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.
We are having a quiet Thanksgiving by
ourselves in New York as our daughters and their families are hosting their
husbands’ families in Sharon for the holiday weekend. Aaron posted a link to
his outdoor turkey cooker,
and I have the full 18-minute original 1967 recording of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice Restaurant” playing as I write this.
Later we will eat some of our favorites including bread “stuffing” with onions, celery, water chestnuts, and almonds, and whipped sweet potatoes made with maple syrup and sour cream.
One news item that definitely caught my attention in the past few days was news of food poisoning linked to consumption of romaine lettuce. While food poisoning is always distressing, particularly for such a wonderful food as romaine lettuce, it is helpful to see a bit of humor in it, and the following post showed up on numerous friends’ Facebook postings.
But here is a bit more sobering view of that romaine lettuce story.
Meanwhile, we have for many years used romaine lettuce as the “bitter herb” at our Passover Seder. I am hoping they will resolve this problem before then because I cannot see myself eating the alternative, horseradish root.
We went yesterday to see “Boy Erased,” a movie based on the true story of Jared Eamons (played by Lucas Hedges), a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality in an unaccepting environment. His parents, Nancy and Marshall (played by Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe) are religious Christians not willing to accept this aspect of their son. Marshall, a Baptist minister, is particularly troubled by his son’s declaration and goes to great lengths to enroll him and keep him in conversion therapy. I am not sure how often this approach is still attempted, but from what I have read it was seldom if ever successful. The good news in this particular case is that Jared’s father eventually did come to some level of acceptance, so that the family has been able to maintain some sort of relationship, as we see in real life pictures that are shown during the credits.
We had a wonderful weekend in Sharon, spending
time with each of our six grandchildren.
Hearing the weather forecasts for
Friday, we were able to rearrange our schedules a bit and headed up from New
York on Thursday afternoon. That gave us plenty of time to put the finishing
touches on the meals we were planning to serve. Dina and Aaron and the two
little ones came over on Friday night; Joshua was with a friend and Ella was
away at the Bat Mitzvah celebration of a fellow Maimonides student. Simmie and
Ronen and the girls joined us for lunch on Saturday, along with Maya’s friend
Becca.
Maya came back to our apartment on
Saturday evening where we watched the movie “Benji” (Maya loves movies about
dogs) and then watched a Netflix show called “Nailed It,” where amateur bakers
who aren't exactly great at baking try to recreate ridiculous cakes in a timed
competition. Apparently, Ella and Maya had discovered this show when they were
with us together last summer. One of the competitions was to bake a cake of the
bust of our current president.
Maya’s delightful giggle was a
wonderful response to this silliness, and she made her parents watch it a
couple of times when they came to pick her up.
On Sunday we had a chance to spend some
time with the two older children. Ella came over and we watched “Home Alone,”
which she had never seen, and then played some games. Joshua then joined us and
we had some lunch and the boys settled in to watch football.
All in all, it was a terrific weekend,
marred only by some difficulties I am having that are almost certainly late side
effects of the radiation to my bladder. Let’s just say that the drive both ways
took quite a bit longer than usual, and we are becoming experts on the rest
stops along the route from New York to Boston. Perhaps some day we will learn
why there are three highway rest stops in Connecticut relatively close to each other
along I-95, at exits 41, 52, and 66. There is also an area very close to exit
93 that is a good place to stop. Beyond those, travelling northbound through
Rhode Island there are rather long gaps and you are pretty much forced to exit
the highway and drive some distance to find a fast food restaurant or gasoline
station, not all of which have bathrooms available. Going through southwestern Connecticut,
we usually take the Merritt Parkway which comes into I-95 at exit 37 and has
reasonably frequent rest areas.
You now know more than you ever wanted
to know about bathrooms on the New York to Boston corridor!
Meanwhile, when we returned to New York
I managed to get in to see my urologist, just to make sure that there is not
anything going on that needs to be or can be addressed, and everything looks
pretty much the same. We are a bit puzzled about the recent flare-up of symptoms
but I am also trying to make some dietary changes based on things we have read
that may help.
After a year of refraining from
performances of live music, as is the Jewish tradition following the loss of a
parent, we went last night to see Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden. This is
the third time we have gone during his almost five years of monthly concerts at
MSG; I wrote about the other two in May of 2015 and in January of 2017. He was
a bit under the weather last night but is still very much going strong. He says
he will continue these monthly shows as long as they keep selling out, and
there is no sign of that ending any time soon.
A special highlight last night was that
he was joined on stage by Joe Perry of Aerosmith, who sang “Walk This Way.”
Another highlight, something he has apparently done at a number of his shows
but not the ones we had seen, was a performanceby
Mike DelGuidice, musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter, best
known as rhythm guitarist and vocalist for Billy Joel's band, of Nessum Dorma, the Puccini aria from Turandot.
As I prepared to write this, I was taken aback to read that, according to multiple media reports, Aerosmith’s Joe Perry was rushed to the hospital after his performance with Billy Joel last night, according to multiple media reports. The 68-year-old guitarist collapsed in his dressing room just after he finished “Walk This Way.” After paramedics worked on him for 40 minutes, he was taken to a local hospital. According to a statement from Mr. Perry’s representative, he remains in the hospital where he is alert and responsive," but "will be unable to appear today at Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp in Florida and apologizes to those attending." “Perry is expected to return to the road later this month,” the statement from Perry’s rep concludes.
Here is the full set list from last night’s concert:
Big Shot
My Life
Vienna
The Entertainer
Zanzibar
The Downeaster Alexa
Goodnight Saigon
Allentown
Walk on the Wild Side
(Lou Reed cover) (with Elliot Murphy)
Don’t Ask Me Why
New York State of
Mind
Movin’ Out (Anthony’s
Song)
She’s Always a Woman
The River of Dreams
Walk This Way
(Aerosmith cover) (with Joe Pery)
Bohemian Rhapsody
(Queen cover, partial)
Only the Good Die
Young
Nessun
dorma
(Giacomo Puccini cover by Mike DelGuidice)
Scenes from an
Italian Restaurant
Piano Man
(encores)
We Didn’t Start the
Fire
Uptown Girl
It’s Still Rock and
Roll to Me
You May be Right
Looking back, I see that at after the last two concerts I posted my personal favorite Billy Joel song, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.” So today I am going to post “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” his summary of world history from 1949 to 1989. I wonder if he is planning to update the song at some point.
Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye" Eisenhower, vaccine, England's got a new queen Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye
We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock" Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev Princess Grace, "Peyton Place", trouble in the Suez
We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai" Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide Buddy Holly, "Ben Hur", space monkey, Mafia Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo
We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land" Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion "Lawrence of Arabia", British Beatlemania Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say
We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan "Wheel of Fortune", Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law Rock and roller cola wars, I can't take it anymore
We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire But when we are gone Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on
We didn't start the fire It was always burningSince the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
We didn't start the fire It was always burning Since the world's been turning We didn't start the fire No we didn't light it But we tried to fight it
Many years ago, on the recommendation
of my friend and graduate advisor Randy, I bought an album of blues music by a
fellow named Keb Mo. I cannot seem to put my hands on it now but it was
probably either his debut album, “Keb Mo,” released in 1994 or his second album,
“Just Like You,” which was released in 1996 and won the Grammy Award for Best
Contemporary Blues Album the following year. I have a faint recollection of
going to see Keb Mo perform at The Bottom Line in lower Manhattan, and I found
a picture of him on line from a performance there in September of 1996. I must
admit I had lost track of him but it seems he has released at least 16 albums
over the past 25 years or so, including three more that won Grammy Awards for
Best Contemporary Blues Album in 1998, 2004, and 2017.
Keb Mo came back to my attention
because I just saw that he and Roseanne Cash have released a new song, “Put a
Woman in Charge,” an appropriate message in light of the significant numbers of
women who have run successful political campaigns this year.
House
Senate
Governors
Total
Members
435
100
50
Women Before election
84
23
6
Women After election
96-100+
24
9+
+numbers not final
[Verse 1: Keb' Mo’] Way back when In the beginning of time Man made the fire then the wheel Went from a horse to an automobile
He said, “the world is mine” He took the oceans and the sky He set the borders - built the walls He won't stop till he owns it all
And here we are Standing on the brink of disaster Enough is enough is enough is enough I know the answer
[Chorus: Keb' Mo’ and Backing Vocalists] Put a woman in charge Put a woman in charge Put the women in charge Put the women in charge Put a woman in charge Put a woman in charge Put the women in charge Put the women in charge
[Verse 2: Keb' Mo'] The time has come We've got to turn this world around Call the mothers Call the daughters We need the sisters of mercy now
She'll be a hero Not a fool She's got the power To change the rules She's got something That men don't have She is kind and she understands
[Bridge 1: Keb’ Mo’ and Rosanne Cash] So let the ladies Do what they were born to do Raise the vibration And make a better place for me and you
[Chorus: Keb' Mo’ and Rosanne Cash] Put a woman in charge Put a woman in charge Put the women in charge Put the women in charge Put a woman in charge Put a woman in charge Put the women in charge Put the women in charge
[Bridge 2: Keb' Mo' and Rosanne Cash] Hallelujah Hallelujah We're gonna feel the magic When the girls take over It’s gonna be fantastic
[Chorus: Keb' Mo' and Rosanne Cash] Put a woman in charge Put the women in charge Put a woman in charge Put the women in charge
Put a woman in charge Put a woman in charge Put the women in charge Put the women in charge Put a woman in charge Put a woman in charge Put the women in charge Put the women in charge
Put a woman in charge Put a woman in charge Put the women in charge Put the women in charge Put a woman in charge Put a woman in charge Put the women in charge Put the women in charge
Despite the horrific events of last
weekend, we somehow managed to carry on with our plans. We were in Sharon, where
we had a lovely Shabbat day with
Simmie and family. Saturday night we all gathered at Dina’s house for pizza and
baseball, although we left to get some sleep long before the 18-inning game
ended in win #3 for the Boston Red Sox.
We had planned to spend Sunday with
Eliana and Maya and settled on going to see the animated movie “Smallfoot.” It
is essentially a take-off on stories of Bigfoot but rather than being told from
the point of view of a human it is told through the point of view of a young
Yeti. Like so many animated films these days, there is plenty of humor geared
towards the adults. In some ways it was the perfect choice for a break from all
the depressing news out of Pittsburgh, and for that reason I think I enjoyed it
more than I might have otherwise.
We saw the movie at the Superlux Theater in Chestnut Hill. The girls really love that place and I think they would be happy to see pretty much any movie there.
Joshua and Ella joined us on Sunday evening to watch game #5 of the series. Since Monday was a school day, they had to go home and off to bed a little before the game ended but Barry and Joshua were on the phone the minute the Dodgers’ third out in the bottom of the 9th inning, giving the Red Sox the 2018 World Series championship. It might have been nice for the Boston fans had the Red Sox lost that game so that they would have gone back home to finish the series, but at the end of the day I suspect that having to settle for watching the win on television was a small price for them to pay.
The drive home on Monday started in the rain but we drove out of the storm about an hour after leaving Sharon. The trip took us through the beauty of the fall foliage, and I managed to get this picture through the car window.
