About 30% of people diagnosed with breast cancer at any stage will develop distal metastasis. I am one.
Changing the tone a little bit today, I’d like to share Poem XXVI from A.E. Housman’s The Shropshire Lad. The gentle rhythm and straightforward rhymes belie the complexity of the underlying emotions. I’d love to hear your reactions. The half-moon westers low, my love, And the wind brings up the rain;...
I don’t often use this blog to talk in detail about my health issues, but today I’ll make an exception. For the past several weeks or couple of months I’ve been experiencing disturbing symptoms that may be caused by any one of a number of different things, from the dire...
There is a sort of religious corollary to Godwin’s Law. I am not sure exactly how to formulate it, but it seems that the longer any online discussion of public issues continues, the greater the likelihood that someone will eventually make a reference to religion as the source of injustice,...
I remember… All telephones being big and black and having dials Televisions housed in beautiful wooden cabinets as a matter of course. They were black and white, of course. The transistor radio section at the department store. Six transistor radios were groovy. Feltboards in school. Slide rules. (Listed under “Obsolete...
Full disclosure. I live with cancer. I hate that I live with cancer. Cancer and I may have reached a delicately balanced modus vivendi, but cancer still scares me. I have mets (metastasis, secondary tumors) in my bones, but the last chemo series greatly reduced them and I am pretty comfortable...
A sonnet today. Shakespeare. Love, he says, is constant: unchanging even in the face of change, unfaltering even in a raging storm. It is a fixed point of reference even when it it is undervalued. Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love...
Jerusalem is a multicultural city, and I have friends and contacts of different languages, religons, ethnicities and cultural traditions. People who live in more homogeneous settings sometimes find it confusing to move among cultures. I was discussing this with a friend recently. Being a person who writes (and talks) to figure out...
You can’t always get what you want You can’t always get what you want You can’t always get what you want But if you try sometimes you might find You get what you need. (Rolling Stones) I was disappointed today. There was something that I wanted, not something huge, a little...
My very dear friend Aliza wrote this response to my Valentine’s Day 2012 post. Not only a dear friend, she’s a great writer and I am delighted that she gave me permission to publish it here. Aliza, I love you. My friend was about to undergo a major operation and...
Fourteenth of February, 2004. There was a heavy snowfall. In Jerusalem that is almost as rare as it is in Los Angeles. Many streets were closed, and many people were afraid to drive on the streets that were open because, after all, Who knows how to drive in the snow in...