IV. Only By Doing ...

About the age of 14 I became a member of two Philadelphia scientific institutions having a long, varied and, to me, exciting role in American scientific history. And they were just a bus and subway ride away!

The FRANKLIN INSTITUTE, with it's impressive classical facade and even more impressive gigantic,gleaming white marble statue of Benjamin Franklin in the main rotunda. It was there that I spent innumerable hours taking in ALL of the new planetarium shows (learning about astronomy, of course), among other things.

I went to most of the new exhibit inaugurations, "for members only":

-the walk-through HEART, that monster heart that "beat" constantly and smelled "new" somehow-- must have been the materials and paint

-the NICKELODEON, with it's old time silent films accompanied by a player piano, the ones with the music rolls, similar to the one at my paternal grandmother's house-- the "opening" was attended by Sam Goldman of Goldman Studios

-the COMPUTER center, where I saw my first really impressive ROOM FULL OF COMPUTER stuff, I mean a LARGE room filled with many of these huge, whirling memory tape apparatus, the punch-card input devices and readers and all of the colored lights blinking on and off, just like in a "science fiction" movie!-- probably a "dinosaur" compared with a "modern" setup

-the Astronomy Club and workshop where you could make your own telescope

-the rooftop OBSERVATORY having that mysterious ceiling that would open up for the telescope-- the one I saw my first SUNSPOTS with, projected onto a screen below the eyepiece. And all those meteorites on display, those visitors from "outer space", chunks of rock and metal with the etched "Widmenstatten Figures" on them (in the nickel-iron meteorites the "figures" are caused by the way the metal crystallized)

-the frequent, probably monthly or so, evening lectures by "name" scientists expounding their work and thoughts-- I would usually get autographs from whoever I could, but have no idea where they are today! I was really impressed by several speakers: 1) Dr. Freeman Dyson of the University of Pennsylvania, I think, who spoke about his personal philosophy of science-- curiously, he was the only one I could not get an autograph from-- he said "I never give autographs. Never know what you are going to use it for!"-- and I was about 15 at the time! 2) Dr.Percival Lowell, "Astronomer Royal" of England, who spoke about the evolution of the solar system. 3) Dr.Celia Payne-Goposchkin , who lectured on the planets and their evolution. During the talk her "partial plates" noticeably slipped a few times causing some STUPID people in the audience to laugh-- which I found absolutely intolerable because one would think that the attending "members", probably from even "notable" area families (which I was/am not!) would have had the sufficiently "proper" upbringing to realize that there was NOTHING funny to the "slips"! I was amazed!! 4) Dr. Linton Sattertwaite of the University of Pennsylvania and their University Museum (a remarkable place dedicated to archaeology) who spoke on their forthcoming expedition to the Lost City of Tikal, until then hidden by the jungle in Guatemala. I wrote to him later, asking whether I could join their team as a photographer or general helper, but he replied that most of the work would be carried out during the school year, thus making it impossible-- and "thanks" for my asking. 5) Drs...&... , who spoke and showed innumerable slides of their newly discovered "organized elements", strange microscopic spore-like objects actually found as inclusions WITHIN a rare class of meteorites, the "carbonaceous chondrites". Of course their work was greeted with skepticism and there were many questions following the presentation, "Did you check for 'contamination'?", "Can these organized elements be related to terrestrial spore or pollen grains?"-- which they could not because, among other things, they exhibited mostly "trilateral" symmetry, whereas most life forms on Earth have a "bilateral" symmetry-- meaning that if you cut them in half, both sides would appear as almost identical mirror images (BUT, I am now recalling some research I read about years ago that demonstrated that if we slice the picture of a human face in half, then recreate the entire face by using only the right OR the left half, the two resulting faces would appear quite different!!). In any case, their work SUGGESTED that there might be life outside of the Earth, somewhere in the Universe-- and this was/would have been the first tangible proof! WOW, we may really NOT be alone here on this big, beautiful blue orb eternally floating in cold, dark Space!

-the Science Fairs held there under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Sciences, in which I participated for the first time (age 16) with a paper entitled "Record of the Rocks", concerned with the geological history of New Jersey as interpreted through the fossils which I had collected. The next year, at age 17 (a Junior in High School) I presented a project titled "New Jersey Marine Life", accompanied by shell specimens and a report illustrated with colour drawings I made of the species I wrote about-- this time I won First Prize and was invited to attend the State three-day meeting held at Waynesburg State College out in western Pennsylvania-- this was my FIRST real trip, all by myself, away from home-- the classical Greyhound kind! I stayed at the college, met many other kids presenting their projects, and of course I got first hand ideas on "how to do" a better project. I did not win anything there, but I was awarded an "honorary" membership in the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Sciences.

-the LINK TRAINER, a pilot training device in the aviation room, where you could sign-up to win the monthly WINGS contest and an hour flying lesson at a local airport. You sat in this pilot seat-like thing, with all the controls on a panel in front of you, with the "stick" and foot pedals in their proper places, while you watched a constantly moving circle of light on a screen in front of the apparatus. You had to follow the dot through the crosshairs of a small plastic (?) screen above the control panels by using the stick (up and down movement) and foot pedals (left and right moves)-- sort of reminds me of some computer games I infrequently played years ago-- I imagine that the newer ones must really be cool with all the advances in technology that have occurred since these "primitive" days many years ago! I won it twice under my own name-- you could do this after an interval of one year following a win-- obtaining a certificate, a gold plated wings pin and the hour flight lesson each time-- which was great fun!! Imagine me at the controls of a REAL flying machine! AWESOME!!

BUT, being an "exacting" observer of the very explicit contest rules (I ALWAYS have attempted to read ALL directions/instructions in absolutely everything I do-- I might be the ONLY teacher at school who reads EVERYTHING contained in the TONS of sheets we get each year, simply to be AWARE of my "environment") , I imagined, in theory at least, that if I signed-up using someone else's name on the contest form and IF I won again, that OTHER person would win that month's contest. IT WORKED at least twice! Once for my brother Bill and the other time for a friend, Joe, who I met in the Institute elevator going up to a lecture program-- he had my same birthdate, January 14th! Interestingly enough my father wanted to study to become an aeronautical engineer but was not allowed to-- AND my brother later became a "civil" pilot, getting his pilot's license and even owning a plane at one time, although I never actually "went up" with him even though I had the opportunity to do so a couple of times! MOREOVER, his wife also has a civil pilot license and often used the plane they had. Apparently it cost too much money to keep it "parked" at the local airport, and with upkeep and all, they finally sold it years ago.

The ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA was my other hangout, actually my favorite one. It was founded by several of the pioneer American scientists working in Natural History, that vast discipline which covers all of life, past and present, the old "Nature Study" gang. They even have some of the fossils that Thomas Jefferson collected and wrote about! WOW, you can imagine what this place did to me! There were the exhibits, frequently changing, and the lectures and all, BUT there were also the research laboratories and library! A treasure trove of "stuff".

At the age of 16 I started working (actually got paid for it!) in my spare time, usually on weekends, in the Exhibit Department with the live animals. There were snakes, spiders, small mammals and even some tropical marine fish. The animals were kept in the animal room when not on display or being used for presentations to school kids. It was a smelly room, really reeking of the scent of the animals-- and their by-products! I had to clean out the cages, measure the various feeds and keep records of feeding, cleaning and all. I had a raccoon, a ring-tailed cat, a skunk, an opossum, flying squirrels, some chipmunks and a porcupine to care for. My favorite was the porcupine-- I still have a quill or two somewhere! They were all sort of tame except for the ring-tailed cat. Had to wear thick leather gloves with them all, but I often petted them with no gloves on, talked to them a lot of course, and found an absolute delight at being able to "commune" with these neat little furry creatures-- could it have been that I "sensed" that they were part of my/Man's wild/primeval Nature, one which I could "feel" by intuition alone?.

A Year went by and I transferred to the Fish Department in the basement where they housed an enormous collection of fish from around the world preserved mostly in alcohol, many specimens having been collected over a hundred years before! This was my job-- go through the entire collection fish-group by fish-group, noting which jars had little or no alcohol left in the antique glass stoppered bottles, carefully removing the original label, writing a new one on the newer format slip in black India ink, replacing the fish and both the new and old labels in "modern" specimen jars having a "poly" cap liner (the "latest" thing at the time!) which would prevent evaporation of the 70% isopropyl alcohol, the preservative of choice. I would have to prepare the preservative from an "absolute" stock solution using graduated cylinders, hydrometers (those floating things that look sort of like thermometers but have a narrower top part with a scale on the inside printed on paper showing various "levels" of alcohol content) taking notes all the time about what I was changing, checking the original catalogs written in so many different hands over more than a century, and initialing all of my new work. Perhaps this is where my fetish for exacting notes all began?! Again, the smell of some of the poorly preserved fish was an interesting one! Some jars even contained completely dried-out fish, still useful, though, for future study. They might have even used rum or a low alcohol content brew to preserve some of the fish while on foreign expeditions-- some contained formaldehyde, which really smells! I heard about the famous expedition to Africa to obtain the LARGE gorilla they have on display. An enormous barrel-shaped wooden air-tight container was made to hold both the gorilla and it's preservative-- which was RUM! Apparently on the ship route over to Philadelphia, the crew drank most of the rum and the remains of the animal arrived almost completely dry!! Now THAT is really being hard-up for a drink!!

I guess that I was 14 or so when I really started collecting "Natural History" specimens (minerals, fossils, shells and other marine life, various odds and ends such as skulls, Indian artifacts, even stamps and coins) in a somewhat "organized" manner, with a catalogue listing scientific/common names, locality/date collected, and notes that might be useful such as how common, found "live" or dead, etc. How did I get into the "scientific" part of all of these things? Both of the aforementioned venerable research/public education institutions developed and fostered my "professional" interest in several different fields:

Conchology = shells

Since we always lived at the southern New Jersey shore area during the summers, and frequently visited "off-season" to get the house ready for vernal habitation, my almost daily beach walks would introduce me to the fascinating study of marine life, not only seashells but also crabs, bryozoans ("moss animals"), skulls of fish and birds, corals (New Jersey even has some deep water corals!-- it is sort of like the Prickly Pear Cactus that no one "expects" to stumble across as far north as New Jersey), star fish, sea urchins and even sea cucumbers, as well as many species of fish, both endemic (=local) and "tropical species, among other "beach" things.

I was a "founding member" of the PHILADELPHIA SHELL CLUB which held monthly meetings in the evening at the Academy of Sciences. It was presided over by Dr.R.Tucker Abbott, holder of the "Pillsbury Chair of Malacology" at the Academy. The meetings usually followed a "members' dinner" at some local restaurant-- I was never able to attend these informal/social discussion gatherings. Each meeting had a "Shell of the Month" presentation given by a member-- I did one of them, talking about Prunum roscidum (scientific names SHOULD always be underlined), a small, rare snail from the beaches of New Jersey. Guest speakers would talk about their expeditions to distant lands, none of which I EVER thought/imagined/dreamt that I might visit some day!

A Japanese researcher spoke of his discovery of a "bivalve" snail found in Tokyo Bay (BIVALVES usually refers to clams and the like, shells having two = "bi" "valves" or shells connected to each other). That was "revolutionary" in it's own way. He also showed us the beautifully illustrated SHELLS OF JAPAN tomes having ALL the photos in colour, BUT with a text in Japanese, except for the scientific names. I have the two volumes in my research library.

A South African "amateur", Mrs. Norah Rumble, presented many colour slides of the beautiful African marine shells she had collected over the years, and presented the Academy with a "representative" collection. She and I later corresponded, and she sent me many specimens from her "homeland".

Mrs. Clara Burke, another avid collector was also a member and had a wonderful,very large assortment of worldwide shells-- plus, she lived in North Wildwood during the summer (that is where she kept the shells) and I frequently visited her during the summer to talk/see shells. When she died she left the entire collection to the Christian Admiral Hotel, owned by a "religious" group in Cape May-- it has since "disappeared" and the Christian Admiral is closed. What a waste!

Mrs.Edna Hanscom, her husband Eliot and their two children Peter and Nancy were always at the Shell Club meetings. They owned the "classical" HANSCOM'S BAKERIES (my family could rarely buy their great baking because the prices were much higher than the usual "normal" store stuff-- although my maternal grandmother frequently bought there) in and around the Philadelphia area. They lived on the "Main Line" in Bryn Mawr, one of the richest suburbs. They, for some reason, took me "under their wing" and I became sort of a member of their "extended" family.

-I spent time at their home in Ocean City, New Jersey (one of the only towns in the State where you could not find a liquor store AND everything was closed on Sundays! They also had cool concerts in the Convention Center on the boardwalk on Sundays), went on local collecting trips, spent MANY hours at their absolutely "plainly"-sumptuous stone-clad, Windsor-style home, with an impressive grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs, all the great chandeliers and beautiful "period" furniture and Early American paintings, Mrs. Hanscom's certificate as member of the descendants of the MAYFLOWER hanging on the wall above the walk-in fireplace , the maids and butler scurrying about when I stayed for dinner or overnight-- this was my FIRST view of the OTHER "HALF" and how they live!!). Peter and I became the best of friends over the years, and we participated in lots of "different" activities (he is married and lives between Vermont and New Mexico, and we still correspond several times a year).

- one summer they invited me to accompany Peter and Brian, a friend of his from school who frequently went with us on "excursions", on a two week trip along the Hudson River from New York to Vermont, using their cabin cruiser. Peter was the "Captain" and Brian and I did whatever was needed. His parents would meet us at Chimney Point, Vermont when we got there. WOW-- what a trip. I had never even dreamed of doing anything such as this! So his parents put us in the boat, loads of food and sleeping bags and all, and waved good bye as we sailed off into the sunset on an adventurous teenagers' expedition. It took us past West Point Military Academy, Bannerman's Island-- where some munitions mogul named Bannerman built a real CASTLE, for some reason or other-- it was much too interesting to just go by, so we just had to get out and explore it!-- deserted, one "guard". We got in, went through several floors, opened trunks of Spanish-American War belongings of unknown individuals. Found some badges, canteens, notebooks, flags and stuff (some of which I still have, God knows where!). Some of the floors had caved in-- BUT, then we heard the guard looking for the source of the noise. We left in a hurry, needless to say! We went through several "locks", those places where the water level had to be adjusted to the level of the upper River, with the outer gates closing while we were still in the boat and the water slowly rising to the next level as the boat swayed to the deep sounding groans of the water surging in or out of the lock. Nights of camping out on islands along the River, cooking for ourselves for the first time, swimming in the River as we went along-- sort of a "modern" Huckleberry Finn! About two weeks later we passed Fort "something or other" and finally reached Chimney Point where his parents and sister were waiting for us. As I am thinking back on all of this, I really can not recall how the boat ever got back to New York-- or did they have a trailer hitch and drag the boat with us back to Bryn Mawr??! We then all loaded into their station wagon and continued our sojourn through parts of Vermont. The first time I ever saw MAPLE SYRUP being collected from the trees (as a matter of fact it had never occurred to me, up until that experience, that "maple" syrup was obtained from the tree of the same name! "Logical my Dear Watson"!)-- Edna needed a few quarts of syrup for home use-- she ONLY used the REAL thing. Then to the marble quarries in Bennington-- we actually went down hundreds of feet to the bottom of one of the quarries in a large bucket-like thing suspended on a cable! Right down through the "stepped" walls where the stone had already been removed. And there were so many different colours of marble. I obtained several "drill cores" of various shades of marble, like twelve inch long cylinders about two inches thick that they extracted to see what was "down there". Edna also had a reason for going there-- she needed a marble slab for a counter top in the kitchen, so she picked out the colour, the size she needed, and ordered it-- it had to be cut to size. On the way back Peter saw an old Model T Ford for sale along the road-- he apparently always had wanted one. It was sort of ratty looking, but was seemingly "all there". After some discussions with his parents and the seller, they decided that if he wanted it (about $500 or so, after coming down from a higher price!), he would have to pay his parents back in installments. A GREAT way to instill in him a sense of personal "responsibility"-- what many of my eighth grade students totally lack!

-Peter talked me into learning to ski, so we (Peter, Brian and I) went to some meetings of the Main Line Ski Club in Ardmore, I think-- as I write all this I am absolutely amazed that I can remember SO MANY details about things, when today I often can not remember even my phone number when pressed to!! We saw all these movies about great ski resorts, both in the U.S. and abroad, more films about "conditioning" exercises, how great it is to "mingle" at the ski lodges, noting the abundance of alcoholic drinks and all. Then, that same winter, Peter said we would practice "in the neighborhood"-- his, of course. OK, let us see what happens. First of all, the ski boots he loaned me were two sizes too small, but that is OK, I got them on at least-- I HAD TO, that was all there was! Then whenever I stood up my legs would fan out in the weirdest positions leading to my complete collapse. And finally, when I actually got "moving" I would run into a tree or some other stationary object, like a wall! Those were my last ski experiences.

-The family also has two horses in a stable-like structure behind the house, one for Pete and the other for his sister. He and his sister each had that "classical" riding uniform, the one you see at the renowned Devon Horse Show on TV-- the one that Christopher Reeves had his accident at, I think-- with the riding hat, leather prod/whip and all. I went riding ONCE with him in the nearby woods, another first for me. It was "almost" fun-- except that the horse seemed to be scared of running water and when he came to a small "stream" he would JUMP over it-- great for my balance! AND, he must have had an awful itch on his side because when a he neared a tree he would rub his side on it-- of course this would almost knock my left leg up and off the horse, unbalancing me in yet another way and giving me that "unwanted" feeling! I do not think I have been riding since then!

-One Mischief Night Peter, Brian and I went out in his area, to try "something" he dreamed up-- he had this very large bullfrog-- he also had some "cherry bombs", those inch round firecrackers that REALLY explode! And there was some neighbor that he did not like for some reason. So what was the plan? Tie a string on one of the frog's legs-- stuff cherry bomb in frog's mouth-- tie frog to door knocker of neighbor's massive solid-wood door-- light firecracker, knock on door! Door opened, firecracker went off-- frog pieces flew in all directions, even hitting neighbor-- neighbor screams-- Peter had his "thrill"! WHAT FUN!! What a dork! I have since come to the conclusion that "rich" kids frequently do strange things because they are so bored/confused with having ALL the "good/normal/right" stuff, they have to invent really weird/negative things to compensate for their abundance of "blessings"!! Most of them seem to "grow out of it" in later life-- luckily for them! (Except for that duPont dude, also from the Main Line, who killed an Olympic wrestler "friend"-- it was in today's papers, few details).

-Ricky Pew was also one of Peter's friends. PEW, the "financier" Philadelphia family of SUN oil fame, I think. I only met him once-- a shy kid, thin and gawky. We once went to one of Ricky's family mansions, then abandoned, somewhere on the Main Line-- I remember the walls were all covered with textured CLOTH-- something I had never seen before, and there were so many architectural details and all, fireplaces, curved staircases, stained glass windows, and old Victorian gas/electric light fixtures-- I HAVE three or four of them, with the original glass globes, in a house I partially restored here in Trenton!! Peter dismantled some marble pieces from one of the numerous stone mantles-- his souvenir of the trip. It was an erie place, no lights or anything-- only the flashlights we were told to bring along. So many rooms, and that wide winding staircase leading to the second floor-- sort of reminded me of the "Adams" house in those movies ("Adams Family Values").

-Once on a winter visit to Peter's family Ocean City residence, the three of us (Peter, Brian and I) went out for a drive-- yes, he had a car and all, and he was younger than I-- can not remember what kind, a convertible Triumph, I think. Let's go to the New Jersey National Guard base and look at some planes. OK, sounds like fun (at after ten p.m.?)! In front of the base there were a couple of old fighter jets-- cool. He wants to get inside of one of them and remove something or other-- luckily, it just happened that he had brought some tools with him: screwdriver, wrench and pliers-- must have been a Boy Scout ("Be Prepared"!). So as I am sitting in the back of one of the planes, looking at all of the apparatus-- we got in through some trap door on the bottom-- he dismantled some dials or something-- them we left. Put junk in car, went for a walk on the boardwalk. Then he gets the idea to pry open some telephone change boxes-- which he could not do for some reason (wrong tools, I guess!), so he only yanked off the receiver and threw it on the beach. A block further down the boardwalk a police car pulls up and asks us what we were doing on the boardwalk after midnight. He replied for us: "I'm Peter Hanscom and we were just taking a walk" (we were probably the ONLY people "taking a walk" on that cold, windy night!)-- the policeman almost croaked when he heard "Hanscom"! He asked were we staying at such and such an address-- his parents' place, and Peter said "yes"-- connection made-- NO PROBLEM! The poor cop slunk away without another word. When Peter moved slightly to continue walking, the screwdriver fell out of his boot!!! Good thing it did not happen when the cop was there-- the poor guy would have probably picked it up and returned it to Peter!! Oh, well, I guess it must be "nice" to have family connections!

-I was invited to Pete's graduation from high school. It was another FIRST for me-- the first time that I ever knew that some people use two last names: Peter Brackett-Hanscom-- it apparently has to do with how "famous" the second (maternal) surname is-- since Edna was a daughter of the MAYFLOWER and all, I guess that was the reason. If your father's name was "Jones", BUT your mother's maiden name was "duPont" and somehow related to THE duPonts of Delaware, then you might go through life with the Jones-duPont "label"! I guess it makes some sort of sense.

-Once when I went to dinner at their place, with several adult guests attending, I took something out of my pocket and OUT DROPPED my ROSARIES! Edna came over to me later and said that she was "glad" that the guests had seen the rosaries!! Because some people had remarked in the past that the Hanscom family does not like Catholics or associate with them-- that is what she told me!! What a surprise-- something that would have never occurred to me! Are there people like that? I know that my father would not play with that orchestra in a Protestant church-- but that was my father! That is how the "seeds of divisiveness" are sown-- AT HOME!!

Getting back to the shell part and Dr. Abbott (you can see how I can get diverted when I write or even speak!), he was a shrewd person-- he knew that I was interested in shells and suggested that I work as a "volunteer" in the Shell Department-- a chance that I jumped at, naturally-- he knew I would! So for a year or so I would spend my time as an unpaid dude sorting out shells, looking at them under the microscope, writing tiny labels for each different species using a "crow's quill" pen and a bottle of India ink, writing a SMALLish catalogue number on each shell, writing the name and all in the main catalogue and filing it, in it's own cardboard tray in the new metal double-door shell cabinets he had someone "donate" to the Department. As recompense he gave me a signed copy of his thick "American Seashells", three specimen cabinets designed by Thomas Say, an American pioneer in malacology over a century before, and a huge display case made of solid mahogany! That was just what I needed and I was sincerely thrilled to get them. I have since loaned the book to a "friend" and never gotten it back, the display case was sold with the New York Avenue house in North Wildwood while I was in Europe (it was in my garage-lab), BUT I still have the shell cabinets, painted over the original wood in an avocado green by my father-- I guess he had paint left over when he painted the cellar at Gillam Street or something.

Dr. Abbott later moved to Sanibel Island in Florida, a shell collectors paradise (or so I hear/read). I saw him when I returned to the States at a meeting of the Stone Harbor (New Jersey) Nature Club, where he talked about shelling in Florida. He looked great after probably 20 years! He died just before Christmas, 1995 in Florida.

Palaeontology - fossils

Dr. Horace G. Richards was the curator of the Geology Department at the Academy of Natural Sciences. I would wander into the department by way of the "Do Not Enter" door in the museum. It was he who really tutored me about the role fossils play in describing what the Earth was like in the past, making it a "living" narrative rather than just a dry and boring story.

He was a bespeckled man of medium stature, always wearing a suit and tie,speaking with frequent "sucking through his teeth" sounds. His office was filled with books and manuscripts, photos of palaeontologists he had known, and tables were always piled with trays of new fossils that he or his students had found and were studying to later publish papers on the finds.

He showed me my FIRST insect in amber (a big topic today!), how European Bellemnites (squid "bones" from an extinct variety of Cephalopods = "head footed" animals, like the squid and octopus) were flatter and broader than their New Jersey relatives, what "giant" European Trilobites were and what they and other ancient animals "looked" like in life through the paintings of Charles R. Knight which were illustrated in Richard's book, "Record of the Rocks"-- Knight's great murals were/are in the American Museum of Natural History in New York (or is the Field Museum in Chicago?). He had been to and studied fossils at most of the major museums and universities of the world, including Russia-- some thought he was a "communist"-- it did not matter to me what they thought-- he was my ideal scientist!

He accompanied me to various classical fossil sites in New Jersey, searching for Cretaceous (the Great Age of Chalk) shells, bellemnites and brachiopods in the "bogey" greensand marls of New Egypt, shells, shark tooth fragments, pieces of crab claws, worm tubes and bellemnites in the dark clays at Maple Shade at the site of a former brick factory-- now long since gone! (I often afterward went by bicycle from the Gillam Street house, over the Delaware River toll bridge to Maple Shade on fossil jaunts by myself), Vincentown, the sandy "cliffs" of the canal at Cape May for Ice Age shells along the "spoil banks", not far from where he and his sister had a summer place. He was professor of geology/palaeontology at the University of Pennsylvania and was the only reason I applied to study there. We went to the Delaware Water Gap to look for other fossils of other ages. He presented me with "reprints" of his publications, and while I was studying in Madrid, even sent me an "author's proof" of his two volume work on the Cretaceous of New Jersey.

We were both members of the Cape May Geographical Society, in southern New Jersey, and he often led several of the Saturday field trips/beach walks, pointing out, identifying and describing shells, fossils and even trees and birds. He was an old time NATURALIST, not one of these new fangled "specialists" who are only "programmed" to see a small part of Nature and have NO idea how ALL OF LIFE connects in some, often obscure way!

Dr Richards was somehow connected with the Philadelphia Mineral Club, which also met at the Academy and held numerous study trips to collect fluorescent minerals at the old Franklin Mines in New Jersey, and to other sites in Pennsylvania for other minerals and just plain old rock specimens illustrating different chapters of the Earth's past history. The mother of a friend of mine who always went on the mineral trips with us told me once, "Sonny, you know I never see you appear 'happy' and 'excited' EXCEPT when you are out on one of these field trips, learning something new and taking piles of specimens with you!" She was probably correct! I have learned throughout Life that all of these "specimens" are welcome FRIENDS, ones which do not "demand"/"insist"/be "untrue"/"lie" or intentionally "deceive"/or try to "hurt" me, rather tell me about themselves, helping me to UNDERSTAND them and their place in the CONJUNCTION of BEING!

PEOPLE, on the other hand, are too often extremely difficult to fathom, despite my constant "logical" attempts at "understanding". What is their agenda? What are they looking for? What is their personal, individual purpose? Why must they do what they sometimes do? Are they really "sapiens", thinking beings? Are they really as "philosophically" INTACT and REAL as a fossil, that piece of inanimate petrification that had it's place in the theme of Creation and still carries that same SOUL within itself for us to decipher, though requiring some work/research, of course. I have thought for years about some of the people I have known, yet still find no "logical"/reasonable answers to any of these questions. Yet when I hold a fossil, mineral, seashell, arrowhead or bone or whatever, I seem to get "living" vibrations or waves or something, something that makes me feel "in tune", "on the same wavelength", "familiar"-- not an "outsider" looking in or intruding, rather a CO-inhabitant of the same Universe! Curiously, I have OFTEN felt this same sense of "HUMAN communion" during my years abroad. Is it just American "society" which is OUT OF TOUCH with some innate, primordial HUMAN sense or faculty that might give us more "meaning"/ feeling of "belonging" to all which is Life??

Dr.Richards died (I really HATE the EUPHEMISM "passed away"!) while I was studying/teaching in Europe.

Astronomy - the Universe

When I was 15 (!) I founded the GREATER NORTHEAST ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, was it's "President", and had 3 different "chapters" functioning (this, according to some old newspaper clippings I have in front of me). I was shocked NOW, and it takes a lot to really "shock" me these days!

Anyway, my "founding group" held evening (can you remember WHEN you could go out at night without any "reserve" at all, taking public transportation in a major city and such without feeling intimidated!) meetings at the Holme Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, in the Holmesburg area of northeast Philly.

We sponsored, under the guidance of Mrs.Dorothy Fisher, the Head Librarian, extended exhibits on "Meteorites", "The Satellite Project" with a model satellite borrowed from the Franklin Institute-- at the very beginning of the Space Age! We also had other evening programs, one of which I still have the "program" for: "The Stars and the Dinosaurs"-- there were a couple of short talks by Gerry, our "Vice-President", another by me, and three colour movies: "The Solar Family", "The Fossil Story", and "In The Beginning". What fun I used to have! Always the "teacher"! And I still thoroughly ENJOY teaching, despite the radical changes in social and educational mores which we can see all around us today. Most of the Club members were kids, with a sprinkling of parents now and then.

Gerry had a telescope and only lived two blocks from the Gillam Street house-- an authentic "nerd"! Nice and very intelligent, but none the less nerdy-- imagine, IF I can call him "nerdy", I myself must have appeared SUPER NERDY!!.

With his telescope I was introduced to "declination" and "ascension", the two coordinates used to locate an object in the skies. We saw planets, the Moon and its details, even a couple of faint galaxies. When satellites became more numerous and predictably visible, we both joined the "Artificial Satellite Observers" group whose job it was to "locate" satellites in order to return the data to some central place so that the movement of these artificial "moons" could be plotted more exactly. We took "timed" hour-long black and white photos of the night sky in order to see the apparent circular motion of the stars around the Pole Star-- what we really photographed was the rotation of the Earth on it's "axis", making the stars appear to move in circles, shown by a series of concentric lines.

We both also joined the Amateur Telescope Makers' Club at the Franklin Institute. We actually ground our own mirror to make a reflecting telescope, using a thick glass "blank" eight inches in diameter. We used hot pitch to stick the blank to a wood post,and klutzy us, we poured it on too fast, making some odd move and the hot black stuff spilled all over our pants! We had to take the subway and bus home with this large black blotch showing-- embarrassing, to say the least for two kids who looked like slobs! Then we put grinding powder and water on top of the blank-- first a coarser grade, then finer and finer grain sizes as the mirror reached certain points in the process-- walking for hours and hours around the post/blank to grind the extremely exact "parabolic" surface necessary for the telescope to function as it should. Then there were the several tests of the mirror using a light source and meter stick, to check the exactness of the grinding process, the curvature of the mirror-to-be and to ascertain the "focal length"-- the distance between the "primary" mirror (the one we were making) and the "secondary mirror, that immediately below the "eyepiece" which would focus the light/image to our eye. And we actually did do it correctly, somehow, and that is how Gerry and I made his first Newtonian reflecting telescope! Our "Window on the Universe"!

Ten years ago I bought a ten inch "state of the art" MEADE 2080/LX3 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope having a quartz drive, illuminated viewfinder and other cool stuff (you can take absolutely great pictures with it, even of distant galaxies!)-- and have used it about ten times since then! (That is a "galaxy" of tens in one paragraph!) Some of those times at another school I was assigned to in Trenton when we had a great Science Club going, mainly because the principal had the "insight" to allow me to totally organize the whole thing. But school stuff will be part of the topics discussed in a later chapter.

I started this chapter about ten hours ago, have gone through one quick check/revision and am now "calling it quits"-- have not even had lunch or dinner yet! Who knows when the next installment will appear? "Stay tuned"! Saturday/Sunday, 27/28 January 1996

Next Chapter

RSP Main

Questions and comments may be emailed to the editor of Kardas.net at

This page was updated with the able assistance of an Apple G5 iMac, the Perfect Home / Office Computer     PageMill and the PageMill logo are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated

Free counters provided by Andale.

COPYRIGHT © 1997 - 2007 by La Atlántida Web Design. All rights reserved. due to the constantly changing nature of the Internet, some external links may no longer be valid My Other Domains Privacy Policy