Cell Phone Towers in Ridgewood

First it was the installation of solar panels on utility poles and now it is cell phone towers which are making headlines in Ridgewood. Both are technological advances designed to make our lives more sustainable and convenient so on first glance why are residents making such a fuss?

Of course, it is easy for me to judge as I live in Forest Hills, NY and have towers all around me, as well as jets from La Guardia airport passing overhead on a regular basis. You could say this makes me immune to the beauty of nature and the tranquility of a quiet day. Though I knew what I was getting into when I moved here and scenic beauty and quiet afternoons were not part of the bargain of living in the Big Apple.

My hunch is that residents of Ridgewood are up in arms because the rules of the Village are seemingly being changed. I'm not here to argue about Master Plans or the particulars of zoning laws. I'll just point out that if you asked a resident whether they ever thought there would be solar panels in their southern facing front yards or cell phone towers on empty lots, they probable would have said no. It's not part of the idyllic image which Ridgewood cultivates so carefully.

It will be interesting to see how this works out, especially in an era where sources of new tax revenue are few and far between. These cell phone towers do bring in rental money and once you put up one for T-Mobile the other Telco Carriers will come with their checkbooks open. I could see this as being hard for a cash-strapped village government to turn down.

Gum Day

I actually had a teacher in the 6th grade, Miss Jensen, who would let us chew gum on Fridays. It was called Gum Day and you had to be on your best behavior and sitting in the book reading area of the classroom. This section had a couple of old comfy chairs and was screened off from the windows so passer-bys wouldn't see this limited bit of anarchy which was going on in our classroom.

This truly was an anomaly I believe for any classroom in Ridgewood. I can't think of any other teacher in my thirteen years spent in the Ridgewood Public Schools who condoned the chewing of gum during school hours.

Gum chewing was confined to after school where some of us learned to blow bubbles to various degrees of dexterity. I never learned to blow a bubble because I didn't like the taste of Bazooka Bubble Gum which was the standard by which all bubbles were judged. I liked the gum which came in the nickel packs of baseball cards ( 5 cards and a stick of gum). Though it was inferior bubble blowing gum so I would either chew it or throw it away.

Some of you may even remember the introduction of sugarless gum and one preposterous commercial produced by Dentyne. In the ad they stated, that if you chewed Dentyne after a meal you didn't need to brush your teeth. It went to show how brazen a fraud some companies were willing to try on a gullible public. This commercial lasted for months before being pulled from the airwaves after protests from dentists and parents alike.

Teaching Cursive Writing

Cursive writing was taught to everyone in the Ridgewood School System usually in the third grade. We were admonished to write our signatures neatly as this would likely be the same style we would use for the rest of our lives.

Implied in this warning was the strongly held opinion that something we did now would have repercussions much later in our lives. The same thing was said about cracking one's knuckles but to this was adding a warning about some hideous deformity which would surely afflict one's hands if you continued to crack your knuckles.

I heeded the second warning but am one of many I know who has let their cursive skills atrophy. The fear now is that with the use of computers some students many never learn cursive, except to sign their names. This would be a shame as there is an artistic skill which can inherently be taught along with cursive writing, even if I am not an art lover who makes this a personal practice.

Some educators are going as far as to complain that children are "losing time where they create beauty every day." These same people have a hard time making this a practical argument for cursive. Probably because they are mourning the beauty and the aesthetics of an increasingly lost artistic skill as well as an ability to read historical documents like the US Constitution in its original form.

Though this begs the question whether cursive is a 21st century skill. I am on the fence as to whether it is one. I do remember being kept after school because my handwriting was bad, though a lot of good this did me.

I have no problem with the teaching of cursive if it is placed in the context that those who learn to write by hand learn better. I recall it mostly as a rote exercise devoid of attempts at creating something appealing to gaze at or that by learning to write clearly by hand would make me a more capable student in the future.

Sometimes all it takes is a change of context for a seemingly cryptic lesson to become, in the words of the poet John Keats "a thing of beauty." In the end the argument for teaching cursive might come down to whether we want to teach our children be added that a thing of beauty can also be a joy for ever.

Solar Panels in Ridgewood

It's hard for an outsider like myself to come down on either side of the argument about the aesthetics of solar panels being mounted on PSE&G utility poles in Ridgewood. Our old house didn't have the southern exposure these panels require so we probably wouldn't have had a quarrel to pick. Though I can see how they might be an eyesore to some who once had a view and now found they were on the frontline in the fight to expand the use of clean energy in New Jersey. There hasn't been much warning according to reports in today's New York Times. People say they have left their homes for a few hours and returned to find the solar panels installed and the installers long gone.

There is talk in the village of steering the installations to the roofs of schools and that to me makes sense. As a matter of prudent public policy and as a teaching moment for students, placing them on the flat roofs of the public schools might very well be the best solution. Nobody is talking badly about solar power in general it's just how they look in someone's front yard and how that might lower the value of the property. If the installation of solar panels somehow lowered homeowner's property taxes there might be a line of people volunteering their utility poles. It might be difficult to place a dollar value on a view from one's front window but given enough incentive I bet people would name a price where suburban aesthetics could be bought.

HDTV

Let's be clear about one thing: no matter how much I might characterize the 1960s and 70s as a golden time to grow up in Ridgewood, there is still one thing without question which is better now: TV. We had channels 2,4,5,7,9,11,13, and the UHF (Ultra High Frequency) if you wanted to be adventurous. We had mostly black and white sets with rabbit ears and there was no cable or remote controls.

Today I can lay in bed at night and watch my Yankees live in HD (High Definition) or record them and watch something else. I can mute the sound at my whim and channel surf to my heart's content. It would probable do my heart good to get up and change the channels and volume like we used to do, but I'm not going to look this gift horse in the mouth. The fact that the picture is so sharp you can see the players sweat just adds to the experience.

While TV has become better it has also become a more personalized and solitary experience. Sure we still gather around the TV on occasion but with no where near the frequency as when we watched rockets blast off into space or for funeral processions of slain presidents. We don't even pay attention to the commercials anymore and nobody gets a laugh by repeating Alka Seltzer catch phrases like, "I can't believe I ate the whole thing" or even Wendys, "Where's the Beef?"

I'm not the one to judge whether this loss of a collective memory of what was on TV the night before is good or bad. It likely is just another sign of the times and what most people call progress. Nobody I know wants to give up their remote, or their cable connection, or HDTV and trade for an old black and white. Though I bet someone in the future will draw the connection between the obesity epidemic in this country and the introduction of the TV remote control. I don't believe we are watching more TV we are just naturally not getting up as often as we used to in order to change channels or fuss with the antennas. All those calories we used to burn are one day going to be estimated and give everyone pause for thought.

Baseball Played Without The Lines and Bases

It is impossible to travel through Ridgewood these days and not marvel at all the well groomed ball fields. There are more now than when I was growing up and they are infinitely better cared for by the Village. I am glad for the children living close by as these are good places for them to learn about life and the fine lines of differences between us all.

I can recall as a youth how when it rained the Willard School field would flood and the water would stand for days. It would produce a mud, in the outfield particularly, which made for many comical moments for these unlucky enough to have the outfield as their position. We called it the "Creek Mud" and one unlucky soul even had this nickname awarded to him after one very memorable slide through the creek mud in an attempt to field a ball.

It's funny to me now how our games were played with rags for bases, foul lines which were approximated and always a source of contention, and with various patches of grass in the outfield that no suburban homeowner would ever allow to grow on their property. All of these obstacles didn't deter our desire to play baseball. These were just incorporated into our games and became variations on a theme which could be played with a full contingent on each side or with half the outfield designated as foul territory. If somebody who didn't know the rules of the game had watched us all day they would have become quite confused as to what we were doing. You see, baseball could be played off the wall, off the steps, with a kickball, on a stickball court, and on any manner of baseball diamond we might configure. We might play with a hard ball, softball, red kickball, wiffle ball, or tennis ball. It was all the same to us, but to a stranger it would have been a real head-scratcher for someone to say them that we were all playing the same game.

RHS Class of 1973 40th Reunion

According to the folks on the planning committee of the RHS class of 1973 40th Reunion"

"Well we got together back in December for our first 40th reunion meeting - after all the laughs and inevitable memories and a few drinks we finally talked about places.

Attending were John Wescott, Frank Petrucci, Terri Dimodugno, Jack Wolfstirn and Rick Flannery (missing that day was Tom O'Connor). We met at the Village Grill in Waldwick. We will be meeting again in April! Frank is back in New Jersey!! Frank's another one of those ageless classmates - can you age please!

Hey you're not gonna want to miss this one everybody - its gonna be good! Teachers will be there too!"

Godzilla

A contribution from Jim Schoneman, RHS class of 1974


When older men recall their younger days, there is a tendency towards a selective ransacking of thoughts. It’s not intentional. More likely it has to do with survival. After five or more decades, if we were to remember everything as it actually happened, and then put it all together in one collective notion, many of us would volunteer to spend the rest of our lives in prison. Bill Heavey had it right when he said "that memory doesn’t give a damn what you think." We should be thankful for that.

But there are certain memories that withstand the whack job we politely call “time.” Some of those moments, and one in particular, I recall with clarity. But hardly anybody believes me, because there’s no such thing as a hundred pound snapping turtle.

Several years ago I was out fishing some northern Wisconsin back bay with a friend. Dean and I had been fishing partners for many years, and all you need to know about him is that when the game warden shows up, you want Dean in your boat.Dean and I have a longstanding agreement that if his ploy doesn’t work, then I’ll pay the fine.

We were fishing in early June, and even though the ice had gone out only a month previous, the weeds in this bay had already started to clog its warmer and quieter water; but that’s where the fish were. We casted the edge of the weeds and picked up some perch and bluegills, and the occasional walleye. Then the snapper showed up. By any measure, he was a big snapper; and we watched him while he quietly circled our boat, acting as if he had some previous experience with a fisherman’s leftovers.

When a snapping turtle is in the water, you can only see the top of the turtle’s shell and his snout sticking out above the surface. As a result, the best way to gauge size is to eyeball the distance between the snout and the part of the shell that is visible. Based on our hayseed assessment, it was clear that this was a high ranking cooter.

Dean was impressed. So much so that he put down his walleye rod and proceeded to rig up his hefty musky pole with the strongest and thickest hook he could find. He grabbed a sickly bluegill from the livewell, threaded it onto the hook, and threw it within striking distance of the snapper. Anticipating some form of prehistoric entertainment ahead, I sat down in the boat and popped open a Blatz. As an afterthought, I told Dean that he was going to need a stronger hook.

The snapper took the bait, and Dean managed to drag it to within 10 feet of the boat before it became aware of the minor inconvenience. Then the turtle simply dove into the weeds and dug his claws into the mucky bottom. It was slight bother for the submerged turtle, but above water Dean was picking himself up off the floor of the boat. The turtle had floored him, and he reeled in his slack line to find that his hook was now shaped like a fat toothpick.

“Did you see the size of that monster?!” Dean said. I had, and I was feeling quite satisfied when he was reminded of my warning about the need for a stronger hook. After reassuring Dean that he sure was a big old thing, I took another swig of Blatz, and silently reflected on that other turtle; the one I had seen and battled 30 years earlier. There was no point in mentioning it to Dean. It would only serve to spoil his queerly glorious turtle moment. I knew how Dean felt.

Back at the tavern, Dean proceeded to regale the patrons with the story of his turtle battle. It was fun to listen to, if only because Dean was a good teller of tales. But there came a point when the nonsense needed to be silenced, and I interrupted his story and told him, and everyone else in the bar, that I had once hooked into a hundred pounder. Then I held up my arm and stretched out my fingers, and pointed to the area between my elbow and fingertips. And then I said “His front foot was that big, and his claws were as long as my fingers.”

That got everyone’s attention, because this was a fisherman’s bar, and everyone in there knew that there’s no such thing as a hundred pound snapper, with claws as big as your fingers. Now I had to back up my preposterous claim with an even more preposterous story. But that was easy, because this story was true. I had once hooked into Godzilla.

Around the time South Vietnam fell to the communists, I got a job as a summer camp counselor. That would put me there about 1974 or ‘75, depending on which side you talked to. The camp was located in Harriman State Park, in lower New York state, and was situated on the banks of tiny Lake Stahahe.

Lake Stahahe was a small mounatin lake, perhaps 100 acres in surface area. It was long and narrow, and about 20 feet in its deepest hole. At its northern end there was a concrete dam that held back a ten foot head of water; so in its original state, Lake Stahahe was probably no more than a wet pothole, surrounded by bog. Once through the dam, the waters of Stahahe Brook flowed north, until it reached the upper stretch of the Ramapo River.

There were several small, rocky islands at the lake’s southern and deeper end. The biggest island we called Blueberry Island. It was simply a granite formation that for thousands of years had been nurturing a patch of wild blueberries. They tasted good in the pancakes.

This whole scene, including the pancakes, was nestled in a wild and comfortable valley of the Ramapo Mountains.

I worked the waterfront at the camp, and taught swimming and canoeing to poor kids from the South Bronx, and rich kids from Long Island and the Jersey suburbs. It was on this waterfront that I first heard of Godzilla.

Every summer camp has its legends of ghosts and goblins and escaped madmen who would dismember you in the dark if you misbehaved, but this camp had an advantage when it came to spook stories. It was only 20 miles from there, at a place called Sleepy Hollow, that Washington Irving was inspired to write about that headless apparition, riding on a horse. The Headless Horseman. There was something about the mountains and valleys and forests of the Ramapo and Catskill ranges, especially at dusk or dawn, that made a guy consider that a zombie with a hatchet could actually be waiting for you in the dim and misty twilight. It also helped having the Appalachian Trail run right through the camp. The only people who walked that trail were the deranged and parasitic type, and sometimes they’d get lost and ask us for spooky directions. But none of this has much to do with turtles.

What made Lake Stahahe truly unique, at least back in those days, was its infestation with Eurasian Milfoil. Sometime during the mid 20th century, some hunyak decided it would be a good idea to plant a sprig of the aquatic weed in his fish aquarium. Then, after he had emigrated to America, his fish died. So he flushed his dead fish, and the aquarium water, down the toilet. Somehow, some of that water ended up in Lake Stahahe, and the milfoil spores got together and decided to settle and build a colony. 40 years later, those of us living in the upper Midwest know that the rest is history.

Eurasian Milfoil is bad for lakes, but the turtles seem to like it.

My introduction to Godzilla came on my first day on the waterfront dock. It was during Class 1, Lesson A, of the Red Cross Introduction to Canoeing (RCIC) course. Being a recent graduate of the Red Cross Certified Canoeing Instructor (RCCCI) course, I was proud owner of an RCCCI manual. For Lesson A of the RCIC course, the manual said that the instructor should simply place the student inside the canoe, hand him a paddle, and then give the canoe a good shove.

My first two students sailed away smartly, but the third one, Norbert, was not cooperating. I pointed his canoe north, towards the dam, but as I prepared him for take-off Norbert grabbed the gunwales and started screaming “Don’t send me there! That’s where Godzilla is!!!”

I leafed through my RCCCI manual and scanned it for anything helpful, but there was nothing found in the index that even hinted at how to deal with a student who’s afraid of Godzilla. I did find an index entry relating to how to deal with a gunwale grabber, but that had more to do with the simple fear of water. The Red Cross had not considered that a fear of giant, fire blowing, Japanese dinosaurs might present itself as an obstacle to canoe instruction.

My partner on the dock, Larry, heard the commotion and came over to lend a hand. “What’s the screaming about?” he asked. I told Larry that I was simply pointing Norbert in a canoeable direction when he started screaming something about Godzilla. Larry replied, “Oh. Well, you can’t send them that way Jim. Godzilla’s down there.”

Larry was kind enough to elaborate, and he explained that Godzilla was a monster snapping turtle. He lived down by the dam, in the milfoil, and had been around for as long as anyone could remember. On occasion he would come out of the weeds and infiltrate the camper’s fishing hole. From the small and well worn platform of granite and sand above the hole, where the campers would stand and fish, he could be seen on the bottom, six feet down; and all you could see were his giant, white claws. Larry held up his hand, stretched out his fingers and said “His claws are as long as my fingers.”

Over the course of the summer I would often find myself fishing with the campers at the fishing hole. It was right next to the dam. Being next to the dam allowed for a decent flow of water, so the milfoil had never been allowed to take root. The water was clear, and it was loaded with fat bluegills. It was a good fishing hole. Godzilla thought so too, because he was a frequent visitor. He’d be on the bottom, six feet down; and except for those huge white claws, all you could see would be a ghostly shadow of his gargantuan head and carapace. For the kids on the rocks, it was a singular experience. You would overhear many youthful exclamations of the word “Wow!” expressed in various moods and tenses. And then you would see campers holding up their hands, and stretching out there fingers.

Godzilla would never be able to crawl out of the water and show himself completely. For without the benefit of the water’s neutral buoyancy, the shear mass of his body and shell would cause him to be crushed by normal gravity. But there came a day when Godzilla did show himself, at least a part of himself, above water. On that day, out in the milfoil patch, Godzilla stuck his snout up through the weeds. We were standing on the shore and watching, and he was watching us. Based on the size of that snout, it could be none other than the beast himself.

It was time for quick thinking. None of us had a rig suitable for this task. There was no fishing pole on earth that would volunteer for this job. I ran to my tackle box and rifled through its contents, looking for the hook that I knew was in there. And there it was. A zinc plated, galvanized steel triple hook, in size 3/0. It wasn’t necessarily large, but it was thick – and very strong. That hook had served me well at that trout farm back in New Jersey, under cover of darkness. That hook served only one purpose. It was never intended for legal sport.

Now we needed line. Line? This wasn’t a job for “line.” This was a job for rope, or cable or…lanyard string! This was a summer camp. Not only did we make a lot of lanyards, but we had lanyard string holding up our tents. We used it as clotheslines and climbing ropes. We even used it once to tow a 400 pound tombstone off the premises. It was amazing stuff. It looked like a flimsy plastic fiber, about the thickness of yarn, but it was reinforced with some kind of tungsten steel belting that made it extremely strong. I ordered one of the campers to head up to the Arts & Crafts cabin and grab about 30 yards of lanyard string. He returned quickly with the required amount – in green.

I hurriedly threaded the lanyard string through the hook, and told one of the campers to tie one of those strong knots he was supposed to have learned in Frontier Class. We were all acting as a cohesive unit, working quickly and efficiently, and casting fleet glances out to the milfoil to make sure the snout was still there.

The hook was now rigged, and I called for bait. “I need a lively bluegill!” Within seconds, a brightly colored six incher was impaled on the hook. I gave the loose end of the lanyard string to a camper to hold, and then I took that bluegill and gave him a mighty heave. It landed one foot from Godzilla, and it flopped as it lay on top of the heavy carpet of milfoil. It was a perfect shot.

My memory seems to recall that time stood still, and maybe it did. We watched the flopping bluegill, and we watched Godzilla. He was either going to pull his head back under the weeds, or he was going to advance on the bluegill. He chose the latter, and his front legs slowly pulled him through the thick milfoil. When he approached within striking distance, he paused and sniffed the air. And then, as fast as lightning, he opened his jaws and struck.

On shore, the camper holding the other end of the lanyard string held his poise. He would have made a good Marine. We all watched, and patiently waited, as Godzilla took several healthy chomps out of that poor fish. When we were confident that Godzilla had reached the hook, I gave the go-ahead to start pulling.

The camper took up slack and the lanyard string came taught. He pulled, and pulled some more, and even though we could see the camper was pulling with all he had, Godzilla wouldn’t budge.

We were now confident that the hook was firmly lodged in Godzilla’s bony jaw. It was time to put a bit more muscle into this turtle tug-of-war. I took over as chief turtle puller. I wrapped the lanyard string several times around my hand, and grabbed that hand with my other hand. I faced Godzilla, and began to walk slowly backwards on the gravel shoreline.

Godzilla began to part the milfoil. The lanyard string held. As Godzilla sensed his peril he began to backpaddle clumsily, but to no avail. As we pulled him closer to shore, we could see the full outline of his massive carapace. He was as big as a camper’s torso, and twice as thick. He had to weigh at least 100 pounds. But it was becoming clear that Godzilla’s last chapter was being written. I heaved back with all my might, and it was over. Godzilla had reached terra firma. He was out of his element.

What we didn’t realize was that it was all a trick. Godzilla was simply biding his time until his feet could touch the bottom. When he was in about two feet of water he was able to dig his claws into the gravely basin. It was never a contest. Like a Sherman tank, he backed up and never stopped. I had all my weight against the lanyard string, and the next thing I knew I was flat on my ass.

Godzilla had floored me, and as I reeled in the slack lanyard string, I saw that the number of barbs on my triple hook had been reduced by one third. He had broken the hook.

I stood up and joined the campers at the shoreline. We watched Godzilla slowly fade into the depths, and disappear into the forest of milfoil. And then he was gone.

**********

Twenty five years later, I had two little campers of my own, and on a spring day in Wisconsin the boys and I found ourselves exploring the edge of a nearby cattail marsh. As we walked along the cattails, one of the boys found a tiny turtle. He picked it up, and came running over to show it to me. It was a baby snapper, no bigger than a silver dollar. The boys wanted to take him home and keep him for a pet, and daddy was more than happy to oblige.

We named him Godzilla.

When we got home, we found the old 10 gallon aquarium and filled it with water. We threw some sand and gravel in the bottom, and dropped baby Godzilla into the tank. We watched him swim happily around, and then he got tired and rested on the bottom.

After I tucked the boys into bed, I told them the story about my adventures with the real Godzilla, and I explained to them that if they took real good care of their baby Godzilla, he might grow up to be a hundred pounds too. They were quiet, and they listened, and they looked into daddy’s eyes as only young boys can; and then they fell asleep.

As I closed their bedroom door, I took one more look at baby Godzilla. He was sleeping peacefully too.

**********

Aw, Jim. What a sweet ending to this story. Your little boys, falling asleep with baby Godzilla, while daddy tells a story.

Well…yeah. That is pretty sweet, but the story isn’t finished yet.

When we woke up in the morning, we all raced to the aquarium to look at baby Godzilla. He was still resting peacefully on the bottom of the tank. But this morning his eyelids seemed to be a little pale, and his shell had turned white. Oh no.

As God is my witness, I thought turtles could swim. When I saw baby Godzilla sleeping peacefully the night before on the bottom of the tank, I figured that when he needed to take a breath, he’d simply swim to the surface and get one; just like Flipper. The thought had never occurred to me that placing a turtle in deep water, and inside a glass lined canyon, meant certain death. I had not provided safe sanctuary, meaning a rock that would let him climb out of the water - and breathe. I had visions of poor baby Godzilla scratching against the glass all night, trying to gain a foothold somewhere, and then giving up, and drowning.

So I had managed to kill Godzilla after all, but not in a manner that I would dare tell in a fisherman’s tavern. I’m really not sure if the boys have ever forgiven me for that blunder. But they’re adults now, and will have to live with whatever traumas I’ve passed on, without any apology from me.

Now that the story is over, I’m wondering why I ever thought any of this was worth bragging about.

Why Blog?

Every once and while when the ideas for this blog seem few and far between, I have to ask myself the obvious question of why I recount a time so long ago. The answer today is that I believe in the benefits of technology and the Internet in particular. Nothing is ever forgotten on the Internet. Data sits in storage forever. This is a fact, and a good reason to have something memorable and or inspirational to write before you begin a blog as it will follow you to your grave.

This is not to give myself too much credit as I know I have good posts and bad. The important thing is I believe its important to recall a time and a town much different than the one which stands today. I sometimes sound old and say the "good old days were better" but that is fairly common as we age and I see nothing wrong about my including a subjective judgment or two into a blog for the world to criticize.

The fact is there are somethings I like better about the Village now than when I was growing up. It's hard to argue with a bigger library, more parks, and better cared for ball fields, to name a few of my favorite things.

I may not like the loss of a "local feel" to Ridgewood in the form of individual shopkeepers who operated store like Perdues, McHughs, Bill Lyons, and the hardware stores. Their children went to our schools and they all had commutes to work which were the envy of their customers who had to hop a train or bus into NYC. The localness of Ridgewood I remember has been replaced with restaurants and bank branches and brings with it a superfluousness that didn't exist when we had Moms at home and we at least tried to eat dinner together.

Who is to say Ridgewood won't return to some of the habits of its simpler roots? The furor created by talk of changing Graydon Pool is a good example. It was nice to see people become passionate and engage in a strong public debate over the pool's future. This leads me to believe their is a strong core of people, living among the McMansions, who will steward the Village through the coming years. Hopefully they will remember the history of Ridgewood and will continue to strongly debate any proposed changes to its aesthetics or the aura it so routinely projects as a nice place to live or to be from.

Super Science Saturday

Sorry about the poor quality picture I shot with my I-Phone. I took it at last month's Super Science Saturday at RHS, an annual event where science is the star and not athletics for a change. Don't get me wrong I was a jock and had a good time but now I am a network security geek and was very pleased to see all the attention these young scientists were receiving.

The photo was something of a discovery as it was not something we did in the 1960s and 1970s, namely, honoring teachers for their contributions to our education. You will see a few teachers in the photo receiving long overdue recognition and one teacher who is still active at RHS, Helen Aslanides.