Rise We Will

Listening to the horrible news out of Pittsburgh these past two days brought me back to “Rise We Will,” a song David Roth wrote and recorded in the aftermath of the bombings of the World Trade Center and released on his 2004 “Think Twice” album. The details differ but the sentiment remains the same.

David Roth Rise We Will

(Click on this link. Then click on the downward arrow in the top right hand corner and the song will then appear as a file. Double click on that file to open it and it should play.)

Revive, restore, renew, rebuild

Peace and Love,

Rebecca

One dozen treatments

My career choice, statistics, should never have been a surprise. I have always kept track of and tried to learn from details. While the pembrolizumab infusion was completing this morning, the nurse asked how many additional treatments are planned. We explained that there is no really good long-term data on pembrolizumab in bladder cancer, but we are hoping that updated data from the pivotal trial that led to the drug’s approval in this indication will be presented at the upcoming American Society for Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco in mid-February. This led the nurse to suggest that we might just continue until the drug stops working. I do not think she really meant for that to come out as badly as it sounded, but I quickly pointed out that I certainly hope we will not get to that point.

I found myself coming home from treatment and wondering just how many pembrolizumab infusions I have had so far. I was able to easily reconstruct this from my Google calendar and confirm with my on-line medical record from MSKCC, and the answer is 12 – one dozen treatments.

Dose #	Day	Date
1	Friday	23 February
2	Friday	16 March
3	Thursday	05 April
4	Friday	27 April
5	Tuesday	22 May
6	Monday	11 June
7	Friday	06 July
8	Friday	27 July
9	Friday	17 August
10	Friday	07 September
11	Friday	28 September
12	Wednesday	24 October

No one knows just how many treatments are “enough.” We did not see Dr. Iyer (oncologist) today but I believe this topic is one he intends to discuss with us over the next few months.

Meanwhile, I need to get some rest now. The treatment does leave me tired, but that is a relatively small price to pay as long as it works!

Love,

Rebecca

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

A.O. Scott begins his NY Times review of the new film “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” by saying “Lee Israel may be the single most interesting movie character you will encounter this year." I certainly have not seen as many films as Mr. Scott has but I strongly suspect he has this one right.

Melissa McCarthy, whose most recent memorable gig was her hilarious, if almost painful, portrayal of former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on a number of episodes of Saturday Night Live in early 2017, takes on a very different role based on the memoir of Lee Israel, an American author who became best known for the literary forgery she conducted over a number of years in the 1990's. I probably should remember this incident but have to admit I do not, which made the story all that much more interesting.

Ms. Israel’s activity began almost innocently enough as a way for a struggling writer to earn a living. While her early work had achieved some notoriety, she was increasingly unable to interest publishers in her projects and had descended into alcoholism and poverty in an old, drug-infested apartment for which she was unable to even pay the rent. While researching a biography she was writing on the late vaudevillian Fannie Brice, she stumbled on a note Ms. Brice had written. When she discovered that collectors might be interested in such memorabilia, and in particular that they would pay more for personal tidbits, she began creating her own versions of letters from various well-known writers like Noël Coward, Lilliam Hellman, and Dorothy Parker. This activity apparently went on for a number of years before her fraud was discovered.

Her guilty verdict only resulted in probation (as well as a promise to stop drinking, which she apparently did not keep). This seemed a bit surprising to me at first, but thinking about it more, it is really hard to believe that all those agents who were paying for her forgeries and then selling them to collectors at vastly higher prices certainly contributed to her criminal activity, and this may be why the judge did not see fit to punish her more harshly. Ms. Israel died in late 2014.

The movie is worth seeing for Melissa McCarthy’s performance alone. Hopefully more good parts will come her way.

Love,

Rebecca

Spelling Bee

Earlier this year the New York Times added some new games to their daily on-line edition. I have to admit I only discovered the one I will discuss here about a month or so ago, but I have become quite devoted to trying to work on it every day.

The game is called “Spelling Bee.” Each day, seven letters are given, one of which is in bold font and appears in the center of the grid. Here is an example:

How to Play

Create words using letters from the hive.

·       Words must contain at least 4 letters.

·       Words must include the center letter.

·       Words may not be proper nouns or hyphenated.

·       Letters can be used more than once.

Score points to increase your rating.

·       4-letter words are worth 1 point each.

·       Longer words earn 1 point per letter.

·       Each puzzle includes at least one “pangram” which uses every letter. These are worth 7 extra points!

The letters in today’s Spelling Bee are

MOCPLTI

If you want to try to play, stop reading here!

I found 14 words which corresponded to a score of 70; two of the words use all 7 letters.

·       Clomp

·       Comic

·       Commit

·       Complicit

·       Impolitic

·       Limit

·       Loom

·       Mill

·       Mimic

·       Mitt

·       Moll

·       Molt

·       Moot

·       Pompom

Rankings

Ranks are based on a percentage of possible points in a puzzle. The minimum scores to reach each rank for today’s puzzle are:

1.      Beginner (0)

2.      Good Start (2)

3.      Moving Up (5)

4.      Good (8)

5.      Solid (14)

6.      Nice (24)

7.      Great (38)

8.      Amazing (48)

9.      Genius (67)

In other words, a score of 70 for today classifies as GENIUS!

I am really enjoying this game!

Love,

Rebecca

Nothing like a dame?

We saw the newly released film, “Tea with the Dames,” that apparently also goes by the name “Nothing Like a Dame.” That latter name hearkens back to the song written for the musical “South Pacific” by Richard Rodgers with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, “There is Nothing Like a Dame.” But as I see it, that is about as far as the similarity goes.

“Tea with the Dames” is a documentary in which four British stage and screen stars and apparently longtime friends, Dame Maggie Smith (83 years old), Dame Judi Dench (83 years old), Dame Eileen Atkins (84 years old), and Dame Joan Plowright (88 years old), drink tea and chat about their lives and careers interspersed with clips from some of their legendary roles. I cannot claim familiarity with much of their work. But two things struck me in a very positive way about these four women. The first is how amazingly articulate and witty they are even well into their 80s. They may be a bit hard on themselves when memories are unclear, but they are all doing quite well indeed. And the second is how they are all aging naturally, not giving in to the temptation to allow plastic surgeons to attempt to maintain their younger looking faces. Actors such as Jane Fonda and Goldie Hawn come to mind as examples of just how unattractive this can be.

Have a great weekend!

Love,

Rebecca

Me or I?

On our drive back to New York after a wonderful weekend in Sharon, including celebrating Noah’s 2^nd birthday, we were listening to an interview with Adam Cohen, son of the late singer/songwriter/poet Leonard Cohen. We had seen Adam perform at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal (Montreal International Jazz Festival) in the summer of 2015 (see blog post from July 9^th). Like his father, he is a highly articulate and prolific poet and songwriter. So why did he, not once but twice, say “my mother moved my sister and I to (another city)”? Why is there such an intense aversion to using the word “me”? I just cringe when I hear this, particularly from the mouth of someone who otherwise has such an impressive command of the English language.

This got us to thinking about how much we had enjoyed that trip to Montreal. In fact, here is what I wrote at the time:

All good things must come to an end so on Sunday morning we headed back to New York on another gloriously sunny day. All I can say is that Barry has already checked out the dates for the 2016 festival!

Neither 2016 nor the subsequent few years happened, but we have now made some tentative plans to attend the jazz festival next summer, which happens to fall during the week of our 46^th wedding anniversary.

Sunday was a “Julia day.” We took her to the Providence Children’s Museum, when they opened at 9 a.m., planning to spend a couple of hours. It turned out to be a good thing that we brought along plenty of snacks and drinks and even a sandwich for Julia, because an hour after we arrived two of her friends came with their families, and we ended up spending nearly five hours there.

Have a great week!

Love,

Rebecca

The beginning of a great career?

Joshua just called to share some exciting news: he and his friend Dror were elected as co-presidents of the Ninth Grade Class at the Maimonides School! It was a tough election: there were eight other pairs of candidates in the running. As his grandparents, it is tempting to say that this success is a direct result of his keen intelligence, his winning personality, and his good looks. But, realistically, it appears that it was primarily the promise made by the two young men to have the school provide free ice cream to all the ninth graders that carried the day.

Did you catch Jeopardy on Tuesday evening? The final answer was:

Of the 23 lawgivers depicted on marble portraits over doors in the U.S. House chamber, he’s the only one in the Bible.

The question?

Who was Moses?

After posting this, it occurred to me that I should have included a picture of that marble portrait, and here it is:

Love,

Rebecca