having fun

We continue on our project to make our end of life years richer and fuller. We finished up our course on cubism, which we both enjoyed but I think that Brian will definitely have to take a survey course in art history. Both of us will at the community college when I turn 65 next year. BCC has a program for seniors where you can audit what you want for free after age 65. Because I did all of that enrichment activity to keep myself sane by taking all of those art history, literature and so forth courses during my "lost years" in Midland, Texas, I was able to put more of what the professor said in the context of what else was going on in the art world during that time. It is interesting to bring together economy, politics, architecture, music and see how they intersect in the Zeitgeist of the times.
One Sunday we went to a B&B event in Flemington where they paired chocolate and wine. Oh my gosh were the chocolates wonderful. So were the wines, but I didn't really think that the vitner and the chocolatier did a great job of pairing. Some of the pairings were a bit jarring and some actually worked well. But we met a bunch of folks who were really, really pleasant, and the hosts were fantastically friendly people.
That same week we went to the Kantha exhibit and lecture at the Museum of Art. These members only tours and lectures are so informative. I would never be able to see or know the meaning and significance of some of the works that we have seen without them. The Kanthas were exquisite and so very detailed. That same day we were off to the Wilma to see Language Games, a new play. The Wilma is funny. The plays we have attended there are either fabulous or we have walked out at intermission. They are always thought provoking and edgy new works. This one was great and particularly interesting for an immigrant. It concerned a young man who is an ethnic Arab, whose father emigrated to the U.S. when the young man was age 3 years so that his family could have a better life. His son becomes an interrogator/torturer in what we are to understand to be Guantanamo. His father is arrested on suspicion of terrorist activity and brought to the prison and comes face to face with his son to be interrogated. What a powerful play. We stayed for the discussion, which we thought would be at a higher level. We were surprised at the concrete interpretations of this spectacular play. No one seemed to "get" the central theme of dialectic -- things turning into their opposite. E.g. Egyptian father's expectations of a better opportunity for his son by immigrating, and his son becoming an interrogator/torturer for the U.S. The African American psychiatrist turning into his opposite and the formerly oppressed becoming the oppressor. This plus the subthemes of destroying an identity by destroying a people's language and others makes this a powerful play for the thoughtful.
The next evening we saw Graham Greene's Travels With My Aunt, which was a superb performance and the theatre was packed for this oldie but goodie. My only complaint is that it was in the Walnut Street Theatre's smaller venue and the chairs are uncomfortable and too close to each other. Coupled with the fact that all I could get was evening tickets and we usually go to matinees because we get sleepy driving home, and there was an accident on 95, I was cranky by the time we arrived back in New Hope.
We drove down to visit Shannon, Jon and the twins in N.C. and saw Daryl, Dina, Amy and Mark as well. A very fun visit. We really like Jon's family a lot. They are always so gracious and inclusive. The little girls are no longer babies! How time flies. Both of them are talking much and so different from each other. Sophie is a thoughtful little scholar who loves her "Bacz" and Jacqueline is most definitely her Dziadzio's little girlie girl.
One of our book clubs had its meeting about Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho. Blach. We were the only members of the club to not like this over-rated pabulum. I panned it on Goodreads but found that we were in a minority there as well.
The pool work got done this week. Glad to have those workmen out of our hair. The gardens are exploding and the property is gorgeous. It is always at its best in the spring I think.
We've been running from one activity to another as this blog attests. We took in Alice in Wonderland and thought it was far superior to Avatar. We ate Chinese afterward which was mediocre despite the 30 minute wait to get in at 5 pm on a Thursday. Last night we met our empty nesters at Bobby Simones, a local restaurant, and ended the week with a bang.
Next week I have to testify at a trial, which kind of ruins my whole week being on call. But Brian has errands and has to go to the audiologist, so I guess I may as well work.
The university becomes more and more of a pain in the rear. The dean asked me to spearhead multidisciplinary grand rounds at the medical school on April 29. I have 5 people: a psychiatrist, an epidemiologist, a physical therapist, a biochemist, and myself. Since January only the shrink -- buddy Andy Levitas -- has come through with any content or work with me on this. Just my ambition in life - to play nursemaid to a bunch of people with their doctorates making sure they get their stuff done. Like herding cats.
Then the office of ethics and compliance is running after faculty for us to take mandatory courses and answer intrusive questions. Like "do you do any volunteer activity?" I told them it was none of their business what I did in my spare time and Andy told them to shove their ethics course ...
A man after my own heart!
Every time I turn around there is another mandatory diversity, cultural sensitivity, HIPPA, organ donation course that they want you to take. Then our brilliant dean for grad studies came up with the idea of having all faculty teaching in graduate courses to send her a report of what courses they taught, the # of the course, the section, the names of the students, and their grades for the semester. Hmm. I was under the impression that the registrar's office does this. So yet another mindless piece of work for the faculty -- and then they bitch that people are not producing scholarship. Go figure. ONLY TWO SEMESTERS TO GO!!!
It continues to be very quiet without our kitties. It is so strange to come home and find it empty. We really miss them, but won't get another pet until we stop traveling. We have some big trips planned in the next several years.
I am having a heck of a good time corresponding with the extended family in Poland and the U.K. Especially fun is discussing issues with the younger generation. They are so darn cute!

death in family

So, sad news -- but perhaps not. Yesterday Brian's father died suddenly while on a trip to the Grand Canyon with his wife, Jill. One minute he was looking at it and the next he had simply died. She was pretty distraught when she called Brian last night. Of course, he being the only rationale and empathic member out of a toxic crew of 6, he was asked to call all of them to pass on the news. Being the kind person that he is, he did, although it was not a whole lot of fun. Glad that is over and I really feel for Jill to have to go back and undoubtedly be treated abominably by the wicked stepdaughters. I cringe for her.
So, how do I feel about all of this? I am glad that my father-in-law did not suffer. If one does not depart this life in one's sleep, one should depart as suddenly and painlessly as Jack did. I really feel bad for Brian on many levels. He loved his father and his father loved him in his own strange way. He will mourn his passing and miss having him in his life.

Katyn -- the gift that keeps giving

Yesterday we awoke to find that Poland's leadership was decimated in a tragic plane crash on the way to a memorial commemorating the victims of the Katyn forest murders. Being a bit paranoid on the issue of Russia, I defaulted to my position that they must have had something to do with it. Sabatoge. Of course that is a bit crazy. But I think that we need to spread the word about what Katyn was and why it is important. So I highly recommend learning about this nasty piece of history. University of Illinois professor, Allen Paul, has a great book out on the topic. He has recently updated it. Also, the film, Katyn is exceedingly powerful. Katyn is now available with English subtitles. It is a film by Andrzej Wajda, one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, who shows generations of his countrymen – (and the rest of the world) what they were told not to think about. With its mournful score, muted cinematography and restrained performances, this is a work of sober commemoration. Hopefully it brings some small measure of rest to the 22,000 innocents who were slaughtered by the Soviets for no other reason than to purge Poland of its intelligentsia. It is a story of personal legends, of unknown soldiers and civilians. Wajda unravels their various narrative strands, like a desperately ripped flag, a national tragedy doesn’t cease, it haunts.
The collective, spiritual crisis of post war Poles is sharpened by the introduction of documentary footage, juxtaposed with children looking for a Christmas tree during the Occupation then an open-air screening of propaganda films absolving Russia of the Katyn massacre. Wajda confronts historical evidence and personal recall. When a widow tells a collaborator, “You may think differently but you do the same. What difference does it make that you think differently?” it powerfully communicates real life complexity.

Health Care and Irrationality

Abraham Verghese says it better than I ever could: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2009/08/irrational-belief-breaks-down-the-rational-mind/23198/

Recent visit & activity

Well FINALLY the new book is done and is out to Wiley for copy editing. Allan Tasman tells me that it is the easiest project he has ever done with anyone. Perhaps that is because I had no ego tied up in it and I did the majority of the work. Victim of my own competence. So, we will see now how it sells.
Shannon and Jon and twins were here during the third week in March. Tara and Mike came up for a day during that time and it was so very cute to see the babies playing. Sophie and Alina hit it off right away. Jacqueline was a bit more demure, but she soon joined in on the fun. Photos on my facebook page. So, Brian and I are reading up a storm. I am in the home slide of a biography of Madame Chiang Kai Shek. What an extraordinary and despicable woman she was. As for Chiang, he was just as bad as Mao.
What I am learning is that the U.S. wasted countless taxpayer dollars arming him and he simply hoarded the weapons. Mao couldn't help but win because Chiang was so pusillanimous and Mao actually had an ideology that he could sell. What did Chiang have? Militaristic nationalism, corruption, and opium. Arrgghh. We had McCarthy hearings over all of this. A pox on both the communists and the Chiang Kai Shek crowd!
Life continues apace and well. We are thrilled about health care reform passing, although we would like to have had a public option. But policy is incremental and the GOP and their tea party lunatic fringe have been so obstructionistic, that we were lucky to get what we got.
I am sort of disappointed in the press in that they simply don't hammer home the realities of what is going on with health care and the fact that we have such a dismal track record when compared to the rest of the world. Just look at our infant mortality rate! It is disgraceful for the so called "best" health care system in the world. They don't talk nearly enough about the other health indicators. They also don't bother to point out to the nay sayers who talk about the waits in Canada and other public option countries that we have to wait here as well. People with HMOs have to wait -- I did for 48 hours before I had an MRI because the morons wouldn't approve it for my back pain. AND if one has no health insurance you wait forever. And die. At any rate there is so much for the press to argue. Perhaps they don't because the GOP-tea partiers simply do not listen and refuse to engage in any discourse that makes their position untenable. I found it interesting today that the NY Times pointed out that the tea partiers were > 80% Republican, many were out of work AND ON GOVERNMENT subsidies. But they want smaller government. Go figure.
So we saw Antony and Cleopatra this past weekend and then met the Tulmans for Thai food. The opera was interesting, but I don't need to see this one again. Far too much recitative, the tenor was weak, the soprano was the size of Precious (the movie) although she had a great voice, and the staging was really odd. It just did not work for me. Back to the more classic operas.
We attended our last lectures on cubism at the Museum of Art and they have left Brian hungry for more.
He will have to take an Art History course. I think he may have missed some foundational concepts since he had not ever taken art history and I had. Next year when I turn 65 and no more UMDNJ (bye-bye!) we will be able to audit courses at Bucks County Community College for free under their seniors program.
His new bee in bonnet is that he wants us to take Spanish to get ready for our trip to South America.
We had Alina for an overnight. What a joy it is to have her with us! When she runs through the meadow after Brian yelling "Dzia Dzio!" it is very touching. Her fun thing to do is to help him chase the Canada geese away. They are the bane of our existence during mating season.
Today we are meeting our Doylestown group for a class on pairing chocolate and wine. There goes the diet again, and next week we have two plays (how did THAT happen?) and another museum lecture on Indian art.
Ken and Bill are planning a belated birthday dinner for me and we are headed out to North Carolina to visit the twins, Shannon and Jon after that. Whew. Having fun is exhilarating and tiring.
I was friended on facebook by one of my neices who lives in Warsaw. What a cutie. Facebook can be both inane and a lot of fun. I think that it works well if one ignores and does not friend the purveyors of inanity. It is great when linked with goodreads. And I have learned a lot from my Polish groups that I have friended. Most of it has to do with what I have to learn and read before next year's trip to Poland and the family reunion.

The ongoing project

Whew it has been a whirlwind month. How refreshing it is to step out of our usual repertoire of reading choices. The book clubs have forced us to stretch and read things that neither of us would read -- for example Brian is reading some great fiction and I am reading more history. Now there's a reversal! But both of us are enjoying the ones that we read together. We had a blast reading Water for Elephants and both adored the book.
I so feel as if I am on a senior slide. It is an effort for me to get to the computer to finish up works in progress. But I finally managed to complete the full manuscript for the Tasman-Mohr collaboration. Yay! Luckily, being the important personage he is, Allan is not too timely so he did not notice me dragging my feet in the last few months. At work I find that I could really not care what is going on and I basically read a book through meetings. Always hated those anyway as they are such a waste of precious time.
Time -- ah yes -- what a precious commodity and more precious every day. I was reading an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a gambler. The guy is unemployed (lost job) has a wife and two kids and goes to the casino in Chester several times a week to -- as he puts it -- "kill time." Why would anyone want to kill time. Time is to fill with interesting things to do and things to learn -- not to kill. I wonder how many people out there (gambling addicts and others) are living lives of quiet and gray desperation where it is so dismal that they have to kill the precious commodity of time.
This past few weeks we met one of our "art of cooking" groups at a Venezualan Restaurant. Oh Yum. I've had a lot of cuisine, but never Venezualan. It was great! This group is run by a chef and he does interesting activities such as visiting the Terminal Market and the Italian Market, cooking classes, and sampling interesting fare across the city.
We attended an all Brahms performance at the symphony. The performance was wonderful, but Brahms is really not my favorite. I prefer more Romantic rather than Baroque and then my favorite, Berlioz, who was a true character, is always a treat. We attended the Picasso and the Avant Garde special exhibit. It was very well done and on Saturday we will be taking the first half of the course in cubism at the museum, so that will enrich what we saw. The last course we took (last month) was on the Renaissance and it was great. The U. of Penn. art history professor really brought the art and architecture to life, placing it in the context of what was going on historically and economically in Europe.
We visited Jon and Shannon for 4 days and took the kids to Gymboree and other kiddie activities. Jacqueline sure does like her Dziadzio, while Sophie seems to favor Babcia.
We watched Alina for a weekend while Tara and Mike went to the beer festival and she wore us out. The child has soooo much energy and she is always up and happy. What a temperament! She loves her Dziadzio, favoring him over me. We met the kids in Philly for lunch earlier this week for their anniversary and when she saw him in the restaurant, she yelled "Dziadzio!" at the top of her lungs and ran to him, throwing herself into his arms. It was truly a Kodak moment.
On a final note, sadly we had to put Wookie and Bevo down today. Wookie was almost 18 and Bevo was 15. They both had arthritis and had trouble going up and down the stairs. Wookie was in renal failure and drinking and peeing everywhere. Bevo was spraying to cover Wookie's scent. It became an untenable situation. This is the first time that we will be without an animal in over 30 years. Very sad.

Shotakovitch

Omigosh. We went to hear Shostakovitch’s 11th symphony yesterday. What a treat! Who knew that one could combine harps with percussion and make it all work. Brass, winds, drums, 2 harps, violas, violins, gongs, cymbals and actually some instruments that I did not even recognize came together to produce a symphonic performance that got the orchestra FOUR ovations. It was breathtaking. I have an attraction to some of the broodier (is that a word?) and more complex composers – Berlioz being my favorite followed probably by Shostakovitch. I suspect that complexity is in the eyes of the beholder in that Beethoven is very complex, but being an amateur and not a musician, I don’t have the musical sophistication to analyze. I just know what these composers do to my soul. Plus, I never grew up with classical music and did not even start developing that part of myself until I was well into my twenties. So – on to my impressions, amateurish though they may be. Dmitri Shostakovitch, much harassed by the Soviet state, manages to communicate a melancholic depth and profound sense of anguish in many of his symphonies, concertos, and quartets. He seems overly ambitious at times, but I suspect that what appears to be pretentiousness is actually a subtle satire of the Soviet state and its blustering bombastic swagger through history. Shostakovitch’s genius was that he could subtly thumb his nose at the Soviet censors and often (not always) they were too stupid to see it. The 11th symphony is a large-scale tribute to the "victory" of the Great October Revolution of 1917, composed on the 40th anniversary of the occasion. The mass demonstration of 1905 ended in the brutal slaughter of thousands of peaceful peasants and workers rising against the rule of Nicholas II. The minor key pervades. The first of the four movements is called "The Palace Square," setting the somber scene where the violent events of the day would occur. Shostakovitch includes two Russian prison songs in this movement. The second movement, "January 9th," pictures the workers' march through the streets and their slaughter. "Eternal Memory" is the title of the third movement, a pensive requiem, and in the last movement, "Alarm," the spirit of revolt returns, with militant songs and a triumphant, percussive finale. Bravo/brava Philadelphia Orchestra!