One sappy movie, one compelling movie

Many thanks to all of you who reached out with advice for and commiseration with the sciatica. The quickest and easiest thing to do was a massage, which I did, and seems to have helped quite a bit. I am still exploring options for some of the other ideas you have so graciously shared.

I am also happy to report that I have continued to get around well enough to see a couple of movies.

The first was not one I would ordinarily want to see, but thought I was in the mood for some lighter fare, so we went to see “Book Club.” This star-studded tale of four women, played by Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, and Candace Bergen, who have been reading and discussing books for over thirty years was, to put it mildly, a huge disappointment. The silly story line and poorly written script did not deserve the talents of these four terrific female actors who were joined by a most able set of male actors, including Richard Dreyfuss, Craig T. Nelson, Don Johnson, and Andy Garcia. The best I can say is that if you have nothing else to do and are looking for a relatively mindless couple of hours, this may be the movie for you. On the other hand, both your time and your money are almost assuredly worth much more.

Today we went to see “A Kid Like Jake,” starring Claire Danes and Jim Parsons as Alex (a stay-at-home mom who had practiced law before her son was born) and Greg (a psychotherapist) Wheeler, parents of five-year-old Jake. Although the director of Jake’s preschool (played by Olivia Spencer), a friend of Alex and Greg, tries to make them aware that their son is different with descriptions like his enjoyment of “gender-expansive play,” they do not seem to take seriously his increasing insistence on seeing himself as a girl.

This is not necessarily a topic we had ever given much thought until quite recently, when we became aware that someone we know has a pre-school age child who appears to be gender non-conforming. Although the child’s mother has been speaking and writing about this experience, it is not my place to provide any of the details here except to say that I am not sure we would have gone to see this film if not for our awareness of that family.

The film gets off to a fine start and paints a warm portrayal of a loving couple who are devoted parents to their unusual little boy. Much of the film portrays their struggle with coming to terms with their child’s gender non-conformity. They only become fully accepting of his situation in the final minutes of the film, and somehow they move from nearly devastated to well-adjusted with their new reality within an unrealistically short period of time. I wish the film would have spent less time on some of the side-stories (for example, about one of Greg’s patients) and more on how the family was able to take that leap and appear to “live happily ever after” in the closing scene. Still, it is a moving story and worth seeing.

Have a great week!

Love,

Rebecca

Ups and downs

Before we knew we were planning to spend Shavuot in Sharon, we had bought tickets to take Joshua to a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park on Memorial Day. So, we returned from Sharon on Tuesday, heading straight to MSKCC for my treatment. We stayed in New York through Shabbat and drove back up to Sharon on Sunday. Simmie and family spent Memorial Day Weekend in New York visiting her husband’s family, and the older children were busy with friends, so we took the opportunity to spend some time with Julia, taking her to Kidsports, a nearby indoor play space for young children. For some reason it was rather quiet there which gave her lots of room to play on all the equipment, and then she selected a plaster helicopter to paint. We had planned to stop for ice cream on the way home but I guess we pooped her out at Kidsports and she was asleep in her car seat when we arrived there, so Barry ran in and bought the ice cream to take back to her house in Sharon.

On Monday we saw the Red Sox beat the Toronto Blue Jays 8 to 3. I am always glad to know that I do not cause bad luck for every team I favor. It was a good game but it would have been better had the temperature been 10 or so degrees higher and the sky less overcast. Today it is hot and sunny, just what we needed yesterday.

After the game the dozen of us gathered for a barbeque at Dina and Aaron’s house. I should have taken more pictures but I did get a couple of cute ones of Noah playing with a big box.

One of the reasons I did not manage to take too many pictures this weekend is that I am having yet another medical problem, this time with sciatica. This had started early last week but by the weekend was making the simple act of walking extremely difficult. I had this some years ago and fortunately it resolved. For now, we drove back to New York this morning and I have an appointment with my primary care physician tomorrow morning and will likely be referred to a specialist. Hopefully someone can give me some advice to alleviate this.

Meanwhile, have a nice week!

Love,

Rebecca

Over protective?

We spent the holiday of Shavuot with our children and grandchildren up in Sharon. This holiday has special poignance for our family because Barry’s father died on the second day of Shavuot 21 years ago. His name was Joshua. It is always nice to have this time all together to talk to the children about their great grandfather, who unfortunately was gone before any of them were born. We especially enjoy thinking about how much he would have appreciated his namesake: he was athletic and was a good-natured fellow with many friends.

Shavuot is the holiday that commemorates the revelation at Mount Sinai. There is a strong tradition to eat dairy foods on this holiday. There are many explanations for this custom. One that is often given is that when the Jewish people received the Torah, in which the laws around the proper preparation of meat were introduced, they needed a few days to prepare before beginning to observe these laws. There are also repeated references to Israel as “a land flowing with milk and honey.” Because cuisine for Shabbat and other Jewish holidays tends to be focused on meat and chicken, we vegetarians think of Shavuot as our holiday.

So our family had a dairy extravaganza over the two days. Dina prepared quite a feast for two other families and us on the first day, including an appetizer of fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil with a balsamic vinaigrette, Crespelle, a long-time family favorite from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, and desserts that included cheesecake and “seven layer cookies” (you can find a recipe at https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/91711/seven-layer-magic-cookie-bars/). On the second day our dozen family members gathered at Simmie’s house to for a meal that included Simmie’s cheese and potato blintzes and my cheesecake (with sour cream topping).

We left Sharon early on Tuesday because I had rescheduled my fifth treatment at MSKCC that would have been last Friday to noon on Tuesday. The drive to New York that usually takes about 3½ hours took 5, and Barry literally dropped me off at precisely 12:00 pm. Of course, by the time they did the blood work that has to be cleared each time and then got the drug from the pharmacy, we ended up leaving there after 5 pm. So, it was a very long day!

We stopped along the way from Sharon to New York at a Starbucks where I had my summer drink of preference, a chocolate Frappuccino®. I was quite amused by the wrapper on the straw that instructed

Not recommended for use in hot beverages

Do we really need this much protection from ourselves, or have we become such a litigious society that they feel the need to warn us of something so obvious?

 

Be well, all.

Love,

Rebecca

RBG

I do not always remember to listen to the Sunday Puzzle, Will Shortz’s weekly stint on National Public Radio, but I happened to remember this week and although the on-line game was rather difficult, next week’s challenge took me fewer than 5 seconds. See if you also get it quickly:

This week's challenge comes from Peter Collins of Ann Arbor, Mich. Think of a two-word phrase a child might shout when walking in the front door. Rearrange the letters and add an "E" at the end, and you get the next two words the child might shout. These are both common expressions. What are they?

On Sunday afternoon we saw the documentary “RBG,” a new film about United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I have to admit I did not know all that much about Justice Ginsburg. If you had asked me to name a few of the Supreme Court decisions in which she had played a key role, I could not have done so. But many of the key cases she argued before and judged during her Supreme Court appointment in 1993 have had enormous impact on the lives of women, because she was able to make an argument that the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment could be used to inhibit discrepancies in hiring and public policy.  

The film also spends a lot of time examining her personal life, particularly her marriage to Martin Ginsburg, a successful tax attorney in his own right to whom she was married for 63 years until his death in 2010. His admiration for her and his devotion to her career was impressive by todays’ standards, and even more so by the standards of the 1960s.

If you have a chance to see this film, I highly recommend it. Justice Ginsburg is quite an intense person, but there are still plenty of moments of humor and sweetness, particularly from her husband and children. I am glad we will have this film to share with our grandchildren – boys and girls - when they are old enough to appreciate it.

Love,

Rebecca

Lux level

There has been a real proliferation of “lux” movie theaters, the ones which will serve you a full course dinner while you watch a movie in amazingly plush seats. Although we may not be able to take full advantage of what they offer, we still enjoy going to these, and another new one opened recently not far from where we live in New York, so we decided to check it out. This one is called the iPic theater, “your ultimate night out.” It really was quite lovely.

The trouble with these places is that they by and large do not show the sorts of films we tend to enjoy seeing, but from reading the reviews we thought that “Tully” looked interesting. I just went back to read the New York Times review, in which Manohla Dargis begins by describing the film as “a tragedy that thinks it’s a heartfelt comedy.” I could not agree more. This movie was perhaps supposed to be funny, but frankly I found it quite sad. The story focuses on two women, Marlo (Charline Theron), who has just given birth to her third child, and Tully (Mackenzie Davis), a night nurse Marlo hires to help her through the early exhausting weeks. But Tully turns out to be much more than just a baby nurse, she quickly inserts herself into this family and, in particular, into the relationship between Marlo and her husband Drew (Ron Livingston, familiar to "Sex and the City" fans as Jack Berger). If any of you readers has seen this film, let me know what you think of it.

One of the advantages of living in New York City is that there are always so many interesting events going on. The 92^nd Street Y is one of the places that hosts an amazing variety of speakers and performances throughout the year. The other night we went to see “Jake Tapper in conversation with Stephen Colbert.” Mr. Tapper is CNN’s chief Washington correspondent. Although the main focus of this talk was his recently published debut novel, The Hellfire Club, there was plenty of witty banter on any variety of topics. I really wish I had taken some notes because my memory is still just so frustratingly minimal!

Jake Tapper in Conversation with Stephen Colbert

Have a great weekend!

Love,

Rebecca

A gracious gesture

Our third grandchild, Gabriella, will soon celebrate her 12^th birthday. Traditionally, boys celebrate their coming of age (Bar Mitzvah) at age 13 while for girls this (Bat Mitzvah) occurs at age 12.

Traditional Judaism assigns different responsibilities to males and females. While most boys celebrate Bar Mitzvah by participating in synagogue ritual activities, girls’ families can make any number of decisions about how to celebrate. Last year, when our first granddaughter Eliana became a Bat Mitzvah, her family hosted a wonderful luncheon at which Eliana and a number of relatives gave moving speeches. Joshua turned 13 about a month later, and he had a fairly traditional celebration that included reading from the Torah scroll on Shabbat morning.

Ella is combining elements of both of these. On the weekend of her 12^th birthday in June, she plans to lead women in the Friday evening service that welcomes Shabbat and will participate in a Saturday afternoon women’s prayer service during which she will read from a Torah scroll. In addition to these activities, like many of the young celebrants she knows, she wanted to find something special that she could do to mark this occasion. She found a way to quite literally give of herself: cutting her long hair and donating it an organization that makes and distributes wigs to women and girls who are undergoing chemotherapy.

Pantene Beautiful Lengths

Her hair was cut on Sunday afternoon. Here are “before” and “after” pictures from the back:

Here is Ella in one of the outfits she plans to wear.

I just can’t stop singing that song from “Fiddler on the Roof.”

And then, of course, there’s the Crosby Stills and Nash song.

We are so proud of Ella for sharing herself so lovingly.

Love,

Rebecca

Fun in the bathroom?

Now that Julia is finally “trained,” we try when we take her out to provide frequent reminders to use the restroom. When we took Julia and Ella to the circus a couple of weeks ago, one of the first things we did was use the bathroom. Because the Big Apple Circus sets up their huge tent in a parking lot, they provide a bunch of portable toilets for use of the attendees. Julia was quite fascinated with the porta-potties, so she asked to go another three times during the performance. We know better than to ever say no to such a request from a recently trained child. But Barry discovered her fascination when he took her: she was amazed at the idea that she could look down that hole and see everyone’s waste.

I knew that she went rather frequently that day but Barry never told me why until he happened to mention it to some friends. All I know is that those Big Apple Circus tickets were a pretty expensive way for her to have this opportunity!

We had quite an amazing coincidence yesterday. We were over at MSKCC for my follow-up visit with the radiation oncologist who oversaw my treatment, the one who had some years ago been one of Barry’s students. As we were leaving the building to head to the car, who walks right by but our friends Ava and Jason! Ava is now doing a radiation oncology rotation at MSKCC so I suppose this was not entirely unexpected, but what are the odds that we would both be walking along the same street at the very some moment? We chatted for a while before heading our separate ways but it was a wonderful surprise.

This morning I had my cystoscopy with Dr. Bochner. I will share the results once we have them. It is a magnificently beautiful day here in New York, so we stopped briefly for an outdoor lunch before heading home. Now I am exhausted!

Enjoy the great weather!

Love,

Rebecca