Update 1-20-04


Hi,

A couple of notes, some medical news, an observation, and a joke.

First, from Henry Gabbay: I enjoy reading the weekly updates and, since the reunion, have been in contact with Marc Jonas. Last weekend, Susan and I met Marc and Claudia in Manhattan for brunch and Movin' Out...a little nostalgia. We were going to have dinner together, and Marc and Claudia were planning to stay at our home Saturday evening, but everyone was fighting the flu, so our evening plans were postponed. I look forward to the next weekly update and Happy New Year to everyone.

Next, from Barbara Blitfield Pech: please "forgive" my recent lack of "participation." I've been...busy...but never too busy to keep in touch. Just a quick note for now though. Hope it's not too late to extend my best wishes to all for a happy and healthy new year. I am somewhat bemused at the importance of needing to include the "healthy" portion of any greeting. Speaking of Marc Fishman's date notation: yikes, has it all come down to this? By the way, I just got a nice note from Irene Augustin, who has announced the August arrival of her grandmother title. And speaking of arrivals: just in time for the thaw, Jerry Bittman has been CONVINCED to get out of the cold and will be a welcome guest at the newly renovated Pech Palace. Still have a few rooms left poolside for anyone else who wishes to visit...escape...hide out....chill (no pun intended). I am also looking forward to my next Long Island visit to Robin's "Hamish Hacienda" (warm house, loosely translated). She mentioned that she had run into June Croton, and they are "lunching" as soon as they can clear schedules. Also, and very briefly, if I may just "use" the reunion page for some of my overdue correspondence: Nancy Garfield, thank you for the "validation." Wish I had "known" how not alone I was, academically. And yet we all excelled in our own unique ways, in spite of our "guidance handicap." Terry Donohue Calamari, welcome to Florida. I'm a short hour east of you. Let's "do lunch," FOR SURE. I will eventually get in touch...or beat me to it. Either way, it's all good! (Thanks, Rich...I owe you a 37 cent stamp!)

The medical news, from Zelda White Nichols: This is so amazing, I had to send it to everyone. My dad had countless skin cancer growths removed from his head, face, neck and hands over a period of 10-15 years. It seemed like he was going to the doctor every other month to be checked. Like many others of his generation, he spent summers in the sun getting a "good healthy tan." If you weren't tan in the summer, it meant you weren't well. He loved to fish (as do I) and back then there was no such thing as sun block. Because of all he went through, and knowing what is involved with treatments, I had to share this. If any of you know of anyone with skin cancer or have it yourselves, there is hope.

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Researchers at an Australian university believe they have developed a breakthrough showing skin cancer can be stopped by the common cold virus.
Skin cancer, or melanoma, is the fifth most common form of cancer, and Australia has the highest rate of melanoma in the world, with one out of every two people likely to develop some form of the disease. A team led by Professor Darren Shafren at the University of Newcastle has established that malignant melanoma cells can be destroyed by infecting them with coxsackievirus, the common cold virus. Their work is to appear in the January 2004 edition of Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
     "We believe this is a significant breakthrough in the development of the treatment of melanoma," Dr. Shafren said in a statement released by the university Wednesday. He said the results achieved so far using human cells and in animal studies had been "very exciting." "If we can replicate that success in human trials, the treatment of this often fatal disease could be available within the next few years," he said. Dr. Shafren said the team believed the treatment could even be effective for people with advanced melanomas.
     According to the university researchers, the projected process begins by injecting the common cold virus into a melanoma. The virus replicates itself and then, according to the projection, begins killing off the melanoma. Within weeks, there is a reduction in the size of the melanoma, and it eventually disappears. When the secondary action begins, the team expects the virus to circulate through the body, finding and killing off melanomas. The effect is that the virus will seek and destroy melanomas that may be undetectable.
     Dr. Shafren noted that the coxsackievirus was not a manufactured drug or a genetically altered virus. Instead, it was a virus that occurred in the community. "Viruses are seen as unhealthy organisms, but we have identified a potential way they can be used by the body to fight and destroy disease," he said.

The observation, condensed from Dan Barry's column in The New York Times: Beginning around midnight on January 16th, and lasting for a few fleeting hours, the official temperature of Manhattan dropped to 1 degree. By four in the morning, the temperature had doubled — to 2 — but that brief 1-degree period granted curious distinction to the day: it tied the record for the coldest January 16th in city history, a mark established in 1893
     In one sense, this seems the slimmest of connections between days separated by 111 years. In another, there was odd comfort knowing that this very cold was felt on this day in this city at a time when a Tammany Hall lackey named Gilroy was mayor, and the economic calamity known as the Panic of 1893 was but months away.
     By 12:30, ice-sharp winds from the Northwest were dodging the edifices of Midtown to send streetlights swaying. It was as good a hint as any to stay indoors, and yet a deliveryman on a bicycle was wobbling down Lexington Avenue, balancing on his handlebars a box containing someone else's pizza. The gothic building that once housed the Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital loomed over the intersection of First Avenue and 30th Street; though ancient in appearance, it had yet to be built in 1893. On First Avenue near 56th Street, a steam pipe jutted from the middle of the mostly deserted street. White plumes poured out, as though the only heat to be found.
     It was not a night to strike up casual conversation. A worker at the Department of Sanitation gave little more than a grunt as he shoveled rock salt onto a glazed sidewalk. A deliveryman for Poland Spring quickly shared that some of the water in his truck hold was frozen solid. "It's coming -- I see it coming," a man standing rock-still in a bus shelter near Marcus Garvey Park said of his bus. Exchanges like these were few though, because it takes two to talk.
      Along a deserted stretch of Riverside Drive, the wind whistled across the Hudson River to rattle chains that hung from a billboard and to cause an unsettling banging at ghostly Grant's Tomb. The tomb was under construction in 1893. "It's 1 degree and clear in Midtown," a radio news broadcaster said, delivering an assessment that was truer than he realized. At 2:30, the zipper news that moves across the buildings of Times Square played to an audience of none, though in the meatpacking district, a single, underdressed woman stood hugging herself on a corner. At 3 AM, with the wind-chill factor making it feel like minus 20, above New York Harbor hung a crescent moon. It was time for anyone still out there to come in from the cold.

Finally, considering the cold, a helpful New England Temperature Conversion Chart
60̊ F: Southern Californians shiver uncontrollably. People in New England sunbathe.
45̊ F: New Yorkers try to turn on the heat. People in New England plant gardens.
32̊ F: Distilled water freezes. Italian and English cars won't start. People in New England drive with the tops down.
15̊ F: New York landlords finally turn up the heat. People in New England have their last cookout.
0̊ F: Everyone in Miami dies. Girl Scouts in New England sell cookies door-to-door.
30̊ below zero: Californians flee to the equator. People in New England throw on flannel shirts.
100̊ below zero: Texas shatters. New Englanders close the windows.
250̊ below zero: Washington, DC runs out of hot air. People in New England wear caps.
460̊ below zero (absolute zero on the Kelvin scale): All atomic motion stops. People in New England let the dogs sleep indoors.
500̊ below zero: Hell freezes over. The Red Sox win the World Series.

The home page: http://hometown.aol.com/falcons1965a

Rich