudson River. I was able to take a picture
because we were sitting in traffic, but it was still difficult to get a good
one from behind the glass.
