Hurrying home for Shabbat, St. John style

Have a great weekend and stay warm – we surely will.

Love,  

Rebecca

Beware of tsunamis

When our daughters were young, perhaps pre-teenagers, they and their friends would sometimes sit with their friends at our Sabbath table engaged in a rather morbid discussion on the topic of whether they would prefer to die (or kill someone) with a knife or with a gun. In light of the horrible weather we are missing in New England, I was reminded of this when I saw the following new sign along the roads of St. John, where the dangers of weather events are quite different but perhaps no less real:

For as long as we have been vacationing on St. John, there has been this little shack selling Columbo yogurt smoothies along the road towards the area of the island where we always stay. But for one reason or another we have never stopped there until yesterday. Here is Barry with his berry smoothie; I, of course, went for the peanut butter and chocolate.

This next picture is of the new grocery store in Coral Bay, the part of the island where we stay. When we first started coming to St. John, there was just one place to buy groceries in the Coral Bay area, a little hole in the wall called Love City Market. Barry and I always suspected that a lot more than groceries changed hands there. There were two larger stores on the eastern side of St. John, about a 30-40 minute drive from where we stay, Starfish Market and Dolphin Market. A few years ago, a small market called Lily’s opened in Coral Bay. Their stock was an improvement on Love City but it was still limited. We arrived this time to find that the spot where Lily’s had been is now inhabited by a newer and enlarged grocery store with a relocated Dolphin Market. This market has a reasonable selection of food and even some produce, although the best produce is still at Starfish. The new Dolphin Market is in the same little complex as Aqua Bistro, one of the places that has live music most nights.

The next picture is Hawksnest Beach, where we spent Wednesday.

You can see that our donkey friends are still hanging out here.

And this last picture is Cinnamon Beach. We have always loved Cinnamon but it is a rather long walk from the closest place that Barry can drop me off, so last year we did not go there at all. Wanting to see it again, we decided today to go for it, and with a bunch of stops I managed to make it. It was definitely worth the effort. It really is a beautiful beach, and is less calm than most of the other beaches so there is a wonderful breeze. We had a lovely day.

As I am completing writing this, there have been 24,953 page views on this blog. This will probably get me over the 25K mark!

I know it is still very cold in much of the US. Enjoy the pictures and we will think warm thoughts of you and for you!

   

Love,

Rebecca

Are we sure we're on the same planet?

Today I find myself singing a song from Sesame Street:

Can you figure out which two of these images are not like the others?

 (these next two are our car, which we left in Simmie and Ronen’s driveway)

Love,

Rebecca

Talk about guilt

Take good care of yourselves!

Love,

Rebecca

Still Alice

Today is Martin Luther King Day. Having seen “Selma,” as well as reading, watching, and listening to numerous other pieces over the past week or so, and having been confined to quarters with the miserable weather yesterday, we snuck out for a little while this afternoon to see the new movie, “Still Alice.”

The story is about a 50-year-old Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University (Julianne Moore), wife of a Professor of Medicine (Alex Baldwin) and mother of three young adult children, who begins to exhibit odd symptoms and, following a battery of tests and evaluations, is diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease. To say that this is a particularly devastating diagnosis for someone who has spent her life in pursuit of understanding brain function is an understatement. There are no miracle cures or particularly feel-good endings here. The first part of the movie seemed a bit too perfect, with all but one family member portrayed as clever and charming over-achievers and most of the dialogue in tired clichés. But the second half, as Alice’s condition begins to deteriorate seriously, seems far more realistic and quite painful. Even her husband, who is portrayed as a reasonably nice fellow, finds a way to disentangle himself from the pain of experiencing her final decline.

A.O. Scott wrote “It surrounds Alice and her family with the signifiers of a perfect, privileged life: impressive jobs, well-raised children, a Manhattan brownstone and a lovely beach house, neither one too showy. But all of this feels like a too tidy garden that has been planted for the sole purpose of introducing a blight and observing its ravages. The story is sad and sincerely told, but it is too removed from life to carry the full measure of pain that Alice deserves.”

The first portion of the movie, as she notices the early symptoms, begins the rounds of diagnostic tests, and finally receives the devastating diagnosis felt a bit too close to home for us. It was a bit difficult to watch the neuropsychologist administer some of the same assessment tools that we remember so well. But there is no doubt that I had to feel extremely grateful that the course of my disease was ultimately quite different from hers. However frustrated I may become at the lapses that are pretty much a constant part of my days, I have to remind myself that I have been quite fortunate indeed.

This is not a fun movie, but Julianne Moore’s Oscar nomination is certainly appropriate. For something a bit more upbeat, I am hoping we will have a chance to take the children to see “Paddington.”

Love,

Rebecca

Two movies

As I sat down to write this review of the film, “Mr. Turner,” which we saw last week, I took a look at Rotten Tomatoes to see the ratings. I was a bit taken aback by the rather large difference between the critics’ ratings (97% approval) and the audience’s ratings (60%). I scanned through quite a few films and did not see any with a gap this wide between the two opinions.

To some extent, I can see why. The film is a bit difficult to follow and understand as it portrays an eccentric British painter, J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). Like many such films, it switches back and forth between incidents at varying times of Mr. Turner’s life. We learn that he was deeply affected by the death of his father and loved by a housekeeper, even though he ignores her except for grunting orders and occasionally forcing himself on her. He is devoted to his art and a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, even going so far as to have himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can better see a snowstorm he will eventually paint. But for the most part, is life appears to consist of travelling and spending time with wealthy acquaintances in the country. His one close relationship after the death of his father seems to be with his landlady, with whom he moves incognito to Chelsea, where he eventually dies.

Mike Leigh directed the film, but the cast of this film are not familiar names. We are familiar with some of Mr. Leigh’s work, including “Vera Drake” (2004), “Happy-Go-Lucky” (2008), and “Another Year,” all very good films. We were reminded of “Happy-Go Lucky” during the previews before the screening of “Mr. Turner,” because the lead actress in that film is currently in the new, film, “Paddington,” which we hope to see with the children.

While I cannot say I loved “Mr. Turner,” what was quite interesting was the attention to the details of life in the late 18^th/early 19^th centuries. For all our complaints about modern life, I would not care to return to that “simpler” time. And do not even think about being ill!

We had been hoping to go into the City today, but it is raining very heavily with the temperature hovering just around the freezing point. So we watched something Barry had taped that was broadcast on CNN recently “Life Itself,” a documentary on the career and life of Roger Ebert. He was quite famous as a movie critic, pairing with Gene Siskel on the show “Siskel and Ebert at the Movies” (and various other names) from 1986 until Siskel’s death in 1991.

This documentary is not for the fainthearted. It really is a bit hard to watch at first, so disfiguring were the surgeries that Mr. Ebert was forced to undergo. He is unable to fully close his mouth and looks like he has a permanent awkward smile on his face. That takes some getting used to, but once you get past it, he really was a pretty amazing fellow who managed to continue to be extremely productive and witty through what seems to be unbearable suffering. It really is quite inspiring.

Hopefully by tomorrow this weather will pass. At least it was rain rather than snow!

Love,

Rebecca

Too little too late?