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Alice at Plum Island and other Stories, Threads & Magic
A Look Inside
The book is printed in color, and of course the PDF file versions are in color, with lots of my hand drawn illustrations of the stories, as well as photographs from days past. For the record, I didn’t pick the cover drawing because of it’s content but rather for the way the beach colors flowed. There were some who thought it wasn’t illustrative of the content.
Introduction from the book
I’ve always told stories, anecdotes about happenings, that stuck with me, either because they’re funny, or ironic, or illustrate something or other. They’re the Stories in this book.
As I got older I began to see that my life had unfolded as if choreographed, with one thing leading naturally to another, much as Joseph Campbell has pointed out in his work. These longer tales are the Threads.
Then there are events that are, in the words of Yogi Berra, just too coincidental to be coincidences. They make up the Magic.
Reviews
Those who have seen early copies seem to have enjoyed it. One couple said they enjoyed reading the stories out loud to each other. Other’s wrote to me:
“Loved all the stories with their different moods and messages. It’s impossible to choose a favorite.”
“Chipper the Parakeet is an animal portrait worthy of James Herriott, which gives us a peek at your childhood context too. Adventure Adventure is so rich in describing how opening one’s mind to associations among people, interests and ideas can generate so much creativity. Wow, that’s such a bland statement – doesn’t capture it at all! Your stories about your work and your extra-curricular activities bring alive what they meant to you, how they shaped you and in some cases how you shaped them. Being a people person, I loved the story about playing cards with your little grandson and the saga of your friendship with Sid. Also found the breast cancer and the (movie) extra stories interesting. And I’m always up for a good gift of the universe story like Fortuitous Dog Bite. Honestly every one of them captivated me.”
“Love the stories! You write so well.”
“Thanks for the book! Putting a smile on my face, much appreciated!”
Bullies, a story from the book
Eighth Grade, 1958 Levittown NY
I was a relatively small kid in school with a slight build, a meek disposition, and a year younger than everyone in my grade. This meant I was sometimes the target of bullies in school.
In eighth grade this tough kid, also named Dennis, who had been pushing me around for a while, got right in front of me at my desk before the teacher came in, and dared me to hit him, he said, “come on, hit me, I dare you” over and over.
So I did.
I suspect he was about to kill me then and there, except the teacher came in the room at just that moment. Dennis said to me “you got lucky, I’m going to get you after school.”
I opted to take a different exit from school than I normally did and a different route home.
The next morning he said “you escaped me yesterday, it won’t happen today.”
Looking for a way out, I said to him “Look Dennis, if we fight after school one of two things will happen. One is you beat me up, in which case everyone will look down on you for beating up a kid smaller than you. The other is, unlikely, I might beat you up, which will be really embarrassing for you. Either way, you lose.”
He said “I’m gonna get you after school.”
Around mid afternoon, still in school, he came up to me and said “I’ve been thinking it over. The way I see it is, if we fight after school one of two things will happen…” and said back everything I’d said in the morning.
I agreed he was thinking clearly, and we became, well if not friends, friendly after that.
Draper Labs
My first job was as a scientific programmer at the M.I.T. Instrumentation Lab, now called the Draper Labs. I hadn’t gone to M.I.T. or gotten a college degree higher than a bachelor’s, but had friends who got me the job there. We were working in a small group that serviced small contracts.
We’d just gotten one called the Star Occultation project. It called for the analysis of satellite data looking at images of stars as they faded behind the atmosphere before disappearing behind the earth. That analysis would let us figure out the amount of various pollutants in the air.
I was to be the programmer for the project. We had a PhD student from M.I.T. work with us as chief scientist.
He came up with a bunch of equations that determined pollutant percentages based on input star occultation image data. He gave them to me to turn into code, which I did.
Strangely, instead of generating meaningful percentages, the program produced all zeroes for output. He was a bit angry, said clearly I’d made a mistake, and to check my code.
I did, and it still came out with zeroes for output.
He was furious and walked into my boss’s office, and within earshot of everyone in the group, loudly asked how he could have assigned such an incompetent programmer to the project, one that couldn’t even code a bunch of equations. He demanded I get thrown off the project and that he be provided with someone who knew what they were doing.
It was Friday.
Well, it was eighth grade all over again, and I knew I could stand up to this bully and I knew I had coded his formulae correctly. So I went home and went over his equations. I was able to, from a pure math point of view, analyze the equations and prove that, no matter what input, they would always produce a zero as the result.
Monday morning I asked for a meeting. It was me, my boss, and a very angry and arrogant M.I.T. graduate student. I was pretty wired up and went to the white board and laid out my proof, showing that his equations were incorrect and would always produce a zero. I also showed what the correct equations should be.
Wow, was he mad! He just stormed out of the room slamming the door behind him.
With just the two of us left in the room, my boss looked at me and said, “Well I guess now you’re the chief scientist for the Star Occultation project.”
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Alice at Plum Island and other Stories, Threads & Magic