Catching up on reading

I suddenly remembered today that I never wrote about the audio versions of two books, each recorded by the author, to which Barry and I listened during our trip to St. John. No Tolstoy or Shakespeare here, just light “beach reading.”

On the flight to St. Thomas we began listening to Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan. Neither of us was all that familiar with Jim Gaffigan but we had read and heard that the book was enjoyable. From the start I will say that one of the most appealing things about him is that he wholeheartedly resists the temptation common among popular comics to use off-color language. I often think that comics use offensive language for its shock value, helping the audience forget that what they have to say is not really all that humorous. Of course, just the title of Mr. Gaffigan’s book tells you that he is writing about parenthood. He and his wife had five children between two and ten years of age squeezed into a two-bedroom five-story walk-up in Manhattan. They needed to learn to laugh or they might have done some harm to themselves or others. Did we really believe all of his stories? Of course not. But they were told with good humor and were perfect vacation reading.

Once we arrived in St. John we toggled our listening between Dad is Fat and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling. We have become familiar with Ms. Kaling from her series The Mindy Project which is in its second year on Fox TV. Until reading her book, I was largely unaware of her earlier career, in part because I was never too fond of the NBC series, The Office, a show on which she was a cast member from 2005 to 2013. She is bright and funny and quite charming, all of which she might do even better if she took a cue from Jim Gaffigan and cleaned up her language a bit. Actually when I hear her use or read her written off-color language, I am always a bit surprised because it feels somehow out of character.

We had a nice but very cold weekend. We did manage to walk to synagogue on Saturday, and had invited friends to join us for lunch so we had a nice afternoon. We had hoped to go out on Sunday but (again) the snow started falling in the morning, another 6” or so before it stopped in the afternoon. So we had a quiet day at home, and while Barry worked I decided to bake some hammantaschen, the filled triangle-shaped cookies traditional for the upcoming Purim holiday.

Since we were not able to get out yesterday, we went instead this evening to see a movie, “Two Days, One Night.” This movie received quite stellar reviews, including A.O. Scott of the New York Times and a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. My hesitation was the fact that the movie is in French, but feeling buoyed by seeing a Hebrew language film last week, I decided it was worth a try.

The film is about a young family, parents Sandra and Manu and their two children, struggling with both financial and psychiatric problems. Sandra has just been discharged from a hospitalization for depression. Unfortunately, she returns to the small solar energy company where she had worked only to be told that she will be laid off. It seems that the management had offered the employees a choice: they would either maintain the current staff at current salaries, or, if they agreed that one of them (Sandra) would be laid off, they would provide the workers a long-promised bonus of $1000 euros. Sandra and a couple of co-workers appeal to them to allow the employees to vote again. The two days and one night was the time that Sandra had to try to convince all of her coworkers to support her continued employment. While most were sympathetic, many had their own financial woes and were just one small step from living off the government. The vote resulted in a tie, and the company decided that Sandra must be laid off. At the end, they made her an offer: if she waited a couple of months, they would not renew someone who was in a contract position and she could take that job. It happens that the contract worker had really gone out on a limb for her, and she was unwilling to accept that offer. But along the way she found that perhaps she had more inner strength and reserve than she thought, and somehow you just know at the end that she will land on her feet.

I may not have gotten all of those details completely correct, but hopefully I have provided the gist of it. It was an extremely well done and acted film, simple but very moving. I am not sure just how realistic the scenario is in France, but it still made for a thought-provoking tale.

It is hard to believe it has been six months since my last visit to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. First thing tomorrow we head down for the MRI, followed by a visit with Dr. DeAngelis. Good thoughts are welcome!

Love,

Rebecca

The Sunday New York Times

Every Sunday, Will Shortz, Puzzle Editor for the New York Times, hosts a ten minute or so radio program. The contestant is an entrant selected at random from those who responded correctly to the weekly challenge from the previous Sunday. I have entered many times over the years but never been selected. I suspect I am only solving the easier ones, like this week’s, when the number of correct responses is high so the probability of my selection is quite low (answer will be provided on request or on the radio next Sunday:

This week's challenge comes from listener Smatt Read of Somerville, Mass. Actor Tom Arnold goes by two first names — Tom and Arnold, both male, of course. And actress Grace Kelly went by two first names — Grace and Kelly, both female. Name a famous living actress who goes by three first names, all of them traditionally considered male. The names are 5, 3 and 6 letters long, respectively.

I admit that I cheated a bit, using Google to think of actresses who go by three names, such as Sarah Jessica Parker of Sex and the City fame. If I were really clever I could have written an algorithm to both find and evaluate the names, but that degree of effort seemed a bit extreme, especially since I came up with the answer within about two minutes after starting the search.

Over the past few years many of our friends have been quite reticent to listen to any NPR programming because of disagreements with some of the political views supported by their staff. I definitely understand that. I am far from being what anyone would think of as a “news junkie,” but from where I sit, neither NPR nor Fox are providing completely unbiased, let alone completely accurate, reporting on a wide variety of issues.

All of this came to mind because of a piece that appeared in last week’s Sunday New York Times magazine entitled “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life.” Ms. Sacco had about one hundred followers on Twitter, a similar number who read this blog. There is no question that she wrote something that in the moment must have seemed humorous but that many of us would consider quite offensive; the details are in the Times article but I will not repeat them here. I know nothing about how Twitter works but apparently, just after posting the Tweet, she boarded an overseas flight and the item, initially sent to her usual modest-sized audience, “went viral.” On landing she found her Twitter feed filled with thousands of angry, nasty messages. Shortly after the incident, in an effort to protect the company for which she had been working, she was asked by her manager to resign. She is apparently not the only person to whom this sort of thing has happened.

Reading about this gave me pause. While I have not done anything to promote this blog, I have also done little to limit access. Having said that, I cannot imagine why anyone would find what I write of sufficient interest to waste time helping it “go viral.” The only consolation is that these things usually last 24-48 hours and then the crowd moves on to the next topic.

On a closely related topic, if you missed this week’s “Modern Family,” try to see if you can get ahold of it. The episode is about the pitfalls of heavy reliance on electronic communication, and was definitely one of the best we have seen in a long time.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Love,

Rebecca

Gett

Under traditional Jewish law, a couple can only be divorced if the husband presents the wife with a religious bill of divorce known as a “gett.” This tradition and the language and ritual surrounding it traces back to Biblical times, and it is not my intent to delve into a lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of following such traditions here. However, what is relevant is that with respect to marriage, divorce, and a variety of personal matters, the ancient biblical laws are what define the process in the modern State of Israel, where not all Jewish citizens practice the full gamut of traditional Judaism but have only that approach to dealing with religious matters. A wife who does not receive a gett from her husband becomes an “agunah” — a chained or anchored woman, not permitted to marry anyone else.

“Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” is the story of a couple who have remained in a largely loveless marriage for many years. Viviane, a secular woman, and Elisha, a pious and traditional man, have raised several children. Viviane wants Elisha to grant her a Gett but Elisha adamantly refuses to do so. Early in the film, it is not entirely clear why Elisha is so intransigent on this issue. Although there have been reports of men who have used this as a weapon to extort money from women’s families, this was not the case here, and Elisha’s motives become clear only much later in the film. Meanwhile, year after year at every opportunity she pleads her case before the religious court in an attempt to have Elisha forced to grant her the Gett, but year after year she fails to succeed.

Viviane and Elisha do rather little of the talking. Most of the dialogue is between their representatives and the panel of judges, the “Bet Din” responsible for hearing and adjudicating this case. “Gett” unfolds as a debate about love, marriage and human rights that turns on personal stories and philosophical asides, arguments and counterarguments. As one witness after another testifies about Viviane and Elisha’s marriage, her virtue, his rectitude, it becomes clear that divorce here isn’t only a personal choice, but a matter for God and a people.

This movie represents the third effort featuring Viviane written by Ms. Elkabetz with her brother Shlomi Elkabetz. We have not seen the earlier ones, “To Take a Wife,” and “Shiva,” but I think we will try to do so.

For me, this was something of an experiment. I had mentioned long ago that one of the things we love about living in New York, particularly so close to Manhattan, is the wide selection of alternative and independent film. Because the films are from around the world, they are often in foreign languages with subtitles. For much of the last three years, trying to get through even a small part of such a film was simply a futile endeavor. While it is still a struggle for sure, we thought this might work a bit better because we read a lot about the storyline before seeing it and because from the trailer it appeared to be a slow enough moving film that I might have a chance to keep up. Fortunately that turned out to be true, and only during a couple of very heated sections did I feel entirely lost, although even then the gist was clear.

This is by no means a fun afternoon. But it was an impressive and powerful film, and particularly those readers who give thought to such things would find it quite thought provoking.

I was very happy to have a chance to get out of the house, although, realizing we needed to end our day with something a bit more fun, we had dinner out at our favorite little Italian restaurant. Sweet potato ravioli with a delicious creamy tomato sauce can cure pretty much anything!

Have a nice week,

Love,

Rebecca

A chance to share just a small piece of the legacy

Barry told me this morning that he had heard something on the radio about the approval of a Pfizer drug for the treatment of breast cancer.  Click on this link and then click on “Listen to the Story.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/02/19/386096296/a-biological-quest-leads-to-a-new-kind-of-breast-cancer-drug

As is the usual nomenclature used in early drug development, the team referred to this drug by its mechanism of action, a Cyclin Dependent Kinase #4 and #6, and it came to be known as our “CDK 4,6” compound.  Sometime during the three years since I oversaw that early development work and now, both the drug and I moved on: the drug has been approved for the treatment of patients under the names palbociclib (generic) and Ibrance (brand), and I moved past my own chemotherapeutic regimen.

This event and listening to the news report attached here may be a somewhat sobering reminder that one seldom uses the word “cure” in reporting the results of cancer clinical trials. Surely our CDK 4, 6 inhibitor will not completely cure everyone who takes it. But the way I see it, any increase in quality and longevity of life is a good thing against such a difficult adversary. To all my current and past friends from Pfizer, I continue to feel blessed to have been part of such a bright and dedicated group of clinical researchers.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Love,

Rebecca

Long absence from writing

It has been two weeks since I last wrote, which may well be the longest gap I have had since starting to blog almost three years ago. Although it had taken me a number of days to get into the groove of St. John this year, by the end the trip seemed far too brief. Although we were sad to see the trip end, we were anxious to return to New York and Boston and our homes and family there.

We flew back to Boston on Thursday February 5^th and fortunately had some time with both daughters’ families over Sabbath. But by Sunday, when we headed back to New York, neither of us was feeling well, and we spent the following week almost completely unable to do anything at all. As I am finally starting to come back around I have discovered that we are not the only folks struggling with some nasty viruses. We have been back in New York for 9 days and I have yet to walk out the front door.

I have a list of topics about which I plan to write. But for today, I am just going to share two things.

Thanks to our daughter Simmie for sharing this first item with us. It would be funny but I fear most Boston area residents are having a hard time laughing at this point.

The second item was one we just happened to catch on the CBS Nightly News broadcast yesterday. We lived in Sharon, MA from the summer of 1986 until the spring of 1991.  During that time there was a young couple with whom we were friends. They later divorced and we largely fell out of touch with them over the years since. Elizabeth went to medical school and has now also embarked on a career in local politics. The name and face were quite familiar the minute we saw this piece. Now I just need to figure out how to get back in touch with her.

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/oregon-set-to-crack-down-on-unvaccinated-children

Stay warm!

Love,

Rebecca

Sunrise, sunset

Just to close the loop on yesterday’s question, thanks to my friend Randy, who lives in Hawaii, for the following information:

This is a yacht that came into the Puako area a while back. There was another one similar to it a year or so before that. Both of them were capable of making the crossing from the mainland (either US or Asian/European side: one was owned by a Russian and the other by an Italian) to Hawaii. I think all the stuff on the "mast" is navigation, radar and communication (including TV) equipment.

One fabulous thing about being here is that the sky is so fascinating, with magnificent sunrises and an amazing view of more stars than you can even imagine. We do not have the equipment photographic to capture these as well as professionals, but last night was the perfect combination of full moon and no clouds, and even these amateur shots are pretty cool.

Today is our last full day in paradise. We are so not ready to come back to the cold!

Love,  

Rebecca

Sure beats me

These two pictures are of the same vessel, one head-on and the other a side view. Do any of you have any idea what this is? It would look like a regular yacht (you see an amazing of them down here in these waters) but for that weird thing sticking out the top.

We saw this today off Francis Beach. We had been reluctant to go there because it is often very buggy, but perhaps since this past week has been so dry, the bugs were not a problem and we had a terrific shady spot on the beach all day.

Love,

Rebecca