Memory #2330.23-g

Founding Esalen Institute:

“In May 1960, Dick Price returned to San Francisco and took up residence at the East-West House with Gia-Fu Feng. That year he met a fellow Stanford University graduate, Michael Murphy, at Haridas Chaudhuri’s Cultural Integration Fellowship where Murphy was in residence. Dick moved into the Cultural Integration Fellowship as well. In 1961, Murphy and Price visited the oceanside property in Big Sur, California, that was owned by Murphy's family. The property included a natural hot springs.

In 1962, using the Murphy property and capital that Dick had accumulated, along with assistance from Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Laura Huxley, Gerald Heard, Gregory Bateson and Frederic Spiegelberg (with whom both had studied at Stanford), Price and Murphy founded the Esalen Institute. Among other objectives, Price saw Esalen as an alternative to then current mental health practice, especially the practices of mental hospitals. Esalen was to be a place where inner process could move forward safely and without interruption.

Previously, the natural hot springs baths on the Murphy property were part of a run-down resort (known as Slate's Hot Springs). The security guard was a young Hunter S. Thompson. Joan Baez was also in residence. Thompson was soon fired by Murphy's grandmother, although Baez remained in residence through the beginnings of Esalen. Henry Miller regularly visited the hot springs during this early period of Esalen's history.

In the middle of 1962, Abraham Maslow happened to drive onto the Esalen grounds and soon became an important influence on the development of the institute. Julian Silverman came to Esalen in 1965, in order to work on the schizophrenia project at Agnews State Hospital, and ended up serving as Esalen's general manager. Will Schutz came to Esalen in the 1960s and worked on aspects of his "encounter group" process. George Leonard, Joseph Campbell and Ida Rolf were among the many people who had an impact upon Esalen's development. In 1974, Price married his second wife, Christine Stewart Price, a Gestalt practitioner who became his primary collaborator at Esalen.”

(Hunter Thompson...imagine that..he was at Esalen)

**

Ever attend an “encounter group?” I did. I didn't even know it at the time either. And the people who were running it weren't your average Beat Poets who hung out at the North Shore Beach.

In our senior year at St Rays, there was a required course called “Christian Action” where the students would have to go out into the world and perform some sort of community service. You finally were a well developed Catholic and it was time to act as Jesus would. But Jesus was never ordered by a court or a school to perform “community service,” was He? We were.

I was placed in a local school with some slow kids to show them flash cards to improve their spelling abilities. Did I do any good? Probably not. Did I feel better as a person? Nope. What did I learn from this? That, as a teen, you tell adults exactly what they want to hear and were easily duped once they thought you “understood.”

Another aspect of this course was the “Retreat!” This day long retreat was held at the DeLasallian New England headquarters in Narragansett. The purpose of it was to deepen your Catholicism. The big event was run by Sister Johnelle (she deserves a whole story herself on here one day, but in short, imagine a hippy/Beat Generation/”with it”/radical leftist nun who tried her hardest to “be one of the kids”). She, along with a one of the lay teachers who I can't remember his name but we all called him “Ajin-San.” He looked like Richard Chamberlain in the Shogun TV series. God I get off the subject. She and Ajin-San ran the main reason for the retreat, to expose yourself before God. Or so they thought.

Anjin-san

So, here's how they went about it and it was a bit sneaky too. We all sat down and formed a circle, where upon Sister Johnelle distributed poster board and markers to all of us and told us to just “draw a person with anything around it.” We did.

This is an old “one time only use” psychological test. If asked to “draw a person” the theory is that you inadvertently draw yourself, including all the deep seated mental illnesses, fears, hopes and in essence, completely expose your true self.

When the drawings were done she picked someone and asked each of us to comment on the “picture” that was shown. Sister Johnelle guided the questions further deeper and more intimately toward the person that was in the hot seat. As I watched this, I figured out what was happening, you were supposed to divulge the ugliest truths about yourself which made you aware of them. But there was one HUGE FUCKING problem which dawned on me fast.

At the beginning of this retreat, you SWORE on Jesus's soul that you would NEVER repeat anything you heard here. We all swore we would. But I knew in my heart of hearts, no one would keep a secret in high school society. Anything you divulge, honestly, will be spread across the entire school in nanoseconds. By the next day, and I witnessed this, very personal secrets people talked about were spread about as malicious gossip. One girl had admitted to becoming pregnant and having an abortion. She had trusted the others with that once, very private issue. Too late now, I knew about it the next day. I knew about it and I didn't even really know the girl. How's that for building trust?

Knowing people can't shut up, I clammed up fast. Or rather, I stealthily guided Sister Johnelle's own game of exposing myself by guiding them all down a lane of secrets that I didn't care who knew. I considered them minor but acted like it was a NSA secret. This satisfied Sister Johnelle and she moved onto the next. What was the secret? Easy, I admitted as an 18 year old, that I smoked pot and drank to get silly falling down drunk to “avoid” stress and pressure. Big Fucking Deal. Who didn't do this?

Then I witnessed a witch burning. I saw this encounter group turn bad and use every ugly teen tactic at conformity to pressure another classmate to open up totally. What was even uglier, Sister Johnelle headed up the mob carrying the pitchforks and torches. He, on the other hand, was having none of this.

His picture was a dazzling, Jimi Hendrix-ed, splattering of colors and monsters with twenty eyes and the such. He explained that it was a great experience he had while ripped on LSD. The group, led by Johnelle, then really ripped into him when he steadfastly REFUSED to accept his use of drugs was an escape. Since the prisoner won't break, you roll out the rack, the electrical cables to his balls and every other form of pressure to make him “talk.” I swear they kept at him for 40 minutes.

He never did break. I give him credit for standing up to this cheap attack. I on the other hand, just used my sleazy lying abilities to avoid it. But he fought them off.

I sat there, watching all of this and thought it pretty grotesque. This is “Christian Action?” It also made me deepen my incredible distrust of Sister Johnelle. I hadn't had much for her to begin with after watching her closely throughout the semester and how she operated. She was a great one for using sly tactics to maneuver the kids into what she wanted them to do, or say. I concluded she was complete bullshit long before this retreat. The retreat just made my decision about her stiffen even more.

This is what happens when you put therapeutic methods into the hands of morons. "Do No Harm" is the Hippocratic oath. Well, that Retreat had no qualified Dr's in residence at all.  Encounter groups, when run by amateurs, do more damage than good. 

I once knew a psychologist who had spent a month at Esalen to learn the then new EMDR techniques. A whole damn month. In fact, it takes longer. He went to Esalen to find the inventor of EMDR herself, Francine Shapiro, in order to learn it correctly.  He would go back at times to recharge his technique or to add to it when they found other methods improved upon it.  

Esalen, built into the cliffs at Big Sur. There is a whole compound up and behind these cliffs as well. 

And a little more about Hunter Thompson and Big Sur and Esalen. 

Bunny (owner of the property) had long turned down her grandson’s repeated requests to hand the grounds over to him. She was particularly concerned that Michael would “give it away to the Hindoos.” But things were getting out of hand at Big Sur Hot Springs, and she would soon change her mind after events that have since become legendary. Much of it, unsurprisingly with hindsight, revolved around Hunter Thompson.

Thompson, it turns out, sometimes picked verbal fights with the homosexual bathers. One night, he returned to the property with his girlfriend and two hitchhiking soldiers from Fort Ord (a base just north of Monterrey). Thinking it was safe to go down to the baths in such a crowd, Thompson ventured down the dark path. But some of the bathers jumped him, the soldiers and his girlfriend ran away, and Thompson was left alone to slug it out. As the story goes, most of the slugging was done by the bathers. The men beat Thompson up and came very close to throwing him off the cliff that night. Bloodied and bruised, he got back to his room in the Big House, where he spent the next day sulking and shooting his gun out a window, which he never bothered to open.

Not long after this incident, Bunny would read one of Thompson’s early published essays in Rogue magazine, “Big Sur: The Tropic of Henry Miller,” in which he described the folks of Big Sur as “expatriates, ranchers, out-and-out bastards, and genuine deviates.” Such language did not go down well with Bunny. She may have been in her eighties, but she was also tough. According to Anderson, she then “made one of her rare trips down to Big Sur, in her black Cadillac with her Filipino chauffeur, for the specific purpose of firing Thompson's ass.” Exit Hunter Thompson.

Opening page to that particular article: 

Excellence

From Google: “Choate Rosemary Hall (often known as Choate) is a highly selective, private college-preparatory boarding school located in Wallingford, Connecticut. Its history, academic influence, and reputation make it one of the leading schools in the United States.”

To put it simply, your kind probably isn't too welcome there.

**

Once he finally got his PhD from Vanderbilt with two weeks to spare, my friend figured it was time to get a “real” job as his last job was being drunk and stoned in Bermuda. Prior to that he was teaching kids and being drunk and stoned in GooseBay, Labrador in the frozen north of Canada. He has the distinction of being “second best” at something at Vandy, and that is he came in second for the “longest time it takes to finish a PhD.”

I ask: “Who won first place?”

“I don't know....someone more unmotivated than me” he answers.

After applying as a professor at various universities and colleges, he found an opening for a history professor at Choate. He figured it would be a nice start to a career and to boot, Choate wasn't too far from Plymouth when compared to say working in Urbana/Champagne in Illinois where he did a stint before the Labrador gig.

“I was driving at the time a real shitty looking MGB. It was a great car, always ran but looked like the pits. It was dented, rusted in spots and the paint had faded to a dull pasty color. The day of the interview at Choate I had put on my best suit. The problem was that I had spent the last few years in GooseBay Labrador and Bermuda and neither occupation required any sort of dress code.”

He goes on..

“My suit was polyester. The pants sort of had a bell bottom flange to them but it was clean, in style, 70s mind you and it did fit. But I knew it may look “low-budget” for an interview at a place like Choate. No matter, it was all I had and I wore it anyway.”

“I find the building the interview is at and I see this guy standing outside of it. He had on one of those tweed jackets with elbow patches, combed Brill creamed hair and he was holding a pipe at the moment. When I pulled up, the guy looked at the car and me as if I came from Neptune...the look on his face was astonishment.”

“I get out and ask him where I could find a Mr. Steerling...there was a pregnant pause and he finally says that he was. I shake his hand and tell him I'm his interview...the history one. He then gives another peculiar look and finally composes himself and invites me in.”

B. tells me he knew the interview wasn't going to go well from the first second he saw the guy's face.

“After all the usual questions about my background and qualifications, the guy then tries to discourage me from pressing this opening further.”

“Mr. B, we here at Choate, we strive for a certain, how would you say...a certain impression, a vision and our students expect only the best, as their parents do as well. All of our professors realize this pedigree and carry themselves with a Choate Pride of service to this nation's best...to the ones who have through this nation's history have risen extraordinarily through the generations.”

“You mean inherited money?” my friend retorts.

“The guy then starts tripping over his own words, swearing that Choate isn't about snobbery nor elitism, it's about 'excellence.' The guy stumbles poorly and I answer him finally.”

“So to clarify, you mean excellently inherited money?”

“I kill the interview right there by reaching across his mahogany desk to shake his hand and thank him for his time. I go out, fire up my loud MBG and see the guy looking at me from his window.”  

This is Choate's lunchroom. There's no Lunch Lady Doris slapping school pizza on your plastic tray here.  Perhaps Emiril Lagasse is chained to the stove, having orders shouted at him by impatient brats, who then toss escargot snails at him for fun too.

Bath Salts and the Like DO Kill

There used to be a small strip mall near our neighborhood where we kids hung out constantly. This was before structured time for your kids and we were shoved out the door to “go find fun yourselves!”

In that strip mall was a CVS that somehow tolerated our going in and out as we rarely bought anything. Mostly we hung out by the magazine shelf pawing through them. They didn't keep the Playboys, Hustler's behind the counter then either. That's awfully liberal of CVS, but it was the 70's. What was done was that those magazines were hermetically sealed in shrink wrap.

On the chance that we did buy something, we'd go up to the registrars and pay. I can remember discovering some old ladies you could smell if you were within ten feet of them. They had this cloud of cheap perfume that hit you like hammer. It was either that or the nose stinging Ben Gay that they slathered on. It was like an atomic Wintergreen Lifesaver.

My Mom was not entirely different though. On some days, my Mom, and am sure others, would take a bath during the midday. She'd have various lotions, baubles that dissolved or salts that melted away in the water and colored it, scented it. Most times it wasn't that bad. I knew that if Mom was going into the bath, it meant that:

--She was not to be disturbed, for a good hour...or more.

--I could not use the bathroom, even if my bladder about to burst. (I learned that pissing behind the shed was a good emergency plan)

--If the phone rang or there was a knock on the door, I was to handle all inquires.

--Above all: I was to remain QUIET.

It wasn't all that bad, since she was in the tub, I had run of the house as she wasn't about to come out anytime soon .

But there was one thing I could not stand.

Jean Nate.

My Mom used to splash this stuff into the tub as she was filling it. This stuff would STINK up the whole house and I found it incredibly offensive. I was stuck in the CVS again, behind an old lady polluting the air around her.

No matter where I went in the house, this pernicious stuff would travel far and wide and get into every nook and cranny. I began to fear that I, as a boy, would start smelling of it.

When I was nine I thought going upstairs into my bedroom would save me. No, it was just as syrupy up there. I made a decision. I thought I'd rather shiver than put up with the odor and I opened up my bedroom window and my brother's across the way for some fresh air. January air mind you.

It worked some. It did clear it out somewhat. After she was done and drained the tub, it mercifully took that Jean Nate down with it. I came downstairs and could breathe once more. After a bit, she took me to go shopping. When we came home, she noticed my brother's window open and commented on that. She then went ballistic when she found MY window open as well.

“WHO opened up those windows! It's JANUARY!” This was aimed at me of course.

“Don't you know the cost of oil heat? Don't you have any idea what it TAKES to MAKE the money to buy it! What's going through your mind???” It seemed like she'd never shut up.

As a nine year old, you don't always have the best answers and sometimes honesty is not the best policy.

I had told her that the Jean Nate stunk up the whole house and I was trying to air it out. That didn't go over too well. Boys are great for inadvertently insulting their own Moms.

**

It's been nearly two decades since my Mom has gone on. After the funeral, the phone calls and the whole episode is done, I started going through the house ridding it of her junk and to keep things that I'd remember her by. I tossed her incredible library of Ladie's Home Journals. Why she kept them I have no idea. I kept all those Kodak photos of her though. As I was going through her bureau I came across this:

A bottle of Jean Nate.

I stood there with a bit of astonishment. “God..I remember THIS stuff.” I opened it up and sniffed. Yep, just as offensive as ever! I found out just holding the bottle gets it on your hands and I washed it off not too long after.

I never threw the bottle out if you can believe that. This was a memento I HAD to keep. I have it to this day. When I took this picture of it, I had to wash my hands again to rid me of that smell.

Sinners and...More Sinners

I sometimes have a few stories in drafts, being reworked and then tossed entirely. Others I get bored with and toss those. I have one that's pretty sad about a kid I once knew but it's still baking in the oven and it'll be better written than this goofy one coming up. But I wish to be silly this morning instead.

Disclaimer #1: I wasn't the one! I swear! I was in school that day with the                          
                     rest of you! I didn't have a Chevy Nova till the next year, a   
                     BLUE one!

Disclaimer #2: I knew who did it and I'm still not revealing his name!

**

May 1982 was monsoon month for some reason. We had week after week of dousing rains that would come in, pour like hell for thirty minutes then leave, followed up by more in short order. It looked like maybe our upcoming graduation day would be cloudy, rainy but warm.

My high school was/is situated on both sides of Walcott st in Pawtucket by the St Joseph's parish church. During changes in classrooms, a good amount of the kids had to walk either to the “west” or “east” building that was along the street. Alot of us became soaking wet from the downpours including me that day.

Some of the kids filtered into one class I had all drenched to the skin. They complained that a car has passed by them, hitting one of the many puddles and soaked them. Bad luck I thought. But at the day wore on I began to hear stories of a car purposely aiming fast at those puddles as the classes changed. I didn't have to change buildings that much that day as all my classes were in the East building so i was spared and didn't know that it was going on. 

Walcott, in certain places, turns into a lake when it rains hard. You know those puddles, four inches deep filled with warm summer rain usually. They don't last that long but long enough to be surprised by how quick a street can fill up.

After school, I go by my friend's house and his brother, along with a few of his friends, are laughing their asses off about some joke they pulled earlier in the day. Mark had a cream colored '76 Chevy Nova. He and his buddies, discovered by accident, that if you smacked a puddle while the classes were changing at Saint Rays, you could cause a seven foot wave of water spray to drench anyone on the sidewalk. Being no dummy, figures out a plan that provided much recreation.

Mark then sat, lying in wait, around a corner until the classes changed he tells me. When both sides of the street were filled with students. He fired the car up and raced onto Walcott and aimed at four giant puddles he found.

He's barely able to tell me the story as he's nearly wetting himself laughing.

“At first, they didn't even move. I would aim at the puddle and BOOOSH! I'd soak them all! Then I'd do the same to the last three puddles and manage to nail them too! There was this hot looking blonde in some white capris...I flattened her hair with the water..I'm sure of it!”

“But that's not even the funniest part! They learned I was doing it intentionally and knew which car to look out for..but I'd change up where I hid it...a different side street each time. Then I'd come flying around the corner and start racing to a puddle and the kids would all start running for their lives, onto the lawns, over a short brick wall or just plain duck! I'd hid the puddle anyway, get less of them but watching them run like rabbits was more fun!”

I asked how many times did he do it?

“Six...in a row! AH HAHA HA HA HA!”

He gave up when he sniffed a cop that was called by the Principal. Mark was good at that, smelling them from a mile away and then scooting off before anything could be done. Weirdly enough, no one got the license plate. I guess it's hard to when you're dodging a wave coming at you.

The next day in homeroom class, I sort of asked...”What the hell happened...some car was going up and down Walcott splashing people?” I was acting as duh duh as I could.

“That sonuvabitch!” Carl yelled at me “He got me TWICE! He goes down Walcott, hitting the puddles and me...and he then U-turns around fast and nails every puddle up the other side! I had run to the other side thinking he was done and didn't hear the car coming back....that prick!”

I hate to say it, but I was trying to stifle a giggle as I heard this.

This is considered “fun” when your sixteen and it's your first car.

OK, Story #2 about Mark and Saint Rays

We had a nun, a sister who taught English named Sister Paul Rita. She was a shortish, bit rotund teacher who had a temper that could turn on w/o you even giving a hint. Perfect poker face. You never could predict when the geyser would gush. Her nickname was “Sister Ball Beater.” We didn't give her that moniker but she had won it years ago with other classes and it carried down through the years. I guess whoever invented it made sure “ball beater” rhymed with “Paul Rita.”

By that time, many nuns took to wearing street clothing, casual. The habits they wore were by choice now and most doffed that. But, even in street clothing, nuns had a habit of wearing clothes that still said “nun.” Alot of flannel grays, light blues and sort of dyke-y A frame shirts and whatnot. You can tell they were completely sexless...or rather dressed like that on purpose. Sister Paul Rita was no different.

You could spot a nun walking down Walcott just by how they dressed.

Mark, who I mentioned before who was watering the kids at that school, once stopped by, outside the East building where there was a short wall, he sat down for a bit. This was right opposite of the church across the street.

Mark at the time was a public school student but had skipped school that day. He sat there, rolling up a bag of joints and he didn't care who saw.

Now I didn't see this happen but the way Mark relayed it to me, it was spot on.

“I was sitting there, on that wall, opposite of the church, rolling up a big bag of joints when this dyke nun comes by. She holds out her hand and says 'Give it...to me.'”

I ask, “What did you do?”

I told her, “Fuck you lady, I don't go to this school!”

“You told a nun “Fuck you? You did know she is a nun right?” I sat there imagining Sister Ball, sorry, Sister Paul Rita's reaction.

Mark goes on, “Yeah I knew and so what? I got up and walked off. She then demands that I come back and I give her another “Fuck You!”

Knowing Mark then, his “fuck you” would've sounded like this: “Fuuuuuck Youuuuuu!”

I had Sister Paul Rita that year. I sat in her Late American Literature class. I sat there looking at her the next day, stifling another giggle knowing just what had occurred only yesterday. Ah, she probably wasn't fazed by it that much. I'm sure her career as a teacher brought her into contact with a lot of boys who were just as street and impudent as Mark. She had her share and was toughened by it from all those years. But this time she couldn't give Mark detention, as he strode away from her, telling her to go fuck herself.

WW2 Dads and Table Manners

A friend was telling me his Mom managed to get an entire set of 1930's German Fiesta Ware, piece by piece. His Dad complained because the large dinner plates were just 9 inches in diameter. “My Mom eventually had to get him his own special plate, a cheap Bakelite one that was 12 inches in diameter...to hold all the food he'd pile onto it. Not only that, it had a curved lip to hold any juices in.”

“He would eat entire meatballs. He'd stuff one into his mouth, chew it a few times then swallow it. He'd eat like a goose, just somehow get it down his throat. My Mom made largish golf ball sized ones too.”

“The gravy, God the gravy he'd flood his plate with. I'd watched him slice a huge slab of roast beef and I said to him, 'You going to launch that into that ocean of gravy?'”

“WATCH YOUR MOUTH KID!” he shot back.

My own Dad would mound a Mt Vesuvius pile of mashed potatoes onto his plate, then fill the caldera with a soup ladle's worth of gravy. He vacuumed that down in fair order, before doing it again.

My Mom, being Irish, couldn't cook but she tried. One of her skills included frying cubed potatoes in a pan that had been just used for frying hamburger. The flavor of the ground beef with the addition of more Blue Can Crisco grease would be the two ingredients. The potatoes were portioned out to all of us and after eating his, I saw my Dad get up, take the spatula and try to chisel the pieces and scraps that had stuck to the bottom of the skillet. My brother and I would nearly puke watching him eat those burnt crisps.

Every Sunday, for a while at least, and thank God it ended, we'd have a “real” Sunday dinner. Every Sunday dinner meant eye of round, which to begin with is a fairly lean cut of meat. My Mom thought that incinerating it was the proper way to cook it. My brother and I would be in the den, smelling a real cremation and roll our eyes at one another. Ugh, another travail to overcome, the weekly burnt roast of beef.

Dad, being a Depression Era kid, thought it a great treat. He'd cut the meteoroid himself (it looked like a meteor, smoking and black) and take the end pieces for himself. I'd hear him eating it, crunch, crunch, crunch. My brother and I were lucky enough to get something of the center of that meat, which was more than well done.

I'd use my steak knife to surgically remove the gristle. I thought it loathsome. After a few times, my Dad would wonder why I would cut it out, saying..”that's a good part!” I thought he had to be kidding. Then again, the thought the best part of any beef was the fat. In a way he's right, but gristle?

I shouldn't point fingers at him now, neither can my friend point finger at his Dad. We both were telling stories of what piggish things we each have done with food. I've sat in front of the TV while eating out of the very pot I cooked in, dribbling some of it on my tee shirt. Who cares? I live alone anyway. The dog I had was great for clearing up after me.

I once opined to a friend at work, “Ya know, If I wanted to, I could eat two pizzas, wash it down with canned beer, then shove two cigarettes up my nose and smoke them if I wanted too...who's going to bitch at my table manners?”

My friend said he had that beat. “You know Klondike bars right? Try this. Get two of them, and sandwich in between them a heaping pile of Neopolitan ice cream...you'll need a fork to eat it!”

“Two Klondikes...with MORE ice cream?” I say

“Yep..it's heaven!”

Or one of his favorites. Peanut butter with bacon sandwich. “But you have to FRY the bread slices in bacon fat too”

I ask. “Have you ever had to check yourself in the mirror before going out to the Quickie Mart...check tee shirt for splatters after eating?”

“Yep.”

“Thank God...I ain't alone!”

1+1=2

Ever take the GRE's? Or even worse, the Miller's Analogies? Both tests saw off the top of your skull, pull your brain out and squeeze it like a sponge, then return it. I took the GRE's a long time ago when I was thinking about getting a CAGS degree after I was out of RIC for a couple of years. Good thing I didn't as talk therapy was about to be destroyed by the Pharmaceutical industry by providing pills for every malady. This would make life more profitable for health insurance companies, who hated the idea of financing years long, weekly sessions costing them ever more and more.

The GRE's, then, were in three parts, language, mathematical and logical reasoning. How did I do? I am proud to say I scored a standard deviation and some ABOVE everyone else on the language part, the mean on math and I was shocked to see I did horribly on the logical reasoning with a standard deviation below. I wasn't happy about that. I was weak in that section but didn't know how weak. The language part was easy for me. That's my gift, talent I guess. I can still read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. I can't do math in my head though, I need pencil and paper or a calculator and I'll get to that in a minute. Here's something cool. English wasn't the English you and I speak today.

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote     When April's gentle rains have pierced the drought

The droghte of march hath perced           of March right to the root, and bathed each sprout

to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour     through every vein with liquid of such power

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;       it brings forth the engendering of the flower;

Whan zephirus eek with his sweete           When Zephyrus too with his sweet breath has blown

breeth 

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth        Through every field and forest, urging on

Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne       the tender shoots, and then there's a youthful sun

Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,     His second half course through the Ram now run

And smale foweles maken melodye,           and little birds make melody.

That's how they spoke back then. It sounded like this: “The droughty of March hath pierce-ed to the rooty. And bath-ed every veiny in sweech licore.”

Anyways...I did well with languages. Math on the other hand I sucked at or at least barely manage to pass throughout my school career. The reason? Shitty math teachers. I sat down one time and compared my grades to the teachers I liked vs. the ones I hated. The ones I liked I did fairly well, the ones I hated? Awful. There were more awful than liked.

I hope things have changed. My experience with math teachers was that they were the shortest tempered, impatient and cruelest beings on the Earth. I can point to ONLY two math types I have met that were completely perfect.

I can remember this in second grade from our teacher who shouted, “You got it WRONG!!” That was followed by having to back up and and redo the problem as she/he would find out that you didn't know the procedure to find parts A and B which got you to C. Then there was more complaining from the teacher.

The WORST teacher in math I had and I'll name him here, Richard Pascucci, was a piece of work. In Saint Ray's many of us had to take him for geometry, B level (college prep) with it's geometrical proofs. Seeing this again makes me hug my math PTSD even tighter.

Pretty much every Friday we'd have a test on the week's past work. On the following Monday we'd get the tests back and he'd go over each problem on how to solve it.

I remember this distinctly one Monday morning. It was first period and we were all sitting there waiting for Pascucci to arrive.

“What do you think he'll bitch about today?” asked one of us.

I say: “Oh, he'll come in, blow half the class telling us all what idiots we are for failing Friday's test.”

Some others of the class turned towards me with that knowing look in their faces.

Soon arrives Pascucci. He walks in, drops a bundle of papers on his desk with a THUMP. Those were the corrected tests and then says:

“I spent A WHOLE WEEK trying to explain to you how to do this! What more can I do? Over HALF of you FAILED the test!! What is it? Are you even AWAKE? HUH?” Pascucci didn't even bother to hide his disgust for us.

He then tries out a new teaching resource, colored chalk.

We go through each question and with various colors, he spells out the logic behind these proofs and how to conclude them. The chalk didn't help matters at all as I found out from several others. As we filed out into the hallway after the bell rang, someone behind me chirps up; “Duhhhh, we 'tards can now better understand this with the pretty colors!”

Pascucci should have never been a teacher or perhaps he was the worst example of a typical math teacher of the time. Either way, I hated his guts.

Years later, I had to take a required statistics course for my major in psychology. All science, including social sciences, are really math in the end. I was to learn about correlation coefficients, Spearman Rho's, regression analysis and degrees of freedom. I knew I was going to pass with barely a C- in this course and that would mean struggling to attain that.

But, what luck. It was taught by Earl Simpson. This guy could explain Einstein to a 10 year old and make it reasonable. I sat there, understanding without too much difficulty, every concept behind statistics, the formulas and how to design tests. I came away from that course with a new idea. Perhaps I didn't organically suck at math? Perhaps if I had the right teachers it would've made the difference. Why was it that I could grasp some of the middling to higher ideas of statistics when just a few short years earlier, I thought I was borderline DUH when it came to math? By the end of Simpson's course, we were into number theory and using the then new fractal geometry to design psych tests. I “got it” without that much trauma.

**

Want to torture yourself for a bit? Here's a link to a Miller's Analogies test. You know the set up.

Dog is to cat as night is to......

But watch out...it gets viscous as you go further on.

Miller's Practice Test

Hey Nineteen!

Way back when

In Sixty-seven

I was the dandy

Of Gamma Chi

Sweet things from Boston

So young and willing

Moved down to Scarsdale

Where the hell am I

Hey Nineteen

No, we can't dance together

No, we can't talk at all

Please take me along

When you slide on down

Hey Nineteen

That's 'Retha Franklin

She don't remember

The Queen of Soul

It's hard times befallen

The sole survivors

She thinks I'm crazy

But I'm just growing old

Hey Nineteen

No, we got nothing in common

No, we can't talk at all

Please take me along

When you slide on down

*

“Hey Nineteen”

“Wow...look at that! She's beautiful!” I thought to myself one time at the Ocean Mist in Matunuck. She was probably 22 and I of course, was too old. But seeing prettiness like that justified my flashing an ear to ear toothy smile at her. It's impossible not too.

We got to talking and I rightly guessed she was at URI up the road from here, a pharmacy major. The conversation was fun as she had a brain. What entirely threw me at one point were her comments on what was playing on the jukebox.

“Gaawwwd...I love this song!” she said.

I told her I did too, I always thought “The Tide is High” by Blondie was always great.

“Who?” she asked.

“Blondie...” I repeat.

“Who's she? Does she have a real name?” she asked.

I halt right there and suspect something's really amiss. Had I said “Blondie is a group...and Deborah Harry was the blonde lead singer,” I'd get another quizzical look, I knew I would.

She goes on:

“Anyways, I love this song. I think it came out last month. I was driving home to North Adams and you can't help but bop along to it!”

“...came out last month.” I didn't dare break her illusion that this song was new or that it was released in 1981. I looked down, then straight ahead as I realized just how different we two were. She kept rapping on about The Tide is High and I smiled, nodding and quietly killing any attempts within myself to pursue her any further.

We part amicably and I return to the 40 something guys I was hanging with.

“Strike out again did you?” says Marc.

“Nope..this time I took myself off the roster.”

“Huh?

“Never mind...I'll tell you later.” I say.

I haven't heard the phrase the “Generation Gap” uttered since the early '70s but it really still exists today. Sometimes it's thrown right into my face in the most unmistakable ways. Of course, the youth can throw this up at me, “Do I listen to Ariana Grande?”

“Who?” I'd say. “Did she play with Miami Sound Machine?”

Cue the eye rolls now.  

KILL IT! KILL IT! KILL IT!

If you're like me, you probably don't like spiders, snakes, centipedes and other creatures that would like to envenom you. What I really don't care for are the ones I can't identify. We've all seen those organge-ish garden spiders who are harmless enough. Perhaps a small centipede that's less than an inch long. Buy when I come across something I've never seen before...ugh.

I'm cleaning out my cellar from a small flood. For months, I was swearing to all that was Holy that I would clean out the cellar, now I have to do it. If my Whirlpool washer hadn't decided to burst it's flexy hose...Well, what can I do about it but fix the mess?

Cellars...only in New England do we call them that. The rest of the country calls them basements. I loved playing in my cellar as a kid as long as the LIGHTS WERE ON. Also, if Dad were about the cellar, then no creatures, monsters or whatever could corner me and eat me alive. For a joke once, my brother had slammed the cellar door shut, killed the lights to the cellar and laughed his ass off. In his words: “I could hear you flying up the stairs! I shoved my body against the door as you banged on it like you were being murdered....HAHAHAHAH..AH HA HA HA HA!”

When you're seven, pitch black cellars with doors that you cannot open mean every bug, spider, monster and ghost is coming for you.

Nice guy, Ken was...for having a little fun at my expense...

No matter, I fixed his Little Red Wagon when I told my Dad who busted the typewriter a few days later.

As a young teen, my brother and I would hang around down there as he played his guitar on that Marshall amp that could be heard down the street. I was poking around, seeing what I could find when I swore I saw this 4 inch long, reddish brown, fat-assed centipede crawling around near the corner behind the washer. I flipped! Jesus H Christ!

I grabbed my old Daisy BB gun and started pouring bb shot into the corner where the evil bastard was hiding. I don't think I got him. Those things can move pretty fast with those numerous legs.

“What the FUCK are you doing?!” my brother yells.

“IT'S A CENTIPEDE! HUGE! I WAS TRYING TO KILL IT! YOU WANT THAT THING IN HERE?!”

I was surprised he showed no concern for it at all. Why? These things are Satan's demons.

**

As I was cleaning out my cellar, I found some wet MDF board that's now no good. I had no use for it anyway as it's been there for the possible use of “I might need it someday.” Well, someday never did come. I pulled it up, tossing it out the cellar window and then I lifted the last piece that was lying flat on the floor. As I moved it, this big fat, black and furry spider starts running for his life.

I instantly become an eight year old boy again.

“DIE! DIE! DIE YOU MOHTERFUCKER! DIE!”

I'm stomping my foot where I think this little bastard is and what athletic ability he had. He manage to keep dodging my foot as I kept slamming it down. Finally, I hit him with what must've been the equivalent of a WW2 BlockBuster bomb when he went GOOSH and became flat as a pancake on my floor.

I then sat down for a minute, completely creeped out by this spider I could not identify and began wondering how many of his family were lurking in the shadows still. I could feel their disgusting eyes, all 8 of them, per spider, looking at me, waiting for that moment to bite me.

I go upstairs and mix up an Allethrin nerve gas cocktail for them. I go back down and start spraying the crap out of any dark area I see.

Ugh...and I mean that...UGH!   

You want this thing in your house? You'd chase it with a weed whacker if you had to!

Yawn...

Nothing to write about so here's is a completely politically incorrect cartoon from when you could get away with it.