A good start

The children all started school today. The summer certainly passed very quickly this year. Meanwhile, Barry and I had our own important outing for the day.

Dr. DeAngelis sees outpatients for follow-up on Tuesdays at the MSKCC outpatient facility on East 53^rd Street, where MRI is on the 8^th floor and neuroncology is on the 5^th. A couple of months ago I received a call to inform me that the equipment on the 8^th floor is undergoing renovation and I would need to have my next MRI, scheduled for September 2^nd,  at the main hospital on York Avenue between 67^th and 68^th Streets.

I have not been over to the main hospital in quite some time, and it is a very strange feeling to go there now. The surroundings are oddly familiar but I cannot specifically remember being there. Barry reminded me that I was there for my scans while I was undergoing treatment. I rather faintly remember that Simmie had come to New York and went in with me for my first scan there. I do not remember knowing how or why she went rather than Barry. It turns out that at Mount Sinai they had not allowed anyone to accompany the patient, so when I was transferred to MSKCC Barry assumed he would not be able to go and took advantage of my time in radiology to run home for a bit. When they came to get me they asked Simmie if she would like to go in with me and she said “sure.” I hope it did not do any more damage to her hearing than the years of listening to my singing!

Not knowing how the traffic would be this day after Labor Day, we left the house two hours before the scheduled appointment and of course made it to York Avenue more than an hour early. But they took me in fairly quickly, leaving us plenty of time to get over to 53^rd Street.

Dr. DeAngelis made her usual enthusiastic entrance with a smiling “you’re fine!” We chatted for a bit about my cognitive function, which has continued to improve slowly but remains a challenge, and agreed that we can schedule my next appointment for six months from now. In truth, my last appointment was supposed to have been only five months from the one previous, but ended up close to seven months because of our summer plans with the children. So six months should be just fine.

So we can breathe a sigh of relief today and get on with planning for the upcoming holidays!

Love,

Rebecca 

Worth the wait

Last year in early September we saw a live taping of the NPR talk show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” at Tanglewood. When we saw a few months ago that the show was again being broadcast from Tanglewood we quickly bought tickets and made our plans. We originally planned on leaving Western Massachusetts on Friday and either coming back to New York or heading to Sharon. But the weather forecasts were so amazing that we decided to stay in the Berkshires through the weekend.

Last year’s taping of the show at Tanglewood had been the first, and this second one was even more fun. The panel was completely different. Carl Castle, who had been the moderator for years, has retired from the show, but did make a brief appearance. The new moderator, Bill Curtis, has a somewhat different style than his predecessor but is every bit as entertaining. The three guests this week were Paula Poundstone, Adam Felber, and Roy Blunt, Jr.  They were absolutely hilarious! Barry and I wonder how much of the show is scripted and how much is truly spontaneous banter. I suspect that a fair amount of host Peter Sagal’s material is written, but that does not take away from his terrific delivery and his ability to go with the flow. The guest was Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. No matter how much was scripted and how much was ad lib, he did a great job. We hope this will become part of our standard summer entertainment.

We are still trying to find the perfect but not outrageously expensive lodging in the Berkshires. The place we stayed was alright but was not quite as nice as we had hoped. In the inn’s defense, they are in the middle of renovations. We stayed in one of the recently redecorated rooms, but the common areas need work. Nonetheless, we had a relaxing couple of days, and managed to drive back to New York this morning before the heavy rain that had been predicted started a short while ago.

Simmie and family will be stopping in New York on their return to Sharon from a family event in Maryland. So we are looking forward to having them with us this evening and tomorrow morning before they continue on their way home. Hopefully they will make the trip safely between the storms.

Have a wonderful week.

Love,

Rebecca 

Another small world story

As the Disney song goes, it is a small world after all.

Some months ago, when our friend Michal was visiting us, we introduced her to dear friends and neighbors, J and L. As we sat and chatted, we quickly discovered that Michal’s mother, O, had been a classmate of L from kindergarten through high school. I cannot quite recall how we stumbled upon this fact, but it is one of those wonderful “small world” stories that can happen when you least expect it. We have known Michal’s family since they and we lived in Dallas in the early 1980s, and have known J and L since moving to Riverdale over 25 years ago. I just never had reason to link them.

O and her husband, who have lived in Colorado for many years, were in New York this weekend for a wedding, and we managed to get O and L together. They had not seen each other in almost 50 years, but it seemed as if just a few months had passed for them!  Barry and I were quite impressed at how much the two friends remembered of their school and teachers. It was a small school, and most of the class of 50 or so was together for those thirteen years.

This is certainly a very different experience than typical in public schools, where students attend a series of increasingly larger schools. Most of my friends in high school had gone to different elementary and junior high schools than I, and I would be hard pressed to provide more than a small number of names of teachers or classmates from those schools.  This was true even before the tumor, which primarily affected my short term memory.

What a joy to watch these two old friends reconnect!

Since we are in New York, we managed to see an excellent film called “Love is Strange.” It never ceases to amaze me how well-known actors appear in these small, independent films, when clearly they could earn far more in more widely distributed movies. In this case, the lead roles are played by John Lithgow (Ben), Alfred Molina (George), and Marisa Tomei (Kate, married to Ben’s nephew). The two men play a couple living in Greenwich Village who have been together for forty years and are excited to finally have the chance to be married in New York State. Shortly after and because of their wedding, George, a long beloved music teacher, is fired from his job in a Catholic school. He is unable to find another job and soon learns that his retirement fund is not quite what he thought it was. Ben is somewhat older and no longer working. They are forced to sell their cooperative apartment and find a less expensive place to live, but are determined not to leave Manhattan (neither of them drives). None of their friends or relatives who live in Manhattan has space for two people, so they are forced to separate. Ben goes to share a bunk bed with the teenage son of Kate and her husband, who is Ben’s nephew, while George finds a couch in the apartment of a young gay couple.

Not surprisingly, this arrangement is stressful for both the hosts and the guests. While George is a quiet fellow who listens to classical music, the young couple throws late-night impromptu parties. But the focus is on Ben and his nephew’s wife Kate, who is a writer who works from home and is bearing the brunt of Ben’s intrusion into their lives.

In our discussion over dinner, Barry and I discovered that we had each seen a key part of the plotline somewhat differently, which led to different impressions at the end of the film. The more we tried to figure out what the filmmaker meant, the more we realized that perhaps the ambiguity was intentional. You can see this story in many different ways, through many different lenses. That is, perhaps, at the heart of the beauty of the film.

A.O. Scott summed it up right on the mark in his NY Times review, saying:

By the time the movie is over, you feel as if the people in it were friends you know well enough to tire of, and to miss terribly when they go away.

Have a great day!

Love,

Rebecca

Take me out to the ball game!

We had a wonderful time with Joshua. We drove back to New York with him on Monday and went directly to Citi Field to see the Mets game. Once again, although they did score one run early in the game, the Cubs evened the score mid-game and by the end Cubs won 4 to 1. 

On Tuesday we went to the Bronx Zoo, which was on Joshua’s list of things he wanted to do. The weather was fabulous and we had a lot of fun walking around and talking and eating our lunch outside. 

Wednesday we headed over to the Intrepid. Barry and I had never been there and did not know what to expect. It is actually quite nice and interesting and almost everything is accessible. Joshua enjoyed seeing all those planes.

Joshua is quite simple to feed. While he eats a variety of foods, he does have his preferences. Since he was only with us for a few short days we wanted to follow his directive, as we did with the three girls. So we had dinners from just two local kosher restaurants: Carlos and Gabby’s (Mexican food) and Pizza Block, a relatively new addition to our neighborhood. We played lots of games and watched some sports on television, something which I would never do on my own but was happy to do with him. He is quite the sports fan, and knows a lot about the baseball teams and players.

A friend, whose firm has season tickets at Yankees Stadium, had given us two tickets to the game this afternoon that he could not use. Our plan was for the “boys” to use them, and we were to drive back to Sharon on Friday morning with a stop at Mystic Aquarium along the way. Unfortunately, these plans had to be revised at the last minute because Barry could not take him. I wish I was able to just get in the car and drive him and attend the game with him, but that is not something I could do safely. Not wanting him to miss the game, Dina drove up early this morning, took Joshua to the game, and is heading back to Sharon with Joshua this evening. The good news is that it was a quick game and the Yankees won!

We had long hoped to have each of our grandchildren spend time with us in New York this summer, and we are very thankful that we were able to realize that dream. Each of them is already talking about the things we will do on their visits next year. I just hope we will all be healthy and able to make that happen.

Stay well!

Love,

Rebecca

Siriusly!

Our new car came with a one year subscription to Sirius XM Satellite Radio. This gives us access to literally hundreds of radio stations that serve a wide variety of musical interests. We spent some time looking over the list and Barry entered pre-sets for the stations that looked interesting so we could listen to them during our drives along I-95 between New York City and Boston. Among these are a few different stations that play music from the 1960s and 1970s.

On our early Friday morning drive from New York to Sharon we had the radio tuned in to a channel that plays music from the 1960s. The disc jockey was looking for people to call in with the answer to the following question: in the song “Woodstock,” written and recorded by Joni Mitchel (also recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), there is a reference to “the garden”: what garden was this?”

Here are the lyrics to the first verse of the song:

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I'm going on down to Yasgur's farm
I'm going to join in a rock 'n' roll band
I'm going to camp out on the land
I'm going to try an' get my soul free
We are stardust, we are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.

We looked at each other and thought “what a ridiculously simple question, everyone knows the reference is to the biblical Garden of Eden.” The first few callers gave this answer but they were told it was incorrect. Huh? Finally, the disc jockey said that the reference was to the city of Garden, Michigan.

Really? Joni Mitchell is Canadian. I cannot imagine why she would have included a reference to some obscure town in Michigan (population 221 in the 2010 census). Further, this would have been completely off topic in the song.

I really think this DJ was just pulling the listeners’ legs! We arrived at our destination so stopped listening, but presumably someone set him straight.

This started me thinking about the two versions of this song. Joni Mitchell’s rendition is quintessential Joni Mitchell, haunting and soulful. CSNY sang it more as a rock anthem to the event and the young people who attended. I posted Joni Mitchell’s version on the 45^th anniversary of the festival earlier this summer. Here is a video of Crosby, Stills and Nash performing the song at Madison Square Garden in the fall of 2009. I am nearly 100% certain that Barry and I were at that show! I only wish I would have had the foresight to hang on to all those ticket stubs….

Have a nice Sunday!

Love,

Rebecca

Beautiful

You may have noticed that I often mention the singer/songwriter Carole King. I have been a huge fan since she began performing and recording around 1970. I own nearly all of the 20+ albums she recorded (I did not purchase some of the “compilation” albums, as those songs were already on other albums I owned), and in my younger years it would be fair to say that I knew the words to virtually every song on every one of those albums. Our daughters can tell you that they grew up listening to Carole King and to their mother sitting at the piano trying to play and sing those songs.

In the early 1990s a show called “Tapestry” opened at an off-Broadway theater. Barry and I saw that show with a friend who had also been a fan. It was awful! I cannot even remember the storyline, but I remember feeling that they just clobbered her wonderful music. Our most vivid memory is that our friend kept making what would now be called “snarky” comments, albeit in Yiddish, throughout the performance.

[Full disclosure: I recently reminded the friend of this incident, and she had no recollection of it whatsoever. But Barry and I remember it quite vividly. I guess she decided it was not worth using up long term storage space in her brain!]

So when a musical called “Beautiful,” based on Carole King’s early career, opened on Broadway earlier this year, I was reluctant to go and see it. I did not even read the reviews, and even when Jessie Mueller won this year’s Tony award for best actress for her portrayal of Ms. King, I was still not convinced. But after our recent positive Broadway experiences with Eliana and Ella, Barry suggested (again) that we get tickets, and we went last night.

It was a good show, and Jessie Mueller was quite impressive. The story follows Ms. King’s early career, when she began at 16 writing songs recorded and popularized by other singers. It tells of her difficult marriage to song-writing-partner Gerry Goffin, and ends with her legendary 1971 concert at Carnegie Hall. Much of the score is music she wrote prior to her breakthrough “Tapestry” album.

I am glad I finally saw it, but I cannot say I loved it. I am simply too much of a Carole King purist: in my opinion, no one can sing her songs as well as she can (and that includes James Taylor singing “You’ve Got a Friend.”)

A couple of months ago, Carole King went to see the show, but must have been disguised so that no one knew she was there. After the show she made her presence known and joined the cast on stage. I found (of course) a YouTube video of that evening.

We are headed up to Sharon this weekend, and will be bringing Joshua back with us for his week in New York. Instead of American Girl and Broadway, we have tickets to two baseball games and hope to go see the Intrepid. It should be a fun week.

Have a good weekend!

Love,

Rebecca 

Sobering thoughts

Yesterday I wrote a bit about the death of the actor, Robin Williams. I talked about this in the context of a time when so many people are dying prematurely all over the world. I woke up at 3 am this morning thinking about an incident I have heard Rabbi Avi Weiss recall on a number of occasions over the years, and was amazed to quickly find his own words with a few clicks

A favorite personal story reinforces this idea.  My mother of blessed memory, and father made aliyah (emigrated to Israel) years ago.  Whenever my parents flew to New York, it was my responsibility, as their only child living there, to meet them at the airport.   

One time my father called me to inform me that at the last moment, their arrival was moved up by twenty-four hours.  Professing my deep love for my parents, I insisted that I couldn’t change my schedule on such short notice.   

“You’ve become a hotshot Rabbi," my father responded, “and don’t have time for your parents?”  “I love you deeply," I protested, “but it’s difficult to alter plans at the last minute."   

I’ll never forget my father’s response.  "Don’t love me so much, just pick me up at the airport."   

(you can find the entire talk at

http://www.hir.org/a_weekly_gallery/6.8.08H-weekly.html

Rav Avi has told this story in many contexts, but the message is clear: it is easy to love the world, but much more difficult to love just one person.

Perhaps the same can be said for the way we often feel about people who are famous. Given the frequency of divorce among celebrities, it is clear that they find it difficult to love just one person, but they undoubtedly love their fans. While millions of people “loved” Robin Williams, we might not appreciate being loved by someone who put so much of his energy into his career.

The other question I was pondering at 3 am was the appropriateness of reporting the details surrounding the cause of his untimely death. But then it struck me that the thing about hanging is that there is no question of the intent. Overdoses of drugs or even gunshot wounds could be accidental, but wrist slashing and hanging are unequivocal signs of an unbearably deep depression. We have personally known a small number of people who took their own lives despite significant attempts at intervention by well-regarded professionals. The suicide of someone who surely had access to the best resources is a stark reminder that we still have so much to learn about the human brain and how to repair it when it malfunctions.

He was obviously a tortured soul in life. Hopefully his next journey will be a happier one.

Love,

Rebecca