We’ll get there …

31 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by michelinewalker in Comedy, Molière, Sharing

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Honoré Daumier, Jean-Pierre, Le Malade imaginaire, Stanislavski

Le Malade imaginaire by Honoré Daumier (Wiki2.org)

My post disappeared once again.

I had expressed regret that my brother died when he could have survived. He would have been 76 yesterday. I have just returned from a memorial service in his honour.

I also shared my view of the strange manner in which certain doctors believe anxiolytics and sleeping pills are the same medication. They may belong to the same family, but one does not take sleeping pills before getting into one’s car.

As well, I mentioned being told that I was responsible for the hemorrhage I suffered. I should have known that aspirins thin the blood.

Moreover, I am seeing abuse of the elderly. If one loses one’s driver’s license, one also loses one’s autonomy and helpers may start controlling your life.

Finally, promoters have found ways of having hastily constructed near or above a grocery store to make life easier for persons who are ageing. These apartments cost a fortune. One can buy or rent. Promoters want to make millions and do, at the expense of the elderly.

Take pity on retirees.

Konstantin Stanislavski as Argan
in the Moscow Art Theatre production in 1913 (Wiki2.org)

We now enter Molière’s Imaginary Invalid. During the fourth performance of the play, Molière collapsed. He fainted. However, he decided to finish the performance. He was then taken home, hemorrhaged and died. He suffered from tuberculosis.

Louis XIV authorized his being buried in consecrated grounds, but he was buried at night.

The Imaginary Invalid resembles the Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Argan wants his daughter to marry a doctor just as Monsieur Jourdain wants his daughter to marry an aristocracy. Both are comédies-ballets. Marc-Antoine Charpentier wrote the music for the Imaginary Invalid and Pierre Beauchamp was its choreographer.

Marc-Antoine Charpentier (Wiki2.org)

Comforting Thoughts…

13 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada, Quebec, Sharing

≈ 20 Comments

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Jean-Pierre, Ozias Leduc, Quebec Doctors, the Spirit

Colour Sketch for the Decoration of the Chapel of the Bishop’s Palace, Sherbrooke: “The Annunciation,” Ozias Leduc, 1922. (Musée des beaux-arts du Canada/National Galery of Canada)

Yesterday, my nephew François took me to see my brother Jean-Pierre. He is hospitalized in the very large building I showed in an earlier post.

When we arrived, a priest was giving him the Last Rites. The priest invited all of us to kiss him and leave him a message. No one knows how long he will live, but he is in a room for the dying.

My brother is very weak. He can barely lift his head from the pillow and he cannot sit in bed without the help of three persons, one for each arm and a person who rearranges his pillow.

We stayed with him the entire afternoon and the little group returned to the hospital in the evening. I stayed home. I don’t want to know how much we paid in parking fees, but if members of his family did not help my brother, he would require the services of at least one professional twenty-four hours a day. A nurse came in to give him morphine and she obviously kept an eye on us, but he wasn’t alone.

Good News

I have good news. Quebec doctors were becoming an aristocracy:

“On Wednesday, an independent report commissioned by Quebec’s Health and Welfare Commissioner found that physician salaries had doubled between 2005-15, while the hours doctors spent with patients declined.”

Why Quebec doctors have rejected a pay rise

By Robin Levinson-King, BBC News, Toronto
8 March 2018

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43336410

However, here is what doctors themselves did in late February 2018.

We, Quebec doctors, are asking that the salary increases granted to physicians be cancelled and that the resources of the system be better distributed for the good of the healthcare workers and to provide health services worthy to the people of Quebec, the letter posted on 26 February states

L’Heure mauve, Ozias Leduc, 1921 (Virtual Museum of Canada)

L’Esprit : une expression de la transcendance

Ozias Leduc L’heure mauve, 1921 huile sur papier, monté sur toile 92,4 x 76,8 cm Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal Don de Madame Samuel Bronfman en l’honneur du soixante-dixième anniversaire de son mari © Succession Ozias Leduc / SODRAC (Montréal) 2003
Love to everyone 💕

A. VIVALDI: «Filiae maestae Jerusalem» RV 638 [II.Sileant Zephyri], Ph.Jaroussky/Ensemble Artaserse

Ozias Leduc, L’Archange saint Michel, fusain [charcoal] sur papier, 1894, 43 x 35 cm, collection Huguette Leblanc et Guy Gagnon

About my Brother.2

30 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in Sharing

≈ 17 Comments

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Illness, Jean-Pierre, My Family

Bouquet of Flowers, by EugÃ¨ne Delacroix

Bouquet of Flowers by Eugène Delacroix (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)

I told you that my brother Jean-Pierre was about to undergo another course of chemotherapy. He will not. Nothing can be done to save his life. It would have to be a miracle.

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Jean-Pierre, lower right

In the background, left to right, we have Thérèse (who may be stroking one of our black cats), my great grandmother Philomène, mémère Pomerleau, in her nineties, and my sister Diane. In the foreground, sitting next to me, is my brother Jean-Pierre, blue-eyed, blond, and wearing glasses. We lived in an old and very large brick house. We did not have hot water. Grand-maman Philomène, my father’s maternal grandmother, would take us into the forest to gather herbs she used to make medications. She was of French descent. We never met my father’s Irish grandmother, but Jean-Pierre was with me when we went to Massachusetts to meet my father’s father and Nanny, the woman whose house and farm he had bought and where he invited her to stay for the rest of her life. My grandmother would not move to the United States. I believe she divorced my grandfather. My father, his brother, and two sisters were brought up by their mother and Philomène, who earned their living as a midwife and pharmacist. She was an assistant to the village doctor. Their house sat between a railway and a river. The train left a supply of wood and coal, that my father would pick up. I never asked where the family got their water. The house is still there, but I don’t think a train runs by, just the river.

I can’t believe that nothing can be done to save my brother. He’s lost about sixty pounds (27.2 kilos) and he is still losing weight. A few months ago, he was prescribed antibiotics. My brother has a beautiful rich voice: bass-baritone.

RELATED ARTICLES

About my Brother (30 August 2018)
My Family (24 April 2016)

Love to everyone 💕

Marie-Nicole Lemieux chante Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix, Camille Saint-Saëns

tombeau_du_chanoine_lucas_amiens_ange_pleureur130608

The Weeping Angel of Amiens

About my Brother

30 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in Sharing

≈ 16 Comments

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Jean-Pierre, Leonardo da Vinci, my brother, Tchaikovsky

Leonardo_da_Vinci_Virgin_of_the_Rocks_(National_Gallery_London)

The Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci, about 1491/2-9 and 1506-8 (The National Gallery, UK)

I’ve tried to work, but unsuccessfully. I therefore apologize.

My brother, Jean-Pierre, was operated on. They removed his bladder and parts of the body located near the bladder. He must now undergo chemotherapy because no one knows if the cancer has been fully removed. The cancer has metastasized.

In the meantime, he has to learn a new way of life. He has a loving wife who will be helping him.

He also has three devoted children, two of whom live nearby. They are very fine human beings.

Persons who have children often love life more those who have not had children. My brother’s bungalow is like grand central station. The children are always dropping in and discuss what problem they may be experiencing with their father.

My brother is non judgemental and he is forgiving. He is also very generous.

No, he is not an intellectual. He is in the clean energy business and has many customers in Africa. He has therefore travelled to Africa several times where he has many friends. But he started out in the Air Force. He was interested in the military.

At that time, he was in a car accident. There were five persons in the car. Four died, but he thought he was fine. He did not realize that a piece of glass had penetrated his forehead. When symptoms appeared, the piece of glass was removed at the Montreal Neurological Institute. He recovered fully, but the accident may have ended his career in the military.

What has united my brother and me more than anything else is the death of several siblings. There is a congenital blood disease in my family. So we lost fourteen brothers and sisters. An Armenian doctor, whose family settled in Sherbrooke, found a cure. My brother and I could not understand why our family was not like other families.

I don’t think I will see my brother until he returns home. We will speak on the phone. He has asked to be left alone. He has to learn how to function without a bladder and needs rest before his second round of chemotherapy. A few months ago, my brother saw a specialist who did not diagnose cancer.

The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, La Dernière Cène (Google)

I’m still working on the French Revolution. There is a problem. On the day of the Tennis Court Oath (20 June 1789), one person, Joseph Martin-Dauch, out of 577, would not take the collective vote. Why?

Mikhail Pletnev plays Tchaikovsky Children’s Album op. 39 – video 1986

Tchaikovsky (bbc.co.uk)

My Family

24 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by michelinewalker in Sharing

≈ 15 Comments

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Diane, Jean-Pierre, Philomène, Thérèse

cover

I seldom feature my family in a post. Today is an exception. I have not been able to concentrate on anything for several days. Hence a photograph of my great-grandmother, “mémère” Philomène, and my three siblings. Philomène made remedies using herbs and had been a midwife. She was a tiny blue-eyed woman. She did not live with us a very long time, but we loved her.

My Family

Thérèse, 3rd child

On my great-grandmother’s right side is my sister Thérèse. Thérèse died of septic shock in 2008. As a child, she had pale brown hair and dark brown eyes. She was a very sick child. An operation saved her life, but she remained extremely fragile. She started school when she was about nine. The classroom was the wrong environment for her. She was therefore educated privately. She was a born mathematician and a very good singer, a soprano. She fell in love at the age of 14 and married four years later. She gave birth to three daughters, but her youngest child died during open-heart surgery. That was so sad.

Diane, 4th child

On “mémère” Philomène’s left is my sister Diane. Diane was the brightest child in our family. She was blond, had and still has pale skin and yellowish eyes with, I believe, a tinge of blue. Diane was trained to be a secretary and was a secretary until she got married. She taught French once her three daughters were old enough.

However, at the age of 12, Diane participated in a theatre competition, at the provincial level, Quebec. She played a role in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and Ralph Bellamy, the adjudicator, awarded her first prize: best actress. The troupe wanted to remove one actress to increase its chances of winning at the national level. That was a mistake. At any rate, removing one actress, my mother, meant removing my sister Diane. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation offered Diane a television role, but we did not live in Montreal. My parents could not be persuaded to let her go. Diane is the mother of three very active girls.

Jean-Pierre, 1st Child

My brother, who is sitting on the floor, was also very blond. He had and has very pale skin and powder blue eyes. He joined the armed forces as soon as he could. However, he was in a car accident that killed all passengers, except him. He had a cut on his forehead but it took a few months before he realized it was an injury. The cut healed, but a piece of glass or metal had penetrated his forehead. It was removed when symptoms appeared and he recovered. My brother is an excellent singer, a bass-baritone. Jean-Pierre has been a businessman mainly. He has two sons and a daughter.

2nd Child

I am the little girl sitting on the floor smiling. I had black hair and hazel eyes. I still have hazel eyes. I loved studying and became a university teacher. I also studied music for a very long time. As a singer, I am an alto. We were a barbershop quartet.

Our parents loved us very much. I miss them.

Love to all of you. ♥

Plaisir d’amour composed by Jean Paul Martini
Kathleen Battle (Soprano)
Nancy Allen (Harp)