Florence (Now Jean) Ager

GIFTING AND SHOPPING TRENDS

Paul Simons

After reading Steve's tribute to his mother and Jeff's words I'm moved to add my sympathy to theirs for the suffering she endured. Life for many seems to be more moments of lightheartedness interspersed with a continuous struggle against adversity which turns tragic. It doesn't do any good to count one's blessings in the face of the suffering of others. We need to try to alleviate suffering and when we can't we can at least share in it. Thanks Steve for allowing us to do that, to feel a bit of what you're feeling and a bit of her strength in confronting pain and persevering through it.

Philip Spiess

Hey, boys and girls!  While we're in the throes of the Twelve Days of Christmas, or the Winter Solstice, or the Annual Shop Till You Drop Season, or whatever it is -- it's time to recount that ageless seasonal legend of:

"HOW THE ANGEL CAME TO BE ATOP THE CHRISTMAS TREE:        (A Tale of the Spirit of Christmas)":

It was many, many years ago, almost too long ago to tell when it was -- why, it was practically "once upon a time" time, it was that long ago -- when, up there at the North Pole (and it was a much longer Pole then; it hadn't begun to melt, for it was shortly after the last Ice Age), a disaster occurred -- the Elves went on strike!

Oh, yeah! they were steamed!  Santa's living and working conditions -- if they even could be called such -- for the Elves were distinctly substandard.  First off:  freezing cold temperatures, and no heat in the bunk houses!  (Santa can be stingy -- he puts all his money into making those toys, so he can look like the Big Man on Christmas Eve!)  Second:  18-hour work days!  (How else do you think he gets everything done in time for Christmas?)  Third:  Unhealthy food, including Christmas cookies and chocolates, washed down with hot cocoa (collected on Christmas Eve from the houses visited, and used for the Elves' yearly dining).  (Even the reindeer get a better knosh, and daily at that!)  Fourth:  Inability to get any sleep, short as that sleep might be.  (Those damn Christmas carols kept playing over the loud speakers 24 hours a day from the popular radio stations, with "Jingle Bell Rock" or "Feliz Navidad" repeating every seventh song or so).  Fifth:  The actual work was boring, boring, boring:  carving toys, painting toys, wrapping toys, loading toys -- always the same, day in and day out (and the assembly line and conveyor belt had not yet been invented)!  Sixth:  Their shoes all curled up at the ends, cramping their toes.  Seventh:  -- but you get the idea.

So, as a result of all these spirit-destroying work conditions (and Elves are usually a carefree lot when they can get away, as you may surmise), they "downed tools" and went on strike!  It was the week before Christmas.  There was nothing that Santa could do to talk them back to work; the situation had gone on too long, with Santa refusing the Elves any negotiations or altered terms of work, for Santa is a stern taskmaster.  (Remember, he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake -- and he gives you a fat black lump of coal in your stocking if you've misbehaved -- and those stockings are harder to walk in than curved-toed shoes any day!)

So what could Santa do at this, the last minute, with so much still to be done?  Well, he brought in the Angels to break the strike.  Now, frankly, between you and me, there's nothing worse than a "scab" Angel.  They certainly are well-meaning, and they're used to taking orders from Mr. Big, but they're not adjusted to the Santa's Toyshop kind of work (they can't even play "Feliz Navidad" on a harp), they haven't been trained, they only know how to sprinkle rainbows with color or paint the clouds with sunshine, they've never loaded a sleigh, harnessed reindeer, or given a good push at the "Dash away, all!" signal.  In short, as quick workers at short notice for a Fat Man in a Mood at "Crunch Time," they were a disaster.

Finally it was Christmas Eve, and Santa was tearing out his few remaining hairs.  Nothing was done, nothing was finished:  paint had yet to dry, packages had to be wrapped, evergreens had to be decorated and draped, the reindeer had to be fed before their nightly journey, the sleigh had to be loaded, lists had to be checked and re-checked -- and Santa was absolutely beside himself, so many things yet to be nailed down and accomplished, and it was really time to go --

Just then the smallest Angel of them all came into the office and said, "Hi, Mr. Santy!  I've got the tree decorated, just like you asked.  Where do you want me to put it?"  And Santa told that littlest Angel just where he could put that tree . . . .

And that, folks, is the touching, heartfelt legend of why the angel is atop the Christmas tree.  "God bless us, everyone!"  

Philip Spiess

The Spiess cellar, ready for New Year's Eve!

Margery Erhardt (Schrader)

HoHoHo! Phil, just how much wine from one of your barrels did you have before writing that funny piece? And why wasn't I invited?

Philip Spiess

"Civilization begins with distillation."  So wrote William Faulkner, and I, like he did, often write my pieces for "The Forum" near or after midnight, after my wife, Kathy, and the dog, Haligan, have gone to bed.  Like Faulkner (and many other 20th-century writers of note), I tend to drink whiskey (either Glenmorangie Scotch or Virginia Gentleman Bourbon) -- or something else -- as I write (I'm no slouch on wine, either).

I couldn't invite you to the cellar because you wrote me after New Year's Eve, and, truth to tell, the "cellar" is that of A. Smith Bowman Distillers in Fredericksburg, Virginia (main distillery now in Frankfort, Kentucky, once here in Fairfax County, Virginia, at Sunset Hills).

As to the humor, well, humor, dear readers, is where you find it (I just try to supply what strikes me as funny).  The story in question I first heard from my father; I have significantly embellished it in the build-up to the punch line here.  (Speaking of punch, yes, I sometimes drink a Regency or Victorian Punch, a la Dickens, while I'm writing at this time of year -- recipes available on request.)  [Note:  Remember, in our Senior year at WHHS, 1964, you all voted Laura Reed (Pease) and me "The Wittiest."]

Happy New Year! 

Stephen Collett

My favorite word for the new year is defenestration. I had to look it up. I got the "fenestra" part, a window. But it means to throw an idea, or ideololgy (cant seem to get spelhelp there) out the window. I think it was used in some regard to Kevin McCarthy.

On a different plane, I am looking at shifting seven of the critical windows in my house in the coming year, as soon as the carpenters can work. It will take a big stake in my savings, but save on the energi costs, one hopes. A kind of refrenestration.

Philip Spiess

I learned of the famous (or infamous) Defenestration of Prague from Mr. Knab in AP Modern European History.  The event took place in 1618:  two Roman Catholic Lords Regent, sent by the Holy Roman Emperor to quell the Protestant estates of the Kingdom of Bohemia, were, with their secretary, thrown out of the 3rd (top)-floor windows (the actual "defenestration") of the tower of Hradcany Castle in response to the Emperor's letter declaring a death sentence for the Protestants.  Miraculously, the three escaped death, Catholics declaring that they had been saved by angels, while Protestants claimed that the three had been saved by falling headfirst into a manure cart.  (I think Mr. Knab favored the latter view.)  The whole incident precipated the Thirty Years' War beginning two years later.

In the same century, defenestrations took place regularly on a nightly (or knightly) basis, as Londoners of every class and level of society emptied their chamber pots out of the second and third floor windows into the streets (hence the common phrase, assumed to be "French," "Gardy loo!" or "Watch out for the water!").  This, in turn, led to the recently abandoned (in our times) custom of gentlemen, when accompanying ladies on the street, walking on the outside (street side) of the sidewalk. 

Paul Simons

Good word! Here it is in action! The controlled defenestration of a piano:

Philip Spiess

Paul:

At the risk of repeating myself (which I'm doing [cf. Post #3455 (4-4-2018) on this "Forum"]), I'll follow up your video of the "Heave of Destruction" with my story of a moment in our lives at Walnut Hills High:  

I cannot say whether it was a Steinway or a Baldwin concert grand on the WHHS stage, circa 1961 (the one the now-disgraced Jimmy Levine played on, to impressive effect), but I am about to tell you what happened to it.

Some bright-eyed, though not bright-brained, lad on the Stage Crew -- I think said "genius" was Don Lee, a year ahead of us -- got the not so bright idea that it would be a fine and fun thing to attach ropes to the concert grand piano on stage and hoist it up to the height of the "grid," that massive iron-girdered platform high above the stage from which all of the light battens and scenery battens and curtains and whatnot -- the things that were dropped into place on stage when needed and whisked out of sight when not -- were suspended.

No sooner said than done -- by some other of the idle brains on Stage Crew ("An idle brain is the Devil's playground," it is said).  (Full disclosure, as they say in The Washington Post:  I was a member of Stage Crew at this time, and obviously present, as I am reporting the incident, but I was not a participant, having great respect for Signor Cristofori's venerated invention -- the "soft-loud" -- which helped make Beethoven great.)

We watched the great grand (Baldwin or Steinway, as it were) sail aloft, as if lifted on wings of song (mind you, it had to be seriously counter-weighted at the batten rail to get it to move at all), and then -- but perhaps you, the reader, anticipate me -- and then . . . with a slow-motion splitting and shearing of the none-too-sturdy rope supporting it, fascinating to watch, it descended.

I say it descended, but this was not in slow motion.  It was fast, furious, loud, and devastating.  I thank God to this day that there was no one under it, for it hit the stage with a crash that shook the room and demolished the instrument.  First, the three sturdy legs which supported it snapped off; the pedals and their support shot off into the wings.  Then the keys of the keyboard peeled out of their traditional position like something in an early "Silly Symphonies" cartoon and scattered themselves about the stage.  The music stand above them flew up in the air.  And with one final grand movement, like Leviathan slipping back into the sea, the heavy folded-back top detached itself from the piano's main body (its iron frame of strings), and ponderously threw itself into the orchestra pit.

I watched this debacle from somewhere mid-Auditorium.  Though the possibility of this occurence had crossed my mind on hearing the initial proposal being made, the reality, when it did occur, was far more real than the mere probability.  I had seen nothing quite so spectacular since watching the film of the Washington Tacoma Narrows Bridge ("Galloping Gertie") flagellate itself and self-destruct in 1940.  I've tried to describe the scene for you -- but I guess you had to have been there.

Paul Simons

Many rockers at WHHS both before - Hertzman, Susskind, Mitnick, Lane - and after - Kurtz, Birckhead, Altman to name a few. I n our class besides me Frey, Buchholz, Katona, Alberts and others. All influenced by and in awe of this man who just died. There's a lesson here - 

Philip Spiess

Folks, I do not presume to dominate this "Forum," but Paul Simons and I have had a way (unintended and unplanned) of tandem commenting on diverse matters.  He reports on, and shows a video above, of the explosion in 1937 of the German Zeppelin super-dirigible Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey, a famous event, as it pretty much ended dirigible (i.e., lighter-than-air craft) travel worldwide.  [My first travel by air was in the Goodyear blimp in Florida, circa 1959, and it was a lovely, gentle ride].  At Lakehurst, an electrical storm was approaching, and it has often been assumed that a lightning bolt set off the explosion as the Hindenburg landed.

But I have a somewhat different and horrifying story to tell, which may contradict the common news report.  From 1968 to 1970 I was in graduate school at the University of Delaware, and my sister Barbara was residing in Barnegat, New Jersey, on the coast.  I often took the weekend to visit her and her husband there (to get a substantial meal), and one weekend, while I was visiting, we were invited out to have dinner at the home of one of my brother-in-law's parishioners (he was the Presbyterian minister in Barnegat at the time).  After dinner, as we talked, it came out that I was interested in 78 r.p.m. records.  "Oh," said our hostess, "we have a batch in the barn; you can have any of them if you like."

I looked through them, and the first one I came across was the radio broadcast of the Hindenburg disaster, with the reporter crying, "Oh! the humanity!  The humanity!"  "I'd like this one," I said, and my hostess said, "Oh, I remember that night.  I was out in the Jersey Pine Barrens with my then boyfriend, kinda spooning, you know, when we saw the Hindenburg go over.  My boyfriend said, 'I bet I can hit that sucker!' and he took his 22. rifle and fired at it."  Now I know from my Boy Scout days that a 22. rifle's shot can go as far as a mile, so it's entirely possible that he hit the Hindenburg, which therefore would have started leaking hydrogen gas.  Was it therefore no wonder that, on hitting static electricity on landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, that the Hindenburg blew up?

This true story troubles me to this day. 

Philip Spiess

Richard Winter

I just made my flight reservations for my trip to the reunion in Cincinnati in June.  I hope many of you will be there -- I look forward ot seeing you.

Philip Spiess

Richard or Gail (or whoever):  Are there any plans we should know about yet, such as events, reserved hotels, dinners?

Laura Reid (Pease)

Phil, yes, a "Save the Date" is being mailed to all "64 graduates in the next few days; hotel options will be listed there.  We will have a casual get-together Friday night downtown and a dinner Saturday night.  Also included will be a tour of WHHS on Saturday during the day..

Hoping for a wonderful turnout for our long awaited reunion in Cincy, June 9th and 10th, 2023!

Stephen Collett

Just got my ticket to Ohio. Can´t wait. So you all stay well.

Richard Murdock

Got my roundtrip airline tickets a couple of weeks ago.  I am flying into Cincinnati on Tuesday June 6th  - arriving from California late in the PM.   I wanted to have a couple extra days to play tourist in Cincinnati, and to drive by the home I grew up in - out in Mt. Lookout.  I am definitely looking forward to seeing everyone and enjoying Cincinnati and WHHS.   Only hope the humidity is not too bad.  Living for so many years out here in the SF Bay Area - has gotten me used to basically zero humidity during the summer.  

Sandy Steele (Bauman)

As Laura mentioned, the Save the Date will be mailed this week or next, and the invitations will be sent in April. We are looking forward to seeing e wry one as it's been much too long.

Laura Reid (Pease)

Dick and Steve,  So happy you are coming to the reunion!!  It will be wonderful to be together, finally.  Sandy and I wish we could do something about the humidity, but as you know, that's a lost cause!!  However, we are planning on having a great time....see you all on June 9/10!

Richard Winter

I'm posting this poem at the request of Jon Singer

  ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED AT WALNUT

At the seasonal crest where the hootennany glory and culture

Meteorically clashed with raucous rhymes and bebop beats,

We, the indigenous gifted from disparate cultures of burbs and hood

Assembled for big-picture learning under an educational dome.

Whether preadolescent or post pubertal at the time of our migrations,

All fostered pride with their widened horizons by the ‘64 graduation.

We’ve all bookmarked multiple investments of the varied opportunities

We’ll highlight as we ignite remembrance in an upcoming class reunion.

In advance of reassembling with you all, let me say I learned the following:

It’s not soul crushing to lose in the majority of sports in all seasons.

An AP class is an aspiring delivery room for a time-sensitive college degree.

Instruction by our peers and elders valuably extends beyond the classroom.

A split lunch line is a wandering journey to satiate hunger, not to tickle the tongue.

Duality of wood shop and segregation within home econ. affirms our differences.

Metal forks impaled in a lunchroom ceiling may be quite injurious should they fall.

If you don’t copy assignments in homeroom, study hall boasts a sweet serenity.

Peanuts and Walnuts raised natural abilities, senses and hidden treasures to glory.

Those who hid out for smokes as a higher attainment of adultness unlocked stupidity.

Even the simplest schoolboy may learn from the obligation to study obsolete Latin.

Individuality and personhood are not enabled by forced naked swimming class.

                                                          Jonathan Singer, M.D.

Richard Winter

White Castle has sometimes been discussed in this forum.   There aren't any White Castle restaurants where I live in Massachusetts, though I have seen their products in the frozen food section of our grocery stores.  But here is something new about White Castle (it is a short video that from CNBC):

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7023299162230165504?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

So glad that you long distance travelers can make it back to "The Natti".  
Jon, your poem is a marvelous description of the class of '64. 
I don't recall if I ever posted this limerick on the forum previously, however we WHHS alum, appreciate mathematics and witty rhymes, whether we are right or left brain dominant.  
ENJOY! 
 

Philip Spiess

William S. Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan fame couldn't stand Edward Lear's limericks, so he wrote the following parody:

"There was an old man of St. Bees

 Who was stung in the arm by a wasp.

 When asked, "Does it hurt?"

 He said, "No, it doesn't;

 I'm just glad it wasn't a hornet!"

Laura Reid (Pease)

Dear Classmates,

Sandy and I are working on our reunion, and we wanted to give you a "head's up" on hotels, as I have gotten several inquiries about where to stay.

We have three options, two downtown and one in the shopping complex near Hyde Park called Rookwood.

1.  AC Hotel, 135 Joe Nuxhall Way, 45202; 513-744-9900.  We recently learned that the Bengals have reserved a number of rooms here the same weekend as our reunion, so availability could be limited.

2.  Residence Inn by Marriott, Phelps Hotel, 506 E. 4th Street, 45202; 513-651-1234.  This hotel is on the eastern end of 4th Street, across from Lytle Park and very near the Taft Museum of Art.  It would be very cconvenient to our Friday night venue.

3.  Courtyard Midtown (Marriott)/Rookwood, 3813 Edwards Road, 45209; 513-672-7100.  This hotel has a room block for Walnut Hills, class of '64, for June 9 through June 11, with a discounted rate.  You MUST mention Walnut Hills when you make your reservations.  This hotel is in a very nice shopping area with lots of restaurants.  It is also 10 minutes from Walnut Hills HS, and 10 minutes from our dinner venue for Saturday night.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.....we hope to have a huge turnout for our reunion and can't wait to see you all!!  Go Bengals!

Sandy and Laura   (Laura:  513-379-6805; pease1947@gmail.com)