Tribute to a Teacher

On By Norbert HauptIn Cool People, Education, Feelings3 Comments

“I’m a success today because I

had a friend who believed in me 

and I didn’t have the heart

to let him down.”

— Abraham Lincoln

 

There are two teachers I remember who made a difference in my life early on. My parents were not able to provide guidance, leadership or direction. When I was in German elementary school in my little town, when I was 10 years old in 5th grade, there was one classroom for the first eight grades. The first row of six kids was the first grade. The second row was the second grade, and so on. In the morning, Herr Sicheneder started in the front and gave the “little ones” assignments and then he worked his way back. I was in 5th grade, and he usually combined grades 5 through 8 and taught them together, at least in subjects where it made sense, like history or geography. After 8th grade, you were done with school and everyone went to a trade school and start a three-year apprenticeship for a trade. I was a shy little boy who had no idea where he was going.

Herr Sicheneder pulled me aside one day and told me that I should apply for prep school. This was in 1966. In the German school system, in those years, maybe 5 to 10 percent of all kids got to go to Oberschule (high school), in German called Gymnasium, which was the only pathway to higher education and university. To get in, you had to pass an entrance exam. I had no idea what was involved, how you applied, and what the exam was like. Herr Sicheneder kept me in school after all the other kids went home for many months and tutored me. I still remember many of the drills today, almost 60 years later. Wegen, während, statt, kraft, oberhalb, unterhalb, diesseits, jehnseits are all German prepositions followed by the genitive case. Who knows stuff like that? I do, because Herr Sicheneder made sure I had them all memorized. He drilled me in German, mathematics, essay writing and whatever else was in the exam. I have no memory of taking it, but I passed, and in the fall of 1967 I started taking the bus to the city every day and went to Oberschule. Herr Sicheneder was the single most important influence on the direction of my life by a long shot. He put me on a course that resulted in what I am today, and without him, my life would have been very, very different.

Herr Sicheneder was in his late fifties then. As an adult, I never got the chance to go back and thank him for what he did for me. He passed away many decades ago.

I met the second teacher with similar impact on my life on my first day in Gymnasium at the end of August 1967. My professor of Latin and German, and my homeroom teacher, was a young man right out of university perhaps in his first year of teaching, by the name of Wolfgang Illauer. I had Professor Illauer in Latin and German for three years. Being a bit of a German literature snob, he taught us discipline in writing, grammar and spelling and made sure we appreciated German literature. Professor Illauer taught me how to write, imparted critical thinking, instilled values for beauty, art, literature and general culture. Being a professor of the classic languages of Greek and Latin, he had a strong classical background which rubbed off on me. Professor Illauer was my coach and teacher between ages 11 and 13, and he shaped my intellectual and cultural trajectory unlike any other teacher I remember. As I grew into the upper grades, I never saw him again.  Eventually I went on a scholarship foreign exchange program to the United States and got my entire college education here.

A number of years ago I googled Professor Illauer and being the academic he was, he had given some lectures as a guest professor in his retirement. I found his email address. We connected and established correspondence, mostly sharing our thoughts on literature, poetry, writing, education and all the things that academics of the classics are interested in.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, we met in person for the first time after more than 50 years. I spent a night at the Hilton at the Munich Airport, and he drove in from Augsburg to have dinner with me. When I was a child, he was a god. Today, we’re almost equals, two old men interested in a common quest for language and education. We’re on a first name basis and use the German familiar form of address. We talked about Tolstoy. Wolfgang recently read War and Peace in the original Russian language. Go figure. He recommended that I read Somerset Maugham’s short stories, which he reads in English.

I spent a couple of hours over dinner with an “old friend” and one of the two teachers with immeasurable impact on my life.

Wolfgang reads this blog. This is my thank you.

 

Visiting The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.

On By Norbert HauptIn Art, TravelsLeave a comment

On a trip to Washington, D.C., where there are more art museums than in any city in America I know, we visited The Phillips Collection.

This boutique museum holds a most incredible collection of astonishing quality. There are several van Gogh works, countless pieces by Monet and Cezanne, and above all, the most Picasso works in one place I have ever seen. There must have been more than 100 Picassos, featuring “the Blue Period” early in his career.

I can highly recommend The Phillips Collection.

Here is a brilliant van Gogh where I lingered for quite a while before I moved on:

House of Auvers by Vincent van Gogh

Book Review: Time Tunnel: The Eclipse – by Richard Todd

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, History, One and a Half Stars, Science Fiction, Time TravelLeave a comment

It is 1890. Annika finds herself without a transponder, which is the device she needs to return home to her own time in 2008. Stranded in time, with no way to go home, she makes the best of her situation and fights for the Sioux. She has a little help, because Kyle left his backpack on the counter in a bar when it disappeared. The bag contained his laptop which had basically all human knowledge as of 2008 on its hard drive (go figure how that would be possible).

This is book three out of three in the Time Tunnel series by Richard Todd. There is a little time travel plot twist here, but otherwise it’s just an alternate history story reminiscent of the trilogy by S.M. Stirling starting with Island in the Sea of Time.

I can recommend that series highly. In comparison, Time Tunnel: The Eclipse is a simple-minded tale of alternate history in a world where the United States disintegrates from internal strife and Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan rule the world outside of America.

Todd’s character development devolves in this third book. Most of the characters do stuff and react in ways that do not make much sense and seem very unrealistic. I got the feeling that the author just wanted to hurry and wrap this series up.

I finished reading this book simply because I had invested time in the first two of the series and I wanted to learn what would happen to Annika. However, the third book didn’t add anything new other than a neat plot twist at the end.

 

 

Book Review: Time Tunnel: The Empire – by Richard Todd

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

Kyle Mason changed world history in Book 1 when he prevented 9/11. His wife Padma, who had died in 9/11, was alive again when he returned. Since Kyle and Padma knew the future between 2001 and 2008, they started a company and became fabulously wealthy by playing the stock market (Apple, for example) and capitalizing on the 2008 market crash. Padma and Kyle were the world’s first and only trillionaires. Padma, the face of their company, essentially “bought” the U.S. government and the country openly called her the Empress of America. She was running things.

That backdrop raised authoritarian opposition, ending in an eventual coup d’etat in America and totalitarian rule. One day emperors, the next day fugitives, Padma and Kyle retrenched to the time tunnel complex in Las Vegas. As government forces chased them down, they hurriedly escaped into time. Without proper navigation, they ended up in 1890 in South Dakota, just before the massacre at Wounded Knee. It was time for Kyle to change the nation’s history again.

Most of the story takes place in Sioux country. The plot, while sometimes contrived, kept me turning the pages. When I was done, I picked up Book 3 right away.

 

 

Book Review: Mission One – by Samuel Best

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, One Star, Science FictionLeave a comment

Jeff Dolan works for a private space firm as an astronaut. The CEO is a young entrepreneur, and his general manager a shrewd operator. There are also other private competitors. NASA is only a shadow of its former self. Now they are on the way to the Saturn moon Titan. It’s a race.

Shortly after departure from earth, a terrible technical accident occurs putting the entire mission in jeopardy. They manage to salvage the ship and continue to go to Titan. Eventually they figure out there was sabotage and the company apparently is putting more value on the mission than their lives.

Once they get to Saturn, they quickly discover that “something” is already there, something apparently not man-made.

Mission One is a first-contact story.

Generally I love first-contact stories, but this one has so many flaws, it didn’t work for me.

*** Some spoilers after this ***

The company’s CEO is being blackmailed by the general manager, who basically hires a swat team and takes over the company at gunpoint. That’s just not how business  works. The writer apparently has not worked in an entrepreneurial company.

The spaceship has a limited amount of fuel. Fuel is being calculated all the time in this story, particularly after the malfunction. But it seems to be all about what they call “major burns” which suck away all the fuel. So they are planning on coming home from Titan with one major burn left in the tank. Somehow they never seem to care about deceleration. The ship goes to Titan in record time but does not seem to have to decelerate there. The ship uses up its last major burn coming home from Titan. How does it slow down when it gets to the halfway point?

You might say that’s not so important. I agree, it could be excused, if the ship were to be a Starship Enterprise-type ship with basically magic technology. But this story presents itself as a science-based science fiction tale, but its science does not hold water whatsoever. In contrast, Andy Weir does a great job in The Martian and Project Hail Mary in that regard.

Another plot component is related to the distance between Saturn and Earth, which is currently around 88 minutes. It varies widely depending on the position of the two planets in their orbits. However, no matter how far, it’s a long time and you can’t have any real-time communication. However, conveniently, once they are within reach of the alien artifact in orbit around Titan, they have instantaneous communications between Earth and the ship in orbit around Titan. Somehow, the artifact makes this possible, and nobody seems to be surprised about that. Again, magic technology that just does not make sense in this context.

Overall, there is nothing wrong with using magic technology to build a plot, if it’s done right. In this case, it just never made sense and I felt that the magic was too distracting to be convincing, and it constantly reminded me that I was reading a book. I never got into the book.

Book Review: Time Tunnel: The Twin Towers – by Richard Todd

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

The story starts in the morning of September 10, 2001 in New York City. Kyle Mason, a major in the Special Forces, has just married Padma Mahajan, who works on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center. She is an investment banker for Cantor Fitzgerald. They are staying in a hotel in SoHo, and out their window they can see the Twin Towers. Padma leaves to get Starbucks, while Kyle takes a shower. When he gets out, a mysterious figure appears in the mirror behind him.

Vignettes reach back to 1947 when supposedly UFOs crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. There are episodes of the story in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and through the years, culminating in 2008 when a handful of brilliant scientists, sheltered and covered by the U.S. Army in Area 51, finally develop a working time machine.

Richard Todd is a good story teller and he creates credible characters, with good realistic dialog, and a fast-paced plot. I enjoyed reading this book until the last sentence, at which time I decided to buy Book 2 of the 3-book series.

 

Movie Review: Cry Macho (2001)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two StarsLeave a comment

It’s 1979. Mike Milo (Clint Eastwood) is a former rodeo star and horseman who has obviously aged beyond his prime. His former boss and rancher Howard (Dwight Yoakam) has a 13-year-old son named Rafael or “Rafo” who lives with his estranged ex-wife in Mexico City. He thinks he is being abused and wants to bring him home to Texas to live with him. But Howard has legal issues and cannot travel to Mexico himself.

Mike owes Howard a favor. Howard coerces Mike to go to Mexico in his stead and essentially kidnap his son. Mike drives his beat-up Suburban to Mexico City and promptly finds the ex-wife. She is completely self-absorbed and surrounded by dangerous thugs. Rafo is a wayward kid who has gotten into cockfighting, and it appears that the only thing in life he loves is his rooster Macho.

On their way home via the backroads of Mexico, the two face a number of challenges, which bring the unlikely pair together and each is forced to face his own demons.

Cry Macho is a feel-good movie, with a little of an unrealistic bent.

Based on the 1975 novel by N. Richard Nash of the same name, Cry Macho is another Eastwood attempt to make a movie similar to Gran Torino, which I thought was a masterpiece. But Cry Macho didn’t quite work the same way for me. Eastwood was 90 in 2021 when he made the movie and starred in it. I just couldn’t be convinced that the rancher would send such an old man to do his dirty work, and when Mike, during a stop on the way home, started breaking wild horses on behalf of a Mexican rancher, none of that seemed realistic. It could been a better movie if someone else had played that role.

Some of those flaws notwithstanding, I enjoyed watching Cry Macho. It was a good movie to watch with headphones on whiling away the hours during a long flight back from Europe.

German Foreign Minister Speaks at United Nations

On By Norbert HauptIn Atrocities, WarLeave a comment

A powerful speech at the United Nations by Germany’s Foreign Minister (the equivalent of the U.S. Secretary of State).

VIDEO: Baerbock auf Englisch zu Ukraine: “Es geht um Mia und die Zukunft unserer Kinder” | Euronews

A Day in the Life of Refugees

On By Norbert HauptIn Atrocities, Commentaries, HistoryLeave a comment

It was winter. The mother was 35 years old. Her husband was gone, fighting in the war. She had five children. The oldest daughter was 9, her oldest son was 8, and there were three younger daughters. With them was her mother, the children’s grandmother. They packed up a few suitcases with the most important belongings and they left their home. They locked the door. They headed west. They never saw their house, their home, again.

The year was 1945.

The town was Breslau, then Germany, now inside Poland.

The mother was my paternal grandmother. She would die in childbirth two years later.

The 8-year-old boy was my father.

The invading force they were fleeing from, closing in on Germany, were the Russians.

My father is still alive today. He knows what these thousands of fleeing Ukrainian families feel like today.

Book Review: The Sentinel – by T. M. Haviland

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, One and a Half Stars, Science FictionLeave a comment

About a hundred years in our future, around 2124, there is a small permanent human settlement on Mars, and permanents space stations in Earth orbit and on the moon are a reality.

The hunt for rare minerals to feed the needs of technology has intensified, and there are companies mining in Antarctica, under several kilometers of ice, using robotic mining equipment for prospecting.

In this endeavor, a mining team finds what they think is a peculiar meteor that must have been there for more than 10 million years, which is at least how long that part of Antarctica has been covered by thick glaciers.

As they study the object, however, they find anomalies that they can’t explain, and they gradually come to the realization that they are dealing with an alien artifact.

But what does humanity do with something it does not understand? Try to destroy it.

As you might expect, that starts off a chain of events that may not be stoppable.

The Sentinel is a speculative fiction book that tells a story. The characters are simple and one-dimensional, and much of the plot is fairly predictable.

I enjoyed reading it to a point, but I would probably not clamor to read more books by this author.

Camping with Devin – 27 Years Later

On By Norbert HauptIn Cool People, Memory, Nature, Relatives / Friends3 Comments

Devin was a Boy Scout when he was little. The picture below was taken of the two of us the morning after camping with his troupe at a Boy Scouts camp in Balboa Park in San Diego. I don’t have any exact record of the date, but I am guessing it was 1995 or 1996. Devin was seven or eight years old then.

Today we went back to re-enact the photo. I still have the same jacket, and the same chairs we used then. We got permission by the San Diego – Imperial Council of the Boy Scouts, found camp site #1, and sure enough, the fire pit was still there. We tried to match the same pose, even though this one was in late afternoon light, the old one was early in the morning.

Devin is now an experienced outdoorsman and athlete, and works for the California Conservation Corp. And I try to keep up, climbing and hiking as much as I can. It all started with the Boy Scouts.

It meant a lot to me to go back to the same spot, with Devin now three times the size he was then, and sit in the same chairs.

Too bad we didn’t bring any coffee.

Banning Books – Comments by Author Jeff Zentner

On By Norbert HauptIn BooksLeave a comment

Here is a meme on banning books by Jeff Zentner

 

I do not know who actually put this list of books together, but I found it inspiring.

  • Gone with the Wind – by Margaret Mitchell: Reviewed on June 15, 2011, 4 stars
  • As I Lay Dying – by William Faulkner: I read this book about 20 years ago, should write a review, but can’t remember enough about it. Need to re-read.
  • Beloved – by Tony Morrison
  • Catch 22 – by Joseph Heller: I have tried to read this several times and could never get through. I need to try again. I have it in hardcopy on the shelf behind me.
  • Brave New World – by Aldous Huxley
  • The Color Purple – by Alice Walker
  • Death of a Salesman – by Arthur Miller
  • Catcher in the Rye – by J. D. Salinger: Reviewed on March 19, 2009, 4 stars – I have read this book two or three times over the years.
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – by J. K. Rowling
  • Howl – by Allen Ginsberg
  • A Light in the Attic – by Shel Silverstein
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – by Mark Twain
  • James and the Giant Peach – by Roald Dahl
  • The Joy of Sex – by Alex Comfort: Boy, I did check that book out when I was a young man.
  • Lord of the Flies – by William Golding
  • Native Son – by Richard Wright
  • Of Mice and Men – by John Steinbeck: I have read this book but too many years ago and therefore no review
  • Portnoy’s Complaint – by Philip Roth
  • The Sun Also Rises – by Ernest Hemingway
  • The Pentagon Papers – by Office of the Secretary of the Defense, 1971
  • Sophie’s Choice – by William Styron
  • Slaughterhouse Five – by Kurt Vonnegut: I tried to read this a few times and never got into it.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird – by Harper Lee: Read several times long ago.
  • Ulysses – by James Joyce: I can’t read Ulysses and I can’t read Ulysses Take Two.

So here is my reading list. Let’s get to work!

Book Review: Time of Death – by Nathan Van Coops

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Two and a Half StarsLeave a comment

A young widow hires Greyson Travers, a private detective, to investigate the suicide of her husband. Since she does not believe her husband would commit suicide, she thinks it was murder, but she has no proof. Travers has a great reputation for solving crimes, so she hires him to figure out what happened.

What she does not know, of course, is that Travers is a time traveler. Rather than figuring out what might have happened, he simply goes back to the time and place of the crime and watches it happen. What could be simpler?

He quickly realizes that the crime is much more complicated than it appears, and there are other time-traveling criminals involved.  He quickly finds himself ensnared by the mob and some very dangerous characters who use time travel to commit crimes.

Greyson Travers is the son of Ben and Mym Travers of Van Coops’ In Time Like These series of books, all of which I found highly readable. It is not necessary to read those books before enjoying Time of Death. It stands alone, and the author slowly introduces the concepts of time travel of the In Times Like These universe without it getting in our faces.

I have read all of those books, and if you’re interested, here is a summary of my reviews. You can click on the titles to jump right to them.

Nathan Van Coops Agent of Time Fiction Time Travel 2 Dec 13, 2020
Nathan Van Coops The Warp Clock Fiction Time Travel 3 Oct 9, 2018
Nathan Van Coops The Day after Never Fiction Time Travel 2 Jan 2, 2017
Nathan Van Coops The Chronothon Fiction Time Travel 3 Dec 3, 2016
Nathan Van Coops In Times Like These Fiction Time Travel 3 Oct 31, 2016

Time of Death is basically a murder mystery and it deals with a heist.

There was only one issue I had with the plot. The mob figures in the story have the ability to travel in time, but they organize this weird heist to collect cash from a casino. Seriously, if I were a time traveler, it would be so much easier to get rich, without hurting anyone, without cheating anyone else. Why not go back to 1980 and buy some Apple stock? Then come back to 2022 and enjoy the fruits of that decision. Oh well, there would be no murder mystery then.

I enjoyed all of Nathan Van Coops’ books, and I rated them all between 2 and 3 stars. They are always very readable and fast-paced. Time of Death is a fairly short book and a quick, fun read.

Book Review: The Vanishing Half – by Brit Bennett

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Racism, Three StarsLeave a comment

The author of The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett, at age 32, is younger than my youngest child. She apparently grew up in Oceanside, California, which is about 30 minutes down the road from where I have lived for a lot longer than 32 years. Home.

Brit Bennett is an African American woman. For the remainder of this post I will no longer say African American, but use the terms “colored” or “black” or “dark” just as she uses those terms throughout the book.

The story starts in the early 1960s, and is about the Vignes twins, Desiree and Stella, who grow up in Mallard, Louisiana, a very small town in the country, almost entirely black, but the light version of black. So light, indeed, that the twins pass as white when they are out of their environment. As the twins grow up, they try to break away from the yokes of their ancestry, and each twin has her own way. Desiree is the outgoing one. Stella is the quiet one. When they move into New Orleans to get jobs, one day, Stella disappears. She is never seen again. Even private investigators can’t find her.

And that’s all I am going to tell you about the story, because you’ll need to read it for yourself.

The Vanishing Half is about racism in America, and it shows, without ever lecturing or judging, what it is like to be a colored person in our country. The subtle insinuations and the basic assumptions that we all have about black people come to life. As we experience this story, the absurdity of it all becomes obvious. The book deals not just with racism but also transgender issues, always nonchalantly, without getting in our face.

As I read The Vanishing Half, following the twins, their parents, their lovers, the fathers of their children, and their children, through their lives, I felt like I got to know them all intimately, and when the book was finally over, and I flipped the last page, I knew I’d miss the characters. I wanted it to continue. It is that kind of book.

And my awareness of what it’s like to be black in America was hugely elevated.

Brit Bennett, as such a young woman, has written a very wise book, and I will surely pick up her next ones.

And you should pick up this one.