Update 1-1-08

Hi,

First of all, Happy New Year.  Nice how that works out this year in terms of passing on good wishes.  Other well-wishers:

From Rich Sternhell:  I have just had the most wonderful experience of becoming a grandfather for the first time.  My daughter, as a resident physician, had to return to work after only four weeks of leave.  As my wife's teaching responsibilities prevented her from taking time off, I spent two wonderful weeks as a nanny of a four-to-six week old beautiful little girl.  While exhausting, it may qualify as among the best two weeks of my life.  I encourage all of those who have the opportunity to grab it.  Happy New Year to all!

From Joanne Shapiro Polner:  Thank you, Robert Fiveson, for the link to the blimp story -- indeed a very well-written short story.  While looking over the ensuing commentary below the story, I was laughing again, for truly, a rule arises:  never eat or drink while reading highly recommended amusement stories. 
      With the blimp story and the thoughtful comments on, and the repeat of, Dan Essman's poem for his dad, 'twas a nice way to close a day of happiness and memories in this part of the world dedicated to a week or so of openheartedness and empathy with fellow human beings. 
      Happy New Year to every one of you South High grads and all your families, too!

From  Evelyn Roedel Read:  I thoroughly enjoyed the 12-25-07 update.  Thanks for sharing.  And, everyone, have a Happy, Healthy, and Safe New Year!

Also from Robert Fiveson, who comments on this piece, “This is good TV,” a new link:
http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=5108454

From Barbara Blitfield Pech:  It is just a coincidence that the initials are the same as mine, and I only wish I could take credit for the youtube entry I am letting you know about.  But, feeling a bit nostalgic last week, I surfed onto youtube.com and typed “Valley Stream, NY” into the search window.  Surprise, it came up with two pages of entries.  I scrolled down to the fourth or fifth title -- BFP VALLEY STREAM 11580 -- that lists it as an “Introduction to Valley Stream: and quite a good one it is at that.  There is footage of every place important you’d want to see, including Valley Stream South and Central high schools, Rockaway Avenue, and other assorted locations, streets, and travels through town.  It’s a nice trip home for the holidays, at the very least.  Enjoy.

Barbara also sends a link, with the comment:  “Dear friends who are family and family who are friends -- Happy New Year, 2008 hugs, and I thought you would enjoy this version of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ "  http://llerrah.com/auldlangsyne.htm

 From Peter Shapiro:  Wishing family and friends a very Happy New Year filled with good health and prosperity.  All the best to all of you.
     Also, for those of you who haven't heard, after twenty-one years in Sherman Oaks, California, on January 12th, my wife Kathy and I are moving to Rancho Santa Fe, in northern San Diego County.  Kathy will work out of the Watson Wyatt office in Del Mar Heights, and I will commute on weekends and stay in the Los Angeles area during the week, while most likely working through  July 2008.  A new chapter begins.

From Stu Borman:  I hope you are all having a good holiday break.  Rich, would you mind changing the URL of my Class of '65 photos on the class home page?  The revised URL is:  www.geocities.com/sab2d47.  I'm abandoning the e-mail address on which the former GeoCities address was based because it eventually became a spam-only account.  So the other site will be phased out, and I've already uploaded the same content at the new address.  It should work just like the old one did.
      On a second subject, I found the recent "gay" discussion interesting.  I now kind of remember Ira Mitzner being very bothered by having been called "gay."  Now, we know that he was just more refined and better groomed than some of us.  I don't recall the word "gay" being widely used back then, but I did first hear it when I was in high school.  I met a guy named Arthur -- not Halprin -- on the streets of Philadelphia when I was on a family trip there.  Arthur came to visit me at my home once, and while there, he asked me if I had ever heard of "the gay life."  I said "no," but I've remembered this conversation all this time, so I guess I suspected even back then that Arthur meant something by it.
      And on a third subject, last month -- as I write this -- I went to an otolaryngologist who specializes in facial surgery to inquire about getting a nose job.  I had the surgery on December 11th, a little over two weeks ago as I write this, just after I had turned 60.  It was a four-hour operation, and I was under general anesthesia, so I got some extra sleep that day.  It takes six months or more for the swelling to go down totally after a nose job, so I don't know exactly how my nose will look, but the otolaryngologist appears to have done an amazingly good job.  The major problem I was trying to correct was that my nose became asymmetric about the time I graduated from high school.  Judy Schulman saw me in a store after we graduated, and in her very honest way of expressing herself said, "Hey, Stu, your nose is bent."  I've been self-conscious about this problem for years, though it’s no fault of Judy's.  In fact, my nose stayed bent out of shape for about another forty-two years, but somehow Dr. Arenstein has now arranged things so that it's centered.  I couldn't think of a good answer when Dr. Arenstein's asked me on my first visit, "Why do you want to do this now?"  In other words, "You're probably getting pretty close to croaking anyway, making the orientation of your nose a moot point, so what gives?"  I didn't say it at the time, but perhaps the correct answer would have been, "Vanity never dies."  I just hope I can run into Judy Schulman again, so she can see the improvement.
     Again, regards to all.

[Rich – Happy belated 60th birthday, Stu.  Happy straight nose.  And I’ll change the link to your high school photos next week, once I’m home again.]

Finally, I was going to include the November Alumni Association minutes.  But since Robert Fiveson’s link to the blimp story has made so many people happy, here’s the whole piece for people who are linkphobic.
     From “The Straight Dope” by Cecil Adams – The Horror of Blimps
     Last week while travelling I stopped at a Zany Brainy store and saw that they had a blimp for sale. It's called Airship Earth, and it's a great big balloon with a map of the Earth on it, and two propellors hanging from the bottom. You blow up the balloon with helium put batteries in it, and you have a radio controll indoor blimp.
     I'd seen these things for sale in Sharper Image catalogs for $60-$75. At Zany Brainy it was on clearance for $15. What a deal!
     Last night my wife was playing tennis and it was just my daughter and I at home. I bought a small helium tank from a party store, and last night we put the blimp together.
     Let me tell you, it's quite a blimp. It's huge. The balloon has like a 3 ft diameter.
     We blew it up with the tank attacched the gondola with the propellors, and put in batteries.
     Then we balanced the blimp for neutral bouyancy with this putty that came with it, so it hangs in the air by itself neither rising nor falling.
     It was easy and fun, and then I blew up another balloon and made Mickey Mouse helium voices for my daughter.
     My three year old girl loved it. We flew the blimp all over the house, terrorized the dog, attacked the fish tank, and the controls were so easy my daughter could fly.
     Let's face it, blimps are fun.
     Alas, the fun had to end and my daughter had to go to sleep. I left the blimp floating in my office downstairs, my wife came home, and we went to bed, and slept the sleep of the righteous.
     At this point it is important to know that my house has central heating. I have it configured to blow hot air out on the ground floor and take it in at the second floor to take advantage of the fact that heat rises.
     The blimp which was up until this moment a fun toy here embarked on a career of evil. Using the artificial convection of my central heating, the blimp stealthily departed my office. It moved silently through the living and drifted to the staircase. Gliding wraithlike over the staircase it then entered the bedroom where my wife and I lay sleeping peacefully.
     Running silently, and gliding six feet or so above the ground on invisible and tiny air currects it approached the bed.
     In spite of it's noiseless passage, or perhaps because of it, I awoke. That doesn't really say it properly. Let me try again.
     I awoke, the way you awake at 2:00 AM when your sleeping senses suddenly tell you without reason that the forces of evil on converging on you.
     That still doesn't do it. Let me try one more time.
     I awoke the way you awake when you suddenly know that there is a large levitating sinister presence hovering towards you with menacing intent through the maligant darkness.
     Now sometimes I do wake up in the middle of the night thinking that there are large sinister and menacing things floating out of the darkness to do me and mine evil. Usually I open my eyes, look and listen carefully, decide it was a false alarm, and go back to sleep.
     So, the fact that I awoke in such a manner was not all that unusual.
     On this occasion I awoke to the sense that there was a large menacing presence approaching me silently out of the gloom, so I opened my eyes, and there it was! A LARGE SILENT MENACING PRESENCE WAS APPROACHING ME OUT OF THE GLOOM, AND IT COULD FLY!!!
     Somewhere in the control room of my mind a fat little dwarf in a security outfit was paging through a Penthouse while smoking a cigar with his feet up on the table, watching the security monitors of my brain with his peripheral vision. Suddenly he saw the LARGE SILENT SINSITER MENACING FLOATING PRESENCE coming at me, and he pulled every panic switch and hit every alarm that my body has. A full decade's allotment of adrenaline was dumped into my bloodstream all at once. My metabolism went from "restful sleep mode" to HOLY SHIT! FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE!!!! mode" in a nanosecond. My heart went from twenty something beats per minute to about 240 even faster.
     I always knew this was going to happen. I always knew that skepticism and science were mere psychological decorations and vanities. Deep in our alligator brains we all know that the world is just chock full of evil and monsters and sinister forces aligned against us, and it is only a matter of time until they show up. Evolution know this, too. It knows what to do when the silent terror comes at you from out of the dark.
     When 50 million years worth of evolutionary survival instinct hits you all at once flat in the gut at 200 mph it is not a pleasant sensation.
     Without volition I screamed my battle cry (which is indistinguishable to the sound a little girl makes when you drop a spider down her dress (not that I'd know what that sounds like,) and lept out of bed in my underwear.
     I struck the approaching menace with all my strength and almost fell over at the total lack of resistance that a helium balloon offers when you punch the living shit out of it with all the stength that sudden middle of the night terror produces.
     Its trajectory took it straight into the ceiling fan which whipped it about the room at terrifying velocity.
     Seeking a weapon, I ripped the alarm clock out of its plug and hurled it at the now High Velocity Menacing presence (breaking the clock and putting a nice hole in the wall.)
     Somehow at this moment I suddenly realized that I was fighting the blimp, and not a monster. It might have been funny if I didn't truly and actually feel like I was having a legitimate heart-attack.
     On quivering legs I went to the bathroom and literally gagged into the toilet while shaking uncontrollably with the shock of the reaction I'd had.
     Unbeleivably, both my wife and daughter had completely slept through the incident. When I decided that I wasn't having a heart attack after all I went back into the bedroom and found the blimp which had somehow survived the incident.
     I took it to the walk in closet and released it inside where it floated around with the air currents released from the vents in there. I closed the door, this sealing it in, and went back to bed. About 500 years later I fell asleep.
     At about 7 am my wife awoke. She had been playing tennis and wasn't aware that we have assembled the blimp the previous evening, and that is was now floating around the the walk-in closet that she approached.
     The dyndamic between the existing air currents of the closet and the suction caused by opening the door was just enough to give the blimp the appearance of an Evil Sinister Menace flying straight towards her.
     This time the blimp did not survive the encounter, nor almost, did I, as I had to explain to my very angry spouse what motivated me to hide an evil lurking presence in the closet for her to find at 7 am.
     I can order replacement balloons on the internet but I don't think I will.
     Some blimps are better off dead.