Update 8-23-11

Hi,

A catch-up of some notes about last week's newsletter and the week's before.

First, another note about Stuyvesant Town, from Helen David:  Peggy Cooper Schwartz lived at 2 Stuyvesant Oval, and our building, 4 Stuyvesant Oval, was attached to number 2.  We'd run into Peggy's parents, Owen and Lenore, while wheeling the baby carriages.
    My husband and Owen had been in the same class in high school and at Brooklyn College.  The apartment houses on the Oval were particularly desirable because they were the farthest away from the major streets and avenues.
    And congratulations to "little" Peggy on her new grandchild!

[Rich -- I also asked Helen if she happened to remember which elementary school was in the Stuvesant Town area, trying to figure out which school Robin Feit Baker and I had gone to.]

From Helen:  I'm not sure.  There seem to have been two, P.S. 6 and P.S. 10.  My children were educated in Hewlett-Woodmere.

[Rich -- I checked the New York City school system, and neither of these schools seem to exist anymore.  But I remember going past the Oval on my way to school, so I must have been heading out of Stuyvesant Town toward 1st Avenue.  Again, that was quite a walk, from Avenue C, along the East River, alone, for a 6-year-old.]

Leaving New York, from Zelda White Nichols in North Carolina to Ellen Epstein Silver in Texas:  I just want to give Ellen a huge "thank you" for her e-mail a few months ago regarding cataract surgery.  I did call her, as I knew I would have to have the surgery done, and she was very informative.  She really smoothed the way as I didn’t know what to expect.
    I’m writing now because I had my right eye done 5 weeks ago and my left eye done 3 weeks ago.  My final follow-up appointment with my doctor was today, and all I can say is WOW!  Those who remember me might remember that I always wore glasses.  I have since I was 8-years-old.  So, to all of a sudden see without any regular glasses really is miraculous.  In fact, I was able to see the afternoon of each operation, and now I only need glasses for reading.
    The procedure took 15 minutes in outpatient, and there was no pain or discomfit during or after each procedure.  I can’t stop thinking of when my dad had it done years and years ago.  He was in the hospital for almost a week and had to wear dark glasses with tiny pin holes to see through for a long time after that.  My only restriction was I had to wear glasses that fit over my regular glasses for a week after each eye was done, but only when I was outside.  I also had a special plastic patch over my eye for one week when I went to bed at night.  And, yes, there are eyedrops, but they're minor.
    For anyone needing cataract surgery in the future, run -- don’t walk -- to get it taken care of.  Thanks again, Ellen.  Growing older isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Zelda sent another note, this one about New York.  My folks didn't move to Long Island from Stuyvesant Town, but we did move from Brooklyn when I was in the 3rd grade.
    I went to P.S. 222 in Brooklyn and had just learned to print, so I was totally out of my league because 3rd graders at William S. Buck were writing longhand.  I had 6 weeks to learn how to do that before the end of the school year, or I wouldn't pass.  I wonder how many other people came from other boroughs of New York to live the better life in Valley Stream and Lynbrook?

Meanwhile, Ellen Epstein Silver also wrote:   I hope that article about my son-in-law, Jeff Rogers, didn't sound like I was bragging.  I was just sending it to you since you know Jeff and my daughter, Jessica.  It's certainly OK that you shared the article with the class.

[Rich -- I wrote Ellen:  It was a nice article to share and certainly deserving of that.  And how are your knees?  Better than Robert Fiveson's foot, I hope, and Linda Cohen Greenseid's back.]

Ellen answered:  My knees are good.  I went for an x-ray on Monday, and I'm almost fully healed without surgery.  So I'm back to the gym and getting ready for other daughter Wendy's wedding in September.   
    Getting old does make it seem longer to heal, and things tend to "break" or buckle more often.  You also forgot to mention Valerie Nelson Gillen's spill on her driveway.  That injury needed stitches to repair.  Though she might have posted the news about that one on Facebook. 

[Rich -- Yep, Valerie did post that on Facebook.  I saw reference to it later, when her stitches came out, so I guess all is well.]

Robert Fiveson didn't write about his foot, so I'm assuming that's doing well, too.  But he did share this link, saying:  I know we will all want to bookmark this and refer to it often!  The link:  dead . atyourage . com

[Rich -- The site Robert discovered is probably just what you'd imagined:  news about famous people we've outlived by our present ages.  It can be customized by birth date.
    I checked the site, and it's clever.  I suspect it's also factual, but it brings up a piece of misinformation I've had in my memory since 1959.
    I think on the recording "An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer," Lehrer cracks, "When Mozart was my age, he'd been dead for 7 years."  Somehow, even then, I knew Mozart had died at 35.  I don't know how I knew that, but maybe it was Forest Road School's music teacher Jane Beethoven's most lasting contribution to my education, along with the infernal lyrics to "Inchworm."  So when I heard Lehrer crack that in 1959, I figured he was 42, and I'm always amazed to find he's still alive, considering he's into his mid-90s.  But I just checked that, and he was born in 1928, making him merely 83.  So on top of misrepresenting his personal experience poisoning pigeons, he was lying about his age.
    "...We'll murder them all, with both laughter and meriment,
    Except for the few we take home to exper - i - ment..."]


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Rich