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.
This is a link to podcasts that are so unbearably boring that they put the listener to sleep. We heard about this when a segment about the podcast was aired on “CBS Sunday Morning” with Jane Pauley.
Since the COVID pandemic began, one in three Americans has had reduced quality sleep. Correspondent Susan Spencer pulls back the covers on how pandemic stress is among the factors affecting people's already-tortured relationship with shuteye. Spencer talks with Drew Ackerman, a lifelong chronic insomniac whose storytelling podcast, "Sleep With Me," lulls listeners to slumberland; and with professors Sharon Bowman, Jennifer Martin and Tiffany Yip about the importance of sleep hygiene, and the effects of reduced sleep on chronic health impacts and productivity.
I figured I could do a great public service and share this information with my blog readers. You can let me know which is more sleep-inducing: this podcast or my ramblings.
Meanwhile, have a healthy week and try to get enough sleep.
Was it always true that there was so much incorrect or misleading information out there? Or is it just that we have access to so much more information that, even if the same proportion of it is incorrect, the amount of it is simply mind-boggling?
The Washington Post said in January 2020 that Donald Trump had made more than 16,241 false or misleading claims as president, an average of about 14.8 such statements per day. The numbers for presidents prior to 2017 would appear to be much lower, but certainly not zero. Perhaps it was easier to track the last president’s statements because so many of them were on social media; there is no definitive way to compare his record to any presidents before him.
Speaking of cleaning up our acts, earlier this month I wrote about cleaning the car before Pesach (Passover). I was thrilled to just receive this video from Dina, which is so much more fun than we could possibly have doing this ourselves!
I completed my Ph.D. in Statistics at Southern Methodist
University in Dallas in the summer of 1986. Two years later, I attended the
annual Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) which were held in New Orleans. The JSM
is a professional/academic conference for statisticians held every year (usually in August) since 1840.
I wish I could remember the sessions I attended or the
pearls of statistical wisdom I gleaned from those meetings, but what I
primarily remember was the nightly gatherings with friends and colleagues along
Bourbon Street. On one of those evenings, we made our way to a famous watering
hole called Pat O’Brien’s, which has been in business since 1933. They are well
known for a famous drink known as The Hurricane:
2
ounces amber rum
1/4
cup passion fruit juice, or 1 tablespoon passion fruit syrup
1
teaspoon superfine sugar
1/2
teaspoon grenadine
Juice
of 1/2 lime
I suppose I was never one to hold my liquor very well, and I
do recall being warned not to drink it too quickly. But it was a typically warm
and humid New Orleans August evening and the drink was quite tasty, and let’s just
say I was fortunate to be with friends because I probably made quite a fool of
myself. Fortunately, it began to wear off by the time we headed back to our
hotels. And, fortunately, I managed to return to New York with the glass.
Why talk about this? Because last evening on Jeopardy! in the category “Potent Potables,” the $800 answer was:
Pat O'Brien's in New Orleans is famous for this stormy cocktail that has its own tall glass.
And the question was:
What is The Hurricane?
Thanks to Jeopardy! for bringing back this fond memory.
I am not sure if this is good news or bad news, but one
thing for sure is that the last thing we need right now is something else to
keep us awake at night. They may be small but they can sure make an awful lot
of noise! What am I talking about? Cicadas!
Brief
side note: I struggled with that last sentence, because “about” is a preposition
and it is not proper English to end a sentence with a preposition. However, to ask
“about what am I talking?” when writing about cicadas seems a bit melodramatic.
Then
I found this on a blog called grammarly.com:
It’s not an error to end a sentence with a
preposition, but it is a little less formal. In emails, text messages, and
notes to friends, it’s perfectly fine. But if you’re writing a research paper
or submitting a business proposal and you want to sound very formal, avoid
ending sentences with prepositions.
We
are all friends here, correct?
Back to cicadas, first, a brief video of the sound of summer
cicadas.
USA Today recently published an article on cicadas that included a brief video and began:
Brood X periodical cicadas, underground for 17 years, ready to reemerge and make some noise
This year will mark the reemergence after 17 years of Brood X, or the Great Eastern Brood, of periodical cicadas – those large, winged, kind of scary-looking but mostly harmless flying insects known for their almost deafening buzz.
“The end of May through June, it can get pretty loud – if you are in an area where they are numerous, there can be hundreds of thousands, or millions, of them,” said Howard Russell, an entomologist (insect scientist) at Michigan State University.
One of the largest broods of periodical cicadas in the nation, Brood X will emerge this spring in 15 states: Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, as well as Washington, D.C.
I suppose I would rather be listening to cicadas than to the forecast of snow in the coming days! Here is part of the forecast for tomorrow, March 16th:
Time
Temperature
Weather
Probability
7 pm
38°
Snow Showers
35%
8 pm
38°
Snow Showers
39%
9 pm
37°
Snow Showers
36%
10 pm
37°
Snow Showers
40%
11 pm
37°
Snow Showers
42%
Hopefully those temperatures mean the snow will not accumulate.
One of the many challenges of these past nine years of
living through two cancer diagnoses and their consequences along with pulmonary
disease is that, most of the time, I feel relatively useless. This past year
has been frustrating for all and downright painful for many, and has only added
to my sense of being a person who takes far more than she can give. That was
never the person I believed I was.
But today, for a change, I was actually able to do something
helpful. Both of our daughters are teachers in Massachusetts. After many months
of showing rather poor support for their educators, the state finally did the
best thing any state can do right now: they opened appointments to teachers for
vaccinations for COVID-19. Just one problem: booking appointments can
require quite a lot of time on-line with a system that opens each day at 8:30
am, when most teachers are engaged with students. This provided a unique
opportunity for Barry and me to step in and offer to help. So, this morning, we
had 3 laptops going in an effort to log in to the site and find appointments.
The first one Barry was able to schedule was over an hour away from Sharon. But
then we managed to get on to the site that included appointments at Gillette
Stadium in Foxboro, about 6 miles from their homes. And from there we were able
to schedule an appointment for each daughter, both on the same day but a number
of hours apart.
And now, we see that Massachusetts has finally lifted travel
restrictions for those who have been fully vaccinated:
Individuals who have been fully vaccinated against
COVID-19 for at least 14 days are no longer required to quarantine or have a
recent negative test result upon arriving in Massachusetts, under a new
exception quietly made to the state’s emergency
travel rules this week.
The updated rules — which apply to most people
visiting or returning from states with high COVID-19 rates — say that
asymptomatic individuals who have gotten both doses of the Moderna or Pfizer
vaccine or a single dose of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine more
than 14 days ago do not need to quarantine for 10 days or have a negative
COVID-19 test upon arrival in Massachusetts.
Why was the exception “quietly” made? I cannot answer that.
With all of this combined, but admittedly continuing to err
on the side of extreme caution necessitated by my underlying pulmonary disease,
we are hopeful to be able to travel to Sharon when the weather is warm enough
for us to remain largely outdoors to visit with our children and grandchildren.
This is the first time we have actually even been able to seriously consider
doing that.
I have never been a particular fan of Dolly Parton but was
impressed to read of her substantial contribution to the development of the coronavirus
vaccine developed by Moderna. The New York Times reported:
Last year, Ms.
Parton donated $1 million to Vanderbilt
University Medical Center, which worked with the drug maker Moderna to develop
one of the first coronavirus vaccines to be authorized in the United States.
The federal government eventually invested $1 billion in the creation and testing of the vaccine, but
the leader of the research effort, Dr. Mark Denison, said that the singer’s
donation had funded its critical early stages.
A few days ago, a short video of Ms. Parton receiving an
injection of the Moderna vaccine was widely publicized, including a short rewrite
of her song “Jolene.”
Then, yesterday, Carole King released her own video to encourage people to be vaccinated. Be sure to “unmute” if you are not hearing the audio when you go to this link. I love the rhyming of “late” with “hesitate.”
