Roger O Green

The Lydster, Part 104: The Medical Episodes

“Osgood-Schlatter disease typically occurs in boys ages 13 to 14 and girls ages 11 to 12. The condition usually resolves on its own, once the child’s bones stop growing.” The Daughter’s eight and a half, ahead of the curve.

Thrice in the past month or so, the Daughter has awakened in pain.

The first time, she had been experiencing right knee pain for a week, building into something she could not bear any longer. Her mother took her to the doctor that afternoon. She has Osgood-Schlatter disease, which is less a disease than a syndrome.

It “can cause a painful lump below the kneecap in children and adolescents experiencing growth spurts during puberty. Osgood-Schlatter disease occurs most often in children who participate in sports that involve running, jumping and swift changes of direction — such as soccer, basketball, figure skating, and ballet.” My daughter was participating in soccer and ballet.

“Age ranges differ by sex because girls experience puberty earlier than do boys. Osgood-Schlatter disease typically occurs in boys ages 13 to 14 and girls ages 11 to 12. The condition usually resolves on its own, once the child’s bones stop growing.” The Daughter’s eight and a half, ahead of the curve.

The second time, on a Thursday morning, she complained that she was having trouble breathing. Her mother had already gone to work, but Lydia hadn’t gone to school yet. She was having an asthma attack, or “incident”, as the ER doctor at St. Peter’s Hospital said. They gave her oxygen, and a couple of medicines, including a steroid which was she was supposed to keep taking for five days, but resisted because of its taste.

The following Sunday morning, she complained of chest pains. Back to the ER, this time the three of us. After eliminating some sort of heart problem, it appears she pulled a muscle in her chest, probably a function of asthma. A heating pad and pain killers were the treatments. (This is why, church people, I missed choir that morning, but made it to the end of the service.)

I’ll be happy if we can avoid physicians for a while…

MOVIE REVIEW: Lincoln

Will Lincoln become the definitive Lincoln biopic?

On Black Friday, my wife and I went to the Spectrum Theatre in Albany to see the 1:50 showing of the new Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln. It was sold out! That hasn’t happened to me since the original Star Wars. We bought tickets for the 3:15 show and were advised to be back by 2:45.

We bought some hot chocolate, then went to a charming little toy store/food emporium. By the time we got back to the theater, there was this long line. I assumed it was to buy tickets; no, the 3:15 was SOLD OUT, and the line was for the ticket holders, which included us, fortunately. Also, the 6:25 showing that night also sold out, we noted as we left.

I was glad to have seen a recent interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals, the Lincoln book upon which the movie was based. I wasn’t as surprised by the relatively high-pitched voice that Lincoln (the extraordinary Daniel Day-Lewis) had. All that he had lived through, the secession, the war, and the death of a son all wore on him so that General Grant said that he had aged ten years in the past 12 months. Yet, despite all that, he could be very funny!

I wonder if the 10% of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes who DIDN’T like the movie thought it was boring, etc. I think they may have had different expectations. It is, above all, a political movie, based in the first four months of 1865. Lincoln has been re-elected President. A number of Democrats in the House of Representatives have been defeated, but are in a lame-duck session. Can Lincoln get the 13th Amendment, to abolish slavery, through the House? And how will that affect the chances for peace in that great civil war?

For the most part, it didn’t feel like a Spielberg movie. I can’t explain that exactly, except to note that the second scene in the movie, involving people quoting Lincoln, to Lincoln, did have a Spielberg “feel”.

Great appearance by Sally Field as a haunted Mary Todd Lincoln, a role she noted recently that she had to fight for; Lincoln was older than Mary, who he called Molly, but Day-Lewis is a bit younger than Field. Also, there were stellar roles by David Strathairn as William Seward, Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens, and others. I must admit that the character James Spader played didn’t seem all that different from his role on Boston Legal.

Will this film become the definitive Lincoln biopic? It may very well do so. People cried, and applauded at the end of the film. I liked it a lot.

Wicked, the book versus Wicked, the musical

What I’ve discovered in my circle is that people who read the book first, prefer the book.

Reprinted from my Times Union blog.

My wife and I went to see the musical Wicked at the Thursday afternoon matinee on November 8, right after it opened, at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. We had not seen it before in any iteration, not at Proctors a couple of years before or on Broadway. I wasn’t particularly familiar with the musical, aside from Defying Gravity.

All in all, it was WONDERFUL. The performers were great, and the element that really impressed me was lighting. Michael Eck’s review is about right, though I obviously can’t speak to how much it may become dated.

My wife met me at the theater. She was driving from work with little time to spare, so I took the bus – the 905, for you locals – to Schenectady. I had left the book I had been reading, an autobiography of Walter Cronkite, at work, and I needed a distraction. I grabbed my copy of Wicked, the book written by Gregory Maguire. In fact, it was a copy signed by the author, to me, which I purchased from him at a Friends of the Albany Public Library event in April 2006.

I got about an eighth of the way through the book, and then I saw the musical, then I finished the book. Probably not recommended. These are very different animals. Wicked the book is grimmer, grimier, more sexually explicit, more about political intrigue and musings about religion.

I’m not talking about minor differences of interpretation. The musical’s book by Winnie Holzman resembles the book by Maguire in only minor ways. Elphaba, who Jaquandor describes here, is green; she has a distant father, a deceased mother, a sister Nessarose with cool shoes, and a secret romance. Almost everything else you THINK you know from one source will be negated by the other source. Characters are merged, characters who die in the book are pivotal in the music, relations are changed, and a whole lot of characters in the book never make it to the stage at all. Religion and politics, and what’s going on with the Animals, are central to the book, more peripheral to the musical.

For a spoiler-free analysis, go HERE. If you want analysis with specified spoiler alerts, look HERE. And if you like spoilers galore, go HERE.

What I’ve discovered in my circle is that people who read the book first, prefer the book. People who saw the musical first either really dislike the book, or can’t get through it. In fact, one said, the best thing, or even the only good thing, about the book is that it generated the musical. There’s a level of violence and sex in the Maguire book some found disturbing. For me, the extra characters left me a bit confused, and honestly, a tad bored in the middle – where is this GOING? – though it mostly made sense at the end.

There is a “reader’s group guide” at the back of the book. Question 1 notes that “Wicked derives some of its power from the popularity of the source material. Does meeting up with familiar characters and famous fictional situations require more patience and effort on the part of the reader or less?” I say “yes”, both. In particular, the musical is even more beholden to the classic film than the book.

I’m curious what others who both read the book and saw the musical think about each. In particular, I wonder if the order they experienced the media matters.

Reacting badly to “door busters”

The intrusion of shopping on the previously perfect holiday of Thanksgiving infuriates me.

Apparently, I have an almost irrational loathing for the phrase “door busters.” I’ve heard it before, but this season, it is so pervasive, even though I rarely watch live TV. Just talking about it with someone at work, I’m told I spoke of the word VERY LOUDLY.

It’s the idea that, in order to be a good consumer, one needs to aggressively bash in the store’s entryway. Having to fight the crowd to buy “stuff” that may be on sale seems, well, unseemly.

I have gone to Black Friday sales but once, at the insistence of relatives; not only did I despise being stuck in the crowds, none of the items I ostensibly went to purchase were still available at 8 a.m. There’s not even a guarantee that Black Friday sales are such great deals.

The intrusion of shopping on the previously perfect holiday of Thanksgiving infuriates me. The store opening on Thursday at 8 or 9 p.m. means that some underpaid folks have to push themselves away from family and friends to serve frenetic shoppers. That is unless the workers decide to strike.

On the other hand, I can get behind Small Business Saturday. Seems WAY more civilized.

JFK and Thanksgiving Day

Some people say, “We should be thankful EVERY day,” and that’s true. But, for most of us, we just aren’t.

I went out with this woman in the late 1970s who was old enough to have voted for John Kennedy the first time she had the opportunity to vote for President. I can only imagine how devastated she was, along with the rest of the country, when he was killed. Every Thanksgiving I spent with her when she or someone else said grace, she always added, “And bless the memory of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

That thought ran through my mind when I realized that Thanksgiving and the assassination of JFK coincided this year. November 22 in 1963 was a Friday – I’ll undoubtedly write more about THAT event next year, on the 50th anniversary.

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. Yet I know from personal experience how a holiday can engender sad feelings as well. My Chinese restaurant Thanksgiving, when I was uninvited, out of the blue, by an ex. Or the Christmas Eve in 1990 when our church’s tenor soloist died, and yet we had a service to sing; I’m sure we were not very good.

Still, I think a day set aside for thanks is a good thing. Some people say, “We should be thankful EVERY day,” and that’s true. But, for most of us, we just aren’t.

For those of you celebrating it, may this Thanksgiving be a good one.
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Yes, I think the pardoning of the turkey is a silly tradition. It doesn’t bother me, though, like it does some indignant folks. Silliness in DC beats incivility.