P.S. A Column On Things

Start of August 1 Column

All The Different Me’s: Childhood Dreams

I fondly and distinctly remember myself in my pre-school years. I was glued to the television. The stories I was told were:

* I learned to read from the TV, because commercials back then featured close-ups of the product package, with the announcer saying the name.

* I preferred commercials to content. “You’d ride your trike in circles during the program, then stop and watch the commercials with rapt attention,” my mother told me.

But clearly I watched TV and listened to radio. I wanted to be a disc jockey, or a TV host in the manner of Jack Paar, Steve Allen or Art Linkletter. Which is to say my fantasy was that I was down in the audience, sticking a mic in people’s faces and asking them to talk on the “Pauli Schindler Show.”

I taped a string to a spoon, which I used for a microphone. Brooms were cameras, operated by my little brother Steve. It is tough to shoot a program with just one camera, but we managed it.

Apparently, I listened to the Stan Freberg Show (the last network comedy show) when I was five years old, because 14 years later, I stole from it in creating The New Eugene Oregon Show, at a time when those shows were not available in full.(I was also blessed with the opportunity to interview Freberg for an hour at his home for a profile in AdWeek).

I wrote a 140-page novel one summer on my mom’s Olympia portable. I was a self-taught typist, but still managed about 60 words a minute. The novel, Vernon Jones, Super-Scientific Detective was modeled after The Hardy Boys and my father’s collection of 40’s Tom Swift books. I had what I would later understand to be carpal tunnel syndrome from all those hours of typing, and wore my arm in a sling for six weeks that summer (probably about 1965). I later made the novel into a 10-part radio series on KBPS. No copy of the novel or the radio series exists. Personality wise, it shows my interest in writing and me obsessive nature.

I was apparently cute as a button, according to pictures: an average of three a year; the 1950’s were different times, two at Christmas and one on vacation (I have no idea what I looked like when I was just hanging around at home). I also had expert testimony on the subject from friends of the family. I was chubby, but not fat. I was a loquacious, precocious, curious young man who read early and never hid his light under a bushel. Even as a pre-schooler, it was said I lit up a room when I entered it.

Paul’s Poetry Corner: I Had Some Light

Link to:  I Had Some Light
Which begins:
I had some light,
Wanted to mingle it with yours.

Right Column Redux: Heather Cox Richardson

The column to the right on this blog contains permanent content, most of which has appeared at one time or another in the main body. I’ve decided to include a reminder.

Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American An historian offers a calm daily look at the news.

This and That

 
”Don’t Pet The Sweaty Stuff Followup
Last week’s column included some old advice I received: “Don’t sweat the petty stuff and don’t pet the sweaty stuff.” If you don’t read comments, you will have missed Robert Malchman’s: “If you haven't petted the sweaty stuff, you've missed out massively.”

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Dast
For some reason the word “dast” popped into my head this week. It means “dare” as in “I dast not go.” It fell out of common usage by the turn of the 20^th century. According to the Internet: “Dast” is a bit of American dialect that's found in plays and novels depicting working-class or countrified speech. Sometimes it means “dare” (or “dares”), sometimes “dared,” and sometimes the tense is ambiguous or irrelevant.”

Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe: 42 Years Of Yiddishkeit

Check out 42 Years Of Yiddishkeit, her 44^th appearance in this column over 17 years. It starts:

Aaron Lansky, President of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA, wrote, "In short, after  forty years we're working harder than ever to preserve the treasures of Yiddish culture and share them with the world."

Starfish Story―Every Effort Counts

This story, used by Tamara Levitt on the Daily Calm app, is a cousin of “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” It sounds ancient, but was actually written as the 60’s ended, by Loren Eiseley (NOT anonymous). Here is the original starfish story.

But like all good quotations, it becomes more concise with repetition. With due credit to the author, here is the Reader’s Digest condensed version (35 words shorter than the original)

I saw a man in the distance bending and throwing as he walked. As he came near, I could see that he was throwing starfish, abandoned on the sand by the tide, back into the sea. When he was close enough, I asked him why he was working so hard at this strange task. He said that the sun would dry the starfish and they would die. I said to him that I thought he was foolish. There were thousands of starfish on the beach. One man alone could never make a difference. He smiled and hurled a starfish far into the sea, saying, "It makes a difference for this one."

Cracked ≠ Broken

Yes, it does seem I’m obsessed with cracks but a) I am cracked and b) it is a good metaphor.

End of August 1 Column (No. 836)

Start of July 25 Column

All The Different Me’s: Grade School Paul

My recent item, All The Different Me’s prompted me to provide a little more detail about some of the me’s.

While I did not completely love myself in grade school, I loved school, and couldn’t wait to get there every day (It was a 700 yard/5 minute walk from my house). I  never missed a day of grade school, except that time Mom took me to spend a day with her at Portland State, where she was a late undergraduate.

On the first day of Kindergarten, when asked my name, I said, “Pauli,” which is what everyone in my family called me. For eight years, I heard shouts and whispers of “Pauli Want A Cracker.” I wouldn't say my classmates were mean; they were just being children.

I was already a PA announcer by the time I was in 8th grade (I also hosted a College Bowl based on 8th grade Social Studies), so on track and field day I announced events and results, and accepted slips of paper with “Please come” announcements.

In retrospect, I: can’t help but think I was in on the joke; I owned several hundred Beatles trading cards. In any case, in autopilot mode, I read the slip of paper handed to me: “Would John Lennon and Paul McCartney please come to the microphone.” I do remember feeling immediately embarrassed.

I was teased without mercy, but only bullied once by Sterling Spence, who followed me home and “fought” with me across the street from the school―and thus  beyond the school’s heavy hand of discipline. Neither of us was hurt; I suspect it was mostly a slap fight of the kind seen in comedy films and TV shows. Sterling died seven years ago.

I was NOT a sports person. I probably still hold the Gra-Y basketball record for fouling out in the first two minutes of the game. I don’t think the ref liked me. I couldn’t make any of the Beaumont teams, so I became the manager of several. As manager of the Golf Team, I was carrying Timmy Meyers clubs (he’s also gone-2001) when he roundly berated me for casting a shadow on his putting line. He was much shorter and lighter than me, but discretion was the better part of valor that day.

Paul’s Poetry Corner: Reincarnation

Link to: Reincarnation.
Which Begins:
Reincarnation.
I’d be surprised
If we’re offered choices
About other lives.

Right Column Redux: The Tech

The purpose of this feature is to point you at obscure permanent content elsewhere on my site. Here are some things that are NOT in the right column, but rather from Schindler.org

I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in management from MIT in 1974. I was editor-in-chief of volume 93 of The Tech at MIT in 1973-74. My stories can be found by searching the index.

This and That

Press Play *****
(Less than 90 minutes: perfect length) A cute time travel rom-com that ticks all the boxes (different timelines, don’t step on any butterflies, etc.) including one that is altogether too rare: the fact that the universe pushes towards its desired outcome, even if you change the details.
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If Offered A Choice: New Version
My one and only commercially viable love song, If Offered A Choice has now been rendered in a multi-part a capella version.
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Slower, Older Smarter
Check out Slower, Older, Smarter. Spot on for us boomers.
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In Stamp News
Daniel Dern reports: For the philatelists and "people who like to use cool stamps:" Shel Silverstein (already available), Buzz Lightyear (soon),
Charles Shulz (and the gang―Sept. 30); James Webb Space Telescope; etc.
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RIP Byte.com
Daniel Dern noted that Byte.com (which we both once edited) is now a dental site. I did some work with the Internet Archive. United Business Media (the benighted successor to CMP) pulled the plug on the site (already reduced to a mere redirect to InformationWEEK) during March 2018. Sic transit gloria Byte.

Let It Slide

Don’t sweat the petty stuff
Don’t pet the sweaty stuff