#48 - Boston - Coincidences - May 5 07
Here is one for you – a bit of a long story, but you can take it, I am sure. You may get a beer or a cup of tea, if you like.
In what proved a very busy-body type of week, I was wheeling and dealing with six million business cards I had collected at the most recent oncology conference, when I came about a few old business cards from my personal life that I hung onto for one reason or another. Among them I found a card for Barbara Hill-Moore – soprano, distinguished music professor and voice teacher at Southern Methodist University in Texas. Now Barbara you see, I met many, many years ago, during my stint as a press spokesperson for a music festival in Germany (I just assume that you knew that, right?). During my vacation to the United States in 1988 (the one that has lasted for the past 19 years) I traveled across the country visiting family, friends – many of them musicians that I did meet during said festival (which took place in tents with lots of mud around it – I am not going to discuss this now….). So, I did stop in Dallas, and let’s just say this was definitely not the “time-of-my-life” portion of the whole trip – I stayed with some (on second sight) fairly shady characters, was stuck in an apartment somewhere in Dallas, while my hosts were up to no good and out carousing all night – not good, not good at all. Barbara, bless her, after a dinner conversation where I had a little nervous breakdown on account of the whole bad-host situation, took me under her wing, invited me to her home, showed me around and was just as kind as could be.
We had not exactly stayed in touch, so I figured, what are 15 years more or less, and decided to drop her a little email, you know the “I-am-not-sure-if-you-remember-me-I-swear-I-am-not-a-crazy-stalker” kind. After sending it off, I looked a little more at her website (http://faculty.smu.edu/bhmoore/) and discovered that not only did her daughter Leah live in Boston, but her son-in-law, Gary is a colleague of ours at Harvard School of Public Health, a very gifted young doctor who conducts studies on cancer preventions and on disparities in cancer. How cool is that? I am always amazed at such coincidences, and how life sometimes comes around in circles. What a nice story to be able to tell you. Made me smile all week!
Before I go on to the events of the week, another thought, again on the more philosophical side, and this thought comes with a thank you to my dazzling UK friend Jen Morton who told me that the Petraisms are an attest to my multi-lingual skills (not to forget superior intelligence as indicated by my math skills – see below) – which made me feel so special. In the course of that correspondence a couple of German idioms came to mind, and I just will share them now with you, if you like it or not. I really don’t care (no, I have not been drinking….). Instead of sleeping like a log, we sleep like a sand sack in the Southern German parts of the country, if you wish someone luck, you “press your thumbs” instead of keeping your fingers crossed, and if you to encourage someone in an athletic endeavor, you tell them to break their legs and their neck!
Back to the craziness that is my life – work has been a little nuts this week, but not in a bad way, just juggling too many things at the same time – which lead to a somewhat minor mental collapse yesterday afternoon where I could not for the life of me remember what 6 times 8 was, and had to pull out a calculator to figure it out. Major old-timers moment there. Sometimes you just can’t keep it together, as much as you try.
Monday – Community Running track practice – where I dragged a few of my unsuspecting friends for a “field trip” – I am not sure if they have forgiven me for the torture I exposed them to, but I think some amends were made at Ana’s Tacqueria at MIT following the workout.
Tuesday was a big day – first of all, the new bed arrived – oh it is beautiful my friends, just beautiful!! So beautiful indeed that I decided that I must, must, MUST have the dresser matching to it, drove to Jordan’s on Wednesday night after running practice at the hospital, and bought the damn expensive thing. See I had to go back on Wednesday -Jordan’s has this deal where you get free delivery if you order a second piece of furniture within a week of buying the first one. What could I do, but hoof it out there, be again mesmerized by all the shiny things they throw at you before you even have seen one piece of furniture, had a buffalo burger at Fuddruckers and made salesman Joe deliriously happy. The dresser will be arriving Tuesday and my bedroom will be snazzier than ever!!
Back to Tuesday actually – early evening led me to the Trident, one of my favorite places in Boston’s Back Bay (http://www.tridentbookscafe.com/) – combination book store and café with very decent food. Purpose of the visit was that I met with Michele Martin, who is just starting a business called Marathon Paws: she hires runners and joggers to run and walk people’s dogs for them. What a neat idea – I can get my running in, and take someone’s dog with me. Most of you know that I am a total dog nut – so this is pretty ideal for me. Two months from now, we will be ready to go and the many pooches of Cambridge will get a workout.
I then headed out to dinner with my friend Frank, who lives in my hometown in Germany, and who once in a while breezes thought Boston like a fresh breath of air. Frank wanted steak so we headed to another Back Bay haunt, Joe’s American Bar and Grill http://bbrginc.com/joes/1.html, ate tons of food, had some nice wine and even had room for desert.
Last night a whole gaggle of friends (Patrick, Ellen, Amy, Dana, Stan) and I went to Lexington to see community theater – the Lexington Players performed Stephen Sondheim’s Musical “Assassins” - http://www.sondheim.com/shows/assassins/ . Of course I had heard of Sondheim before – you know “West Side Story” “Sweeney Todd”, “A Funny Thing that Happened to the Forum”, but this show was new to me. Called by some “his most unpleasant musical” it depicts, in revue style, men and women who attempted (some of them successfully) to assassinate presidents of the United States – John Hinckley (Reagan), Leon Czolgosz (McKinley), Samuel Byck (Nixon), Charles Guiteau (Garfield), Giuseppe Zangara (FDR), Sara Jane Moore and Lynette Squeaky Fromme (Ford), Lee Harvey Oswald (Kennedy) and of course, last but not least, John Wilkes Booth (Lincoln). Our friend Irene, who was part of the ensemble dazzled as usual and I would have loved to see her in the role of one of the women assassins (she would have kicked butt!), and I thought Dave Leigh as Sam Byck was quite impressive. He consumingly performed two monologues as the very-off kilter Byck, who ranted about his plot to crash a plane into the White House to kill Richard Nixon in tapes he sent to Leonard Bernstein and Hank Aron (he just wanted a little attention, is all). There was a little wardrobe issue (would not call it a malfunction, maybe a misalignment) with Leigh’s costume that did delight the audience for a short bit, in particular a group of very giggly women a couple of rows behind us, but it’s all good as they say.
Today, just like most of the other days this week, Mother Nature delighted us again with a wonderful spring day, sunny, a bit on the breezy side, not too warm, but good, just good, you know. I met up with Ellen, Patrick, Amy and Dana for brunch and an introductory meeting between two dogs – you see, Ellen and Patrick recently adopted Highway Flame, a just charming greyhound, who used to earn his living at the Wonderland race track until last December, and Peanut, Amy and Dana’s new addition, a slightly portly, six-year old Chihuahua who needed a new home, and boy did he luck out with his placement at Casa Litman. The meeting went pretty well, a respectful distance was kept between the two canines with an occasional snarl by Peanut in defense of his travel bag, but we could see the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Alright, time to go to the store and get some food. My refrigerator has been officially classified as a “frat fridge” which means the only thing it contains is beer and condiments (and bird seed). Not good, gotta go.
Hope y’all have a nice weekend. We are heading to the Berkshires tomorrow for some hiking and a concert with former “Men at Work” front man Colin Hay - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Hay - tell you all about it next week.
Toodles,
PetJ
In what proved a very busy-body type of week, I was wheeling and dealing with six million business cards I had collected at the most recent oncology conference, when I came about a few old business cards from my personal life that I hung onto for one reason or another. Among them I found a card for Barbara Hill-Moore – soprano, distinguished music professor and voice teacher at Southern Methodist University in Texas. Now Barbara you see, I met many, many years ago, during my stint as a press spokesperson for a music festival in Germany (I just assume that you knew that, right?). During my vacation to the United States in 1988 (the one that has lasted for the past 19 years) I traveled across the country visiting family, friends – many of them musicians that I did meet during said festival (which took place in tents with lots of mud around it – I am not going to discuss this now….). So, I did stop in Dallas, and let’s just say this was definitely not the “time-of-my-life” portion of the whole trip – I stayed with some (on second sight) fairly shady characters, was stuck in an apartment somewhere in Dallas, while my hosts were up to no good and out carousing all night – not good, not good at all. Barbara, bless her, after a dinner conversation where I had a little nervous breakdown on account of the whole bad-host situation, took me under her wing, invited me to her home, showed me around and was just as kind as could be.
We had not exactly stayed in touch, so I figured, what are 15 years more or less, and decided to drop her a little email, you know the “I-am-not-sure-if-you-remember-me-I-swear-I-am-not-a-crazy-stalker” kind. After sending it off, I looked a little more at her website (http://faculty.smu.edu/bhmoore/) and discovered that not only did her daughter Leah live in Boston, but her son-in-law, Gary is a colleague of ours at Harvard School of Public Health, a very gifted young doctor who conducts studies on cancer preventions and on disparities in cancer. How cool is that? I am always amazed at such coincidences, and how life sometimes comes around in circles. What a nice story to be able to tell you. Made me smile all week!
Before I go on to the events of the week, another thought, again on the more philosophical side, and this thought comes with a thank you to my dazzling UK friend Jen Morton who told me that the Petraisms are an attest to my multi-lingual skills (not to forget superior intelligence as indicated by my math skills – see below) – which made me feel so special. In the course of that correspondence a couple of German idioms came to mind, and I just will share them now with you, if you like it or not. I really don’t care (no, I have not been drinking….). Instead of sleeping like a log, we sleep like a sand sack in the Southern German parts of the country, if you wish someone luck, you “press your thumbs” instead of keeping your fingers crossed, and if you to encourage someone in an athletic endeavor, you tell them to break their legs and their neck!
Back to the craziness that is my life – work has been a little nuts this week, but not in a bad way, just juggling too many things at the same time – which lead to a somewhat minor mental collapse yesterday afternoon where I could not for the life of me remember what 6 times 8 was, and had to pull out a calculator to figure it out. Major old-timers moment there. Sometimes you just can’t keep it together, as much as you try.
Monday – Community Running track practice – where I dragged a few of my unsuspecting friends for a “field trip” – I am not sure if they have forgiven me for the torture I exposed them to, but I think some amends were made at Ana’s Tacqueria at MIT following the workout.
Tuesday was a big day – first of all, the new bed arrived – oh it is beautiful my friends, just beautiful!! So beautiful indeed that I decided that I must, must, MUST have the dresser matching to it, drove to Jordan’s on Wednesday night after running practice at the hospital, and bought the damn expensive thing. See I had to go back on Wednesday -Jordan’s has this deal where you get free delivery if you order a second piece of furniture within a week of buying the first one. What could I do, but hoof it out there, be again mesmerized by all the shiny things they throw at you before you even have seen one piece of furniture, had a buffalo burger at Fuddruckers and made salesman Joe deliriously happy. The dresser will be arriving Tuesday and my bedroom will be snazzier than ever!!
Back to Tuesday actually – early evening led me to the Trident, one of my favorite places in Boston’s Back Bay (http://www.tridentbookscafe.com/) – combination book store and café with very decent food. Purpose of the visit was that I met with Michele Martin, who is just starting a business called Marathon Paws: she hires runners and joggers to run and walk people’s dogs for them. What a neat idea – I can get my running in, and take someone’s dog with me. Most of you know that I am a total dog nut – so this is pretty ideal for me. Two months from now, we will be ready to go and the many pooches of Cambridge will get a workout.
I then headed out to dinner with my friend Frank, who lives in my hometown in Germany, and who once in a while breezes thought Boston like a fresh breath of air. Frank wanted steak so we headed to another Back Bay haunt, Joe’s American Bar and Grill http://bbrginc.com/joes/1.html, ate tons of food, had some nice wine and even had room for desert.
Last night a whole gaggle of friends (Patrick, Ellen, Amy, Dana, Stan) and I went to Lexington to see community theater – the Lexington Players performed Stephen Sondheim’s Musical “Assassins” - http://www.sondheim.com/shows/assassins/ . Of course I had heard of Sondheim before – you know “West Side Story” “Sweeney Todd”, “A Funny Thing that Happened to the Forum”, but this show was new to me. Called by some “his most unpleasant musical” it depicts, in revue style, men and women who attempted (some of them successfully) to assassinate presidents of the United States – John Hinckley (Reagan), Leon Czolgosz (McKinley), Samuel Byck (Nixon), Charles Guiteau (Garfield), Giuseppe Zangara (FDR), Sara Jane Moore and Lynette Squeaky Fromme (Ford), Lee Harvey Oswald (Kennedy) and of course, last but not least, John Wilkes Booth (Lincoln). Our friend Irene, who was part of the ensemble dazzled as usual and I would have loved to see her in the role of one of the women assassins (she would have kicked butt!), and I thought Dave Leigh as Sam Byck was quite impressive. He consumingly performed two monologues as the very-off kilter Byck, who ranted about his plot to crash a plane into the White House to kill Richard Nixon in tapes he sent to Leonard Bernstein and Hank Aron (he just wanted a little attention, is all). There was a little wardrobe issue (would not call it a malfunction, maybe a misalignment) with Leigh’s costume that did delight the audience for a short bit, in particular a group of very giggly women a couple of rows behind us, but it’s all good as they say.
Today, just like most of the other days this week, Mother Nature delighted us again with a wonderful spring day, sunny, a bit on the breezy side, not too warm, but good, just good, you know. I met up with Ellen, Patrick, Amy and Dana for brunch and an introductory meeting between two dogs – you see, Ellen and Patrick recently adopted Highway Flame, a just charming greyhound, who used to earn his living at the Wonderland race track until last December, and Peanut, Amy and Dana’s new addition, a slightly portly, six-year old Chihuahua who needed a new home, and boy did he luck out with his placement at Casa Litman. The meeting went pretty well, a respectful distance was kept between the two canines with an occasional snarl by Peanut in defense of his travel bag, but we could see the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Alright, time to go to the store and get some food. My refrigerator has been officially classified as a “frat fridge” which means the only thing it contains is beer and condiments (and bird seed). Not good, gotta go.
Hope y’all have a nice weekend. We are heading to the Berkshires tomorrow for some hiking and a concert with former “Men at Work” front man Colin Hay - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Hay - tell you all about it next week.
Toodles,
PetJ
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