July 2008 This month’s gold medal event was the Lake Charles, Louisiana reunion that marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of GPGC, the Governor’s Program for Gifted Children. This reunion, a follow-up and enhancement of the initial reunion held in 2005, was successful in most every respect (a short flagpole falling precipitously onto an unsuspecting head being an unhappy exception, fortunately with but minor damage done).

The GPGC motto is Ab illo cui multum datur multum requritur (“to whom much is given, much is required”), and many of our alumni have done much, our two most noteworthy former students being Tony Kushner and Harry Conick, Jr. We have as well multiple doctors and lawyers, including two attorneys who recently became so fed up with conditions in their localities that they ran for public office and won, one as Justice of the Peace in Austin and the other as Tax Assessor in New Orleans. There is also a rare coin dealer, a dean at Harvard Business School, a breeder of horses in Tennessee, a man who runs a translation company in Paris, a physicist with multiple patents, and a retired nuclear submarine captain who now works with the Rocky Mountain Institute getting the Pentagon onto the alternative energy map. David Duhon was there; I remember him best as a cellist of substantial talent (he still plays), but in his “life after the Program” he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia, then an organic gardener for fifteen years, after which he suddenly converted into a professional bridge player (in his spare time he is a serious backpacker).

During the festivities Ross Wood, music librarian and professional organist, paid a glowingly droll tribute to Jerry Crews, for many years the well-beloved leader of the GPGC chorus; and after a tribute to our dear orchestra leader Sylvia Kushner, Zarthoui Eby-Dombourian of the Seattle Symphony played an exquisite flute solo. I spent lovely moments twice with the 14-yr-old Anne-Marie Pollacia (who though not herself a giftie is the daughter of giftie Lisa Parsons Pollacia, and attended the entire event with her mother) trading curious words, and sharing the value of performing senseless acts of neighborliness; and gnawed the fat for three hours or more with Allan Petty. It’s been a year since Allan left the program; this year he will be a senior at the Louisiana School for Math, Sciences and the Arts in Natchitoches (that’s pronounced “knack-uh-tish,” for you out-of-staters). The following, from Allan’s entry in the 50th anniversary alumni edition of our GPGC yearbook … miles to go, could have come from my own mouth: “So many things have happened to me as a direct result of the program and there is no way that I could every express my thanks. It has completely changed my life in every way imaginable and all of the changes have pushed me in the direction of a much better life experience.”

At this reunion I was unofficially voted “most changed” (at my 30th high school reunion a woman named Suzanne got that nod officially; she had been Bruce back when I knew him in chemistry club, we used to play bridge at lunch—at that reunion I had to be content with the official title of “came from furthest away”). The highlight of this reunion was as before the emotional assembling together on stage (after the final performance of this year’s students) of all current & former “gifties” to sing “The Impossible Dream” (I standing directly behind Mr. Crews); there was as always not a dry eye in the house.

Like me the other attendees retain immense gratitude for a program that introduced so many of us to intellectual peers who each forced each other to think. Dr. George Middleton, Jr., GPGC’s founder, made of GPGC a haven for gifted children who were taught the value of intellectual freedom, with the hope that as those students grew they would help to safeguard the freedoms that we in this country take for granted, to make it more difficult for tyranny to establish itself here.

Sadly, “Uncle Middy” shuffled off this mortal coil three months before the reunion, which made me mightily glad that I had attended the 2005 event (another significant reason for gratitude being that Dr. Louis Sanders, who I had seen again in 2005 after a gap of nearly 40 years, died shortly after Katrina ). Mr. Garbo, “Coach” Ancelet and Mrs. Wegener did however make it, and again I was struck at Dr. Middleton’s astuteness at locating talented teachers and counselors who were also truly good human beings to work with us kids, and his knack for convincing these individuals to work long hours at almost no salary for the love of helping children to think and learn.

Finally, it all comes down to Dr. George Middleton, Jr. (1923 – 2008); a great man, a man who wanted to make us think, and who succeeded at making many of us think. He also succeeded at making the program continue for a half-century thus far, and at finding himself a worthy successor in Josh Brown. Take a look at our website (www.giftie.org), and when you become inspired do contribute your mite to assisting in the development of young gifted minds (you can send a check to Friends of the GPGC, Hunter Nibert, 1216 Magnolia Drive, Carrollton, TX 75007); you won’t regret it.

Before the reunion I celebrated Guru Purnima in Seattle; during and after the reunion, I was reminded poignantly of just how much “Uncle Middy” acted a guru to me, well before I had any clue of what a “guru” might be. May all his students continue to strive to be worthy of him! May his spirit continue to guide us, and those who come after us!

June 2008 During June’s first week, a visit to West Point: after a tour of the academy grounds, a concert in the Cadet Chapel. Its organ, first installed in 1911 with 2406 pipes, now (through a “multitude of gifts”), has become the largest church organ in the world, with approximately 23,500 pipes—though none of these were played on this afternoon, which instead spotlighted young talent, including the Clubwala’s younger daughter, who both sang & played the piano. On the ride back to Middletown I was driven through Kiryas Joel, the village which has the youngest median age (15.0) of any population center of over 5000 residents in the United States (the overwhelming majority of KJ residents being Hasidic Jews of the Satmar sect).

June’s second week found me in New York City; its third week, in Texas. Now that my mother’s home is car-free, I have become the talk of the town as the eccentric visitor who wanders about Floresville on foot during the heat of the day. I frankly enjoy walking, and am rarely out after 1pm (after which the summer heat does become severe), and appreciate the obligation to get in some cardiovascular stimulation. But the majority of local residents are convinced that I am loco (and/or maybe penniless), and periodically people “take pity” on me & offer me lifts. Several times I’ve been collected from the road by our 90-year-young neighbor Hilda, who delivers me all the most recent town gossip. On the morning after my return from the East Coast I got an earful, her comments punctuated by regular “rat-a-tat-a-tats” as a woodpecker pecked repeatedly (and fruitlessly) on the metal ventilator atop her roof.

Later that week I met Lone Star, his age at that time being about one month. He had been found two weeks previously by a neighbor of my cousin Bill; the game warden told them to release the fawn back into the wild, which they did, only to find him back in their yard the very next day, which is where he has stayed, being bottle-fed by Bill’s younger son until he can go off on his own. From Bill & his family I learned several useful details about raising young deer, including that the feeding bottle has to be held vertical (or the milk will get into the lungs); and that the doe has to lick the baby’s backside in order to get it to pee and poop (humans duplicate this step with a wet wipe).

On the night of June 21 I sat in the back garden watching Jupiter, the moon, and Scorpio; on hearing a rumpus behind me I turned around and trained the beam of my flashlight on a possum nosing about for sustenance in the dry weeds.

On the night of June 28 the sky was crystal clear, with the brilliant Jupiter & Scorpio separated by the Milky Way. Around midnight a pronounced rustling began behind me, the rustler moseying generally in my direction until beginning to head straight for me. Though I remained still to avoid alerting it to my presence, a sudden gust of wind from directly behind me sent my scent into its nostrils, whereupon the prowler immediately, carefully & silently retreated from earshot before I could determine its identity.

On the afternoon of June 30, near the back garden fence: a small dead animal, falling apart, a symbol, conceivably, of month’s end, the culmination of the year’s first half, and my completion of yet another year of existence. Rarely do I scoff when Nature offers figures of speech; as Robert Frost puts it in our quote of the month, from his essay “Education by Poetry”: “Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.” Amen to that.

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