Day 34 (91.9%)

Now we are truly in the home stretch – we’ve finally made it to fewer than 10% of treatments remaining!

Today’s song, “34 Blues,” was written and recorded by Charlie Patton (born sometime around 1891) just months before his death in January, 1934. I have to admit I am not sure to what the number 34 refers. But there it is!

I ain't gonna tell nobody, '34 have done for me

I ain't gonna tell nobody what, '34 have done for me

Took my roller, I was broke as I could be

They run me from Will Dockery's, Willie Brown, I want your job

They run me from Will Dockery's, Willie Brown, I want your job

(spoken: Buddy, what's the matter?)

I went out and told papa Charley,

"I don't want you hangin' round on my job no more"

Fella, down in the country, it almost make you cry

Fella, down in the country, it almost make you cry

(spoken: My God, children!)

Women and children flaggin' freight trains for rides

Carmen got a little six Buick, big six Chevrolet car

Carmen got a little six Buick, little six Chevrolet car

(spoken: My God, what solid power!)

And it don't do nothin' but, follow behind Holloway's farmer's plow

And it may bring sorrow, Lord, it may bring tears

It may bring sorrow, Lord, and it may bring tears

Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, let me see your brand new year

34 Blues (Charlie Patton)

Today I am wearing the last of my sports team t-shirts, this one a free handout at a Mets game on Mother’s Day a few years ago. It is a bit cool out today so I put a long-sleeved shirt under the t-shirt.

For those of you who are observing Yom Kippur, have a meaningful fast and a gmar tov.

Love,

Rebecca

Day 33 (89.2%)

I woke up early and the first thing that caught my eye in my inbox was a video from Dina – a video of little Noah, just two weeks shy of his first birthday, taking his first steps! What a thrill! Hopefully we will be able to go up to Sharon and chase around after him very soon.

Today’s song is from the group Smashing Pumpkins. To be honest, I have no idea why it is called “Thirty-Three.” The best I could find was that composer Billy Corgan joked on an August 24, 2000 taping of VH1Storytellers that he planned on making "Thirty-Three", "Sixty-Six", and "Ninety-Nine", but only finished "Thirty-Three."

Thirty-three (Smashing Pumpkins)

Today I am wearing another t-shirt from Striar Hebrew Academy in Sharon, this one with the school mascot (a lion).

I am feeling ready to move on….so I am going to get a much-needed haircut today!

Love,

Rebecca

Day 32 (86.5%)

Something I’ve been noticing lately is how many other song ideas have come to mind over the past few weeks. For example, back on Day 9 I used “Nine to Five.”  How did I have forgotten The Searchers 1963 hit, “Love Potion Number 9?” For Day 8 I could have used Herman’s Hermits 1965 “I’m Henry VIII, I Am,” which was a revival of a 1910 British music hall song.

Like so many days, today, #32, was slim pickings. I have to admit that today’s song is pretty sappy, but it was the best I could find. Here is the chorus of Jeremy Passion’s “32,” a tribute to his mother whom he says “only looks like 32”:

I just wanna tell you

While we’re here together,

Thank you for raising me.

When friendships have faded

And life gets complicated,

Still got my family.

Oh, Momma, thank you for loving me.

32 (Jeremy Passion)

Meanwhile, another sports team t-shirt from Joshua today, the Baltimore Orioles.

This morning the therapist who set me up started talking to me about life after the radiation therapy is finished, about the recovery time from the side effects of the treatment. It was a bit disconcerting for him to talk about the fact that the symptoms may take weeks to fully subside, but the good news of this conversation is that I guess it means we really are in the home stretch!

Love,

Rebecca

Day 31 (83.8%)

On August 6, 2011, thirty-one United States troops lost their lives in Afghanistan. In their memory, this song was composed and video posted on YouTube in July of 2012.

Thirty-one (Bryan Harrelson & Rebecca Talbert)

Today I am wearing a Boston Celtics (basketball) t-shirt.

 

I am feeling quite helpless listening to the news from Puerto Rico. As I try to think about what I would do in the face of such disaster, I am increasingly frightened by the realization that I would almost assuredly not survive for long. It is only a shame that rather than focus on this true humanitarian crisis, our government leadership seems only able to talk about appropriate behavior during the singing of the national anthem at sporting events. While this may be an important issue, there is just no question in my mind that its importance at this particular moment pales next to what is happening on many of the Caribbean islands. Perhaps if our leaders would focus on channeling the energy of all Americans to contribute to the recovery efforts in the various communities in the southern United States and in the Caribbean Sea, we would all feel significantly more patriotic and proudly sing our national anthem.

Stay safe.

Love,

Rebecca

Red Letter Days

I have two causes for celebration today. First, this blog has now had over 50,000 pageviews!

Pageviews today

48

Pageviews yesterday

43

Pageviews last month

1,836

Pageviews all time history

50,000

Of course, those views span more than four years of time, while blogs of most celebrities achieve many times that number per day. But it still sounds like a pretty big number to me, and I am amazed to think that all of you have clicked on that link more than 50,000 times and are still clicking!

Second, Barry and his colleagues have recently learned that they have been awarded a grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue to move forward on a project that has been the core of Barry’s research work for the last twenty years, namely, to develop a test to identify individuals who have genetic alterations that place them at higher than average risk for developing complications following radiation treatment for prostate cancer. Such a test would be helpful for men diagnosed with prostate cancer as this will help guide them in reaching a decision on whether to undergo surgical removal of the prostate, radiotherapy, or active surveillance. The purpose of this funding is to move the basic research that Barry and his colleagues have been doing into the clinic so that this test can be used on a routine basis. This represents something new for Barry as he will be working with the Food and Drug Administration to determine what is necessary to gain their approval for use of this genetic predictive test.

For me this news is especially rewarding. It confirms the importance of the work to which Barry has long devoted himself. And as someone who has reaped significant personal benefit from years of NIH-funded research in cancer and pulmonary disease, it is reassuring to know that our country still sees fit to continue to support these endeavors.

Love,

Rebecca

Day 30 (81.1%)

This week I will be wearing t-shirts from our grandson, Joshua. He just turned 13 and these are all shirts that no longer fit him – he is already 5’10” tall, and although he is quite slim, he needs size extra-large t-shirts to cover his torso. After this week, we will need to put these away for ten years or so until little Noah grows into them!

You may have noticed a difference between the picture posted today and those posted over the previous 29 days. Today’s picture is in front of a wall that is parallel to the one we had been using. This is entirely a function of the changing angle of the sun in the morning. The light streaming in through windows high up in the wall across from our living room fireplace has been so bright that we can no longer take pictures there in the morning. For the last two days, we tried moving over a few feet, but at this point even that does not help. So we decided to try something a bit different, a wall perpendicular to the one with the fireplace on which we have a collection of artwork from Maya and Ella.

Today’s song is “Thirty Days” written and performed by Chuck Berry in 1955.

Thirty Days (Chuck Berry)

Hard to believe we are really in the home stretch now!

Love,

Rebecca

Day 29 (78.4%)

Today’s song, “Twenty-Nine Palms,” was written by Robert Plant about the small town of Twentynine Palms, California, which is located in San Bernardino County in the Mojave Desert. It is said to be based on the Canadian singer Alannah Myles, with whom Plant was touring in California at the time he wrote the song. 

Twenty-nine Palms (Robert Plant)

On Monday I will pass the 80% completion mark!

Love,

Rebecca

Day 28 (75.7%)

In the interest of complete disclosure, the t-shirt pictures for Days 28 (Thursday 21 September) and 29 (Friday 22 September) were actually both taken on Sunday 24 September due to the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana.

For Day 28 I found a song called “Twenty-Eight Thousand Days” by Alicia Keys that seems quite relevant:

If you had 28 thousand days,

Who would you love? Where would you go?

What would you celebrate?

I’m telling you that life’s too short to just throw it away,

So have the time of your life, so have the time of your life.

How long is 28,000 days? With 365 days in a year, that comes to almost 77 years. Hopefully many of us will have more, but it is still worth a pause to think about how we are spending every one of the days we are blessed to be on this earth.

Love,

Rebecca

Twenty-eight Thousand Days (Alicia Keys)

Day 27 (73.0%)

Today’s song and video are entirely new to me. I had never heard of the British singer/songwriter who calls himself “Passenger.” Although the lyrics do include a couple of expletives, and the fellow has a rather odd voice, it is a catchy tune with some interesting feelings expressed, so do give it a chance.

27 by Passenger

Twenty seven years, twenty seven years old

Only thing I know, the only thing that gets old

I gotta sell out if I want to get sold

Don't want the devil to be taking my soul

I write songs that come from the heart

I don't give a f--k if they get into the chart, oh no

Only way I can be, is to say what I see

And have my shadow hanging over me

I don't know where I'm running, but I know how to run

'Cause running's the thing I've always done

Oh I don't know what I'm doing, but I know what I've done

I'm a hungry heart, I'm a loaded gun

Twenty seven years, twenty seven years now

Only thing I know

I know that I don't know how

To please everybody all of the time,

'Cause everybody's always f--king changing their minds

A little bit faded

A little bit jaded

Not gonna stop and I won't be persuaded

To write words I can't believe in

To see my face on a video screen

I don't know where I'm running, but I know how to run

'Cause running's the thing I've always done

Oh I don't know what I'm doing, but I know what I've done

I'm a hungry heart, I'm a loaded gun

Twenty seven years, twenty seven years done

Written six hundred songs, only twelve get sung

Eighty seven thousand cigarettes have passed through these lungs

And every single day I wish I'd never smoked one

A week brushing my teeth and a week getting my haircut

Eight years sleeping, I'm still tired when I wake up

A whole year eating and I still lost weight,

Five proper girlfriends and five messy breakups

Twenty seven birthdays, twenty seven New Years

Thirty thousand quid just so I could have a few beers

Ever dying old hopes

Ever growing new fears

Don't know where I'm going but I know how I got here

I don't know where I'm running, but I know how to run

'Cause running's the thing I've always done, oh

Oh I don't know what I'm doing, but I know what I've done

I'm a hungry heart, I'm a loaded gun, oh

Said I don't know where I'm running, but I know how to run

'Cause running's the thing I've always done, oh

Oh, I don't know what I'm doing, but I know what I've done

I'm a hungry heart, I'm a loaded gun, oh

I am wearing another James Taylor t-shirt today.

27 (Passenger)

This evening is the start of the Jewish New Year, a two-day holiday which is, this year, followed immediately by a weekly Sabbath. My treatments will continue but I will take a break from blogging these next couple of days. Nonetheless, I have selected songs for Days 28 and 29 and will share these after the holiday.

Best wishes to all for a healthy and productive year! I am going into the holiday with a little under 50,000 “page views” on this blog, and look forward to reaching that milestone early in the new year!

Love,

Rebecca

Day 26 (70.3%)

Yesterday I noticed that the song I had chosen for Day 26 (today) was called “26 Miles (Santa Catalina),” a song about an island 26 miles off the coast of southern California. And suddenly it dawned on me: we have actually BEEN to Santa Catalina! Fortunately, some years ago I had organized many of our old photographs into file boxes with cards marking the dates and events, and I was able to find some pictures from that trip back in the summer of 1990. I was able to confirm what I recalled: the annual meeting of the American Statistical Association was in Anaheim, California that August, and we spent a day with Simmie and Dina on Catalina as a side trip before the meeting started, during which Barry spent a couple of days with them at Disney Land. Here are a few pictures of our daughters and me from that trip.

In 1958, the song "26 Miles" by the Four Preps hit number 2 on the Billboard charts. The main theme of the song is summed up in the last line in the refrain, calling Santa Catalina "the island of romance." The island has just one incorporated city, Avalon, which appears in the phrase “in a noisy bar in Avalon I tried to call you” in Crosy, Stills and Nash’s 1982 “Southern Cross.”

26 Miles (Santa Catalina) (The Four Preps)

I have only one CSN t-shirt so today I’m sporting a shirt from the Carole King and James Taylor 2010 “Troubadour Reunion Tour.”

Love,

Rebecca

Day 25 (67.6%)

Two-thirds of the way done!!!

Today was another one of those relatively easy days for a song, going back to Chicago’s 1971 song “25 or 6 to 4.” I have to admit I had never given much thought to the meaning of this song. Here are the full lyrics:

Waiting for the break of day

Searching for something to say

Dancing lights against the sky

Giving up I close my eyes

Sitting cross-legged on the floor

25 or 6 to 4

Staring blindly into space

Getting up to splash my face

Wanting just to stay awake

Wondering how much I can take

Should have tried to do some more

25 or 6 to 4

Feeling like I ought to sleep

Spinning room is sinking deep

Searching for something to say

Waiting for the break of day

25 or 6 to 4

25 or 6 to 4

Apparently there had been some colorful explanations of this lyric, but in fact, it seems that the song is simply about trying to write a song in the middle of the night. The song's title is the time at which the song is set: 25 or 26 minutes before 4 AM. I was also amused to read that the song’s writer, Robert Lamm, had written another Chicago hit called “Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?” Perhaps this song was the answer.

Twenty-five or Six to Four (Chicago)

Today I am wearing a t-shirt from the Michael Moore Broadway show, “The Terms of My Surrender.” I wrote about this on August 3^rd.

Have a great day!

Love,

Rebecca