My Other Mother

My mother was born in 1903 in Milwaukee. Her father was a German cooper and her mother was a Gypsy. A real Gypsy. Mother had had 3 sisters, all older, and was brought up Catholic. (She left the church when she was 15 because a priest wouldn't let her light a candle for her mother unless she paid for it. She challenged him about only rich people getting to heaven, turned and never went back to a Catholic church again.) They were poor, and as each sister married and moved out the house got less crowded. Her mother dropped on the street in 1910 and died on the spot. Nobody knows why she died. Nobody now knows where she is buried. A little girl was too much for her father, so she was sent to live with her oldest sister, married but childless. Her uncle abused her until she went out on her own at 14. The year was 1917. She got a job with the telephone company and moved in with another operator who became her life-long friend. She was an exotic beauty and soon was modeling for various photographers and artists. She was a flapper, a dancer and a general hell-raiser. She met her husband, my father, in 1921 and was married in 1925. The Roaring 20's. He was a hell-raiser too, so they raised hell together throughout the 20's and 30's and endured the Great Depression with a large group of close friends and a lot of bathtub gin. My father was a graduate electrical engineer and had steady work all through those tough years. She raised hell and had a ball. They tried for children, but she could not keep a pregnancy, so in 1937 they adopted my brother. That did it. Thank you Tom for me.
World War II came along and so did I. My father worked in D.C. during the war years (they had moved from Milwaukee to New York in the 30's) She stayed home coping with 2 boys, rationing and a old friend that desperately wanted her (and never getting her. He was an undertaker and she made my father promise that when she died "he" would never touch her body. I don't know if my father ever knew of the attempted betrayal by his friend).

After the war she spent the next 5 summers living in a surplus army tent at the end of a potato field hauling water a mile from the farm house at the end of the road, using a latrine and getting sprayed several time a summer with pesticide from a bi-plane crop duster. She got a tick bite and contracted what was diagnosed as tick fever, and was never the same again.
Enter my Other Mother.
She went down hill pretty fast after that. We moved into a new neighborhood in 1950 and she had an "nervous breakdown" shortly after that. She took loads of Valium when they came out, and got shock treatments several times in the early 50's. She suffered from a continuous string of physical problems, some "in her mind" to quote the family Doc., and some of an infirm body. She smoked like a chimney, lost weight, got emphysema and died in 1971 of heart failure.
I often wonder what life would have been like if my original mother had survived into my adolescence and adult life. She was such a risk-taker and hell-raiser there is no telling how the family would have been different. But she didn't. I miss them both and love them both for different reasons, and wish them well where ever they may be.

shoot the bear

In my distant past I was a "yute", as they say in Brooklyn. In the early 50's there was an arcade game that involved shooting at moving animals with lenses in their bodies with a rifle with a light in the barrel. So when you "shot" the light flashed and if you aimed accurately at the lens in the animal you "got" it and it did something. I remember the bear specifically but don't really know why. Anyway, when you hit the bear, it reared up, roared and turned around and went in the other direction. You scored a point. If you keep hitting the bear it kept roaring and turning and you kept scoring.

For years I have been using the analogy "like a bear in a shooting gallery" when someone turns abruptly and moves on. I have had to explain this to numerous people who probably then and now think I an nuts. Well, nuts to you of little faith. Watch the video and you will see what I mean. Where the hell the stuff on YouTube comes from I do not know (of course I know really, just look at the link, what I mean is I am amazed that anyone has all this stuff).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCko28VS4FU

Now, that may not be the most exciting video you have ever watched, but by golly I grew up with games like that and they are still better than all that video crap. So there.

Mystery Woman and Fear Filled Eyes

Today I saw her again. See was dressed the same as all the other times I have seen her. Sweat pants, running shoes, some kind of pull-over top. Hair long, dirty blond and stringy. She walks along the hard shoulder of the divided highway with a slight stagger like she is a bit drunk. She veers onto the roadway an inch or two and then back on the shoulder. She turns and looks over her own shoulder, her face full of fear. Today she had a backpack, stuffed with who-knows-what. Sometimes she walks west but today she was walking east. This means that sometime during her walks she crosses 4 busy lanes of traffic. Sometimes she changes direction and starts to walk the other way, only to change again and go back the way she was going, eyes fearful both ways.
The first time I saw her I thought she was really high and in danger of getting run over. I looked for a highway patrol car (always some in this stretch) and there was one on the side of the road in the direction she was walking (lurching more like it). The trooper would have seen her coming and taken some action (I thought). The things I noticed most were the staggering walk and the fearful looking over her shoulder.
I know she has a story and big problems. I wonder if she is on the street because of the drastic cut in treatment for poor people when many facilities were closed or underfunded? I wonder if the current health care debate takes mystery women with fear in their eyes into consideration at all? Somehow I doubt it. I guess that she will end up on a slab somewhere, crushed and cold. The only meds in her system alcohol and heroine, or crack or crystal meth. Where a simple prescription of something, a bed and some counseling would probably save her, she lingers in fear. What a crappy system.

Photo credit: http://wittgensteinforum.wordpress.com/2007/10/

"Things I Learned on the way to Other Things"

Years ago there was a columnist that occasionally included a column called "Things I Learned on the Way to Other Things" or something close to that. I tried to find the reference to it and failed. I remember the stacks at U of M, U of F and FSU. Being in undergraduate and graduate school for a total of 13 years gave me lots of miles in stacks. Add a few public libraries and you probably get something like 15 or 16 years of perusing. Usually I had a quest of some kind, looking for something specific or some genre to consider. But in sweeping along the shelves often something caught my eye. I would pause, take out the book and glance through it. More often than not I'd sit somewhere and have a little read. I found a wonderful quartet called "The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe this way. The story of an apprentice torturer in a time when that was a legitimate occupation. And others. My point? Well, its this: when you are on the way to something, keep your eyes, ears and mind open to other things as well. You never know what you will find on the way. Oh, and yes, it takes more time too. Going to the library was always a risky business for me. Never knew when I'd get out.
Book cover from: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60211.The_Shadow_of_the_Torturer

IPA, Yummm.

IPA. Now that is a word (is it a word? I=India, P=Pale, A=Ale. Put together it's a word to me, or maybe an acronym?) that causes a deep sigh and taste remembered. A fine hoppy brew, wonderfully colored (what color? not really sure since I am colorblind. Maybe golden or reddish?) with a good up-front smell and an long lingering taste on the back of the tongue. And if an IPA is a really good one, the burp refreshed the taste. Wonderful. To quote Goeffrey Holder "Marvelous!" Other drinks? Well, there are a few such as red and white wine and water, but for staying power and sheer je ne sais quoi nothing beats it.

Photo from: http://www.antipope.org/fisherrow/index.html

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