Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Hi Bruce,

I know that we have gurus to direct you how to change your picture. Maybe Ira? The updated picture is really nice!!

Well, it can be assumed with a pretty high degree of accuracy that the rockets come from Iran. I don't hear that Russia is involved. Paying for the rockets? Hmmm. Every country that sends support to Iran pays for the rockets! And BTW, very little of money that is sent to Gaza to help its citizens, to pay for hospitals, to supply food, very little actually goes to these goals. Most of the money is taken by Hamas and goes into Hamas pockets.

I totally lost it a little while ago. Heard just a snippet that a reporter was saying about foreign powers looking for "symmetry" comparing Hamas bombing versus Israel's. I started yelling at the TV (never a good sign for me) and waving my arms. SYMMETRY??!! How can any rational human speak of symmetry when Hamas and the jihadis aim to destroy residential areas and kill as many people as they can, while the aim of Israel is to destroy terrorist infrastructure, arsenals, tunnels, etc. and kill as many TERRORIST LEADERS as possible? That isn't symmetry, is it? Am I missing something?

Sorry for the rant. My brother's kibbutz (David Holtzer WHHS 1967) was attacked several times today while I was watching TV....... They are fine, but I am very tense....

Paul Simons

Pardon me for interposing myself here but first Bruce I think that if you navigate to your own page by just picking yourself from the list of our entire menagerie there are links to  upload photos and little camera icons to pick which one sums you up to the Class of 1964.
 

As far as Hamas goes I hear they were elected. Same for various other tyrants all over the world which tells me that there are a lot of fools among the human race. There's a song that goes "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" but some on this planet have a lot more fools than anyone deserves. Voting, democracy don't work if vast numbers of people don't know or care what's in their own best interest, and allow themselves to be guided by greed, racism, hatred, and lies. We are lucky here in America where political candidates would never even dream of lying or appealing to racism to garner votes.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Paul, When Hamas was elected in 2005 (literally and sadly a lifetime ago for many Gazans), their platform was humanitarian, and one of its "wings" was deveoted to charity work. They certainly did not campaign on their terrorist "wing". I truly believe that the vast majority of people who voted for Hamas back then were duped, and not fools. That said, they have seldom stood up to these tyrants and bullies when their true face was known. I am sure that there were opportunities for the terrorized people of Gaza to stand up against Hamas, but were seldom, if ever, taken, so the tyrant just became stronger. Try not to judge the ordinary folks of Gaza.....

Paul Simons

  Judy of course you know that these conversations are completely public, I know it too, and might as well say that you have a more compassionate heart than I do. Maybe that's because I live in a country where there are people who have a similar stance as Hamas towards "the other" - former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer pointed out on NPR today that Hamas advocates the murder of Jews world-wide - and they vote. The worst mass-murder of Jews in the history of America was carried out at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, not far from where I live, Philadelphia. I won't say the murderer's  name and I won't name the politician that he said he admires. But yes we've got 'em here. If you can't read it, the Jan 6 insurrectionist's shirt reads "Camp Auschwitz."

I will say that every situation is different and listening to Dermer draw the same line you draw between the Palestinian people and Hamas that you draw I have to admit that I too must sympathize with the suffering of the Palestinian people and realize that maybe they have had no real choice in elections in Gaza. I understand that one of Hamas' ways of dealing with dissidents is throwing them off rooftops. It is Hamas that has given them no choice and has also given Israel no choice.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Paull, were you ever in Israel for a visit?

Paul Simons

Judy no I haven't. I know nothing of what it's really like. Mexico and Nassau, that's it for my foreign travel.

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Paul, I think most Americans do not get out of the States often. You are blessed with so many wonderful vacation spots at home!

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

A sad post. I have just learned that our classmate, Irving Crandall, died in his sleep last night. I will post again once I learn more. I join classmates in remembering Irv and sending condolences to his family. May his memory always be a blessing.

Paul Simons

Thanks Gail. Sorry to hear about Irving Crandall. He was a good dude. At least like in the song "The Gambler" - "The best you can hope for is to die in your sleep."

Judy - it looks like the world is an unsafe place. The beach in New Jersey will have to be the extent of my vacationing for a while.

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

Paul and others--

Please post memories of Irv Crandall on his In Memory page. Thank you.

Becky Payne (Shockley)

I was very sad to hear of Irv Crandall's death. He lived not far from us in St Paul, and John and I had several pleasant meals with him in past years. I always found him to be an interesting and kind person. We had not heard from him for quite a while, and he did not respond to an email I sent him a few months ago, so I wondered how he was doing. I did attend a lovely memorial service several years ago for Suzanne, his second wife, who had developed Alzheimer's. I also met his sister from Cincinnati at at that time. 

Dale Gieringer

Sorry to hear about Irv Crandall.   Thoughtful and good-humored fellow.   We were in classes together most every year.  His younger brother Richard dropped by to visit us some years ago.   Sursum ad summum omnes.  

Ira Goldberg

One of the nice, fairly quiet gents in our class. I'm so sorry to learn of Irv's passing. His face came to mind immediately. 

Bruce Fette

Hello WHHS,

Seems like the message forum has been rather quiet recently.

So this is a call for new topics to enliven this forum.  

Nearly all have moved into retirement now, resulting in a shift of interests from those professional topics of 40 to 50 years to some new topics such as hobbies, volunteerism, writing that next novel, caring for grand kids or aging parents. Possibly also involving selecting a new location for a down sized retirement home.

Let us hear from all of you, what are you up to now? Whats your favorite thing? How do you plan to celebrate your next holiday. How about July 4th? Where will you be? How will you celebrate the biirth of a nation where the design of the government was specifically focused on insuring democracy for the people rather than being run by the whims of the "King"?

What about favorite books, movies, vacation locations, books or music?

What special thing you learned at WHHS that made you specially happy you had learned it in your later life?

Tell us all about your favorite pets. What are their favorite behaviors, or tricks, or abilities.  :)

Some of you may wish to discuss new boyfriends, girlfriends, or what your spouse is up to now.

Want to brag about your parents or grandparents or someone in your family tree? My dad was dating my mom while he was learning to fly a P38 during WW II. He was a naval aviator at Parris Island I think. Looks like they got married the minute the war was over.

Want to talk about highly interesting people in your life? Or someone who was your most significant mentor? Or a significant event in your life?

Anyway, Lets hear from all of you WHHS 64! Everyone included! Pick a topic and tell us about it!

Bruce  (apparently named after a Scottish King 1306-1329?). 

Paul Simons

Well Bruce seeing your photo makes me wonder what you and others have to say about what we called UFO's, now called UAP's  - something like Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. I hear they scoot away fast - obviously if they are intelligent either living or AI they don't want to fall into our hands, after having witnessed what we do to one another on this planet. I have mentioned before that only light travels at the speed of light and the nearest solar system to ours is 4 1/2 light years away. If something could go at 10% of the speed of light it would take 45 years - at 18,600 miles per second. At 1% of the speed of light or 1,860 miles per second, 450 years. Can we imagine a vehicle going 1,860'miles per second? I have read that if we want to think and talk about this stuff we have to talk about many generations of people traveling along, with diapers, beer, and of course a way to watch the Super Bowl back on Earth, not to mention toilet paper. So for me, the idea that the more extraordinary the claim is, the more convincing the proof must be remains in effect. I think what the Navy pilots saw were more likely advanced drones than extra-terrestrials.

About the country - we have to remember the Pilgrims etc came to get away from a tyrannical monarchy. The founders did create a democracy but with slavery. This place practiced slavery for about as long as it's been outlawed. Right now some appear to favor a return to monarchy, with a king as you mentioned, and to hell with free and fair elections, and although I doubt slavery will be made legal again white supremacy is ascendant with that crowd. Evidently it never left. But the experiment in democracy is hanging on, although in many places only by a thread.

As far as what I do when not at work - still banging around on the gee-tar

Bruce Fette

Way To Rock Paul!

As for UFOs, etc, 1) a 4 year flight may seem impractical to us humans, but nothing for a drone, and perhaps nothing for living creatures with different evolutionary history. 2) As I have said before, living creatures on different planets in different solar systems may experience different forms of physics and therefore have developed a broader understanding and experience, and 3) perhaps the intelligent life forms on different planets in different solar systems could well have focused their energies on more useful and constructive technologies and less on war and greed 4) Seems to me that when we observe acceleration that seems impractical to us, it just means that we are observing mastery of a technology most of us humans are not familiar with.

Paul Simons

Bruce I like you and admire the work you've done and I disagree with everything you say except that we human beings have wasted our lives and resources making war on one another. But to your other subject - the physics we have developed account for just about everything from the interactions of subatomic particles to the life cycle of stars and the motion of galaxies. No we don't have it all clear on dark matter and Einstein's search for a grand unified theory is not satisfied but for beings to transcend constants like the speed of light and the force of gravity you need a different universe. Michio Kaku says our universe is just one member of a multiverse but where is the next one, if ours is infinite? Oh right, a wormhole. What's the difference between science and science fiction? One of them is fictional.
 

About the 4 1/2 year journey - that's what it takes light to make the trip from Alpha Centauri. Light and life or aircraft are not the same thing or you'd need to be in a tank made out of 800 tons of titanium to go sunbathing. Sorry and still friends I hope.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Did I miss something about needing new passwords? 

Anyway, no bragging or new romances here. 53rd anniversary this week. 

I still babysit for the littlest members of the family but not as much as I did for the older grandkids.  Life is different now.  All the kids are now familiar with remote learning except the baby and she needs to get used to seeing strangers because she is afraid of new people. 

I still love my flower garden and all the beautitful colors that emerge from the bulbs I planted around the yard. I read more than ever but now it's mostly mysteries but nothing that will give me nightmares. There is such a thing as cozy mysteries.  

As for politics - I am still active but behind the scenes. As a liberal Democrat I cannot wait until we turn this world right side up again. 

Thank you for that video reminder Paul that you're only as old as you feel and act.  I loved it and keep on playing! 

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

On June 11, I was reminiscing about our last in person reunion, when a few pictures form our VIRTUAL 50th reunion in 2014 appeared in my Facebook memories timeline.  I had pictures of me wearing my freshman beanie, choir key and class ring, an a black and white picture (from the Remembrancerj from the cast picture at the finale of The Peanuts of '62!  (attached).  I really enjoyed the virtual reunion.  As I recall, watched it while talking to Ira Goldberg 
I wrote this on on Facebook: 

Two years after the WHHS class of ‘64 celebrated their 50th year class reunion VIRTUALLY (in this memory from 2014), the class held their traditional BIRTHDAY BASH in-person in CIncinnati in 2016, the LXX Reunion. At that time, we scheduled our next in-person reunion for 2021, as a 3/4 reunion (.75) BIRTHDAY BASH. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, we will have to wait until 2022 to celebrate our 75+1 BIRTHDAY BASH in Cincinnati. Thanks to those who had the vision to develop the class website and keep it up all these years, we have been able to stay connected. Who could have imagined back in 2014, that VIRTUAL meetings would become so commonplace in 2020. 
Class of ‘64, continue to “sursum ad summum”.  I will always keep dear in my memories those we have lost since our last reunion. Looking forward, God willing, to seeing you again next year, June 11-12, 2022. 
GO EAGLES!

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

For Barbara Tepper and other readers who would like some whimsy in their life, I'd like to recommend a book By Alix Harrow called The Once and Future Witches. Yes, it's about witches, but I doubt that it will give you nightmares. She wrote another whimsical book, her first book, entitled The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I started it, then gave it to my son to read, so I cannot report on it. My son said it was excellent, though. 

If anyone knows of other witch books, good ones, I would appreciate knowing. Books about fairies also acceptable.

Dale Gieringer

To Paul and fellow humble earthlings -  

      "The greater the island of human knowledge, the vaster the shore of human ignorance."    Our earth is just 4.6 billion years old in a galaxy with millions of stars over 12 billion years old.  Modern human science is less than four hundred years old.   Surely there are innumerable civilizations thousands, millions or even billions of years more advanced than ours.  That's more than enough time for them to have made contact with our planet using technology far beyond our current understanding.   Remember, it's less than 150 years that we've even been aware of invisible electromagnetic radiation, let alone relativity, radioactivity, quantum mechanics or nuclear forces.  For us to dismiss interstellar travel as unfeasible is like a Roman engineer dismissing a flight to Mars.  IMHO, the recognition that UAP's are out there supports the notion that we are being observed by higher intelligences than our own.  After all, what do we know?

Paul Simons

Dale with all due respect saying that for several reasons there "must be" far more advanced civilizations than ours, which have the technology to be in the neighborhood, and saying that you have proof that this is true are different things. Neil De Grasse Tyson says it far better than I can. In this first clip there's some agreement with your beliefs;

But there's another side to the story:

Thomas Lounds Jr.

hello whhs !  I forgot my password .  Ergo, I have been able to read but not respond-until now ,apparently.  I owe a number of you for all that you have accomplished and especially to realize that--at least to some extent--I may have helped you in that area as both your advisor and, for some, among your early teachers.  What a school to have been a part of! 

Bruce Fette

Paul, I* understand where your questions come from. As you state, Eistein has set up a number of hypotheses subseuently proven. However, the unification remains out of touch. My example to you about physics is to ask what mechanism of physics causes gravity. Yes we know its related to the mass of all the particles (or elecromagnetic waves) within each atom, and that somehow the aggregation of all those atoms makes gravity stronger. However, if we understood the synthesis of gravity at the atomic physics level, then it might be practical to create mechanisms to minipulate gravity or perhaps even manipulate Newtonian physics such as F=MA. 

And while we have the Einsteinian notion of mass growing as items approach the speed of light, there is also the notion of how to measure the speed of light, because light properties depend on where you observe from. We all understand the Doppler effect. It is even used in astronomy to assess range to very distant objects. But we dont know what we dont know about physics at, near or above light speed. 

I think very few understand the physics of Black holes.  But the fact that they exist and the fact that we dont understand the physics of black holes except to say their gravity is so awesome that it effects pretty much evereything in the galaxy. Notionally the atoms are really smashed together more tightly that we can possibly experience here on earth. And we know that if there is some way to really pack them tighter, that somehow suddently gravity experiences a non-linearity (like dividing by zero).

So please consider, as Dale says, there is more yet to be learned.  And what we have have been able to learn is limited by the environment in which we learn. So in summary, the physics we understand makes the phyics that we dont understand seem like science fiction. But for now, I still want to understand why the particles or waves of the atom somehow interact with the waves from other atoms in a way that we call gravity. And when we undestand that sufficiently well, then we can begin to address Einstein's unification and why he didnt solve it.

Mr. Lounds, welcome to join any of the threads in ongoing conversation. :)

Paul Simons

First Mr. Lounds I hope you're happy with what you, as the WHHS science teacher, have unleashed. I'm out of my league here, Fette and Gieringer are actual scientists, I'm just a viewer of "Big Bang Theory" on TV. Since you did post something the password issue is resolved.

About the subject of interstellar travel, the movie "Interstellar" was very entertaining and thought provoking. But that's not the point. My issue is people taking an anecdotal observation and making scientific dogma out of it. See those saucer-like images on that photo of an airplane's greyscale radar screen? And they move funny, fast, and strangely? Well obviously that proves aliens are here, thanks to their phenomenally advanced technology that we can't understand. Look, those are deadly serious Navy pilots saying "WTF?? Did you see that??", they never joke around about anything, do they?

I remember a discussion at the lunch table at a job I had some years ago, blue collar warehouse labor. One fellow said he was sure aliens were here, as a matter of fact they frequented the 7-11 near his trailer park, and it was because the alien rockets had, in his words, "special motors". He could not tell me how a flashlight with 2 D-cell batteries worked, yet he knew all about alien rocket propulsion systems. I am willing to bet many proponents of the "They're here and the government is hiding a vast trove of information from us" conspiracy theory can not tell me how a flashlight with 2 D-cell batteries works. I am also willing to bet that they have never thought about the technology that we do have, for example how to make a wrist watch including tiny screws, gears, springs back then, and a tiny crstal-controlled oscillator and frequency counter and solenoid and so on now, that can tell you exactly what time it is. How about a little respect for that?

My gripe is that not demanding rigorous proof opens a door to pseudoscience like phrenology or "scientific" evidence supporting white supremacy, the evil that is ripping this country apart - again. It's fine to speculate about unknown technology, just please don't ask me to believe anything if you can't prove it.

I will say that I have a special antenna on my radio which I have trained on the trajectory of the Voyager spacecraft and it did appear to stop, remain stationary for a few hours, long enough for the gold record of earth's many sounds that it carried to be played, and then move again. Shortly after that I received a message from interstellar space, in perfect English Morse code, saying "Send more Chuck Berry!" This really happened.