Dem Bones, Dem Bones

Seven years ago, after a bilateral mastectomy, I started a ten year oral chemo regimen to kill all the estrogen in my body. This is supposed to significantly reduce my chances of a cancer recurrence. Unfortunately, it also greatly increases the rate of bone loss.

In the first year I lost over 10% density in my lumbar spine, 6% in my left hip and the femoral neck T score was went from -.9 to - 1.3 In the subsequent years I was consistently losing at 3% to 4% and had gone from healthy to osteopenia to bordering osteoporosis scores.

All of this freaked me out because I really think bones are important so I started a program for healthier bones - calcium, Vitamin D supplements and lots and lots of time in the gym doing lifting weights. And I am pleased to report that it is finally paying off and density scores are headed in a positive direction.

Lumbar spine +3.5%

Left hip + 1.3 %

Left femoral neck T-score -1.0

However, even with the improvement the left femoral neck was at the absolute lowest limit of normal so I texted Peachie, my exercise science daughter,

Well, it looks like squats (and new pants) are in my future.

Full of Grace

Some fun and amazing things from this week


Beaner’s boyfriend has asked for our blessing for him to ask her to marry him. He would not be my first choice for her but he loves her, that is obvious. So two weddings in one year. Oh boy.

Peachie and her fiance were home for the weekend and we all went out to dinner. Sitting there watching my two grown daughters, settled in their careers and now having found their life partners, all chatting and laughing together, left me with such a good feeling. The kids are definitely all right.

Sunday we all went hiking up north to see the fall foliage. Oh how I do love the changing of the seasons.

Unfortunately my knees told me not to attempt the summit. Instead I settled in quietly next to this little surprise spring and enjoyed the water music.

The mornings are now so dark that when I walk the dog, the stars are still shining.


Young love, the mountains*, the stars, the changing seasons. No matter what craziness is happening in the political world, these beautiful and perfectly magical things remain constant and I am grateful for that.


* Fortunately the Adirondacks are within a State owned park and Trump cannot sell them

Hi, guys

A friend of mine sent me this Twitter thread from a man called Julius Ghost. I don’t have a Twitter account and I’m not sure how to credit him but I thought this was worth sharing.


Julius Ghost @JuliusGoat


Hi, guys. Imagine if one day you got kicked in the nuts, really hard, on purpose.

You doubled over. Felt the pain. Nearly passed out. Nearly puked.

Then you got kicked again. And again.
Imagine it happened to you when you were 12.
Imagine it was an 38 year old woman who did it.
Imagine it was your mother’s friend and business partner.
Imagine you told your parents and they didn’t believe you.
Imagine they never mentioned it again.
You learned to keep quiet about it.
You learned to be scared.
Imagine that later your father explained that women just wanted to kick men in the nuts, so as a boy you had to be careful.

Imagine he had very detailed practical advice on this.

Imagine you started spending your life planning on avoiding being kicked in the nuts.
Imagine you became aware that women, including much older women—even elderly women—were always looking at your nuts. Women on the street would follow you. They’d tell you what a nice package you have. They’d tell you you’d be hot if you just showed off your nuts a little more.
Imagine you started wearing clothes to hide them. You bought uncomfortable protective gear.

All the posters and advertisements in all the magazines featured men’s crotches, though frequently not their heads.

Women’s feet were frequently featured in prominent juxtaposition.
Imagine most of your friends all told you about getting kicked in the nuts.

Imagine none of them had ever told anybody else.

Imagine all the older girls at school would make jokes about kicking you in the nuts.

Imagine all the laughter. The jokes are all so funny.

Jokes.
Imagine you went to church and were told that God made girls to want your body, so you should protect your nuts at all costs.

Imagine the minister said it was your responsibility as a maturing boy not to do anything that would make girls think about kicking you in the nuts.
Imagine you found a girlfriend, and you loved each other.

One night, you were fooling around and she kicked you as hard as she could in the nuts, and it all came rushing back.

Imagine she acted like obviously you wanted to be kicked in the nuts,mocked you for getting emotional.
Imagine you told the police, and they asked you what you’d been wearing before she kicked you in the nuts. Asked if you’d had a drink. Asked what you might have been doing before. Had you been naked? Kissing?

You had.

You left.
Imagine there were laws that said that if a wife kicked her husband in the nuts it wasn’t assault.

Imagine you heard about men with ruptured testicles who had to pay for their own forensic reports

Imagine you saw statistics showing only 1% of kickings resulted in conviction.
Imagine a girl was caught kicking a boy repeatedly in the nuts while he was passed out drunk.

Imagine the judge let her off, because she was worried about the damage to the girl’s future prospects. She was a star swimmer with a scholarship.

Imagine this happened all the time.
Imagine if one day men all started talking about how almost all of them had, at one point or another, been kicked in the nuts.

Imagine if women’s main concern was what false accusation might do to their reputations, and whether this new honesty might ruin the mystery of sex.
Imagine a woman ran for President.

Imagine audio came out of her bragging about making it a regular practice to kick men in the nuts without even introducing herself.

Imagine she lost no support for this.
Imagine she claimed the men accusing her were lying.

Imagine she said they were too ugly to kick.

Imagine there had never been a male president.

Imagine she ran against the first major-party male candidate.

Imagine he had experience, and she had none.

Imagine she won anyway.
Imagine she supported a Senate candidate known for kicking young boys in the testicles.

Imagine she nominated a judge.

Imagine the judge was accused of kicking a boy in the nuts.

Imagine the accuser had to hide from all the death threats as a result.
Imagine the man who had been kicked testified, providing sworn testimony.

Imagine the judge gave an vindictive rant in response.

Imagine he was derided for providing no evidence.

Imagine if they looked for no evidence.

Imagine the judge was given an op-ed to explain herself.
Imagine the President mocked the accuser in font of a crowd, and the crowd laughed and clapped.

Imagine the judge was confirmed.

Imagine the deciding vote was a man.

Can you imagine?
Now imagine that being kicked in the nuts might result in you having to create, in your body, a genetic replication of the person who kicked you.

And imagine that the judge intended to make sure you’d have to carry it.

Imagine that was the *reason* she was chosen.
I can't imagine women's rage today, but this exercise, while abstract, helped me get nearer to it than I'd been.

Be kind to women, guys. Today and every day.


If you see somebody being cruel to women, or abusive, or violent?

Kick 'em in the nuts.



By the way it's 100% insane that this issue seems to require an analogy to draw a sharper focus on how wrong our society presently is, but here were are.

_________________

Turning Around

Last week was the anniversary of my attack. I say “my” but I really mean “our”. Sometimes it is just too painful for me to go down that road. It is a day once overpowering with emotional trauma and now, after much time and therapy, a time of general melancholy. A time of remembering the fear and humiliation of that day but also, now, being grateful for my healing journey.

I did not watch Dr. Ford’s testimony before Congress although it has been next to impossible to avoid the constantly screaming headlines. Last night Trump decided to mock her and I am horrified to see so many people cheering as he ridiculed her. Angry at him. Ashamed for them. Scared for all of us. Is this really what we have become?

Years ago I took the advice of my therapist and decided to go in the direction I wanted to go. In my case it was turning from the pain and humiliation and dehumanizing act of rape toward a place of peace and joy and love. Now it’s time for our country to decide which way it wants to go. This is beyond politics, this is about the very soul of our nation. This is about facing forward and refusing to to be scared backwards. This is about doing the hard work of turning this ship of hatred around.

We are on this sinking ship and unfortunately, we are all on it together. If it goes down, we all go down. Yet there seems to be no talking reason to irrational people. They have no shame. They have no conscience. The only tools we have left are our votes. It is time to toss these rich, white, aging men off the brigg and take back OUR country. We deserve so much more than this.


34 days.

All the Lonely People

A good friends of ours, who is also a colleague of Martha’s, was recently diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer. Her treatment plan includes at least 9 months of chemo, radiation and then, if those are successful, a double mastectomy. She is a single mother with an 8 year old son. As soon as she allowed her diagnosis to be public, people started volunteering. A schedule was almost instantly filled with dinners to be delivered, rides to chemo and play dates for her son. All the kids at the elementary school made her get well cards. The village stepped up in a big way.


Last week a young woman (Sarah) I have known since she was 3, and was most recently a colleague, got the news that her 21 year old son was killed in a motorcycle crash. She had had this baby boy when she was only 15 and gave up a lot to be able to raise him. I went to the wake with my dear friend Anna who 28 years ago suffered a similar loss when her 5 year old daughter and 4 year old nephew were killed by a drunk drive. We got to the funeral home early and already the line was out the door and around the building. The show of support was tremendous. Once we reached the receiving line Anna hugged Sarah and whispered something in her ear. I have no idea what she said but I am sure it was something that will help Sarah as she navigates through this tragedy,


So while it was an extremely sad and emotional week for me and my community, what happened next hit me even deeper.


Margaret, the elderly woman I am now grocery shopping for, told me that her daughter has abandoned her. She has had no contact with her for over 3 years. She had signed her house and her father’s house over to the daughter and once that was done the daughter just wrote her off. She told me that she has spent all of those Christmases, Thanksgivings and Mother’s Days alone - with her daughter and granddaughter living right across the street!


I have no idea why the break happened but I just can’t imagine being that alone. She sits in her house in a deep state of depression. I emailed my organization’s volunteer coordinator with my concern and this was part of her reply:


“It is a sad situation and hate to say we are seeing more and more of people alone with no one they feel they can ask for help.”


I had been quite melancholy about my friends who have very long roads to healing, but this broke my heart even more to think of all these elderly people sitting in their homes, alone.



Much like everything else in our society today, there seems to be an ever widening gap between the haves and the have nots while we overflow with resources. I know people have so much to give and in these days of uncivil and mean divisiveness, community acts of kindness and love stand out even more and give me hope. But we need to figure out a way to funnel some of this generosity to the people who are in so much need of it.


I don’t have the answers but in reading about loneliness I read that what lonely people miss most is intimacy. Yesterday I visited Margaret and gave her a hug. She cried. It’s a small drop in the ocean of her loneliness but it is a start.


All the lonely people, where do they all belong? They belong to all of us.

Grecian Adventure

Everything started out smooth enough. Leaving from our small, hometown airport, we breezed through security. But then we learned that our flight would be delayed because our plane was stuck at a different airport. That would cause us to miss our connection to Athens but we discovered a different flight leaving so we hopped on that. We taxied out only to come to a full stop. Apparently there was too much air traffic in the NYC airports and we had to wait. Then we were told that because of low cloud cover we would have to wait longer. We finally arrived - 10 minutes after our Athens connection had left. First we were told we had to wait 24 hours for the next flight but after some wangling we were able to catch a flight to London later that evening and then a connection to Athens. All in all we arrived about 7 hours later than originally planned.

Unfortunately, our luggage did not arrive at all. It is such a lonely, sinking feeling to watch all the other people on your flight collect their bags and leave while you stand there, alone, hoping against hope that your bag will miraculously appear out of the shute.

We reported the bags lost and found our driver to take us to our hotel. This was our view, from our room - the Temple of Zeus:

And the view from the rooftop restaurant where we had breakfast every morning:

I always carry one change of clothes in my take-on bag but of course my daughter, who never thinks anything will go wrong, did not. So out we went into Athens to buy some essential toiletries, underwear, and some clothing to carry us through.


The next morning we had booked a tour of Athens and the Acropolis. We saw the 1896 Olympic stadium which hosted the first modern games

And Hadrian’s Arch:

And of course, the Acropolis.

The Acropolis museum is built over an ancient settlement and there are glass walkways through which you can view it:

We spent about 1 1/2 hours with a guide learning much about the building of the Acropolis and the meaning of the sculptures and particularly the reverence for the goddess Athena:

And then walked up the hill to view the buildings themselves.

Throughout my career as a city planner I always worked with historic preservation. But now my efforts to preserve and protect 200 year old buildings seemed humorous in comparison to the 600 B.C. buildings I was witnessing. I was awestruck. But this was my daughter’s dream vacation and she did not want to spend too much time with history lessons so off we went shopping again. At least they were old historic neighborhoods (Plaka) we were shopping in:

Our luggage had still not arrived (which I write calmly about now but was a major source of stress at the time) when we were off to take a ferry to the island of Mykonos. On board my seat mate was a Greek woman who worked in hotel development. We had a long and educational (for me) conversation about our different development experiences and parted with shared email addresses.

Mykonos is a beautiful island of whitewashed buildings (by law your house must be white) and small churches (by law, in the rural areas, you must build a family church - about the size of a garden shed - before you build your house) and vineyards. We had a lovely hotel right on Platys Galias Beach (Pelican Beach)

Our luggage had still not arrived although by this time they had found it - one still in Newark and other in London - and they promised it would be delivered on the next plane. So back to shopping in Mykonos Town.

It is a very compact town with winding, narrow streets. I was told this was to deflect the strong winds that sweep across the island and also to confuse pirates:

Here we ate amazing seafood (although I had to ask the waiter to behead and debone a sea bass for me as I didn’t like my food looking at me) and wandered the streets buying bathing suits and more clothes.

And then we spent the evening walking along the shore, eating gelato:

On our second day in Mykonos my daughter scheduled a bike tour. The description sounded wonderful - starting from a family owned vineyard and organic farm, take an easy bike ride to a secluded beach, have a picnic and return to the vineyard, all while our leader, Dimitra, told us about life on Mykonos.

Ten of us gathered and were assigned mountain bikes. We were told to bring water, a bathing suit and towels which I carried in the backpack I used as my plane carry on. Out we started in the blazing Mediterranean sun. Our first stop was a small church where we learned about the religion of the island.

Then the ride started get difficult. The roads were all arid dirt and rocks and I was terrified of wiping out, especially on the steep downhills. Soon I was trailing the rest of the pack by greater and greater distances but one group leader always stayed behind with me.

We finally made it to the beach and I lost no time in jumping in to cool off.

We shared a picnic of wine, fresh lemonade, seasoned tomatoes, cheeses, breads, meats, olives and an orange cake in honor of the 30th birthday of a woman in our group.

There was a long and steep hill to get back up so I left the group early and started walking my bike back up. Soon everyone lapped me and I was once again pedaling in the back of the pack. But I made it back, huffing and puffing, my heart rate far exceeding safe. I should note here that I carried the backpack in the blazing sun because my darling daughter didn’t want to ruin her tan lines.

At this point some of the folks left but we stayed at the vineyard sipping wine and lemonade and chatting with a couple from Germany, a couple from northern Greece and two sisters from Chicago.

One more day at the beach and visiting the windmills and eating amazing seafood and finally our luggage arrived!

Then off on another ferry to the island of Santorini, known for its white buildings and blue domes.

Here we had a beautiful hotel room facing the volcano with phenomenal sunsets.

While Athens was for history, Mykonos for shopping, Santorini was to be for sunbathing and wine. We spent a day at the Black Sand Beach, made from the volcanic lava rocks smoothed into small black pebbles.

We dined in Oia and watched the world famous sunset, and we went on a wine tasting tour that took us to 3 different wineries, tasting 5 different wines at each stop.


At the first stop we learned about how the grape vines were kept low to the ground because f the high winds, and because they had no wood to stake plants. Instead the vines were wound into low ‘bird’s nest’.

Then we saw where the grapes were stomped, by feet, and the juice funneled into barrels for fermentation.


Our last stop was on a hill top where we could watch the sunset while sipping the last dessert wine. I did take a tiny sip of each wine but then my daughter drank the rest. She was pretty much wasted by the time it was over.

We spent our last day lingering over breakfast and getting massages at a fancy spa. Delightful.

Then it was onto Santorini airport for a flight back to Athens.

Santorini airport reminded me of a third world, 1940s airport - a small building with 6 gates and about 20 seats. The place was mobbed with weary travellers strewn all over the floors and there were no working outlets to charge phones and few working bathrooms. I was never so happy to board a cramped little plane and get out of the terminal.

One more night back in Athens where we enjoyed a lovely rooftop dinner overlooking the spectacularly lit Acropolis

and then back on a plane for the 12 hour flight home.


I am still struggling to get back on a sleep schedule and I still haven’t finished unpacking.

When asked about my favorite parts of the trip they were mostly the times we spent away from the tourist spots like the killer bike ride and times spent talking with folks from other countries. Having grown up near New York City I was used to multiculturalism. Now I live in a homogeneous suburb. It was very refreshing to see and hear different languages, dress, foods, etc.


Other little weird observances -

Almost everyone speaks English - most better than I do.

New York Yankees caps are worn by people around the world. I personally found people from New Zealand, Germany, Greece, Spain and Great Britain all wearing them. When asked if they were fans the answers were always “no, but the caps are prized.”

Nutella everywhere. I mean everywhere. It is in cookies and gelato and crepes. I had a Nutella calzone the size of a football and there was Nutella on every breakfast bar. I have no idea how these people stay so thin.

Cats are also everywhere.  They wander in and out of shops, which always had open doors, and sunbathe in shadows.  People apparently put out large plates of food for them and they inhabit the islands as if they owned the place.

All in all it was a wonderful trip making memories with my daughter. The lost luggage stress has faded and been replaced with beautiful new clothes we would not have bought otherwise.

Personally I would have liked to do more historical/educational wanderings - there is a town in Santorini that was bured by the volcano that is older than Pompeii and an archaeological site on the island of Delos that many people list as a “must see”. But wandering around beautiful small towns, relaxing at extraordinary beaches with crystal clear water, chatting with locals and folks from elsewhere, dining at seaside restaurants and sharing the most breathtaking sunsets every night with my daughter was a pretty exceptional adventure.

August Odds and Ends

August has been extremely busy with mostly good and fun times

My sister and BIL visited at the lake which is always time spent chatting and mindlessly eating. (Did we just eat an entire half gallon of ice cream in one sitting?)

Beaner took Martha and I to see the Piano Boys as our Mother’s Day present. I didn’t know the Piano Boys were actually a pianist and a phenomenal cellist. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person play their instrument which more joy and abandon. Soul nourishing.

We went blueberry picking and filled the freezer for future pies and muffins but squirrels ate my entire orchard.  There's not a peach, apple or pear left to be seen. At least I had a couple of peaches off the tree before the plague came.

We have had extremely overcast skies recently which, we are told, are not clouds but rather the smoke from the California fires. Holy smoke! I can’t imagine what it is like on the west coast.

Thanks to one of my alma maters, the entire family congregated at Yankee stadium to enjoy an unlimited buffet, free hat and great seats on a perfectly pleasant night to watch a game. And our team actually won - something they have had difficulty doing lately.

Wedding planning going at full pace. Venue, check. Date set, check. Wedding dress, check. Peachie has been planning this since she was 5 so I don’t have to do much.

Roaming around the County Fair watching sheep shearing and cow milking. And, of course, this.

The passing of Aretha Franklin. She was the soundtrack of one of the most beautiful chapters of my life. I am enjoying all the tributes which are taking me back to that very happy place. Bittersweet.

Tomorrow Beaner and I leave for Greece. I am grateful to be able to create such memories with my oldest daughter but claustrophobic me is very anxious about the 10 and 12 hours trapped in a plane, plus feeling responsible that all plans go smoothly. I would ask that you send some travelling mercies into the universe for us.

Wow, August flew by..See you in September.