Ira Goldberg

Bittersweet reading this Friday's Chatterbox. Cheered by Larry Klein's column about pigskin victories and Gene Stern's covering fumbles, but sad to read of Derek Dunn in better times when he is gone from us now. Confirms importance of our days and friends high on that special hill! Nevertheless, sure enjoying all the facets of our '64 Senior year!

Jeff Daum

Steve thanks for your comment and yes I have lots of additional pictures from Machu Picchu.  I was fascinated with the engineering feat accomplished in the 15th century represented by the structures, the hauling of the stones up to the nearly 8,000 feet elevation, and attention to details like anticipating the need for drainage through and around the rocks (and then having collection basins to allow the water to settle and store).  Here are a couple more shots:

Steven Levinson

Ira, bittersweet for me too.  Regarding the premier "It's Academic" competition, WLW-T's amateurism and incompetence really screwed us over, and in more ways than reflected in the Chatterbox.  If WLW had followed its own rules, we would have won by a wide margin.  That was annoying.

David Buchholz

Jeff, love the shots of Machu Pichhu...my sons both walked the Inca Trail; the younger one proposed to my daughter-in-law there.  We took the train down from Cuzco and walked the last day, then climbed the mountain on the other side.  My slides aren't as interesting, but we loved the Andes.

More insanity from photographers.  Carrying a tripod six miles through the redwoods to Berry Creek Falls, just east of Santa Cruz, only to find that a troupe of boy scouts was camping on the wooden viewing platform, which meant that the time exposure required to make the falls look like this was impossible, as their footsteps on the platform shook the tripod.  Exasperated, I asked in a calm voice, "If all of you would simply step off the platform for about ten seconds I would be eternally grateful."  They did.  I was.  I still am.

Nelson Abanto

Hey Phil (and everyone),

Did you see Verdi's MacBeth on Saturday?  I thought it was one of the best performances ever. It was a super cast including Anna Netrebco (in a very revealing dress)' Rene Pape, Zeljko Lucic and Joseph Calleja.  Everyone was in top form and Luisi was great. 

"MacBeth" was never one of my favorites but this was sensational.  If you missed it the Encore is tomorrow at 6:30pm.

Jeff Daum

Thanks David.  What great memories you must have of the Inca Trail and such a storied location for a proposal!  Beautiful results using the long exposure of the Berry Creek Falls.

Larry Klein

Hey Eagles sports fans!  Update on the STATE golf championships.  Our Walnut's Katie Hallinan is at the halfway point after one round.  She fired a 76 today and is tied for 8th place OVERALL, only 3 shots off the lead.  It's going to be much colder tomorrow, and Katie is a tough bad weather player.  She has already made history as the first Lady Eagle ever to play at the state golf tournament.  The Walnut boy's team played at state in '38, '55 and '57.  It's been 57 years since an Eagle has been to state golf.

This was going to be my "retirement" season, but I guess I'll have to stick around a couple more now.  Wish us luck tomorrow!

Laura Reid (Pease)

keep us posted Larry!!  no retirement yet....you're on a roll!  Go Eagles!!

David Buchholz

David Buchholz

The Snowstorm in Nepal, Part II. Below Jadyne and Jennifer is the town of Muktinoth, where those stranded in the snowstorm were trying to reach.  

Even though it was warm when we were there we were looking forward to the little hotel's advertised "hot showers." "How are they?" I asked a trekker. "Don't know," he replied. "The pipes haven't thawed out yet." — 

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

I wish this Forum had a  button like Facebook. I love all the pictures and Larry's sports updates v

Jean Snapp (Miller)

I love all these travel pictures!  Wonderful trips with eyes for beauty, even in raw places.

Larry Klein

Update!

Sorry I didn't get this up yesterday, but after 8 1/2 hours on my feet (three days in a row) at the course and then driving home, I was out like Rip Van W.

Katie gave it a valiant effort.  After a rough start the first 4 holes, she made a nice run and was only 2-over par for the last fourteen.  She finished with 76-81=157 for 16th overall and only one shot away from being the top freshman in the tournament.  Still the first and BEST ever Lady Eagle at state golf. Her highlight of the w/e was an eagle 3 on the par 5 12th hole at the Buckeye Grey course.

I'm looking forward to at least one more year and better things ahead.  Go Eagles!!

David Buchholz

Because I'm going through Nepal photos...this one is just amusing.  We ran into a traffic jam in Kagbeni, Nepal, along the Annapurna Circuit.  This wasn't rush hour, though, and it happens frequently every day.  You just have to watch your step.  There's a familiar yellow "M" in the center of the image, but I think it was probably pirated.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Jerry Ochs

More of our four-footed friends.  I think of this one as, "You lookin' at me?"

Nancy Messer

Love the photos with the animals.

Philip Spiess

Dave Buchholz:  Re photo of goats -- how Nepalling!  Hope you didn't step in any Katmandu!  The Berry Creek Falls photo is berry, berry nice!  And the photo of Death Valley is so surreal that it looks like a landscape by de Chirico or one of the Art Deco posters produced for the National Park Service in the 1930s and '40s.

Nelson:  Missed Macbeth; I've been traveling in New England for the past month and climbing mountains.  Got to the top of Mount Major in New Hampshire, overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee, and had raised my hiking stick and announced loudly, "I claim this land in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella!" when my phone went off -- its ring tone is Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries."  A couple below me said, "Well, that was dramatic!"

Ann Rueve:  Your fourth ("fun house mirror") photograph on Entry #1097 looks like an original work of art somewhere between the styles (Danny Brown, take note!) of Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Stella, and Constantin Brancusi.

Jerry:  Yes, "The Admiral on the Wheel" -- I used to like to sit in front of our Christmas tree when I was at WHHS and look at the lights with my glasses off, because they blurred so nicely.  It was like something seen through a winter fog.

Chuck:  Thanks for the Easter/Passover information; it was all new to me.  Of course, what Christians celebrate as the Last Supper was, indeed, a Passover meal:  Jesus was Jewish, a fact apt to be forgotten by most Christians.  I have come to believe that Christianity as it formed over the ages into what we know it as today was really established by St. Paul, himself a good Jewish lawyer.  By the way, The Oxford Companion to English Literature (at least the 4th ed. [1967], which I won as the 1968 recipient of the Hanover College English Department's John Livingston Lowes Award for Excellence in Research) has, as Appendix III, a description of the "Christian Calendar," i.e., the Western Christian religious calendar, denoting the holy days by Dominical Letter, Easter Day, the Regnal Years of the English monarchs, the dates of Movable Feasts, and Saints' Days -- from 1066 through 2000!  (And, yes, I have recently heard of plans to rebuild the Temple -- there was to have been a copy of it at the 1926 Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposition, for which I have seen the plans, though it never materialized -- but, as you say, the rebuilding will be, if not during a red sun, at least during a blue moon.)

Jonathan Marks:  I think with your theatrical sense you knew at the time that it was the best Peanuts ever, but, as you were heavily involved in it, modesty forbore you to say aught of it.  Likewise our class:  I'm not given to mathematical mysticism, but I always thought that '46 (the year most of us were born) and '64 (the year we graduated) seemed somehow interchangeable -- for undoubtedly cosmic reasons!

Jeff Daum:  Your photograph reminds me of Tennyson's (my favorite poet, along with Byron) "Flower in the Crannied Wall."  I have always been intrigued by the legend that Machu Picchu's massive stones were moved (flown?) into place by music (possibly flute) -- much more interesting than Merlin's moving into place the monoliths of Stonehenge!

And Larry:  Speaking of ruins, that supposed Caribbean Mayan temple mound?  You can't fool me -- that's the Miamisburg Mound State Memorial in Miamisburg, Ohio, north of Cincinnati, before they let the trees grow up!

Sorry, folks, that this entry was so long, but I was catching up on the comments and pictures posted during the month that I was gone on my trip.  NOW -- for catching up with The Chatterbox!

David Buchholz

It's hard to imagine an event worth missing the Giants in the World Series for, but dinner with Gail, George, and my wife Jadyne—all Giants fans—at Ajanta in Berkeley tonight was more than worth it.  Besides, George and I had our iPhones tuned to MLB.net, so while Gail exchanged texts with Steve, we could find out just what we were missing.

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

David, you rascal! You promised that you wouldn't post this photo on the Message Forum. Oh, well, the Giants rocked it tonight, and the four of us had a fun time together. Really, it was the four of us and Steve Kanter who was texting comments about the game throughout the evening. Now it is on to Game 5 and a step closer to a World Series victory.

David Buchholz

And maybe a few photos from India, as Gail and George are headed there next month.  One of our favorite stops was Varanasi, the most sacred city in India, where many come to be cremated, their bodies then sent down the river.  A block or so away from the funeral pyres weddings are held.  The Torquays used to play at weddings.  These are not the Torquays.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Gail - Why didn't you want that photo posted?  It's beautiful!

Philip Spiess

Okay, folks, this Forum suddenly seems to have gone anemic.  Let's have more people responding, commenting, fulminating -- I know a lot of you read this without responding -- you've said as much (when you respond).  You're not too old to exercise your wit, your intelligence, your creativity -- or to just share your thoughts, your experiences, your travels, your children, your photographs -- even your illnesses, which many of you have shared, which allows us to be concerned and empathetic, and to know we are all aging together.  We are all, as this Forum shows, friends who care about each other and are excited to learn about each other after 50 years have passed!  Speak to us; we want to hear from you!

Nelson:  I know you were busy in Strassburg, Alsace, with the wedding.  But did you happen to visit the Cathedral and see the unbelievable Clock?  (I almost wrote Cock!)

Jerry Ochs:  Your picture (beautiful and intriguing) of steps (Entry 1074) reminds me of a scene halfway through the movie The Robe, wherein Richard Burton and associates raid the prison of the Emperor Caligula to release a prisoner.  This movie and its sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators, have always excited me because of the actor Jay Robinson's depiction of the Emperor Caligula (he later apparently went berserk, jumping on his bed naked, yelling, "I'm Nero!  I'm Nero!"  But, of course, the ultimate Nero was Peter Ustinov, in Quo Vadis?, even surpassing Charles Laughton in The Sign of the Cross, a movie made notorious by Claudette Colbert bathing in wild ass's milk).  I saw the original releases to the Caligula movies in the theater as a youth, and, recognizing what an effect they had on me as imprinting an idea of the Roman Empire on my mind, showed large portions of them to my 6th Graders as we studied the Roman Empire and its "Bad Emperors" (I also showed large portions of Quo Vadis?).

And then suddenly there were all these flower photos.  Are you people budding geniuses or blooming idiots?

Chuck Cole:  You claimed (sometime back) that you did want to hear my story about Horatio Greenough's statue of George Washington in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.  The Greenough statue is a very large seated statue of George Washington as a (perhaps) Roman general, flowing hair, bare-chested, Roman military-style skirt over his lap, and a Roman sword in hand. He is otherwise fairly naked, which led to my mentioning it in my American Association of Museums Museum News article on the sesquicentennial of the Smithsonian (1996) as a statue of Washington at the Bath (it has always been my subtle trick to slip a joke into every one of my published professional articles, to see if anyone notices -- only one Smithsonian curator did; Ira Goldberg and Gail Weintraub Stern, this is the article I sent you).  At any rate, our scene now shifts to the very young days of my son, Philip F. Spiess, with whom I was the "at home" parent.  He was about 5 years old, and, to amuse him, since he was interested in medieval times, castles and dragons and so on (my influence, no doubt, given the 1870s Germanic castles on Lafayette Avenue in Clifton, behind the 1940s house I grew up in), I showed him Fritz Lang's incredible 1924 German silent movie, Siegfried, based on the Nibelungenlied Saga (Nelson Abanto, take note); we watched it several times.  In it, the character of Siegfried is young, with flowing hair, bare-chested, a military- style skirt over his lap, and a sword in his hand.  One day I took young Philip into the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian to join his mother for lunch (she was an Assistant Director of the museum), and we passed the statue.  "Who is that, Philip?" I said, thinking he would recognize George Washington.  "Siegfried!" he promptly announced in a loud voice, causing museum visitors to turn in surprise.  Nelson:  Is it a crime to Wagnerize your son?

Larry Klein

Phil - in the fifteen minutes it took to read and re-read your last post, I learned more history than in all 6 years at Walnut.  I also made note that the time off in the northwoods has apparently rejuvenated your wit and typing skills.  Welcome back SpiessMan!

Jeff Daum

'Inspired by Phil's prod' I thought I would put up some more photos.  This first series is from a collection looking at the wonder of the sunsets we are privilaged to watch almost everyday from our home.  The second series will be themed sunsets around the world.  This first collection I had origninally planned on doing by putting one of my cameras in a fixed location and taking sequential shots over time.  Never got around to doing that so all the shots are spontaneous.  Here is a sampling: