The Class of 1962 Celebrates Class Day at Columbia College on Morningside Heights

The blogger and Ed Pressman at the John Jay

Hall breakfast prior to Class Day ceremonies

For the second year in row, I attended class day events at the at the Columbia College Commencement ceremonies. (For last year's posts click here.)

After the honor of carrying the class banner, I attended the Commencement. 

Carrying the Class flag is fun even 

in the light rain

Rick MacArthur Class of 1978 and publisher of Harper's Magazine delivered the keynote address. He urged the graduating students "to absorb, to question, to challenge to refute any author on any subject..." Close textual reading, reflection and refutation, if necessary, is what is expected of the Columbia College student. 

Fiftieth anniversary class representatives, Class of 1962 included Paul Alter, Burton Lehman, Stanley Lupkin and Edward Pressman.

Over one thousand students received the Bachelor Of Arts degree this year.  

I look forward to attending next year's fifty-first reunion. 

Harry Bennett Library hosts a captivating lecture on Gertrude Stein and her Artists: Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne

Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906

Helaine Rheingold presented a slide show illustrating works by three towering late 19th and 20th century artists-- Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso.

The large community room of the Bennett library was nearly filled to capacity.

 Ms. Rheingold did not disappoint the crowd because she has a unique style of engaging her audience.

At the outset, she made it very clear that you are going to be direct participants; I will be inviting your comments. Sure enough, the audience quickly became willing participants as she often peppered her remarks with questions that were eagerly answered.

Here are just a few points she made:

Cezanne liked painting still lifes because he had no patience in dealing with people who would cause so much trouble; he would insist his subjects sit silently still for hours on end. In painting Ambrose Vollard a portrait dealer, Cezanne demanded he sit on a kitchen chair atop a flimsy packing case from 8AM until 11:30 PM. Once, when Vollard dozed off and nearly fell, Cezanne shouted, "Does an apple move?"

Picasso claimed that Cezanne was "my one and only master...Cezanne was like the father of us all."

Paul Cezanne, Plate of Peaches, 

1879-1880

Matisse set up a serious daily regimen because he panicked (shook, swore, sweated) when he painted. He would get up at 7AM and play his violin for two hours in a remote bathroom. For the next three hours, he would paint and after lunch would either nap, or stroll past Aleppo pines in the garden to one of the cafes. At four, he would return to his easel until dark. He would close the shades and do some drawing. 

Picasso left  a legacy of over thirty thousand paintings. Little known are the lifelike portraits he did of his father and his wife Olga. He also did caricatures of other famous artists' works such as Velazquez's famous Las Meninas. 

Indeed Picasso was known to have said "Good artists copy, great artists steal." 

By the way, Ms. Rheingold is a docent at the Neuberger Museum of Art and Arts Enrichment Facilitator with the Stamford Public Schools. 

Spotted, a new horse icon joins Belltown along Newfield Avenue in Stamford

Newfield Avenue's new equestrian metal sculpture

that is on the lawn of Lakeside Pottery 

My passion for riding and writing about horses has been covered in posts about the American Quarterhorse and the 'white horse with no name' that graces the Sunoco station across from Grade A shopping center on Newfield Avenue. (see: Newfield Avenue's fixture: a horse with no name)

Now another horse with no name has suddenly surfaced in the same neighborhood on the lawn of the Lakeside Pottery School, Studio and Gallery diagonally across from the Sunoco station. (see accompanying pictures)

This brown sculpture is now the latest addition to Stamford's outdoor art.

Indeed, it is a welcome prelude to the Stamford Downtown Special Services outdoor summer art festival, Horsin' Around. 

Updates from the French Tennis Open: Serena Williams Bows Out in First Round

Serena Williams at the 2011 AEGON International

Courtesy of Wikipedia

This match produced a shocker!

 Serena, usually at the top of her game at the start of a major, lost in her debut match to Virginie Razzano 4-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3.

Razzano was ranked number 111 in the world.

Serena simply could not get her aggressive game under control with so, so many unforced errors.

Here are some amazing stats:The final game lasted 23 minutes; Serena saved 7 match points; 12 deuce points were played; Serena, two points away from winning the match blew a 5-1 lead in the second set tie breaker.

I watched a replay of the last game and I can attest that it was a see-saw with Serena and her opponent at times showing brilliance and Razzano even cramping up. (If only Serena could have slowed down her game!)

A short review of Great House by Nicole Krauss

This is an enchanting novel about love, loss, anxiety and desperation.

The focus of the novel is a large oversize desk with 19 drawers, one of which is permanently locked. It is described as:  "This desk was something else entirely: An enormous foreboding thing that bore down on the occupants of the room it inhabited, pretending to be inanimate but, like a Venus' flytrap, ready to pounce on them and digest them, via one of its many little terrible drawers."

There are four narrators, each with their own chapters;  three of them have some connection to the desk.

The fourth narrator is a bitter, irate, disconsolate Israeli father who is desperately seeking reconnection with his son Dov who took off for England to pursue a career as a judge; now, he leaves his job behind and returns to Israel to be with father. He is aloof and insentient which irritates his dad.

The novel begins with Nadia a writer who relates that her boyfriend split taking all the furniture. Through a mutual friend, she connects with a Chilean poet named Daniel Varsky who is returning to Chile and needs a place to 'store' his huge desk. So she gladly accepts the proposition

We later learn that Varsky has disppeared under the Pinochet regime.

Nadia has had the desk for several decades and then one day a woman shows up at her doorstep saying she is Varsky's daughter and wants to take her dad's desk back to Israel with her. Without hesitation, Nadia acquiesces.

I leave it to the reader to fill in the gaps and make connections as needed.

Suffice it to say, that nuances in language left me with the desire to read this remarkable novel a second time.

What I've Been Reading Lately: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

This engrossing biography is about one of the geniuses of the last century who is in a pantheon along with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and, perhaps, a few others.

His genius was comprised of two aspects worth exploring:  his unusual psyche and his innovative/forward thinking.

First was his irascible and erratic psyche/personality. If he didn't like your opinion, suggestion or the design and prototype you were working on, he could and would often lash out at you in front of others by saying this "sucks" along with other derogatory terms.

He was quick and summary in his judgments, which most of the time were accurate and on target.

It would take an equally strong personality to stand up to Jobs and convince him that you were on the right track and a few of his associates were not intimidated by his unpredictable outbursts. The latter would go on to earn his respect and build up his team.

Jobs was always interested in hiring and surrounding himself with A team players--people of talent and energy to express that talent.

His teaming up with Steve Wozniak is a perfect illustration of Jobs working one-on-one with an engineering genius. Together the duo would go on to build the early Apple computers culminating in the Macintosh.

He operated in what has been called the reality distortion field. This is a term borrowed from the "Menagerie" episodes of Star Trek "in which aliens create their own new world through sheer mental force." (118). What this means is that once you came under the charismatic, indomitable will of Jobs, you were forced to change your thinking and side with his view of reality.

By this stretching and manipulating reality, Jobs was able to push his team to meet deadlines for product introduction that the team thought impossible.

He forced them to think out of the box.

The second aspect of his genius was his obsessive lifelong belief in the integration of hardware and software. (Jobs was a master- a perfectionist- of design and would pour over dozens of shapes before he would chose the right one for a new product).

Unlike Bill Gates of Microsoft, he would not allow other hardware manufacturers the right to use Apple's software system.

It is this tight control of content (music, photos, etc) hardware (iphone, ipod and ipad, MacBook Air MacBook Pro, etc) and software (OSX, Leopard, etc) that allowed the syncing of all Apple devices; this, in turn,  propelled the sales of all Apple products (including shared revenue streams)  from its itunes library to down loading apps, books and magazines for its iPad.

To summarize: one of the major themes of the book is that Apple has become the number one company in the US because of the driving, obsessive, compulsive personality and integrative thinking of its co-founder Steve Jobs.

But, will Apple continue to thrive without Jobs to lead?

PART ONE: Remembering Dan Lucey, A Highly Ranked Spunky San Francisco Tennis Player: My Coach and LIFE MENTOR:

Dan Lucey at a Tournament in 

Stockton, California (Thank You  Rena Lucey

for the photo--she is a  friend for over 50 years) 

It was in the mid 1970's that I came under the wing of Dan Lucey at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park tennis facility.

Tall, thin and lanky, Dan had the most fluid strokes of anyone I met. He was a pleasure to behold as he gracefully moved around the court with short, movements always returning to a central position awaiting the next shot.

His strokes were always clean precise and consistent.

He knew how to coach the fundamentals of the game: the serve, ground strokes and volleying.

He was also a  master of strategy.

He would hop on my court (as I was practicing with a partner) take my position and quickly modeled the fundamental strokes and strategies of the game. Then I would take over and Dan would continue to coach me.

He was ranked in the top ten statewide in the 45's; tournament play had evidently honed his competitiveness and spunk.

 In 1974, he was ranked number 2 in the Men's 55 Singles in the Northern California Tennis Association's tentative rankings just behind John Morrison of Sacramento at number one, with Norm Brooks of San Francisco following Dan at number 3. 

Dan worked for The Water Department and while doing fieldwork often visited the tennis courts during his lunch hour.

He knew every tennis player at the facility-- their strengths and weaknesses.

Tom Brown

on the cover of his Tennis Memoir book

As Tom Goes By

He often commented about Tom Brown's aggressive ground stroke game  as we watched him beat local ranked  players 25 years younger  (Tom lost to Jack Kramer in the US Open finals in 1946 and the Wimbledon finals in 1948) ; He also commented  about Rosie Casals' feisty style as we watched her matches at the Park. 

Whitney Reed 

from www.whitneyreedtennis.com

He directed my attention to the unflappable Whitney Reed, the top seeded player at the annual San Francisco Open tournament. Whit, as he was called, hailed from Alameda across the Bay.

At one point in the early 1960's, Whit displaced Chuck Mckinley to be the number one ranked men's singles player in the US. In his career, he had wins over Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, Neale Fraser, Frank Sedgman, Gardner  Mulloy and Manuel Santana to name a few. All the latter have been enshrined in the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

Dan always would observe my game and worked often with me (and others)-- ALL GRATIS!

Of course, I admired his patience as he devoted time to coaching his boys, Glen and Marco. 

 
He matched me against other players on my level and encouraged me to play some Bay Area satellite tournaments.

This was how I improved my game--thanks to Dan.

We miss you Dan.

I thank Rena Lucey  Dan's loyal and dedicated wife (and my friend for over 50 years ) for sending me photos of one of my life's hero so I can complete this  posting originally  published on May 13, 2012-over 10 years ago.

It is wonderful to to connect--recently- with Rena  (remembering her visit to NYC in the 90's)  so I could complete Part I of my saga and move on to Part II.

Dan inspired me with what he repeated to me over and over again. So do go on to Part II.