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.
Just want to let you
all know that we are well, we’ve seen a couple of interesting movies I want to
share and had a very nice Sabbath afternoon today with friends. We are going
down to Florida for a couple of days to visit family and in an effort to travel
light, I am not lugging along the laptop.
Hopefully we will
essentially jump over the storm that is moving up the east coast by leaving before
it moves as far north as New York and returning home after it has moved on its
way further north. It may be a bumpy flight tomorrow, though.
Two months ago, I
posted a piece about our friend Michal Chesal who had been nominated for the Juvenile
Products Manufacturers Association Super Hero Spotlight Feature for the innovative design and development of the Baby K'tan baby carrier. I am happy to
share the good news that Michal has won!
There is a piece
about Michal posted at this link. Thanks to all of you who voted for Michal and
helped to make this possible.
After all the bad
news of the last couple of days, I was happy to wake up early this morning and find
new Colbert Report and Daily Show episodes on the TiVO.
I was particularly
amused by a piece Colbert did on Amazon. I wanted to insert the video here but
for reasons I cannot understand I was unable to download it, so here is the
link:
This really hit home
for me. I have probably mentioned this here before, but although I do
fundamentally agree with the point Colbert is making, and I really do miss
going to regular stores and actually seeing and touching things (the recent
trip to the outlet mall was a notable exception), I cannot even begin to imagine
how I would have functioned during this past year and a half without on-line
shopping. Granted I would have saved a lot of money, probably enough to feed
many starving children around the world. But I would also be sitting here with
baggy old clothes, and I would have to send Barry out for every little thing I
need. Instead, our house is now well stocked with random items like Chapstick, toothpaste,
deodorant, and various cleaning items to last through a very long confinement
to quarters for at least our entire family of ten. Add to this American Girl
paraphernalia, Legos kits, Quadrilla, and Hex Bugs sitting in various Sharon
homes, all thanks to Amazon Prime and other on-line shopping, and we could
stock a few elementary schools.
My joy at the wonders
of the world wide web is somewhat tempered by the fact that early reports are
beginning to suggest that the New York Metro North rail conductor was using his
mobile device while driving that train early Sunday morning. I have for some
time now been grousing about the need for developing basic courtesy standards
for use of electronic devices. Talking on cell phones on airplanes, as appears
to be under consideration, would seem a very bad idea because people will
inevitably be yelling into those phones in the close and noisy quarters of the
cabin. But this goes far beyond making lives more pleasant, it gets to the
potential for putting our lives at risk. We all want to believe that we are
good at multi-tasking, but study after study, as well as simple common sense,
shows that we are not. The real question is, if it should eventually be
established that the conductor was in fact texting just prior to that horrific
accident, will anyone listen or care or change their behavior?
My memory works in
strange ways, sort of fits and starts of tidbits going in and out. For the past
week or so I have been incessantly humming the second movement of Beethoven’s
Symphony No. 7 in A major. This piece was used in the climactic scene in the
Oscar-winning movie from 2010, The King’s Speech, but I am not sure why
I started thinking about it again.
I mention this here because what I forgot to
write about entirely was that we saw a movie the other day. Barry, Dina, Aaron,
and I took all four children to see Frozen. Although animated and having
a PG rating, it is visually impressive even in 2-D (for various reasons we did
not choose to see it in 3-D), and a real twist on the usual fairy tale. Rather
than being a typical damsel in distress the girl at the heart of the story is
spunky and strong-willed, and does not wait for some prince to fulfill her
dreams. I don’t want to spoil the movie for those who have not yet seen it, but
this leads to a rather surprising outcome in the choices she makes. As Stephen
Holden wrote in the New York Times review:
They are significant departures from tradition in a film that shakes up
the hyper-romantic “princess” formula that has stood Disney in good stead for
decades and that has grown stale. Treacly, kissy-kissy endings are not enough
anymore. Nowadays, a princess has to show her mettle and earn her
happily-ever-after stripes.
We had a wonderful
first four days of Chanukah with our family. I do need to figure out how I made
sweet potato latkes in the past because the spices were not quite right, but the
regular latkes were a big hit – there were only a few left of the more than 40
good-sized pancakes. We had lots of fun watching the children open gifts. We
went with the big items for that first night, which included a lot of American
Girl paraphernalia for the girls and tickets to an upcoming basketball game for
Joshua (to be chaperoned by us). The second night was Thanksgiving, and we
gathered for another fabulous year of Thanksgiving fare prepared by our
children. Friday was a relatively quiet day, and then Joshua came over for
Friday night dinner and a sleep-over. We had bought him a puzzle/model of
Manhattan and we spent a few hours before and then after dinner working on
putting it together; it is still not quite finished.
After lighting
candles Saturday evening we headed back to our apartment to pack up the car so
that we could leave early this morning, anticipating the usual
end-of-Thanksgiving-weekend heavy traffic. We awoke quite early and were on the
road by about 5:30 am. I had shut down my computer Saturday evening and neither
of us had taken time to check e-mail on our cell phones before leaving. It was
only about an hour out of Sharon that I turned mine on and was shocked to see
an e-mail sent by our daughter Simmie in the wee hours of the morning telling
us that Ronen’s grandfather had died a few hours earlier. He had a full life and
had not been well for some time but that does not alleviate the shock and pain felt
by his family, including his very devoted grandson. Ronen’s parents, who had
been in Sharon for the weekend, quickly packed up to head back to their home in
New York and catch a flight to Israel, where Ronen’s grandmother still lives
and the funeral will take place.
Then, as we were
nearing New York, we heard the very distressing news of the horrific commuter
train derailment in the Bronx this morning. This one really hit close to home
because it happened just south of the Spuyten Duyvil station, the one very
close to our home from which I commuted in to and out of Manhattan for many of
my years at Pfizer. It was shocking to see the images of my old stomping ground
on television when we arrived home. At least four people died and another dozen
were seriously injured, with dozens more suffering varying degrees of injuries.
But in the interest
of not closing on an entirely sad tone, I will post a few pictures of the fun
we had with the children, and wish everyone a good week.
This is a strange
year in which Chanukah begins the night before Thanksgiving. There have been a
lot of cute cartoons and jokes about this. Some people have started to refer to
tomorrow as “Thanksgivakah.” But I think maybe the name should be shortened to
just “Givakah” in recognition of the amount of time we have spent accumulating and
wrapping gifts for our grandchildren! I am the first to admit that it perhaps
spun a bit out of control this year (I can see our daughters and sons-in-law
rolling their eyes as they read this, saying “ya think???”) but we are going to have a few extremely fun next few
days.
The tradition on
Chanukah is to eat foods fried in oil to commemorate a small amount of oil found
in the ruins of the Temple that miraculously lasted 7 days until new oil could
be produced. So I spent much of today making the Chanukah food traditionally eaten
by Jews of European descent, potato latkes.
For the uninitiated, latkes are pancakes
made of shredded potatoes mixed with grated onion, eggs, and flour and fried in
oil. I made two kinds: white potatoes and sweet potatoes (without onion but
with cinnamon and ground cloves). This activity makes a mess of the stove that
takes at least as long to clean up as it does to make the latkes, especially if you are as picky as I am.
We are all gathering
at Simmie and Ronen’s house tonight. We will probably need two trips to get
there, between the gifts and the 3½ dozen white + 2 dozen sweet potato latkes, not to mention the apple sauce
and sour cream. I am reasonably confident that this will satisfy ten hungry
eaters.
Tomorrow, our
children are preparing Thanksgiving dinner. A few years ago, Aaron bought a Char-broil
infrared oil-free turkey cooker (say that three times fast!) so he is in charge of the bird. Simmie usually makes a vegetarian dish, and Dina provides the traditional side dishes. Crank up Arlo Guthrie singing "Alice's Restaurant" and you have Thanksgiving!
For all of you who are celebrating one or both of these holidays, enjoy!
We have white shower
curtain liners in both bathrooms of our Sharon apartment. I have been noticing
for some time now that the bottom part of the liner in the master bath, the one
used most frequently, has turned a rather unpleasant brownish color. I had
already bought a new one, but decided to try washing this otherwise perfectly
good one first to see if the stain might come out.
I was able to get the
curtain down on my own, and, after running it through a wash, the stain is not
completely gone but much less apparent, so I decided we could get more use out
of it. But when it was done washing I quickly realized that I needed help hanging
it back up. Rather than get on a stepstool, and run the risk of falling and not
only hurting myself but having Barry very annoyed with me, I asked him to help
me with it. While he was putting it back up I said something about how brown it
had gotten, to which he replied, “yes, it had.”
Here is my question:
we both noticed the shower curtain needed attention, but why was I the one to
take care of it?
In Act 1, Scene II of
Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar,
Cassius says
The fault, dear
Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves,
that we are underlings.
Is it nature or is it
nurture? I’m not sure. But what I do recognize is that what makes a marriage
work is for each of the parties to recognize that the other may have special
skills and talents that, working together and capitalizing on those strengths, can
make their lives better. So while I may sometimes wish that Barry was even a
fraction of the neat freak that I am, I have to stop and remind myself that I
would be blessed if I could have even a fraction of his steady temperament.
Having reached our 40th
anniversary this year, I feel I need a pithy answer when someone asks about the
secret of our long relationship. I tend to reply that we have been very
fortunate. But perhaps the answer is not only in our stars but in our selves.
It is now Monday
afternoon. We are sitting here, classical music playing, and it feels like the
first time in a very long time that we have had a quiet moment.
Barry’s flight on
Thursday evening had been delayed, so he did not arrive home until 1:30 am (yes,
you read that correctly, am), which everyone knows is far past our usual
bedtime. But he had to be up for a 6 am teleconference, a time which normally
works quite well for him and certainly works well for his European colleagues
on the call. So by Friday evening he was pretty much drained, but Ella is so
charming that he had no trouble staying awake through dinner. While we ate a
wonderful thick corn and vegetable soup, she had her usual macaroni and cheese,
which should more appropriately called cheese and macaroni given the ratios she
likes (you can be sure that her Sabba happily obliges). We played some games
and she showed us some of her schoolwork from the week and the next thing we
knew it was bedtime. We were up early Saturday morning for more games before
heading off to synagogue.
We had two couples
over for lunch, one of whom we knew when we lived in Sharon over twenty years
ago, and the other who we have had the pleasure of getting to know in the last
couple years. They, like us, are part-time Sharon residents. Although still
maintaining a home and jobs in the New York area, they bought a house in Sharon
to be near one of their daughters who lives there with her husband and three children
and is a close friend of our daughters. Barry tells me that the food was good
(I was the cook, so I cannot be a fair judge), but we had so much left over
that we were able to serve Sunday dinner to our entire crew with only a little
supplementation.
After Sabbath, Eliana
and Maya came over for a sleep-over while their parents went to a Sister Hazel concert
in Boston. Any younger readers may
appreciate this but, frankly, if not for Simmie and Ronen, who have enjoyed
their music for years, I doubt I would have ever heard of this band. So as I
started writing today, I figured I should check them out. They sound pretty
good! [Message to Simmie and Ronen: you have nothing to fear, Abba and I
promise not to try to go with you next time!]
We had fun with Eliana and Maya, who of course stayed up a bit later and woke up a bit earlier than they were supposed to, but what are grandparents for? We had breakfast and played some more before they went back to their house so we could all get ready for the next item on our agenda.
Simmie has for some years taught in the Hebrew School of one of the local synagogues, and a few of her former and present students had parts in a local production of The Wizard of Oz, so the ten of us went. It was quite an impressive production, with a number of really talented young people. It was during the intermission that we found out that the cowardly lion had been one of Simmie’s students, and he was really very good. I cannot even begin to imagine how much work, how many hours, went into this production which was only performed four times, but I am sure it was a very valuable experience for all the children and their families.
After the play, everyone headed over to our apartment for dinner. By the time they left and we cleaned up, we were pretty much exhausted! We even slept until 6:30 this morning, so we must have been tired.
As a closing thought, I wanted to share a report from the BBC that I happened to hear on the radio yesterday. This brought to mind a course that Barry has been teaching for a number of years now. It started back in 1996, when a radiation oncologist in Tel Aviv whom we had met initially through friends in Sharon, asked Barry to come and teach a week-long course in clinical radiation biology to radiation oncology residents in Israel. Barry taught that course quite a few times, about every three years. But then a few years ago the course broadened to serve about twenty radiation oncology programs in Middle Eastern countries and was moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where it now attracts a group of about 80 radiation oncologists from throughout the region. Barry has taught in Turkey twice; the third time he was supposed to teach was the spring of 2012 when I was undergoing treatment and everyone well understood why he was unable to travel. Hearing about the women traveling to Israel to ensure the birth of healthy babies reminded me of the training that Barry’s colleague has established. I have supplied a link to this heartwarming story here.
