Healing Plants

The weather has finally taken a turn for the better here in the northeast! But let me first go back to when it was cold and dreary.

We stayed in New York this weekend because we are headed up to Sharon on Wednesday for Grandparents Day at school on Thursday and Friday. The weather was awful – cold and rainy, so we had a quiet Sabbath. We spent part of the day reading the new book by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, which I wrote about a few days ago. We did not get very far because nearly every paragraph resulted in some discussion. This will undoubtedly continue to provide Sabbath reading and discussion for a number of weeks to come.

We then saw two movies. The first was “Stories We Tell,” about the complicated life of an aspiring actress, the mother of the filmmaker, Sarah Polley. It took me a while to realize that the film was going back and forth between actual film footage and newly created scenes using an actress to portray the main character. Because this was confusing, and because, to be honest, I found this family to be far more annoying than sympathetic, I cannot really say I enjoyed this film, although I am sure it will continue to win critics’ praises.

The second movie we saw was “What Maisie Knew.” The acting was incredible, particularly the little girl who played Maisie, Onata Aprile. This is a gut-wrenching story of a marital breakup. Barry and I spent a fair amount of time over a lovely dinner at Noi Due (we had to do something fun after sitting through this film) trying to figure out which of the two parents was the more despicable. I have to say it is a difficult call, as both were just so self-centered and mean-spirited. You can see from the strength of my words here that it was a well-acted but painful film to watch.

So we agreed that the winner of our 3-entry film festival over the last few days was Frances Ha!

Today, with the beautiful weather, and needing a break from all the psychological drama, we headed off to the New York Botanical Gardens. We spent most of our time in the new exhibit, presented by Pfizer, “Wild Medicine: Healing Plants Around the World.” The creativity of these folks simply does not cease to amaze. And I have to say that the people who choose to spend their time there are an amazingly friendly bunch – we had a couple of enthusiastic discussions with some of the other visitors. I know many of you who have been following my blog listened to me drone on and on last year about the Monet exhibit, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, if you missed that one, at least try to catch this one, which will be going until September 8^th. We did not even see the entire exhibit, in particular, we are saving the children’s area for when our grandchildren are here later in the summer. Today we did an overview, so it will be fun to return and spend a bit more time listening to the recordings that go along with the exhibit.

Tomorrow is a busy day. I have a routine appointment with my internist in the morning, and then the first session of my two courses in the afternoon. I will check in when I can. Meanwhile, have a wonderful week – summer is finally on the way!

Love,

Rebecca

Native Plant Garden Opening

Just had to share this picture from the Striar Hebrew Academy web page....

Enjoying the lemonade

In a moment of whimsy, I sent the piece I posted this morning to Letty Cottin Pogrebin (via her web page), and I just received the following e-mail message from her:

Dear Rebecca,

What a lovely piece!  Thanks so much for posting it on your blog, for coming last night to support me and Abby, and for your enthusiasm for my work through the years. I'm truly grateful.

   Best,

    Letty 

Talk about making lemonades when life gives you lemons!

Love,

Rebecca 

A sad world after all

A story that appeared in the Huffington Post a couple of weeks ago caught my attention only recently. The story, about Walt Disney World, was written by Lisa Belkin, who I only wish I could claim as a relative.

It’s a smaller world for some of us than for others, apparently.

The New York Post reports that the latest “must have” for wealthy parents, is a “disabled” guide at Disney World, so that their darling children don’t have to wait on lines for rides. According to an exclusive by reporter Tara Palmeri, Manhattan “one percenters” have been passing around the name of a “black market disney guide” -- an adult who needs a motorized scooter for mobility, and whose presence can take advantage of the rule that “handicapped” guests can go directly to the front of the line and bring up to five other people along.

 “When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are,” Jiminy Cricket sings. Unless, of course, you are wishing to bypass the line. Then it helps to have a lot of money. And very few scruples.

We are planning the first of what we hope will be four trips to Disney World over the coming years, one with each grandchild. The ten of us had all gone two years ago, and it was great fun, but we have long wanted to take each grandchild separately.

Two years ago, I rented a scooter each day. Disney World offers gracious accommodations for parties in which a member has disabilities, including allowing them to proceed to the front of the line (or use a separate line for people with disabilities) on most of the rides. It certainly did alleviate some of the long wait times, but in fact there were some rides Barry and I sat out because the wait in the wheelchair line was far longer than in the standard line but the standard line could not accommodate the scooter.

Waiting times were not the point. The point then, which is far truer now, is that it is simply not possible for me to do that much walking. But now, as the trip approaches, I am feeling sick to my stomach about the idea that someone may look at me, oxygen and all, and wonder whether I really need that scooter or am simply using it to cut lines.

A world in which someone is willing to “rent” a disabled person or put an able-bodied person in a wheelchair to gain the “perks” of traveling with a person with disabilities is a very sad world after all.

Love,

Rebecca 

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

If you are an American child of the 1960s, particularly a female, the name Letty Cottin Pogrebin is probably familiar to you. As I sat down to write this, I went to a drawer in my dresser and pulled out a copy of Ms. Magazine from May of 1973 – forty years ago! This issue featured a cover story on Motherhood written by Ms. Cottin Pogrebin. I have kept it in my dresser drawer for all these years, and pulled it out in February 1999 when we went to hear her speak and I was able to ask her to sign it for me. Here we are fifteen years later and I just pulled it out of that same drawer. She wrote “For Rebecca, Barry, Simmie, and Dina – A Free to Be Family.”

I still remember how she ended that piece. She was talking about the trials and tribulations of trying to juggle a successful career with a family (a topic that to this day never seems to grow tired). She related that one of her daughters asked if she ever wished she had never had children in the first place. “Sometimes my life is a little too full because I have you children,” she said, “but for me, it would be much too empty if I didn’t.”

For those of you who are not familiar with her, the following is excerpted from the biography on her web site http://www.lettycottinpogrebin.com/index.htm:

Letty Cottin Pogrebin is an author, activist, and national lecturer. A founding editor and writer for Ms. magazine, Pogrebin is also the author of ten books, among them two memoirs – Getting Over Getting Older, and Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America – the novel, Three Daughters, and the newly published How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick.

She is also the editor of the anthology, Stories for Free Children, and was the consulting editor on Free to Be, You and Me and Free to Be...A Family, Marlo Thomas’ ground-breaking children's books, record and television specials.  Besides her twenty year affiliation with Ms. Magazine, Pogrebin has published articles and op-eds in The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Boston Globe, among other publications. She is a co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus; the Ms. Foundation for Women; the UJA-Federation Task Force on Women, and the International Center for Peace in the Middle East.

Her recently published book caught my eye. I had not been aware of her breast cancer diagnosis a few years ago. But when I saw that she was to be speaking in Manhattan, I was anxious to hear what she had to say. Last night, Barry and I attended an interview with Ms. Cottin Pogrebin conducted by her daughter, Abigail Pogrebin.

Ms. Cottin Pogrebin was also treated at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and she took advantage of the hours spent in the various waiting rooms there to meet and interview people for the book she realized she had to write. Her frustration at the behavior of some of her friends and family is tempered with tremendous understanding and compassion for the difficult issues that friends and families of patients often confront. She is the first to admit that, prior to her own illness, she often said and did some of the things that were not helpful or even upsetting to her as a cancer patient.

What is fascinating is that she and so many of the people she interviewed seemed to have similar reactions to the usual “comforting words” that well-meaning people say all the time. Things like “God does not give us more than we can handle,” “if you think you have it bad, you should hear what happened to me,” and suggestions that one’s doctors may not be the most expert can sound trite at best and downright agonizing at worst.

This could not have been an easy book to write, and she talked about friends calling and apologizing when they thought they were reading about something they might have done. But I am glad she wrote it, because it is a much less painful way for people to learn these lessons than the one we have experienced during this past year. Barry and I hope to spend what is predicted to be a rainy Saturday in NY reading the book together. 

Love,

Rebecca 

Three posts

I am sitting at my computer early Thursday morning with three ideas in my head, two of which deserve their own space. So I will tackle the third one first, and then move on to the other two.

There are so many great new films to be seen! Unfortunately, quite a few are foreign language films, and my reading ability has still not improved sufficiently to make reading subtitles possible. I know this must seem puzzling to all of you reading this. It is puzzling to me as well. But apparently somewhat different parts of the brain handle these seemingly related functions, so I am able to write but still struggle to re-read what I’ve written. Well, at least it provides a good excuse for my often mediocre writing.

[Note: that last sentence will prompt many of you dear readers to send messages and tell me how articulate I am, and I do appreciate the words of encouragement. But sitting here at the computer is quite a different exercise than live interactions, so while I may be performing acceptably at the former I am easily flustered by the latter.]

Be that as it may, the good news is that there are plenty of new English language films of interest. We had a list of three, all playing at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and chose “Frances Ha,” written and directed by Noah Baumbach, who also wrote and directed the 2005 film “The Squid and the Whale.” The movie tells a fascinating story about friendship and love as a young woman struggles to find her place in the world around her.  A.O. Scott captured it well (New York Times 18 May):

In the course of a little less than a year, Frances, heedlessly skipping through her 20s, suddenly falls down and feels the impact of reality. Or maturity. Or some other hard fact that she might have acknowledged before, but mostly for other people, or for later.

If you have a chance, this is one I definitely recommend. We are also hoping to see two other films currently showing at Lincoln Plaza, “What Maisie Knew” and “Stories We Tell.” I will report on them when we do.

Love,

Rebecca