Intimations of mortality

(“Alarums and Excursions” is a Shakespearian stage direction used frequently during battle scenes. The phrase indicates a call for a good deal of noise and lots of actors running back and forth across the stage.)

I distinctly remember sitting in my 4th grade classroom trying to figure out if I had a prayer of being alive in the 21st century. Sixty seems impossibly far away when you’re 10. Mr. Becker, my arithmetic teacher (it’s not math till you get letters in the problems), was extolling the myriad virtues of multiplication. He actually owned a children’s camp somewhere in Maine from which many of my friends managed to return, but about which they rarely spoke. These chronological calculations return to me now and then as I avoid reunions which have stratospherical numbers attached to them. My 45th from high school this year. Maybe I am going to be an old curmudgeon. Perhaps I already am. Memory Lane is no walk in the park.

However, my memory was jogged more pleasantly recently by an article in the Courier-Gazette written by David Grima. He was extolling the history of Rockland District High School’s famed Kippy Karnival. Some 40 years ago, I was a part of that festival and I still have The Cauldron of 1964 to prove it. That’s the RDHS yearbook.

1964 was, of course, the year of the Beatles’ first visit to our shores. It was also my first year of teaching. I made every mistake that a neophyte can make including getting locked in the boys’ room during a break between classes. I was a terrible disciplinarian and only managed to get through the year by perfecting dodging and weaving skills more appropriate in a bull fight.

As a consequence of my need to find novel ways of keeping order, I managed to achieve a reputation for being somewhat less than conventional. I wasn’t surprised therefore when I found myself in league with three other faculty members all determined to make a significant contribution to that year’s edition of Kippy Karnival.

After a good deal of soul searching, I’ve decided that whatever statute of limitations exists for foolishness must have expired, so I take the liberty of naming my colleagues. Bob Sagan actually taught music for SAD 5 that year and so became a co-leader. Hank Lunn who is also a real musician (in fact still plays locally) was the other. They were the ones who attempted to get Ralph Berry and me to give a passable imitation of musicians. That was necessary because we did have a gimmick. We really did perform two songs. I know one of them was “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and I think the other was “I Saw Her Standing There.”

What we discovered was that the Beatles were writing and performing what to us seemed pretty complicated music. I think Hank was drumming and at one rehearsal he remarked that Ringo had created a difficult act to imitate.

Although I wound up spending a good deal of my life to date in and around stages, I don’t think any appearance I ever made was accorded the same hysteria which greeted our first performance. No one knew whether to laugh or laugh harder. On stage we had a hard time not breaking up. But we didn’t really have time. Those are breakneck strenuous songs. I was the only one whose hair didn’t threaten to fall off because I was the only one who didn’t need a wig.

I guess it really was a long time ago.

Somewhere along the line I lost my RDHS grade book. I sure wish I hadn’t for a variety of reasons—none of them particularly praiseworthy. However, I’m thrilled to have managed to preserve that yearbook. It commemorates one of the best moments I ever had as a teacher. I have no idea what it actually taught, but life got a lot easier around school after Kippy Karnival that year.

Book of the Month
In the last year or so I’ve been fortunate to have discovered the detective novels of Nevada Barr. Barr’s compelling detective is Anna Pigeon, a law enforcement Ranger with the National Park Service. With the exception of two novels set in the Natchez Trace Parkway National Park in Mississippi, each of Barr’s immensely readable books takes place in a different locale. The settings have included Isle Royale Park in Lake Superior, Carlsbad Cavern (known in the NPS as CaCa) in New Mexico, Dry Tortugas south of the Florida Keys, Ellis Island, and Mesa Verde in Colorado. Other books in the series involve grizzlies, forest fires, and loggerhead turtles. The intrepid Pigeon is tough, reclusive, resourceful, and self-contradictory enough to be totally believable.
Barr herself is a former Ranger and her novels provide fascinating, responsible, and useful insights into some of the environmental dilemmas which face us today.

Quotations of the Month
“The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away.”—John Strider Coleman

“Do not wish to be a bureaucrat, for it is impossible to be both a general and a comedian.”— Advice from the 11th century Byzantine commander Kekaumenos to his sons.

Bill Lannon is Co-Founder and Associate Publisher of the Midcoast Review. Contact him at <wlannon@gwi.net>.

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