2.1.2015 & 11.24.2020

In the spring of 1970, when I was sixteen and a senior at Hopkins, I received a telephone call informing me that I had been chosen to be one of 115 high school students through the country to be named Presidential Scholars by President Richard Nixon.  The ceremony was scheduled for June 4, the day of my planned graduation.  I had mixed feelings about going due to my feelings about Nixon and his policies, but my parents gently pushed me to go to Washington D.C. and forego my high school graduation.

Because I was to be the class valedictorian, it was my duty to present a valedictory speech, literally a “well-wishing” at the commencement.  Because I was going to be absent, Mr. Victor Reid, one of the senior members of the faculty, suggested that he videotape my speech beforehand.  Unlike today, videotape was in its infancy, and so there was an air of novelty about this idea. I prepared a speech, and on a mild sunny day we stood outside Lovell Hall on the side of the hill and he taped my speech.

The speech was about an experience I had going to a kind of mini-Woodstock music festival which was being held at the nearby Edgewood Park.  The event was held a few months after Woodstock itself, and drew a healthy crowd.  There were complaints at the gate that an admission fee ($2) was being charged, and charges of “rip-off” were flung.  The organizer complained to me “How am I supposed to make up my expenses?”  I concluded that the notion of a free gathering of idealists was kind of a myth, and that it was our duty as idealists to try to bring our utopian values to our day-to-day lives.

It was not the best thing I’ve written, but it’s what came out of me at the time. I worried briefly about what the response might be, then let the thought pass.  I had no control over that anyway.

The Presidential Scholar experience, which lasted two days, was, in a word, bizarre. I will write about that separately. Today I am focusing on my experience of missing my graduation.

The year before, in my junior year, I won eight awards at the school’s awards assembly: English, Math, History, German, the Rensselaer science medal, and three more that I cannot recall.  It was a very strange experience for a few reasons.  For one thing, I had completely lost my voice several days before playing in a tennis match with a cold.  Secondly, the headmaster, instead of consolidating the presentations into one or two trips, insisted on giving a lengthy introduction to each prize.  I was sitting in the middle of the aisle halfway to the back, and so I had to push by a bunch of classmates each time I went up to accept the award.  And I couldn’t even say “excuse me”. With each trip there was less and less applause until finally there was only a smattering of half-hearted clapping.  For me it was less an affirmation than a reminder of how much my family’s pursuit of excellence had distanced me from my schoolmates.

The following year the headmaster did grant me my unspoken wish and consolidated my numerous awards (I do not recall how many) into one presentation, in which my brother Harold was invited to the front of the gym to accept a red wagon full of my prizes.  When I returned from Washington I was greeted with a photograph on the back page of the New Haven Register of Ha looking like someone had punched him in the stomach pulling a little red wagon down the aisle.  I felt that he had spared me this mortifying experience.

I never got a single word of response to my valedictory speech, nor any contact with my classmates. I came back from D.C. after a confusing and disturbing experience, having learned that Washington did not really care about the feelings and the views of even the most high-achieving high school students, and I don’t remember even having the chance to share these feelings with anyone–I did not have a “best friend”–I had my brothers, who for some reason I did not entrust with my feelings.  My parents were not surprised by my experience, but had long ago learned themselves that politicians were not necessarily to be trusted.

I found myself feeling isolated that summer. I remember being interviewed by a radio personality in Hamden about my D.C. experience, only to be cut off by her whenever I was trying to make a point that was not conventional or rote.  As in D.C. I felt that my voice was not being heard.

I don’t remember any discussion about whether or not to accept the award. Just recently I learned that my parents were split on the issue. My dad felt that I should stay in New Haven and graduate with my classmates, while my mom wanted me to go to Washington to accept the award. The tie was broken by the headmaster, Mr. Sherk, who felt that the award reflected positively on Hopkins, and that I should therefore accept it. I wish that I had had a say in the matter.

Now, looking back fifty years, at least part of me wishes that I had attended my graduation, to shake hands with my fellow graduates, their parents and families, to give my speech in person and to take in whatever responses it drew, to enjoy a sunny day with my family and acknowledge the end of six long years in the life of a sixteen year-old.  To any of my classmates who might read these words, Alan Spatz, Paul Sciarra, Brian Smith, Thom Confrey, Hans Riemer, Craig Rutenberg, David Kimberly, Denny Lawless, Bob Murray, Paul Kirchner, Pete Sargent, Jim Lapides, Dick Wingate, Gareth Glaser, Phil Kuttner, Brad Gallant, Tim Nolan, Ted Shaffer, Simeon Komisar, Brook Reams, John McGrail, Don DiPalma, Marc Kasowitz, Phil Harvey, Steve Kasowitz, Bryant Boyd, Matthew Katz, Aaron Lipstadt, Steve Katzman, Ike Deas, Richard Hexter, Terry Zanes, Knobby Walsh, Chris Nolan, Tim Donahue, Hugo Dwyer, Bob Caligan, Chris Bluhm, Win Davis, Eric French, Joe Greene, Bob Harrington, Jack Heath, Don Jacobs, Carl Pantaleo, Pete Price, Paul Rehnberg, John Resnik, Larry Pryor, Bob Westlund, Adam Walsh, Danny Vlock, Les Tyler, Jack Tweed, Randy Stone, Bill Schmiedel, Phil Salisbury, and Tim Minor, I wish you a happy graduation, and much happiness and fulfillment in your lives to come. And to my friends and schoolmates who have since died, Dave Sears, Pete Jarowey, Paul Brown, Bob Winters, Doc Gillis, Paul Maresca, Keeley Myers, and Gary Schoenknecht, may you rest in peace and may your families be comforted by happy memories with you.

Not enough cases at work today, so I got furloughed.  I decided to spend the day taking down the Christmas tree and straightening up the living room.

We kept the tree up a little longer than usual, because, being artificial, it posed less of a fire hazard than a dried-up natural tree.  It is about seven feet tall and splits into three pieces, each of which is a load for one person.  The harder part was getting the pieces into the red canvas carry-bag.  I almost called my neighbor Jim for some help, but finally figured out  how to fit the puzzle together.  I crammed in the pieces and zipped it up into a neat package, then dragged the whole thing (thankfully it  has wheels) out to the garage for another year.

Some of you may remember my adventure with a real-live tree two years ago, a smallish tree with a 100-lb. rootball at its base.  After buying the tree, I received instructions to keep it indoors no longer than 10 days.  Given that it was more than ten days before Christmas, this  did not seem to make sense, and so I kept it inside for about two weeks.  When it came time to plant the tree in the back yard, it turned out to be moribund and didn’t survive. (As my facebook friends know, it took literally months for me to accept the fact.)

So when we decided to go the other way, with an artificial tree, it seemed to promise some relief from the heartache of the live tree.  We went to a reputable dealer, Seasonal, a few miles south of Gillette stadium, and forty-five minutes later came out with our new tree.  The next thought I had was “this is the last Christmas tree I will ever buy,” then was immediately struck by the finality of that statement and its implications for my longevity.  So no Christmas tree is without its heartache.

*************************************

“Straightening up” the house is always a daunting task.  When you have a few hours to spend you can pick out a small project, like the pile of mail on the kitchen table.  But when you have the whole day, the expectations outrun the reality and the result may well be that you are totally stymied.  I do not know a homeowner who does not feel intimidated by all of the  junk that s/he has accumulated over the years.  The more rooms, the more stuff.  For example, in our house we have the basement, the garage, the attic, and half of a large sunroom full of paper, old bills, the kids’ assignments from elementary, middle, and high school (which show off their brilliance so how could we possibly throw them out?), ancient  items like the stock certificates that my parents bought me when I was seven years old (how could I possibly cash them in and lose the evidence of  their parental love?), stacks of 33- and 45-rpm records (including Elvis, Buddy Holly, and Bill Haley and the Comets), and of course photographs.  Aah the photographs.  Nothing like throwing sand into the wheels of progress.   As soon as a stack of old photos pops up, the cleanup session is over.  So is the other cleanup session going on in the other part of the house, the spouse’s project, because the spouse has to see the adorable baby and toddler pictures as well.

Somehow my indefatigable mother was able to move out of two residences, our large Colonial family house of three decades, and the townhouse into which she moved from there.  From the townhouse she has settled into an upscale assisted living center, in which she occupies a sizeable condo with two large bedrooms, two large bathrooms, and lots of storage space.  So she has moved some of her belongings from place to place, but she has also been ruthless (in this context a positive trait) about throwing things out.

Of course, there are isolated items which come to mind, for example the two large pen-and-ink posters that I stayed up all night drawing as announcements for high school play productions (You can’t take it with you and Look homeward, angel).  The first one was admittedly a rip-off of the Beverly Hillbillies, and the latter based on a dramatic photo of Jan Capretz superimposed over a locomotive (Jan was the lead in the play).  I was in direct competition with Paul Kirchner, a talented artist who went on to become a professional cartoonist.  He told me that he thought my posters were better than his (mine were more dynamic), but then went on to draw a poster for Oliver which blew me out of the water so badly that I didn’t even come up with my own entry.

Despite the infectious energy of the first poster,  I ended up feeling badly about it because, at about four in the morning (that’s my excuse) when I was putting my signature on it, I decided to cleverly make it out of the block lettering in the street.  Since it was at the bottom of the image, which was done using one-point perspective, it was way in the foreground and came out very large.  As soon as the kids at school saw it they gave me a hard time about making my name so big.  I felt like an egotistical jerk, and found myself questioning my own motives.

Alas, those posters are gone.  And I know they must have been in our finished attic at 310 Yale Ave.  So, they must have been thrown out.  (Actually my brother Howie came across the “You can’t take it with you” poster somewhere and photographed it for me on his iPhone, but now I can’t find the file. (How did I download it from him anyway?) I’ll have to email him about this.

Anyway, when one is ruthlessly (and that is the only way you can do it) going through his or her accumulated stuff, the policy has to be “toss now, ask questions later”.  What comes to mind from the eighth grade is a passage from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden in which he describes a farmer going through life with a huge barn on his back, accumulating belongings including a wife and kids, cows, chickens, and horses all making a mess, farm equipment, bales of hay, and just plain junk.  He urges the reader to shed the barn and live a simple life, free from the tyranny of possessions.

I don’t think at this point in my life that I can do this.  My mom tried twice, but now has a new residence full of stuff at her center. (Even her large bathrooms are doubling as storage space.)

But I might reflect on the fact that all of our junk is the embodiment of the richness of our past and present lives, as individuals, as a couple, and as a family.  So maybe it’s the very act of going through the stuff that reminds us of where we came from and who we are.

Even the photographs.

Thanks for reading.

Looking out the front window at the Beaver Brook reservation across the street, I can see a large group of kids sledding down our modest hill.  They seem to be having a lot of fun, taking off one after another every few seconds.  This brings to my mind our family’s adventures with downhill skiing.

Having sent our kids to a prep school which included many affluent families, we soon came to realize that they might feel excluded from the mainstream if they did not know how to ski.  Friends’ families owned slopeside condos, for example, and were eager to invite David and Jonny, and sometimes all of us, up to northern New England for ski weekends.

We developed the following plan: we would buy skis and equipment for the kids, and one of  us would also learn to ski so that we could supervise them.  In my twenties and thirties (I had recently turned forty) I had some history with seemingly similar sports, namely roller- and ice-skating, and so I seemed to be the natural choice.  Carol was content to be the snow-bunny mom, cheering from the bottom of the hill and welcoming the skiers with hot cocoa.

We all went to Bob’s Wilderness House in Allston to be fitted for skis, boots, poles, and warm layers of ski clothing.  The price of all of this was quite steep, over $200 apiece for the three of us.  (At this point Jonny was only in third grade, and his skis only reached up to my stomach.)

As luck would have it, Ronnie Sue, a young woman who had worked for us as a nanny, was an excellent skier and had even worked as a ski instructor in Colorado.  She was eager to help us get started.  She was quite familiar with all the local hills, and we packed up our gear and went to our first venues, Prospect Hill in Waltham (which went under a short time afterward), Blue Hill in Canton, Bradford in Haverhill, and Nashoba in Acton.

Everything about downhill skiing was foreign to me.  The boots were so rigid and heavy that wearing them felt like being encased in cement.  Even getting them on was a major struggle.  Once in them, I could not walk without a lot of effort.  Putting my weight on them while skiing created a lot of pressure in my toes, and after one successful run I took off my boots to find that my right big toenail was black and blue.  I went back to Bob’s as I was slowly losing my toenail, and the person who helped me (he was called a pedorothist) said to me “Oh yeah, this happens.  I had the same thing a few years ago.  We just have to make a few adjustments.”  He put little pieces of padding in different places, and my idea of trading away my massive boots went by the boards.

The kids, under Ronnie Sue’s tutelage, took to skiing without a hitch.  At each hill they glided effortlessly, looking quizzically at me as I struggled to just stand up.  I think that Ronnie Sue realized that if she tried to help me that it would take up all her attention and energy, and so she smartly decided to concentrate on the guys.

The kids had their challenges too.  Within a few weeks of their first outing there was a neighborhood racing event at Wachusett Mountain in Westminster.  Despite his inexperience, Ronnie Sue was convinced that David would enjoy competing in these friendly races.  We drove over an hour to Wachusett and David suited up.

The races were held at the bottom of the “bunny slope”, a gentle, friendly slope under normal conditions.  However, the conditions were not normal, but quite icy (i.e. “normal” for New England).  As we watched and waited at the bottom of the hill, we saw skiers coming down quite fast, with a few wipeouts as well.  A PA system was used to announce the skiers and their times.

David’s name was called, and we saw a small figure skiing quite smoothly back and forth down the hill.  As he finished the short course and approached us, we stepped forward to congratulate him, but instead he sailed right past us and skied all the way down to the lodge.  Leaning against the vertical gray shingling, he threw down his poles, removed his skis and his boots, and, as we arrived by his side, said “I’m done.”  As it turns out, David had been terrified the entire way down owing to the speed of the icy surface, and, despite his good race time, had absolutely no desire to repeat the experience.

This incident reminded me of the only previous time I had ever been on skis, about twenty years before.  A group of college choir friends were going up to Killington VT for a ski party and I was invited.  Without a second thought I tagged along (“Oh it’s easy, you’ll like it!”) and rented boots, skis, and poles.  I was not dressed at all for skiing, wearing a tan army shirt and dungarees.

On my first trip up the lift I dropped one of my poles.  I was panicked by this, but at the top a fellow choir member from Colorado named John gave me one of his, and proceeded to ski beautifully down the hill with only one pole.

We were on a huge beginner slope which was called something like ‘The Mill”.  There were hundreds of skiers in the growing darkness.  I launched myself and started to ski down.  Within milliseconds I came to a horrifying realization: I was on solid ice, and accelerating rapidly.  Not knowing what to do, I did the only thing I could think of:  I sat on my rear end and came skidding to a messy stop.

Standing up took me several minutes, but after that I tried again, and learned to my delight that I could ski quite smoothly going down and to my right.  However, I was much more tense and shaky going to my left, and furthermore the transition from one to the other was quite difficult for me because I had no idea how to turn! And so I made my way down the hill, skiing to the right edge of the course, falling on my butt, getting up, struggling to the left edge of the course, and falling again.  I think I actually made two runs down that course, and woke up the next morning with black and blues in all of the predictable places.

Despite this inauspicious exposure, I took up roller skating and then ice skating several years later, and became a decent skater (i.e. I could skate backwards and enjoy it).  Both Carol and I expected that these experiences would translate easily to downhill skiing with our sons.  We turned out to be wrong.

At first I was surprised to learn that a girl who had grown up skiing at Nashoba, a small hill nearby, had become a member of U.S. Olympic team.  I wondered how she could compete with the girls from Colorado or Park City, Utah, with their perfect white powder and plentiful slopes.  After these two experiences, David’s and mine, I realized that skiing in the ice and crusty snow of New England was probably more challenging than skiing on perfect powder, and could form the crucible for an excellent and fearless skier.

Around 1974, when I was 21 years old and in my second year of medical school, my old girlfriend and I got hooked on The Waltons, a new TV series about a large family living in rural Virginia during the Depression and then World War II.  Earl Hamner’s book The Homecoming served as the basis of the story.  Every Thursday night at 8 PM it became almost gospel to watch The Waltons.

My wife Carol and I have rediscovered this show, being rebroadcast on Hallmark TV.  The only catch is that the rebroadcasts are of episodes from seasons 7 through 9, which do not include the incomparable Richard Thomas as John-boy, and thus lose much of the emotional “oomph” provided by this fine actor.  He was truly the “glue,” as well as the star, of the show.

Therefore we have sought other venues to watch as well.  The pilot, The Homecoming, is available on Youtube, and is quite satisfying.  The season one opener, The Foundling, is available for free on Amazon, and is about the family taking in an abandoned deaf mute girl.  We also watched the second episode of the second season for $2.99, in which John-boy seeks privacy to write but ends up delivering a baby!  As implausible as the plot sounds, it was executed very well and made for a coherent story.

The show started in the 1972-73 season and won multiple Emmy awards starting in 1973, including many for its excellent cast, including Richard Thomas, Michael Learned, Ralph Waite, Ellen Corby, and Will Geer.  These actors helped to create a feeling of authenticity which was remarkable.  In its second season the show ranked #2 in viewership.  It ran for five and a half seasons with Richard Thomas, and three and a half more seasons without him.  After nine seasons, the show came to an end after having established a loyal following.

The show is about “old fashioned values”: home, family, respect for others, unselfishness.  As the old saying goes, “They don’t make shows like this anymore.”  The closest approximation that comes to mind is Parenthood, an ensemble show with more modern issues, but themes including loyalty, self-realization, and family.

John-boy is the character who embodies Hamner as a youth.  He is drawn to writing, and stays up late at night writing a journal which will evolve into his novel.  Thomas portrays John-boy as a sensitive, intelligent, and empathetic young man who becomes a third parent to his six siblings and learns much about life from shouldering this responsibility, and by his openness to the inhabitants of Walton’s Mountain.  His sensitivity molds these experiences into life lessons which are compelling, and told in nuanced ways.  Despite its wholesome values, the show avoids being maudlin by its excellent writing.

Hamner narrates the beginning and end of each episode.  Interestingly, he does not sound like the persona of John-boy (John-boy sounds more perceptive), but much of the writing of the show arose from Hamner’s experiences.

The show is available in its entirety on Amazon.com, both on DVD and on Instant Video.  I have ordered the DVD of season one.  In the meantime,  I would recommend it to anyone who resonates with these descriptions.  Let me know if you like it.

Thanks for reading…

We went to see The Imitation Game yesterday, and it made a big impression on me.  The film, directed by Morton Tyldum, tells the story of Alan Turing’s role in cracking the Nazi encryption machine Enigma during World War II, thereby laying the groundwork for the invention of the digital computer.  I usually rate movies based on how often they come back to me.  This one has never left me, and I have been reading from two books about Turing, Alan Turing: the Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, which inspired the movie, and The Code Book by Simon Singh, one of my son David’s favorite books.

The movie was exquisitely made, with standout performances by Benedict Cumberbatch (who received a nomination for a Golden Globe but not an Oscar), Keira Knightley (her best in my book) and numerous others.  The story was a sad one, describing how a precocious child was bullied and excluded while in private school, but sustained by the friendship of a like-minded companion who then died of tuberculosis. (In real life his parents left him by the age of 18 months, and he was brought up by nannies and relatives until he was sent to boarding school.)

In the movie Turing is a lone voice arguing for the construction of a machine to undo the Enigma code.  In real life it seems that he was respected enough for his previous work that he had a good amount of cooperation from his talented colleagues in constructing his machine, which is considered a precursor to the modern computer.

In addition to the scientific intrigue is the intrigue of Turing’s personal life, in which he was homosexual.  Homosexuality was apparently tolerated in the society of Cambridge University when he was a student, but several years later he let the information slip while being interviewed by the police, and he was charged and convicted of indecent behavior.  He was subjected to hormone therapy which disrupted his life and his ability to function, and finally, at the age of 41, he took his own life.

It is a cruel irony that a man who made such a huge contribution to society should have been victimized by that society’s own narrow-mindedness.  Many authors have since pointed to Turing’s contributions, and he has been called the Father of the Modern Computer.  Although teams of researchers at places like IBM worked furiously concurrent with his work, the name does not seem to be unjustified.  His theoretical work, which dated from 1938, when he was 26 years old, clearly had a profound influence on the entire field.

It seems fitting that this powerful and well-made film should stand as yet another tribute to the seminal efforts of this special, great man.

Many of you have read my post from a few months ago entitled “My second father and my second brother”. “My second brother” is a bit tongue-in-cheek, because I had three biological brothers before Juarez Ricardo came along. But Juarez and I were inseparable for two years as members of Dr. Walle Nauta’s lab at MIT, and I came to think of him as my brother.

I LEARN TO DRIVE A STICK

It was impossible for me to write about my parents’ struggles with a standard shift without recalling my own experience, with Juarez of course, in the same vein. We had signed up for our first scientific meeting, the American Association of Anatomists, to be held in Louisville, Kentucky. We could have flown of course, but Juarez, hungry for knowledge about this country (he was from Brazil), wanted to “see the Midwest”. In our relationship I was the active one and he relatively passive (or contemplative, to be more flattering), and so his plan was that I drive his Toyota Corolla wagon while he smoked his pipe and admired the scenic American midwest from the safety of the passenger seat. The only problem with this scenario was that his car had a standard shift, which I did not know how to drive. We made a plan to meet at a large MIT parking lot at 6 PM, when it would be relatively empty, and give me a crash course on driving a stick.

When the time came, things at first did not go well. Whenever I let out the clutch the car would jerk uncontrollably, and both of our heads jerk forward and back against our traumatized necks. After several episodes like this, I stopped and took stock of the situation. Juarez looked very disappointed that his plan was failing. I studied my strategy and guessed that I was not releasing the clutch at the right level. Since I had no idea what the right level was, I decided to let it out incredibly slowly throughout its excursion, and see what happened.

It worked. About a third of the way from the bottom the clutch engaged smoothly and we began to cruise around the lot at about ten mph. It was a miracle! Juarez took the pipe out of his mouth. “Oh great, Ed! Now I can see the Midwest!!”

THE KENTUCKY DERBY

Although my memory is hazy, I believe we made the journey in one long day. Our destination was the Downtown Holiday Inn. With no knowledge of Louisville hotels, I had decided that a Holiday Inn seemed safe, and had a choice between Midtown and Downtown. I figured that Downtown was where the action was, and rented a room there.

On the way to our hotel we went along the river (Mississippi?) and saw signs proclaiming “Home of the Kentucky Derby”. By sheer happenstance, the Kentucky Derby was being held that very weekend! We had lucked out, we thought. We passed the Midtown Holiday Inn, which looked clean and cheery. We looked forward to settling into our hotel.

As we headed toward our hotel, the neighborhood began to deteriorate. Strange dark people inhabited the street corners along with women dressed like Derby jockeys, in bright red short-shorts. Even my innocent brain recognized them as hookers. “Do you think those men at the corner are hobos?” Juarez asked. For some unknown reason “hobo” had become one of Juarez’ favorite words. “We just call them ‘bums'”, I answered testily.

The Downtown Holiday Inn was a dump: dirty, sooty, with the feel of cockroaches (although I must admit I didn’t actually see any). We went to our room. I was totally spooked, while Juarez was happy as a clam. “Ed, I think I’m going to walk down to the corner store and get some tobacco. I’m almost out.” “Are you sure you want to do that?” ” Oh, yes, don’t worry I’ll be fine.”

Twenty minutes later he returned with the tobacco. “How’d it go?” I asked. “Ed, in Brazil we have an expression, “I am holding my a**hole in my hands”. “What does it mean?” “It means I am incredibly scared!” Juarez had been accosted by both hookers and “hobos” during his brief encounter with the neighborhood and his feeling of well-being was gone.

As it turned out, over the next few days we got used to our grungy little hotel (it looked better in the daylight) and even made a habit of greeting the hobo at the door and giving him a quarter, for which he was truly grateful. We presented our paper at the conference (Juarez, being first author, read the presentation without incident), and we enjoyed the ambience of the Derby. After three days in this academic fantasy world, we headed home.

All I remember about the return trip was fields of wheat, seemingly endless, rippling in the midwestern wind. Why we hadn’t noticed them on the trip in I will never know, except that our excitement about the journey may have hindered our actual appreciation of our surroundings.

THE PRE-STAINING ERA

When we started to work in the lab, there was already in place a factory-like routine followed by Bob, a grad student, and Miles, a post-doc (post doctoral fellow). We would perform brain injections on white lab rats, then “sacrifice” them and process the brains for microscopic examination. Juarez and I had to learn every step of the process, which we did in a few months.

The culmination of the process was staining the brain sections, which we had sliced thin on a microtome and mounted onto glass slides. The sections were put through a series of rectangular glass dishes not unlike a photographic developing setup. The result was a set of slides stained a pale green, which we examined through the microscope and saw–nothing! The stain was called a Nissl stain and was meant to show nerve cell bodies. We saw nothing of the kind, only odd squiggles which we correctly determined to be artifacts.

What made it even more frustrating was that everyone in the lab would look at our slides and say “nice stain!”, even Dr. Nauta! What they meant was that there was no heavy background color to interfere with the appreciation of our experimental label. Meanwhile, Juarez and I pored over our rat brain atlas looking for indentations and small blood vessels which might provide some clue to what the hell we were looking at!

It was a sunny Saturday when I was driving on Mem(orial) Drive right near the lab, when it hit me! No one had changed the staining setup in many months. Maybe if I refreshed the stain something would show up on our slides! I hung a U-turn at the next turnaround and headed for the lab. Within an hour I had discarded the tired green solutions and replaced them with bright blue ones.

When I put the newly-stained slides through the setup, the result was dramatic. Through the microscope’s optics thousands of oblong nerve cell bodies jumped out at me, forming patterns which delineated different clusters or nuclei. It was just like in the text books! I called Juarez, and immediately he drove in from his home in Newton.

Puffing on his pipe, he sat at the microscope and beheld the magic sight: neurons galore! He was incredibly excited. “Oh, Ed, this is truly the end of the pre-staining era!”

Ironically, on Monday everyone in the lab looked at our slides and said the same thing: “nice stain!”

(laughing when he saw cars lined up at a stoplight)

WE GO TO DISNEYLAND

In his fascination with all things American, it was only a matter of time before we went to Disneyland. Not Disney World, but the original Disneyland. By happenstance the Society for Neuroscience was meeting in Anaheim one year, and, being within a mile or so of Disneyland, we absolutely had to go.

At that time (the end of the 70s) Disneyland was a mess. All of the Disney money had gone into Disney World, and Disneyland had been crippled by a long strike. Three quarters of it was nonfunctional, including many of the favorite rides. It was almost a ghost town, with very few kids. (!) Nevertheless, Juarez was entranced by the rundown place, smoking his pipe and ambling through the different rides and pavilions.

My only goal at Disneyland was to be drawn by one of the Disney cartoonists. So at one of the booths we found one of them drawing effortlessly on large transparent cels. Juarez and I posed for caricatures, which the fellow whipped off in less than a minute. Mine showed me carrying a tennis racket (I was wearing a tennis shirt), and Juarez’ showed him smoking his pipe, with the pipe smoke holding a dollar sign. I realized that he looked like a rich kid, well-dressed in a light suit (with no tie). We were delighted.

Later I altered Juarez’ caricature by pasting a small headshot of Dr. Nauta where the dollar sign was. We were both obsessed with Nauta.

OUR BRAIN RESEARCH PAPER

In 1977 Juarez completed his two-year stint as a post-doc. His wife Adelaide had returned to Sao Paulo the year before with their two daughters, Helena and Tatiana. She was a board-certified internist who had been reluctant to come to the US in the first place, and spent the entire year studying to re-take the difficult board exam which she had already just passed! (Her hiatus for one year nullified her first successful effort.) She was not successful at learning English and felt isolated for the entire year, only socializing with a few Brazilian friends.

Juarez’ newfound “bachelor” status allowed him to concentrate 100% on our research efforts, which at this point comprised an attempt to publish a remarkable finding which we had made using the latest tract-tracing technology. I had done most of the painstaking manual labor which led to the finding, with Juarez smoking his pipe and chatting with me while I worked. However, when it came time to decide the authorship of the paper, Juarez told me that he needed to be first author in order to advance his career. I reluctantly agreed when he pointed out to me that I was still a student, and therefore not expected to first-author a major paper. He also vowed to do an exhaustive literature review to emphasize the physiological significance of our finding, which included him essentially moving into the Countway Medical Library, something which was soon made unnecessary by the arrival of the Internet.

Juarez had signed onto the project in an organic way, since he and I were inseparable for most of the workday. We went to the F & T diner in Kendall Square every day for lunch, and ordered what the extroverted short order cook Dominic called a “quarter pounder” before McDonald’s came out with theirs. I always ordered a Western sandwich. We ate, drank, and slept the brain. I even looked at the sky once and saw a serrated pattern in the clouds, and had the thought “Well, God didn’t do a very good job cutting that section…) We were obsessed.

Dr. Nauta did not put his name on the paper despite the fact that he had originally assigned me the project and monitored my progress every week. He did not explain this decision, but we realized that he probably did not want the second author on the paper to be buried. So the paper was Ricardo and Koh. Since the last author was usually the person who ran the research group, people at meetings were surprised that I was Koh. They expected a white-haired man who looked like Dr. Nauta.

Our paper was entitled “Anatomical evidence of direct projections from the nucleus of the solitary tract to the hypothalamus, amygdala, and other forebrain structures in the rat.” Because of Juarez’ extensive literature review, it exceeded the maximum length allowed by Brain Research, and we were given the choice between cutting out the review or paying $4,000 in “page charges”. When we told Dr. Nauta about the issue, he did not hesitate. “We will pay the charges!” At my last visit to ResearchGate, the 1978 paper had been referenced over 1300 times in the literature, with new citations every week.

SAD NEWS

After we submitted the paper, I had a case of “post-partum depression” and took the summer off (without asking anyone permission) and played tennis and drank Tanqueray and tonics at the Boston Tennis Club. (See tennis posts.) Juarez returned to Sao Paulo and continued to write up the findings which were emanating from our extensive histological experiments. We corresponded by airmail, which took about a week. We met once at one of the Neuroscience meetings, where he was presenting a paper. He was well-dressed and looked well. He had his own lab in Brazil, and came to be known as a “little Nauta” with his encyclopedic knowledge of the literature and his soft-spoken intensity.

The following year, I heard that Juarez had died. He had developed a fulminant case of rheumatoid arthritis which had attacked his organ systems and led to a rapid decline. He was at oldest 35 years old.

There was no Internet or e-mail at the time, and so I got this news about six months after the fact. I did not have his home address or phone number (I had written him at his work address at the University of Sao Paulo), and could not even write Adelaide a letter of condolence. As a result, I never had the opportunity to mourn his loss.

Perhaps this is the reason that these memories are so fresh in my mind. I never buried them. God had blessed me with this wonderful friendship, and I needed to say goodbye. Perhaps writing about them is my way of honoring Juarez Ricardo, my dear, dear friend, my second brother.

My dad and mom were both high-strung people, so it stands to reason that they would at times fight.  One of the most common subjects for their arguments was whether to get a car.

At that time we were a family of nine, six young children and their parents, and a Korean housekeeper, Mrs. Won.  Early in his years in America my dad had seen a movie called The Fighting Sullivans (1944) in which five Irish-American brothers are killed in an explosion during World War II, and concluded that members of a family should travel separately to avoid a similar fate.

Although this theory ruled out having a car, it did not rule out cramming the entire family into one taxicab, which my dad would do during our trips to the West Haven beach.  It usually took some doing to convince the cab driver to take all nine of us, especially after the state of Connecticut passed legislation banning more than four passengers to a cab.  In these circumstances the driver would usually summon a second cab, and my dad would get into a riproaring argument with both drivers.  Somehow we always made it to the beach, but not before our sense of summer freedom had been completely destroyed by these events.

The second argument against having a car was a simple one: neither of my parents drove.  One would have thought that this fact would have ruled out the possibility entirely, until one of Mom’s co-workers accepted a year-long assignment to be a missionary in Zimbabwe.  Bob owned a tan Chevy II sedan which he needed watched over and driven by someone, and was willing to lend it for the year for free.  This was too good a bargain to pass up for even my dad, and within a very short time he and my mom had both taken driving lessons (I don’t know any of the details) and were ready to drive Bob’s car.  The only obstacle now was that the Chevy had a stick shift, and their lessons had not included use of a clutch.  According to my mom, the first few voyages were very difficult for Dad, Mom, and the car.  However, they both mastered the clutch (amazingly by trial and error) and the car became a solid part of our family.  According to my mom, after the year was up and Bob returned for his car, my father went out that day and bought a new used car.

Anyway, having a car made it possible for all of us to pile in and go to West Haven as a family.  This strategy did have its disadvantages.  For example, I remember a few years later, when we had a station wagon, a trip to the beach which was so relaxing that my parents and my sister Carolyn decided to go to a drive-in movie.  The three of them were comfortably ensconced in the front seat for the movie, about which I remember nothing because I was one of the three unfortunates who were in the back-back.  Not only could we see nothing, but as the salt water dried on our bathing suits, and under them, our rear ends became incredibly itchy, making the experience even more of a torture.

Neither of my parents ever looked comfortable driving.  My dad always used a homemade blue plaid back pillow wedged behind his lumbar region, and drove sitting bolt upright with both hands tightly grasping the wheel.  For twenty years he commuted forty-five minutes each way to Central Connecticut State College in New Britain, so he racked up many highway miles.  His driving strategy was simple: “Guys, just stay in middle lane!”  After my own twenty-seven years of commuting on the highway , I have settled into this driving style as well.  It’s more relaxing, and protects you from the state cops as well.

Two weeks ago we saw on TV a showing of the 1965 musical The Sound of Music, directed by Robert Wise.  As always, I was moved by the story, but also aware that it must have been idealized for the big screen.  I decided to read the real story, in the form of “The story of the Trapp family singers” by Maria Augusta Trapp. (N.B. She consistently leaves the “von” off their names, I think to sidestep the anti-German sentiment that grew out of World War II.)  This account was originally published in 1949. (This edition by Wm. Morrow, 2002.)

Although most of The Sound of Music is fictional, the feel of the story rings true to the reality.  Maria von Trapp was a fiercely optimistic person with a huge amount of energy; she is faithfully depicted by the incomparable Julie Andrews, overcoming one huge obstacle after another in a story whose drama exceeds that of the movie!

One obstacle arises after the end of the movie, which depicts the family climbing over the Alps to freedom from the Nazis.  After this climb, the family made two trips to the U.S. to give concert tours to raise money after they lost their savings in a bank closure.  After the first tour their visas obligated them to leave and return to Europe.  After obtaining new temporary visas they returned to Ellis Island to again gain admission to this country.

It was then that the idealistic and open Maria made a major gaffe.  When asked by the immigration agent how long she would be staying in America, she said enthusiastically “I am so happy to be back in this country and I never want to leave!”  This was interpreted as a rebellious and disobedient statement, and the family of eleven was jailed in a detention area not unlike Guantanamo.  There they met other “suspicious” refugees from other countries, including 80 from China, several of whom had already been imprisoned for eight months without legal process or representation.  Their older son Rupert was a medical student and was not travelling with them, and he was able to find friends who pulled political strings to get them released after four days.

Needless to say, this story was not included in the movie.

In reality, Maria was a highly trained musician and music teacher, and the music that the family sang included Bach, Palestrina, and Josquin des Prez, all of which they learned by heart.  In an example of life imitating art, there are several YouTube videos of subgroups of the family singing “Do Re Mi” which I do not believe was part of their repertoire.

Led by Maria and her husband Georg, the family achieved an amazing amount with a minimum of resources.  Maria became stepmother to seven children and proceeded to give birth to three more.  As an adult, she taught herself English and proceeded later in life to write several books about her experiences.  The family went on innumerable concert tours in the U.S. and Europe. They built a house in Stowe, Vermont and there started a Music Camp which attracted over a hundred students per year.  They started an Austrian Relief Fund to help the people of their war-ravaged homeland climb out of miserable poverty.

I have heard rumors over the years that Maria von Trapp was “not a nice person”, or was “too pushy” or unlikeable.  In this book she comes across as self-effacing, humble, and emotional.  In one vignette where the family’s concert contract is not being renewed,  she pushes to find out why, and finally gets the explanation that she has “zero sex appeal”.  Still a beginner at English, she goes on a crusade to find out what sex appeal is, and how one gains it.

At the end of the book she describes Georg’s last days as a victim of lung cancer in 1947, and her account is moving and earnest.

There are many humorous moments in the book, including one in which Maria, a student of American slang, tells a bishop to “scram” in order to get him to leave a room before her.  Later she describes the commuting pains of a family of ten with fifteen bags, including a spinet piano, on railroad trains.  She loses her four year-old son at one point, and finally finds him trying to con passengers out of pennies.

I have to point out an amazing fact about the movie’s song Edelweiss.  I am not alone in having assumed the song to be an old Austrian folk song, or even national song.  As it turns out it was written in 1959 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein for the Broadway show The Sound of Music.  In other words, the real Georg von Trapp never heard this song, much less sang it.  Humorously, Theodore Bikel, who played Georg,  stated that, “after performances, he was approached by native Austrians who said they were delighted to hear that old folk-tune again.” (Wikipedia, “Edelweiss”)  Again life imitates art…

I found this story to be moving and honestly told.  Both it and The Sound of Music stand as accounts of the von Trapp family’s struggles, triumphs, and losses.  If you liked one, you may very well like the other.

1/8/2015

When David was about four years old, we started to go to the Waltham Y(MCA) for indoor soccer.  For a half hour the kids would play six-on-six on half of a basketball court (a heavy curtain was pulled across the half-court line).  Every week there would be ten or eleven goals scored in the game,  all by David.  After the third week of this, I said to David on the way  home “David, maybe sometimes instead of shooting you could pass the ball to one of your teammates so that they could score a goal too.”  I felt that I had said this in the most nonjudgmental, non-blaming way possible.

For the rest of his long soccer career David did not take another shot on goal.

From this experience I learned the scary amount of power parents potentially wield over their kids’ lives, intentionally or not.

COACHING ADVENTURES

For age 7 6×6 town soccer I was David’s coach.  One early Saturday morning before a home game we were having a practice and doing drills.  Specifically, we were trying to come up with a good corner kick play.  The field was larger than our usual, so even Jeff, one of our stronger kickers, could not reach the goal mouth.  I devised a play in which Jeff would pass his corner kick to David at the 18-foot line, and then David would make a short cross in front of Jeff’s brother Chris, who had a big (and accurate) foot.  This play I thought was brilliant except for one thing: Jeff refused to pass the ball to David, and kept trying to get the ball to his brother.

After multiple explanations, I finally decided to take matters into my own hands, and play defense on Jeff.  By blocking off the path to Chris,  I figured that I could make Jeff pass it to David.  Unfortunately, I kept getting faked out by Jeff and he was able to kick it toward Chris.  As I was lunging side to side in my defensive effort, I suddenly rolled over my ankle with all of my weight (I honestly do not remember which one–both of my ankles are terrible) and had the most excruciating pain that I have ever experienced.  I looked down with horror and literally saw my foot hanging off the side of my leg.

The EMT’s came and stopped when they looked at my foot.  How were they going to splint this?  Finally one brave soul pulled it gently toward its rightful place and they were able to get it into a wide inflatable splint.

By the time I got to the ER I had no more pain.  Later I learned that this was because the dislocated foot was compressing the tibial nerve, the large nerve which serves the bottom of the foot (and more).  This became an orthopedic emergency, and I had the dislocation reduced under spinal anesthesia.  But that’s another story.

THE OFFSIDES CALL

At one of David’s seventh grade town games, the referee didn’t show up.  I was the coach of David’s team, and I loved to ref and show off my knowledge of the rules of the game.  So I volunteered to ref the game, so that we would not have to disappoint the many kids and parents who had come, especially on the other team, which was playing at home.

Reffing on a full-sized field turned out to be harder than I thought.  Specifically, I had to stay near the level of the ball on the field to catch any offsides violations.  This required lots of running, and by the end of the game I was bushed.

The game was hard-fought and, with a minute to go, was a 1-1 tie.  Suddenly the opposing striker broke free and took a short pass from an inside, brought the ball up and scored the winning goal.  Except…that he was offside by a full step, potentially nullifying the goal.  I looked over at the home side and saw the parents and kids rejoicing, jostling the winning striker and pouring Gatorade on his head.  At that moment I knew that I, a visiting parent first and substitute ref second, was not going to overturn the goal.  The goal stood and the hometeam won 2-1.

On the way home David and I were quiet.  Finally, he asked me one question: “Hey Dad, that kid was offsides, wasn’t he?”  “Yes, he was.”  We drove the rest of the way home in silence, but I knew from David’s reaction that he understood.

DUCK WALK

I was such an enthusiastic (read: obsessed) soccer dad that I attended all of David’s preseason practices at the beginning of ninth grade.  The practices began with three days of drills and scrimmaging, followed by the assignment of the kids into Varsity, JV, and Thirds. Having played in prep school and college, I knew that David was a good player and should easily make the JV.  I secretly held out hope that he might make the Varsity, which was almost unheard of for a freshman.

David played well in the scrimmages, but had one weakness: he didn’t like to head the ball.  He had probably learned that from me; I didn’t like to head the ball myself, and I never encouraged him to either.  Otherwise, David played solidly in every way.  Meanwhile, I chatted up the coaches, Andy, Bill, and Harry, a teacher.

When the assignments were given out, David was not on the Varsity or the JV, but was placed on the Thirds.  I was very disappointed, but David took it without a complaint.  I tried to follow his lead but inside I was seething, and it ate me up.  Why had David been excluded in this way?  Was this racial discrimination?  I couldn’t let it go.

Being on the Thirds had a few hidden advantages.  For one thing, David and another underrated classmate, Max, were elected co-captains of the team.  Secondly, the coaches recruited members of the lower teams for games, so David got a JV jersey and got to play on gameday for the JV.

But the best thing was David’s coach Steve Rafellini, an entrepeneur and ex-All American collegiate player from Villanova.  Steve was new to the school and an unknown quantity, so despite his credentials he was assigned to the Thirds. (Kind of like David…)  Steve had been a candidate for the New England Revolution team when he blew out his ACL and had to retire.

Anyway, about a week into the season, Steve approached me on the sideline and said, “You know, David is really a good player.”  I looked at him.  He went on “He’s got great ball skills, and he may be fastest player in the whole program.  I don’t know what the coaches were looking at when they assigned him.  I’m sorry I didn’t have a vote.”

I told David about our conversation.  “I’m having fun with the Thirds” was all he said.  In any case, playing on both the Thirds and JV games gave him plenty of playing time.

David made the JV the next two years, and was recruited to play on the Varsity games as well.  Finally his senior year he made the Varsity, and was able to concentrate on one set of games.  By this time he was also universally recognized as being the fastest player in the school.  His favorite play was, as a defender, to let his opponent pass him near midfield and bring the ball up into the penalty area, and then to swoop back at breakneck speed and break up the impending scoring play.  When he did this, his teammates would give each other high fives and scream with delight.

David finished his prep school career as one of the most respected members of the varsity team.  One day I ran into his coach Harry.  “Good season, eh coach?”

“Yes, it was a good season.  Hey, Mr. Koh, I owe you an apology, or I guess David.  For some reason it took us a long time to realize how good a soccer player he was.  And also, your son is freakin’ fast!”

“Why do you think it took so long?”

“I don’t know.  It might be the way he runs.”

“What do you mean?”

“He runs with his toes pointed outward, a little like a duck.  He doesn’t look like he’s going fast.”

As I walked away I reflected on the conversation.  David had been discriminated against but not because of his race or religion, but because he walked a little like a duck.  On such bases were decisions made.  Welcome to the world.

Through all of this, David carried himself with dignity.  He always tried his hardest, and accepted the results and the consequences.  When he made the Varsity, he was the same player who had played on the Thirds.  It didn’t make him better or worse.  The key thing was that he could play to the best of his ability and compete at a high level.  He has done so to this day.

“

I believe that Jonny began playing the guitar around third grade.  He had a kindly teacher named Erica (who as it turned out was a Cajun Zydeco musician) and she started him off with some simple Beatles tunes, which he mastered quickly.  (The only one which comes to mind is “In my life”.)  He played on a nylon-stringed three/quarter sized acoustic guitar, which he enjoyed.

After about a year, Jonny asked us to buy him a new guitar, an electric.  I was surprised by this request, because I somehow assumed that he would be playing Beatles, James Taylor, and folk-rock all of his life (in other world, all my favorites).  Electric guitar was a break from this path, which I came to accept after I saw Jonny’s enthusiasm for it.

Purple Haze

Our most memorable experience with Jonny’s electric music came five years later, at an eighth grade assembly at Shady Hill.  Jonny had told us that he would be playing in a small combo, but that was all the information we had.  We arrived in time to sit near the front.

Of course, Jonny’s act came last.  We got more nervous as the time approached.  Finally, Jonny and his two classmates took the stage.  One sat down behind the drum kit, the other strapped on a bass guitar, and Jonny donned his electric.  Jonny was dressed neatly in a Carol-pressed white shirt and a thin tie.  He looked amazingly calm.

After some tuning and preliminaries, there was a pregnant pause, followed by a soft “one two three four…”  Then out came the loud, distorted, overcranked chords of Jimi Hendrix’ rock anthem Purple Haze.   It was GREAT!  There were no vocals, but the band’s vigorous playing made up for it.  The audience went crazy.  At the end all of the kids mobbed the stage.  (I have a visual memory of Jonny being carried over people’s heads as in a mosh pit, but I am reasonably sure that this is manufactured.)  We were beaming.  I leaned over to Carol  and said “This is the greatest moment of my life!”

Jonny was in the process of applying to David’s prep school, a school which had a tradition of not accepting siblings.  I asked Jonny to burn a CD of Purple Haze, and I hand-carried it to the admissions department of the school.  I don’t know if this had anything to do with Jonny’s acceptance there, but what adult over thirty does not like Jimi Hendrix?

The day after Thanksgiving

Years later, when Jonny was in college, we were invited by his friend Jamie’s family to an annual music-making event which was held on the day after Thanksgiving.  The music selection was eclectic, with jazz and acoustic folk leading the way.  Jonny brought his childhood nylon-stringed three-quarter sized guitar.  My flute was broken (and unused), so I went along for the ride.

When we arrived there was an impressive array of instruments: guitars, a fiddle, a xylophone, a ukulele, an electric piano, and various handheld percussion instruments.  The crowd was also eclectic, but dominated by the my-aged over-fifty crowd.  There was at least one professional musician, a thin guy with a goatee who played very well on a variety of instruments.

The group was focusing on jazz standards, most of which I did not know.  (Stormy weather comes to mind).  However, Jonny eased in and quickly became part of the central group.  (I asked him later how he knew these old songs.  “Jesse (his guitar teacher) taught them to us.”

I sang along with some songs that I knew, which made me feel less like an outsider, and I watched Jonny pick up steam with Mr. Goatee (I do not remember his name).  Soon they were jamming happily, with participation from other members of the group when they knew the song.  Every once in a while they took a break and one of the regulars would sing a song or tell a story.

The evening stretched past midnight, and Jonny lay on his back on the living room floor improvising solo on his guitar.  The rest of the group was also on its back on the floor in a pleasantly comatose state, hypnotized by the music.  I could not believe that this was happening, and I pinched myself to make sure it was not a dream.

Finally a little after one o’clock the group split up.  The tremolo player disassembled his instrument, an imposing process, and the rest of the group stood around and chatted in a relaxed, friendly manner.  Many of them came over and thanked Jonny for his contribution to  the evening.

As is his way, Jonny took this all in stride.  He had gone into another space where the music just flowed out of him.  As his dad, I had a pride which was born of ego. (After all, I must have done something right to have such a talented son.)  But Jonny was ego-less, a conduit for the music.  I have had this experience once or twice in my life, but I have not been able to keep the feeling going.  Maybe I can learn it from my son…