Update 5-20-03


Hey,

Letters:

From Booker Gibson:  The Class of '61 is special to me since they were my very first class when I began teaching music at South.  I think I've been to two or three of their reunions because Emily Kleinman Schreiber constantly sends out bulletins on parties, sicknesses, reunions, grandchildren, etc.  News of Al Raitano fits right in.  He came to their reunion in, I believe, October 2001, maybe from Arizona or California.  At South, he was always a performer -- in my class, too -- but he was good!  At this reunion, he told us about where he was performing on that September 11th date in 1981.  Instead of just doing his jokes, he just sang the beautiful song, "How Do You Keep The Music Playing?"  I had forgotten he had such a rich baritone voice.  Maybe he's a somewhat shorter version of Jay Leno, but he can sing.  So enjoy the NBC Second Chance show on June 1st.  Bye now to all.

From Emily Kleinman Schreiber:  Thanks for putting all our class information in your newsletter.  That was great.  Please give my regards to everyone.

From Peggy Cooper Schwartz:  Food memories of Valley Stream and the surrounding area.  For 25 cents, Jeryl Monsees and I used to feast at Golden Crust Pizza in the Green Acres shopping center.  The best slice and a coke.  I think the pizza there was so incredible because of the olive oil they used.  And I remember Len's, also in the shopping center, where they had the best giant onion rings and flame broiled burgers.  Harriet Buxbaum introduced me to the delight of feasting at Woolworth's lunch counter at the shopping center.  Fifty-five cents would  get you a great greasy burger with very greasy fries and a coke.  Come to think of it, the hot dogs at the lunch counter of Newberry's were also pretty good.  And for Chinese -- you just couldn't beat The China Jade or the Bamboo Inn.  Maybe the food network could run a show on "The Foods We Loved in Valley Stream in the 50s and 60s."  Bon Appetite.

In light of the present New York Times mess with Jayson Blair, and an ongoing e-mail discussion I've been having with Barbara Blitfield Pech about my editing everyone's letters, here's Barbara, unedited.  She feels I rob the letters of their personality.  I just want to make them clear.  We don't have to vote on this, though it is, once again, election day in California -- we have a lot of them.  In my father's house, there's room for many voices.  Though, as I recall, they were often raised.
Here's Barbara:
      to all.......it was my pleasure to share my mini reunion....so sorry that so many of your could not be there to enjoy it with me.....next time?...in response..to just some of this weeks notes...zelda...of all the memories..good, bad..indifferent....WHY the girls locker room....if i recall..it was NOT dusting powder that wofted throught the rows of unwashed..sox...also..having seen my share of gym bloomers..we were LUCKY...once the liner pant was torn out...ouch!!!!!!!!!!!!..was the  chinese restaurant in question tim chan..[probably the only place i didn't munch at this time..] ray...goldies is still there...in 1963..i wasn't "involved" with places of..that sort...I was trying to fake proof my way into the central inn and the silver knight...now an office building..EEK! I [suppose] if there can be 2 ed bonlarrons' there can be 2 heta apfels'..althought one was way too many at the time..or anytime after...[sorry heta..but 4 years of homeroom..left it's mark....] for emily...don't know how many from our class are reading..but i can ASSURE you you have many many many hands holding yours as you "cross-over" to 60......as we are right behind you...dear...give it all you've got...  & know...our sixty isn't the way i remember "grands".. aunts..uncles...even neighbors..] then again..our..30, 40, 50...70...80.etc...wasn't and won't be either.....YAY US!  btw...recently went to an afternoon movie and asked for a senior ticket...GOT CARDED!!!!!!!!!!!! life is GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hugs..b

Also, somewhere in the mass of e-mail and spam during the past few weeks, it seems I lost a letter from Jerry Bittman, about Barnett Zinger.  Jerry was wondering why it didn't get printed.  I didn't know it had been sent.  If you've written something and don't see it in the following update, please let me know as soon as possible -- and send another copy.  This is the first piece that's gone missing, but, of course, I may not know about others.

And instead of my usual mouse-eye view of Hollywood, here's a more important voice, director John Schlesinger, as recently re-quoted from a mid-70s interview:  "Here you get up, have a little cocktail, a little swim, a little dinner, a little sleep, and suddenly you're 60."

Finally, the answer to why we're all beginning to look alike at the reunions, from the May 15th New York Times:  Amid rolling pastureland about 180 miles southeast of Rome, dust is flying.  Workers carefully dig through crumbling sandstone deep beneath the surface of a grassy hillside ... The catacomb is only one of dozens of Jewish sites, artifacts, documents, rare books and manuscripts being discovered, analyzed and restored in southern Italy and Sicily.  This work by scholars and government authorities is beginning to flesh out the largely unknown story of vibrant yet long-lost communities of Jews that inhabited the region from Roman times to the end of the Middle Ages ...  There has been limited interest in the area by most Jewish scholars because virtually none of today's Jews understand their ties to these people ...  This oversight has been so even though historians consider that some the Jews of southern Italy were the ancestors of the earliest Jewish settlers in Northern and Eastern Europe.
      The full article is free until May 21st.  Or ask me for it.  The Times address is:  http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/15/arts/design/15VENO.html?ex=1054193280&ei=1&en=6b00614c89931720

The home page:  http://hometown.aol.com/falcons1965a


Rich