"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself." (Buddha)

.....I thought my reading public might be interested in an email I received today from yet another former student. If not for email, I might never have known what had become of the kids in my classes; this one seems to have also "made it." I'm thankful that I motivated him, if even but a little. These letters, a few of which I've shared with you in my blog in the past should give you an indication of the kind of teacher and person I aspired to be. I wouldn't harm a fly unless it buzzed on my mallomar. I'm also grateful to have someone else do most of my blog today! (It's been edited so to be a little shorter).

Subject: Greetings from Barcelona:

.....Good evening, Dr. Ross. I was really pleased when Kathy Mackey sent word of your awards videos, indicating she had your email address. The truth is, it's been a long while that I have wanted to know how you are, to get in touch, as I have often had occasion to think of you. Part of my life has been spent, like yours, teaching - in my case, in theatre and cinema schools, art schools, university film departments etc. I have learned what it means when a student says "thank you for your course." More than anything, I think that's what I have wanted to say to you - thank you for a number of things I got from you, lo these many years ago at North Shore High School:

---An understanding of how a teacher (let's face it, for teenagers, a symbol of authority, especially in the era we're talking about) can be passionate about his subject, and care deeply about it as you do.-

--A way of looking at literature as part of "all culture" or something like that (holistic view?), which shows how cultural artifacts that we had thought were lifeless mummies we were obliged to study were actually living, breathing pieces of our present lives.

--I think most especially of your elegant solution to a difficult problem when a number of us protested the experiment of independent study. The first assignment you gave me to analyse the character of Falstaff. As I recall, there are something like 11 or 14 plays of Shakespeare with a character of that name - often just with one line - but I read them all,
and never again did I think Shakespeare "dead." Getting through the line from Richard II to Henry V was a revelation.

.....You can tell, if I'm writing so much detail about something that happened so long ago, that it made quite the impression. Life has been good to me, I have managed to spend most of my life earning my living doing things that I love, I have tasted my 15 minutes of fame (Perhaps you already knew, but in the mid 80s I was the program manager of WNYC-FM). I have lived in four countries, I now speak five languages, which I never imagined doing, am married to an extraordinary woman who is herself a brilliant educator (she is head of the language service of the Catalan education ministry), and share my life between an old house in Barcelona and a little cottage in a former mining village in the Langudoc region of France, where we have 6000 square metres of oak forest, fruit trees and a vegetable garden. I continue to make sound art (these days not so often, but this will change), and earn my living as a specialist in technical communication which puts me in the forefront of new communications technologies, epistemology, multi-cultural mediation, design, ergonomics etc.

.....I feel like a kid in a sandbox, in love with life, and very very appreciative of the good fortune that has come my way.My paths have not been those that I forsaw back in high school, but I wouldn't have been able to tread them without the marvelous foundation I received from you. It was only when I arrived at university that I truly recognized what a good education I'd received.

...So thanks again, and please tell me about what you've been up to (I did catch the war exploits bit - as you yourself said in the interview, a previously unknown dimension).All best wishes, Ray Gallon