Those are the breaks

Posted on May 27, 2020 by hdh

Those are the Breaks

I played softball in the local community recreation league for 10 years. It was a very friendly league. No umpires, batters got 3 swings, coaches on first and third made the calls, etc. The team I played on was made up of a bunch of middle-aged teachers and friends. It was a fun league that had teams from high school/college-aged kids ranging in age from late teens to early 20s, to the ‘Boys of Summer’ team that was made up of men in their 50’s and 60’s for the most part. Age-wise we fell somewhere to the right of middle, nearer the oldest group.

Our team was called the Wizards.  We decided that we needed t-shirts so we purchased these dark blue shirts with an image of a wizard on it. For a league that had no uniforms, it was pretty cool having the whole team show up in the same uniformed t-shirt.

My t-shirt only lasted for a few years though. In 1985, an incident happened before we even go to play our game. We got there early and were in the field warming-up. The other team hadn’t shown up yet (In fact, they never did, we won on forfeit). I was practicing at shortstop. Carl was behind the plate while batters were hitting practice grounders to all of the position players. After two plays to short where I made some pretty good catches, Carl screamed out, “Harvey, he’s an animal out there!”, pointing out to everyone that I was catching everything.

Big mistake. I, of course, took that to my head, so that when the next grounder was too far away from me to stop, I decided to try anyway and show-off my animal self; after all, I’d seen professional players dive for balls many times on TV making spectacular dives to catch balls. Something that professional players have that I didn’t have was ‘skill’. As I dove to catch the ball I put my right arm down to cushion the fall (my mitt being on my left hand). It was at that point that my collarbone went snap. I was 34 years old. This is the first bone that I had ever broken.

At this point I wasn’t sure if I broke anything; I did know that I was in a lot of pain. This was during the era when not everyone owned a cell phone. Luckily one of our player’s house was right next to the playing field. He went home to call for an ambulance, while the rest of the team tried to give me first aid, having realized that something was amiss. It wasn’t long before the fire department’s rescue vehicle turned up, my arm was immobilized and I was put into the ambulance. Dennis, the player who made the call, decided that he would ride with me in the ambulance. Mack decided that he would drive Dennis’s car and follow the ambulance to the hospital so that Dennis and I would have a ride home. This wasn’t totally altruistic on Mack’s part. He was pleased that this also got him out of having to go home early (since the game was canceled) and have to mow his lawn which is what his wife had requested of him that morning instead of playing softball. Continue reading →

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The Reign of Silence

Posted on May 21, 2020 by hdh

The Reign of Silence

The crowd amassed in front of the stage. I was behind the curtain waiting to perform. I could hear the cacophony of sounds as the clock ticked closer to the appointed hour. 

Then the time had arrived I could hear the emcee announce my name. There was thunderous applause as the curtains opened and I stepped out and then…there was silence. 

I’m used to silence from an audience in anticipation of the first song of my set, but this was different. There was no movement to accompany this quiet which is usually visible when I begin. The reason being, there was no audience. Whoever had been making the noise prior to the curtain being drawn had vanished. 

I tried to sing, despite my confusion, but everything that normally would have come out of my mouth had turned silent. What was going on? Was this a dream? More likely a nightmare. As I looked around, all the stage crew were still there; waiting for something to happen. I took a step back and as I did the curtains were drawn shut. 

As soon as they closed all sounds reappeared. I turned to one of the stage crew and asked, “What just happened?”

He replied, “We just got word from the director, that because of the Governor’s decree, no concerts are allowed to be performed until all pandemic precautions have been observed.  There were too many people in the audience not observing the proper protocols. So we had to mute you and the audience and restart the program pending the proper observance of all the rules. Now that you’ve stepped behind the curtain, we have been able to properly provide all audience members with the proper masks and shields and gloves.”

It was hard for me to fathom all this information. It became even crazier when the stage manager came to me with a mask and shield for me to wear. 

That being said and done, the curtains again opened to a rounding applause and I began my concert. I hope no one was videoing this one. It was bad enough that it was being streamed live.

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May I?

Posted on May 14, 2020 by hdh

May I?

Why is it in this world that we always have to ask permission. Not only do we have to ask permission, but we have to do it properly. 

It’s not, “Can I go out to play?” or “Mom, Can I just have a drink before I go to sleep?”

It’s “May I go out to play?” or “Mom, May I have a drink before I go to sleep?”

Everything is “May I this?” and “May I that?”  What happened to initiative and the right to make your own decisions? We should be more independent and not have to ask permission to do anything. 

I’ve been trying to convince my parents that this is the case, after all, I’m 33 years old. Granted I still live at home, but that should not matter. 

They never use “May I” when talking to me. Shouldn’t they say, “May I suggest some wonderful job opportunities that are available in another part of the State?  No, they continually dispel with the “May I” protocol and it’s, “You need to get a job and move out of the house!”

You would think they would show some appreciation to someone who has diligently supported their food and shelter sharing, without burdening them with having to deal with added money management; if I actually paid them. Think of how easy I make it for them not to have to keep records on money’s owed them for services that they willingly provide. 

Sometimes I wish they would just give some more independence without reminding me of my older siblings, all of which have high paying occupations and are living with families of their own. I bet they didn’t get to where they are with any “May I’s”.

But that’s the way it is. Despite the fact that they keep telling me that, “All Things seem possible with a May I” It just doesn’t seem to work for me. 

But I’ll keep trying. “Hopefully, if I am patient with them and wait a little longer, like till I’m 50, then “May”be they’ll let me do what I want to do, which is right now, not doing anything, and welching all I can from them.  

Oops, did I say that out loud?

 

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There’s no place like home…

Posted on May 7, 2020 by hdh

There’s No Place Like Home: Well maybe

The famous line from The Wizard of Oz, that everyone remembers is, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” Most of us can relate to that. At least we used to.
I love the snugness of my house. Each of the rooms, with their distinctive flavor. There are quiet rooms where I can just sit and think, the noisier ones where the sounds of nature fill the air through open windows, unfortunately, at times, followed by the cacophony of cars, lawnmowers, and blowers, and neighbor’s housebound kids being released from homeschool, the calming rooms, where we can relax, vege out on TV if we want or grab the latest novel that we’re into and sink into a chair and become one with the characters in the story. Yes, there’s no place like home. Well maybe…

We are now in quarantine, Day…Whatever. Rooms have changed their designated assignments now that there are multiple people in the house all of the time; as do time slots for those rooms. You now need an office room, for work. You now expect there to be more quiet rooms, so that people can have their quiet space when needed. It appears that headphones are used more often. Don’t get me wrong, I love the additional together time, but one gets used to certain routines.

Home is the place to be, when you are allowed to leave it and interact with the world, usually on a daily basis. That has been replaced by interacting at a distance both physically and virtually. Personally, for me, there is a limit as to how many virtual meetings one can and wants to attend.

Then there are the glitches in our virtual world. I enjoy seeing my writing and storytelling friends on screen and hearing the tales that they spin in the work they do. However, when the pictures don’t appear and the voices are choppy, and especially the most frustrating of all glitches, the sound does not sync with the video (don’t you just hate that), I feel like I’m in a very poorly designed version of “there’s no place like home”.

Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall and listen to a conversation; to hear what everyone else was talking about? Well, I’ve been there, at my last Writing Group, and trust me you really don’t want to be that. Though I loved all of the stories being shared, no one knew I was there and I couldn’t be heard, even when I wanted to say something. That’s scary. Imagine how many people, could be listening in on your every interaction. And for all of you listening right now while I’m writing this…Just STOP IT! When I want you to read this, I’ll share it.

Home now becomes a place of seclusion, even when you are with those you love; where cabin fever can reign, a periodic happy place. Be thankful, though, for things could be worse. I feel for the homeless at this time of quarantine and those that have difficulty just being in homes, where it never was the “no place like home” to begin with or has become a “no place to be…at home”.

I hope this passing phase of our existence works itself out sooner than later; when we can go back to some semblance of what life was like, with a greater understanding of what has happened to us and that allows us to make our global home better. So we can truly say, “There is no place like home.”

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A to Z Challenge 2020 – Reflection

Posted on May 4, 2020 by hdh

A to Z Challenge 2020 – Reflection

    So ends another A to Z Challenge year. This has been my 5th one.    

    Finding themes has always been an interesting task. Each year, I brainstorm with friends, family, and students that I work with. Generally, I get my theme idea early in the year and then use the ideas that I get from everyone to formulate what kind of writing I will do. 

    It has varied from personal essays to opinionated dialogue to random scatterings of thoughts. As I have progressed through the years I have experimented with different forms of writing, dabbling with some individual fiction pieces, to poetry, to memoirs, to editorials. The more open-ended I have become the more I’ve been willing to experiment. 

    I admire the bloggers that can write a 26-part story, poetry for every entry, well researched factual pieces, and personal narratives. 

    This year’s theme left all that I did open-ended. I chose to use Google Images to write something similar to an alphabet book. Using suggestions from students for nouns and adjectives, and Google Images using the phrase, “A is for”, “B is for”… “Z is for” I came up with the ideas for each piece. And I tried everything.

    In the past, I have started my actual pieces some time in March and for the most part, was able to keep 2 or 3 days ahead of the actual posting date. This year I started much earlier. I actually started writing, A is for Awesome in November of 2019. I didn’t finish it until March. 

    In the past, I wrote my pieces sequentially. So after writing “A” I would write “B”, etc. This year I jumped all over the place. After writing ‘A is for Awesome” and explaining to my students how I developed some of my characters from real people, a student came up to me and asked me to write about him. So my second piece was “C is for Courageous.”

    Every one of my previous year’s pieces stood on their own. However, after writing my third piece, “Be is for Bold” (which later was renamed “B is for Birthday”) I realized that what I had written had the potential for being a multi-letter story. I didn’t want to do it sequentially, so I worked out which letters would continue the story (F, H, K, M, Q, R, and S) and then wrote the rest of the story before jumping back to where I left off in the regular alphabet. For those of you that want to read the whole story, “A Birthday Present”,  I also posted it all in one place as one piece, after the final part, “S is for Surprise” was posted on April 22. Here’s the link: http://www.hdhstory.net/Storyblog/?p=2021. That piece was my favorite one to write. It was fun to see it evolve as I was writing it. In fact, the ending only came to me the day before I wrote: “R is for Rescue”.

    Somewhere after completing “K is for King” which was part of the “A Birthday Present” story, I was inspired to write a poem about my teaching days and thoughts about the present state of education, so I jumped to writing “T is for Teaching” before returning to the Birthday saga. 

    Everything else I wrote in order, alphabetically. Having pre-written 11 pieces by mid-March, I had some leeway in getting the other pieces done on time. Even so, I still managed to be only a few days ahead of myself when the final due dates arrived. 

    I really enjoyed this year and as usual, am stumped as to what theme I should pick for next year. I definitely would like to do this again, despite the fact that it is very time-intensive and can be draining. The COVID-19 quarantine did give me more time; not wishing that that scenario should ever occur again. But I have learned over the years that the more I write ahead of time, the less stressful it is. I do wish I would have more readers and comments, but then I don’t tend to read other people’s blogs as much as I should and comment on them. I do read more after the A to Z is over. So I understand. 

For those that are interested here is the full listing of all this year’s entries with links to their posts:

A is for Awesome, B is for Birthday, C is for Courageous, D is for Definitely Daffy, E is for Email, F is for Follow, G is for Guitar, H is for Hunted, I is for Ignorant, J is for Jam, K is for King, L is for Love, M is for Mistake, N is for NO!, O is for Obsessive, P is for Prepare, Q is for Queen, R is for Rescue, S is for Surprise, T is for Teaching, U is for Untold Stories, V is for Virtual Reality, W is for Weather, X is for Unknown, Y is for Year, and Z is for Zero.

Be well. Stay safe. And keep on writing and sharing. 

Harvey Heilbrun

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The Doctor is in

Posted on May 1, 2020 by hdh

The Doctor is in

I entered college as an engineering major. Supposedly always good in math and science, that seemed to be the direction I should be headed. Well, that lasted just one year. With a grade-point average in the low 2s, I decided to declare myself undecided in my sophomore year. I explored both education and psychology as possible careers. I liked the courses that involved both majors. I might have been influenced by the fact that one of my sisters had a career in education and my other sister was a social worker. 

Needless to say, I managed to survive my sophomore year and brought my average up a little. 

It was in my junior year that things changed dramatically. A friend of mine, who was pursuing a major in education, told me about this great course offered by a Dr. Littky. He was a professor in the education department. This course if you were accepted in it was more of an independent study of education. You would be allowed to work in a school district for 4 days a week as an observer. In my case, it was at the Middle Island Middle School (now called Longwood Middle School), which at the time was doing split sessions with the high school as the new middle school was being built. 

I mostly got to team up with 4 6th grade teachers as they were creating this new school. It was awesome. Dr. Littky encouraged us to help them create the school. I learned a lot, and also shared a lot. I suggested a new reading idea, “Hooked on Books” and became well known with the teachers. That first semester I spent a lot of time with a 7th grade English teacher in addition to traveling between the four 6th grade teachers. 

The next semester I was lucky to get into Dr. Littky’s class again and again worked at Middle Island, mainly with the sixth grade. When it came time for me to do student teaching, Middle Island continued to be my school district and Dennis (Dr. Littky) was to be my supervisor. I got to student teach with one of the four sixth grade teachers, Liala Strotman. It was a busy year. I was more annoyed by the fact that I still only could be there 4 days a week, due to a reading course I had to take back at Stony Brook.

I graduated from college with a dual major in Education/Psychology. Dennis left the university to start a new middle school in the Shoreham-Wading River District. I applied there to teach, but he wouldn’t hire me, due to my lack of teaching experience; since he was starting a brand new school, he needed those experienced teachers to get it working. But I was not forgotten.

The following year, after helping out in the SWR district as an administrative aide to Dr. Littky for a month in January and working as a permanent substitute in the Three Village School district for half a year, I was hired by Dennis to be a 6th-grade teacher in the newly merged Shoreham and Wading River district’s Middle School.

Dennis was my mentor. He allowed me to explore who I was and how I wanted to teach.  The journals that he made us write during our Stony Brook days inspired me to continue writing throughout my teaching career.

Whenever I had a problem that I went to him with, he wouldn’t give me the solution, but threw it back at me in a caring way to make me think about how to solve the issue myself. He allowed me to be creative in my approach to teaching and kids. I owe a lot of who I am as a teacher to Dennis. 

He eventually left the Middle School to become a famous education innovator. I moved on from the middle school to the elementary school to explore different ways of working with kids. I teamed up with Bill Silver who became one of my closest friends, my kindred spirit if you will. Bill continued the kind of encouragement that I had received from Dennis. And still does to this day. 

There are times in your life where you can say, this was the turning point of my life. Mine, at least as a teacher, is easy to pick out.

It all started the day the Doctor was in. 

 

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A to Z Challenge 2020: Z is for Zero

Posted on April 30, 2020 by hdh

Z is for Zero

Zip, Zilch, Nada, Nought, Nothing, and Nil. They all mean the same thing…Zero. Did you ever notice how useful the number zero (0) is? You can add or subtract it to anything and it doesn’t change what you started with. You can multiply it by anything and you’re left with it alone…zero!

If you‘ve been worked really hard, finished what you were working on, and you’re lucky, you’ll have nothing (zero) left to do and you can relax and enjoy the day.

It’s a great price to pay for things. “This is provided to you at no cost.” $0.00 means it’s free.

It makes you feel good when you have done something and get zero complaints. Of course, the opposite may be true if you get zero compliments.

It’s a great income to have when you tack it onto other numbers; the more the merrier. “Yesterday I spent $1 on a lottery ticket but today I was told I would get $1,000,000 for it!” 

Your computers heavily depend on it. Remember binary code is just made up of 1s and 0s. But the number one (1) doesn’t begin with the letter ‘z’, so we’ll have to leave our “Ones” discussions for another day. 

Zero – is nothing to scoff at. (btw: the pun was intended there)

 

And since this is the last day of the A to Z Challenge Blog for 2020, and I’ve completed all of my posts, I have ZERO things left to write!… Well, that’s almost true. Here comes the creepy number one (1) again. I still have to write one more thing: my A to Z Challenge reflections piece for 2020 is due some time in May.

Oh well, I hope you enjoyed all the pieces I wrote for this year’s challenge. Come back and visit again; there’s sure to be a lot more writing.

 

 

 

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A to Z Challenge 2020: Y is for Year

Posted on April 29, 2020 by hdh

Y is for Year

Year – the time it takes a planet to go all around the sun. 

On Earth, that would be 365.25  Earth days. On Venus (the planet closest to Earth), that would be 224.7 Earth days. On Neptune (the planet in our solar system farthest away from Earth), 60,182 Earth days. 

Interestingly, your pet dogs or cats also do not follow human years as they age. The adage that for every one year of dog life is an equivalent of 7 years in human life is incorrect. That answer is an average. Dogs and cats age faster when they are young, so the equivalent age for dogs (and cats; similar to small dogs) are more like the following table: 

So the concept of a year is relative; to what you are and where you live.  Thinking about how old you are, which number would you prefer to have?  A short age number, with an older age feel, which would be the case as a dog/cat or living on Neptune. Or a large numbered age, but actually feel younger as if you lived on Mercury (88 days to an Earth year) or Venus. I’ve always been partial to Venus. 

Now you never have to worry about lying about your age. If someone asks your age, just decide whether you want to be an Earth old number or an Earth young number. Let them try to calculate it. I’m 113.1 years old on Venus and only 37 years old on Mars. I won’t even go into how old I am in cat/dog years.  

Problem solved. 

So how old are you? 

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A to Z Challenge 2020: X is for Unknown

Posted on April 28, 2020 by hdh

X is for Unknown

    What makes the letter X so important? Think about all the words you know that start with the letter X. Not many are there? I can think of x-ray, xylophone, xenophobia, Xanadu, the element xenon, to mention a few. That’s about it. You can pick any other letter and if I asked you to think up words that start with that letter, you would have no problem, with the exceptions of possibly Z and Q. 

    Yet the letter X is one of our most important letters. Why do I say that? Think about where the letter X is used most often. Whenever you are solving a problem in math, what is the letter that is usually chosen to represent your answer?  Instructions: “Solve for X.” Of all the letters of the alphabet, X is the one that is most often used. Even though when I taught math, I always told the class that an unknown can be represented by any letter, that all-important ‘X’ was the one that was usually chosen. And in most examples, it is the lower case ‘x’ that is the preferred version. If you needed a second variable, no doubt ‘y’ followed by ‘z’ were the preferred choices. 

    I’m sure there are a number of you skeptics out there that feel the unknown number most used is ‘n’, however, my research has shown otherwise. Please don’t ask me for my sources as they are personal and I had to sign an NDA (Nondisclosure agreement) with a very important legal firm.

    There are other important uses of the letter ‘X’. How else would you find a pirate’s hidden treasure, if you didn’t have a map, where ‘X’ marked the spot. No other letter marks the spot. Personally I think that O should mark the spot allowing you a broader area to search in, giving you a better chance of finding what you’re looking for, rather than the exact spot. And there was the classic treasure scene in the movie, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” where the treasure is under the Big W, not an X.

    And why is the game Tic-Tac-Toe played with X’s and O’s. Why not B’s and R’s for Black and Red or symbols like Checks (?) and Dollar signs (?). The game Score Four is played with disks of red and yellow.

    The letter ‘X’ is clearly an important letter. X’s are something to strive for. X’s give you wealth (treasure maps), X’s give you success (3 in a row in Tic-Tac-Toe), and demonstrate your great detective skills (Solve for X). So you should feel good about the letter X and its importance in our world.

    Therefore I propose that in order to keep the letter X, as the positive sign for accomplishing good things, that we, from this day forward, adopt the letter ‘H’ as the one chosen to mark things we do wrong. Abandon any negative connections to the letter X that say you did something bad. Replace it with a letter that stands for Help, which you surely need when you make a mistake. 

That’s my plan and I’m sticking to it. Who’s with me?

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A to Z Challenge 2020: W is for Weather

Posted on April 27, 2020 by hdh

W is for Weather

According to the Whether Man, from the book The Phantom Tollbooth, “It’s more important to know whether there will be weather, than what the weather will be.” Never a truer word was spoken.

We live in an age where meteorologists have all the fancy computers that can be used to predict weather patterns and forecast the weather, and yet with all the information and tools that they have, they only can give a limited percentage of correct information, it seems. 

How many days have you watched or listened to the weather report and it gives you information that changed from previous information that they gave you. 

“It’s going to rain today.” Well, no it didn’t.

 “Prepare for heavy snowfall.” That would be the dusting we got. 

Don’t you love when they give you percentages? If they don’t give you a 0% or 100% of something in their prediction, they can’t be wrong. 

“There is a 1% chance of a tornado today in your area.” When the tornado hits, their claim is, “Well that puts you in the 1%” 

The same goes for when you are in a high probability:

“Today’s forecast shows a 90% chance of heavy fog and blizzard conditions.” When you have clear visibility and light snow, you were just part of the 10%. They must have been correct. 

It’s very frustrating to try and prepare for something when several different sources give you different predictions. And don’t get me started about 5 and 10-day forecasts. You should try tracking how much they change as they get closer to that 5th and 10th day and what the real weather is like when that day arrives. 

 

Climate is a different issue. There, they are talking from a grand historical perspective, where the data is reliable. And the predictions that they make are actually coming to pass, which is pretty scary. You should pay attention to them. 

But as to weather, I’m satisfied to look or step outside and predict what I should be wearing and preparing for. Let the forecasters predict for me whether there will weather today or not. Hopefully, I will be able to rely on that being accurate. 

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