Update 8-24-04

Hi,

Three notes and some more August filler:

From Nancy Garfield: If you hear from Barbara Blitfield Pech about Bea Massa Brown, could you let us know how she is, and if she needs anything from us?

From Barbara, but not about Bea in the way Nancy meant: Reminded myself of a more interesting junior high classroom caper as I wrote about Bea Massa. I did have the opportunity to mention this to her at the reunion, and it's just "silly" enough to pass for the type of memory you might want to print. It was a junior high requirement that all the girls take Home Ec, and damn they were going to turn us into cooks even if we burned the school down trying. One of our first stove meals was to prepare oatmeal and cinnamon toast, from "scratch." Not having a lot of kitchen experience, we read the recipe as well as we read anything else we had no interest in. Bea was at the stove stirring an unmeasured amount of oats in less measured boiling water over a flame that mimicked the North-South game bonfire. As the teacher (Miss Brennan?) walked around to each kitchen unit to oversee our progress, we all stood smiling as Bea stood quietly burning, as the oatmeal began to boil over. Then, rather than (logically) lowering the flame, Bea thought fast, just dumped the overspill into her apron pockets, and stood her ground grinning with the rest of us. Can't eat oatmeal to this day without remembering that particular morning.

From Allen Moss: Well, here goes Denny -- some more memories from the good old days. Great idea, too. Hope other classmates contribute their recollections.
Wherever Mr. Seaman, senior year chemistry teacher, resides, I send apologies from one of the students that made your life HELL for a year. Do my classmates remember the first year high school teacher who looked like Ichabod Crane, with a voice that frequently cracked when he was under pressure -- which was most of the time because we showed him absolutely NO respect! He continually was fumbling and dropping the chalk and eraser. And he was absolutely inept with a simple bunsen burner and test tubes. He was verbally pelted with our incredible derogatory remarks and sniggers while he was trying to teach the class. He was literally putty in our hands, because he did not exactly come across as the most confident and secure instructor, and we took advantage of it. And to top it all off, his last name was the CONSTANT target of our adolescent verbal abuses!
On the other hand, one of my most treasured memories was the anticipation of Toni Rea's class. I actually looked forward to it ALL of the time. I know many of you share my feelings about her and her incredible love and commitment to her field. It was so GREAT to see her at the last reunion, and I hope we will see her again next year. And it certainly is not a coincidence that one of my two majors in college was English. My love of writing and my part-time free lance job now can be traced directly back to those hours in the classroom when I was encouraged, supported, and mentored.
And now for some quickies:
Friday nights at "Marty's" by the Gibson train station with Bobby Friedman, Steven Boughner, and many others downing quarter beers until we couldn't see straight.
Bob Fiveson, Jay Turk, and I in our ill-fated fishing expedition in Jay's "putt-putt." Almost immediately hitting Long Island Sound, we were caught in our own version of the "Perfect Storm." Totally unprotected in an incredible summer squall, we were bailing our butts off and totally soaked to the skin. Needless to say -- no fish that day!
Cruising around Woodmere and environs with Elliot Weinger and Barnet Kellman in the Weinger family "wheels," an absolutely beautiful 1964 Ford Sunliner -- always with the top down, and always the shouts of "shotgun" or "radio." We rarely picked up any girls, but we certainly had to been given a "A" for our efforts -- we kept trying! And Elliot, if you are reading this, I am a lover of vintage cars (I owned a 1950 Buick convertible for 8 years when I was in Chicago). You don't want to know how much your beautiful ragtop is worth now!
On occasional Friday nights staggering around the corner of Kalmia and Brentwood Lanes in Green Acres with Greg Kaplan and Neil Guberman polishing off the last of either bottles of Ripple, Thunderbird, or Boones Farm. We never got carded when Greg was buying the booze! Invariably, we ran up against the dreaded "chick gang" comprised of Stu Kandel's little sister Marsha and her friends Robin Seader, Leslie Weinberg, and Sherrie Tepper.
And one last memory -- for you Dennis -- and that is of how gracious, warm, and friendly I remembered your Mom being to me on the few occasions when I was at your house. And correct me if I am wrong: didn't you own a great old 1957 Ford Country Squire station wagon with the wood trim? Idiot Savant Moss on old cars -- thank you very much!
Best Wishes to all.

Finally, another letter from my world-traveling friend Melody Myles Eckart: I began my search for something different to do back in February, when I sat next to a friend’s sister on a plane out of Chiang Mai to Bangkok. Connie had worked in Asia for over 30 years. I was a true neophyte and had been here about 6 months. She told me about this organization called The Consortium that, among other projects, teaches English to refugees. OK, I teach English; maybe I could be of some help? That was how I found myself on a plane flying to Mae Sot in June, when four months before I did not even know what a Mae Sot was.
My experiences in the refugee camps were an education in living, in teaching, and in politics. I will tell you about the first two because the people are what mattered to me, not the politics of why they are there, how they got there, or how much longer they will be there.
Armed with a good pair of heavy-duty sandals, my granola bars, my fanny pack which contained my life (passport, credit card, phone and money) and my sense of humor (a necessity), off I went the first day to Umpiem camp. I worked in three camps. One is to the north about an hour away, called Mae La. It stretches for about 6 km along the road and is set in a beautiful valley with a huge mountain range for a backdrop. There are approximately 40,000 people who live there. Umpiem is south, about an hour-and-a-half of the most carsick, winding, mountainous road I have ever traveled. It is on a hillside and has about 20,000 refugees. Noh Poe (pronounced nupo) is south of Umpiem another hour-and-a-half of more of the same carsick, winding, mountainous road. The only redemptive factor is that the scenery is so breathtakingly beautiful. I could not get over the rich lime greens of the rice paddies, which were just being planted as I arrived; the local people traveling on the songtaws, a form of taxi/truck, loaded with as many as 20 people, some hanging off the back; the motorcycles carrying whole families (I saw one lady feeding her baby a bottle); and the cows in the middle of the road that would look at you as if you were in the wrong place. Also, the dogs sleeping in the roads always added so much color and diversion, who could think about the bad ride?
The camps are virtually concentration camps with armed military guards. The refugees are allowed out to work, but they have no papers and no passports. If they try to run away, they will just be picked up by the authorities and brought back. They are from Myanmar (Burma), but Thailand has offered them a place to stay while waiting for a resolution to this military conflict. I promised not to discuss politics, but that is the situation in a nutshell. No permanent structures are permitted, so all of the houses are made of bamboo -- floors, walls, ceilings, and steps. The windows are skylights in the ceilings, with plastic covering up the holes.
The homes are clean, but sparse. The Karen use very little furniture: no beds, chairs, or couches. People sleep on mats and sit on mats. These roll up nicely to create an open space. The cooking is simple, with rice being the staple food, and most Karen eat it three times a day. Because they are refugees, they are given rations of charcoal, cooking oil, rice, and soybeans. Of course, the rations are never enough to last the whole month. Anything else, they must pay for, which is why some of them go to work in the surrounding fields.
The grounds around the camp are dirt and mud. Nothing is paved. Sometimes stairs on the hillsides are made with bamboo sticks. The chickens and goats run with the children, and the children play games with seeds, strings, and dirt. The paths between the buildings are trodden down, and if it doesn’t rain, your chances of not falling are much better. The mud on the roads constantly threatens to swallow trucks whole.
I wrote in a diary, faithfully, for the entire month I was there, but I will spare you all the detail. I would like to share some of the more poignant experiences with, and about, the people.
The first person I would like you to meet is Paw Yu Lee, whose name means "July flower." She is a graduate of an advanced English Immersion Program (EIP), in Umpiem camp run by two incredible young adults who built the curriculum. To interview for this intensive program, Patrick and Brooke asked the candidates to just “tell them a story.” Paw Yu Lee told about one of the times that her village was burned by the opposing military, and she stood outside one of the bamboo huts and listened to her best friend screaming because the fire was all around, and she was trapped with no way to get out. She experienced her village being burned three times before moving to Umpiem when she was 20.
Kalu Paw, whose name means "angel flower," told about how the people in her village never slept in their houses for fear of the burnings, so they dug holes outside, and the whole family slept in them. If the enemy came, it was easier to run to the forest to get away. One time after a raid, two young girls were found burned with their father, who could not run away because he had a leg amputated after an accident from a land mine.
The last person is Kate, a teacher from Noh Poe camp. She is 30 years old with 13 years teaching experience. I walked into her class the first day and knew immediately she was a great teacher. Her students were noisy, in groups, working and having a terrific time. They weren’t just sitting being robots spewing forth what they had been taught. You can just tell she has a knack for teaching because she cares about those kids. She took me on a walk the first day I was there. What should I have said in response to her statement: “If I could have gone to college, I would be in a city teaching and making a decent wage. My goal is to have my degree by the time I am forty.” There is also a possibility that she may have breast cancer. She has a lump in her breast, and the medics have given her antibiotics.
Personally, this was the hardest thing I have ever done. I slept one night listening to a rat scratch and chew just beyond where I was sleeping. I was so hungry another night I almost cried. I will never forget tutoring a group of orphans one night without electricity. We were like puppies, all huddled together around a tiny candle, working on math and science and reading. Then we had to walk back to the “dorm” in the dark, over rocks, crossing a rickety bamboo bridge in the rain, with only flashlights. I was terrified I would fall. And how can I ever forget the delighted squeals of all those little kids gawking at me and laughing and loving having their picture taken?
On my last day there, I mentioned to one of the young men (a Karen Thai, but not a refugee) who reviews the new teachers that I felt like I had not done very much at the camps. I felt like I was simply given credit for breathing and being born a native English-speaking person. He looked at me and said, “But you never know how much of a difference, sometimes, one person can make.”
The entire experience surely made a difference for me.

Rich