quote:

Originally posted by Nan W:
Daniel, thanks for waiting so long for an answer. Monday was Mr. Nan's device test and surgical procedure, then after that I was just exhausted.

It went well, as far as it went. The device tested fine, but they were unable to do the procedure to fix the non-life-threatening arrhythmia because they couldn't induce it and get it to last long enough to map it. Without knowing which of 3 or 4 parts of the heart it was coming from, they couldn't do the fix.

Mr. Nan is bearing this more stoically than I thought he would. It means that they haven't eliminated that arrhythmia as a cause of his device going off unnecessarily. But it hasn't done that since last October, and he's been exercising quite a lot. If it turns out to be a recurring and frequent problem, they will try the procedure again.

For me, I realized I was looking at this procedure as something that marked the end of the whole episode. Once we got past that, things would get back to "the new normal". And they have. It feels wonderful, like being out of the jungle, or over a mountain or through a tunnel. Or maybe back through the looking glass.

Speaking of which, see next reply!

nan, if you haven't read my book you might not know about some very experimental heart research that is using music to correct arrhythmias. i first learned about it from a new york times article about the researcher, who is also a well-known jazz drummer and alternative medicine practitioner.

google "milford graves" to learn more about this. maybe it would be a good excuse for you to get back to nyc for a while.

he's in one of the late chapters of my book. i'm not sure what to make of his experiments, but both harvard and the guggenheim foundation have been involved in supporting him.

quote:

In the present, I’m like Alice in my avatar – I’ve come all the way across the chessboard and finally become a queen. I’ve done all the schooling, found a husband, bought a house, had a kid, have a work life -- and now sales people in stores call me “ma’am”. At this point, I’m not just going forward one square at a time, but can go any direction I want, as far as I want.

i LOVE this! how wonderful!

Piqué -- thanks. I read the book a while ago and hadn't remembered that part.

I did do some googling, but it sounds like what he does is more for people who have more frequent or constant arrhythmias, which are actually irregular rhythms and which create symptoms like palpitations, dizziness, etc.

There's no way to apply the musical therapy or bio-feedback in Mr. Nan's case -- it's not an irregular rhythm, it's very infrequent and asymptomatic, and of course the device zaps him out of it within a very short span of time.

Too bad!

Nan,

What pieces of music have you most enjoyed playing?

On your bucket list of pieces you'd like to play - what is still out there?

Who do you most enjoy hearing play the piano?

What are some of your favorite pieces of music?

How did you meet Mr. Nan??? - you've probably told this story, but I can forget my own name by the end of a long sentance.

Just catching up on this thread. The more I learn about you, Nan, the more I hope to meet you someday. Your essay on camping and your pictures brought me back to my own childhood in a big way.

How did you come to study in Oxford? How did you decide to go? Was it expensive? I can tell it was a great decision.

quote:

Nan,

What pieces of music have you most enjoyed playing?

Am I allowed to say “the ones I can play with the fewest mistakes”?

No. Okay, well, I’m pretty much just an intermediate level player — that’s how far I got in my teens when I had lessons and was taught more to play pieces than to really play the piano. And I haven’t been able to start lessons again yet. So my repertoire is somewhat limited.

Right now, I most enjoy pieces that really bring out the tones in my piano, especially the bass. Chopin’s Prelude 17 (which I’m just learning) -- the second page has a part that’s sort of repeating, but has the left hand down an octave. It’s gorgeous, even when it’s me that’s playing it. I also like to putter around in pieces that are above my current level (the usual Beethoven suspects) but that I may attempt someday, when I can get health problems out of the way and get back to setting up lessons.

On your bucket list of pieces you'd like to play - what is still out there?

Lots!!!!!

The Waldstein. Though my hands will never be big enough for some parts.


Who do you most enjoy hearing play the piano?

I’m odd about that, I think. I don’t listen to music really often. I have to be in the mood, and I like it best when I have something to do with my hands while I’m listening. When I actually have spare time, I’m more likely to sit down and read. When I do listen, it’s often because I’ve heard something on the radio and can’t get it out of my mind, so I end up listening to it over and over again, over the next several days. I don’t know why.

I’ve had the Beethoven sonatas played by Willhelm Kempff for a long time, and when I hear more recent pianists, I don’t usually like them better. And Rudolf Serkin for the Emperor concerto.

What are some of your favorite pieces of music?
Beethoven’s 7th, the 2nd movement.
The emperor concerto
The operas I’ve already talked about
Strauss waltzes
The madrigals we sang in high school choir
The schubert lied we also sang -- and I can’t remember which one it was!
Pretty traditional. I need to hear more recent stuff.

How did you meet Mr. Nan??? - you've probably told this story,…

No, I don’t think I have. My first semester teaching, he was in my History of English class. He was trying to finish the requirements for the major (he'd transferred from the architecture school), couldn't get into the course on humor in writing that he'd wanted, and needed a class on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the early afternoon. So he picked mine. And was pleased that he was the only one in the class who got my Monty Python references. After a while, he started walking back to my office with me after class, and staying to ask a lot of questions. We only got to know each other later on, though.

quote:

We only got to know each other later on, though.

A likely story!!!

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Nan W:




What a perfect picutre! My childhood vacations were always camping too, although always in a "campground." We had two parents, five kids, a grandmother, and sometimes a dog crammed into a very large Sears tent.

So, one of the little girls in the photo must be you???



jf

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Originally posted by lilylady:

quote:

We only got to know each other later on, though.

A likely story!!!

Move right along, folks. Nothing to see here. Pay no attention to the lady with the wicked mind!

Just catching up on this thread. The more I learn about you, Nan, the more I hope to meet you someday.

Rusty, thank you! I would love to meet you, too. Now you just have to tell that boss of yours to stop sending you to silly places like Rome and Prague, because the place you really want to go is … Detroit.

One of these days I’ll get back to the Boston area for a visit. I’d really like to take the Bean there.

How did you come to study in Oxford? How did you decide to go? Was it expensive? I can tell it was a great decision.

Well, you see, once upon a time I had a fairy godmother.

I had never thought about graduate school, until the year after I graduated from Pomona, when I went back there for some lectures. One was about linguistics and lights flashed and bells rang. This was something interesting.

I found out that the Linguistic Society of America has a Summer Institute, each year at a different university, with everything from intro classes to advanced seminars taught by the leading people in those areas. So off I went to USF in Tampa for 8 weeks, to try it out.

Each Institute has a Professorship for a noted historical linguist. That year, it was a woman who was the Professor of Comparative Philology at Oxford. A very intimidating position, but she herself was very approachable – very interested in students (and Italian rather than English, though you wouldn’t have known it just from talking with her). I was taking 2 intro classes, but sat in on a couple of others, including her Historical Ling. course.

I had this very weird combination of wanting to get as much exposure to the subject and the people as possible, but also being extremely, almost pathologically shy. The former helped me overcome the latter enough to at least sit at her table at lunch, though not enough to actually say much! There was always a group of students with her, to talk about historical linguistics and listen to her stories. I did explain why I had come to the institute, though.

I still remember walking up to her table one day, feeling extremely awkward and skinny, trying to balance my lunch tray, and feeling mortified that I was so much shyer than anyone else there. I sat down and a couple of minutes later she turned to me and said “Nan, in your search for a place to do graduate work, have you thought about coming to us?”

I still think it one of my top life accomplishments that at that moment I (a) did not fall off my chair and (b) did not say anything stupid like “no, nope, not in a million years”. I must have said something, though, maybe “urmphyfurmpf” or something else that she could interpret as “that sounds like a great idea, please tell me more”.

I found out later that she had heard about me from some of the other faculty whose classes I was in – I guess I was pretty intensely interested in everything. And I was interested in the same kind of overlap between linguistics and philology that she was. I still had to go through the admissions process – she didn’t have that much of a magic wand. And find the money. But she helped me through the process.

It was actually some of my graduate student friends there who dubbed her my “fairy godmother,” because of her help in getting me there and the many things she continued to do for me. Like letting me housesit for her, to save money. Or finding ways for me to experience Oxford traditions. Once she gave me her ticket to Encaenia, the honorary degree ceremony which students don’t automatically get to attend. A long, very medieval-looking procession of faculty members, into the Sheldonian Theatre. Then an address about each honoree’s accomplishments by the University Orator. In Latin. (Okay, there was a translation in the program.) That year, they gave honorary doctorates in Music to Herbert von Karajan and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

So, um, to get back to your questions!

It was expensive in the sense that I didn’t have enough savings from 2 years of working in a bookstore after college (I got a loan from my parents, eventually). But at that time the foreign student fees were very low, and it cost less per year than Pomona had.

There really wasn’t a decision about it. It was just an opportunity I couldn’t not take. The most intensely intriguing and satisfying years of my life, and a chance to go from always feeling out of place, to feeling in place.

Nowadays? A couple of months ago, Mr. Nan went outside to get the mail. He came back in and in answer to my inquiring glance, tossed me some Oxford alumni thing and said “You got an owl from Hogwarts.”

quote:

So, one of the little girls in the photo must be you???

I'm the one on the left, with lighter hair. On the right, my younger sister.

I'm intrigued that so many of us have camping in our backgrounds. I wonder if there are as many families who go on camping vacations nowadays as there were, say, three or four decades ago.

quote:

Originally posted by Nan W:
A couple of months ago, Mr. Nan went outside to get the mail. He came back in and in answer to my inquiring glance, tossed me some Oxford alumni thing and said “You got an owl from Hogwarts.”

Sounds like you picked a keeper, Nan!

I can only echo everyone else's sentiments--it's been really great getting to know you in these posts.

quote:

Originally posted by Nan W:
I graduated from Pomona,

I had forgotten about this! I suppose you are way too young to remember the golden years for inter-collegiate sports at the Claremont Colleges, when a slender, but ruggedly handsome Stag shooting forward used to demolish the Sagehens from the perimeter?