tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post6056470389434503988..comments2024-03-29T03:19:09.227-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: HOW SHARPER THAN A SERPENT'S TOOTHRobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-50221317360548152502012-10-12T09:42:10.901-04:002012-10-12T09:42:10.901-04:00Well, if it makes your silence any easier, I find ...Well, if it makes your silence any easier, I find I'm not as intense about this stuff as when I was younger--I feel pretty sanguine about the extra inning victory of the Orioles last night. Basically, I think the event of a subway series in 2000, which I had no real expectations of ever seeing, in which the Yankees crushed the Mets (who are the real enemies of Yankees fans, not the Red Sox) pretty much fulfilled all my baseball dreams. I suppose it might have been like the Dodger World Series win over the Yankees in 1955 for old Brooklyn Dodgers fans. Re: my grandmother and DiMaggio. It was pretty much along the lines of you and Jolie. (Though in the real life fantasy department, when I worked for the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union in Connecticut, one of my co-workers was Morty Miller, the nephew of Arthur Miller. He once mentioned to me that he danced with Marilyn Monroe at his bar mitzvah. For a 13-year-old boy at the time, it probably seemed like some weird, erotic dream.)Jim Smethursthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13834065318718385769noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-92018233697191126892012-10-12T07:32:34.885-04:002012-10-12T07:32:34.885-04:00Since I consider you a dear friend, Jim, I must pa...Since I consider you a dear friend, Jim, I must pass over in silence your surely painful confession that you are a Yankees fan, but I have to hear more about why your grandmother thought Joe DiMaggio should have married her! Was there actually a chance? Or was it like my belief that Angelina Jolie missed out when she chose Brad Pitt over me?Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-61280793151624072322012-10-11T23:11:00.515-04:002012-10-11T23:11:00.515-04:00It could be worse, Bob. My father was a Giants fan...It could be worse, Bob. My father was a Giants fan when they played in Polo Grounds and I grew up to be a Yankees fan (and it was his mother, who thought Joe DiMaggio should have married her rather than Marilyn Monroe, who converted me).Jim Smethursthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13834065318718385769noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-37870040127824123242012-10-11T05:13:07.555-04:002012-10-11T05:13:07.555-04:00Ah, but clearly you did manage! Not to become an ...Ah, but clearly you did manage! Not to become an astronaut, but to become educated, which is, in a way, better.<br /><br />A propos, when my sons were little, both of them bought and read so many comic books that we had to get big plastic laundry baaskets to keep them in, so that they did not litter the whole house. How did they turn out? A chess prodigy and a law professor. I actually read a bunch of the comic books at one point to see what they were consuming. I discovered two things: First, the vocabulary in the comic books was rather sophisticated. Second, the underlying ethos was clearly liberal [the villains were all originally good people who had been turned rotten by some terrible accident, like being dropped into a vat of acid.] I stopped worrying after that.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-7551207232812348842012-10-11T04:30:40.010-04:002012-10-11T04:30:40.010-04:00I was a bookish kid. For good or ill, I owe that t...I was a bookish kid. For good or ill, I owe that to my late Dad and to Neil Armstrong.<br /><br />My Dad, for economic reasons, never managed to finish his medicine studies. Given this, I guess understandably, he placed much importance in education, particularly in the sciences.<br /><br />Maybe you'll wonder what does it have to do with Armstrong. The answer: my Dad was a clever guy. <br /><br />When the Apollo 11 landing took place I was 8 years old. I still remember my Dad, Mum, my little sister and I literally glued to our old black-and-white TV set watching every detail. <br /><br />As millions of kids all over the world, those guys were my heroes.<br /><br />And my Dad understood that very clearly. So he told me if I wanted to be like them, I had to study and, although often money was short, he managed to buy the occasional scale model (so as to keep the imagination vivid) and several of the Time/Life series books. I remember, among others, Evolution, Space, The Reptiles.<br /><br />And it worked just fine, as I am sure he knew it would. I wouldn't turn the TV on, or play, or anything really, before doing my homework.<br /><br />Later on I became a fervent Isaac Asimov fan (not just, or even mainly, for his fiction, but for his popular science books) and I went on to buy with my own money high school books so that I could study on my own, so anxious I was to be an astronaut.<br /><br />Needles to say, I never managed. Now, even Armstrong is dead.Magpiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07528637318288802178noreply@blogger.com