Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

H is for helmet: bicycle, motorcycle

Bicycle helmets cut the risk of severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) by half.

helmetFor the longest time, I’ve been wearing a helmet when I ride my bicycle. Years ago, I used to take a lot of grief for it. “Whadja think you’re doin’, riding a motorcycle?”

That’s because in New York State, only bicyclists under the age of 14 years old are required to wear safety certified bicycle helmets when they are operators or passengers on bicycles. BTW, children aged 1 to 4 must wear certified bicycle helmet and ride in specially designed child safety seats.

Whereas, motorcycle helmets ARE REQUIRED in New York State. “It shall be unlawful for any person to operate or ride upon a motorcycle unless he wears a protective helmet of a type which meets the requirements set forth in section 571.218 of the federal motor vehicle safety standards as may from time to time be amended.”

I’ve read that protective headgear is designed to absorb shock and redistribute impact on contact, thus reducing the risk of traumatic brain injury. Specifically, despite some criticism of bike helmets for not being protective enough, they do cut the risk of severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) by half when riders suffer a head injury, a U.S. study suggests.

I have this friend Donna who had a serious bicycle accident in July 2017. She recently showed me photos some days beyond her event, and she would agree about two things: 1) she looked pretty terrible in the after her event, though she looks quite like herself now; and 2) if she had not been wearing a helmet, at best, she would have had severe brain injury, and more likely, she would have died.

I sought her out because my sister Leslie had experienced a remarkably similar event in June 2018, with each flying over the handlebars. Having seen her helmet, which she bought only three days before the event, there’s little doubt she would have been dead or permanently injured without the “shell”.

Some people don’t like helmets because of vanity, or “freedom”, or wanting to feel the wind in their hair. My experience suggests those are meaningless trade-offs if you’re deceased.

For ABC Wednesday

Full moon, lost keys, Berkshires vacation

What the heck was wrong with the world?

Check snopesThe three of us just got back from a week-long vacation in a timeshare in Hancock, just across the state border in western Massachusetts. I never write about these things beforehand or during the trip. “hi, we’re away until Friday. Please rob our house.”

Did you miss me? Of course not; that’s the beauty of posting ahead of time. But I missed me, and my quiet reflective time. It was difficult to keep up with current events, or visit other blogs, or write this one. I did have Internet connection on the laptop, but my cellphone was useless. There were a couple TVs in the room, but I never saw the news but once.

The irony, naturally, is that I have plenty to blog about, not just what I did, but what’s going on, such as Robin Leach dying. I think some other folks passed away recently as well.

A long-planned meeting of my parents-in-law, my two remaining brothers-in-law and my wife, sans the spouses, took place. This meant the “outlaws”, which is how my BIL’s wives and I have long dubbed ourselves, got to compare notes on family characteristics. It was surprisingly fun.

When the three of out we went out in Albany on Saturday, we wondered what the heck was wrong with the world. Two bicycles almost ran into our car, and separately, another bicyclist nearly cut in front of us.

OK, they’re bike people. But then two different people parked their cars and started crossing the street in the middle of the block in front of us. They didn’t even look, yet they had no distracting electronic devices.

This continued with more pedestrians and cars Being Stupid all weekend. Yes, it was a full moon. I’m not one to attribute the level of earth’s satellite to wacky human behavior, but SOMETHING had to be happening.

I lost all my keys a couple weeks ago. No clue where, but naturally, it’s been a royal PITA. We went to Home Depot Sunday to get new keys, copied from my wife’s set. Front door and back door keys – no problem. Mailbox key – ditto. The shed key, where I keep my bike – no can do. Feh.

Champagne kisses and caviar dreams to all of you.

EpiPen extended use dates provided by Pfizer

I’ve always sensed that the expiration date was too short

EpiPenMy daughter has been had in her possession (or her mother’s, or mine) an Epipen for nearly a decade.

For those who aren’t familiar, an “EpiPen is an injection that contains epinephrine, a chemical that narrows blood vessels and opens airways in the lungs. The allergic reactions (anaphylaxis) treated with the use of EpiPen include those from insect stings or bites, food, drugs, and other allergens.”

We discovered my daughter’s allergy to peanuts when she was two and a half, and ate a cookie. She also responds poorly to several tree nuts, which we found out a couple years after that. We, of course, are very vigilant about checking food labels. To date, we’ve never actually USED the device, though we have practiced with the dummy version of the Epipen: Blue to the sky. Orange to the thigh.

But, like most health aids, the Epipen has an expiration date, so this requires getting a new device a couple times a year. The schools loathe having outdated medicines on hand.

As it turns out, for a varirty of reasons, there has been a shortage of Epipens in 2018. To address this, “FDA is alerting health care professionals and patients of updated dates through which some EpiPens and the authorized generic version, manufactured by Meridian Medical Technologies, a Pfizer company, may be used beyond the manufacturer’s labeled expiration date.”

If you click on this link, you can look for the alphanumeric batch designation, the manufacturer’s original expiration date, and the new expiration date (beyond manufacturer’s original expiry date).

The thing is, I’ve always sensed that the expiration date was too short, which has made the process of keeping “current” devices at school/camp/et al to be costly and inconvenient.

In a related announcement, the FDA approved the first generic version of the EpiPen this month.

Leonard Bernstein would have been 100

Leonard Bernstein described how composers are able to create an astonishing variety of musical works from just thirteen notes of the Western tuning system

Leonard BernsteinThis is true: I have a stuffed lion named Lenny, named after Leonard Bernstein. He has a wild and magnificent mane, just like the composer/educator often had when he was conducting a symphony.

If he only did those Young People’s Concerts on CBS-TV during my growing-up period (1958-1972) , that would have been enough to make him an important figure in my life.

But, of course, he also composed the music to West Side Story, a movie I saw when I was about 10, and which I’ve seen in various iterations of plays and ballets at least a half dozen times. The Quintet version of Tonight was revelatory.

Leonard Bernstein had such a vast and varied career, I can hardly do it justice.

Here’s a bunch of links:

Leonard Bernstein: Young People’s Concerts | What Does Music Mean (Part 1 of 4) (1958)

Bernstein and Glenn Gould: Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D minor (BWV 1052) (1960)

West Side Story -Tonight Quintet and Chorus (1961)

Bernstein explains beautifully and eloquently exactly what a conductor does

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major, “The Titan” with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra , conducted by Leonard Bernstein

His Overture to Candide, conducted by Bernstein himself

Leonard Bernstein, conductor AND pianist, George Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue – New York Philharmonic, the Royal Albert Hall (1976)

Leonard Bernstein – Kennedy Center Honors, 1980

Jaquandor writing about John Williams: “There’s a wonderful essay by Leonard Bernstein called ‘The Infinite Variety of Music,’ which appears in the book of the same title. The essay is actually the script of one of the wonderful episodes he used to do for the educational teevee program Omnibus.

“In this particular episode, Bernstein described how composers are able to create an astonishing variety of musical works from just thirteen notes of the Western tuning system, by reducing things even further and showing how a number of great composers wrote amazing pieces, many of which are very familiar, by using as their main motif the exact same four-note melody.”

Bernstein at 100

Religion & Spirituality In The Music Of Leonard Bernstein

10 Must-See Artifacts in This Powerful Centennial Exhibition

Amy Biancolli interview with Jamie Bernstein, Lenny’s daughter

Movie review: Eighth Grade

an odd mixture of nostalgia and horror

eighth gradeThere was an easy way my wife and I knew the movie Eighth Grade was definitely on the right track; we brought our recent eighth grader with us to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany. She sat between her mother and me at the cinema, and alternated burying her face in into the arm of one parent or another in mortified recognition.

The film is an honest and poignant comedy about Kayla (newcomer Elsie Fisher) as she’s continually trying to figure out adolescence during the last week of middle school. Her father Mark (Josh Hamilton) tries to negotiate the terrain between showing that he cares and trying to give his daughter space, but just ends up leaving her exasperated. (Sometimes I know the feeling.)

I suppose what I like about the film is what it’s not. It largely avoids being a knock-off of Mean Girls or Clueless. Social media plays a large part in this endeavor – Kayla records a bunch of self-help videos – but she doesn’t become a YouTube star. It’s not an emo bummer.

Writer/director Bo Burnham, who says that he’s never been a 13-year old girl, talked on The Daily Show about how his stand-up comedy was really appealing to that middle school demographic.

Maybe it’s that there’s something universal about being person unprepared for the challenges of being on the cusp of adulthood, a period many look back upon with an odd mixture of nostalgia and horror.

The film is rated R for “language and some sexual material”, none of which was ribald enough to suggest you keep your teen home. In fact, some of the sex ed stuff is hysterically funny, and true.

Naomi Fry of The New Yorker says the movie has “queasy verisimilitude.” If you’ve ever been thirteen, you should watch Eighth Grade, and drag a teenager with you if you can.

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