REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (July 1, 2008): My wife and I went hiking several years ago on a steep trail in a town called Gold Bar, Washington. We had just completed most of the ascent, when we realized that it was about to turn nearly vertical. We took a break to admire the marvelous view, and wondered whether we should continue to the top of the mountain. Just then, a fellow who must have been in his 80s rapidly approached behind us, and without hesitation, continued rapidly toward the summit. We were astonished, and wondered who he might be. When he passed us again on the way down, we asked him if he had hiked this mountain before. "Only about a dozen times a day, nowadays," he responded as he continued to quickly descend. "As you can see, I'm not as young as I used to be, and I carry this walking cane with me most of the time. But the view is as magnificent as ever, and I'm not going to allow myself to deteriorate without a fight."

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (June 26, 2008): When I was in high school, I had a friend named Ken whose father Sal loved to tell stories around the dinner table. Unlike myself and most of my friends who ate our biggest meal of the day around six or seven in the evening, my friend and his family dined at 3:30 sharp--which also made it convenient to watch "All in the Family" on TV. After school ended at 2:30 p.m., Ken and I would often walk over to his house, so I was invited to quite a few dinners through the years (my mother always wondered why I wasn't as hungry as I should be). Sal's favorite story was about the time when he was helping his oldest son load several heavy packages onto the train at Penn Station in downtown Baltimore. He was about to leave, but the doors had firmly shut and could not be opened even with several other people trying to assist. By the time he found a conductor, the train had left the station--on its way to the next stop more than 60 miles away in Wilmington, Delaware. In those days before cell phones, all Sal could do was to make an expensive long-distance call when he finally arrived in Delaware and tell his wife that he'd be quite late for dinner that day, as he was in Wilmington and would have to wait for the next train back. As the years went on, this tale accumulated numerous additional humorous embellishments which may not have been entirely true.

Sal pretended to forget that he had recounted one or another version of this story dozens of times earlier, so he would frequently retell it and improve upon his earlier attempts. One fine Saturday morning, my father drove his brother, who lived in New York, to the Baltimore train station and still had not returned after nearly two hours. Finally, the telephone rang and my mother answered it. "You'll never guess where your father is!" she screamed. "Wilmington, Delaware, no doubt," I calmly replied.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (June 15, 2008): For many years, I took a commuter train at 9:30 p.m. which stopped in my town exactly seventeen minutes later. I took this train so often that I got to know practically everyone else who rode it along with me, including especially the gregarious conductor who had been in charge of that route since about the time I was born, and was close to retirement. We used to talk about everything from the weather to the financial markets to what we were planning for our weekends. Several years ago, there was a political maneuver by a wealthy nearby town which caused this locomotive service that had operated since just after the Civil War to be permanently terminated in September 2004 in my town and in two other towns. On the last scheduled day of its operation, I had to take an earlier commuter train for an important meeting--but I headed out after dinner to the train station to say a final goodbye to my favorite conductor whom I knew would be passing through my town for the very last time. When he arrived, even though it was after dark, he somehow knew to look for me and saw me standing on the platform. I expected him to wave and maybe say a few words; instead, he completely stopped the train and talked with me for several minutes, lamenting the concept of "progress" before finally starting up the train again and completing his ultimate ride on that line.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (June 1, 2008): Each year, the city of Montclair, New Jersey has a special festival in their largest open meadow entitled "May in Montclair". One of the most popular features is an exhibition of real Scottish border collies by world-renowned trainers of those dogs. The handler wows the audience by showing how sheep and geese will move together in the exact direction that he requests, by using his dogs to herd them. Several years ago, he began the demonstration as he usually does, by letting three sheep out of their holding pens. He didn't expect that his sheep would dash off toward the end of the meadow and beyond, traveling well over 20 miles per hour. You should have seen the looks on the faces of a pair of joggers on a nearby running path when these three sheep suddenly bounded in front of them, practically knocking them over, followed shortly thereafter by one very eager border collie.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (May 11, 2008): In July of 2000, my wife and I stayed at a bed and breakfast place in Bermuda that was owned by a wonderful man named Westmore Bean, who rented out the basement of his house to us. Mr. Bean taught me the rules of cricket, cooked some local specialties, and reminisced about life on the island going back to the 1920s. In preparation for the trip, I had printed out roughly 200 pages from the internet which dealt with all aspects of the history of Bermuda: why people wear Bermuda shorts, what to see in each of the individual islands, and so on.

On the night before our flight home, our place was covered with randomly scattered internet printouts, as I had been too lazy to put them into any kind of meaningful format. I wasn't eager to bring the huge amount of paper back on the return flight, so I tried to throw it out--but I could not fit it into the trash can, since it was in such disorganized form. I therefore sat down to put it into a single pile that could be easily discarded. While I was doing that, I began to organize the papers into categories: by island, west to east; by historical significance, earliest to latest. Before I knew it, the whole pile was perfectly arranged--and so I couldn't bear to throw it out! So I simply left it for Mr. Bean to take care of after we left. As a gift after we got back to the U.S., I mailed him a videocassette of "That Touch of Mink", starring Cary Grant and Doris Day, which Mr. Bean had watched being filmed just one block away from his house.

In April 2004, we returned to Bermuda. His bed and breakfast was no longer in operation, so we stayed elsewhere. We decided to pay Mr. Bean a surprise visit. It turned out that he converted the basement into a long-term rental. We sat for more than an hour, talking about everything that had happened since we were last there. Unfortunately, his wife had recently passed away. As we were about to depart, Mr. Bean thanked me for the video, and said, "Before you go, let me show you something which you'll find interesting." He returned with a book, bound by hand, which contained all of the 200 pages that I had left in a pile. A friend of his who was cleaning the place after our departure had noticed it, and decided to surprise him by having it specially bound at a local print shop. Mr. Bean showed off the book proudly to everyone who came to visit.

In his early 90s, Mr. Bean died less than a half year ago. He will be missed.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (May 4, 2008): When I was in high school, I had a friend named Kelly who enjoyed playing Led Zeppelin songs on electric guitar. Being a pianist myself, we worked out duets and performed in the neighborhood. When not playing music, Kelly was the biggest sweet talker (a.k.a. b.s.-er) that you could imagine. One day, I bet him lunch that if I dialed a number at random, he couldn't keep the person on the telephone for a full minute. He immediately accepted my challenge. I literally just picked out numbers without even looking at them, and a woman answered the phone. Kelly not only was able to keep the conversation going for more than three minutes, but in another three minutes had arranged a date with this woman. After high school, I didn't see him again for about a decade, when I ran into him in a well-known local music store where he was looking for some special guitar picks. Not surprisingly, he had become the lead salesman for some kind of shady outfit. I'm sure he's still out there selling timeshares or arranging subprime mortgages, and working on the arrangements for a few Zeppelin tunes.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (April 27, 2008): When I was a student at Johns Hopkins, my academic adviser was Dr. Jan Minkowski. He was the kind of person who cared about not just the obvious academic achievements of his students, but also their lives as a whole. When I was having difficulty deciding which classes to take in my sophomore year, he suggested, "Take differential equations--that's something you'll use over and over again." I responded naively, "I'm sure that once I finish my final, I'll never see another differential equation in my life." I was wrong; for more than a decade, I have been working with differential equations every day in computing options prices. He knew exactly which professors made their classes interesting, and who made their students learn how to think. Dr. Minkowski also made sure that I was introduced to ideas and people who later made a major difference in my life. On graduation day, he somehow located me amidst the massive crowd of students to give me some final words of encouragement. Sadly, Dr. Minkowski died before I had a chance to go back and thank him.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (March 31, 2008): When I was in college, I joined the chess club which used to meet each Saturday night starting around 9 p.m. and often going well past midnight. The only room large enough for us to meet at that time was in the same building and also the same floor as the university's Rathskeller, which used to blare loud disco music most Saturday nights. Eventually, we got used to playing chess with "Staying Alive" in the background and the reflections created by bright strobe lights.

On one Saturday evening, the disco DJ stayed home and I was invited to perform at the Rathskeller on a grand piano for a special "Western Night". This was great fun, as people crowded around the piano to sing some old cowboy songs from the 1800s. Around midnight, so many people were leaning on one side of the piano that its weakest leg gave way and it suddenly collapsed onto the floor, dragging down a few dozen beers and creating an amazing mess--not to mention a loud dissonant crash. Luckily, there were no real injuries. I brushed myself off and walked over to the chess club to see if anyone was still around.

There were still several intense chess matches in progress, so I sat down and watched. Not one person noticed that I was dressed as a cowboy with a ten-gallon hat. A few minutes later, a few of the women who had been gathered around the piano noticed me sitting in the club and walked over. One of them gave me a passionate kiss--which finally induced a few of the chess players to look up from their games.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (February 18, 2008): When my sister Beth was in ninth grade, she began an independent science project that took several months to design and investigate. She created a special colorful display on a wooden board; she accumulated a huge amount of data; and one day after exhausting herself with some meticulous painting, she asked me what I thought. I looked carefully at everything, and finally told her truthfully, "You've done a wonderful job collecting information, and your artistic ability is amazing. What you need is some way of connecting it all together." "Can you be more specific?", my sister insisted. "I'm not even sure what I'm looking for," I admitted. "Let me study it this weekend." That Saturday afternoon after piano and composition classes at the Peabody Preparatory, I went to my favorite hideout, the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, and spent a few hours skimming through several science books. I was beginning to get discouraged, when finally I discovered something called the "chi-square test". I borrowed the book, studied it, and explained it to my sister. She immediately realized its importance, and redesigned her entire project as though she had years of experience with significance levels and frequency distributions. In a major regional competition, my sister won numerous awards from the state statistical society and other organizations.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (February 12, 2008): I visited Tokyo for just over two weeks in October and November 1987. When I was there, I stayed at a traditional Japanese inn which had one distinctly nontraditional feature: all of the other guests besides myself were working full time on tourist visas. One fellow was a lively Australian chap from Brisbane, who sang and played traditional American and Australian folk songs on his guitar near subway stops. That might sound like an unpromising way to survive in the world's most populous city, but he actually earned more money than any of the other people who were staying at the inn. From time to time, passersby would leave him tips as large as ten thousand yen (at that time, about $70 U.S.). Having stayed for more than two years at this inn, he coaxed the proprietress into giving him a special monthly rate and in eventually occupying the most desirable room available. We discovered that we could both speak some Spanish, so we would converse in that language when we did not want the other residents to understand what we were saying. That was especially true when he told me about his unfortunate and rather lengthy experience in a Mexican jail after he was caught with a small amount of marijuana on a music tour. Some of this guy's adventures, if they were true, would make Crocodile Dundee seem like a hopeless wimp in comparison, although they can not all be reprinted on a family-friendly web site. This chap made friends with the inn's other residents by always having on hand a generous supply of high-quality whiskey.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (January 21, 2008): In May 1984, I decided to drive from Baltimore to Chicago to visit a good friend from high school who had moved there. His older sister was also living in the Windy City at that time. I usually flew, but for whatever odd reason, for the first and only time, I decided to drive. After supper, I began to head west into the sunset of the Blue Ridge Mountains at 6 p.m. on a Wednesday evening and arrived at 4 p.m. the following day, having driven for 16 hours and taken two separate 3-hour naps on my car seat in the parking lots of two chain motels. I didn't bother to stop for food along the way. (That's what I call traveling in style!) When I finally arrived in Chicago, I contacted my friend and invited him out to dinner. We had quite a full meal, after which his sister unexpectedly called and invited both of us to have dinner with her an hour later. Naturally, we accepted, and all of us went to a popular Thai restaurant where I eagerly downed a second and even larger feast. My friend, not surprisingly, was barely able to eat anything. "What's wrong with you?" his sister worried. "Don't you have a good appetite these days?" "Maybe he's not accustomed to the spicy Thai seasoning," I suggested with a sly smile.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (January 8, 2008): When I was in second grade, we moved from one part of Baltimore to another. At the new school, each class was learning a different song for the school musical to be performed in December, "The Wizard of Oz". The assigned song for our class was "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead", and since we had moved several weeks after the fall semester had started, I worked diligently each evening and even on the weekend to memorize the words so I could catch up with everyone else. Finally, I came in one day confident that I would be able to sing along with the other students in the class--and that day I was abruptly transferred to a different class. "No!" I screamed, "not a whole new song!" (The story has a happy ending, as I was able to eventually also memorize "Follow the Yellow Brick Road".)

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (December 12, 2007): When I was in high school, the father of one of my best friends became my buddy. His name was Jack Martin, and we shared a love of music. Especially during my college years and for a few years thereafter, we went to see some truly great jazz and folk performers together: Count Basie; Pete Seeger with Arlo Guthrie; Oscar Peterson; Ahmad Jamal; Anita O'Day with Harry "Sweets" Edison; the Modern Jazz Quartet. I especially remember a concert in a small, crowded club in downtown Baltimore featuring the great jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli; during a break between sets, the violinist's forty-something backup band took a much-needed break, while Mr. Grappelli himself, at that time in his mid-70s, played jazz piano throughout the intermission.

My favorite time with Jack was a fine early summer day in 1984. We drove early in the morning to a waterfall in western Maryland where we sat and talked about life for several hours. In the afternoon, we went to visit a friend of his who had four musical children. They each performed a classical piece in turn on their various instruments, starting with the youngest, as I accompanied them on the piano. The oldest one, about sixteen years of age, played Bach's Violin Concerto #2; this well-known work has a piano reduction that would have been impossible for me to sightread competently if I had not practically memorized it several years earlier to win a statewide competition with a violinist friend in high school. All of us shared a delicious and leisurely dinner together before we returned home. Either before or since, I cannot recall a more memorable day.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (November 26, 2007): When we were growing up together in Baltimore, my sister had a close friend for many years named Janet. Unfortunately for my sister, Janet's father was given a promotion which involved moving to Buffalo, New York, which is several hundred miles away. About two years after they moved away, our family drove to Toronto to visit our cousins. As we pulled into a motel in a small town called Painted Post, New York, the immediately adjacent parking place was simultaneously taken by Janet and her family, who--unknown to us--were driving to Virginia Beach for a vacation. That remains to this day as the most remarkable coincidence that I have personally experienced. It was a somewhat embarrassing event for Janet's father who was scolding Janet as we got out of the car, not realizing that we were right next to them quietly watching--except for my sister who was jumping excitedly up and down.

The same evening, our two families enjoyed a wonderful dinner together. Afterward, having forgotten that we had driven so far during the day, I turned on my favorite radio which I had packed and which was tuned as usual to listen to the Baltimore Orioles' baseball game. In another surprise, the game came in almost as clearly as if we had been in Baltimore--I guess the same AM radio frequency was not used for a very long distance north of my home town.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (November 11, 2007): When I was studying at Peabody Institute in Baltimore, there was a fellow who used to hang out with me named David Buechner. Even in those days, he was a sensitive and intelligent performer who often discovered nuances of interpretation that I had overlooked, and therefore I often asked his advice before important piano recitals. One day more than three decades ago, I forgot my library card, but I wanted to borrow Debussy's beautiful "Estampes", with my favorite "Gardens in the Rain". I asked David if I could borrow his library card, and he said okay. When I offered to return it to him later, however, he insisted that I keep it. I thought he might change his mind, so I kept it at all times on the top of my dresser.

The library card expired in May of 1976, but I couldn't bring myself to discard it. I have relocated more than a dozen times since then, and yet David's library card has always remained on my dresser. Various people through the years have asked me why I have someone else's library card so prominently displayed. I do not even have my own library card or almost anything else from those days, so it is rather difficult to explain. A couple of years ago, I saw David mentioned on the front page of the New York Times magazine. Unlike myself, he is still performing full time, although life has changed for him in rather unexpected ways. If he wants his library card back, I'd be delighted to return it to him.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (October 22, 2007): For many years, I have been attending an event each January in which sophomores and juniors from my alma mater visit Manhattan for a few days. I serve as one of their mentors, telling them about how to pursue job opportunities in finance, and the best way to make the most useful personal networking connections. During the first few years of mentoring, I was barely older than the students whom I was assisting, so when they asked me when I graduated, I would always joke that it was "before you were born". This response would inevitably generate great laughter. Now, it is no longer humorous--at least to me--because it is true. If I continue with this mentoring program long enough, I'll eventually be able to say honestly that I graduated before their parents were born.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (October 8, 2007): Just over a year ago, I was in Alaska during the beautiful autumn season that lasts for only a couple of glorious weeks in September. While driving on the highway to Seward, I noticed a photographer standing patiently by the side of the road, so I parked and walked over to him. "Look at that," he pointed to a craggy stone hill nearby, "that's a family of Dahl sheep. I've never seen them at such close range." I asked him, "Do you live around here?" "No," he replied as he began to rapidly take one photo after another, "I freelance for National Geographic. They're going to love this." As he took dozens of photos, I slowly took out the digital camera that I had not had time to familiarize myself with before the trip. I had the owner's manual with me, but it took several minutes to figure out how to use the camera properly, during which time my amused pro had taken probably two hundred shots. Finally, when I had everything set, the sheep had gradually moved well up the mountain, so even with the strongest zoom lens my photos looked like indistinct white dots on an autumn landscape. At least the colors turned out brilliantly.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (September 23, 2007): In February 1984, I was scanning the advertisement section of a local Baltimore newspaper when I noticed that some historic sheet music was for sale. I called the number listed in the ad, and made an appointment to visit a house in an old section of town, owned by a woman named Hoffman. When I arrived, this woman told me that she had music from songs which had made the "Hit Parade" back in the forties and fifties. I saw a grand piano in the room, and asked if I could try sightreading some of the music to see if I liked it. As I did so, her brother George showed up, and told me the piano was for sale along with the music--so I ended up buying both. After arranging to pick up the piano a week later, George asked me: "Do you have a little more time? Let's try some of these." He played and sang for about ten minutes, then got up for a moment. I immediately sat down on the bench and cheerfully offered, "That's wonderful, now let me try a few." We went back and forth for four or five hours, until finally George told me, "I'm tired. Let's do that some more when you pick up the piano next week."

Just before I left, I noticed a bass in the corner of the room. I inquired politely, "Does anyone play that?" He responded with a chuckle, "Oh, sure, I have fun sometimes when no one is really listening." When I returned a week later with the moving people, the sister was very agitated. She told me, "George just passed away this morning after riding his bicycle. He collapsed right after he got back and died instantly. I hope you like the piano. Meanwhile, my brother's burial will be tomorrow," and she gave me the address. I hardly knew what to say. When I showed up at the funeral home, I was startled to see a full jazz band performing tunes just as they famously do in New Orleans when a well-known musician dies. I asked someone, "Is this the funeral for George Hoffman"? "Yes, of course," this person responded, "didn't you know that at one time he was the best-known jazz bassist on the East Coast?" I was stunned, and responded honestly, "No, I didn't realize that. I've only heard him singing and doing Hit Parade tunes on the piano." The other person glared at me as though I must be crazy.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (September 9, 2007): I have a brother named Dan who is 6-1/2 years younger than I am, and is much more intelligent than myself. When Dan was a kid, he always wanted to learn new games. In the spring of 1970, I broke my arm, so I stayed inside for most of my summer vacation that year. My brother was usually around, and kept pestering me to teach him something more interesting. I finally surrendered and told him, "I'm going to show you a simple game called chess which I'm sure that you will enjoy." I figured that Dan would soon give up due to the difficulty, but amazingly he quickly grasped even the most obscure rules. Over the course of the summer, he improved so much that I told my dad that Dan knew how to play chess. My dad laughed, until they played against each other and my brother easily won. When American Bobby Fischer contested the world championship versus Russian Boris Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972, and the whole country wanted to learn the game, Dan taught his five-year-old friends how to play. After joining the chess club at his high school, which consistently won state championships, my brother at the age of fourteen was able to beat me routinely without much of a challenge. At the age of sixteen, Dan won a citywide tournament, brought home a huge trophy, and--just as world champions Bobby Fischer and Paul Morphy had done before him--announced at the peak of his accomplishments that he was permanently retiring from the game.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (August 5, 2007): Way back in 1966, our family stayed one week at a mountain camping retreat in the Poconos called "Barrow Lodge". Each morning, all of the residents got together to sing the official camp song, which began like this: "We welcome you to Barrow, we're mighty glad you're here . . . ." After all of us sang the song in unison, the parents split up from the kids, not to get together again until after supper. We had a wonderful time, so a few years ago I was telling a co-worker about the place. He insisted that it never existed, so I told him, "I'll bet I can even find the camp song on the internet". I was wrong--it was nowhere to be found. The only reference to "Barrow Lodge" was a small radio station. So, in frustration, I sent an e-mail to the owner of the radio station, telling him that there used to be a real place called Barrow Lodge, and sending him the lyrics to the camp song. I didn't expect any response, but I quickly got back a corrected version of the lyrics, along with a question as to how I knew about the camp. The radio station owner was the son of the couple who had started the place in the 1940s. Unfortunately, the camp lasted only one year after our stay; the Federal government forced his parents to sell using eminent domain, with the intention of building a dam--which was never built. The land remains abandoned to this day. The radio station owner had saved some promotional postcards about the original Barrow Lodge, and graciously sent me one--which stands proudly on my piano. An identical postcard four decades earlier had encouraged my parents to take us there in the first place. There are currently two different Barrow Lodge postcards for sale on Ebay (is anything not available on some online auction site these days?), but I have no intention of selling mine.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (July 23, 2007): For one year I had the most peculiar white-collar job that you can imagine. I worked for a company that had an interlocking series of computer programs. The problem with these programs was that they did not synchronize with each other, since some of them ran too quickly, while others were slow. There was no easy way to speed up the slow ones, but there was a simple way to slow down the fast ones. Every computer language has a command which tells the computer to "do nothing" or "take a break for a certain exact period of time". The programs I was working on had an instruction called NOP, which means "perform no operation for 2 clock cycles". My main job for the year was to add as many NOPs as was needed to ensure that hundreds of programs ran synchronously. One of the few breaks I got from this rather tedious task was whenever one of the shared computer machines began to act crazy. The first time this occurred, I happened to be very close to where my boss was sitting. I told him confidently, "I can fix this!", even though I had no idea what to do. I asked everyone to please leave the room, so that I could work without distractions. I then turned off the computer, and turned it back on. Amazingly, this solved the problem. People asked me what I did, but I didn't want to give away my secret. After that, every time one of the main shared computers went haywire or crashed, I would be asked to fix it. More than 80% of the time, simply restarting it did the trick, but I still insisted that everyone leave the room first, to create the illusion that I was doing something really unique. To this day, I think my co-workers didn't learn my secret. Please don't tell them.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (July 8, 2007): My sister got married in Venice six years ago, so several of us spent about a week there during the time of the wedding. I wore my favorite straw hat, which sometimes makes people think that I am impersonating Vincent van Gogh. My sister dressed each day in her unique style, while a friend of my sister had braided her hair with various dyed shades of blue, white, and pink, rather like an exploded peppermint stick. As we visited the fascinating neighborhoods in that old city--Cannaregio is my favorite section--we tried to capture parts of Venice through film. Every time we tried to get a good angle for some shots, especially when we were in a popular part of town, we found ourselves being approached by quite a few tourists who wanted to take photographs of us. Many others pointed, gawked, or otherwise commented on our presence. It was simultaneously flattering and annoying--a little taste of what it must be like for a famous person to travel around the world.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (June 27, 2007): In August 1974, our family took a vacation to a remote part of West Virginia--so remote that I repeatedly paid for very small items in local stores with dollar bills, since I was getting real silver dimes and other very old coins in change. Somehow, word got out that President Nixon was going to resign, so people from miles around gathered at the single color television in the nearest town's main lodge to watch the historic event. As Nixon made his speech, some people laughed derisively, as others wept; many just stared passively, while a few simply got up and walked out of the room. My sister and brother had the right idea: while the rest of us were listening carefully to the President, they played the pinball machines in the back room.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (June 17, 2007): I was hiking one day with some friends in a forest located on top of a ridge. We had a wonderful time, but it became dark sooner than we had anticipated, and it was clear that we had not allowed sufficient time to return to the starting place of our hike before it got dark and the trails would become very difficult to follow. There was a town below us which had well-lit streets, so we decided to quickly descend before we had difficulty finding our way. Fortunately, we found a relatively easy path that was not too steep and did not have any poisonous plants or sharp thorns. Just when we thought everything was going to be fine, we discovered a very large dog, weighing at least 150 pounds, that was too eager for us to reach the bottom. We tried to distract him by throwing some sticks in the opposite direction, but that had no effect. Soon the dog started barking loudly, which attracted the attention of the owner of the property. Fortunately, the owner did not begin shooting! He was rather startled to see the seven of us suddenly appear on his land at dusk, but he was gracious enough to grab his dog and permit us to cross through his house into one of the streets of the town. We apologized for causing him trouble, and he said it was the first time that such an event had happened in the fifty years that he had been living there. We later discovered that he was a rather famous person who had moved to the U.S. from Europe shortly after World War II. The next time we hiked in the same forest, we made sure to check the time of sunset before we began.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (May 28, 2007): This is probably the only reminiscence I have written about someone else's reminiscence. In my update from September 20, 2005, I talked about how from 1969 through 1977 I would spend a couple of hours each Saturday at Baltimore's historic Enoch Pratt Free Library (see link immediately below). They had an unusual collection of books, including probably the sole remaining copies of some works. One of their books was a very plain paperback which had been written by a working-class man from the Bronx, called "Bronx Cheer". The author's name was Julius Jacobs. The pages of the book were obviously unprofessionally typeset, as though someone simply put them through an old-fashioned typewriter and perhaps checked briefly for errors if time permitted. The book was written by an old man who clearly wanted to leave some legacy of what it was like growing up in that borough of New York City during the early part of the twentieth century.

The writer has a quirky, original viewpoint on life--such as pointing out that the profession of physician has so many precisely named subspecialties, whereas his own career as a dishwasher allows no distinction between those who are adept at cleaning glasses from those who are best at washing silverware. His conclusion is that the greater the money involved, the finer the distinctions--which is absolutely true if one sees what has happened with the sudden explosion of classifications of modern art these days. One of the more amusing recollections is when the author climbs onto a roof to get a closer look at an unusual architectural detail, only to get unwanted attention from a passing policeman who thinks he has more nefarious intentions. The author is a feminist years ahead of his time, proposing the word "xe" which would serve as a neutral pronoun instead of saying "he or she".

By the time I had finished reading "Bronx Cheer" thirty years ago, I decided that one way or another, I wanted to write my own reminiscences for others--even if mine would probably be hopelessly unable to meet his impressive standard. I also felt sad that I couldn't purchase the book, because I sensed that I would never be able to locate it again. However, that was before the internet and Amazon; I see that "Bronx Cheer" is currently available in theory from a few places, although in practice it is rather difficult to locate. One of these days, I'll have to get a copy and reread it, to see if I can gain some additional insights.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (April 11, 2007): When I turned 13 years old, like most Jewish adolescents of that age, I had a Bar Mitzvah. There were months of preparation in chanting the Torah and Haftarah, and in preparing for relatives and friends to visit--some of them from quite far away. By the time the day arrived, I felt I was ready, but I had not expected the crush of people who surrounded me almost nonstop during the Bar Mitzvah weekend. One of the features of the occasion is receiving gifts--which seemed to happen in frenzied clumps. I tried as best I could to make sure that I did not misplace any of these presents, and meticulously wrote down the name of the giver along with each gift in a special book. About one week after the celebration was over, and life had returned to normal, I wrote thank-you notes to each of the gift givers. At least I thought I had; as the months slowly passed thereafter, about a dozen people began to make subtle remarks--mostly to my parents--about not having received thank-you notes. They also made puzzling comments such as "are you people loaded--how come you haven't cashed my check yet?" My parents and I concluded that some of the gifts must have been overlooked somehow, but even after turning the house upside down, we didn't find any additional ones.

In those days, I was studying music at the Peabody Preparatory Institute. About once or twice a year, I would be invited to give a piano recital or to enter a competition. I was in one such competition about a half year after my Bar Mitzvah, waiting backstage with my piano teacher who was helping me with final preparations. She told me, "I'm not worried about how you're going to perform--I only get a little nervous about how you look. Why does your jacket look tilted?" I had no idea what she was talking about, and told her so. "See that; it's not balanced properly. Let me help you fix it." She opened up my jacket--and out of its pocket dropped a dozen envelopes. The other students in the competition looked at me strangely as I began to laugh uproariously, since nervousness is usually the only emotion just before going on stage. I think this strange incident helped me to perform more calmly that day. As you can guess, those envelopes were Bar Mitzvah gifts that I had placed there during the rush of receiving presents six months earlier, and had totally forgotten about. Since I only wore my "fancy" jacket a few times each year for special occasions, the recital was the first time that I had worn it since my Bar Mitzvah.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (February 21, 2007): I have only played golf twice in my entire life. The second time, which happened a couple of months ago, will be described in a future reminiscence; now, I will concentrate on the first time, which was way back in June 1978. I had just graduated from high school a week earlier, and my girlfriend invited me to spend several days with her and her brother in their cabin on an island in Virginia, immediately adjacent to Chincoteague (of "Misty" fame). When we arrived the first evening, her brother asked if I would like to play golf with him at 4:30 a.m. the next morning. That sounded ridiculously early to me, but I didn't want to seem like a sissy, so I immediately responded, "Certainly." When it was time to head to the course, I observed that he was wearing high boots more suitable for duck hunting than for golfing, and a very ragged pair of old blue jeans. I also noticed that we had plenty of clubs, but only a handful of balls, so I politely inquired if we were going to pick up some extra balls along the way. "Yes, we are," he laughed, "you'll be quite a busy bee. I may not play golf very well, but I always run a surplus." I had no idea what he meant, but went with him willingly. I thought I would show how generous I was by bringing enough money to cover both of us, but the clubhouse looked abandoned. "Don't we have to pay something to golf here?" I asked, puzzled. "I see a list of prices." "Oh, just forget about that, no one charges on Wednesdays. The course is completely trimmed and cleaned from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each Wednesday, so no one is around to collect the fees. Those of us locals who appreciate the true meaning of frugality always play early Wednesday morning. There's nothing like high, tall grass to separate the men from the boys!" I didn't want to appear to be a spendthrift, so I kept my mouth shut as we went to the first tee and started to play. As we walked down the first fairway, he pointed out a water trap just to our left. "I don't think we have to worry about that one--we've already gotten past these hazards," I pointed out. "I never skip a water trap!" he boasted. "Let's go." He then proceeded to walk right into the pond, all the way to its deepest point. Now I understood why he was wearing those boots and jeans. Naturally, I had only my regular shoes and designer pants, which were about to become quite soaked. "Put your arms in all the way as though you really mean it," he exclaimed, and soon we had found five thoroughly dirty balls that had gone into the muck. "Wonderful! Right over there is a sand trap, so let's get ready to dig." I cannot even remember how well I played, since the entire morning was a blur of bending over in smelly, muddy, algae-ridden pools of something like water, and plowing through sand mingled with bird droppings. We ended up staying more than four hours and playing all 18 holes. We also ended up bringing back well over a hundred golf balls, which left my golfing buddy absolutely delighted. Ironically, to this day, the only thing I remember vividly about the entire vacation was the golfing experience.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (February 6, 2007): About a decade ago, I booked an airport rental car at a surprisingly low rate from a well-known nationwide chain. When I arrived after my flight to pick up the automobile, the manager asked with a smile, "Would you like to upgrade from your compact car to an Oldsmobile Cutlass S to make your ride more pleasant? It will only be an extra ten dollars a day." I thought about it for a moment, then politely declined. Barely a few seconds later, the manager tried again. "Surely, sir, you would prefer a more comfortable and luxurious method of transportation. You can have the Cutlass S for just five dollars more per day." "No, thank you," I insisted, "I'll just stick with my compact car, but I appreciate your offer." "How about a mere two dollars a day extra--you can't beat that for a deal!" "Thanks, but no thanks." I asked the attendant for the keys, and he walked me over to my vehicle--which was an almost new Oldsmobile Cutlass S. The only cars remaining on the entire lot were all of that model.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (January 16, 2007): When I was in Tokyo in October and November of 1987, I walked east of the Sumida River late one afternoon into a working-class neighborhood where few tourists bother to go. I found a small park where there is a bronze statue of a bull. It is considered good luck to rub the part of the bull which corresponds to that part of your body which is feeling pain. The brightness or dullness of each area showed where most people had chosen to touch the bull. After examining this, I decided to slowly wander around the park, not having any particular purpose in mind. I saw a park bench and decided to take a break. Soon afterward, an old man who was similarly wandering around the park sat next to me. Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. Finally, I decided to attempt my very poor Japanese and remarked, "Good day, is your health well?" To my great surprise, the man responded in fluent, unaccented English, and proceeded to tell me his story. His parents had been killed by the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, so he was raised in an orphanage by Americans for several years during the occupation. He had always been interested in visiting the U.S., but had been poor his entire life, and so never had the money to afford such a journey. The man told me I was the first American he had ever met in that park. I hardly knew how to respond, so I told him that I just wanted to learn more about the world. He responded with a nod. We each sat in silence for a few more minutes, and then slowly went our separate ways.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (December 21, 2006): When I was a student at Johns Hopkins, I had an excellent economics professor named Dr. Carl F. Christ. By the way, his last name rhymes with "grist", not with that guy whose birthday is being celebrated next Monday. Each winter, the sophomores and juniors from my alma mater who are getting a minor in business visit New York City for one week, to learn about potential employment opportunities. I have been attending these gatherings for several years. Last year, I received an unexpected surprise when Dr. Christ showed up along with the students, and was deservedly given a special honor. I was even more surprised--and, frankly, a bit disappointed--when I discovered that Dr. Christ already knew all of the economists' jokes that I had learned from the internet. My favorite of these jokes is about a student who visits his favorite economics professor 25 years after graduation, and arrives on the day of the final exam. The student says to the professor, "I can't believe you're still asking exactly the same questions, word for word! I'll bet I could still get an A if I took this test today." "I'm sorry, but you'd fail," responds the professor. "The questions are exactly the same, but the correct answers are completely different."

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (November 19, 2006): There's an old saying that a man may be a king to some, and a pauper to another. When I was thirteen, I was involved with a youth orchestra that was conducted by a dynamic, fiery leader whom everyone in the group loved and followed without question. He demanded very high standards and his young followers consistently exceeded them. His teenage orchestra met across the street from the Peabody Institute of Music each Saturday afternoon and won many state and even national awards over the decades. Unfortunately, this same fellow had a thankless, but higher-paying, "day job" at a public junior high school as the conductor of each grade level's own band. All of the classical music that he loved had to be "dumbed down" repeatedly so that it could be followed by the students--many of whom were, shall we say, less than talented. He was derided by many, including some loudly complaining parents, as out of step and "into" the wrong kind of music. He frequently became frustrated with some who never practiced and others who repeatedly hit glaringly misplayed notes. The lowlight of his career was one day when he became particularly irritated at one indifferent kid who was beyond incompetent. While in a raging tirade, his toupee flew off flying into the front row of band members, exposing his bald head to a raucous cacophony of dissonant jeers.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (September 10, 2006): A lot of times I'm asked how I originally got interested in metals. Many years ago, at the age of 8, I took a special summer class in geology along with other kids my age. One of my fellow students was named Alan Kahn, who had a Jewish father and a Chinese mother. We soon became great friends. Each week, after the classroom session was over, we would go with about one dozen others--mostly boys--on an old school bus and drive to a site where we would all grab interesting rocks from a cliff or from some other huge deposit. Most of these were in western Maryland, a traditional mining area. Alan was obsessed with building the best possible maze for his gerbils, so he used to bring home huge slabs of pig iron, granite, quartz, and every other type of rock, to make an incredibly complex maze in his basement that would have made the Flintstones proud. After a few months, he must have had the smartest gerbils in the Baltimore metropolitan area. One day I taught Alan and his brother how to play bridge; about a month later, he and his brother handily beat myself and another friend who had been playing for a couple of years. We were baffled until Alan showed us how he had developed an elaborate cheating system by kicking feet with his brother under the table. Unfortunately, Alan moved to Pennsylvania in 1970, and I never found anyone else who was that creative in his leisure pursuits.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (August 4, 2006): At the age of fifteen, when I was studying music one chilly Saturday winter morning at the Peabody Preparatory of Music in Baltimore, a sharply dressed nine-year-old boy approached me and asked if I could please turn pages for him. Assisting other students was a common courtesy, so I told him that I would happily do so, and could he please lead me to his classroom. The boy's father appeared, and told me that the request was not for a lesson, but for a recital later that afternoon. The father then invited me to have lunch at an elegant restaurant in the neighborhood with himself, his wife, and the kid. I happily accepted, surprised that I would receive such royal treatment just for turning a few pages at some obscure "Prep" recital that perhaps a dozen people would attend. After our meal, we proceeded to the back of the main Conservatory concert hall, which made me wonder why we were taking such a circuitous route to the building where I had always given my own student piano recitals. Suddenly I found that we were ascending the backstage area at one of Baltimore's premier concert halls, with several dozen professional musicians around me tuning up their instruments. I was puzzled, so I blurted out, "What's going on?" The boy's father replied, "My son, who recently won the U.S. under-ten piano competition, is about to perform Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. It is the final rehearsal and the media should be in attendance. Please follow him onto the stage and sit to his left, where we have placed an extra seat for you." The boy's parents left the stage. A moment later, the curtain rose, and as I walked to my seat, I heard a sudden loud applause. I turned toward the source of the noise, and gasped as I faced the largest audience I had ever seen anywhere, complete with TV cameras zooming in and out. The boy remained quite relaxed throughout, but I don't think I have ever been as nervous as I was during that performance. Fortunately, my page turning was sufficiently competent that it did not interfere with his playing. The father was gracious enough to give me free tickets to the final concert the following week, which the young prodigy performed without sheet music, and which received very favorable nationwide publicity.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (July 11, 2006): When I lived in Baltimore, I used to go to several shops and restaurants for as much as two decades, and got to know the proprietors at some of them quite well. When I finally left in 1985, I didn't have a chance to say goodbye to all of them. Earlier this year, I was visiting one of my favorite delis from the old days, known as Edmart, on Reisterstown Road. They sell something called "hamish mustard" which is out of this world. I thought I recognized the person behind the counter, but I couldn't be sure. He stared at me for a minute, then exclaimed with genuine concern, "You haven't been in here in awhile. Is everything okay?"

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: TORONTO, PART 1 (April 12, 2006): I have family all over the world, but the greatest concentration of my relatives live in Toronto. In 1976, we had our biggest-ever family reunion in that city, and I met some of my cousins for the first time. I still keep in touch with most of them. While we were there, we went to the Ontario Science Center, which I still rank as the best of its kind. In the center (or, should I say, "centre") of the complex, visible from any of the other rooms, was a huge contraption going all the way from the floor to the ceiling. It was patterned after the inside of a computer chip, in which wires conducting electricity go through a series of Boolean "gates". Each gate has two inputs, each of which can be either on or off; each gate has one output, which is either on or off depending upon the values of the two inputs. The gates were arranged in a complex cascading pattern going from the ceiling to the floor. Anyone who wanted to be the next victim of this contraption voluntarily ascended a staircase to a central area in which this person could set the values of all of the inputs to the uppermost gates, those closest to the ceiling. The remaining gates would be triggered deterministically depending upon the results of the outputs of the other gates. An enormous bell on the side of the room was apparently set to ring if someone correctly set all of the inputs in the exact sequence necessary to trigger a positive output from the bottommost gate. Over the course of the few hours that we were in the science center, the bell did not ring even once. An amazing parade of folks gave it their best shot, but inevitably failed. I didn't see anyone under the age of twenty attempt to figure it out. Suddenly, my nine-year-old brother ascended the steps, which caused a ripple of laughter and a lot of fingerpointing. On his first try, the bell loudly rang. They didn't realize they were looking at a future science professor.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (March 12, 2006): My project leader at work, who sits immediately adjacent to my desk, is from south India. His wife is from the same area of the world, and she prepares a traditional lunch for him each morning which he takes to work in several plastic containers. Every so often, my colleague prefers to eat out at a restaurant with a few of his colleagues, rather than eating his wife's home-cooked selections, but he dares not tell his wife that he has not finished her food. Therefore, he inevitably offers me the lunch. That's great for me, since it is excellently prepared and delicious, and is also sure to be vegetarian, since his wife does not eat meat of any kind. The first time that I was offered these delicacies, I made sure to meticulously wash each of the plastic containers afterward. Apparently, my co-worker was not doing the same, so his wife was puzzled why suddenly they were spotless. He didn't want to tell her that he wasn't eating the food, so he came up with some excuse that is known only between the two of them. Since then, she must wonder why once or twice a week the containers are so clean, whereas they are not on the other days. As far as I am aware, neither of the two is a reader of my web site. Thus, the secret is safe and they should maintain family harmony, which is important since they have two young sons.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (February 26, 2006): Many years ago, I was visiting the small town of Dahlonega, a quaint old historic gold mining town not far from Atlanta. Years before gold was discovered in northern California, there was a gold rush in North Carolina and Georgia, substantial enough so that U.S. mints were established in Charlotte and Dahlonega to make coins from the gold mined in each region. In Dahlonega, there is a fascinating gold museum, and even some gold mining still going on by mom-and-pop operations in the area. The Appalachian trail is also nearby. While walking around less than a block from the town square in late December, I was puzzled to see more than a dozen people bending over, apparently picking up the recently fallen autumn leaves, and putting them into bags which had been apparently brought along especially for the occasion. I thought to myself, "What a strange activity--don't they hire someone to do this kind of work?" I went over to one of the leaf pickers, and asked him, "Is this a kind of volunteer community service that you're doing by picking up the leaves?" He laughed heartily and responded, "These aren't leaves, they're pecans which fall from those big trees up above every year at this time. They're six dollars a pound at the corner store. We don't mind if outsiders join us." So, I went to my car to retrieve a canvas bag, and was appropriately occupied for the next hour. They were delicious.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (January 22, 2006): My brother is a well-published professor and researcher, and had been living within driving distance of my home since 1988. This past year he received a wonderful job opportunity in a distant city, even including full paid college education for his children, so he decided to make a move. I knew that this meant seeing him a lot less often, and was concerned that we would begin to lose touch. One evening, a few months ago, I was just beginning to walk home from the train station when my cell phone rang. It was my brother, who had just gotten into his car to drive home from his laboratory, and on a whim, decided to see if he could reach me. By an amazing feat of serendipity, although we are not even in the same time zone, our commuting hours from work to home exactly coincide. We now sometimes talk a few times per week. For fun, I'll have my brother listen in as I stop at a bakery and chat with the people behind the counter, or I'll hear my brother stop at a gas station and fill up the tank (sometimes he asks me to guess the price per gallon). It's not quite the same as when we shared a bunk bed all those years ago, but we're enjoying the unexpected chance to communicate so frequently.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (December 26, 2005): In October and November 1987, I was fortunate to be able to spend some time visiting Tokyo. I could write several dozen reminiscences of that trip, with the smell of persimmons in the air, elevated trains running determinedly here and there, and the most unusual people that I met in the city's small parks. There was a series of over one hundred woodblock prints that were done of Tokyo by an artist named Hiroshige a decade before it became the modern capital in 1868; almost all of them show the famous Mount Fuji in the background, usually partially covered with snow. In real life, a resident of Tokyo almost never sees Fuji-san: besides being 60 miles away, with modern industrial pollution in Tokyo and frequent fog by the mountain itself, it is primarily a vision of the imagination. After I had spent about two weeks in the capital, there was one especially clear November afternoon that was said to be among the crispest in months, so I took the opportunity to ride an elevator in the downtown Kasumigaseki building all the way to the observatory level at the top. There were several dozen people milling around, almost all with cameras: most of them were locals with the same idea that I had. All of us looked in the direction of the famous mountain, but not even the faintest outline could be seen. Gradually, the hour became late, and as the sky became dimmer, most of the previously hopeful onlookers began to descend. Finally, the last brilliant light shone a deep orange, and suddenly Mount Fuji appeared, in all of its glory, perfectly backlit by the sunset. A few people gasped, and the entire room crowded together to take photos for one glorious half minute; then the sun's rays dimmed for the last time, and Fuji-san faded once more into invisibility.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (December 4, 2005): For the past nine years, I have lived across the street from a man named Roy. I don't even know his last name, but he was the first person other than the landlord to say hello, and had the most interesting stories about growing up in Scotland and how he studied piano from a young age. I invited him over to hear me perform some of my songs, and soon we became good friends. After listening to his brogue for several months, I decided to try to imitate it--when he wasn't around, of course. I eventually wrote a Scottish whaling song in Roy's honor and had the privilege of performing it for him before anyone else could hear it, including intentionally attempting to mimic his thick accent. He was totally silent for a full minute, then chuckled that "it sounds like the kind of tune we used to listen to around the fireplace when I was a kid". Roy then added, "Were you trying to sound like me, or did I just imagine that?" I continued to practice imitating his voice, but never got it precisely right. Roy loved to tell stories about "the good old days". He was always outside, chatting with neighbors, playing soccer with kids that happened to be walking past, or working on his house--if he would finish remodeling it, he immediately ripped it apart again, so that he could do it better the next time, and the next. Roy passed away this past Wednesday.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (November 22, 2005): I studied music for ten years at the Peabody Preparatory Institute in downtown Baltimore. The main building in those days looked very much the same as when it was first constructed, with almost everything decades old, including the ornate contraptions needed to get drinking water, the long, narrow benches on each floor, the elevators which had to be operated by a live person, and even the light switches, which were of the small black pushbutton variety not seen in most other buildings in the U.S. since the 1920s. One room even had a telephone dating back that far; although it no longer functioned, it still had its phone number imprinted (only six digits!). One day, I was sitting on the bench in front of the main elevator on the basement level, with my music books spread out along with my lunch, as I tried to eat while studying Mozart's 20th piano concerto. I always loved the basement floor the most, as I could hear distant sounds of many different instruments coming from all directions, mingled with the muted shouts of the ballet teacher barking directions to her students at the far end of the hall. A friend of mine boarded the elevator, telling me he was going to the fourth floor, the topmost one in the building. Feeling somewhat mischevious, and knowing that it would take a few minutes for the elevator man to stop at each of the floors along the way to let people out and in, I gathered together my books, my drink, and my food, put them quickly in my bag, raced up the marble steps to the fourth floor, unpacked everything, and arranged it as similarly as possible on an identical-looking bench in front of the same elevator. When my friend walked into the hallway, he stared at me for a few moments, then turned back into the elevator, wondering why he had ended up where he started. The elevator man had to explain to him that he really had changed floors. Finally, after another half minute, he broke out laughing, and kept on laughing for an unusually long time.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (November 1, 2005): In junior high school, I had a very unusual teacher of social studies for eighth and ninth grade. He was a charismatic man, but somewhat vain, and always eager to have the last word. On occasion, he would ask one of the students to make a paper crown. He would take his chair, place it on top of one of the tables, put the crown on his head, and declare himself king of the class. He gave each student a nickname, and called each of us by that name, rather than by our true name. I was "eighty-eights" because I played the piano, which has 88 keys. When the class would get too rowdy, he would inevitably shout, "All right, babies, sit down!" He had a previous career as a magician, and when we least expected it, he'd pull something out of a student's ear, or something equally whimsical. To his credit, he always made the class lively and informative, and was well prepared for each lesson. The other teachers considered him something of a freak, and did not always include him in their social gatherings. Once, we were studying the California gold rush, and he asked me to sing a few songs that were in the textbook. I'll never forget the first line of one of the tunes: "The happy days have passed, the mines have failed at last . . . ." For a teachers' talent show, he was the hit of the evening, performing incredible magic illusions. His greatest ability was to make even the most boring topic seem exciting.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (October 25, 2005): Three decades ago, my family took a car trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My father decided that we should visit the starkly beautiful Bodie Lighthouse, which would have been an excellent idea, except that there was a sharp nail located in one of the parking spots in the lot, which our automobile naturally drove directly over, making the right rear tire immediately very flat. Given the somewhat remote location, we were stuck at the lighthouse for five hours. Bodie Lighthouse is located on a tiny island, and the opportunities for exploring it by foot are limited, especially as most of the small "land" area is below sea level, quite marshy, and not really walkable, even if you have thick waterproof boots, which we did not. There was a ten-minute film on the second floor introducing visitors to the history of the lighthouse. There was also an aquarium on the first floor that featured two healthy goldfish, one very sick goldfish, and one small, young crab. Well, there you have it. My brother and sister each watched the film, and watched it again . . . about 25 times altogether. After seeing it once, I concluded it wasn't going to win any Academy awards, so I went downstairs to see if the crab could catch the sick goldfish. After more than four hours, and about a hundred attempts, the crab finally succeeded. That was my cue to finally go to the bathroom. Oddly, when I look back on the trip, the Bodie Lighthouse is always the first thing that comes to mind, even 30 years later.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (October 16, 2005): When I was at Johns Hopkins, I joined the chess club, which met every Saturday night at 8 p.m., and was run by a real chess aficionado named Steven Immitt. There was no rule about who could join, but only guys did. The only space large enough to hold the dozen or so chess games that were typically played simultaneously was a room in the basement of the Student Union building. The same basement was host to the university's Rathskeller, a place where students would party hearty every night of the week, but especially boisterously on Saturday evenings. This was in the days when the drinking age was 18, beer was cheap, and disco dancing a la "Saturday Night Fever" was king, so it was common to have well-dressed, but very drunk students saunter, or more accurately stumble, from the Rathskeller into the chess club, and challenge one of us to a game. We had a grandmaster in our group, who loved to challenge these overdressed inebriated strangers, and who refused to play anyone unless there was a stake of at least a quarter. The rest of us usually witnessed at least a few speed-chess contests between this genius and some sorry drunk frat boy, the latter who soon proceeded to lose a few bucks, and then would usually turn either somewhat violent or occasionally break down in tears. The campus security had to be called in at least once per month when the situation would get out of hand, especially if the player had a few pals with him. A general melee sometimes ensued, with chess pieces, clocks, and/or a few bodies flying, and a lot more excitement than you usually associate with that usually sober, intellectual board game. On rare occasions, a female student wanting a break from the Rathskeller noise would wander into the club, leading sometimes to even more interesting situations to be described (perhaps) in another reminiscence.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (September 20, 2005): For ten years I studied piano and music composition at Peabody Preparatory in downtown Baltimore. I soon discovered a marvelous quiet sanctuary only a few blocks from the music school, which was the main branch of the Baltimore Public "Enoch Pratt" Library. Upon entering the massive old building, the main hall had incredibly high ceilings, with dozens of the old-fashioned card catalogs arrayed in a few dozen rows in the center. Paintings of Baltimore's entire founding Calvert family, including distant cousins, hung along the walls, as though one had entered the home of a wealthy and very eccentric surviving member of that family. If one continued in a straight line, one entered an even more unusual inner room, with a loft level of ancient books that appeared to rise into the sky, and which was apparently entirely inaccessible by normal human means, unless one had developed the ability to fly, since it was more than fifteen feet up, with no obvious staircase or ladder. The room contained a massive globe that the public was permitted to use and explore closely, as well as the library's primary collection of up-to-date reference volumes. On other floors were complex labyrinths of all kinds of books, including some very old ones, as well as the most modern, and an entire room of the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe. Walking into the building was like entering a temple; exiting, like returning to reality after a strange dream. Once, when I was nine years old and departed by the main entrance, I was immediately approached by a street bum who begged me for a quarter. That was an even more startling return to the real world than I had bargained for.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (August 15, 2005): When I was in junior high and high school, I had a friend whose father was a jazz musician named Jack. Jack had later left the music business to become a salesman, but continued to closely follow the jazz music scene. As my own music knowledge, which began with classical piano, gradually evolved into a broader appreciation of all kinds of music, Jack served as a teacher of jazz, going with me to see whom he considered the best performers of the 1980s, whether or not they were famous. We went together to nightclubs, to outdoor pavilions, to concerts in local universities where some of the greatest unheralded players sometimes had an audience of only 40 or 50, and even to shopping malls. In some cases, it was years later before I realized how special and unusual was this musical journey. On one occasion, we drove early on a Sunday morning for 1-1/2 hours to visit a friend of Jack who lived in a tiny town in western Maryland. His friend was also a former musician, and he had five kids still living at home, all of whom played different instruments. I ended up accompanying each of them in turn on the piano as they played everything from a Mozart violin concerto to a modern jazz clarinet improvisation. Although they had never seen me before, or even heard of me, they all treated me like part of the family and fed both of us a marvelous supper, after which more music followed. It was an unexpected day that I will never forget.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (July 4, 2005): When I first moved to New York City, I interviewed with many companies before finally deciding where I wanted to work. One of these interviews was at a bank on a very cold early December morning in 1985. I had been preparing to purchase a new overcoat since the previous winter, but had continued to procrastinate about making the purchase, so I was stuck that day having to wear an old navy blue sailor's pea coat with threads literally hanging off the sides, and with a few noticeable holes in various places. When I arrived at the interview, I naturally did not want the person meeting me to see the coat under any circumstances, and got a lucky break: the interview was on a high floor of the building, so when I arrived at the lobby, there was a closet with coat rack right there, near the elevator. I asked the doorman if I could use the coat rack, and he said to go right ahead. By the time I arrived at the interview, I looked professionally appropriate. After meeting with several people, and having what I thought had been a very successful afternoon, the last person interviewing me, a vice president, decided for whatever reason to accompany me all the way down to the lobby, as he was leaving for the day. When we arrived at the ground level, the doorman immediately understood what was happening, and did not attempt to retrieve my hopeless garbage from the closet. However, as we went to go outside, the vice president realized that I was going into the 20-degree evening without an overcoat. He inquired, "Aren't you going to be a bit uncomfortable outside?" I didn't know what to respond, so I said in a cheerful voice, "Well, it's just a short walk to the subway, and the wind has died down quite a bit." He called my bluff, and I had to stop from shivering as we went together to the #2 train downtown, and headed to Brooklyn, continuing the interview informally. He finally departed at the Atlantic Avenue stop to catch a commuter train, about a 15-minute ride from the bank. I waved goodbye, discreetly returned to a train going the other way, and returned to the interview building. Unfortunately, another person who had interviewed me was leaving just as I was about to take my coat out of the closet, so I had to whirl around, say a few pleasantries, and again go outside in the cold for a minute to wish him a proper farewell. I returned once again, and finally was able to get my coat in quiet and peace. Before returning home, I went out one final time in the chilly evening to purchase a proper winter coat. After all that, I didn't get a job offer from the company, for reasons unknown.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (June 19, 2005): When I was near the end of my junior year in high school, we were offered the unusual opportunity to take a class in computer programming the following year (1977-1978). The reason was that the county where I lived, Baltimore County, Maryland, obtained its very first computer for use by students. (They previously had other computers for government use only.) Because one computer had to be shared by all high schools in the county, a strict timesharing arragement was necessary; every second Monday at 10:30 a.m., we would arrive by school bus at Loch Raven Senior High School, and enjoy the use of the computer for exactly 1-1/2 hours. If this was not enough time to complete our assignments, we were permitted to optionally share private carpools to attend the school between 3:30 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday afternoons. Since there were not enough keypunch machines for the Hollerith cards that we had to use, we were given Sharpee black markers to manually mark the cards; if one minor error was made on any card, it had to be thrown away. Inevitably, once or twice each hour, one of the students would make an error on the card and request a full page between each line sent to the printer, rather than a single line; this caused paper to come flying out wildly, the printer to become jammed, the computer supervisor to become enraged, and a screaming tirade to follow. Ah, the joys that today's kids will never experience.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (June 5, 2005): Whenever I visit my parents in northwest Baltimore, I enjoy taking a long morning run through the neighborhood just north of where they live, where there are a lot of horse farms and private tennis courts and swimming pools, and the scenery is spectacular. From time to time, I was sure that I spotted one or two buffalos along one section of the run. I thought perhaps that I was imagining it, but I found out from a family friend that a somewhat quirky guy had been keeping buffalos on his property for several years, and enjoyed showing them off. I conjured up a fantasy whereby the buffalos would somehow get free, and terrorize the tony neighbors. Each morning, on my commute to downtown Manhattan, I pick up "Metro", one of the free newspapers that are handed out each morning to New York City area train commuters. On the front page of the April 27, 2005 edition was a huge photo with this story: "An American bison tramples through a makeshift barrier of lawn chairs and netting, knocking down a police officer on a tennis court at Greene Tree gated community yesterday in Pikesville, Md. A herd of American bison escaped from Buzz Berg's Stevenson, Md., farm, and police corralled the nine buffalo into the courts . . . ."

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (May 30, 2005): In the summer of 1983, I worked with an interesting man named Bill Knox who lived in Rockville, Maryland. One Friday afternoon he asked me, "Would you like to go flying tomorrow?" I didn't know exactly what he had in mind, but I met him just after dawn at a tiny airport only a ten-minute drive from where I lived, and soon we were airborne in his twin-engine four-seater Cessna. He flew the tiny plane along roads that I had only seen while driving and we covered parts of four states altogether (MD, VA, WV, PA). After about half an hour in the air, I asked him, "What are these controls doing on my side of the airplane?" He said, "You can fly this baby equally well from either seat; let's see how you do on your side," and proceeded in a few seconds to remove his hands from the steering wheel, push a button, and give me full control over our destiny. After recovering from the sudden surprise of what had happened, I was able to guide us pretty well for the next half hour; of course, all I did was make minor adjustments to our speed and make a few slow, easy turns, but it was the first time that I had been a pilot, and was a real thrill. As we approached our destination, Bill took over in order to land the vehicle, and I thought that would be our adventure for the day, until he said he wanted to take a glider around some particularly challenging and partially uncharted peaks in the Appalachian Mountains. That was too risky for me; while he went up in the glider to happily flirt with the fine line between life and death, I hiked alone up the highest ski trail in the area, enjoying the wildflowers and being on solid ground. He returned safely, after which we flew in the Cessna back to our original point of departure. Bill and I got together a week later to see Mose Alison perform in a small club in Georgetown, D.C.; it was a fabulous evening. A week later, Bill suddenly took a job in another town, while I simultaneously moved to a new neighborhood in Baltimore; in the confusion, we lost touch with one another and have not been in communication since. P.S. If you haven't crashed your plane yet and you're still out there somewhere, please contact me.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (May 23, 2005): I usually pride myself in being able to find my way back to wherever I want to be, even when I am thousands of miles away from home. Once, however, I got lost less than a mile from the house where I spent most of my childhood. My sister and I were visiting our parents several years ago, when we decided to go jogging together. We started out toward our former high school, then took a familiar path through the woods. We thought we were following along a well-marked stream trail, but soon found it became increasingly overgrown, and after making a turn toward what we thought was the main road, found ourselves surrounded by a thicket of thorny brambles with no obvious way out. Our only clue was the sound of heavy, fast traffic nearby, indicating that we were only a hundred yards or so from the Baltimore Beltway. We spent several minutes trying to find our way back to the original trail, or else some alternative path to a known area. We were almost ready to give up and run painfully through the sharp thorns toward the sound of the traffic, hoping to hitchhike a ride from a passing motorist on the highway, but we finally saw some trampled twigs where we must have entered originally, and rediscovered the main passage without getting too badly scratched. The moral of the story is that even the most familiar path can sometimes lead to utter confusion.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (May 15, 2005): About a decade ago, I went to Philadelphia with some friends. They didn't want to take Amtrak, since they said it was too expensive, so we took a PATH train--basically a subway--to Jersey City, where we switched to another PATH train to Newark, and then at Newark, switched yet again to a New Jersey Transit train to Trenton. Once in Trenton, we had to purchase tickets for the Philadelphia transit system, known as SEPTA (not to be confused with a septic tank). The train in Trenton was only a few minutes away from departing, and it is a long walk up a staircase to get to the human ticket sellers, so most people were buying their tickets from a machine on the train level. My ticket cost $3.20, but I didn't have anything other than a few $20 bills that I had recently gotten from an ATM machine, so I put in one bill and hoped for the best. On the PATH system, often the change from a large bill in those days arrived in the form of clunky dollar coins from 1979. I was prepared for that, but I guess that near Philadelphia they had run out of those coins, and they don't like to give away their quarters so easily, either, so after a brief pause, the machine gleefully spit out 168 dimes. It was like winning the jackpot in Vegas, except that the dimes were bouncing all over each other and rolling around the platform, and meanwhile about a dozen people behind me in line were impatiently waiting for me to pick up my "winnings". The total trip to Philadelphia took about 1-1/2 hours more than the Amtrak train, so the actual savings was questionable. I got a slight measure of revenge on the return trip when I paid for my New Jersey transit ticket, and for those of my companions, entirely from those dimes, but it took a few weeks to disgorge my coat pockets of all of the ten-cent pieces. The worst part: not a single one of the 168 was a silver (pre-1965) dime.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK--A MOTHERS' DAY TALE (May 8, 2005): The most physically painful experience of my life occurred when I was just 3-1/2 years old. I was going to preschool as a part of a carpool. The driver that day, who was the mother of one of the other kids, was slightly impatient when I was leaving the car, and did not check carefully enough to ensure that my entire body was out. She slammed the door on my left ring (fourth) finger, almost severing it in half. To her credit, she quickly rushed me to the hospital, and the surgeon was able to sew it rapidly and efficiently enough so that, even though there is still a visible scar, it does not adversely affect even the most difficult piano playing. Perhaps that is not the most upbeat story, so here is another: my great-grandmother (my mother's mother's mother) always loved to prepare special food and a lively atmosphere whenever I visited her house, and tried to encourage me in whatever I was doing, such as learning to play the piano. Her greatest lesson to me was to keep pursuing your dream, no matter how difficult it may seem.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK (April 27, 2005): When I was a kid, our family joined the local swimming pool, called the Colonial Village Swimming Club. One of my favorite activities, after leaving the water, was to walk dripping to the snack bar to buy little codfish cakes served between two Saltine crackers and lavishly dabbed with sharp mustard--all for just 15 cents apiece. A good friend of mine lived down the block from me; for many years, we invented our own song-and-dance routines that we performed for our parents and for whoever else was unlucky enough to be around at the time. I was visiting my friend and his mother several months ago, and we spent some time talking with his mother's friend, an older gentleman who was interested in telling tales from the past. He asked me what I remembered of Baltimore in the olden days, and I told him my fond memories of the codfish cakes. "Do you know what they were called?" he asked me. "No, I forgot", I admitted. "They were called Cohen's Coddies," he replied. "Oh, yes, that's right. How do you remember such a detail?" "I'm the Cohen who started Cohen's Coddies."

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: I enjoy eating Haas avocados, which are an especially tasty variety with a black craterlike skin. After I eat one, I take the hard central pit, which is inedible, and put it into whatever pot of dirt is most conveniently nearby. About 80% of these pits just sit there and slowly decompose, but the rest, after taking several weeks to germinate, can surge rapidly to a height of ten feet or more. My wife eventually got weary of seeing yet another avocado plant, so I began to take the pits to work to plant them next to the usual boring office greenery that one finds in any professional building. Nothing happened with the first few pits, but finally an avocado tree arose close to the staircase leading down to the next floor. It soon towered above all the other plants nearby, so more and more people began to notice it. I pointed it out to a few of my co-workers, one of whom started calling me "Farmer Steve". Then, one late evening--as I found out second hand the next day--someone from another department brought in a large pot of dirt, carefully dug up the tree, and transplanted it into their own pot, so they could bring it home. Imagine that, an avocado tree thief right in my own building. I'm still eating avocados and still planting them, so sooner or later, another creation will arise to take its place. Perhaps I'll have to hire an armed guard for the next one.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: Last week, one of my co-workers left the company where I am employed as a computer programmer. Whenever this happens, the rest of us quickly descend like vultures on the departed person's desk, to see if there are any goodies worth taking. Sometimes one finds nothing but a few paper clips. Other times, one might find a decent book or a useful computer accessory. As I was going through this man's treasures, I found something I had never seen before in the desk of a fellow programmer: a tabla. For those who are not familiar with Indian music, a tabla is a conical drum carved out of a solid piece of hardwood. It is a real one, too; not some plastic or cheap imitation, and is accompanied by its proper holding stand. I do have some co-workers from India and Pakistan, but the person who left the company is of Italian descent. Naturally, I couldn't resist playing it, which garnered quite a bit of attention from everyone else, who wondered where I got the instrument. Then, a few days later, the person sitting next to me decided to go through the remaining items in this person's cubicle, and found--seriously--a second tabla(!), which he immediately began to play. Now we can perform duets. How someone happened to own--and discard--two of these Indian drums is an interesting mystery. I do have this person's forwarding e-mail, so I can perhaps satisfy my curiosity by finding out the rest of the story.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: In my freshman year in college I drove a very used Plymouth Fury, which looked almost like an ancient, faded blue monster compared with the small Japanese cars that had become popular after oil prices had surged. On one of the first warm days of spring, during the height of the evening weekday rush hour, I became impatient as I had to wait three times for a traffic light to change before finally being able to make a left onto the main road. I screeched my wheels and "burned rubber" as I turned the corner, so even though my speed did not approach the posted limit, a policeman looked dimly upon my driving manner, and flashed his lights as he approached from behind. Even if I had wanted to pull to the side of the road, there was no way to physically do so, as I was already in the rightmost lane. Meanwhile, the traffic cop was four or five cars behind me as all of us moved less than ten miles per hour on a very crowded Charles Street heading downtown. As I signaled for and made a right turn onto University Parkway, the policeman had a bright idea and took a shortcut through the driveway of the corner apartment building in order to catch up to me more quickly. At that point, the traffic became even more intense, so we were going only four or five miles per hour, and I noticed that an amazing event had occurred--the cop was actually four or five cars ahead of me, instead of behind me. Not eager to keep pace, I slowed down to maybe two or three miles per hour, and the cop noticed my maneuver, so he slowed down to match my snail's pace. After another minute, I was almost not moving at all, and he eventually stopped, so I did also. I thought that he would simply get out of his car and walk back on the sidewalk to give me a ticket--something he probably wished later that he had considered--but instead, we remained in a frozen stalemate for another few minutes. Finally, the policeman himself burned rubber and surged across to the opposite side using a short break in the median strip to head the opposite way in an attempt to catch me from the other direction. That was a hopeless idea, however, as the traffic was simply too heavy for even his flashing sirens to have any effect. It was a simple matter for me to keep driving slowly forward as, surrounded by dozens of cars, I was soon unreachable a few blocks away. I kept looking in my rear view mirror for the next several blocks, and still looked even after I had driven a few miles on the rapidly moving Jones Falls Expressway, just in case, but nothing ever happened. I guess the moral is that even the best shortcut has its pitfalls.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: In January 1987 I had an interview with a company that had offices in both Manhattan and Staten Island. I performed well at the Manhattan meeting, so all that remained to be hired was a brief visit to the Staten Island office. In order to get there, I had to take a subway to downtown Manhattan, board the Staten Island ferry, and finally connect to a bus for a half-hour ride, a total of nearly two hours. After all this traveling, and being a full hour early for the scheduled interview, I noticed some tall cattails growing on the side of the road that were just the right size and color to go nicely into a large basket at my girlfriend's place. Since the temperature was several degrees below freezing, I didn't notice while I was picking them that they have tiny but definitely prickly thorns. My hands began to bleed, but I was oblivious to this, and continued to the site of the interview. I found a place to unobtrusively hide the cattails, and foolishly without going into a bathroom, I headed toward the receptionist. She noticed my hands, which by now were turning a bright crimson, but she didn't say anything about them directly, merely asking me if I was feeling O.K. I responded that I never felt better. I was directed without further ado to the head of the department where I would be working, and that person and myself noticed simultaneously that I looked like Frankenstein after a particularly gory feast. I couldn't even figure out for a moment what had happened, until I realized what should have been obvious. After the interview, I had to carry the cattails onto the bus heading back to the ferry; if you have never tried to fit several pointy nine-foot objects onto a crowded public vehicle, it can be quite a challenge. On the ferry itself, the main difficulty was preventing a strong wind from carrying them into the water. An elderly woman noticed my unusual baggage and made an excellent sketch of my holding them, which cost me several bucks, but was definitely worth it. Then I had to get on a subway and avoid poking anyone's eyes out, and finally walked to my girlfriend's place. Epilogue: She hated the cattails, and I didn't get the job. (Post-epilogue: Two months later, my girlfriend dumped me, but let me keep the cattails. I think I was left with the better end of the bargain.) Moral: If you depart from the usual path, expect more thorns than praise.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: At the Walden School music composition summer camp in 1974, discussed below in another reminiscence, one person was chosen by the faculty to serve as the "secret inspector". This person had the task of carefully examining all dorm rooms to make sure that all beds were made properly, all trash cleaned up, and other standards generally enforced, and to report any violations to the camp staff. It was necessary that the identity of the secret inspector not be revealed, so that we would not attempt to bribe this person, or to otherwise act in a way which would adversely affect his or her duties. Unknown to the rest of us, one of the female campers surprised the secret inspector when she returned unexpectedly to her room one morning and found him there, but she was sworn to secrecy. On the final day of camp, we had to guess who the person was. About three quarters of us, including myself--especially myself--thought that it was Jeff Cohen, since he was a couple of years older than most of us and had known connections among the faculty. Jeff has since gone on to considerable fame as a classical pianist living in Paris. But a contrarian approach would have worked better, as the secret inspector turned out to be none other than my own roommate.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: Two years ago, I was at work in downtown New York City when the person sitting in the cubicle next to me said his chair was shaking. I thought he was joking, until about a half minute later when my own chair began to rattle and then the apparently solid floor below us began to vibrate. Soon, we could hear books and glasses crashing down all around us. A few people started yelling, and shortly thereafter an announcement was made on the fire system to "please evacuate the building through the stairs". When we gathered on the sidewalk below, a few hundred of us could talk about nothing else but what we figured was the first serious earthquake in Manhattan in history, until we noticed that only people from our building were clustered outside. Everyone else from neighboring offices and down the street was working at their desks as usual, apparently unconcerned. Puzzled, we couldn't figure out what was going on, until a fire department investigation determined the cause of the tremors. An aerobics class of fifty people was entirely responsible for creating resonance and massive vibrations that had affected a dozen floors of a major skyscraper.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: As mentioned in more than one previous reminiscence, in November 1977 I played piano for our high school production of "Guys and Dolls". One of the liveliest and cutest members of our cast played the role of a "Hot Box girl", performing two burlesque numbers in the show. As a student, she was quiet in class, but outside the classroom, she was very outgoing and enjoyed life fully. She was always the center of attention when we would go to the local diner during rehearsal breaks. Since high school graduation, I have not seen her again, but three years ago I was, shall we say, somewhat surprised to see her name in print. In the "New York Times" Sunday "Styles" section, from September 2, 2001, was a front-page article by their lead society writer, Guy Trebay, entitled "All Undressed and So Many Places To Go". On the page 8 continuation, she is given two full paragraphs. One sentence should suffice for a family-oriented web site: "For herself, however, the experience of going naked at Lighthouse Beach this summer was liberating."

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: I used to attend a summer music composition camp known as the Walden School. It was run by an energetic, inspiring man named W. David Hogan, Jr. We were each assigned to a kitchen crew in order to set out the dishes and silverware, and to serve the food and drink. There were two crews per meal. One day, our crew showed up as usual, but the other crew was nowhere to be found. We didn't know what to do, so we decided to do the best we could with our limited numbers. Naturally it took twice as long to set up as usual, so we still had a few tables to go when the counselors and kids began to pour in for supper. We tried to work a little faster, when the other crew suddenly showed up. It turned out that they had been playing a close game of handball that went into overtime, and they didn't want to interrupt the game to do something boring like setting the tables. The second, tardy crew tried to cover up for their misdeed by rushing to set out the final table, which was comprised of the most senior staff and counselors. They did a good job at first, but when they served Mr. Hogan himself, the head of the tardy crew rushed just a little too energetically, and tipped an entire meal and large cup of grape juice onto David Hogan's freshly washed shirt, tie, jacket, and pants, not to mention splattering the director's face with some kind of vegetable medley. Needless to say, that particular crew did quite a bit of floor scrubbing, lint cleaning, and every other conceivable and inconceivable task for the remainder of the summer without a complaint.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: When I was a kid, the most popular birthday activity by far was to have a duckpin party. In Baltimore, unlike other American cities, almost every bowling alley is divided into two halves. In one half, there are lanes with tenpins that require fifteen-pound balls and where you throw the ball twice per frame, as you can find throughout the U.S. In the other half, there are lanes with pins that are much smaller, known as duckpins, for which you throw a ball weighing only 3-1/2 pounds, and where you get three throws per frame. It's more difficult to throw a strike (all pins down in a single throw) or a spare (all down in two throws) with duckpins, since the ball is far less powerful, so a score of 120 is considered very good. Kids almost always prefer duckpins, because they can hardly lift the larger balls needed for regular tenpins, and because it has been the norm for Baltimore youth for decades (although this tradition has somewhat faded in the past twenty years, alas). Our parents would drop us off at the bowling alley, whereby we would bowl for about 1-1/2 hours. Afterward, we would gather in a big room nearby to eat strawberry ice cream and pound cake, and be entertained by someone dressed as a clown, who would then suffer the indignity of having leftover melted ice cream and cake thrown at him whenever any of his antics were less than excellent. As a true contrarian even then, I decided that for my ninth birthday, I would have my friends meet at Patapsco State Park just west of the city limits. Instead of bowling, we all went on a five-mile hike along a stream with a waterfall, and instead of ice cream and cake, we had barbecued goodies with lemonade and root beer. The general attitude afterward was "it was weird, but we had a lot of fun and we learned something". I guess that's similar to the reaction of those who read this page after perusing the usual web sites.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: In the summer of 1983, I went to visit my best friend from high school, who had moved to Chicago to attend the university in Hyde Park. He was rather busy during the daytime hours, so I explored a lot of the city on my own. One morning around 10 a.m. I headed for a park, and discovered an elaborate sculpture which looked like it might be or once have been a fountain. I walked over to it, and finding it intriguing in its design, I went toward its center to examine it more closely. Suddenly I heard a whirring sound, and soon discovered that it was very much a live fountain, which began to spout prodigious amounts of water. Since it took me quite some time to climb out of the middle of the contraption and move away from the range of the spray, I was thoroughly drenched, at which time the fountain shut down as rapidly as it had started up. I walked around to the other side of the massive sculpture and saw that it was called "Buckingham Fountain", which I later discovered was the most famous fountain in the city. Its posted hours of operation were clearly in the afternoons and evenings only, so the person in charge of its maintenance must have turned it on that morning solely for my benefit.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: In my senior year in high school, there was a family living next door that had grown up in the farm belt of North Carolina. They grew corn and other crops in the back yard, instead of planting the traditional lawn grass, and they had a huge dog which lived in a doghouse in the front yard. One day in January they went on vacation for two weeks to visit their family back on the farm. While they were gone, a small brown-and-white stray dog moved into the doghouse and begged for scraps in the neighborhood. Whenever I left the house for a walk, the stray dog would follow me for a block or two, unless our own family dog was with me, in which case it would stay at a distance and whimper. After a week had passed, the dog was still in the doghouse and I knew it would get kicked out the following Sunday when the next-door family was scheduled to return. On Saturday afternoon, as snow flurries fell, I walked to the library to return some books, and the dog followed me all the way, more than a mile, but stayed just outside the library door. I only took about half a minute to drop off the books, but when I went back outside, I couldn't see the dog anywhere. I looked around for almost an hour, then gave up and walked home. Perhaps the stray dog somehow sensed that the doghouse would no longer be available, and decided to head for a new place to live.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: Several years ago I was teaching piano in Chinatown in downtown Manhattan. My star pupil not only improved his performing ability, but also began to write his own songs. One day, he surprised me by telling me he was treating me to supper for my birthday. I selected my favorite Thai restaurant called "Thailand" at the corner of Baxter and Bayard Streets (it has been there now for twenty years). My protégé asked me what to order, and I told him probably he should get one of their excellent curries, but not the "jungle curry", since that would be too spicy for him to eat. Naturally, he ordered the jungle curry, telling me that since he was from southern China, he could certainly eat much hotter food than any red-haired wimpy American from Baltimore. I warned him again to get either the red, green, or yellow curries instead, but he insisted, so I intentionally ordered the yellow curry for myself, the mildest of their signature dishes, so that he could swap later without losing face. When the jungle curry arrived, my overeager student took one bite, then without a word switched plates with me. I was truly surprised when he discovered that even the yellow curry was a lot spicier than anything his mother usually cooked (he was only a high school junior at that time, and had not eaten out very frequently), since that was mild even to my taste. I ended up eating both of our entrees, encouraging him to order something even more harmless than a Big Mac, such as pad Thai, but he was too embarrassed to want to order anything further at that point. Finally, the bill arrived, and he made a great show of very proudly taking out his first, very recently obtained credit card to pay for both of us, only to discover that the restaurant accepted only cash; he had less than five dollars in his pocket. We have since become good friends, although to this day he becomes upset if I remind him of this incident.

REMINISCENCE OF THE WEEK: In the late summer of 2001, my brother and I visited Iceland. We went horseback riding, swam in thermally heated pools, went biking, and marveled at the Northern Lights (the aurora borealis). I had met an Icelandic man while playing bridge on the internet; we later sent e-mails and talked on the phone, and he was kind enough to drive my brother and myself around the country for two days. We saw amazing geysers and waterfalls, wide open countryside with a few domestic animals, and a generally austere landscape. Rainbows were almost an everyday occurrence. On the second day together, after we had just visited an ancient Icelandic graveyard, my friend said, "I'm not sure why, but I'd like to hear the news on the radio for a few minutes if you don't mind." My brother and I couldn't understand what was being said, but my friend told us "the World Trade Center was just hit by an airplane." That didn't make any sense to us, and then shortly thereafter he told us "another plane just hit the other tower, and they say it's terrorism." We drove immediately to my friend's house and, just as we arrived and turned on the television, on CNN we saw the South Tower fall.