Just eighteen days to go, but who’s counting?

This will be the perfect image to keep in my head during my MRI on the 28^th! 

Like we had any doubts…

That crazy polar vortex seems to have subsided, but it’s still chilly in a good majority of the United States. Many of you, I’m sure, are dreaming of escaping the cold for warmer weather, white sandy beaches and beautiful turquoise waters. Hmmm, I wonder where that could be…

St. John of course!

Samantha Brown, of Travel Channel fame, just released a list of her favorite Caribbean spots to escape winter and the Virgin Islands made the cut. Here’s what she had to say:

The three islands that make up America’s Caribbean paradise have a lot to offer.  You could spend all your time on one island, but for a little more fun, plan a day or two on all three.  You’ll get a healthy dose of beaches, pampering, wildlife and colonial history.   If you are into hiking, you can explore 22 different trails within the Virgin Islands National Park (St. John) which contains Annaberg Plantation, Caneel Bay, Cinnamon Bay and Trunk Bay.  Take your camera and beach gear and spend the day at Magens Bay (St. Thomas), well-known for its photogenic coast and amazing swimming conditions.

Also on Samantha Brown’s list were:

·        Cayman Islands

·        St. Kitts & Nevis

·        Barbados

·        Turks & Caicos

Virgin Islands Named Top Place to Escape Winter | News of St. John

Love,

Rebecca

Life is what happens...

For some years, James Taylor has performed at Tanglewood every summer. Two years ago, he gave three concerts over the July Fourth holiday. We had bought tickets for all three, booked a nice little B&B, and planned to spend a few lazy summer days in the beautiful Berkshires. But to paraphrase a line from John Lennon’s song, “Beautiful Boy,” primary CNS lymphoma is what happened to me while I was busy making other plans.

Last year, James did not do the Tanglewood shows. But he is coming back this summer, and we are hoping to make it to one of the two shows. The level of our Boston Symphony Orchestra membership allowed for us to participate in the presale that began at 10:00 am today, but there was an earlier presale for higher level memberships so the best seats were already sold out. As you can see we purchased our tickets this morning at 10:01 am. They are not great seats but they are not bad. Hopefully the weather will be good and we will be able to enjoy a picnic on the lawn before the concert.

YOUR ORDER RECEIPT (Please print this page for your records)

Thank you for your order!

ORDER DATE	01/14/2014 10:01AM
ORDER NUMBER	17755204

Item(s)

Single Tickets(s): Description Location Seat(s) Price Total James Taylor Tanglewood Shed 07/03/2014 8:00 PM Section 11 Price 2 L2 L1 $73.00 $73.00 $146.00 Total Single Tickets Cost: $146.00 Total: $146.00

Definitely something to look forward to!

Love,

Rebecca

 

If You Build It

At the end of last week, before learning the sad news of the horrible accident that took the life of the young son of one of Barry’s colleagues, and before reading the New York Times review of the new documentary, “If You Build It,” we saw that the filmmaker was going to be at a screening at the IFC Film Center in Greenwich Village on Sunday afternoon. We have had the opportunity to attend such events in the past and find them quite enjoyable, so we purchased tickets. We then saw the New York Times review written by Nicolas Rapold, a name unfamiliar to us, in which he had little positive to say about film. But since we had already purchased the tickets, we decided to go ahead and see it. Sadly, and presumably at least in part because of the review, there were fewer than twenty souls in the audience, most of whom appeared to be New York University film students.

Frankly, we thought that Mr. Rapold was a bit too harsh in his assessment of this film. It was not the finest or most exciting or insightful documentary we have ever seen, but it was an interesting story that we felt was well told. The film chronicles two young teachers in a small rural North Carolina high school who embark on an exciting hands-on learning opportunity. When the filmmaker began the project, he must have thought he was simply chronicling a nice story. But as often seems to happen in both life and in the making of documentaries, things do not always go as planned. Shortly after this new course began, the principal who championed it was fired, and the funding for the course was withdrawn. But the two young teachers were determined to see the project through. It would have been fascinating to learn more about just why the school board acted as they did, but during the Q&A after the film, the Director said that the school board denied his repeated requests to interview its members for the film. Nonetheless, “If You Build It” is a compelling testament to the commitment of teachers and their potential to change the lives of their students, themes that resonate with us as the parents of two talented and highly motivated educators.

If You Build It

Speaking of films, I guess the folks responsible for the Golden Globe awards liked “American Hustle” a lot more than I did. We never went to see “Twelve Years a Slave,” another major winner, because from everything we have read and seen it is an extremely painful film to watch, and I just do not have the ability to suffer through it. Interestingly, both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor awards were given to “Dallas Buyer’s Club” actors Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto. I wrote about this film back in December, but looking back I see that I mainly focused on my own experience in drug development for the treatment of AIDS. In fact, these two performances were extremely impressive, although I must admit I expected Robert Redford to win best actor for “All is Lost.” I am not sure what distinguishes the selection of the Golden Globe awards from that of the Oscars, but it will be interesting to see how the Oscar awards are distributed.

This morning we attended the funeral service for Cooper Stock, the 9-year-old son of one of the faculty members in Barry’s department whose life ended suddenly while walking with his father less than a block from the family’s Upper West Side apartment last Friday evening. There were an enormous number of people at the service, which overflowed to an upper balcony in the sanctuary. Although many of these people undoubtedly knew each other, the sanctuary was stunningly quiet. Only hugs and brief nods were exchanged. A rabbi spoke, followed by one of Cooper’s cousins (a boy who appeared to be around the same age as Cooper was), two of his uncles, and finally his father. We did not know Cooper, but so many things about him were familiar to anyone who spends time with 9 year old boys, like his love of sports and chicken nuggets. Listening to the moving tributes makes you ask yourself whether you would have the strength to stand up and speak under such unimaginably painful circumstances. Neither of us is sure that we could. As an accomplished physician and clinical researcher, Dr. Stock is not a stranger to public speaking, but even he lost his composure during his closing words. Gut wrenching hardly comes close to describing it.

All I know is that I cannot wait to get up to Sharon in a few days and hug our grandchildren!

Love,

Rebecca

Finding strength

We had a wonderful Sabbath. Friends joined us for lunch and we kept a lively and enjoyable conversation going until just a few minutes before Sabbath ended. We have children and grandchildren who are all close in age and we see the world similarly in many ways, so it is always enjoyable to spend time together.

When Sabbath ended I went to tackle the dishes while Barry went to check his email as he always does just after Sabbath. He usually comes back upstairs fairly quickly, but he did not, and I figured it was some minor issue in a grant proposal or paper under review for publication. When he finally came back upstairs he shared what had kept him downstairs for so long. In his email he saw a few messages from Mount Sinai colleagues about Dr. Richard Stock, a radiation oncologist who joined the Mount Sinai faculty about twenty years ago, two years after Barry did. Although he left a couple of years ago to join a private practice, he has continued as an active collaborator in some of Barry’s research work. Friday evening, Dr. Stock and his 9-year-old son Cooper were crossing the street near their home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when they were struck by a taxicab. Cooper sustained major injuries and died shortly thereafter. We had never met Cooper but looking at a picture in the paper he looked a lot like his father.

On this morning’s news we heard of yet another accident involving a taxi in which a young mother of twins was killed while walking. New York is a very big city, and I suspect that there are such reports on the news pretty much every day. But most of us barely hear them and do not give them much thought. I suspect I will hear them quite differently for a very long time to come.

We had thought about going out last evening. We knew our friend Leslie Pintchik, a jazz pianist, was performing in nearby New Rochelle and had thought that if we weren’t too tired we might go see and hear her (that is a nod to Leslie, who always thanks her audience for bringing their ears to her shows). After this news we just did not feel like leaving the house.

We are at an age when many of us have lost our parents (both Barry and I have both lost our fathers) and have some friends who have suffered the loss of a spouse. As painful as these experiences can be, I cannot imagine anything more painful than the death of a child. I have unfortunately known a few people whose children have died of illnesses. I think the suddenness of this nearly instantaneous death in such a young child gives it an additional dimension. I just hope that Cooper’s parents and his sister will find the strength to continue their own lives.

Love,

Rebecca

 

Most cherished room

Yesterday I attended the last writing class of the current semester.  One of the pieces Janet distributed was published in The New Yorker a year ago, and I found it so fascinating that I had to reproduce it here.

THE ROOF
s	n	o	w	s	n	o	w	s	n	o	w
n	o	w	s	m	o	w	s	n	o	w
o	w	s	n	o	w	s	n	o	w
w	s	n	o	w	s	n	o	w
s	n	o	w	s	n	o	w
n	o	w	s	n	o	w
o	w	s	n	o	w
w	s	n	o	w
s	n	o	w
n	o	w
o	w
w

Cathal McCabe, The New Yorker, November 9, 2012

One of our in-class assignments was to write something about the place where we live. I had an idea almost immediately. I have tweaked it somewhat this morning, and here it is.

We bought our current house in late 1999. We had lived in a number of homes but none of them held a candle to this one. A friend of mine knew the owner and knew that we were looking for a house so we arranged to see it without an agent. It was an older home that had been extensively redone fewer than ten years earlier by that owner. From the moment we walked into the sun-filled living room, I knew immediately that we were in trouble, because it was above the price range we had set for ourselves. Somehow we made it work and we have lived here ever since.

Oddly, the place in the house that has come to mean the most to me was not one of the original selling points: not the living room with many windows and a beautiful cathedral ceiling with skylights, not the bathrooms in each of the three upstairs and one downstairs bedrooms, not the kitchen whose walls are primarily windows, not the room with the Jacuzzi and steam sauna, not the wall in the family room that looks like Jerusalem stone, not the second kitchen downstairs that is the dream of anyone who has prepared for Passover. The place that has meant the most to me, especially during the past two years, is a small room off the downstairs bedroom that we knew immediately would be a home office. A couple of years after we moved into the house, we had built-in desks, bookshelves, and file cabinets installed around the perimeter of the room to make it into a true home office. It is not a large room but we designed it so that we can both work there without bumping into each other.

My first memories of the room were before the built-ins were in place, when we had an old desk, an old table, and a few old bookshelves. The room served as “command central” for planning Dina and Aaron’s wedding. After the invitations went out, I would spend each evening updating my Excel spreadsheet with information from response cards that came in every day. Two years later it again served well for planning Simmie and Ronen’s wedding.  

As computers became more and more a part of both our work and personal lives, we found ourselves spending more and more time in that room. When my pulmonary function made it difficult to commute into Midtown Manhattan every day, I was able to put in a productive day “at work” without leaving the house. Over time, as Pfizer reorganized and I was working daily with colleagues who were literally scattered all over the world, from Shanghai to Milan, it mattered little whether I was in Manhattan, Riverdale, or Sharon as long as I had high speed internet access and a telephone. While my pulmonologist kept encouraging me to consider whether it was time to stop working, I was happy to be able to keep doing the work I loved.

When the chemotherapy shrunk the tumor in my brain sufficiently for me to be able to begin to focus again, I found myself spending more and more time back at my familiar desk. To spare my having to go up and down stairs, which taxed my breathing, energy, and balance, Barry had moved our clothing into the extra bedroom that is adjacent to the office, and moved enough utensils from the main kitchen so that we could eat our meals in the downstairs family room. It was six months before we finally moved back upstairs.

Because I was no longer able to perform my responsibilities in clinical research at Pfizer, the nature of my “work” changed, but the office has continued to serve me well. It is here I sit writing this blog, here I play my Lumosity games, and here that I have created the photo albums of our grandchildren. Sometimes I think about moving upstairs, where the large windows with southern exposure bring in bright sunlight. But I doubt I would ever be as comfortable as I am in this familiar space.

It is funny how what started as the low point, both figuratively and literally, became the real high point of my life in this house.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Love,

Rebecca

  

Countdown

A couple of months ago, in anticipation of our upcoming return, I signed up to receive weekly updates from a site called “News of St. John.”

A video posted this morning including two of our favorite beaches, Hawksnest and Cinnamon, reminded me that it’s time for me stop grousing so much about the cold, when in just a few weeks we will have this welcome break! 

Love,

Rebecca

  

A close call

Shortly into his third song at Carnegie Hall last night, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart,” Neil Young suddenly stopped playing and yelled “wrong!” Barry and I looked at each other and thought “oh, no, he’s not going to do that to us again, is he?” At least this time we had a great on-street parking space right outside of Carnegie Hall. But it turned out that what was wrong was that the audience’s clapping, which from where Mr. Young was sitting sounded off-beat, was a distraction. So everyone stopped, and he resumed the performance. WHEW!

It was a great show! I did not take notes, other than to quickly grab a pen and scribble “Only Love” on a piece of scrap paper. But I was able to quickly pick up the full set list on-line this morning:

Set 1
1. From Hank to Hendrix
2. On the Way Home (Buffalo Springfield song)
3. Only Love Can Break Your Heart
4. Love in Mind- grand piano
5. Mellow My Mind- guitjo
6. Are You Ready for the Country- tack piano
7. Someday- tack piano
8. Changes (Phil Ochs cover)
9. Harvest
10. Old Man

Set 2
11. Goin' Back
12. A Man Needs A Maid- grand piano
13. Ohio
14. Southern Man
15. Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield song)- pump organ
16. Needle of Death (Bert Jansch cover)
17. The Needle and the Damage Done
18. Harvest Moon
19. Flying on the Ground Is Wrong (Buffalo Springfield song)- tack piano
20. After the Gold Rush
21. Heart of Gold

Encore
22. Comes A Time
23. Long May You Run

And here is the review from this morning’s New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/arts/music/temperamental-neil-young-starts-run-at-carnegie-hall.html

When we left Carnegie, the temperature was still in the high 20s, so we got home before the sub-freezing temperatures set in. We slept later than usual this morning and it will undoubtedly take a few days to get back on track, but it was totally worth it! Long may he run.

On a completely different topic, something in the news reminded me of a really funny incident that happened some years ago. Shortly after we moved to New York City, some Sharon friends whose two sons must have been around 8 and 10 years old at the time spent a few days with our family. While the parents attended a wedding, Barry, the girls and I went with the boys to see a movie followed by lunch at a kosher fast-food hamburger restaurant in Queens. There are no such restaurants in the Boston area, so this was a real treat for the boys. The older boy quickly ate two burgers and asked for a third. I was a bit concerned but he was quite convincing so we bought it. When everyone was finished eating, we piled back into the car to head back to our house. Before we even got on the highway, the boy said “I think we need to pull over.” Sparing the details, he left part of that lunch by the side of the road. But he had a great spirit, and got back in the car with a grin and said “I knew that third burger was too good to be true!”

As I am sure you all know, following a December ruling by a federal district judge, same-sex marriages could be legally performed in the state of Utah. About 1000 marriage licenses were issued during the first two weeks after this ruling, but on Monday of last week, the Supreme Court ordered a halt to same-sex marriages in Utah. Those thousand couples are probably wondering if the ruling was “too good to be true.” Unfortunately the stakes are quite a bit higher than an upset stomach. Whatever your opinion of this issue, it is clear that there is a human toll on the couples, and in some cases, their children.

It is just noon, and the temperature is about 10^o. I have to decide if I feel up to leaving the house to go to my last music class.

If you are anywhere in the northern half of the country, STAY WARM!

Love,

Rebecca