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.
In the Double Jeopardy round yesterday, there was a category
called “A Pop-Up Category,” and the $2000 answer was:
“And
if this old world starts getting you down, there’s room enough for two” here.
None of the three contestants got it – maybe they were just
too young. But for us boomers, this is a very familiar line from the song “Up
on the Roof” written by Gerry
Goffin (lyrics) and Carole
King (tune) and originally recorded in 1962 by The
Drifters. Ms. King would later record the song on her 1970 Writer
album. James Taylor played guitar and sang it with Ms. King at her Carnegie
Hall concert on June 18, 1971, and later recorded his own version of “Up on the
Roof” on his 1979 album, Flag.
It has been over a week since my last post, and I barely
know where to begin, so I will just try to go in chronological order.
We had a wonderful Shabbat up in Sharon last weekend. Rabba
Sara Hurwitz, a member of the rabbinic team at the Hebrew Institute of
Riverdale (HIR), was in Sharon as a scholar in residence at Kol Shira (translates as the voice of
song), a traditional Jewish “partnership minyan” which provides opportunities
for women to lead parts of the service and take other roles not usually done in
the more traditional, orthodox Jewish setting. Rabba Sara has been at HIR for
many years but this was a unique opportunity to spend time with and learn with
her in a smaller setting, and was thoroughly enjoyable and uplifting.
Chanukah began on Sunday evening, and we were fortunate to
be able to stay for the first two nights. We celebrated with Dina and family on
the first night. Dina made delicious latkes
(potato pancakes, the Eastern European tradition) and sufganiot (jelly doughnuts, the Israeli tradition), along with, of
course, some healthier selections to round out the meal.
Aaron figured out how to inject some jelly into the doughnuts!
A month or so ago I had seen the perfect gift for Noah in a
catalogue from the Metropolitan Museum gift shop, and could not resist. Hopefully
he will not lose too many of the 62 pieces!
On the second night we joined Simmie and family for dinner and candle lighting.
Both nights included gifts for the children. Eliana is always the easiest because she provides us a long list of things she would like to have, and we bought her a number of items on that list. For the other children, we tried to emphasize “experiences,” so there were a lot of tickets to upcoming shows and sporting events.
We drove back to New York on Tuesday, leaving early so Barry could attend meetings all afternoon. I spent Wednesday at MSKCC, having a CT scan and then my regular treatment, so it was a long and exhausting day.
Thursday evening, we went to Carnegie Hall to see a taping of the NPR radio show, “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.” We had done this at Tanglewood a couple of times, and the host Peter Sagal mentioned that the show had not been done at Carnegie Hall in 10 years. Candace Bergen was the guest. It was, as always, a terrifically fun evening, but we’re both a little tired today! We have a quiet Shabbat planned.
Stay warm, and for those who are observing this week, Happy Chanukah!
One adjective that has undoubtedly never applied to Barry
and me is “athletic.” We may have done well in school, but only above the neck.
Thinking about it now, I realize that both of our fathers had some athletic
ability. Barry’s dad (whose name was Joshua, may he rest in peace), played
basketball back in his high school days, and my father (may he rest in peace) used
to join his children for Sunday morning swimming in the summers and ice skating
in the winters. As far as I know, our son-in-law Aaron’s family is similarly
unathletic.
But somewhere in that strange mix of genes we have Joshua,
over 6 feet tall, who both loves sports and is talented. And now, Joshua has
been selected as the only freshman player
on the Maimonides High School (Brookline, MA) varsity basketball team, the
M-Cats.
(picture from Camp Rama, Summer 2018)
Here is the schedule so far. We will try to catch as many games as we can. At the risk of embarrassing our sincerely modest
grandson, I have to say that we are just so proud.
After a quiet Shabbat, we headed down to Carnegie Hall to see Arlo. We had last
seen him for his annual Thanksgiving weekend show there back in 2012 after an
eight-year period during which we spent every Thanksgiving with our children
and grandchildren, seeing him just once in Tarrytown a few weeks before
Thanksgiving in 2015.
Arlo has definitely gotten older and continues
to expand the list of performers with whom he shares the stage beyond his
growing family. Last night’s show included an opening act, The Weight Band. To
be honest, I had never heard of them, although many of the band’s members have
played with other well-known groups, including The Band and Levon Helm’s
Midnight Ramble Band.
One of Arlo’s daughters sang a solo, as did a son-in-law (husband of Sarah Lee Guthrie) Johnny Irion. The entire Guthrie clan, including a bunch of grandchildren, joined together for Woody’s “This Land is Your Land,” with the famous refrain done in sign language by three granddaughters. Overall, it was an entire feel-good evening.
Hopefully he will continue to be able to do these shows, but it is not clear that he plans to do so. I just came across this article that suggests he is going to put an end to it after the 2020 show.
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
