You gotta' shop around...

It comes to mind, that in my life, the things (courses, programs etc.) that were most meaningful to my day to day existence, beyond basic English (reading, writing) and basic math (checkbooks, taxes, discounts) were my shop classes. Although at the time they seemed a bit lame, the electricity, wood and metal shops I took in junior and senior high keep coming back to me as I wander through the days. Although the History and Science people tried to let me know how important they were, in my life, they weren’t. I know that for some; academics, scientists, historians etc. it is important stuff, and I can’t deny their importance to planetary development, in my life the simple basic stuff became important.

Even though I read balance sheets, plan budgets and those things, but I still owe a debt of gratitude to teachers, probably long gone, whose names I can’t remember, for what they’ve given me.

So I drink a toast (metaphorically) to those long gone shop teachers (Mr. Shaverick at Garrison Jr. High, I think) who thanklessly (because Jewish boys didn’t become sheet metal or wood workers) did their job of educating me in the ways of the world.

Stakeholders Group, City of Hamilton, Economic Development's Arts Cluster

Photo of Bill Powell, Painting by Bill Powell

Last night I was invited by the Mayor to attend the meeting of the Stakeholders Group, City of Hamilton, Economic Development Strategy, Arts Cluster to look at the City of Hamilton Strategic Plan in reference to Economic Development’s Arts Planning. That may not have been the name but I never did get it right. This was an initial meeting of about 35 arts professionals representing the visual arts, music, dance and film, I guess, plus perhaps some other stuff as well. There were also some politicians and some city staff. We were in a long, thin room with lots of chairs and it was no way to have a meeting. The facilitator had his hands full because of the awkward setting. Besides, we had never been together before as a group.

The visual arts people all knew each other, and some of the others were known to me, but not all of them. We did go around the room and introduce ourselves, but it was a chore and thankfully we didn’t have a test at the end.

The money generator in the house was the film industry. However, the popular name to bandy about these days is Richard Florida, and his studies in urban populations show a very positive correlation between a flourishing arts community and a flourishing economy. So, suddenly, the arts in general look good to people who may have never considered their importance before.

Among the tasks presented to us were doing at a SWOT analysis; Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to the Arts in Hamilton. Later, towards the end, after “blue skying”, dreaming etc., we had a chance to talk about where we expected to be in five years. Happily for me, sitting right across the table from me was Bill Powell, one of Hamilton’s “old guard” artists, and a very funny guy. Bill is older than me, and I think he may be 70 (but he doesn’t look it!). Bill said (privately),

“In five years I’d like to be able to pee in a straight line!”.

In April, 2002, I wrote.....

OK, OK, it’s the weekend story.

It’s an uneventful 8-hour journey. We’ve prepared ourselves with a lunch and goodies so we won’t have to stop too often. The ride was great, the kids were good and we persevered. We arrived in time. We were met at the door by my mother-in-law telling us that her daughter and grandson were sleeping, and we needed to be quiet.

She screamed this and would have woken the dead.

Next, their neighbors who were there to see the new grandchild, who by this time had woken up from all the noise, followed us in the house. We all gathered in the vestibule, too small to hold us all, and talked to the baby and delivered gifts and swapped stories. There were 7 adults, two children and a baby squeezed in to space in between the doorway and the stairwell. There is not much room to move around, as everything at my in laws is full.

Anyway, the neighbors left and we spent the afternoon talking and playing with the baby. It was fun. We had drinks before dinner and I had much. My mother-in-law had way too much, and she fell twice, later that evening. However, she didn’t remember it the next day so it must have been OK.

Our friend the butcher came over with his 89-year-old mother, who I’ve known for 17 years. She had no idea who I was. It was that kind of an evening.

On Saturday we played around, went shopping and bought toys for the kids and the kids went swimming at the local pool. Then we were going out to dinner.

My in-laws loved this Italian restaurant, but forgot they had no liquor license and you could bring your own. So, I took my father-in-law in my car, after we arrived, for a ride around New Jersey finding a liquor store and bought 3 bottles of wine and returned to the dinner.

The food was great but the service was planned for leisurely diners, not people with kids.

My sister-in-law made us go at 6pm because she wanted to feed the baby there. She then fed the baby at 5:15 at home so we didn’t need to be there early but we were.

The place was crowded and we had appetizers and wine and waited. Finally, after much waiting, the food arrived. It was great, but 5 minutes into the dinner my sister-in-law says’ “when we were kids, did we have a dysfunctional family?”

I wanted to leave, but couldn’t stop laughing, my wife was so angry it took three days for it to end, my in-laws were answering and my kids were in wonder. This was not a good scene.

We had dessert and coffee, and left for home the next morning.

We left with no packed food, as my wife wanted out quick. We did have some goodies from the butcher in the food box. The kids had lots of toys, and 9 ½ hours later we were home.

We were tired and happy to be home and vowed to not do this again, at least not right away.

Livin' the High Life!

Here we go, off this morning to Toronto, to the Sotheby’s in Association with Ritchies Auction of Important Canadian Art. Now I have gone to many auctions in my life, but never this “top of the line” art auction. Even our own prestigious art auction is no where near this level.

This one all started because Bert, my buddy, was responsible for getting the top grossing painting into this auction, as well one into their last Canadian Art auction. His ability to find and bring forth these masterpieces has put him in a prominent position in today’s small Canadian art world.

The two paintings have both been by Lawren Harris, and have proven to be top sellers. They have been great pieces, not unlike the mystery painting I wrote about on Monday, April 20. However, the one last year sold, with buyer’s premium, for $2,000,000 where today’s wonderful, but small painting, sold for $175,000. However, all this gave us reserved seating (there ended up being nine of us) in the third and fourth rows of a very crowded room, with bidders, spectators and the press. The news angle seemed to be mostly about the economy and how the art market fairs in these times. There was a total of $3.2 million dollars spent and a 70% sales rate. Not overwhelming, but not bad. I think it’s a great time for buyers, not necessarily for sellers. The prices are all up over a few years ago, but bargains still exist out there.

The prices realized can be found at http://www.ritchies.com/auctions/851-sothebys-in-association-with-ritchies-important-canadian-art/1,100/0/1

Afterwards there were TV and newspaper interviews for Bert, not me, and we all walked over to the Distillery District for lunch.

The buyer, a dealer himself, got a bargain.

He plans to sell the painting for $375,000.

A Gift Fror J.C.

In my “Messages from Harry” from last Sunday, we both talk about J.C., our Business Manager in Detroit. We both fondly remember him, not for his managerial skills but for his insane work ethic. He was always trying to catch someone trying to fool him or do something illegal.

It took us a while to convince him that we should close on Fridays in the summer because no one ever took a Friday class in the summer, so it was a waste of time to run them. We were open because of about eight employees spread between two buildings. This didn’t matter to him until he realized that we were air conditioning more than 200,000 square feet of space for these people. He did the math using our electric bills and realized the savings. However, he could not reconcile this until I added extra hours on the Monday through Thursdays so that the employees put in the time, that way the savings were real for him. He never let me forget we all received about one free half hours pay each summer week because I couldn’t squeeze in all the hours.

This story, however, is about my gift to J.C.

One morning in the late spring, I was walking in to work. As I passed near the front entrance, I looked down and saw a plant growing through a sidewalk crack leading into our building. I leaned down, gave close inspection, reached out and removed the plant and brought it into the office. I took a small paper cup, put in a little water, and carefully placed the plant into it and brought it into J.C.’s office.

His eyes widened, his face became red and I handed Jim and bright, new marijuana plant as a gift!

What can I say?

At our graduation ceremonies, I had the job, among others, of pronouncing the students names. This is a daunting task, and when you have, as always, many complex ethnic names, you want to get them right. Parents, grandparents, spouses and children are in the audience and they want to hear you say the right name.

This has always been a pet peeve of mine so I practice by bringing together the graduating group for rehearsal and going over the names with their help.

I can mark their card with phonetic symbols so that at the time of graduation, I can read the name from the card handed to me, correctly.

In practice that year, I screwed up the simplest name, Linda Best, and made a Freudian slip, I guess. I turned red, the group laughed, and it was quickly forgotten by me.

Several months later, at a Board meeting, there was a presentation to me during New Business…..

Just Say No!

In the early 80’s, I was sitting and minding my own business, when I received a phone call from Texas Instruments. I was surprised, as I had never had any dealings with them before, but we were very hot on computers, and they were a great source for technology. They were offering me a bunch of computers, using raster technology. I had no idea what that was, but would never admit it and besides, they were giving us a lot of them and we could get our technician to make them work anyway. Plus, they were free!

"YES!" I said.

Than I forgot about it.

Several months later I received a phone call telling me they were on their way, and did I have enough room for them? What, enough room? How big were they?

It seemed there were several tractor trailers coming from Texas to Detroit, with my name on them!

I scrambled around to find a warehouse to store them. I needed a place with electricity and lights so our tech guy could get them to work!

Once I secured a warehouse, as a gift, I had the computers moved there.

The only computers I had really used at that point were Apples. I purchased the first Apple in December, 1979, the first year after their introduction. The next one was sometime after that, with an emphasis on Industrial Design. Most of us thought they were great toys, and were still looking forward to new IBM Selectrics for the offices.

Our new tech guy went down to the warehouse and began to work on these and finally, a month later, got one or two working.

They had the look of a 50’s space movie set. Giant things set in big desks, maybe five feet by three feet with giant round screens with graphs and lots of bright colors. I have no idea what they did. I believe we had 30 or 40 of them.

I have no idea if they are still in that warehouse in Detroit.

I did learn one thing,

Just Say No to everything!

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree...

I was falling asleep last night in front of the TV very early, and the phone rang with a message for my youngest daughter. I thought she told me Martha called. I dozed again after trying to call my wife at Yoga to tell her to have my daughter call Martha.

When they came home I gave them the message and was yelled at for calling in the end manipulations of Yoga (Savasana) and making noise. Then I was yelled at because my daughter knows no one named Martha. My daughter yelled at me and said I was a complete idiot!

They tried Marnie, who didn’t call, but had two baby sitting jobs for my daughter, and Marissa, who had called.

OK, it wasn’t a great feat, but I caused two jobs to happen, so some good came out of it.

This morning I went out, with my baseball cap on, to walk Max, our dog. When I came back in my daughter said, “Oh, here comes the overgrown 12 year old” followed by, “Are they talking the mental institution out to the ball game today?”

My daughter may be a complete idiot!

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!

Gentleman for an evening...

We used to go down to the radio station, WITH, Baltimore, and visit with our favorite disk jockeys. We have visited with Roz Ford, Buddy Deane (who was there when he was not on TV and was the real "Corney Collins" of Hairspray) and Maurice “Hotrod” Hulbert, the late night African American DJ for white people.

The only Baltimore DJ to be enshrined in the National Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Maurice 'Hot Rod' Hulbert was one of the most influential radio personalities ever. Born in the deep South, 'Hot Rod' began to make his mark while at the legendary WDIA in Memphis. Working alongside the likes of B.B. King and Rufus Thomas, Hulbert's training in vaudeville served him well as a radio entertainer. In 1951, he became the first full-time black DJ on an all-white station when hired at WITH in Baltimore.

In the early 50's, his 8 til Midnight slot captivated Baltimore teens and adults alike by featuring 'Commander Hot Rod in his Rocket Spaceship'. We're talking pure theater of the mind, and Rod was a master. He would say, "Good googa mooga, here we go takin' off in our rocket ship from the Big B! Vosa vosa",

We would go down to the radio station, park, and throw stones up to the window until someone would look out and let us know if we could go up or not that evening. Someone would come down, if it was alright, and we could be on the radio.

I remember we helped on the famous Thunderbird wine commercial with Hotrod. He asked, “What’s the word?” and we would shout, “Thunderbird!” Then he asked, “What’s the price?” and we would shout, “50 twice!” (A dollar a bottle). I drank way too much of that stuff in the 50's!

One night we were with them and Roz Ford had a guest, a stock car driver named Dagmar. She was a celebrity, I guess, as she was a woman stock car driver. She had long blonde hair and looked something like the 50’s late night television personality, Dagmar. She was traveling some circuit or other making local media appearances to promote her driving appearances.

She was new to Baltimore and we offered to drive her back to her hotel. She was delighted, and we asked her if she wanted to get something to eat. She was happy to do this so we took her out to our favorite late night deli hangout in hopes of running into friends. I can’t remember who we saw, but we had a good time and so did she. She even picked up the check.

We were harmless kids, and she was a very nice lady. We all harbored our own fantasies about how we wanted the evening to turn out, but kids in the 50’s were reasonably naive and we simply had a very nice time.

She was a lady and we became gentlemen for an evening.

Smokin' a Camel!

In 2007 we were at our neighbours’ house, in the family room, having a New Years drink. They had prepared a lovely snack buffet, and we went into the dining room and took cheese, fruit and cookies on plates, and returned to the family room. They had a lovely set up, with a candle-lit centerpiece and Christmas ornamentation on the dining room table.

Twenty minutes later we were talking when the woman of the house started screaming
and pointing towards the dining room. We all ran to see that the room was on fire. The
man of the house threw water on it, I grabbed the tablecloth and smothered it. The
centerpiece burned as well as the table cloth, the table top finish and a Christmas
ornament exploded sending pieces of hot glass through (right through) the drapes and onto the carpeting, but they did not ignite, thankfully.

The smoke detector was disabled for some unknown reason, and we were two rooms away and never smelled the smoke. We put it out, and the smoke was thick but we opened windows and doors to relieve the air.

We went home and I felt like I’d just smoked a pack of Camels!

Messages from Harry

Harry Smallenburg, my old friend, musician and blog guy (http://harrysmallenburg.blogspot.com/) wrote this story on his blog and I left a comment. However, it seems significant for my life so I am copying it for you with my comments added.

“Ha! Got’em by the short Hairs”A boast by the CFO of Center for Creative Studies—I didn’t hear this directly. It was reported to me. But I could imagine him saying it, with his fist clenched, and a sense that he was saving the institution from financial collapse and disappearance into the abyss. His initials were J.C. (I’ll withhold his full name.) Interestingly, “J.C.” are also the initials of another not-so-very-unknown messianic figure.CFO overstates his title—he was the school’s accountant. He handled all the financial transactions, and in that capacity he considered it his personal mission to be as tight-fisted as possible. “Scrooge” was a compliment. When I first arrived at CCS, in 1976, shortly after it had converted from a two-year certificate-granting institution to a bona-fide four-year degree-granting institution, he held sway. Outside the exercise of his professional responsibilities, he was a genuinely congenial and easy-going guy, but in his office, watch out! He had the cop’s “command and control” demeanor, and a bulldog’s stocky, solid build. He always wore a white or off-white dress shirt, no tie, sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms—he might have anchored a bowling team in his off-hours. His wife, whom I met once, was unfailingly sweet and good-natured.If I ran out of chalk in a classroom, I had to make a trip to his office (a building away) for more. On my first visit, I expected that he would give me at least a box of chalk—if not several—to keep in the department offices. This appeal must have happened before, though. He was prepared. He rummaged in his desk for a moment and produced two clean white sticks, admonishing me to use them sparingly. When I suggested that it was ridiculous for me to walk over to his office just for two sticks of chalk, I got the command and control glare.The academic department had no typewriter. The secretarial staff in the main office had, I believe, just started converting from manuals to IBM Selectrics. I asked about getting a typewriter for our department and, several days later, was given a Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter purchased at K-Mart. We used that for several years. We may have gotten a second one later. It took a couple of years of typing out letters and memos on what was essentially a student’s dorm-room typewriter, with its only marginally professional look, to be qualified for a Selectric.I was told that he locked the sugar (for the staff coffee machine) in the safe when he went home at the end of the day to make sure no one stole it or used more than their fair share.On several occasions, impatient with this regime, I purchased some office supplies on my own and asked to be reimbursed. The sum total of my purchases over several occasions could not have come to more than $60 (in a school with a $3 or $4 million dollar budget. In variably, though, he was furious that I had purchased something without using the school’s tax i.d. so I could avoid the sales tax. He read me the riot act until I told him to go ahead and take the sales tax out of my salary—we were talking about less than $2.He gradually had to give up his iron-fisted control with the arrival of a new administration that took us from the era of the ditto machine to actual copy machines like other organizations had had for decades. We knew the modern world had arrived when the Academic Studies Department was finally allocated a small desktop computer to use for word processing.Eventually he retired, and I understand that he, his wife and friends drove their giant recreational vehicles around the country to places like Lake Powell, where they enjoyed the camping life. He had, honestly, been a good steward of the institution’s finances, and an okay guy when I wasn’t asking for money, so I was glad to hear that he was happy.And, truth be told, he did influence me: even in our current, more environmentally-conscious times, institutions use reams and reams of paper, almost always only on one side, sometimes only for a couple of lines of information (even now, with inter- and intra- departmental e-mail). CCS was no different; it just went through trees at a lower rate than a big institution like Wayne State. Asking myself, what would J.C. do, I decided that I would collect this barely-used paper and recycle it, making notes for class discussion and lecture, printing meeting agendas, etc., etc. One day, I told the dean I had such a collection, and it was increasing at an alarming rate—I couldn’t write notes, memos, agendas fast enough. He laughed and gave me the J.C. prize for the day. There was no medal, no plaque, no document (we had to save money, after all). In fact, there was nothing—it was a joke in passing. But I did get a special frisson at having deserved such merit. J.C., wherever he was, cruising highways and byways, probably smiled with satisfaction at his enduring legacy.


My turn:

J.C. had stock in K-Mart which was why we bought everything there.

He watched a box of paint with my name written on it for weeks, waiting for me to "steal" it. Finally, in desperation, he asked me about the box. I had no idea there was a box of paint with my name written on it but I looked into it and found out it belonged to the sculpture department. They put my name on it so no one else would steal it!

When in doubt, always end with a Beatles tune #2.

Daniel Levitin, Associate Professor off Psychology at McGill University said,

“How many people can hum even two bars of Beethoven's Fourth Symphony, or Mozart's 30th? I recently played 60 seconds of these to an audience of 700--including many professional musicians- but not one person recognized them.

Then I played a fraction of the opening 'aah' of 'Eleanor Rigby' and the single guitar chord that opens 'A Hard Day's Night'--and virtually everyone shouted the names.”

(The music comes up) And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

From Captain Kangaroo to Captain Kirk

The time has finally come to say goodbye to my office chair. I bought it, I think, about nine years ago when it became obvious that my back, already used to a lumbar supported office chair, could not take the old office chair already in place here at school. I have a great office chair at home that I received when I left CCS, which has a whole story related to it that will need some telling later on. However, this chair needed replacement and I went to Staples (where else?) to find one. This one had a high back and a comfortable seat and I was in heaven.

It began to fall apart over time, and the arm rest went first, I don’t know why, It just eroded. The front left got an acid burn, I think, from some cleaning product dropped on the chair in error, I guess. Then finally, my wallet took out the bottom left side of the seat. It looked bad and had become a bit uncomfortable over time.

This new one looks a bit like Captain Kirk’s seat in the Enterprise and had all the good stuff like lumbar support and leather, as well having a Serta label.

It's a great place to take a nap!

The Second Big Trip

The first big trip I took was in 1972 . It was a cross country trip by car with a new Dodge Van and our whole family; my wife and I and three boys, ages 3, 6 and 9. It was a giant adventure!

We left from Baltimore and traveled north to Niagara Falls, into Canada and across into British Columbia. In BC we turned south and went into Idaho (I think) and over to the coast. I know we were in Seattle and went south. We visited San Francisco and continued south toward LA but veered off into the desert, past Barstow through the Mohave and visited lots of the southwest. We went up to Denver and then east to home again. It took close to a month. We had some stays with friends and some motels (3 I think) and the rest was tent camping. The entire event cost $900! Remember the good old days!

This is the prelude to the second big trip, 1982.

My marriage was falling apart and it was a matter of time how long it would last. I wanted to do something and I knew my wife would not want to go anywhere with me. I thought about my happiest family time and knew it was the first big trip of ten years before. So, wanting, I guess, to recapture that time, I decided to go on the same trip again, if anyone was willing to go with me.

Two sons said no as they had summer jobs or just didn’t want to go, but son number 3, a mere 13 years old, was a willing participant in this venture.

My wife exchanged cars with me so I would have the benefit of a larger vehicle, albeit a Chevrolet X car, but with four cylinders and a stick shift, it would work well. I left her my RX-7 which would never have worked for this trip.

We were leaving from Michigan, the only difference in the road chosen, and went up through Michigan into the Sault. We went into Canada and turned left. We were on our way.

We were two wild and crazy guys, as much as a 13 year old and his 40 year old father could be. I had not figured on the fact I was the only driver which can make for some tiring days. We did bout eight hours a day driving, and had routines for stopping, putting up the tent, eating and taking it down in the morning with some kind of breakfast early, we had our real breakfast at some McDonalds or Tim Horton’s or somewhere about 10:00 a.m.

We never met a single Mom with a 13 year old daughter camping, so our interactions were few with humans. However, we had a great time.

We stayed with Barry Glickman in San Francisco as we had on our first big trip, and many times after that. We stayed with Nancy Rosnow in Santa Fe, and even went to a party at Los Alamos where several of her friends swore they glowed after dark.

We had a great time and were gone several weeks, covering pretty much the same route we had before.

We may have seen Joel Cohen in Denver but I’m not sure. I’ll ask him.

It was a rare opportunity for me (and I hope for my son Josh) to have an experience together. We saw lots of stuff! We laughed a lot! We enjoyed each others company. There were no problems that I can remember in hindsight.

I look at those carefree days as one of the best experiences of my life. I would go again but no one will go with me today. My family and I have incredible camping experiences together, but more in the disaster area than the bucolic.

But that’s another story…

Non Fraternization Clause

We never had one of these in the places I’ve worked, and I’m glad that was so.
I wasn’t worried about the staff as much, but the student teacher relationships could be a bit of a problem and I didn’t need a law which would have forced me to be involved in other people’s lives.

I basically felt that people should be able to take care of themselves without my interference. This is not about harassment, that is illegal and everyone now has laws related to that. These stories take place in the days just before the harassment laws went into effect. None of these stories have complaints from those directly involved; all complaints came from the outside.

In the first case a friend of mine called to complain that his daughter, one of our students, was going out with one of our teachers and didn’t I have a law preventing that? No, I didn’t, but I asked him for some more information.

His daughter was over 18 and he had no power in that situation. Could he tell me who it was because I didn’t know, and I needed more information in order to help him? He told me who it was and I explained that he was a technician, not a teacher, clearly not any different for him. I laughed (he did not like that) and asked him how old his daughter was. He told me she was 20. I quietly explained that the technician in question, a former student, was 22, and did he now have a problem? He sheepishly responded that it seemed to be OK. He had assumed the “teacher” was a guy in his 40’s.

The second, more difficult situation was from a father who was mad that his daughter was going out with a teacher who was way too old for her and he was angry and didn’t we have rules?

I assured him we didn’t, but asked him to fill me in so I could try and help.

I knew something about the situation already as the “couple” had been “going at it hot and heavy” in the school parking lot, not a good move. I had some information from people who had seen them. I knew this father had nothing to do with the girl and had just entered into the fray because he was angry when he heard about it, but was not in a healthy relationship with his own daughter.

I explained that his daughter was over 18 and he didn’t have a “leg to stand on” but that I would be happy to bring her in with the instructor to meet with him in my office. I knew this would never happen as he didn’t get along with his daughter.

He declined, but asked for my intervention. I said I would talk to them, which I did. I explained that they couldn’t “go at it” in the parking lot as it was causing trouble for lots of people, but they would have to find a more suitable place to do whatever they chose to do. I never brought up the fact that the first complaints came during her first summer class when she was 17, and that could have been a problem. They did stop the public display of affection and that was all I needed.

In the last case, I had gone out to lunch and was coming back to an “end of the year” party at school, and as I pulled into the parking lot, on the lawn, there was a couple rolling around with roving hands and passionate embraces. This was a bit lewd for outside, when I realized it was a married, female teacher with one of her young boy students.

What the hell, it was the last day of school!

Let ‘em eat cake!

Not the sofa again!

Many years ago when I acquired the sofa as explained in this blog on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 (go back and read it if you missed it) I also received (mostly purchased) a few other items. There was a secretary next to the laundry sink, which had that kind of dark brown paint/varnish stain on it, the vogue of the day in the mid 19th century and it had held washing powders on the top of it when I found it in the laundry room of the late minister’s home. It was also, like the sofa, not included in the inventory of estate treasures, and was available for purchase for $25. SOLD!

I cleaned it up a bit (I know, I ruined its residual value by removing most of the brown varnish stain), but it doesn’t have that much residual value anyway so I didn’t lose much. It was hand made, I believe, although it was never fine furniture, but more of a country piece. It is a 19th Century American Primitive Secretary.

It’s kicked around my houses for all these years and never had a good home. Right now it’s in the studio taking up space and holding nothing much.

One day, with nothing to do, I noticed that there was ink stained over and scratched out on the inside back. I could tell that there had been some writing which was scratched out. I took a strong light and brought it over to the wood and tried to decipher it . Here is my best interpretation of what it says:

Sandra Gasta WC County MD (note: This could be Wicomico County Maryland)

Tuesday about dinner time

August 16, 1865

Whatever this young woman was going to write, she was stopped in mid sentence and quickly scratched out her message.

The Shower Curtain

My wife, whose name can not be mentioned in these pages, as my regular readers must know, has a thing about replacing bathroom items. Not soap and stuff, because of course we replace those, but toilet seats and shower curtains.

Now we have replaced more than our share of toilet seats, and I will not speak out about those because it’s a bit crazy. However, the shower curtain thing does relate to mould (the belief that there is mould everywhere) and rust on the little metal grommets that hold the curtain on. I know you mostly will think this is nuts as well, but I decided to accept my fate and go with these things as they’re no big deal.

My wife was away on a trip and saw in the hotel the curved metal bars with fancy special curtains that give you a bigger feel in the shower. This means the shower feels larger, not you!

She wants me to order them, and I worked with the company and got a price and measurements to do this, and send it to Canada, but want to avoid it as much as possible because it means a bigger, pricier thing and more work for me installing this stuff. It will eventually be done, by me or my successor.

In the meantime, she decided we should get rid of our current shower curtain and liner because of rust (I never even noticed it, of course). She went out to the dollar store and happily replaced the two items for $2.00. You get what you pay for!

It is very pretty, in fact, with a lovely green liner showing through a white print curtain. It is made from 1 or 2 mill plastic, and if you turn on the shower you have to work on it not sticking to your body. Larger folks like me get claustrophobic taking a shower in there now.

I went out to the store and purchased a new , normal shower curtain and liner that are beautiful and go well with our décor. My wife admits this but we are now waiting until my sister-in-law and her husband and kids arrive in June to put it up.

My sister-in-law and her family don’t like our small quarters anyway, but do, I believe, like us. I like them. I recently told my sister-in-law that I love her. That’s another, way too complicated story that has no sexual tension, just nonsense.

However, my wife is concerned that we only have one tub/shower in our house. That’s the way God built it, I figured.

In my life I have had older homes with bigger bathrooms and more of them, but that was then and this is now. We have two half baths as well and we’ll just have to survive. There is no easy way to add a shower in a convenient place.

In one of my old homes, I had a shower in an odd place; it was originally divided into apartments so there was a downstairs bathroom shower in the living room. This was fine but if you took a shower you had to have your clothing with you as you had to go through the living room, the grand entrance hall and up an open staircase in order to get to the second floor and relative safety.

We lived in modern homes in Calgary with extra bathrooms and it was convenient. But now, alas, we will have to suffer through with just one shower/tub combination. With my oldest daughter (who can not be named) leaving for university in Montreal in the fall, there will even be less of a need for an extra shower.

My sister-in-law and her family will get the new shower curtain and will not even appreciate it unless she reads this, and we will probably have to get this new curved pole and special curtain eventually.

As I said, it will eventually be done by me, or my successor.

Another Bathroom Story

In my first year as Dean, many of the women on the staff complained about graffiti on the second floor ladies room in one of our buildings. It seems that second floor female students in the building (the floor was used for graphic design and some academic courses) were writing about the questionable conduct of one of the academic male faculty members. I felt, as the new dean, that I should do something about it. I needed to see for myself what had happened.

The former registrar and I waited until after school one day, when no one was around, and went in to inspect the area. After reading the allegations, she and I left, only to be seen leaving the ladies room by our Public Relations Director.

The next day, an embarrassed dean tried to explain why he and the registrar paid a late afternoon visit to the ladies john together to a very interested audience.

The True Value of Art

My office was, as it still seems today, a storeroom for paintings, prints and sculpture that no one knows what to do with. It becomes a waiting room for art.

We had been given, through some 80’s art schemes, several suites of prints, some of them quite valuable. The total value of my office pieces, in 1985, was about $60,000. Over a weekend, someone, perhaps a staff person or some unknown character, had gotten into my office. Knowing the value of my collection, I approached the office with some degree of concern.

What was missing was my snappy, new umbrella, a free gift given with the purchase of $15 worth of aftershave.

Forbidden City memories

The time was the early to mid 80’s, the place was the Forbidden City Restaurant in the Cass Corridor in Detroit. This was a very good place to look for trouble, pretty good cheap food and $1.35 lunchtime special martinis. Across the street was a little place with hookers outside strolling. This was not your usual lunchtime eatery.

Several of us from CCS, Detroit’s famous art school would eat (and drink) there often. My boss, Jerry Grove, myself and our V.P. Development, Jim Keyes, wrote our whole catalog there one afternoon. They let us stay and use the table and we paid for the lunches and drinks. This was a cheap and sometimes cheerful place.

I had to meet a large group of people for lunch one day, it’s hard to remember who was present, for sure President Jerry Grove and Dennis Barrie, the then head of the Detroit office of the Archives of American Art, later to be famous as the Director of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center from 1983-1991. His tenure was rocked over a trial in 1990, when he and the gallery were indicted on pornography charges stemming from an exhibit of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe (the exhibit show was titled The Perfect Moment. At trial, a Cincinnati jury acquitted Barrie and the Center. The controversy and trial were made into a TV movie titled "Dirty Pictures". I can’t remember who else was present but there were many.

I had something to do at school, which was going to make me late for my $1.35 martini, but I told Jerry I’d meet them there.

I arrived, parked on the Forbidden City parking lot and scooted through the cars toward the front door. I was stopped by the sight of a station wagon with two people in the back, undressing each other and “going at it” to use a phrase. This would have not shocked me much, as it’s not that unusual for the neighborhood, but these were sort of middle aged people with the man dressed (almost) in a suit and the woman dressed (sort of) in a nice red dress. I was not one to sit and stare, the martini was waiting, so I sauntered by and went into the rerstaurant.
Well it just like Norm coming into Cheers, I walked in and was greeted by a hardy, “Arthur” from the assembled multitudes. I smiled and ordered, and then asked if anyone knew a man and a woman who must have just been in there. The man was wearing a suit and the woman was wearing a red dress.

“Of course, that’s Dr. (something or other), Vice President of (something) at Wayne State University and the woman was his assistant”.

Well, I said, “they’re doin’ it in the parking lot!”

Three weeks later I read an article in the Detroit Free Press that the two of them had gone missing. Foul play was not suspected.

I know I used this photo before but it works here....

When I was a kid the laws of the land were quirky when they pertained to booze. Each state had, and probably still has, a series of unique statutes pertaining to the purchasing and consumption of alcoholic beverages.

In the kinder, gentler times before political correctness, before MADD, before alcoholism was a disease, we had ways to deal with our underage drinking.

I know that later on, when I was legal, I went around the US discovering new laws wherever I went. In D.C. you couldn’t move your drink from bar to table yourself. In Texas, at that time, at least in Dallas, you could only drink in private clubs but you could join those clubs for a dollar! In South Carolina, I think, you could only get bar drinks in small, miniature bottles, and the bartender would give you your bottle, your glass, ice, etc. and you had to open the bottle yourself.

Every place was different, but the laws that mattered to me were the ones that set the drinking age.

In Maryland, where I lived, the drinking age was 21, but in D.C. the drinking age, for beer and wine was 18 with 21 for hard liquor. New York was 18 for everything. I had only two destinations as a kid, D.C. and New York. New York was 200 miles away so it was a much less visited spot. D.C. was 40 miles, an hour down the highway, so it was number one on my list!

My best memories (the safest) were actually double dating and going to Washington for pizza and wine or beer in a restaurant at 14th and H Streets, an area no longer fashionable. In the day the restaurant, The Vineyard, had a downstairs with dining and dancing. That sounds today like ancient history I know, but it was great fun. (My son has just added this: 14th & H again is quite fashionable, so you have lived through several cycles of urban renewal, which by the way, was a very positive term that has been replaced by the pejorative "gentrification.")

OK, now the bad stuff. The need for the booze, the 18 year old liquor law, the 16 year old ability to pass for 18 and a highway full of drunk guys returning home regularly is more of a big scary thought! I don’t know how we all lived!

I did, as best as this foggy mind can remember, see and hear George Shearing, Charlie Byrd, the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra and a few other top jazz performers as well as some great DC local folk acts. I could not have had these opportunities in Baltimore.

I also remember going with my friend Jerry Rubin to D.C., drinking and returning home on a Lambretta Motor Scooter at night, on a highway, late in the year, freezing and shaking as we were passed by trucks and busses at 65 miles an hour!

When I was older, past 18, I could pass for 21 and often found local bars that would have me. The experiences in a small country music bar in downtown Baltimore are vivid, even though the name of the bar has escaped me. We went to see Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys, a legendary Bluegrass act that played there. I had the opportunity to witness a real bar fight with chairs broken over people and a run out of side door to freedom.

In all my drinking and driving experiences, it never seemed like a bad thing, it was perceived (at that time, not now) as more of a sport. Today, I recognize the danger we faced but never realized.

We were young and immortal, of course. Our warrantees had not run out.

On the way to Woodstock something happened.....

James Taylor, Ritchie Havens, Joni Mitchell, Pete Seeger, Doug Kershaw and Arlo Guthrie at the 1969 Newport Folk Festival.

1969 was one hell of a good year for me. My last son was born in April, a child I love as much today as I did then, and lots of interesting things were happening in the world.

I hadn’t been drafted! I had managed to be ahead of all the draft cut offs. I was in college in the early years of the war and did not even need a deferral, I was married when they started seriously drafting single guys, had kids when they took married guys and was too old when they took guys with kids. I also was a public school teacher so I went to the back of the line.

However, in late 1968, I was asked by a school board administrator if I would be willing to represent the Howard County Schools for a day at the Howard County Fair the following summer. What the hell! One day in the next summer, sure. I wanted to get in good with the Board, and if they wanted to use me, a lonely art teacher from a Junior High to represent them, I’d do it.

Who knew it would be the weekend of Woodstock! I had not yet heard of Woodstock when this happened.

We went to the Newport Folk Festival that year and it was fantastic! By 1969, however, the increasing popularity of rock music and the volatile political times brought about the end of the festival, and there was no major folk music venue in Newport for over 15 years.

We saw the introduction to the wider audience of the young Boston based James Taylor, we saw the Muddy Waters Blues Band, the Everly Brothers and Joni Mitchell, the parts I can still remember. I do know I was standing next to Theodore Bickel and Pete Seeger when Joni Mitchell started up in the afternoon, and the look on their faces was priceless when they heard the amplified instruments. This was such a no-no for folk music and signaled an end and a new beginning to the tradition.

We stayed in a near by camp ground in our new tent with our 1969 VW bus, as I noted in an earlier post.

We came home to the sight of men walking on the moon!

By the way, we missed Woodstock.

When in doubt, always end with a Beatles tune.

This morning, after some concerns I had about our camera, I went to my computer and uploaded the photos from the card using two different photo programs to see if it was a software problem. It was not.

My next step was to get a new Memory Stick Pro Duo card from the shelf and try shooting with the new one to see if it was a media problem. Both girls had used our camera and had picture problems (miss matched parts, color changes etc.). I put the new card in and went outside and shot a dozen photos, came in and uploaded and lo and behold, it was a media problem. There was something wrong with the card.

Happily I waited for the family to arrive downstairs and told them it was only a media problem, the camera was fine. We didn’t have to get another one or, God forbid, try and have one fixed.

I was blasted by everyone! “What is a media problem? What is media? We thought media was the newspaper or TV!”

I tried to rationally explain the use of the term media to describe anything that held information; CD’s, DVD’s, photo cards, newspaper and TV as well, I guess.

My daughter said,” You’re just trying to sound smart!” This has become the anti intellectual rant every time I use a word of more than two syllables.

When I’m in a store and looking for recordable DVD’s I look around for the MEDIA sign. It’s a normal use of a word today. Clearly, not in my house!

So, at the risk of sounding smart, I am delighted to tell you all that it was a media problem. I still don’t know why this happened, but at least one of those cards came directly from an extreme discount guy in Singapore and that may be the culprit, but I’m not telling the family because we’ll have the other rant about cheap, Chinese knockoffs.

It is now hours later and I’ve been to the camera store and solved the problem. It’s not a software problem, it’s not a media problem, it’s not a camera problem; it’s a computer problem. The Memory Stick Pro slot on the front of my computer has failed! I uploaded the photos from a USB port and they’re fine. The image you see is from the first set directly inputted from the card.

(The music comes up) And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make……..

Ockhams Razor #2

In the time I’ve been doing this blog, I’ve written 68 stories with little end in sight. However, of the 68, I’ve been comfortable with 67 of them. The problem one was the one about Ockham’s Razor. It was the one I didn’t quite get from my head.

I know nothing much about anything scientific. OK, I know a bit, the normal stuff I’ve gleaned from life like the freezing point of water (in Fahrenheit or Centigrade) and assorted practical science, but real hard stuff is not for me. I tried very hard to read Steven Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” and it really was interesting for a page or two and then I was lost.

I used to feel the same way in Hebrew School as a child, or any language class or even most math classes beyond the basics. I can read a balance sheet, and I understand about money, but that’s practical. So science is definitely not my thing.

So, on April 23 I wrote:

In two recent experiences, the movie “Contact” with Jody Foster, and a book I was “reading” (listening to on my MP3 player, in this case a British mystery called “Dust”), there were references to Ockham’s Razor. Knowing this was not a Gillette, I had to dig farther. I knew within the context in which these were found that it referred to the idea that the simplest solution to a problem is probably the correct one. I decided to investigate, and here’s what I found:


Ockham's Razor is the principle proposed by William of Ockham in the fourteenth century: ``Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate'', which translates as ``entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily''.


In many cases this is interpreted as ``keep it simple'', but in reality the Razor has a more subtle and interesting meaning. Suppose that you have two competing theories which describe the same system, if these theories have different predictions than it is a relatively simple matter to find which one is better: one does experiments with the required sensitivity and determines which one give the most accurate predictions. For example, in Copernicus' theory of the solar system the planets move in circles around the sun, in Kepler's theory they move in ellipses. By measuring carefully the path of the planets it was determined that they move on ellipses, and Copernicus' theory was then replaced by Kepler's.


But there are theories which have the very same predictions and it is here that the Razor is useful. Consider for example the following two theories aimed at describing the motion of the planets around the sun


The planets move around the sun in ellipses because there is a force between any of them and the sun which decreases as the square of the distance.


The planets move around the sun in ellipses because there is a force between any of them and the sun which decreases as the square of the distance. This force is generated by the will of some powerful aliens.


Since the force between the planets and the sun determines the motion of the former and both theories posit the same type of force, the predicted motion of the planets will be identical for both theories. the second theory, however, has additional baggage (the will of the aliens) which is unnecessary for the description of the system.


If one accepts the second theory solely on the basis that it predicts correctly the motion of the planets one has also accepted the existence of aliens whose will affect the behavior of things, despite the fact that the presence or absence of such beings is irrelevant to planetary motion (the only relevant item is the type of force). In this instance Ockham's Razor would unequivocally reject the second theory. By rejecting this type of additional irrelevant hypotheses guards against the use of solid scientific results (such as the prediction of planetary motion) to justify unrelated statements (such as the existence of the aliens) which may have dramatic consequences. In this case the consequence is that the way planets move, the reason we fall to the ground when we trip, etc. is due to some powerful alien intellect, that this intellect permeates our whole solar system, it is with us even now...and from here an infinite number of paranoid derivations.


For all we know the solar system is permeated by an alien intellect, but the motion of the planets, which can be explained by the simple idea that there is a force between them and the sun, provides no evidence of the aliens' presence nor proves their absence.


A more straightforward application of the Razor is when we are face with two theories which have the same predictions and the available data cannot distinguish between them. In this case the Razor directs us to study in depth the simplest of the theories. It does not guarantee that the simplest theory will be correct, it merely establishes priorities.


A related rule, which can be used to slice open conspiracy theories, is Hanlon's Razor: ``Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity''.


As I guessed, the simplest solution to a problem is probably the correct one.

The first paragraph and the last line were mine. The middle part was lifted from Wikipedia, a great source of all knowledge, although not always correct, but an easy way to get answers. I didn’t understand what I wrote but I figured my readers are simple folk like me.

Wrong, I have at least two “scientific types” who have happily responded to my ramblings, and I feel I have to come clean.

First was my Cousin, Gary Floam, a very religious person and a man schooled in Computer Science, who has made a living for these past 35-40 years in the computer programming business.

He said, “When I was reading your Ockham’s Razor post, I kept substituting "God" for "space alien". Was this your half-intention?

Concerning universal gravitation, we have no idea how it works. In Newton's day, this "action at a distance" was a mystery. Einstein said something about space being bent by mass, and this explains gravity, sort of. It is certainly not a more simple explanation than Newton's but Newton's predictions were found to be a little bit wrong and Einstein's explanation puts, say the orbit of Mercury, more where we see it to be.

Scientist have been looking for something that makes gravity work. They posit something called "gravitons", but we haven't found them yet.

Right now gravity is something that just happens. There may be something about the universe that makes it want to obey the Newton/Einstein equations, or it may be the particular will of God or a space alien, or we may read in tomorrow's paper that there are gravitons after all.


Then came a response from Dr. Joel Cohen, from the University of Denver, a scientist for sure, a physics Ph.D. and a computer expert.

Joel said “I enjoyed your blog post about Ockham's razor, especially your references to Copernicus, Kepler, and planetary motion.

When I first retired I was looking for something to do with my time and eventually decided to explore ancient mathematical astronomy and how it evolved up to the time of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton. I was particularly interested in Kepler because I wondered how he could formulate his three laws of planetary motion (including motion in elliptical paths) given the planetary data that was available at that time. Kepler was a very interesting and crazy character. He was interested in astrology and had other theories about planetary motion before he settled on the final three laws. At one time he claimed to understand God's geometric plan for the solar system, and connected the motion of the six planets that were known at that time with the five Platonic solids. Surprisingly, the approach gave reasonably accurate results. While I eventually understood how he discovered his three laws of planetary motion, I was not able to find out to my satisfaction how he used the actual observational data. Eventually I moved on to other things.

By the way, my real hero in all of this is Isaac Newton. Newton put planetary motion on a firm mathematical footing and along the way invented calculus. Newton was able to show that assuming gravity acted according to an inverse square law, it was possible to prove mathematically that the planets moved in elliptic paths and followed Kepler's other laws. But he did something that was even more remarkable. He was able to show that if planets traveled around the sun in elliptical paths according to Kepler's theory, there had to be a gravitational force between the sun and the planets which acted in an inverse square way. In other words, Newton was able to infer the mathematical form of gravitational attraction without ever being able to measure it. Great science.

Although Newton understood the mathematical form of gravitational attraction, he never really understood what gravity is. This was left to Einstein's general theory of relativity which describes gravity in terms of curvature of space. In this case, the theory is much more complicated, but doesn't tell us much more about the motion of planets.

I'm looking forward to seeing you. Let's talk about this.

So now I have been “caught” by two people and I am helpless to answer. By writing this confession I hope to vindicate myself.

I have no idea what I said and I promise never to say it again!

Euphemistically speaking....

You will remember it was my anniversary, and we had a lovely day. My wife did exchange (not return!) the Tommy Hilfiger tops for ones of her choosing, and we went out to one of our favorite places (a reminder to Canadians reading this blog, I know I spelled favourite incorrectly, it’s in American English), the Old Mill here in Ancaster. All in all (with a bit of shopping added, and with me picking up teens from the train and depositing them here and there), it was a very nice day.

My wife quietly said to me, when we were alone, “You know what I’d like to do early on Sunday morning?”.... “No”, I said,.... “what?”

“I’d like to spread the mulch”.

OK, it’s a stretch, but I went with the euphemism here. It seemed so appropriate to the day, that I just went with it. “Great!” I said (leering).

She replied, “I have six bags of mulch in the garage and we can spread it early!”

My reputation precedes me.....

It’s our 22nd anniversary today and as we decided not to exchange gifts because of the expense of our Diana Krall concert tickets (a few days ago), I knew we would be doing something, and I was not going to be the one with no gift ready.

Just as I suspected, there was a gift for me this morning, and I had gifts ready. Because I wanted to get something more than a gift card, just because it shows some more thought than a gift card alone would show, I bought two tops at Tommy Hilfiger. They were my style choice, and in fact were not my wife’s taste. We will exchange them today, but at least I tried.

This was not a problem, and it was a sweet gesture. However, returning them caused the problem, mine for sure, because I guess my reputation precedes me.

The question was, at first, “Where did these come from?”. They were two Tommy Hilfiger tops in a Tommy Hilfiger gift bag, duh? Because she expected an answer like Winners, Wal-Mart, whatever, I said, “Tommy Hilfiger”.

She said, “You went all the way to Niagara Falls?”, the home of a Tommy Hilfiger off-retail store. “Of course not, they are from the Tommy Hilfiger store!”

It has become clear to me that no one in my family, especially my wife, will accept the notion that I would buy something retail!

(They were, of course, on sale.)