Bentley

This newsletter was started for ex-faculty and ex-students of the 1950-1954 vintage

Issue #6
1 January 2004
Deadline was 15 Dec 2003
_____________________________________________________________________________

Note: Bentley had no connection whatsoever with Bentley College (Waltham, MA)
or other Bentley schools in California, Kansas, England, and elsewhere.

’46? Roberta Dryer Hirsch, 25 Sutton Place South, New York, NY 10022
’47? Jane Edelstein Silverman, 8320 Waterline Drive, Boynton Beach, FL 33437
‘49    Barry I. Newman, Attorney at Law, 3308 Avenida Sierra, Escondido, CA 92029-7937 (760) 743-5005 <bnewmanlaw@aol.com>

GRADUATES 1950
Baron, Joan G.; Barth, Roger Barry; Berl, Beverly; Charchat, Betty; Cohn, Elaine Suzanne; Dallal, Gladys Farha; Ellis, Paul L.; Serge Gavronsky; Goodfriend, Gloria Linda; Goodman, Sandra Phyllis; Gordon, Sunya-Arden; Greenberg, Gerald M.; Grizer, Martin I.; Haas, Barbara Sandra; Haines, Betty; Iny (Zilkha), Cecile; Koch, Alma; Leinwand, Burton S.; Lindenbaum, Sue; Litt, Susan Z.; Natanson, Barbara Ann; Nathan, Richard Bruce; Neufeld, Carol Joy; Newman, Barbara J.; Purris, Monique Y.; Radin, Barbara E.; Rosenbaum, Donald; Rosenberg, Sue E.; Rosner, June; Sabin, Carol Gail; Sacks, Stuart E.; Schwartz, Joan Betty; Schwartz, Richard; Somekh, Nellie; Stucker, Joy R.

’50   Serge Gavronsky, 525 West End Avenue, New York, NY 10024 (212) 787-7068; and Department of French, Barnard College, Columbia University,
            New York, NY 10027-6598
’50   Burton S. Leinwand, 269 Martling Avenue, Tarrytown, NY 10591-4700

GRADUATES 1951
Beck, Susan; Cohen, Natalie Diane; Davidman, Joseph Leon; Dubin, Marian Sandra; Eisenbach, Lynnette E.; Fertig, Sally; Flink, Yvette Susanne; Fromm, Madeline; Gellert, Anne J.; Ghiron, Renata, F.; Goldberg, Sheldon Howard; Greene, Audrey Elizabeth; Hirsch, Lester Jr.; Kasdan, Arna Sue; Lavine, Burton Jerome; Lax, Harry; Lipman, Gloria Vivianne; Munk, Eugene Clarence; Newman, Phyllis.; Pollack, Anne; Rabinowitz, Phillip; Rosensweig, Frances; Shapiro, Ruth Dorothy; Sherman, Marian Barbara; Singer, Kenneth Hugh

’51 Natalie Cohen Miller, 180 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02116 (617) 247-2357
’51 Joseph Leon Davidman, 1921 N.E. 206th St., Miami, FL 33179 –address no good June 2003
’51 Anne Pollack, PMB 187, 2261 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94610

GRADUATES 1952
Barnett, Carol Jean; Bein, Ilona; Blum, Norman; Boltuch, Jo-Ann; Brown, Ellen Stephanie; Cohen, Elizabeth Grace; Ehrlich, Geraldine Ruth; Feinberg, Helen Frances; Fertig, Maxine; Gavronsky, Edith; Geller, Susan Joyce; Goldberger, Henry; Hassid, Lucille; Hyman, Glory Ann; Jaffee, Lila Nancy; Juviler, Michael R.; Klein, Michael; Klein, Stephen; Kobrin, Evelyn Sonia; Lindenbaum, Edmond; Pollack, Jonathan N.; Schaeffer, Richard; Stetson, Curt Frank; Taylor, Patricia Ann; Weil, Patricia; Wiesen, Dorothy Faith

’52 Carol Barnett Dickman, 1050 Fifth Avenue, NYC, NY 10028 (212) 534-2832.
’52 lona Bein Mechutan, 360 East 72 St., NYC, NY 10021, (212) 879-2264
’52 Dr. Norman J. Blum, 381 Poinciana Dr., N. Miami Beach, FL 33160 <thinphyn@aol.com>
’52     Jo-Ann Boltuch - deceased
’52 Elizabeth Cohen Karlan, 5434 East Lincoln Drive, Paradise Valley, AZ 85253 (480) 443-8667
’52 Ellen Brown Cohn, 2 Overlook Road, White Plains, NY 10605 (914) 584-5882.
’52     Geraldine Ehrlich - deceased
’52 Helen Feinberg Weinstein, 921 Fairway Lane, Mamaroneck, NY 10543 (914) 381-2370
’52 Maxine Fertig Kohler, 145 Central Park West, NYC, NY 10023 (212) 501-9595.
’52 Susan Geller Platt, 126 Cross River Road, Mt. Kisco, NY 10549 (914) 244-0787
’52 • Henry Goldberger, 5020 Arbor Lane, Northfield, IL 60093 847-441-0499 <henryleah@earthlink.net>
’52 Lucille Hassid Kuttler, 6610 Tiburon Circle, Boca Raton, FL 33433 (561)393-0704
’52     Glory Hyman - deceased
’52 • Michael Juviler,   3115 South Ocean Blvd (#704), Highland Beach, FL 33487 <mjuv1936@aol.com>
’52 Michael R. Klein, 225 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011 (212) 929-0463
’52 Evelyn Kobrin Rothschild, 12 Fox Run, Middleton, MA 01949 <eveandray@aol.com> (978) 777-8221

’52 Jonathan V. Pollack - Deceased

’52 Richard (Dick) Schaeffer [M.D.], 8110 E. Del Timbre Dr, Scottsdale, AZ 85258-1768, (480) 951-1330, <RGSCHAEF@aol.com>
’52 Pat Taylor Siskind, 160 East 84th St. NYC, NY 10028 (212) 861-5412
’52 Curt Frank Stetson, 1725 York Avenue (18-G), New York, NY 10128-7811 <cfstetson@aol.com>
’52 Patricia (Weil) King. 32 Hill Ln., Roslyn Heights, NY 11577 <patriciaking@yahoo.com>
’52 Dorothy Weisen – deceased

GRADUATES OF 1953
Asher, Nancy Ann; Bachrach, Joan; Bernstein, Mona Natalie; Birenbach, Sandra Jane; Drogin, Marc Winston; Feldberg, Barbara Renée; Gasarch, Justin Leslie; Haas, Carol Marcia; Hausman, Hinda Rae; Lourie, Doris; Purris, Jacques Steven; Schaffran, Lorraine; Schlang, Adrienne Wilma; Schwartz, Joan B.; Schwartz, Nancy B.; Wallman, Lois Charlotte; Ward, Ira; Witchell, Susan Jane

’53 Mona Bernstein Dukess, 79 Lansdowne Drive, Larchmont, New York 10538 <mdukess@earthlink.net>

’53 Adrienne Schlang Garnett, 126 Beaufort Place, New Rochelle, NY 10801 (914) 632-0694 <aartg@optonline.net>

’53 Marc Drogin, 11 Walden Street, Portsmouth, NH 03801 <marc@drogin.net>
’53 Joan Schwartz Buehler, 1020 Park Avenue (10-A), New York, NY 10028-0913

GRADUATES 1954
Arons, Leonie Carol; Artzt, Paulette May; Bayar, Carol Ann; Beier, Judith Ann; Bernstein, Daniel H.; Blume, Abby Lyn; Buchalter, Patricia; Jane; Daly, Albert E.; Einstein, Thomas; Frost, Sheila Barbara; Gleicher, Marjorie Joan; Goodfriend, Stephen P.; Gould, George; Jeskowitz, Jane Renee; Kagan, Harvey Alexander; Kornberg, Bernice Linda; Lockser, Judith Suzanne; Nelson, Ted; Newman, Herbert M.; Noble, Alan S.; Rosenblum, Ona Audrey; Sabin, Judith Abarbara; Siegel, Alan K.; Stelzer, Carole Wendy; Tow, Wiliam R.

’54 Judith Ann Beier Pressner, 1 Sutton Place South, Lawrence, NY 11559 <jpressner@yahoo.com>

’54 Judith Lockser Lidsky, 215 Highland Avenue, West Newton, MA 02465-2511
’54 Ted Nelson, Visiting Professor, Keio University, Japan c/o Marlene Malicoat, 3020 Bridgeway #295, Sausolito, CA 94965

GRADUATES 1955
Bernstein, Rachelle Pamela; Birnbaum, Linda Nana; Blank, Cecile; Blumenthal, Parsla; Chadabe, Joel A.; Corwin, Thomas Russell; Dunsay, Marian Denise; Finston, Joan; Fox, Myrna Grace; Gurry, Sara; Hirsch, Diana Barbara; Katz, Barbara Sharon; Katz, Ruth Doreen; Klein, Madeline Elizabeth; Lewis, Judith Ellen; Loeb, Evelyn; Loewy, Nancy M.; Osserman, Ruth Sue; Pregel, Robert; Reifer, Patricia Rose; Roth, Sonda; Saretsky, Phyllis Sugar; Schiller, Barbara Judy; Schwartz, Barbara Louise; Schwartzberg, Harriet; Silverman, Susan; Weisbard, Harriet; Williamson, Kenneth

’55 Joel Chadabe, President, Electronic Music Foundation, 116 North Lake Avenue, Albany, NY 12206-2710 (518) 434-4110 <joel@emf.org>
            <http://www.cdemusic.org> < http://www.emf.org>
’55 Thomas Corwin, 42 Sunset Road, Cambridge, MA 02138-1023 <tomcorwin@attbi.com>
’55   Judy Lewis Frank, 1215A Waverly Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19147
’55   Kenneth Williamson, 53 Henry, Brooklyn, NY 11201

GRADUATES 1956
Adler, Paul; Baier, Kenneth; Bardin, Helene Ruth; Barnett, Frank; Berkman, Peter; Berne, Geoffrey Ethan; Biffer, Stanley N.; Burstein, Judith Gayle; Cohen, Ellen Sue; Drogin, Gerald; Drucker, Ellen Rose; Feldhorn, Erl Z.; Frankel, Barbara Mindel; Gardel, William Albert; Genser, Beverly Joan; Halpern, Mimi N.; Karp, Tony; Katz, Daniel; Ladin, Peter Allen; Landsberg, Dorothy Jeni; Lester, Elaine Ruth; Mayhew, Edward Arnold; Newman, Helene; Oshinsky, Dorie Ann; Pollack, Judith Ann; Ray, Helen; Reznikoff, Vera Elaine; Rosenbaum, Susan; Schlang, Audrey; Shcerman, Sidney; Solovei, Barbara Ruth; Spring, Susan Linda; Stern, Joyce Marilyn; Teichman, Barbara; Werble, Barbara F.; Wucker, Barbara Joan; Zucker, Francine Ann

’56    Peter Berkman, 16362 Heathrow Drive, Tampa, FL 33647 (813) 971-4461 <pberkman@aol.com>

’56    Geoff Berne gberne@eos.net--e-mail address no good Oct 2003

   (10 July 2003) Mr. Smith, I remember that you once squired myself, Susie Rosenbaum, Danny Katz, and if I remember correctly my mother to see Paul Robeson on a May Day. Obviously, you have never stopped mentoring.

    [Smith: Did we see a Paul Robeson movie or was it a live show? On May Day I sometimes went to Union Square, fascinated by the various demonstrations against injustice, capitalism, or whatever. When Mrs. Robeson threw some kind of party after her husband’s death, she hired my buddy Gilbert Price to entertain. Gil (4-time Tony nominee, last seen in Geoffrey Holder’s “Timbuktu”) had a timbre quite similar to that of Robeson’s voice, resonant, projective, vibrant. At the Ethical Society not too long ago, I asked Paul Robeson Jr. about his dad’s religious views and was surprised that his father had never left the black Methodist church (for we white Methodists separated ourselves from the black ones). Paul Jr., meanwhile, went to the Ethical Culture School and praised the education he received there. His book was shamefully reviewed, I felt, mainly because of the overtones of his dad’s having gone to Moscow and caught the eye of the McCarthyites.]

    It was a live event! 1954. Something I will never forget. I should not say that, because I do not remember what he actually sang, just the booming voice from a figure that we viewed from the periphery about as far as you could get from the stage.

    I do not have any memories of Mrs. Kaufmann in her work at Bentley that would be more special than those of others. I remember she had an ability to let loose when she wanted to, but I don't think it was ever at me personally, or at least not after 8th grade. I used to be somewhat of a cutup as an 8th grader, so maybe I did feel some of her heat, I and one of my cohorts or other. My biggest personal recollection of her is that she got me my first job, no not my very first one but my first job with a paycheck. My first job was delivering meat to Harlem for Golomb's Meat Market on 98th St. and Madison Ave. But my first paycheck job was as a copy boy at the Morning Telegraph, the racing paper. She happened to know the publisher or editor of the paper. I don't know how she knew that at age 15, after my junior year at Bentley, I could use a summer job. I'm guessing she probably asked me what I was doing that summer (and I'm sure rightly intuited that something other than idleness would be particularly useful, and even necessary character-wise, for me, not exactly a mama's boy, but still, raised by a single parent, a low-paid 9 to 5 medical secretary). Who knows, maybe her publisher friend needed summer help and asked if she knew anybody, and she thought of me. Either way, it was the start of my career in "journalism." My job was in the blue collar end of things, taking race results, track conditions, workout critiques, jockey lineups and weights, etc. off of the news wires and feeding them into little slots and slides in a wall that would go out to various writers (one of whom was their regular columnist Whitney Bolton) and editors. There were probably a dozen different categories of document, and each went through the slots in different numbers and to different people. Such jobs have doubtless been eliminated by computer. Too bad, I'd say, as it was a glorious summer for me, down there on 10th Avenue and 52nd St. (or was it 11th or 12th?) - down near the bus barn is all I remember. I used to work with a tough, skinny working class older kid out of "Grease" who used to sing the old rock 'n roll songs (like "Story Untold" by, I think, the Penguins) to himself. My first paycheck. Mrs. Kaufmann was a saint (oops, wrong word for the reader of this message) for doing that for Geoffrey Berne.
    What else can you say about Mrs. Kaufmann except that she gave real substance to the little booklet for Bentley School that I remember my mother bringing home as we were investigating how to get me out of P.S. 30, a typical roughhouse junior high school otherwise known as Yorkville Junior High School, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues on 88th Street. Our math teacher had kept the whole class after school one day, with the result that one 7th grader walked up to him with a wash basin and hit him on the head. The Bentley booklet's pitch for progressive education seemed so utterly beguiling as I read it at age 11. It seemed like a fantasy place, with its emphasis on clubs, activities, involvement of the student as a person outside as well as inside the classroom. Mr. Clemm's trips to Amish country an outstanding example. I will say that I found particularly enticing the booklet's description of "open houses," community events with entertainment by students and attendance by parents, teachers, and students. Later I remember participating in such an event, in a French-type skit I think. That, and the bazaars and talent shows that were held at the school, always delighted me. I also remember shaking hands with Eleanor Roosevelt at one of the school events, and singing the United Nations hymn. I remember the excellent school library, with its wonderful collection of Modern Library classics that I would never have had money to purchase for myself. Mrs. Austin's Spanish classes brought you in close touch with the different cultures of Latin America, a much, much richer curriculum than the textbook variety. Mrs. Barlow's musical programs - I have never forgotten the "Walt Whitman Cantata" and can sing some of it today, even searching (in vain) through the years for a recording or copy of George Kleinsinger's musical score. We had no instrumental music program, but damn, what an education in singing!

    In short, Bentley under Mrs. Kaufmann made the ideas of progressive education come alive, i.e. she ran a program that was true to its founding ideals and a home for some truly inspirational teachers. I also have to give Kaufmann (or was it the Sameths) credit for giving my brother Eric and myself scholarships, allowing us to trespass on a quality educational place from our starting point on the other side of the tracks in lower Harlem. I happen to be a passionate believer in public education these days, and a fighting opponent of vouchers and for-profit education who happens to live in the home district for the former Ohio state legislator, Mike Fox, who was the originator of the Cleveland vouchers experiment that recently obtained the blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court. I've worked for campaigns against Fox (and against the tide here in an Ohio that still thinks our President is Eisenhower) since 1992, and have been a rare individual member of Ohio's Coalition for Public Education. Private schooling has become a for-profit scam rather than a "progressive" alternative, and has some real crooks riding on the publicly funded gravy train.

     If whatwe had at Bentley was good for anything, it should be good for all, I have come to believe, and would not have traded what my two kids enjoyed in the public schools even for a Bentley, today.

’56 Bill Corwin, Law School Admissions Consulting, 10 Leif Erikson Avenue, Princeton, NJ 08540-8401, (908) 359-5137 (voice); wcorwin@patmedia.net

’56 • Dan Katz, 271 Compo Road S, Westport, CT 06880 (203) 227-9050

’56    Peter Allen Ladin, 4613 Manor View Drive, Leesburg, FL 34748-7481
’56    • Vera Reznikoff Klein, 10 Kirkwood Road, West Hartford, CT 06117 (860) 236-1322 <outfall@attbi.com>
’56    Susan Rosenbaum Nobel, 50 West 96th Street, New York, NY 10025 (212) 865-3196   <Snobel@msn.com>
’56    Audrey Schlang Diamond, 1200 South Flagler Drive (#106), West Palm Beach, FL 33401 <A1Diamond@aol.com> http://www.palmbeachtimes.com>
             Website: www.southfloridatimes.us
’56    Francine Ann Zucker, 574 West End Avenue (#85), New York, NY 10024 (212) 362-6952 or fax (212) 362-4214

CLASS OF 1957

’57     Ellen-Joan Eidenberg Wagner, PO Box 2237, Setauket, NY 11733 <Ejwagner@worldnet.att.net>

CLASS OF 1960
’60   Nancy Gleicher Wechsler – deceased in 1994
’60   Paula Rothenberg, 57 Cambridge Road, Montclair, NJ 07042 <rothenbergp@wpunj.edu>
’60   Suzanne W. Ruttenberg, 445 East 80th Street #16F, New York, NY 10021   <suzannewr@aol.com>

CLASS OF 1968

’68 Bruce Clark, 173 Wheatley Road, Brookville, Long Island, NY 11545

CLASS OF 1969

Ellen (Adler) Sanders, 85-04 Bethany Court, Vienna, VA 22182 (703) 821-2556—wrong address Jan 2002
Carol Berenson Klamser, PO Box 4394, Homer, AK 99603
Karen (Bernstein) Cotler, 451 Maynard Drive, Wayne, PA 19087 (215) 687-9634
Andrea Friedlander, c/o Dr. Ralph Friedlander, 1770 Grand Concourse, Bronx, NY 10457
(212) 588-7000—letter returned Aug 2001
Nina Ginsberg, 1224 Shenandoah Road, Alexandria, VA 22308 (703) 765-3947
Nancy Goodman (deceased)
Barbara Harris
Kathy (Hellenbrand) Rocklen, 38 Portico Place, Great Neck, NY 11021 (516) 466-5452 <krocklen@proskauer.com>
Donna (Iglesias) Wexler, Sterling Harbor Marina, 1410 Manhasset Ave, Greenport, NY 11944 (516) 666-6175
Donnie Kent
Evelyn London, 435 East 65th Street, Apt. 9A, New York, NY 10021 –letter returned Aug 2001
Sheri (Meyers) Allison, 11051 N.W. 19th Street, Coral Springs, FL 33071 (305) 755-4582
Mike Patlin, 702 Paseo Vista, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360
Pamela (Pik) Watson, 6673 Bay Front Drive, Margate, FL 33063 (305) 970-6721—no good Dec 2002
Beth Reimer
Cindy Rosen, 2061 Jupiter Hills Lane, Henderson, NV 89012 (702) 614-9696
Jody (Shindler) Rosenbaum, 2111 Forrest Lane, Naples, FL 34102 (941) 263-0806; June-September: 24
Orit Shiffman, 36 East 36th Street, Apt. 118, New York, NY 10016 (212) 683-0211
Leslie Simon, 235 Cathcart Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060 (408) 458-1118
Vida Sosnoff, P.O. Box 63, Lake Hill, NY 122448 (914) 679-2345—letter returned Aug 2001
Matthew Stern
Millicent Stromberg, 150 East 69th Street, New York, NY 10021
Debbie (Wenglin) Arluck, 328 Pepper N.E., Lockmar Estates, N.E. Palm Bay, FL 32907
Dannie (Wlodawer) Sedlis, 2016 Lincoln Court, Wyomissing, PA 19610, (610)777-2567 sedlisd@aol.com
Laura (Zucherman) Bellon, 358 50th Street, Oakland, CA 94609-2204 - address no good Jan 2002

CLASS OF 1972

Loren Abdulszer, 60 Remsen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 <loren@evolvingtech.com>

FACULTY MEMBERS WITH KNOWN ADDRESSES:

Gertrude Barlow               (music)
        505 West End Avenue, New York, NY 10024
John Clemm              (social studies)
        2108 Morgantown Road (Apt 11), Fayettville, NC 28305-4792 (910) 321-0078
Micheline Levowitz,
         56 Oldfield Road, Lake Success, NY 11020 (516) 482-5705
Paulette B. Maggiolo,            (French)
        207 South Church Street, Woodstock, VA 22664 (540) 459-3646
Walter Metzger
        460 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10027
Eugene Pringle               (music)
        221 East 17th St., New York, NY 10003
Mary Ellen Solt                             (English – she was a successor to Mrs. Edgar Guest)
        25520 Wilde Avenue, Stevenson Ranch, California 91381-1549

Warren Allen Smith            (English; Librarian – 1950-1954)
        31 Jane Street (10-D), New York, NY 10014 <wasm@mac.com> <http://wasm.us>
   The moveable feast continues, abetted by Apple’s latest wonders: the spanking-new Panther operating system; and a 2Ghz G5 Mac with double processors, Sherlock, iSight, iCal, iDVD, iPhoto, iTunes, a 20” monitor, an iPod, an iBook, and a Nokia 3560 mobile phone that takes photos. It’ll take me a decade to learn how to use everything. Having the world’s fastest, virus-free set-up helps me to THINK DIFFERENT.
I’ve been doing my winter solstice cleaning by donating the following:

• Harvard’s Houghton Library has acknowledged my “generous gift” of letters. Eventually, one will be able on the Web to find these several hundred letters, such as those I received from Thomas Mann, Julian Huxley, George Santayana, John Steinbeck, Christian de Duve, Albert Schweitzer, etc., providing graduate students with a flurry of footnotes. (My letter from the Herald Tribune’s now forgotten city editor Stanley Walker and the review he wrote for me about pickpockets is a gem—the August 2003 Vanity Fair describes Walker’s firing John O’Hara because he was never on time, and the novelist’s saying Walker “had tears in his eyes when he fired me.” Incidentally, O’Hara described The New Yorker’s Harold Ross, whose house on Fire Island had been rented for the summer by Audiosonic Recording Studio and for which my partner Fernando arranged that I could house-sit during the week—I had to leave on weekends when the studio guys arrived. O’Hara described Ross as being “a queer duck. Funny stiff German hair and a long gap between his two front teeth. Like F.P.A. [Franklin P. Adams] he swears all the time and when I say swear I mean swear.”) Ross had died in 1951, but his neighbor, theatre critic George Freedley, was surprisingly friendly. Meeting VIPs serendipitously has been almost as much fun as teaching.

• My correspondence and a $1 check from John Dewey have both been donated to the John Dewey Library in Champaign at The University of Illinois.

• The $403 in pre-1953 $1, $2, $10, and $100 bills I have collected over the years that do not have “In God We Trust” printed on them (Gott ist mit uns was also what I found in 1944 on the belts of Nazi prisoners of war) have been contributed to Freedom From Religion Foundation in Madison, Wisconsin. I spoke at one of their conventions, I escorted Taslima Nasrin to one of their conventions, and I like their determined legal fights to maintain separation of church and state. The Foundation will give the bills to high school essay contest winners.

• My correspondence with the poet Tram Combs has been donated to The University of Delaware, which replied that the library not only appreciated receiving it but also liked my having included the Orde Coombs letters, unaware that he had been more than just an anthologizer. Coombs, St. Vincent’s intellectual who was on New York’s staff and who sometimes went to movie reviewers’ viewings with me, died mysteriously of an illness just about the time HIV was first written about. I included letters also from his friend, Lindsay Patterson, James Baldwin’s secretary. The librarian, noting that the library did not have my books, “rectified this” by ordering copies of both books. (Parenthetically, few of my NCHS colleagues talked with me about intellectual matters, although they knew that Lionel Trilling had been my advisor at Columbia and knew I was being published during all the time I taught in New Canaan.)

• My correspondence in the mid-1950s when I was a board member of the American Humanist Association in Washington, DC., has been given to the AHA. It was a time when we voted the first female honorary member (Margaret Sanger) and I served on the Board with Vashti McCollum of McCollum v. Board of Education, the prevailing Supreme Court for half a century, invoked by justices to halt school prayer and bible reading in public schools in the sixties.

• The other major donation is that of my Gilbert Price mementoes, including the 4-time Tony Award nominee’s old tax forms, which have been given to the Schomberg Center in Harlem. I included new material about his having been Langston Hughes’s protégé, my own personal memories, and a photo of his teaching one of my NCHS classes, all of which can be found at <http://wasm.us/ws_price.html>. After delivering the large sheaf of material to the archivist, I paused for a moment while standing atop Hughes’s ashes, which only the cognoscenti know are encased on the ground floor.

• It may not be p.c., but I’m an Indian-giver, also. I took back “The Humanist,” the lifesize statue I had donated to Paul Kurtz’s humanistic center in Buffalo. In a moment, I’ll describe why.

Lebanon High School in Connecticut has just purchased my Who’s Who in Hell, thanks to one of their English teachers. New Canaan’s town library has the book (thanks to Anna Warm’s request). The high school library does not (no thanks to my former colleagues). A faculty member at the University of Nepal has ordered two copies, one for the national and one for the university library – he was happy to see the long entry of little known facts about his little country. A California group just might place 500 copies of the $125 1,268-page volume in national and international libraries, I’ve just learned. (It’s still $75 for friends.) Meanwhile, at a preview of “Taboo,” I gave Boy George an autographed copy of my $15 Celebrities with its long entry about Leigh Bowery, whose part he plays in the Rosie O’Donnell production.

In Rochester I was a guest in July of the Dante Society that was discussing Canto XV of Purgatorio. Afterwards, I helped a joint meeting of the Rochester Anarchists, the Bishop Berkeley Club, and the Bertrand Russell Society celebrate Peter Stone’s being hired by Stanford University. Peter’s professor, William Bluhn, a Catholic expert on The Enlightenment (but not a non-theist), attended the going-away party. St. John Fisher religion/philosophy Prof. David White the next day drove me and the “The Humanist,” a lifesize Anita Weschler fiberglass statue I own, from Rochester—where 25 of his students loved showing him all around town and the campus—to the Institute for Humanist Studies in Albany, where the lightweight fiberglass statue will remain for several months before I decide where next to have it displayed. Anita, who died in her 90s, would have loved seeing students pat its rear end and put their hats on his head. If you’ve never seen a statue matriculate, check my homepage: <http://wasm.us>. I withdrew the statue, charging secular humanist leader Paul Kurtz with being unethical and documenting my case against him to his board of directors.

Dr. Peter Stone, whom I had assigned, tongue-in-cheek, to speak to the Greater New York Bertrand Russell Society Chapter (which I founded) on “What Lord Russell Forgot to Extrapolate when Analyzing Footnotes Used by Zeno of Citium in the 4th Center B.C.E.,” was relieved not to be allowed to address us. That’s because Dr. John Lenz, Chair and Associate Professor of Classics at Drew University, pointed out that Zeno had not used footnotes. Dr. Lenz cited for our edification Anthony Grafton’s The Footnote: A Curious History. The party for Peter, who has been teaching political science at the U of Rochester, celebrated Peter-the-anarchist’s getting hired by Stanford University. Also attending was Dr. Timothy Madigan of the U of Rochester Press, who took me with him to a memorial service for Tom “On Top of Spaghetti” Glazer, whose new words to the tune of “On Top of Old Smokey” had made him a famous folksinger, particularly for children.

Then we interviewed Lawrence Eisler (a/k/a/ Eddie Lawrence), a comic whom oldtimers may remember for his “Is that what’s bothering you, Bunky?” spoken in a sad, creaky old man’s sympathetic voice. For a Philosophy Now article, Madigan (sometimes the British magazine’s guest editor), asked Eisler about living in France after serving in World War II, meeting Picasso and Leger, then becoming a known radio voice here and a friend of alcoholic Bert Lahr and showbiz VIPs by the dozens. Eisler once was in a radio show in which Jerry Stiller plays Knipl, other cast members including Prof. Irwin Corey (the comic who wore sneakers and a tuxedo), stripper Sally Lemay, and the ghoulish comic Brother Theodore who usually performed at midnight shows. (Eisler was surprised when I told him Theodore had died but not before I had interviewed him.) Today, Eisler is a successful oil painter, and I took photos of some of his most recent large oils. I had to inquire, of course, about his one-night 1965 Broadway flop, Kelly, concerning an 1800s Bowery con man who tried to jump off the Brooklyn bridge for profit. Eisler had been lyricist/librettist. It was the biggest flop of its time, but I saw it. Such exceptional people I meet in Manhattan!

At the end of July when he got a two-week vacation from the Stamford Police Department, I took Dominica-born Simon, his wife, and 7-year-old daughter back to Roseau, Dominica, from which Windward Island in the Caribbean I had brought him to New York City in 1976. We stayed first-class at the Fort Young Hotel a few blocks from where he had grown up in poverty. I helped interview his relatives in order to make a genealogical history of 104 members of his family, mostly on his mother’s side. We arranged for a cemetery plaque on his parents’ grave, and he drove us 802 miles through what could be described as an African-like jungle with 4,000-foot mountains. Ex-Premier Edward O. Blanc greeted me (which surprised many, for he has made no public appearances for years and discourages guests because of his poor health; he was the one who made me a guest of the government in 1969 after my students and I collected 43 boxloads of language and math textbooks, donating them to the Minister of Education); hotelier Zena Tavernier fêted me (for I had stayed there in 1969); Carib teacher François Barrie spent three sessions with me recalling how I had contributed globes of the moon to his classes (I once visited students at Center School to tell about having Carib Amerindian friends, about how we get the words hammock and cannibal from them, and how few people know about the Carifuna and the Garifuna); the eminent Caribbean historian and the island’s leading anthropologist, Lennox Honychurch, let me interview him (his mother was in Lord Russell’s progressive elementary school); and I chummed with one of the island’s two surgeons, a Nigerian-born gastrointestinal physician who surprised me with his library of Bertrand Russell books, who gave me a guided tour of the island’s only private hospital that he has founded, built, and runs, and who not only taught me how squash is played but illustrated how he could defeat all takers. I inspired the anthropologist, the surgeon, and the surgeon’s young aide to start a Russell Society there.

I want to commission New Canaan’s Al Knaus to complete an oil painting of Dominica’s premier at the time of statehood, the first step for obtaining independence from Great Britain. Edward O. Blanc is the 25-year-old nation’s FDR (a liberal) and George Washington (ruler at the time of Statehood). I will donate the oil painting to the government and might even go there to deliver it. What’s delaying this is that his son has not yet supplied us with a photo of his image.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, e-mailing for the third time in a day from Sri Lanka, asked if I knew when “looked at me with bedroom eyes” was first coined. “Piece of cake!” I responded in less than a minute: “Gertrude to Hamlet just before he stabbed Polonius in the arras!” Arthur e-mails often, and we seldom discuss literary matters, and never sci-fi. Working with his agent, I am arranging to put a plaque on the front of the Hotel Chelsea on 23rd Street, where he wrote 2001. His publishers couldn’t agree upon who was to pay, so I’ll foot the bill myself.

The September Latin Grammy Awards in Miami started as a tribute to Celia Cruz, who died of a brain tumor in July and who was a client brought to my recording studio several times by Tito Puente. How I wished then that I could have spoken to her in Spanish! Producer-songwriter Sergio George, my close friend at the studio who brought us many clients and was so helpful as a translator, won a Latin Grammy for his cumbia-rock single, “Mi Primer Millon.”

The Philadelphia freethinkers’ magazine, with photos, described their Who’s Who in Hell picnic based on my book’s theme. Activist Margaret Downey kicked off the picnic dressed as a “deviled” egg and handed out egg appetizers as she performed the chicken dance. “Smith amazed the audience,” the group’s newsletter reported, by jumping on the top of a picnic table and performing a mock strip-tease dance,” adding with a hyperbole that “Turning 81 years old has not slowed Smith down a bit.”

I’m in on the ground floor with my homepage concerning the brand new philosophic group known as brights: <http://humanists.net/wasm/BrightsNY.html>. Included are Tufts Professor Daniel C. Dennett, English zoologist Richard Dawkins, and my publisher Lyle Stuart.

Lyle Stuart, my publisher, tells me that the most beautiful house he has been in recently is that of the late Jack Lawrence in West Redding, CT. Somewhere in Greenwich Village years ago Fernando Vargas took me with him to Lawrence’s apartment because Lawrence had asked him to repair his hi-fi set. Aware that I didn’t know who Lawrence was, Fernando asked me to play “All Or Nothing At All” and “If I Didn’t Care” on the piano while he worked with Lawrence. When Jack served us dinner, he floored me by thanking me for my interpretation of two of his most famous compositions!

I received in September a TV film/cinema royalties check for $1.92 from ASCAP because my “Take U Out Tonight” was played in Italy between July and December of 2001. Only problem is that I wasn’t the performer, the lyricist, or the composer. My song is “Hymn of the Pantheist” and my CD is “Costa Rica’s Forgotten Tenor, Manuel Salazar.” Also in September I was interviewed at the United Nations by oncologist Robert Buckman, president of Humanists of Canada. The televised interview about my two books was arranged by British Columbia Humanists for some kind of movie they’re producing.

The week Taslima Nasrin arrived to be a guest researcher at Harvard’s JFK School of Government, I was able to get her new webpage up with the help of Peter Ross, my cybergeek and co-partner in Allen Windsor Computer Consulting: <http://taslimanasrin.com>. It took me eight straight hours to write her article about “Mother Teresa,” an extremely unpopular person in Kolkata, for the French and Indian press. We then challenged intellectuals in an article in Hindustani Times. In November two of her books were banned in Bangladesh and also in the West Bengal.

Peter my cybergeek and I published my own entirely rewritten homepage <http://wasm.us>, which contains many new photos including one of Tennessee Williams in the nude (a photo given me by American Academy of Arts and Letters member Paul Cadmus). Because it is autobiographical, the homepage might possibly mention any retiree reading this. Ooh! We also were commissioned to do a homepage for Princess Maria Ferrara Pema, a relative of Genghis Khan whose family name is Badmajew: <http://onlyonetruth.com>. The princess is directly related to the Mongol conqueror’s second wife. Her physician-father was “in” with Rasputin, Czar Nicholas II, and Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna. Maria, once a dancer and actress in Italian movies who now lives in a fashionable East Side apartment with a terrace, is quite affectionate but complains about an old guy who, from his distant terrace, peers at her and makes unwelcome suggestions with his hands. “That’s what makes Manhattan so interesting, I explained.“

Sylvia Kahan, chairman of the music department at the College of Staten Island, at a brunch autographed her Music’s Modern Muse, A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, “To Warren, whose appreciation of the art of dishing dirt will always be an inspiration to me” in exchange for my Celebrities in Hell, in which I dish the dirt about many musicians. In my review for the British journal and for Village Voice, I praise her for describing so vividly the life of the lesbian daughter of the Singer sewing machine family, a millionaire at the age of 18! Dr. Kahan certainly gives the lowdown on Colette, Proust, Cocteau, Diaghilev, Boulanger, Rubenstein, Horowitz, etc. When I told her I would lend my copy of her book to Arnold Schoenberg, she almost spilled her wine. (Arnold lives in my building and is the last direct living relative of the famed composer.)

I bow when Queen Elizabeth gets on the elevator, for she lives in my co-op. Mary Louise Wilson, in The Beard of Avon, plays Elizabeth as one who hankers to be a playwright. She brings down the house with such of her lines as, “Mr. Shakespeare, thou art in water most enormously hot!” . . . Jimmy Smits, starring in Anna in the Tropics and a former recording studio actor, stars in a photo with me on my Webpage.

The Villager (10 Dec 03), the widely read Greenwich Village weekly, includes the following:

    As the year ends, I take stock and regret how little I finished of the many projects I still have in the works.

OTHER FACULTY MEMBERS
(1950-1959—Check your yearbooks and suggest additions)
(* deceased)

Allen, Irving - Mathematics
* Austin, Margaret – Spanish
Boylan, Eugene T. – Mathematics
Caldwell, Mabel Wood - English
Cohn, Paul – Librarian
Corbiere, Gisele M. – French
Epinal, Paulette – French
Epstein, Susan – Physical Ed.
Forbes, Joel – Mathematics
Ifrah, Robert – French
Mankin, Linda – Music
Manners, Joan – Dramatics
Naismith, James A. - Dramatics
* Nelson, Martin G. – Art
Newman, Barry – Physical Ed.
Persinger, Staples – Phys Ed.
Reede, Roland K. – Mathematics
* Saunders, Sanford – Science
Sher, Felice – Music
Simpson, Carol – Phys Ed.
Stansfield, James – Art
* Suvanto, Edwin – (English1954-1957) deceased
         2003
Weiss, Dolores – Physical Ed.
Westman, Buddy – Music

BENTLEYITES WHO ARE ONLINE

Peter Berkman                      pberkman@tampabay.rr.com
Geoff Berne                            gberne@eos.net
Mona Bernstein Dukess         mdukess@earthlink.net
Norman J. Blum                      thinphyn@aol.com
Joel Chadabe                           joel@emf.org
Bill Corwin                             wcorwin@rcn.com
Thomas Corwin                       trc@medianone.net
Kathy Hellebrand Rocklen      krocklen@proskauer.com
Michael Juviler                        mjuv1936@aol.com
Evelyn Kobrin Rothschild       eveandray@aol.com
Ted Nelson                            marlene@xanadu.net
Barry I. Newman                   bnewmanlaw@aol.com
Susan Nobel                            snobel@msn.com
Jonathan V. Pollack              jpol2829@aol.com
Vera Reznikoff Klein              outfall@attbi.com
Paula Rothenberg                    rothenbergp@wpunj.edu
Suzanne W. Ruttenberg           suzannewr@aol.com
Richard Schaeffer                    rgschaef@aol.com
Jody Schindler Rosenbaum   madamejodyr@aol.com
Adrienne Schlang Garnett       aartg@optonline.net
Audrey Schlang Diamond       A1Diamond@aol.com
Dannie (Wlodawer) Sedlis       sedlisd@aol.com
Warren Allen Smith               wasm@mac.com
Kurt Frank Stetson                   cfstetson@aol.com
Patricia Weil King                   patriciaking@yahoo.com




Your editor has been footing all the expenses, but fortunately others are helping out. Following is a treasurer’s report as of 10 Dec 2003:

Issue #1, February 2001
Xeroxing, mailing                                                      $55.60

Issue #2, August 2001
   Xeroxing, mailing to 60                                          $86.25
Balance before December mailing                                               (141.85)

Issue #3, December 2001
   70 Xeroxing @ 2.00       140.00
   envelopes                           3.00
   .0825 Pataki/Giuliani        10.15
   postage @ .80                 48.00                          201.15          ($343.00)

Total Received to 10 Dec 2002 (reported last issue)
                                                            +$250.00                               $( 93.00)
   June #4 issue
       Xeroxing                       88.68
       Envelopes                      3.00
       Postage                       45.60                         137.28           $( 230.28)
   Dec 2002 issue
       Xeroxing
           Incl .0825 Pataki       115.50
       Envelopes/labels           8.40
       Postage 70 @ .60          42.00
                                                                                        165.90           $(396.18)
   June 2003 issue
       Xeroxing                      73.07
       Envelopes/labels           8.80
       Postage 75 @ .83          62.25
                                                         +195.00          144.12           $(345.30)

Received to 10 Jun 2003       To June 2003           To 10 Dec 2003

$100    Seraphim                Daniel Katz
$50       Cherubim
$40       Thrones
$30       Junior Thrones
$25       Dominations       Henry Goldberger       Michael R. Juviler
                                                                                Marjorie Gleicher Schwed
$20        Virtues                Vera Reznikoff Klein
$15      Powers
$ 5        Archangels

Note: As can be seen, only 5 contributed in 2003.

If there is not more response, including submissions,
you can understand why we may be unable to continue.
Meanwhile, thanks to those who have sent checks!
Next deadline: 10 June 2004

Warren Allen Smith, Editor