Archives for July 2019

Thomas Mann talks about antisemitism on the BBC in 1942. This is one of the few surviving recordings of Mann speaking in English:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

Alexander Pope, “Epilogue to the Satires”

Rip Torn and Tuesday Weld co-star in “A Case Study of Two Savages,” an episode of Naked City written by Frank Pierson, directed by William A. Graham, and originally telecast by ABC on February 7, 1962:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “Ideals and Doubts”

After a seemingly endless series of skirmishes with Murphy’s Law, Mrs. T was finally bundled into an ambulance on Tuesday night and shipped from the University of Connecticut Health Center to New York-Presbyterian, the upper Manhattan hospital where she will ultimately receive a double lung transplant.

I beat her to New York by about twenty minutes, unloaded the one-way rental car (thank you, Hertz) that I used to drive from point A to point B, and fell gratefully into bed. It is, I suppose, possible to be more tired than I was, but I don’t see how, though several more hours went by before I finally grew sleepy enough to shut down my MacBook and put out the light, muttering a grumpy string of variations on “Tomorrow is another day!” as I did so.

So…now what? Quite a few of my readers seem to have picked up the mistaken notion that Mrs. T was rushed back to New York after getting the Big Call, and that she’ll be going under the knife any minute now. Would that it were so! She is, to be sure, “ripe” for transplant, as her doctors put it, but to date Mrs. T has yet to receive an organ offer. Instead, she was sent back to New York as a precaution—albeit an urgent one.

When you’re in the end stage of pulmonary hypertension, the rare and deadly disease that has laid Mrs. T low, the right ventricle of your heart can start to “decompensate” at any time without much advance warning. Once that happens, you need to be transplanted on the double. If you’re not near a transplant center when it happens—and UConn, the center for her pulmonary-hypertension care, doesn’t do lung transplants—then you’re out of luck.

It hasn’t happened to Mrs. T—yet—but the oxygen-related crises that have beset her with increasing frequency in recent weeks suggest that her right ventricle is starting at long last to wear out. For this reason, her doctors in New York and Connecticut agreed yesterday that it was essential to get Mrs. T to New York-Presbyterian, her transplant center, as soon as possible, there to await surgery.

What happens next depends on when—and if—a pair of suitable lungs becomes available. As I’ve previously written in this space:

Would that there were enough donor lungs to go around! But there aren’t, which is the reason for the organ allocation list, which divvys up donor organs in the United States according to a complex formula that weighs the comparative needs of their potential recipients. For the past month or so, Mrs. T’s allocation “score” has been hovering above 50 (out of 100). This means she’s sick enough to start receiving organ offers as soon as a suitable pair of lungs becomes available—so long as it isn’t equally suitable to someone who outscores her.

Our hope is that the events of the past week will increase her score significantly. We’ll learn more about that in the next couple of days. In the meantime…we wait.

For now, Mrs. T will be waiting for the Big Call in New York-Presbyterian’s ICU. Should her condition stabilize sufficiently to send her back home to our New York apartment, which is thirteen blocks north of the hospital, she’ll wait there. Either way, she isn’t going anywhere else. Mrs. T is now extremely frail and needs an abundance of loving care, which I’m doing all I can to supply. No matter what happens, though, we won’t be returning to Connecticut any time soon. Barring some wholly unforeseen development, we’re here for the duration—and time appears to be running out, slowly but surely.

No visitors just yet, please: we’ll let you know when Mrs. T feels like company again. Your best wishes are enough for the moment. Believe me, they matter—a lot. And as usual, allow me to repeat my familiar plea: if you haven’t signed up to be an organ donor, please do so now, and encourage your friends to do likewise. That could matter even more.

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“The others wait…and wait…and wait…and wait.” The opening scene of Casablanca:

Ethel Bartlett, Alexander Brailowsky, Gaby Casadesus, Sidney Foster, Rudolph Ganz, Eugene List, Moura Lympany, Guiomar Novaes, Rae Robertson and Beveridge Webster perform Chopin’s A Major Polonaise in unison. This performance, conducted by Rudolf Ganz, was telecast live from Carnegie Hall by CBS on October 18, 1953 as part of The Ed Sullivan Show in celebration of the centenary of the founding of Steinway & Sons:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“‘Well, what did the school give you?’ said Maria.

“‘It taught me to trust no one and to expect nothing,’ said her stepson, in his deep, smooth, rapid tones. ‘To keep everything from everyone, especially from my nearest friends. That familiarity breeds contempt, and ought to breed it. It is through familiarity that we get to know each other.’”

Ivy Compton-Burnett, Two Worlds and Their Ways

The thirty-fifth episode of Three on the Aisle, the (usually) twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading.

Here’s an excerpt from American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings: 

First, the critics discuss the idea of “guilty pleasure” musicals, and Elisabeth refines her personal definition of “not good but kind of great” productions. Then, they turn to the mailbag, answering your questions about how best to review a revival, the state of America’s “indie musical scene,” and how critics should approach everything from tech failures to standing ovations.

Finally, they reflect on the best shows they’ve seen lately, including Jane Chambers’ Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop, and Shakespeare & Company’s production of The Waverly Gallery….

To listen to or download this episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you’ve missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.