Answering the Call

You probably have never heard of Edmund Berkeley. He and his wife were prestigious writers of biographies and he was an excellent botanist and teacher. His collected papers can be found at the University of Virginia at the web address at the end of this essay.

The photo to the left may well be his grandfather. I don't know for sure but Ed looked a lot like this southern gentleman.
I met him when I signed on in 1972 to be the founding chair of the Math/Science Division at Piedmont Virginia Community College. Ed was there before me, and had turned down the job I got. He just wanted to teach and write. Well, he taught me some things, I can tell you. In this embryonic institution, Ed was the senior faculty member. He was the oldest, the most experienced and the highest ranking. He was as self-actualized a man as I have ever met.
Ed had a kind of southern demeanor. Deliberative in responding to situations, and always thought through a situation before making any comment. He had an accent that put him from the central Virginia area with tinge of new England about it. He usually waited to be asked to offer an opinion, and then was to the point.
As he theoretically worked for me (in fact I used him as a sounding board many times) we had quite a few discussions about this and that. At one point in the early days of the institution the faculty were having problems figuring out their role in governance and were hesitant to bring up issues that they saw as possible career terminators. Faculty didn't know the administration and vice-versa. There was no history at this brand new institution. And many of the faculty were young and inexperienced in education.
Ed always stepped up and asked the tough questions, and pursued when the answers were less than forthcoming. I once asked him about that and he simply said that being the senior faculty member obliged him to take the point on issues that could be contentious. He said that he was as secure as he needed to be and was not afraid of consequences. Thus he told me always take the part of the weakest when you are the strongest. To my shame I must admit I have not always lived up to that model, but as my career progressed I came more and more to understand what he meant.
Ed Berkeley was a man of honor and courage, and a man of conviction. We would all do well to emulate him when possible.

UVa address for Ed Berkeley archives: http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaead/published/uva-sc/viu00598.document
Photo from: www.evergreenmanorhouse.org/

The Czech Pistol

Tucked away in an old box we were storing for a neighbor was a beautiful small semiautomatic pistol. I found it rummaging around in the basement and was stunned by the feel of it. Small and cool. Deadly. Except the slide had a deep dent that made it impossible to move. I fantasized that the dent was a bullet strike during a WWII firefight. Romantic but probably not right. More likely this was done to render the gun a souvenir and legal to own. No way of getting the slide to move. I tried. A lot.
Even though it didn't work like a gun, it looked and felt like a gun. I carried it in my bomber jacket pocket. Mr. Big Shot. Only my closest friends knew about it, and they all had a "go" at carrying it. It went to school, to games, to the movies and occasionally on forays that were on the outside of the law. We never considered the possibility that by simply having this deactivated weapon anything we did was automatically elevated to a felony. Period. No arguing. We never considered the possibility that any sane policeman (all we had then folks where we lived) seeing it in the hands of a nervous teenager would believe it was a real loaded weapon and shoot in self defense. Never crossed our minds.
It went with us on our signature caper, the one that got us caught, but through some miracle it got ditched before the arrest.
That caper and the anguish that followed changed our lives for ever. We were lucky we got caught when we did and lucky we didn't have the gun with us. The support from parents, school, the cops and others got us through and to a better place.
We all got on and stayed on the "straight and narrow" for the rest of our lives.
I have often said that I am the total product of my life experiences, and to change even one would change everything. I believe that to my core. I am not proud of those days of mayhem but they, in part, made me who I am.
What happened to the Czech pistol? It went back into the box and eventually back to it's rightful owner. If it could talk I wonder what other tales it would tell?

Photo source: www.freeexistence.org/images/guns/

Woody's World meets Walden Workshops

My old friend Laura recently left Tally town to go to one of my old haunts, Charlottesville, Va. I have many memories of C'ville, most pleasant and some painful. It is a wonderful town filled with interesting people and places and Laura will fit right in. In some ways it is like Tallahassee: somewhat rural; major university; good community college; good medical care.

Laura and I met at my university and cemented the relationship on an extended field trip to Nicaragua. She came of age, I think, in those days during and following the trip and blossomed into full glory. During the last few years we hardly bumped into each other, keeping track lately on Facebook.

Laura wrote this in her blog: "For me, it's really a balance of three worlds: my internal world, my external world, and the cyber world. There's a lot of traveling to do in one day."

For most of us that really sums things up. Balancing these three aspects can be a challenge and getting it wrong will not be a pretty sight to behold. Before I retired I was pretty well balanced but for awhile afterword things were pretty wobbly. My external world changed radically and that prompted a change in all things internal. The third world, cyber, has been part of my trinity for some time, but took on a new reality and urgency.

After 2 years balance has been mostly restored with OK internal, external a work in progress and cyber going back to a means rather than an end. I found writing again after years of talking and that is a joy. I found memories again after years of immediacy being at the front of the line.

Too often we think of the teacher as giving and the student as taking. For the right people both grow from the interaction and both learn. Would that it were always so.

Teachers are voyeurs, watching from the sidelines as our students move into life, sometimes wishing we could be there with them to feel the joy of success or the pain of failure. But we can't and so watch and thrill for them and hurt for them and laugh for them and cry for them. And mostly they don't know.

It's rare to see the actualization from beginning to, no, not end, to maturity. Thanks Laura for that. I am proud of you and the path you chose and the way you walk it. And while I can, I will keep watching.

A final note here: Sally has been in on Laura's trek from the beginning with me. This is my writing and my thoughts but I know her mind pretty well and we have talked about Laura from time to time. So these thoughts, I think, reflect hers as well as mind. So from Sally a good English "Well Done".
http://waldenworkshops.blogspot.com/?spref=fb

Lost Families, Hate and the Holocaust

Last week we watched Schindler's List again. I have to do this to myself every so often to keep the horror of that time refreshed. It never goes away but with the competition of daily inputs it recedes to someplace less visible.

My grandmother was a Gypsy (Roma really) from the district in Europe known as Alsace-Lorraine, an area contested for centuries by Germany and France. It was the home territory of many Gypsy families and like other parts of Europe was systematically purged of them in the Nazi program of "purification of the race". My mother was unable to reestablish contact with that branch of the family after WWII ended, so we concluded that they were purged along with Jews, homosexuals, priests, mentally handicapped (PC: intellectually challenged) and other undesirables. So I have a dog in this fight. Up close and personal. The thing is, you don't have to have a relative that was murdered by the Nazis. Look up "six degrees of separation" and you will find that you are very close to someone who was personally touched by this madness. You know me, and I have family that died in the camps. Two degrees of separation. I have friends whose familys died in the camps. Three degrees of separation.

I was preparing a short assignment on Judaism for my scriptural text course (taking, not teaching) and came across a link called The Auschwitz Album . I was prepared for another horrifying look at the camps when they were liberated. Go to this site if you have not seen what I am taking about http://www.shamash.org/holocaust/photos/ . (Holocaust deniers are not as strange to you as you might think: actor Mel Gibson is one, as is his father. I don't pay to see his movies any more. )

This was far worse. These pictures showed live people being moved into the camp, women, children and men, thinking they were going to work for the Nazis, but were in reality mostly a few hours or days from death. Then, out of nowhere, comes the NPR update on Ahmadinejad once again professing that the Holocaust is a Zionist lie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism ).

He may or may not actually believe that but he is broadcasting it loudly. This is akin to Hitler's theory of "The Big Lie" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie). Once again being used as an excuse to exterminate a people in an act of genocide.

Most of us can do little to influence the direction of international events. We can vote and speak out, a few will run for office. But we can all REMEMBER. And that is the point of this posting. Don't ever forget that the evils of mankind are just around the corner. Up the block or next door. The Klan, White Supremacists, Taliban, Al Qaeda to name a few. You can't hate just a little. Hate builds like an approaching storm then breaks into fury. In the fury good people follow bad, and bad things happen. Please, don't forget what happens when hate takes over. Please remember my lost family and the families of millions of others lost in the ovens and pits of hate. Learn and Remember.

Photo: Gypsies waiting for "processing" at Belzec concentration camp.

Photo credit: Archives of Mechanical Documentation, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

I hate Google/I love Google

I just figured out that I have a love/hate relationship with google. Love: the access to nearly instant answers like "I wonder what kind of pythons are in Australia?" Hate: I have tried everything I can think of to uninstall Google Earth and the bastard just won't go. No, uninstall on the control panel doesn't work. So, I Googled it and there were over 7 million pages. You would not believe the trouble people have uninstalling this program. I finally gave up. I'm just going to shoot the computer one day soon and Google Earth will die with it.

Photo: NASA: Earth from Space

One Republican Shows His Ass

Joe Wilson of South Carolina called out "YOU LIE" to the President during the joint address to congress. The content of the dispute isn't the issue. Dissing the President is. No excuses for this kind of behaviour. Right wing radio is all over this defending Wilson while at the same time Palin keeps saying that there is a "DEATH PANEL" in the bill, which is a blatant lie, and the same radio hosts applaud her for truthfulness. What the hell is going on in this country. On this day when we should all remember the moment when we came together in grief and anger we are being driven apart by lies and liars, and very stupid people that believe them. I fear for our freedom. The religious zealots may someday win, and then with Taliban-style government we all lose.

Graphic courtesy: www.legaljuice.com/LIAR-thumb.gif

The Lucky Kids of Norgate

I decided that I would make a rocket. I was about 13 years old and had no idea how to do it, but that never stopped me before. I found a spent co2 cartridge that looked perfect. Shiny, metal and it had a hole in one end for the rocket fuel to push out. Fuel. Now that was a problem. What to use? Aha!! I had some fire crackers that my father gave me for the 4th of July. They had rocket powder in them didn't they? No, they didn't. They had high explosive very fast burning flash powder in them. I didn't know the difference, so without delay set about to make my rocket.
Fire crackers in those days had interesting names: Black Cat; Dixie Boy; Gorilla and many others. In the 1950's most or all were made in Macau (sic) or Canton by rolling flash powder in Chinese newspaper strips with a paper fuse. Crimp the ends and Voila! a firecracker. The instructions, as if we needed them were: "Place on ground - light fuse - retire quickly". You could set them off in strings like you see in Chinese celebrations or one at a time. You could blow things up, throw them into the air by hand or with a slingshot - or - you could take them apart and harvest the talc-fine powder for other use.
I poured fine powder into the tiny hole in the end of the cartridge and put a Jetex fuse in the hole. This fuse was available to hobbyists for use in their Jetex rocket engines

(http://jetex.org/) used to power models and things. Yes, I had one of those and it worked fine, but I wanted to build my own. I didn't bother with the stick that you usually find on a rocket. I figured it would fly just fine by itself. But it needed a launcher, didn't it? I built one from a couple of boards nailed into a "V" shape and rested it on two bricks.

The day of the big launch arrived and I decided to get an audience together for the show. Five or six neighborhood kids, none older than me, gathered closely around the launcher. By closely I mean a foot or two. Right behind it. I carefully placed the "rocket" in the vee and lit the fuse. Excitement built as the fire crept towards the shiny cylinder that would soon fly high in the air. At the moment the flame from the fuse hit the hole in the cartridge there was a loud explosion. The launcher flew apart and shrapnel flew in all directions. We heard pieces whirring past our heads as the shiny rocket cylinder ripped itself apart. Stunned by the magnitude of the failure of the rocket to fly and by the loud explosion, it never occurred to me to see if anyone had been hit by flying shards of metal or wood. No one had. Some of you reading this will say "God protects fools" and others will say "amazing good luck that nobody was blinded, killed or maimed".

Years later in a physics class I learned why the thing exploded instead of flying. Something to do with the rapid rise in pressure from the extremely fast burning powder and the tiny hole available to vent the gasses.

Live and learn. Still, a few years later I was once again making things that went boom!, but this time on purpose. (There was one glass bottle bomb with a defective fuse that I put in a tree crotch and Max lit. It blew the second he touched the fuse, glass shards whizzing everywhere but neither of us was touched. At the time I felt that God was saving me for some higher purpose. Would have been easier for God to stay my hand.)

Firecracker photo: pzrservices.typepad.com/.../vintage_firecra.html

CO2 cartridge photo: pillsburystore.com

Fog and the Moving Doorknob

Max and I went to different Universities and met up summers or holidays or sometimes he would come to Miami from North Carolina for a fishing trip. As mostly happens we saw less and less of each other as we moved into our new realms.
One Christmas holiday we decided to go into the City (NY of course) to see what we could get into. We ended up a Trader Vics sometime in the mid hours (9ish) to sample the exotic drinks. My choice was a Samoan Fog Cutter, a fruity drink with rum, gin and brandy, topped off with a little sweet sherry. We sat a the bar and ordered. I don't remember what Max had, in fact I don't remember much about the rest of the evening. I don't know how we got home, or when. I slurped my drink pretty fast and ordered another. The bartender said something like "are you sure you want another of these. They're pretty strong" to which I answered something like "I'm sure." The second Cutter came and during the next interval of time (no idea how long) I finished it and ordered another. This time the bartender was reluctant to give me one, but finally relented. I took a sip and decided I had to go to the toilet. To pee, what else?
The toilets in that particular establishment were located in the basement, down a very long flight of stairs. There was also an attendant to give you a towel or comb or whatever you needed. So anyway, I got inside the loo, found the right place and began. I couldn't understand why the wall was moving. When I finished the attendant asked me if I wanted to sit down in his chair for a little while and that sounded like a splendid idea, so I sat.
Across for the chair was a closet where supplies, I suppose, were kept. The door was closed and had an ordinary doorknob. Except for one thing. It was a magic doorknob. For as I sat and watched it, it slowly began to move upward. It got to the top of the wall and started across the ceiling then "POOF", it was back where it belonged. I observed this mystery for some time and couldn't figure out how the damn thing moved. But move it did. Later, I made my way up the stairs to find my 3rd drink gone and Max waiting for me. The bartender had a smirk and took my payment for 3 Fog Cutters with a big smile. I am sure he slipped me a mickey, the bastard. Days or weeks later I figured out that what was really happening in the men's room. My head was falling backward and my eyes were stuck on the doorknob. Ergo the sensation of me being still and the damn knob moving. The miracle: I didn't get sick. I have never had another Fog Cutter and doubt that I ever will.
Photo: http://flickr.com/photos/88992939@N00/85551340

The San Tones - A Cool Memory

Like so many other late 1950s college kids I decided that playing the guitar would be a good way to attract the opposite sex. It took me a little while to get the hang of it but by the end of my freshman year I could play and sing with the best of them, I thought.

Dick England had a solid body Fender and could really play the thing. His pal Ronnie was even better. They jammed together a lot with a few other guys and me, and finally a band coalesced around Dick as the lead singer. I never could do melody but was OK on backup cords. and sang base. Well, the band was called "The San Tones" and we were, for a time "Dick England and The San Tones". The band played local gigs and attracted some attention but never really got hot. So we decided to cut a record in the summer of 1960 to "go national".
Dick wrote a song called "Elaine" (don't bother to Google it or the band) and we rented a studio in New Jersey to record it. We did. We loved it. Nobody else did.
Dick didn't come back to school the next year. I lost track of him, Ronnie and I lost my copy of "Elaine" (45rpm) somewhere along the way to growing up (actually never really did that).
We had fun, got drunk, women lusted for us, and WE HAD A RECORD! Now that is what I call a cool memory.
Photo from: http://www.mainstreetvintageco.com/catalog/item/4798917/6516552.htm

Tobacco and Friends

By now every one of my friends knows what I think of tobacco and its use. Fifty years of research, denied by the industry, shows without any doubt that the use of any tobacco product will greatly increase your chances of getting some kind of cancer and increase the risk of cardio-vascular involvement. If you know me and smoke, dip or chew you have heard my entreaties. "Please consider quitting", "Please stop before you get cancer", "Please don't poison those around you", "Spitting in a bottle or cup is disgusting", "You smell like an ashtray", "With all the evidence at hand only stupid people use tobacco" and others.

I started out (right after I quit cigarettes) as a militant, heaping abuse on users, insulting them, battering them with all the logic and research I could find. Didn't work. I finally realized that users had to want to stop and a gentle reminder of the consequences and acknowledgement of the challenge of quitting might be a better strategy. Didn't work.

None of it works. Some of you out there will know what you do when all is dark, nothing works and there is nowhere left to turn. Turn to love.

I love you. I will miss you when you die. Please consider what you are doing to yourself and others and try. That's all any of us can ask. Try.

And go to the link below to read more about the photo at the top.

Photo:www.healthwellnc.com/TRUstories/GruenText.html