Amateur photographer

I just saw this picture on the March 14^th posting on

http://newsofstjohn.com/DailySTJ/ :

Here is a picture you readers have seen before (03 February 2014):

Clearly their photographer picked a nicer day, but my amateur version is not too shabby, right?

Love,

Rebecca

Back to the Garden

The first day of spring is on Thursday, March 20^th, two weeks away. But the annual Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden opened last week, and even though the temperature did not get above the low 20s we just had to head over there (the entire exhibit is indoors).

Barry snapped all these pictures (and countless others) with our better camera. The “garden” in the song is not the NYBG, but it works for me.

"Woodstock"

Well I came across a child of God, he was walking along the road
And I asked him tell where are you going, this he told me:
Well, I'm going down to Yasgur's farm, gonna to join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land, set my soul free.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Well, then can I walk beside you? I have come to lose the smog
And I feel like I'm a cog in something turning.
And maybe it's the time of year, yes, and maybe it's the time of man,
And I don't know who I am but life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong,
And everywhere there was song and celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bombers jet planes riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies above our nation.

We are stardust, we are golden, we caught in the devil's bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

The Orchid Show means that the annual tenure of the Allman Brothers Band at the Beacon Theater cannot be too far behind…stay tuned, we have great seats for the 19^th.

From where I see it, spring cannot arrive even one day too soon!

Love,

Rebecca

And the winner is....

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that Barry and I enjoy movies. We had intended to go see one or two on Sunday but we were somewhat sidetracked by predictions of snow (that never materialized) and by running one errand that turned into another.

It all started with baby clothes. With the impending arrival, our daughters were trying to track down all the baby clothes they had passed back and forth between them when each of the four grandchildren was born. But they discovered that after Maya, the youngest, the clothes went to the sister of our other daughter’s husband, who had a girl last year. She lives on Long Island and delivered the clothes to our other daughter’s in-laws’ home a few towns over. Early Sunday morning, we drove out to retrieve them and will take them up to Sharon on Friday. I think I can say that we spent no more on gas than the baby clothes were worth.

While we were driving out there, it suddenly occurred to me that there is an Amazing Savings near our in-law’s home. If you have never been to Amazing Savings, it is quite an experience. I am not sure quite how they do this (and maybe I do not want to know) but they sell a lot of good stuff at prices far lower and with selections far broader than you would find elsewhere. Among those things are items that are most useful with both Passover and a new baby coming: very nice disposable plastic tableware, and every imaginable shape and size of foil pans. Yes, I know, not environmentally friendly, but sometimes you have to prioritize. Between the three bins of baby clothes and the umpteen bags of foil pans and dinnerware, we had a completely full car, both the back seat and the trunk.

We had thought about driving back from Long Island through the City and stopping to see a movie. But a combination of the weather forecast and the fact that we had a bit too much sitting in the passenger section of the car convinced us to head back home. As it turned out, the snow never came. So perhaps we could have gone to see a movie, but instead we took care of something that truly needed to be done, pulling together all the 2013 tax documents and completing the workbook that our accountant provides each year. Just between you and me, I think Barry and I both secretly wanted to go see a movie just to avoid that task. 2013 was a complicated year because of my separation from Pfizer and our efforts to consolidate a bunch of retirement savings accounts. But in fact it went much more smoothly than we expected.

We knew we would have a hard time staying awake through the entire Academy Awards Show last night, so we set up to tape it and watched it early this morning, fast forwarding through some of the fluff.

In case you missed it, here a partial list of the 86th Academy Awards winners:

Best Picture	12 Years a Slave
Best Actor in a Leading Role	Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)
Best Actress in a Leading Role	Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Best Actor in a Supporting Role	Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)
Best Actress in a Supporting Role	Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
Best Animated Feature	Frozen (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, Peter Del Vecho)
Best Cinematography	Gravity (Emmanuel Lubezki)
Best Directing	Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón)
Best Documentary Feature	20 Feet from Stardom (Morgan Neville, Gil Friesen, Caitrin Rogers)
Best Original Song	Let It Go - Frozen
Best Original Screenplay	Her (Spike Jonze)

The film that did very well was the one we know we should have seen but did not: 12 Years a Slave. I mentioned this in passing back in January when I wrote about the Golden Globe awards. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, whatever minimal tolerance I may have had for watching intense suffering on the silver screen before my diagnosis has been exacerbated to the point that I simply cannot subject myself to it. The clips alone have been too intense for me to watch! But I have no doubt that this was an excellent film deserving of all the accolades. 

Back in December I wrote about Dallas Buyers Club “There may well be some Academy Award nominations from this one.” This, too, was a painful film to watch, but I think I was able to see beyond that aspect because of my early experience in antiretroviral drug development. In fact, the film won both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for two brilliant performances. Cate Blanchett, who won Best Actress, was excellent in Blue Jasmine. The Best Supporting Actress category also included two other outstanding performances by less well known actresses, Sally Hawkins in Blue Jasmine and June Squibb in Nebraska, not an easy choice.

Frozen, another movie we thoroughly enjoyed and about which I had written “with or without children, I recommend this movie,” won Best Animated Film (the animation was spectacular) and Best Original Song for “Let it Go” (good luck getting that one out of your head once you hear it a couple of times). I was happy to see that Her, a movie we enjoyed immensely, got a nod, presumably for its thought-provoking storyline.

The next few days will be cold but next weekend should begin to warm…it cannot come too quickly!

Love,

Rebecca

Not to dwell on this topic, but....

This morning I found a transcript of an interview conducted by Ken Jennings, the top winner in the history of Jeopardy!, with Arthur Chu, the current champion about whom I wrote yesterday.

Ken Jennings Talks to Arthur Chu About the Life of a Jeopardy! Master

Arthur Chu, Jeopardy!’s reigning champion, talks to Ken Jennings about the strategy of a quiz show master.

Last night was (yet another) runaway game. I think the question is: why are some people so angry? As I wrote yesterday, I am not crazy about it, but there is nothing in the rules that prohibits his strategy. Is it just his personality?

We will keep watching. And there will not be much else to do with more snow on the way!

Have a nice weekend.

Love,

Rebecca

A clever strategy?

Tomorrow is the last day of February. The old saying, “March winds and April showers help to bring May flowers,” was not likely referring to snow blowing in the wind. But in the northeastern United States, this winter is now the 6^th snowiest on record, and it will not take too much additional snowfall, which is predicted for this weekend, to bump it up to the #2 spot. Some might point to this as proof that we need not be concerned about global warming. Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple. The concern is not simply about global warming, but of extreme weather in both directions. I still want to believe that if the people and countries of the world could stop fighting and focus their collective efforts on addressing this problem, we might well be able to solve it. I guess you could say that I have my head in the clouds (and there are plenty out there).

We are staying in New York this weekend because Barry has meetings at Mount Sinai all day tomorrow. We have some friends coming for Sabbath lunch and I have been cooking. Barry just took some roasted root vegetables out of the oven and I can smell the rosemary all the way down here in the office.

I have written some about the television game show Jeopardy, which Barry and I watch regularly. For the two weeks before this one, there was a tournament of college students. Before that tournament, a fellow named Arthur Chu had won three games, and was scheduled to return after the tournament. He has been back this week and played three additional games. He has a rather distinct strategy of play. Most players start with the easiest (lowest monetary value) question in each category, and work their way to the most difficult (highest monetary value). But Mr. Chu has taken a very different approach. He begins by selecting the most difficult question, and rather than moving up through the questions in decreasing order of difficulty, he jumps to the next category, selecting the most difficult question there, and continues in this pattern. He is a very able player, and knows a lot of the questions, so often ends up in control of the board and able to make this scheme work. To be honest, we are not especially enjoying his approach. It is difficult to keep changing gears across the categories. But he has been trouncing the other contestants, usually going into Final Jeopardy with enough money that he cannot lose no matter what the other players do.

I discovered this afternoon that the internet is filled with chat room discussions about the pros and cons of this approach. The views range from a visceral negative response to absolute awe.

There is a bit about this on the NPR website that you can find here:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/02/21/280749689/asian-american-contestant-villain-of-jeopardy-set-to-return

Jeopardy is on in just a few minutes but we record and watch it later so that we can fast forward through the commercials. It is not quite as clever a strategy as Arthur Chu could probably devise, but it works for me.

Have a nice weekend, and stay warm!

Love,

Rebecca

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/02/21/280749689/asian-american-contestant-villain-of-jeopardy-set-to-return

Laughter

IMHO (which I believe is short-hand for “in my humble opinion”), while there are many excellent television programs, there is also a lot of junk interspersed with commercials. So we seldom watch live TV anymore, taping the things we want to see so we can speed through the commercials. Even if we are home at 7 pm for Jeopardy, we wait and watch it a bit later so we can fast forward through the commercials.

The commercials during Jeopardy clearly assume an older viewing audience, relating as they do to treatments for illnesses that primarily effect aging baby boomers. Perhaps someone should tell the advertisers that many of us have figured out how to skip the commercials.

But I have seen enough to be quite amused by comedians making fun of this sort of targeted advertising. We have started to record Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO. We may not always agree with him politically but he does have interesting guests with whom he engages in thought-provoking conversation. Much of the material is quite humorous, as was this line, taken from a bit last week that we only got around to watching last night.

So yes, welcome to the brave new world of micro-targeting, which, look, is often harmless. No one gets hurt if my computer tells me "ïf you bought James Taylor's greatest hits, you might also enjoy this pillow and some sleeping pills."

(Real Time with Bill Maher, 21 February 2014)

If you have been reading my blog, you know that I am a HUGE fan of James Taylor, so you might think I would find this insulting. But I thought this was hilarious, and I would like to think that James is sufficiently self-aware to have the same response.

I still remember fondly a speech given by a friend at the celebration of her newborn daughter some years ago. She spoke of the attributes of many of the friends and family who had gathered and expressed hope that each of these would be passed on to her daughter. To this day, I am deeply touched by the memory of her including my sense of humor on that list. I like to think that sense of humor has served me well throughout my life, but particularly during these past two years. Solomon had it right when he said

To every thing there is a reason, and a time to every purpose under heaven…

A time to weep, a time to laugh…

May you find time to laugh every day!

Love,

Rebecca

Long ago memories

After a lovely weekend, with temperatures near 50^o even in the Boston area, we are bracing for a return of winter weather, with more snow on the way. As I watch a couple of friends trying to deal with medical issues during or between these storms, I am very grateful that the acute phase of my cancer – the first six months or so – was during the six months between early spring and early fall. At least Barry did not have to add treacherous driving to and from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to his already overloaded list of responsibilities.

While Simmie and family spent the weekend with relatives in New York, Barry and I stayed in Sharon. We had dinner Friday night with Dina, Aaron, Joshua, and Ella, and then the children had lunch with us while their parents ate with friends who have only younger children. Later in the afternoon we headed back over to Dina’s house so the children could put on their snow pants and boots and play outside, and we stayed there until after Sabbath.

On Saturday night we were anxious to watch the end of the two week college tournament on Jeopardy, which we had taped on Friday evening, and the young woman we favored won! Then on Sunday morning we returned to New York, where I spent the better part of the day catching up on bills and trying to pull income tax documents together and make copies of them.

My dear friend Michal sent an e-mail telling of a recent incident involving a pot of eggs inadvertently left boiling on the stove. This could have been a tragic disaster but fortunately no one was hurt, although the mess of exploded eggs was quite an undertaking to clean.

This reminded me of an incident that happened back in 1975. We had been married a little over two years and lived in University Park, a garden apartment complex that was part of the University of Rochester student housing. We had a downstairs one-bedroom apartment, and our friends Sharon and Marty lived around the other side of the building in a two-bedroom upstairs apartment with their infant daughter Eden. Barry and Marty were both graduate students in the Department of Radiation Biology and Biophysics. Marty had been over at our apartment rather late (even then, bedtime was early for us) studying for an exam with Barry. When he went home, Barry and I went to sleep. We were awakened a couple of hours later by the phone ringing. I picked it up and heard “Hi. We’re coming over.” We jumped out of bed and Barry threw on some clothes to find out what was wrong. Within moments he returned with Sharon, Marty, and Eden. It turned out that they had put some rubber nipples from the Playtex baby bottles in a pan of water to sterilize (commonly done back in those days) and then, tired new parents as they were, they fell asleep. The next thing they knew they awakened to a horrible smell and an apartment filled with smoke: the water had boiled off and the rubber was burning. They called us, grabbed Eden, and ran around the corner to our apartment.

We did not have children yet, so did the best we could. We pulled out and emptied one of the drawers from Barry’s chest, lined it with clean blankets, and put Eden to sleep. This incident is still one of our most vivid memories from those years in University Park.

It fascinates me that I can barely remember what I did this past weekend but can remember with such clarity things that occurred forty years ago. I heard recently that new studies are confirming that our memories from the years before we are 25 or so tend to be the ones that stay with us as we grow older. I imagine pretty much anyone over 50 can vouch for that.

So I will keep trying to take a lot of pictures of our grandchildren so I can hold on to their beautiful smiling faces as long as I can!

Love,

Rebecca