My blogging history:
2012: diagnosed with and underwent treatment for Primary CNS lymphoma in my brain.
2012-2013: blogged on Caring Bridge.
2013: moved to Blogger.
2017: diagnosed with bladder cancer and blogged through 14 chemotherapy treatments and 37 sessions of radiation therapy, each with its own t-shirt and musical selection.
2018 to February 2020: Treated every 3 weeks with pembrolizumab for spread of bladder cancer to lymph nodes. As of June 2020, continue to be cancer free.
It has been over a
week since I sat down at the computer to write a post. I doubt any of my
readers were lying awake at night wondering what happened to me, waiting on
pins and needles for my return. I am happy to inform you that I am doing just
fine, perhaps even too well to take the time to post here.
Finally, finally,
finally, spring seems to have arrived. In fact, as is so often the case, we
will soon be complaining that it too quickly morphed into summer. So we have
taken every opportunity to spend time outdoors.
The Botanical Gardens
are beautiful this time of year, with so much newly in bloom. We took the new
scooter and we went to many of the areas we had not seen in a long time, areas
with hills that made it difficult for Barry to push me in a wheelchair. Here
are a couple of pictures.
As the week moved along, the weather predictions for last weekend continued to be quite promising, so Barry again bought tickets to an afternoon Mets game on Sunday. The last time had been a bit chilly but yesterday was perfect. The less than perfect part was that the Mets lost 0 to 1. Not a thrilling game, but we a good time.
We also got into an interesting conversation. Barry and I are both right handed, as are our daughters. Joshua is a leftie. I never thought about the fact that a left-handed player needs a glove for the right hand rather than the left. Watching the game yesterday, we noticed that a fairly significant proportion of the players were left-handed. I wondered whether, in the past, parents discouraged use of the left hand, perhaps not wanting their children to be “different,” and that what we are seeing now is closer to the true distribution of handedness in the population. That theory turns out to be way “off base,” so to speak. In fact, about 10% of people in the general population favor the use of their left hand. But among baseball players, that figure is closer to 30%. Why should this be the case?
Next time you watch a baseball game, take a look at what happens when players are up at bat. At the end of a swing, the right-handed batter is facing away from first base, and his momentum is away from first base. The left-handed batter, on the “other hand” (so to speak), is facing towards first base, perhaps giving him that slight edge to run more quickly and get to first base before the ball does. This seemingly miniscule advantage may make the lefties better ball players.
So if you have a left-handed child, he or she may be at a slight advantage in baseball. We think we may be onto a great idea for Joshua’s science fair project for next year.
Meanwhile, have a lovely week. Enjoy the weather while it lasts!
My friend Guy shared
this video a few days ago, in which a teacher stages an amazingly creative
prank for his mathematics students. This being early April, I would imagine it
was done as an April Fools’ Day joke. But this fellow is no fool!
We managed to squeeze in a couple of movies over the last few days that have somewhat similar, or at least related, themes. The first was Noah Baumbach’s “While We’re Young.” Ben Stiller plays Josh, a pleasant and reasonably well-adjusted 40-something year old fellow who is struggling with getting older and not having accomplished all he may have wanted, while the next generation is newly reaching adulthood and, as the newcomers to this stage, making his aging peer group feel less important. Josh and his wife, Cornelia (played by Naomi Watts), befriend Jamie (Amanda Seyfried) and Darby (Adam Driver), a 25-year-old married couple with whom they become friends. Although they all live in New York, the two couples seem to see the City through different eyes.
There were two actors in the film who looked and sounded familiar but took us a little while of watching to realize who they were. The first was Charles Grodin, who plays Cornelia’s father, a successful film maker who leaves Josh feeling inadequate. The second was Peter Yarrow, formerly of the trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, who plays a left-wing intellectual who seems unhappy and disappointed with everything and everyone. There are no real surprise endings: you can see that the story is heading to a new level of self-awareness and change for the couple, and in the final few seconds you are given a glimpse of what that will be.
The second film was called “Clouds of Sils Maria.” Kristen Stewart plays a young woman named Valentine who works as a personal assistant to an aging, once-famous actress named Maria, played by Juliette Binoche. One of Valentine’s many responsibilities is to help Maria memorize and rehearse her lines, which they do while walking through the magnificent mountain side in the Swiss Alps where they are staying to prepare for the filming. Because the two characters switch frequently between their role relationship and their actual relationship, it is often somewhat confusing to understand just which is being discussed. Perhaps that is precisely the point, the blurring between Maria and the character she is playing in the film, between Maria’s personal relationship with Valentine and the relationship they have as actress and assistant. Perhaps this explains the name, the clouds that blur and hover over their relationship.
Early in the film, Valerie and Maria travel to Zurich so that Maria can accept an award on behalf of the filmmaker with whom she worked on many projects. Unfortunately, they arrive to discover that the filmmaker has died, making the award a posthumous one. There are a number of sub-plots, including a young director who is remaking Maria’s first hit movie, but this time having Maria play a much more minor role as an older woman.
These two films were different perspectives on essentially the same issue: growing older and accepting who we are, with all its disappointments and unhappy memories that can take over if we let them. “While We’re Young” ends, in my mind, on a dautiously optimistic note, but “Clouds of Sils Maria” paints a much less rosy picture. If you happen to know any film students, these two could make a very interesting thesis.
Last, we went this week to hear David Brooks discuss his new book, The Road to Character, at the 92nd Street Y. His focus is largely on two categories of virtues around which our lives are based: the “resume” virtues, which revolve around external success, and the “eulogy” virtues, internal attributes such as kindness and honesty. Most of us spend our lives in dogged pursuit of the former but do not spend a lot of time thinking about the latter. We think about how to educate and position ourselves to advance our careers, but not so much about how to educate and position ourselves to advance the albeit more difficult to measure behavioral part of our lives. Mr. Brooks is a terrific speaker, sprinkling his talk and responses to questions with humor where appropriate while able to be serious and moving as well. He has apparently spoken countless times at the 92nd Street Y and I suspect we will be looking for him again. And we definitely intend to read/listen to the book!
There is supposed to be a large outdoor celebration of Israel Independence Day here in Riverdale this afternoon, but outside may be too cold and if they move it indoors it will undoubtedly be too crowded. So I may hop on my scooter and check it out if it’s not raining.
Last Thursday was the
annual observance of Israel's day of commemoration of the approximately six
million Jews who perished in the Holocaust as
a result of the actions carried out by Nazi
Germany and its accessories, and for the Jewish resistance in that
period. Many years ago, when our daughters were just toddlers, we were in
Israel for two weeks that included Yom Hashoah, and the observance
remains firmly etched in my memory. I am hard pressed to think of any such
event that could possibly receive a higher rate of compliance than this annual
one, which is a reflection of the enormity of the impact that the Holocaust had
on nearly every Jewish family anywhere. This video shows what happens all over
the country.
One of the recurring themes of the observance of this day is a vow to never forget what happened in Europe in the 1930s and 40s. As the generation of people who survived that period is aging and passing on, the challenge of keeping the memories alive becomes greater. It is much more challenging these days to find actual survivors to speak at events. The children and grandchildren of survivors are a group whose lives were most intensely impacted by the Holocaust, and many of them devote significant energy to keeping the memory in our collective conscience.
Our friend Deborah Gastfreund Schuss, a writer by profession, is the daughter of survivors. Last Thursday, which was Yom Hashoah, she published an article on foxnews.com, which I have copied here.
Holocaust Remembrance Day: My father's legacy and my duty to never forget
The author's parents, Sally and Morris Gastfreund, in a photo that was taken after they were reunited in the Landsberg Displaced Persons Camp in Germany. (Courtesy of the author)
Early on Jan. 6, 1943, the Gestapo and their collaborators surrounded the ghetto of Randomsk, Poland, and ordered Jews to assemble in the streets. Whoever fell to the ground while being chased outdoors was shot, leaving a fresh blanket of snow stained with blood.
Among those brutalized that day were my father and his family. Ultimately, his mother, three sisters, brother-in-law and 2-year-old nephew were herded into cattle cars bound for Treblinka’s gas chambers.
Resurgent violence against Jews is a terrifying backdrop to Thursday’s Yom Ha’Shoah/ Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed every year to memorialize the 6 million men, women and children who were savagely murdered as humanity’s bystanders shriveled in silence. A generation of Jews, including almost all my parents’ relatives, was systematically exterminated following a dramatic proliferation of virulent anti-Semitism.
Weighing 85 pounds after his rescue, my father found himself in a makeshift hospital lying beside a former inmate. He held my dad’s hand and whispered, “I’m happy to die a free man. Tell the world what happened and to not forget.” He then closed his eyes. My father’s promise to his friend became a lifelong duty that is my legacy.
Only seven decades after my parents barely survived Europe’s human slaughterhouse, Jews again are common targets – whether in a kosher grocery in Paris, a Jewish museum in Brussels, a tourist resort in Argentina or in graves across Europe.
Our synagogues aren’t safe zones either. The murder in February of a man outside a synagogue in Copenhagen was the latest in a series of attacks since last summer. Our spiritual homes have been targeted throughout Europe and in Jerusalem, where Palestinians wielding guns, axes and butcher knives stormed a synagogue and killed four worshippers in November. Photos of the aftermath revealed blood-soaked prayer shawls.
Those images are chillingly familiar. On the eve of the Jewish holiday of Succoth in 1942, the Nazis stormed a synagogue in Wodzislaw, Poland, and dragged 10 worshipers wrapped in their prayer shawls out at gunpoint. The victims were marched to the Jewish cemetery, forced to dig their own graves and shot. One of those men was my mother’s father.
The world has failed to apply history’s stinging lessons to present-day evil, as escalating acts of terror against Jews often are glossed over. It is human nature to embrace the notion that such malevolence cannot prevail, but the enormity of my family’s experiences in a so-called civilized world proves otherwise.
My parents, childhood sweethearts, endured unimaginable cruelties before they miraculously reunited in a displaced persons camp in Landsberg, Germany.
Enslaved in several concentration camps, my father once secretly fled a “sick barrack” while suffering from typhus. With his brother’s help, he was hidden among ammunition crates to mask his infirmity. That day, the Nazis executed everyone remaining there. He was locked for days in a cattle car rolling toward Dachau – “to work in the heavens,” as a Nazi guard gleefully informed the prisoners – a mission that was thwarted when he was liberated amid hundreds of decomposing corpses.
To escape certain death, my mother jumped from a moving freight train about two miles from Treblinka, shots firing at her from above. The sole survivor of her family, she was incarcerated in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where starvation, abuse and selections were the norm, and where gas chambers and crematoria operated for those deemed unfit.
With the horrors of the Holocaust receding from memory, smoldering hatreds are rekindled. Fearful Jews in France, London and Berlin send their children outdoors stripped of Jewish identifiers, and UCLA undergraduates brazenly grill a judicial board nominee regarding her loyalties, stating “she is a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community.”
It’s a chilling replay of a shameful past, when flourishing propaganda and violence against Jews were ignored as evil engulfed the world.
Weighing 85 pounds after his rescue, my father found himself in a makeshift hospital lying beside a former inmate. He held my dad’s hand and whispered, “I’m happy to die a free man. Tell the world what happened and to not forget.” He then closed his eyes. My father’s promise to his friend became a lifelong duty that is my legacy.
There must be a collective cry against all forms of anti-Semitism, whether threats from Iran or intimidation in academia. How loudly that resonates will determine our willingness to block another free fall into moral bankruptcy.
Deborah Gastfreund Schuss is a Boston-based journalist.
Thank you, Debbie, for continuing to remind us of the importance of these memories. Why do we humans seem so unable to learn even the simplest lessons?
For a number of years
now, I have owned and used a mobility scooter up in Sharon. The walk to
synagogue became impossible and it was difficult for Barry to push me in a
wheel chair. I have written a few times about the availability of a scooter that,
for people who have significant medical issues, can be converted to a mode
allowing use on the Jewish Sabbath, when turning on or using ordinary electrical
gadgets is generally not allowed.
We drive a small car
for a number of reasons. First, we have a very small garage, and particularly during
the winter we like to be able to park the car in it. Second, both driving and parking
in the City are much easier with a small car. But the trouble with a small car
is that a scooter cannot fit in it. Recently, a number of companies began to
develop a scooter that disassembles in four or five “easy” steps, where the
definition of “easy” is in the eye of the person taking it apart, lifting the
pieces in and out of the car, and putting it back together as in the
demonstration video. Nonetheless, now that I am here in Riverdale most weekdays,
while Barry is in his laboratory or teaching or attending meetings, I have been
feeling a bit trapped in the house.
If I am cooking and
run out of something I have to either change gears or wait until he comes home.
If I am really in the mood for Starbucks or frozen yogurt, both of which are
just a few blocks away, I cannot go. So Barry decided that what I need is a
scooter here. Riverdale is pretty quiet on weekdays, so getting around should
not be so difficult other than a few parts of sidewalks that are in dire need
of repairs from the particularly cold and icy winter we have just had.
So after hours of
discussion and a trip last week to a couple of stores that sell these scooters,
we decided to buy one called the GoGo Elite Traveler Sport three-wheeler from
Pride Medical Supplies. It came with red trim but included inserts to change
that to blue. And that may be useful. It occurred me that since I am not
roaming too far away, I might become recognizable around here. But if I keep
changing the color of my scooter, maybe people will think there are two such “old
ladies with oxygen on scooters,” the red one and the blue one, here in our little
corner of the Bronx.
We
are spending this weekend in New York. Everyone is exhausted from Thanksgiving
so we are having quiet meals at home. But Passover provided what you might say is
an unrelated and unexpected idea: baking! Every year before the start of
Passover I make two sponge cakes, one lemon and one chocolate. These cakes are
made with potato starch, basically a sort of cake flour made of potatoes. I
have gotten pretty good at it over the years, judging by how quickly it seems
to be eaten. So I got the grocery items and pulled out the cookbook I remember
was my “bible” for sponge cakes, The Joy of Cooking. I used to have this in two
small paperback volumes, but a few years ago I broke down and replaced those
30+ year old books with the new, large hardback edition. She gives very
specific instruction on how to make a sponge cake, which I try to follow religiously.
You could say I take them as seriously as instructions for preparing our
kitchen for Passover.
One
weakness of an exercise like this on Friday morning is that I have to wait
until this evening to sample the cake. I will have to report back next week.
Barry’s vote carries the most weight on this one.
The
Mets are playing Sunday afternoon and Barry managed to get some pretty good
handicap-accessible seats. So we are looking forward to being out on a day that
we hope will at least not be too cold or rainy. Fortunately all the accessible
seats are covered by upper levels of the stadium. I suppose they recognized
that if a big storm hits we would have a hard time getting to a safe place
quickly.
Back in the old days,
before inexpensive long-distance phone calls and instant communication via the
internet, working full time meant going someplace outside of one’s domicile
every day. To conserve vacation time for summer leisure, we usually went to
work on the intermediate days of Passover. Because of the limitations on food
during those eight days, those who observe have to bring from home everything
they might want to eat or drink during the day. I remember leaving the house
and boarding the train each morning of the intermediate days and feeling very
nervous that I did not have enough food and something would go wrong. Needless
to say, I always packed enough for two or three people, and I never starved.
But the memory remains.
Fast forward to now, I
no longer need worry about starvation, but the week still felt extremely busy
and I could not seem to find the psychic energy to sit down, clear my head, and
write. We returned to our New York home a few hours ago, have finished putting
away our things and going through the enormous pile of mail (mostly junk, of
course) and I am now going to do the best I can to play a bit of catch-up.
A couple of days before the start of the holiday, we took Joshua and Ella to see the newest version of Cinderella. We surprisingly enjoyed it much more than we expected we would. One aspect that was especially appealing was the characters were each somewhat different than the usual versions of the story: Cinderella, played by Lily James (a new actress?), was not just a damsel in distress, and the fairy godmother, played by Helena Bonham Carter, was endearingly ditsy. The most interesting character was the wicked stepmother, played deliciously by Cate Blanchette. Although we usually think of this movie as nice entertainment for little girls, this version had a very adult tone to it that made it fun watching for both the children and their grandparents. I just looked and was not surprised to see that the movie received a respectable 84% on Rotten Tomatoes.
We all came together at Simmie’s house for the first Seder on Friday night. Sabbath day we rested up for the second Seder, at Dina’s house, on Saturday night. We had a lot of fun singing all the familiar songs and listening as the children presented things they had learned in school, and of course eating the sumptuous meals our children prepared and served. As planned, we served our traditional “pizza” for Simmie’s birthday lunch.
During the week, we did things with the children: went shopping, played games, and saw another movie: Home. This movie received only a 47% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but this is one time I think the reviewers may have been a bit too harsh. We rather enjoyed it; have we been seeing too many children’s movies lately?
The weather did not cooperate too well during Passover. We had been hoping to do something outdoors but it was rainy and very cold every day until the very last one, limitting us to indoor activities. One special highlight was that, following some conversations with her, we had bought Maya a recorder and started to teach her to play. She caught on quickly, and I will not be surprised if by the time we see her next she will have taught herself a good deal more.
Meanwhile, some quiet downtime will certainly be a change of pace. I have started to compile a long list of things on which I need/would like to get started. Working with Maya reminded me that I need to arrange to have the piano tuned.
People often say “you
can’t go home again.” This phrase has its origins as the title of a novel by
Thomas Wolfe that was published after his death in 1940 based on material
extracted from his unpublished manuscript, “The October Fair”. I had reason to
think about it quite a bit last week.
Early last week I
received an e-mail message from a former Pfizer colleague telling me about a
gathering of the Pfizer group in which she and I had both worked in the early
1990s. Although I am still in contact with a number of colleagues from those
years, somehow my name was a late addition to the list. The gathering was last
Thursday evening at a restaurant two blocks from the Pfizer offices in midtown
Manhatan, and I was fortunately in New York and able to attend. I took a car
service into the City, the first time I visited my old stomping grounds in over
three years, which was a very strange feeling.
Because of the
countless changes to the Pfizer organization during the last twenty years, I
had no way of knowing whether all of my old colleagues knew what had happened
to me. I did not want to spend the entire evening repeating my “story” again
and again, so the day before the event I distributed a brief update on why I
had left and ended with
Because of my pulmonary condition, I cannot stand for long
periods or walk around a lot, so I do hope you will seek me out in a chair
somewhere and stop by to say hello.
I debated about
sending this note because I feared it might sound a bit more self-involved than
I wanted, but I think it was a good idea because it enabled me to focus on my
former colleagues and on my personal favorite discussion topic: our
grandchildren. I set up my iPhone with a collection of especially cute recent
pictures and showed it to everyone who came by.
I knew nearly
everyone in the room; although there were many I had not seen in quite a few
years. I surprised myself with how many names I remembered, continuing evidence
that the section of the brain in which the tumor grew effects short-term much
more than long-term memory.
Even without moving
around much, I was exhausted after an hour and a half or so. But it was nice to
see everyone, and in particular to see that, despite quite a few stressful
changes, the spirit and desire to help patients is still very much alive. At
the same time, it was a bit of a sad reminder of all I had to give up three
years ago. While it was not exactly a homecoming, I am really glad that I went.
We drove up to Sharon
on Friday and had Friday night dinner with Dina and family and Saturday lunch
with Simmie and family. The children always greet us with such enthusiasm when
we have been away for a few weeks. Maybe absence does make the heart grow
fonder.
We had tickets for
the Harlem Globetrotters on Sunday, so Barry, Joshua, Eliana, Ella, and I headed
up to Boston for the game. I am not sure I had ever seen them live, and it was
really quite entertaining. Especially clever was the “instant replay” which
they did by moving as if in slow motion while pretending to “rewind” the “video”
and then “replay”.
After the game we all met at Dina’s for a family birthday celebration for Julia Rose, who reached her first birthday last week. Here are a couple of pictures. She is every bit as cute and sweet as she looks (no bias whatsoever).
I am sorry it has taken a bit to provide this update. I feel as if I have done a year’s worth of cooking and baking in the past few days, all for Passover. Our refrigerator and freezer here in Sharon are completely full of some of our family favorites, with a heavy emphasis on cakes and cookies that I like to make. I hope everyone will be hungry!
