V. Yesterday is Tomorrow

I was accepted at the University of Pennsylvania in center city Philadelphia to study geology/palaeontology. I would have had Dr. Richards as my mentor. I was also accepted at Villanova University, on the "Main Line" outside of Philadelphia, as a biology major-- with hopes of joining the to-be-founded Geology Department, whenever that would be!

Since my parents, especially my father, was always interested in a "Catholic" focus on education, and Villanova was run by Augustinians (and less expensive!) it was not really too difficult to figure out where I would finally go.

The "less expensive" part, now that I think about it, might really have been somewhat MORE expense-- with the hour and a half commute ONE-WAY twice every day by bus Route 88, the Frankford-Market Street Elevated/Subway ride to Pennsylvania Station in Center City, then the Pennsylvania Railroad train trip, via the Paoli Express, past all the well-to-do suburbs and "classy" schools such as Haverford College, Bryn Mawr College and all. I even got to "like" the travel, reading as I went along, observing my fellow passengers, trying to find my monthly student commuter pass to have it punched by the ticket taker-- each ticket taker used a punch with a different symbol on it, so the pass would look like a collection of holes with exotic stars, squares, letters and other spaces at the end of the month. This must have really appealed to my self-imposed/directed/developed sense of "organized" humanness!

Of course the Augustinians required you to take "RELIGION" courses, which I always seem to have gotten "A"s and "B"s in. "Christian Moral Ideals" (I and II-- as if one course was not enough for a good Catholic!), "Apologetics and Church Teaching", "Chief Truths of Faith" (I and II again! There must be a lot of them!), and "Life Problems" (apparently the Augustinians did not think that more than one semester of such "problems" existed!). Things like why did Christ not appear as a carrot instead of as MAN, whither divorce and contraception/rhythm methods and other such stimulating topics were covered. I can not understand why they did not make you take other courses-- we could have "used" all we would have gotten!

But the most exciting "lessons" were gleaned from my frequent hours-long "group" chats with my "spiritual advisor", Father Byrnes, who would invite three or four of us to his study, with coffee and all, discussing the REALITY of good and evil, the Augustinians vs. the Jesuits ("those heretics"!), the philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas and others and many other really excitingly interesting themes. I guess this is where I began my lifelong search for TRUTH, REALITY and the philosophical "Nature of Things".

In my third year Peter Hanscom and Ricky Pew got together and invited me to join them in some sort of "ritual"-- Ricky had gotten some OLD book on sorcery or something and wanted to actually do one of the "rites", calling up spirits or demons or God knows what (EXCUSE me, God!). Of course I was interested-- VERY interested. So I went to Father Byrnes and asked him what he thought of the "project". He spoke with me for several hours about what he knew of such things, saying he had an "exorcist" friend somewhere in the Mid-West-- that EVIL does exist on the human plane-- that the exorcist was actually chosen by Rome on the merits of his "saintly" life and that he placed himself in mortal danger when trying to force the "evil" out of someone. Things like, and I shit you not, the stuff you saw in "The Exorcist" actually happened to that friend of his-- long before the movie ever came out/was conceived! So I arrived at the conclusion that I did not really want to participate in that "exercise" in calling anything up/out from where ever it comes!! I had enough to do without having to contend with some potentially disconcerting/harmful/negative UNKNOWN.

As I look at my transcript from Villanova I notice that I got a lot of "D"s in my first two semesters. I even flunked General Chemistry I AND II (although parts of general chemistry are totally mathematically logical, I guess I had not prepared myself for SO MUCH logic at once! It was all memorization, and I always seemed to divert my "memory spaces" to CONCEPTS rather than "tidbits"; the teachers seemed to think that "molar equivalents" and such were "common knowledge" or something and just went into "applying" that wisdom without really doing the "concept" thing! The teacher was a priest who "went crazy" years before when he was working on making artificial rubber and had blown-up his laboratory!), taking part II during a summer session, attempting to eliminate the necessity of having to take it during the actual semester-- it did not work, though, I flunked it that summer and had to take it two semesters later (it appears unusual that the general part was so difficult for me, while "Microtechnique" got me a "B"-- perhaps because this was an exacting, logical, almost totally laboratory subject and I always liked "doing" rather than "listening"!). That summer was great fun. I lived with my maternal grandmother while the rest of the family went to North Wildwood as usual. Philadelphia can get really hot during the summer-- something which I had not known until that time. In any case, my grandmother and I got closer than we had been. She was COOL, as they say nowadays. More alive, positive, vivacious and interested in what I was doing that either my mother or father! It was a disaster for me when I returned home from Villanova one evening two years later to find my Mother crying-- her Mom had died at work earlier that day! It is curious, I had dreamt about her the night before, a nice dream not a foreboding one-- this has happened several times in my life! Did I "inherit" some strange "ability" from my grandmother, who was noted for her "psychic" abilities, or is it just an INNATE "human" potential quality which sometimes exhibits itself when one is OPEN or RECEPTIVE enough?

The Biology Department (located in the new Mendel Hall-- Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian who is known as "The Father of Genetics"-- I am sure you can remember his name from high school biology classes-- he is the one who did the experiments with pea plants) in which I was enrolled for three years before they inaugurated the Geology Department (since dropped from the roster of "majors") was filled with Premed students-- it was apparently cheaper than the other Premed schools in the Philadelphia area.

Dr.John McClain was the Department Head, a very demanding educator. Everything was geared towards the premed aspect of biology. In the course in "Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy" we dissected all kinds of smelly things including a shark (Squallus acanthus-- remember about scientific names being underlined? I even did a really great dissection of the "circular canals" (the shark's balancing "organ") and presented it as a special project), and of course, the cat. Not only did we have to study/dissect all of the anatomical systems, circulatory, musculature, digestive and such, we also had to know EVERY bone in its little furry body! Dr.McClain demanded that we be able to IDENTIFY each bone BEHIND OUR BACKS, feeling it to determine the bone name, "proximal" (the end closest to the body axis/line), "distal" (the end farthest from the axis), right and left!! THIS I LIKED, for some reason! And it is actually possible to do!

I joined the Biology Club and later became the Vice-President, then President, and founded its "Newsletter". The Club :

- organized field trips (to study marine life along the Wildwood beaches-- cave trips, accompanied on at least one occasion by the Postmaster of Villanova-- another to the new Computer Laboratory at the Franklin Institute, etc.)

- held monthly evening lectures, several of which I presented ("The Ice Age in Southern New Jersey", "Shell Collecting as a Hobby", "Miocene Fossils from Maryland", and others having guest speakers including Ralph Stone, a caving expert and past president of the National Speleological Society). I was interested in inviting Dr. Libby Hyman of the Natural History Museum in New York and author of the text we used for that class in "Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy", the one with the bones behind your back! I called for an "appointment", saying that I was from the college newspaper and would like to interview her. OK. Arriving at the Museum, finding my way through some very narrow corridors to her office, then finding this V E R Y OLD, white (not gray) witchy-haired, fat legged blobby looking woman slumping in an armchair with her legs spread out as if she were ready to give birth or something (or was it that she "imagined" she might have been ready to "conceive"?!) in a dimly lit office surrounded by shelves of books and papers-- it was not what I had "expected". Then the "interview": would she consider speaking to the Biology Club about vertebrate anatomy? "No, I couldn't possibly. I have more important things to do!" What prompted you to write the book we used in class? "Only the money. I really hate vertebrates, but there was no other book on vertebrate anatomy. So it really sold well!!" Why was she doing this to me? Is it really possible that she was telling the "honest to God" truth? We stumbled onto other related topics, and before I left I asked whether she would mind if I took her picture. "Of course not, everybody else does!" If she would have had long pink ears, beat a drum and was operated by Duracell, I could have perhaps imagined that she would "keep on going, and going...!" BUT, then the best part came when I sent her a Christmas greeting that year, probably two months after our meeting. Unfortunately I was naive enough 1) not to "notice" that the card I sent depicted an overtly "religious" crib scene, nor 2) that she was Jewish. Oh, well, the surprise came when the holiday card was returned to me with a note written on it, "I do not know who you are and I dislike getting cards from complete strangers depicting Medieval mythology!" Holy shit-- this was the real Catholic ME she was addressing! I showed the thing to Dr.McClain, Father Byrnes, and even wound up taking it to the Rector of the University suggesting that we should not be using books written by sullen ATHEISTS! The answer was, "But there are no others!" To me this was a really great lesson in "pragmatic religious ZEAL and CONVICTION"!! That infamous "Religious Right", the "born againers", the ones with all the TV shows and all, they would not have stood for this affront to their monetary donation programming and "self righteousness"-- they would probably have formed a new "political party" to "fight" the subversion of this woman and her textbook!! It is not right for "human values"-- "Almighty God, come down right now and show our sister the error of her way!!", as they wave their hands wildly in the air and the "gospel" choir sings something or other! God, do I really go out on tangents!

- sponsored exhibits at the Villanova University Library ("Taxonomy", how scientists name organisms; "Marine Mollusks", illustrating many shell types including the Rarest shell in the world, Conus gloria maris ("Glory of the Sea"-- Dr.Abbott lent me the Academy's "model" of the shell, carved of wood and painted exactly like the "original"-- there were only one or two actual specimens in existence at that time, although the Academy of Natural Sciences has since collected several!) and of course many books related to the topic. I still do exhibits in the same manner at the schools I have taught at : specimens, books, and a "handout" explaining what is on display, even teachers' guides-- which none of the teachers actually ever used (I guess this observation separates those teachers who "collect a paycheck" and those who actually TEACH because they enjoy it!)!!. I guess that my "earlier" museum work was a helpful guide.

The Biology Department also published the annual MENDEL BULLETIN containing student research articles. I became the "Photo Editor" of the MB and contributed three articles to it:

1. (age 18, my first "publication") "Fossil and Recent Forms of Metasequoia and the Morphological Distinctions between Metasequoiaceae and Sequoiaceae", a two page description of how a new "living fossil" tree was discovered in China, and its relationship to Sequoia, the famous giant redwoods of California. Dr.Ralph W. Chaney, a palaeobotonist from the University of California at Berkeley sent me a fossil specimen of Metasequoia occidentalis Newberry (Chaney) he had collected in Oregon, as well as some branches of Metasequoia glyptostroboides (Hu and Cheng) that were grown from seedlings at his laboratory in Berkeley. I can now admire three wondrous specimens of Metasequoia glyptostroboides, each over eight feet tall, growing here in my "yard/garden" in Trenton-- now bare of leaves-- in the snow.

2. (age 19) "On the Radula of Mollusks, with Notes on That of Prunum roscidum Redfield ("Redfield" was the scientist who "discovered" the species, the one who first published it's description) of Southern New Jersey", a four page study of general notes on what radula are (snail "teeth"), how to prepare them for study, and the first description/analysis of the radula of this RARE New Jersey snail-- the same "Shell of the Month" I presented some years before at a Shell Club meeting. Dr.Abbott "proof read" the study for me, offering suggestions which I incorporated into the article. I always seemed to "keep at" whatever interested me!

3. (age 21) "Preliminary Notes on the Echinoderms of the New Jersey Cape", a ten page summary of my field work studying/collecting sea-urchins, starfish, sand dollars and sea cucumbers (RARE-- not previously found alive in New Jersey) along the beaches, as well as by accompanying clam boats which dredged in the deep waters off of New Jersey. Dr.Richards helped me with this study-- although a palaeontologist, a fossil expert, he was also knowledgeable about most of the life, both plant and animal, of New Jersey (he wrote "Animals of the Seashore", published in 1938)!

Dr.Herbert Warren, an OLD member of the Biology Department staff, was a photography buff. He and I spent muchos hours in the darkroom taking the photographs which illustrated my studies numbers 1 and 3 (#2 had drawings which I did-- I have always liked/enjoyed drawing). He was a very "classical" dude when it came to photography-- he used a large old wooden "bellows" camera that took glass photographic "plates". I learned much about exposure, "depth of field", development and all from him-- much more than my father was familiar with. When I graduated from Villanova, we continued our contacts at Christmas-- if that counts!-- and he ALWAYS sent a booklet of poems his wife had composed, along with a hand-written holiday greeting. I had never, until that time-- and VERY infrequently thereafter-- received really "personalized" Christmas greetings-- always the "usual" greeting cards, rarely the "name imprinted" kinds, except from the Hanscoms! That experience stimulated me to "make my own" holiday greetings using "linoleum cut" art I did, "spirit duplicator" art work using different coloured ink sheets so that the result would appear as a varicolored image (European cave "art", various animals, decorated Christmas trees, etc.), "finger print" greetings where my fingerprints would, with additional hand-drawn lines, form reindeer, skiers, Santa Claus or whatever, and several other design methods. For the past two years I have sent a holiday-decorated letter-sized sheet listing the "main events" of my life during the previous year. All of this may appear "corney", but they are/were my ATTEMPTS at "being" ME, an "individual" going "against the tide"! I still have dozens of full boxes of the "normal" Christmas cards which I bought at the usual "day after Christmas" half-off sales, but they remain in two cardboard containers among the numerous boxes of "Christmas Stuff" I store in the basement.

Then in my fourth year at Villanova they opened the geology major and I switched departments, keeping biology as a minor-- there were only seven students, including me. The Department was headed by Dr.John T.C.(Teng Chen) Yen, a Chinese palaeontologist who had studied/done MUCH research in the Orient, Europe and America. He liked green tea with what looked like more sugar than tea, saved all his nail and hair (he did not have too much) clippings for some obscure Chinese philosophical reason, was married to a Western woman who played the piano very well, invited his students to his home for informal get togethers, and was very active with his numerous research projects. He always carried an old heavy leather briefcase that he got when he was studying in Germany, the "typical" German kind with the brass three-position latch and the two straps on each side. Another of the very "classical" personages I have had the delight to get to know during my Life's journey.

He worked for the United States Geological Survey, and his "specialty" was fresh-water mollusks (clams and snails) from the "Carboniferous" Age, the great Age of Coal. He made me take the U.S. Civil Service test for geologist, grade GS-4, I think-- which I passed. I then was his paid (well paid-- had to complete the most complicated "work time/job specs" sheets I ever remember!) assistant for the two years I was a major in his department. My job was snipping Brachiopod (= "lamp shells", a rather "primitive" form of marine life-- not really too closely related to mollusks-- that has been around for well over one hundred million years!) shells out of very hard "shale" rock, using cutting pliers, dental tools and a small electric drill. What fun!

He wanted me to study "abroad", in Vienna with Dr.Schinderwolf, a renowned palaeontologist with whom he had studied/worked. He described how wonderful European science/life was, how all the classical work in fossils had been done there, and he really got me interested-- BUT my parents did not want me "returning" to the part of the world that their parents/grandparents had left around the turn of the century! "You have 'everything' here in the U.S.", they would tell me. My father often said that his parents had left Europe "when the dark clouds of 'nationalism' were approaching"-- although since then I have learned that these same "dark clouds" were ALWAYS present in ALL of the European countries, for centuries!! That is the reason that I am extremely skeptical concerning the viability of the ECC (the "European Economic Community", sort of like the "United States" of Europe), presently formed by thirteen nations, with another batch on the "waiting list". They are simply too "nationalistically"/economically/culturally/philosophically diverse to really ever join with all the others-- one will ALWAYS be "stronger" than most of the others, "dominating" them in some underhanded way or other-- and, lest we forget the two great wars of this century, neither the French nor the British really "trust" Germany-- and the British seem to trust only those who speak English, preferably those inhabitants of their own Island (a rather "typical" ISLAND MENTALITY)!

So I did not go to Vienna.

Dr.Yen worked for a time at the Wenner-Gren Foundation with the legendary Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an expert in fossil man (he was a "co-discoverer" of "Peking Man") AND a leading Catholic "philosopher" who attempted to bridge the conceptual "gap" between Catholic teaching/dogma and the "theory" of evolution. I ALMOST met him in New York, but something came up and I was not able to go! His book, "The Phenomenon of Man", is a real milestone in this concept-bridging effort. Some say that Teilhard was much too "materialistic/dialectic" in his approach, and Dr.Yen said that some even thought that the Jesuit was a "communist" sympathizer. That tome did do something to enhance my awareness of the dialectics of the religion/evolution "problem", bringing to it/me a totally fresh, philosophical "religious' perspective of the topic. A bronze bust of Teilhard de Chardin, the "second" one done by Malvina Hoffman (who also did busts of John Keats, Ana Pavlova, Ignace Paderewski, Henry David Thoreau, Marguerite Yourcenar-- why does "Belgian" creep into my narrative for a second time? ["Belgian blocks" paving the street in front of the Duffield Street home] and many other personages in the Arts and Letters) now watches me from above the oak desk in my study here at home, reminding me of "yesterday" and inspiring me about "tomorrow", whatever it may bring.

I actually started taking geology courses in my third semester, taking one course per year until the seventh semester when I switched "majors". That meant that I would have to spend a fifth year, instead on the usual four, in order to graduate with the first "geologists" Villanova was to produce. To help pay expenses I got a couple of "jobs" through the student assistance office. I was a "gardener" for some rich family near Villanova, tending the extensive gardens, pruning all the rose bushes, cutting the lawn with a big, old noisy hand-pushed gas-powered lawn mower (what they really needed was a "lawn tractor"!), and that sort of thing. Then I was "house boy" for another family, just basically dusting, vacuuming and generally keeping the mansion tidy for some older woman whose husband went to Villanova and had since died. Always had to enter by way of the "servents' entrance", but was served really great food and remember a very pleasant time there. Both jobs paid extremely well, and I even got bonuses for my "good" work.

I guess that the most interesting and eventful geology course I had was "Field Geology". The seven of us had to go to Mifflintown, Pennsylvania-- somewhere in the western part of the State-- and actually make a geological map showing all of the different rock types, how they were distributed and all. It meant going by car to collecting rock and fossil samples within a "quadrangle" or section of "topographic" map of the area. We lived in rooms at the "Park Plaza Hotel" in Mifflintown, a small backwoodsy place, mostly farms and wide open spaces. The actual work was interesting, done in pairs on different parts of the area, and it showed us the principles of many aspects of geological exploration.

I, being the "romantic" I always seem to have been, wanted to try this exploration stuff like the early explorers did it. I noticed a hormongous MULE standing tied to a hitching post in town, and it occurred to me that they did not have cars in the old days of the original geological/natural history "surveys" (like Lewis and Clark, etc.)-- so I asked the animal's owner whether my partner and I could use his mule for a day to do our studies. He agreed, put a ratty, smelly heavy blanket-like saddle on the mule-- as if the mule itself needed any MORE scent than it already had!-- and we road off into the sunrise! What an experience! Mules do not move really fast, like a horse. They are MUCH bigger, though-- at least this one was (I had never seen a mule before, much less ridden on top of one!)! Once "in the field" we had to find some place to tie the thing to so she would not wonder off, sometimes not the easiest thing to find when we were in the middle of a farm field or something! All went well, I guess, as we finished the day's work and jogged back astride this monster, now into the sunset. I recall not being able to move too well for a couple of days! What fun! Even after the second day the smell had not entirely vanished from my body!

The local agricultural extension agent (they are usually associated with the local government or College, and provide technical help to farmers about crops, fertilizers, animal husbandry and other farm concerns) helped us with directions and all, and told us never to go near a certain area because the people were unfriendly towards strangers or something. The "typical" Appalachian "mountain folk"! Our curiosity was so piqued that we all got into one of the student's cars one early evening and went straight to where he had told us not to go. Through the thick woods and along unpaved dirt, very uneven roads until we approached a shack-like place-- then all of a sudden a lot of spot lights went on and some guy who looked like he just stepped out of a Hollywood "backwoodsy" movie set came out of the house with a shotgun! We immediately turned around, somehow, and quickly returned back to town!

The next day we mentioned our encounter to the agricultural extension agent. He then said that if we were so interested in going to see the people, he would take us there next Saturday-- he had to go for something or other. He knew them well, and there would be no problems. The Saturday came-- we went right up to the "house", made of different sized boards nailed to whatever, patched in many places with tar paper, within a dirty yard piled with all kinds of junk , clucking chickens and a couple of cars, some of which looked as if they would not go anywhere even if you pushed them! A large guy with not a lot of teeth in his jaws came out, dressed in dirty coveralls and shirt, no shoes, the wide straw hat you might see on TV, and speaking a "language" which was hardly understandable except for the "fuck" which punctuated every other word. I am not making any sort of "value judgment" here, just relating my observations! Young kids running all over the inside of the house-- did not bother to count them. The agent and he "talked" about I have no idea what. Looking around the large room (= "living room"?) there were piles of trash all over the place, a sundry flock of cats moving from one side of the room to another, and a SMELL of a dumpyard or something. There was some mention of his sister who his parents took to the hospital that morning because she was expecting another baby-- his! "Fuckin'" this and "fuckin'" that. What were we guys doing in the area-- which we could not really explain too well. And the slaps on the back when we left-- I mean real hard HITS. I guess we had made a "hit" with him or something. Our curiosity was totally quenched-- we had experienced MORE than what we had "expected" or even imagined, and I guess each of us filed the encounter in some mental folder or other.

Thinking back on this I wonder what EXACTLY does "government" do to help ALL of it's citizens to lead a more "fulfilling" life, to be able to CONTRIBUTE something to society as a whole rather than just EXIST on it's "fringes"? That same question presents itself on a daily basis, and even though I attempt to be "positive" about most things, I can not seem to find a "logical" reply. It sometimes appears that the powers that be, WHERE EVER THEY BE, actually WANT things to be this way for some reason. Is it "money" or lack thereof? Is it that "society" MUST consist of "haves" and "have nots"? Should only CERTAIN citizens have all of the better educational "opportunities" leading to more "money making" ability and perhaps, ultimately, to some token sharing in the power structure? MUST there be "peons" and "upper class"? Perhaps college grads might not want to work at a "sanitation" job-- even though some of these jobs pay more money than a teacher? IT OFT TIMES "consciously" BOTHERS ME!! Has society actually positively "evolved" in the way biological evolution seems to have progressed throughout the millions of years of geologic time, from something simpler and less specialized into some form of increased complexity, greater specialization, effort "sharing" and a "clearer" active niche in the conjunction of life? I sometimes think that society in general, Western "capitalism" in particular (with Eastern Europe, the Far East and even the "emerging" nations rapidly "catching up") is actually returning to some more "primitive" state, with the POWER concentrated in progressively fewer hands/pockets! The logical next step is "totalitarianism" where man simply "exists" as a pawn of the State, denuded of all initiative, creativity and HUMANness.

Hell, I got off on another of my tangents! Back to Villanova:

The Geological Society formed and, of course, I was in it. We often held joint meetings with the Biology Club and also had our own meetings, trips (to the Franklin Mines in New Jersey to collect the fluorescent minerals the mines are world-famous for; to Calvert Cliffs, Maryland to look for Miocene shells and shark teeth and some of the other 350+ species of marine animals including whale bones and other vertebrates), exhibits and such.

That Calvert Cliffs trip was "different". It was planned as a "camp out" for two days, staying at some Boy Scout camp we had gotten permission to stay at. A storm was predicted-- BUT a storm NEVER kept me from doing anything! (I would relish taking a walk along the Wildwood beaches during a raging summer hurricane!) We left in two cars, got to the Scout place and found a series of really "run-down" wooden shacks that had been moist frequently used for "out houses", and the weather was getting really nasty-- so all the others said they were going home. Party poopers! (excuse the apparent pun/reference to the Scout "lodgings" we found!) They left me there because I simply did not want to "give up" so quickly-- this was my BIG trip, to a place I had only read about before. I had handled/examined/identified fossils from the same locality in the Princeton University collections during those "vacation-from-Catholic-school" periods. As I trudged along with my backpack and all, the weather got VERY stormy and I actually decided to go back-- told you I was "slow"! So I had to "thumb my way" back to Washington, D.C. to get a train back to Philadelphia-- got picked up by a car almost completely full of black dudes in their early twenties who squeezed me into the back seat and put my stuff in the trunk. There I was, sitting between a couple of big black males, talking little while listening to them talk among themselves in an endless conversation about something or other-- they had an "accent" which made understanding what they were talking about next to impossible. It was unbelievable that "Americans" would sound so very "different". In any case, we finally arrived in Washington, and I offered them ten dollars "for the gas"-- but they refused! I took the train and wound up back home very discouraged because my "dream" trip was completely ruined. Curiously, I did not feel any kind of "apprehension" at getting into that car-- although I wonder whether I would do the same thing today!

Following the large number of "D"s up through the second marking period, I did somewhat better from the third on. It never occurred to me to question why. Was it because I had not yet become "used to" the demands of college? Was I "spreading myself too thin" with so many different activities both in and out of school (as Dr.Yen commented more than once)? Was it, when I only took 18 or 19 credits of course work I did less well than during the semesters I took 20 or even 22-- perhaps challenging me "more"? Or did I think then what I am "conscious" of now, that grades are not really indications of anything!

I had to take a language, so I continued with the sort of "boring" Spanish I started in high school. Even joined the Spanish Club and attended some of their functions-- the Spanish dance productions where the dancers dressed in the typical "flamenco' costumes and such. It was "cool".

I then tried my mind at German and got "D"s through the elementary levels I and II, flunking the intermediate course-- which I did not have to take in the first place, though it did lower my grade average, whatever that is worth "in reality". Then I got into the "Scientific German", a really tough course of "translations" from the early German scientific literature, taught by the same "crazy" chemist I had before-- and I got a "C".

Then came philosophy, things such as "Logic", "Philosophy of Science", General Ethics", and "Philosophy of Being". I did a report for this class in "Epistemology", comparing Henri Bergson's thoughts in his "Creative Evolution" (which I bought at LEARY'S BOOKSTORE located at Ninth Street below Market in Philadelphia-- that enormous treasure trove of tomes about absolutely "anything and everything", having a couple of floors of books, and a ladder that slid along rails to enable one to reach the books higher up on the shelves-- and that titillating "smell" of books, that erudite-flavoured perfume that seemed to exude from the folios and float you away to some distant dreamscape-- reminds me very much of the "child's" movie, "The Neverending Story"-- which I have shared with my kids at school-- some thought it was corney! Leary's has since disappeared) with those of Prof. T.D.Lysenko, once President of the "Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences" in Moscow, contained in a book given to me by a Jewish friend, the transcripts of a colloquium on evolution held in Moscow-- the book was dedicated to "Comrade Lenin"! I just went down to my study and found these same two tomes, relatively well conserved despite their use and age. Bergson's work still contained the bookmark from Leary's! I did not flunk any of these courses!

Next, psychology with "General Psychology", "Statistics in the Social Sciences" (which introduced me to the methods I would later use in some of my research), "Psychology of Education", "Adolescent Psychology" and "Maturity and Old Age" (long before "gerontology" became the topic of "legislation", Federal funding and a vocal social issue-- I did a report on a disease which develops the symptoms of physical "aging" even in young people-- I forget the name of it). Some of my professors remarked that I was taking psych major subjects and doing better than some of those students majoring in psychology. Maybe I studied to "understand" things, not really to "master" them-- and the "grade" never really mattered to me, at least "consciously"-- unfortunately, perhaps.

Even took a course in "Descriptive Astronomy" (the same "crazy" chemist was once again the professor!), one in the history of "East Central Europe"-- perhaps to attempt to understand my "roots", and during the same semester, "Introductory Russian I", which I flunked despite the fact that the professor said that my pronunciation was great! At least I learned to transliterate the Russian/Cyrillic letters into our Latin/Germanic/English ones!

During my tenth and last semester I took a fine arts course on the "Renaissance" in which we toured, via colour slides, the major art forms of this "reawakening" in all forms of the arts, painting, sculpture and architecture-- all European, of course. I did a report on the sculptures of Michelangelo, which seemed to impress the professor so much he gave me some "reprints" of studies he published on several subjects, including an analysis of an ancient bronze helmet discovered in Israel.

I actually did generally better in these "electives" than I usually did in the major/minor "foundational" courses. My final "grade average" turned out to be a big 2.52 out of a possible 4!-- demonstrating that I was/am no genius or anything!

I participated in the activities of the Music Society (suggested by Father Byrnes, the one I had those philosophical and other "rap" sessions with-- we also listened to his "Red Label" 33 1/3 records of classical music and operas-- the "haunting" diabolical laughter of Faust still remains with me!) and the Astronomy Club-- how did I ever find the time, that "precious" something that I say "limits" me today from doing so many of the things I "want" to do?

For two of these Villanova years, during the summers at North Wildwood, aside from working at whatever seven-day-a-week job I could find on the boardwalk, I also wrote a "paid" weekly "Nature Notes" column for the ATLANTIC CITY PRESS, discussing some of the various activities of the Cape May Geographic Society:

-the lectures (Dr. Richards gave a talk on "Lake Baikal", that famous, very deep Russian lake that was not really too explored at that time; Dr.Ernest Choate,Principal of Germantown High School in Philadelphia spoke on the shore birds of Cape May-- he wrote the "Field List of Birds of Cape May County" in which about 291 different bird species may be found!; Robert Alexander, President of the New Jersey Audubon Society introduced us to the more than 150 varieties of trees which could be found in Cape May County-- he also wrote a book on "Noteworthy Trees of Cape May County, New Jersey".)

-the Saturday "beach walks", where the same local "naturalists" would "captivate" the participants by identifying and describing the birds seen through the binoculars at Cape May or the Stone Harbor Sanctuary; visit the only remaining local dairy farm (Ocean View Dairy), sampling the milk right from the cow, and looking for the scores of wildflowers and grasses growing on the farm; search for fossils (that were transported by the Delaware River from as far away as Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania) and the Cape May "diamonds" (simply water polished "quartz" pebbles, the exact same material that most of the beach sand is made of-- nothing other than "pure" glass!) at "the Point" (Cape May Point), with the split remains of the experimental concrete ship, "Atlantis", rising above the rolling waves off-shore; discussing the identifying characteristics of the trees in and around Cape May; visiting Bennett's Bog where we could see the "Spatulate-leaved Sundew" with its sticky glistening pads and the Bladderwort, two of New Jersey's five species of "carnivorous" plants, as well as two of Jersey's 53 "orchid" varieties and scores of colorful wildflowers. I led a walk to "Diamond Beach" at the extreme southern end of the Wildwood Crest beach, identifying marine life (and even the Prickly Pear Cactus sometimes found in the sand dunes-- remember them from another chapter?) to those participating. I was then a senor at Villanova.

The lectures at the Franklin Institute and the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences still found me in the audience. The Greater Northeast Astronomical Society was no more. My contacts with Drs.Richards and Abbott flourished and I even had time to give "guest lectures" on Earth Sciences at Peter Hanscom's Harriton High School, in Bryn Mawr, I think-- it was a new discipline at the time, and "certification" was still in the "mind's eye" of the bureaucrats in the educational burrows of the State House in Harrisburg (Pennsylvania).

Chapter Five was written between 14h, Saturday, 3 February 1996 [following the second biggest snow storm of this winter season-- another six inches of fluffy white stuff, at least!] and 3h, Sunday, 4 February 1996 (with only a break to have a sandwich, another to feed the dogs and "let them out", and a last to "proof read" the first printout. Keep in mind that what you see before you is really the first draft of this magnum opus -- I have already made changes and additions to the first four chapters, and the same fate will eventually fall to this one also. 4 February 1996

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