.....Well I got to my blog after being asked to sign in--which I haven't had to do in a very long time--and I started clicking on things I have not seen to this day! One of the clicks landed me on a page with 42 unpublished comments from various former posts. Most of them were from somebody named "anonymous" and since I do not know anyone by that name I deleted all 42 at one click, and started to write this post. There is not much I can say at this juncture in my life except that at the moment I am sick with bronchitis and I have to use the "nebulizer" with medication four times a day. So, in order to give my readers (hah!) something to read, I will repeat some comments I have received on occasion from former students. I cannot help it if it seems as though I am bragging or something; OK, so I am bragging or something. But seriously, I started writing this blog some years ago so that my grandchildren would know more about their grandfather than some grandchildren know about their grandfather after he has passed away. I'll just do one comment today:
.....Sept. 17 2001
I owe it all to Dr. Ross...Shakespeare (Hamlet in particular), Beowulf (read with gusto in its lyrical Old English), and Freud (for dummies). The roots that started at North Shore H.S. have blossomed. I married an Englishman...and look forward to our bi-annual pilgrimages to Stratford-Upon Avon's Royal Shakespeare Theatre and eagerly anticipate the next great Branagh adaptation (my favorite is still Henry V). I have become a writer of children's picture books...in verse, having been a poet since the 4th grade it seemed like the logical thing to do. I too was wide eyed with wonder and hung on every syllable in Dr. Ross' class. There seems to be quite a few of us who were able to climb out of the DARK PIT...INTO THE LIGHT, thanks to the love of "higher thinking" drummed into us by Dr. Ross. The problem is...the rest of the people we have to deal with on a daily basis are still in the dark.
BARBARA BURTIS 1977
.....Well, there you have it. Thanks, Barbara. Actually, I'm having problems remembering many of my former students, and that is a shame--I'm not proud of it. I'm proud that former students remember me--I cannot name a single teacher of mine in high school. That was James Monroe HS in the Bronx; it no longer exists. Neither do many of my students. Neither does my memory.
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Ruthie! Where are you? I need you here! It's getting lonely. If you died, I understand; but don't do it again!
ReplyDeleteI'm a reader, honest, guv'nor! As I told you in my email, I've been away at the Cleckheaton Folk Festival. Do not feel the need to publish eulogiuims about yourself, Baron dear, do feel free to enjoy a bit more security in yourself. You deserve it - your character, your work, your heroic war record, everything!!!
ReplyDeleteRuthie, dear: I feel that I must document the greatest part of my "legacy" which is the 30 years I spent in front of a class full of teenagers most of whom were reluctant to be there and certain that they were to be bored. This blog is a diary which, hopefully, my descendants may read one day; and I trust that perhaps some neighbors are reading it now, and will get to know me better than they do now with their perception primarily of me as a WWII veteran with some medals which they never heard of. I prefer them to know me through the eyes and minds of my former students who are in their 60s and 70s, and who remember me in special ways. These ways are significant in the story of my life; so why should I neglect and hide them?
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