Friday, April 27, 2007

Cancer Bitch Behaves Badly Again

I went to Caribou Coffee on my way to meet my friend F for lunch. There were bags of coffee for sale with pink ribbons on them. Part of the price goes to the Susan G. Komen foundation, which goes for--what? More pink ribbons, I suppose. I think Komen...
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Thursday, April 26, 2007

Remembrance of Things Past or: Everybody's Got a Web Site (Except Frieda)

My friend Miz J, AKA fabulous cartoonist Jennifer Berman, called today to tell me about a dream she dreamt in my honor. She was (in the dream) approaching Paris, and it looked all Impressionist-y , just as Monet and Renoir had painted it and she realized...
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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

A Cancer Bitch Behaving Badly

Yesterday I went out lightly dressed and didn't mean to be gone all day, but I was. And it got colder and colder (52 degrees). Around 8pm or so I walked the half mile from Letizia's Natural Bakery on Division near Damen, where I had a latte and a chocolate...
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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Freedom and Development

At dinner Saturday (it seems we are always going to dinnner; we are; we're yuppies, I've said to L; no, he said, we're not Y; oh, then I said, we're nyuppies--NOT-young urban professionals) T and J were talking about Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom,...
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Monday, April 23, 2007

Notes on the Visible/Invisible

The shaving of the head, in order to make women visible, to shame them. (I told my neighbor I was going to get a sign that said, I slept with a Nazi, but he didn't get it. And then in the movie Black Book, there they were in post-war Holland, the "Nazi...
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Friday, April 20, 2007

Cancer is Boring

It is life-threatening but boring. And mysterious but boring. Mysterious because I don't even know if I still have it. Was it all cut out? Is this long, hair-losing journey into Chemolandia unnecessary? No one will ever know. For a mystery to be pungent...
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Thursday, April 19, 2007

Head Covering

I became un-Mohawked last night. I'd suspected that the Mohawk was staying put mostly because of the gel, and that without it, it would fall out. I was close. I located the only comb in the house, a plain black one courtesy of my surgery stay at Fancy...
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Men with Guns 2

I went to the concert hall at Well-Regarded University last night to hear Peter Gay (see yesterday's post). It was near starting time and I squeezed my way down an aisle close in where there was just one seat. I sat next to a woman with straight gray...
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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Men with Guns

Monday on the subway going to chemo, I was re-reading Peter Gay's memoir, My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin, in preparation for hearing his lecture Tuesday at WRU (Well-Regarded University). A more accurate subtitle: Growing Up Jewish But...
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Thursday, April 12, 2007

When It Falls, It Falls

My hair kept on falling out and falling out. You could see the part widen in the middle so that my scalp was visible. It is a nice scalp, pink and not scabrous, I'm happy to report. I'm sure I left a puddle of hair at my table at the little cafe down...
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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

The End of Women and Children First???

I read in Windy City Times today, in a feature about my favorite bookstore, Women and Children First, that it may close. In the thirteenth paragraph, the writer said, "Things have gotten so bad at WCF that both confirm the store must now plan month-to-month,...
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Briefly

The neighborhood acupuncturist told me today that I should be asleep by midnight and I'm already three minutes late, so this will be short. I went to Second City tonight with out-of-town friends and through the performance I was combing my hair with...
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Hair is a Woman's Crowning Glory

I read a short story several months ago that I thought was dumb but I still remember it. It was about a Jewish woman with alopecia (hair loss) who became Orthodox partly so that she could wear a wig and not feel self-conscious. But she felt restive within...
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Monday, April 9, 2007

The Government Knows Much

Last month I received a fat business-sized envelope from the state of Illinois. The address was 100 W. Randolph and for a second I thought that it was from the Illinois Arts Council, containing a complaint about my writing the year I had an arts council...
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Saturday, April 7, 2007

The Neighborhood Internist & An Embarrassment of Gynes

I went to my internist yesterday because L kept telling me I need antibiotics.* The chemo nurse thought I might, too, since I've had this cough and sore/dry throat for two weeks. She said I could still do chemo April 16 if I was on them. I don't know...
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Thursday, April 5, 2007

The Neighborhood Acupuncturist

I tried out a new acupuncturist yesterday, recommended by my friend G, who pens the greatly amusing but scarily accurate Whirled News Tonight. G sees this acupuncturist's mother in Chinatown.The place is about a 10-minute walk away, in a half-basement...
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Wednesday, April 4, 2007

The Forgetting of Elvin Hayes & Education in Nicaragua, 1989

This is a two-parter. First is about Passover. If you want to skip it, you can go right to Education in Nicaragua.The Forgetting of Elvin HayesI went to a family seder last night in Highland Park--not my family's. It was presented to me as a full-bodied...
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Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Passover--First Day--Hasids

The first day of Passover comes after the first night.Part of the reason we celebrate/observe (Lenny Bruce said Jews observe; goyim celebrate) Passover or any other holiday, aside from nostalgia, is the longing for the belief of our ancestors. They were...
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Monday, April 2, 2007

The Fifth Question

The Four Questions are asked on Passover, beginning with, Why is this night different from all other nights? which is also the punchline of a joke about Sir Lancelot.The fifth question is how and why we celebrate the holiday if we do not believe in the...
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Go, Cancer Bitch, Go

This is from my friend L (not husband L), who was inspired by Go, Dog, Go!, which she recently purchased as a gift. (With apologies to P.D. Eastman)"Go, Cancer Bitch, Go!"Here's Cancer Bitch.Bark, Bitch, Bark.Go, Cancer Bitch, Go!Cancer Bitch gives a...
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Sunday, April 1, 2007

My Most Useful Teaching Moment

Inflation made the value of the currency change at least every week. Every week a bus token cost more. I have still one piece of Nicaraguan paper money with three zeroes added on, printed officially by the national bank. The electric grid was unstable....
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El Repliegue

Today I felt better as soon as I woke up, though I'd only slept about nine hours, and the night before I must have slept 13. And I can't define or delineate what is better. I still had and have the jittery, run-down-feeling headache. But it didn't bother...
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Two Miles

I walked two miles to the Bourgeois Pig Cafe, the coffe house where we were married. I didn't feel better or worse when I got there. I got a small decaf latte and read A Contract With God, the first graphic novel, which my student T had sent me. It is...
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