Update 11-25-08

Hi,

Happy Thanksgiving, of course.  Here's some mail before you eat, pretty much in the order it arrived:
   
    From Robert Fiveson:  As many of you already know, I am now in Panama and so, too, almost full time, is Jay Tuerk.  Jay has become an instrument-rated pilot, and I fly a Gyrocopter. Jay is having an ultralite built in Texas, and it should be ready around February.  Then, he and I are going to fly it from there to Panama. That should add a few pages to our extensive memoirs together.  In the meantime, I thought I might share two recent photos from down here.  One is of Jay and me on my aircraft, The Jungle Jet, getting ready to roll out, and the other is of me in the air with Jay's wife Sandy aboard.  We fly out of a small ultralite club we belong to.  Just nearby is an amazing lake we fly around.  It's like being 1300 feet above a National Geographic slide, complete with amazing vistas, grass thatched Indian huts, long boats in the Chagres river, and, yes, the obligatory crocodiles and jungle.  Some of the best drugs are still legal.
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3247/3039284845_0f31dd7f61_o.jpg
    http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3162/3035922907_dbca27b7a8_b.jpg
   
    [Rich -- Speaking of pictures, I have a nice one of Judy Hartstone, Barnet Kellman, and me from our recent lunch.  I just need to create a snapshot section of the class blog as a place to post pictures like these.  Lunch was great, by the way.]
   
    From Emily Kleinman Schreiber:  I loved reading everyone's notes after the election.  It is, indeed, going to be a wonderful new world, once we get out of the terrible financial hole we're now in.  Still, as an idealist, I passionately believe that we can and will do it.
         Those who know me also know that I'm a humanitarian in the sense that I don't see people as colors -- black and white doesn't work for me.  When I heard Morgan Freeman speak about this black/white stereotyping, I tried to find his address but to no avail.  I wanted to speak out with him, so if anyone knows how to get his address, I'd be happy to have it.  We all need to stop seeing people in such a color-coded way.  I look forward to hearing/reading people refer to our President-elect as Barack Obama -- the intelligent, motivated, outstandingly creative man that he is -- not as our Black president.
         Okay, now I'm off my soap box and onto the subject of my classroom at Nassau Community College.  Most of my students are feeling so proud, and they've written that they now see the barriers being lifted so that they can also be anything they set their minds to being.
         And, about our dear Booker:  I love the man because he has the most endearing smile, laugh, and sensitive personality.  Booker, knowing that all of us hold you in a special place in our hearts must make you as happy as seeing Barack Obama rising to such a lofty position.  I look forward to seeing you at our next Alumni Association meeting on December 4th.  Also, why don't more of you local alumni show up?  Being with Booker again is worth the trip back to South.
         Don't forget to visit our new web site  http://www.vsshs-alumni.org/  and please join the association.  Dues are inexpensive, and we absolutely need your support.
   
    [Rich -- As you may know, Emily, Claire, and Robbie all take turns in forwarding the Alumni Association minutes to us.  Now, the minutes are going to be posted on the site Emily just wrote about, so you can find them directly in case I get behind in posting them here.  I'll still put highlights of the minutes in the newsletters occasionally, for those people who like their South news edited and all in one place, but there's nothing like going to the web site, or, better, going to an actual meeting and eating the home-baked cookies.]
   
    From Eric Hilton:  There were some great responses to the last newsletter.  Let me add to them.
        To Jay Berliner:  I think Unitron telescope told me, “Hey kid, stop calling us, buy a cheap telescope, and point it at youranus.”
        To Peggy Cooper:  At thirteen, I, too, was a folkie.  My parents bought me a guitar since they couldn’t afford the 6” Unitron -- which wasn't your fault, Jay.  I loved the Kingston Trio and Peter Paul & Mary, but one of my favorite albums was Miriam Makeba and Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall.  I especially liked hearing Makeba sing the "Click" song.  Also, thanks for thinking of us veterans on Veterans Day.  It was an honor to serve the Navy as a chef during Vietnam.  Besides, the Army was no place for a little Jewish kid from Valley Stream.
        To Hiram Rosov:  I remember you talking me into playing guitar in the 1966 senior skit “Wizard of Wong,” alongside Skip Kolsesnick, who was wearing a dress -- not that there's anything wrong with that.  It was great talking to you last week, and I look forward to seeing you and everyone who will be attending the February mini-reunion in Boca Raton.
        To all of my classmates:  I have read about your lives and about some of your successful careers in the arts, and I've been feeling envious.  But I, too, have received some kudos on famous films I know all of you have seen, and I wanted to share them with you.  First, I was one cinematographer on an industrial film which won third place in the 1984 Chicago Film Festival.  The film, “The Shortest Route,” showcased our Sperry Gyroscope radar system on a Swedish container ship.  I only had two usable shots in that because I was seasick and couldn’t hold the camera still.  And who could forget my directing debut in the famous film “The MK92 Portable Radar System for the Taiwanese Navy,” which was, of course, dubbed into Mandarin.  It didn’t win an award, but I got to wear a long scarf and yell, “Quiet, we're rolling."  Perhaps these were not memorable moments in cinema, but what a rush I got doing them.
   
    [Rich -- It would be fun to see you in that scarf, Eric, probably better than in a dress -- which, in some cases, there are reasons to avoid.  And how about letting us all know more about the reunion in Boca Raton.  There are quite a number of South alumni in Florida.]
   
    From The New York Times, by way of Marc Jonas, who notes, "This is a heck of a tribute to Alan Finder's accomplishments and talent."
        Alan Finder Next Night Editor in Foreign
        We're delighted to announce that Alan Finder will be foreign's next night editor.  Alan has been working on the desk for the past several months and has won widespread respect for his calm, professional handling of just about any task thrown his way.  He has been a quick study in the sometimes arcane byways of foreign coverage and has gotten to know most of the correspondents along the way.  He brings all the requirements for this job:  a cool head, good news judgment, extensive experience as an editor and reporter, deep understanding of Times standards, a collegial manner, and very deft editing hands.  Alan's twenty-five-year career at The Times has included stints as a higher education reporter, a City Hall bureau chief, and a Metro reporter in housing, transportation, and labor.  He has also been an enterprise editor in Sports and an editor at the Week in Review.  We're looking forward to working closely with Alan in this crucial job.
   
    [Rich -- Nice, Alan.  And what we've always expected.]
   
    A note for movie fans, also from The New York Times:  "The Little Rascals:  The Complete Collection" is a boxed set of eight DVDs which offers approximately twenty hours of these films.  Some 220 shorts were produced between 1922 and 1944 starring the “Our Gang” kids.  This set consists of the eighty sound films produced by Hal Roach and released to television in the 1950s as “The Little Rascals” -- a name change made necessary because Roach had sold the “Our Gang” trademark to MGM in 1938.  (MGM continued to produce “Our Gang” shorts, with diminishing results, until 1944.)  For the generation that grew up with them, these eighty shorts are the essence of the series.
        But many of the “Our Gang” comedies are remarkable movies in their own right.  Roach (1892-1992) was a pioneering independent producer of short comedies who also started the careers of Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chase, and the team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.  Roach conceived the series while watching a group of children argue over bits of wood they’d taken from a lumber yard near his studio in Culver City, California.  Real kids, Roach believed, would be a richer source of comedy than the pampered stage children usually seen in the movies, and drawing on recommendations from friends and studio employees, he put together a first cast of mostly nonprofessionals.  He also found a director, Robert F. McGowan, who could capture the natural behavior Roach had in mind.
        McGowan would go on to direct most of the “Our Gang” films, and he clearly had a rapport with children. He didn’t work from scripts but, instead, guided the kids through structured improvisations, coaching them constantly as the cameras rolled -- a technique no longer available when sound came in.  With their loose, loopy rhythms and start-and-stop pacing, the early-to-middle-period “Our Gang” films seem to resist the conventional constraints of storytelling.  They shake off narrative in favor of a documentary-like texture -- here are the real streets and storefronts, brand-new bungalows, and refuse-strewn empty lots of a still semi-rural Culver City -- combined with strange, surrealist gags and bursts of anarchic, slapstick violence.  In the earlier films, the Gang had no set social identity:  they could be farm kids in one film, stuck in an orphanage in another, or living in a Dickensian slum in a third.  As the decade wore on, however, they became more and more snugly middle class.
        The jacket of the boxed set promises “fully remastered, restored, and uncut” versions of the films, which is a slight exaggeration.  With one small exception, the films are presented as they were originally released, with the racial stereotyping intact.  And while the majority of the shorts do look as if they had been transferred from original negatives, at least a dozen are taken from 16-millimeter prints issued to the home market.  These, unfortunately show obvious flaws.  Still, while this may not be the ideal “Our Gang” collection, it’s perfectly “otay.”  (Genius Entertainment, $89.95)
   
    Finally, something else from Robert Fiveson, who notes:  There's no message needed with this as it speaks for itself.