Hia M&A friends ,
A group of us M&Aers have been having some wonderful meetings over dinner at homes and in restaurants this winter. Dawn Mckenzie posted a note on Facebook saying that she'll be in town (NYC) on March 16, Tuesday. Would you be free for dinner ? I we can do this, I wouldn't mind helping organize and picking a reasonable restaurant that can fit a group.Let me know what you think. xx, Debbie

Dawn wrote: Hello fellow M&A Alumni! I'm going to be in the city the week of March 15th. Would love to connect with as many of you as possible on Tuesday, March 16th.

Remember this goodie?!

M&A '69 is meeting for a Thanksgiving get together in Long Island City (Queens on Sunday, November 29th)

We'll start of at PS1 at 2:00pm to visit the exhibit "1969" together. PS.1's website is:
http://www.facebook.com/l/21c71;ps1.org/visit/

Then we'll eat together at 4:00pm at Bella Via Restaurant at 4746 Vernon Blvd. Their phone is (718) 361-7510 and the website is:
http://www.facebook.com/l/21c71;www.bellaviarestaurant.com

Please let us know if you are planning on coming so we can reserve space at the restaurant.

RSVP esocolov at gmail.com

I don’t know how many have all four of them, but here they are!
Andrew Galambos

6/20/09
I went to dance salsa tonight, something I love to do. It was ten o’clock and I turned on the car radio. A man on NPR was talking about the score for the original “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” The composer had wanted to create counterpoint against the chaos of Burton and Taylor. He had attempted jazz; tossed it. Then, the piece began, orchestral... violins, brass, a full swelling melody, mournful, slightly dissonant, almost ominous, just like the play. I parked, sat in the car, turned off the lights. It was quiet on this dark side street except for the music. It was this quiet--- and I knew that rhumba and cha cha were just around the corner, timbales, congas, the whole nine---that evoked the feeling:

I missed ‘us.’ We, who enjoyed a mere weekend together, and three to four years, forty years ago.

Now, my life is ordered into compartments---midwife, mother and grandmother, salsera, traveler, perhaps more. I felt an emptiness as the music played, a raw place; something was missing. It was ‘my’ people, all of you, people I knew who could move from salsa to Virginia Woolf in a snap. Ham n’ eggs to sushi. Bach to Monk. Shakespeare to Hip Hop (hip hop??). The streets of Brooklyn to the streets of Bahia. Eclectic, visionary, still feisty after all these years.

Robin said it better:

Through the years I have been blessed to form a few truly deep and ever lasting friendships BUT there is something so viscerally, organically genuine about our high school class and our coming of age at a particular time in history. Its like having witnesses to the very roots of who we are in this life that will always reflect the absolute truth and comprehensive range of potential back to each one of us.

So i was thinking....remember the game "telephone?" I thought perhaps we could send our reflections, one to the other, and have reems of thoughts to keep. At first I thought of sending a page, long mail, but maybe there is a way on this computer-thing. Just a thought.

Sending my love to y'all.....
Marcy

Emiy Socolov
esocolov@manoamano.us

Marcy,

I was very moved by what you wrote (I just re-posted Marcy's email above) and wanted to throw my proverbial hat into the ring. I guess I've said a lot of the things I'll say below to people through our weekend - so pardon the repetition. (I am just practicing for when I start repeating myself every five minutes.)

I had gone to an arts marketing workshop several years ago where we were told about the centrality of the high school years in the formation of a person's cultural identification and taste culture - and nowhere else was that so borne out than at the reunion we just experienced. Being connected in those historic times during this critical period in our own personal growth gave us something so elemental and so intimate. The reunion was nostalgic, yes - but for me the nostalgia counted for about 10% of the experience. Relating in the here and now, completely as peers, with none of the competitiveness that can pervade our lives characterized the reunion for me. There was a familiarity and a trust of unconditional love and support. None of the cliquishness which characterizes high school was there. Maybe aging is the great equalizer: - high school could have been your best time - or your worst time, you could have gloried in the "cream of the cream" rhetoric of M&A or scorned the elitism inherent in "specialized" education. The point was that we were all in the room, all together, and had this wonderful present to joyfully give eachother: our selves.

So happy to know you all and so sad to step of the love boat on that Sunday afternoon as we left Ruth's. Let's buy a building, let's start a retirement community, let's found a nonprofit, let's create a mutual aid fund. All ideas I heard and could get behind. As Macy's was promoting the "Summer of Love" with updated dashikis and love beads in their shop windows, we were living it. Now upward and onward!!!

Emily

Mindy Lewis
mindylewisdesign@verizon.net

Dear M&A-ers (thanks, Marcy, for starting this conversation...btw, I love salsa dancing too!)

After our reunion 5 years ago, I couldn’t imagine that this year’s would surpass it, but it did. The friend who accompanied me to Richard Feldman’s party 5 yrs ago has been talking about it ever since, saying it was the best party he ever went to, calling it “a love fest” - which perfectly describes the way I feel at these events: reconnected in the most profound and joyful way to an amazing group of people who share the same spirit of creativity, no matter where our lives have taken us. Yesterday when I received Marcy’s email I was listening to Eric Bibb’s glorious, soulful music (on his website www.ericbibb.com); his written updates are signed “Peace” - the core value of the era we came of age in. However clunky this sounds, it’s inscribed in our psyches and souls.

Our reunions are also a particularly personal source of healing. Those were troubled years for me. I was extremely shy (“socially phobic” they’d call it now), confused, self-destructive, at war with my mother, and wound up spending more time in Central Park than I did at the Castle. As some of you know, I dropped out during sophomore year and was remanded by the state to a psychiatric ward until after I turned 18 (as I write about in my memoir, Life Inside). I didn’t graduate from M&A, and ever since have felt ashamed and regretful at missing out on those years. So when Jonathan Segal urged me to come to the 20th reunion, I balked. No one would remember me, I thought. It would just be too painful. But I went, and was surprised when former classmates came over, put their arms around me, and told me that they’d missed me and wondered what had happened to me. I can’t tell you how deeply moved I was. And now, at each successive 5-yr reunion, my relationships with old friends (and their spouses) becomes current, and that awful sense of loss has been replaced by celebration and a sense of belonging. And I even have a bootleg copy of the yearbook! (thanks to Richard H. and Harry K.)

Let’s keep each other posted of our news, performances, exhibitions, etc.

Love, peace, and freedom (let’s hope they get the message in Iran)

Mindy
http://www.mindylewis.com

Debbie Un
nubed@yahoo.com

Marcy, girl, and Robin girl, I was really touched by the profundity of your letters.

This reunion was even more amazing than the last. I don't quite know why. And I think that it is quite clear by everyone's responses on Facebook and in emails We are all a bit older (5 years have passed), but for me, I was suddenly confronted with all these people with whom I had so much in common, now and then: our history - culture, political bent, religions, parents, our city, our childhoods, and as Robin said, our coming of age. And I had forgotten how many of my M&A friends shared so much of this. Nowhere else have I experienced this kind of community. And that's why we all must be responding and sharing this general
sentiment.

So, I propose that we, New York/ New Jersey based people meet periodically, it can even be 4 or 5, in a restaurant or cafe or bar,
and just "be". Thoughts?

xx, deb (aka nubed)

Elliot H. Gertel
ehgertel@yahoo.com

Dear Everyone,

Yep, I still feel it two weeks later, still feel it echoing in my brain and heartbeat in my veins and from my toes past my nose from forty years ago, like a fortnight past, like last week, like yesterday, like today, just like now.

Our time was an extraordinary one, a confluence of so much happening so fast, changes around every corner. Some of us were rebels, some of us rebelled by conforming. All part of the community even if we didn’t know it or weren’t sure at the time. A non-stop parade of life unfolding while we were the celebrants and/or the spectators in the midst of/on the periphery of it all.

Our 60s M&A Community Rides Again (did it ever really stop?)

Struggles for civil rights, for women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, against the war (we all know which one) and, as my idol at the time, Phil Ochs, wrote, “Ah, but in such a time of ugliness, beauty is the true protest.” A time of poetry and music and art and drama. Of creativity and exploration, of playfulness, and serious existential conversation and probing. We tried to make chaos of the order that had been sucking the air out of our space and being, and order out of the chaos of war, turmoil, and the “social structure.” To turn dissatisfaction into a smile. Seeing flowers where there were gun barrels. Not to say we didn’t experience frustration, loneliness, fear, disconnection, and other bad vibes, too. Of course we did. Part of the bigger picture or score.

If we were told to do or wear or not wear something, and it didn’t make sense (“you do it because I say so” or “those are the rules!”), we ignored it until it just went away. And went on making our way in ways that made sense to us. Can’t wear jeans? We just wore them anyway. Result? No more anti-jeans rules.

We wrote, we sang, we played. On subways and buses from all points of the city and in some cases… shhhh…(illicitly) from beyond the big town’s limits: that’s how much people wanted to go to M&A, that’s how magical and magnetic a place it was. To borrow from Richard Harris, it was the ultimate be-in!

We learned how to laugh and cry and smile and sigh and sing together. We sketched and painted, molded clay, played strings and winds and brass and percussion, vocalized, got graphic (artistically), went theatrical. Put things inside us and upon us. Turned each other on…and sometimes off. Searched for color and contrast, light and dark, highs and lows, sharps and flats, and found all that and a whole lot more. Even losing one’s way once in a while usually led to greater discoveries.

And because we still have each other and the shared as well as the individual memories of those incredible days, no matter how far in geographic space and time, that time, that space still lives within us, between us.

It’s real…even when it isn’t.

Love, peace, hugs, pictures, melodies, kisses, tears, smiles, sighs, flowers, cheers, shares, memories, etc.,

Elliot
Ann Arbor, Michigan (now), The Bronx (then)

Iva Lane
ilanenyc@earthlink.net

Hello, Everyone again...

This is quite amazing to me, how a 40th(could that be?) high school reunion can elicit such resounding and profound and vivid responses.

The theme that keeps coming up here is the the artistic quest that bound us together, mixed in with the uniqueness of our good fortune to be in the M&A environs during our own coming of age; all of that PLUS the rythym, politics and dynamic changes of the late 60's....and we were there in the eye of it, for better or worse, in confusion, in strength, in experimentation and above all in creativity when everyhting seemed to be "on the line". We had an urgency that burned and united us to act, to respond, to challenge, to most important, make ART!!They were vibrant times as I recall and it felt like regardless of your personal style, if you were at M&A, you were at the core.

So, I suppose, all this considered, I shouldn't be at all surprised that being in one another's presence and making music together in those familiar corridors and rooms, or anywhere else with our voices in unison, those same feelings are still available to us,stirred to the surface, just by being together.

Bravo to us. Thanks, everyone......more than I can say here.

Perhaps the NY'ers might be interested in doing a summertime (or end of summer picnic event in some great park odrsomething along those lines??....

and also I would like to invite anyone in the group who may have a need for a resource for something or service, etc. ...perhaps we can use this network as a way to be exchange resources or get assistance, etc.for one another. Suggestions welcomed....Just an idea for the future. I think maybe that would be cool to develop for us over time.

Iva Lane

Donald Isler
IslerD@verizon.net

It's wonderful to read all these reactions, and see how strongly many of us reacted to seeing each other again, and being together as a group!

Iva expressed it particularly well. I would add that we're all witnesses to each others' existence. It was wonderful for me to see the few members of this group that I'm in contact with ordinarily, but also great to recognize faces I hadn't seen in several, or even in 40 years. And, it's such a nice group anyway! I enjoyed getting to know better the people I never knew well when we were in school.

I am heartily in favor of our staying in touch with each other, with trying to get together when possible, and with our trying to be available to help each other when possible and/or necessary.

Best wishes to all!

Don Isler

Elliot H. Gertel
ehgertel@yahoo.com

Isn't it lovely to have something so satisfying to share and one thing at least to relish over ones so young? Besides, I'm sure they have built up some nice memories of their own. Right now, they are in the moment and--like we did for the most part way back then--they are undoubtedly enjoying their moments in the spotlight. And, well they should. Also, they have a long way ahead, a real long way to go, a lot to look forward to as they make their own way in the world.

But, it sure is nice that we are envied by the younger generation for the time when were physically young, just as we are now so very young at heart and always warmed by our incredible and continuing history together!
Elliot (6/28/09)

As Richard H noted, many of us were hoarse by Saturday night/Sunday morning from so much catching up and singing. Words to describe precisely how exciting, intense, and truly precious these "5-year plan" get-togethers are—and this was surely no exception—fail me. As fleeting and powerful as those days four (can it really be?!) decades ago... The ghosts all answered "here" when the roll was called. The hallucinations, the echoes, the mirages, of what was and what seemed to be. You really had to be there. It's just so hard to let go, but "real" life—as it must—always wins out in the end.

I echo fully what Richard H says:

“I know from the last reunion that it truly was a reunion Be-In (remember those?) Seeing old friends, the Castle, sharing memories of the school and the 60's was something that stayed with me for a long time afterwards. If you've never been to a reunion or it's been a while since you've been to one then this would be a good opportunity to catch up and re-connect.”

So, see you at our next 21st century Be-In and feel the incredible vibes of it all (all right, through the prism of our "grown-up," "adult" sensibilities), OK?

"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest [69er],
If we have unearned luck [e'er finer]
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the [69er] a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And [we] shall restore amends."

[With but minor apologies to Will Shakespeare and especially to Puck and to good old friend James Bednarz who would rightly label my thoughts mushy...well, so what...]
Love, hugs, and kisses,
Elliot

Thanks so much for the invitation. I am teaching art in Oregon and won't be able to make it back. I have really enjoyed all the news. I am still searching for Arlene Cohen and Joe Merlino!I am often in New York and I've always wondered about our castle. I'm so relieved it's in good shape. It's funny how the physical space meant so much to us all. I've wanted to check it out so many times and I'd love
to spend time with such artistic people, but won't be able to be there.
All the best,
Elissa Eagan Meehan

Arlene Toonkel
atoonkel@yahoo.com
Richard,Do you think you or Jane would be interested in sending this out for M&A people if interested to email back to the bills sponsors? I got this from my job at Ramapo College of NJ to support. It makes a great deal of sense for musicians, composers, and visual artists. Here is the link: http://www.congressweb.com/entry.cfm?orgcode=aam&hotissue=13
Thanks, Arlene

Dear Richard,
Thank you for sending all the exciting info about the reunion. I won't be able to attend, being that in Israel we only finish teaching at the end of June. I really wish I could if only to see the school and people again, but your never ending ideas and positive thinking are truly a breath of fresh air! I have taken quite a bit of photographs in Israel, some from the last war, maybe I will try to add some of them . Where and how?Thank you, Gayle

Jan Opalach on YouTube
Listen to this - Jan (is in the middle):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYOSMdDb6Do

I am sorry that I will be unable to see everyone at our 40th reunion, due to a previous engagement. It looks as if it will be a wonderful weekend.My husband Gary and I live in Douglas Manor in eastern Queens. I am an urban planner with a land use law firm here in NYC. I am still a potter, although not as good as I ought to be after 40 years of playing with mud. Our two sons, Adam (Bronx Science, '98) and Josh (LaG, '01) are both artists living in Brooklyn.I hope to see everyone in 2014! And if anyone wants to get in touch, I can be reached at mkesner@kramerlevin.com .
Best wishes--
Marcie (Pollack) Kesner

Alan told me that we had a baseball team! Read on!

Yes, the truth be known there was an M & A baseball team. Nobody knew about it probably because we sucked and we were in an obscure high school baseball league. If you've got the '69 yearbook, Alfred Kunitz, the boys gym teacher was also the baseball coach. We practiced and played up in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan at Dyckman Street. The A train got us there. It was a ball field that would later become famous as the field where the very very very young Alex Rodriguez ( with the NY Yankees) played on while growing up when he was from the neighborhood. Actually, it was the only ball field up there. One school I do remember playing against was Gompers. Well, thats my claim to a rather lame "fame". I played 3rd base and Surprise! when you look at the attachment folder I sent you with my M & A ephemera you'll see the school "Letter" that somehow never got sewn onto the jacket. I think I was a senior when I played and at that point who cared if I had it sewn on at that point. But it's survived and I bet I'm the only one with this dubious collectible. I'll definitely wear it to the reunion! . . . on something. Alas, thank god, the silly senior beret is lost, though I can't believe its not somewhere in my mother's possession. That's OK, though. One silly thing is enough. The Letter speaks for itself for cornball and unhipness.


When you open up my M&A ephemera folder, notice the report card that's opened up. See the tiny Sherman Drexler stamp by the teachers comments?

Feel free, Jane, to post any of these photos on the reunion site, especially the baseball jacket Letter. That one might be the rarest of them all. Think anyone would bid on that on Ebay?

I'll be there...but only on friday night. I'm running an Arts Conference on Star Island from the 13th through the 20th. Love to see everyone though,
Best of light,
Lotus Do Brooks

hey there
how come this always falls on my birthday????? 40 years! and i'm gonna be 58!!!!!! and i have my first child who's 3 and a half!!!!
what a funny great life we all live!!!!
i wont be able to come but have fun!
love and peace,
jai uttal
jaiuttal@gmail.com
www.jaiuttal.com

I dont know what will be until June. I live in a moshav near Ashkelon. As you know there is a war in Gaza and we are very close. A missile fell not far from my house. It is a difficult time for us now and I pray for peace and better times. Thank you for the invitation.

Gayle (avigile gottlib)
avigileg@hotmail.com

October 2005

Hello,
I recently received messages from Charles Wunderman and from David Fischer as to the untimely passing of Nancy Schulteis. Do you have any information as to the circumstances?  I would also like to add my name
and email addresses to the site.
David Towber
Class of 69
dtowber@hunter.cuny.edu
cd_sad@msn.com
also add Carmen Towber (Diaz)
clt51@hotmail.com
carmentowber@verizon.net
Thank you.
David

Dear All,
Can I take this forum for a housekeeping detail?
My email is now socolove@verizon.net
Also, if any of you want to be put on our mailing list for Mexican cultural events (I head a project on Mexican traditional arts called Mano a Mano), please answer me off-list.
Best to all. I loved the reunion and loved being in the castle. I would support and help any effort.
Emily Socolov

I’m not missing! I really wanted to make it to the reunion ( I saw the info in Classmates.com) but I live in Arizona now so it wasn’t too practical to travel. After years of bouncing through dance and acting I’m back to painting. I share a small artist-run gallery space with a friend in Scottsdale, AZ (www.thelunagallery.com).  I’m married and live with my husband, 4 cats and a dog. Through classmates I’ve been in touch with Hilary Luttinger too. Also not missing, but I’ll ask her if its OK to give out information. I remember you really well.  
When I lived in LA I ran into Dena Blum – still an artist, really a nice woman. We went over the yearbook together. I’ll attach a current Jpeg picture and hope it reads – I have a Mac, so sometimes it doesn’t translate.... I filled out the form at the end of the missing page, so feel free to contact me. There’s also contact info on my personal website, www.falcon-hargraves.com. My love to you and everyone I ever knew! It’s so cool to see those names again. Put me on the mailing list.

Bright Blessings,
Susan Siegel (12.16.04)

Arlene Jacks

To everyone who did (and didn't) show up at our reunion... I love you all!  That day was one of the happiest I've ever spent. How delightful to be in a room full of people who loved each other so much.  The hours flew by and, just as quickly as it all began, it ended. The "funk" that I experienced after graduation from M&A came flooding back just as strong as it had been over 35 years ago! However, my calendar has been cleared for next June when hopefully we can do it all over again.  Please let's not let another five years pass until we all get together!  Special thanks to Richard and Jane for all their hard work - you're both stars! Love to everyone and I hope we can all keep in touch.  I can be reached at: arlene.jacks@oup.com.

All the best,
Arlene (7.18.04)

Debbie Lynn Zwiebach

Hi Janey,
I just wanted to thank you for all the hard work you and Richard put towards this past reunion. I think Iam still on a natural high. The parties that Marcy, Richard, and Ruth were the icing on the cake. I am giving you the information on my next art show:

Great seeing you again

Debbie Lynn Zwiebach (7.10.04)
debbie33k@aol.com                                                           

Elliot H. Gertel

Dear Beloved, Cherished Friends of Yore, Yon, and Ever Anon,

"I get high when I see you go by, my oh my..."

Who would ever think that I would be a soothsayer? Back in April, I wrote, "All the 'extracurricular' activities at this get-together--including an opportunity to finally visit our beloved Castle on the Hill and pre- and post-reunion parties at dear old friends' homes--will make this weekend something very special, perhaps the best reunion for '69ers ever!...Looking forward to seeing...everyone from that most wonderful, mixed-up, crazy, magical time...!" My fond hope turned out to be greater, much greater than I ever could have dreamed in the realization!

In truth, I am not psychic: it all seemed so obvious that this would work out so well as a result of the great planning and gentle prodding of the great folks who put their time and energy and caring into making this weekend come together.

Several of you have expressed so eloquently what an amazing weekend it was. Although I found the visit back to the Castle almost mystical and was delighted that this was arranged, I feel that 20 years of other than M&A vibes filling the hallways and classrooms, pervading the locker rooms, the gym, and the cafeteria, the re-arrangement of subject specialties, the sad sight of the now decrepit splendor that has set in, walls now decorated where once there was just institutional green--as wonderful as this new life is--have chased the ghosts of our days away, yet ever faintly, they still linger from afar, and I'm sure many of us felt that chill...

I was amazed by how some people remembered their room numbers and what classes they took where and with whom. To me, all this was pleasant and poignant nostalgia. The energy of our guide (a Taft grad) and love for the building seemed to equal our own. She echoed our feelings that the Castle would be a wonderful place for a reunion, more intimate and familiar than LaGuardia in Lincoln Center could ever be. I hope she stirred us to taking some action to help preserve and restore the building that still means so much to us and to meet en (69) masse there again.

I thought that since I had broken the mystic barrier of the first reunion 15 years ago, our 20th, on a weekend high that washed over me with wave upon wave of nostalgia, flashbacks, and first time hugs for many in two decades and followed up at the 25th, that my old 60's M&A "cool" would keep me from getting washed overboard this time. In fact, I was calm and collected--or so I thought--well into the middle of Saturday's events, but by the time Sunday late afternoon had rolled in, I was amazed by how fast it had all gone by, just like the dream of those three wonderful years from 1966-69. I literally had to be dragged away by kindly friends because I could have danced and sang and talked and basked all night. I really wasn't ready for it to end. It seemed cruel, but we all have our lives and have to go back to them sometime, just as we had to move on and grow up way back then.

As several others said, we owe much thanks to Richard (for being the organizing genius behind this reunion), to Jane for helping publicize the events in an aesthetic and informative way on her web page, to Andy for helping to get our old building opened to us, and to Marcy, Richard, and Ruth for opening their homes and their hearts to us in such a warm and welcoming way. It was these activities and, of course, all of you who made this such a memorable event; whatever was organized outside the lines of the official reunion far surpassed anything that took place under the auspices and glare of the alumni association, though we must acknowledge their important role as the catalysts to our occasional get-togethers.

Even as I go overboard and get a bit too mawkish again, I really would have loved to have a week or more so I could have talked to everyone for much longer. So, please do e-mail me whenever you feel so inclined at ehg@cyberspace.org Electronic discourse will have to take the place of the face-to-face exchanges that make our reunions so intoxicating.

Sweet dreams and love,
Elliot (7.07.04)

Sandy (Sarner) Zarr

Hi everybody! I'm sorry I was unable to attend the reunion. The years I spent at M&A were among the best in my life. I played piano and violin at M&A (remember Mr. Russ?) I went on to study Musicology (Queens college and CUNY Grad School) and taught  music and piano for many years. I have been married for 29 years to a wonderful guy (he's a psychiatrist) and we have a 16 year old daughter. She is very talented and extremely creative; she writes fiction (anybody know a publisher?), is an artist and most of all, she is an incredible musician. She plays flute and piccolo, and is a wonderful singer. She plans to make music(singing) her life's work. I wish she had had the opportunity to attend a school like M&A. However, we live in Michigan, near Flint, and there is no such type of school here. Steven Speiser, I read your note on this bulletin board yesterday. I remember you. We were friends and I even accompanied you at a flute recital (I did a lousy job as I recall). I remember that your parents took us out for ice cream afterwards. Do you remember me? If so, send me an e-mail! Does anybody have contact info for Gail Posner? She was my homeroom teacher and a science (bio, I think) teacher at M&A. I have lost touch with her and would like to find her. I have placed my e-mail address on the M&A list. Friends, feel free to write to me.
Looking forward to renewing old friendships!

Sandy (Sarner) Zarr (7.04.04)
szarr@comcast.net

Donald Isler

I thoroughly enjoyed the reunion weekend, and want to thank those who "made it happen," especially Richard Harris for the tremendous organizing work, Jane Lewis for this great website for our class, and Ruth Obernbreit for the wonderful party at her house.
 
I attended the semi-annual after the dinner on Saturday evening and particularly enjoyed it because:
 
1) I met, and got to speak with one of my teachers, Mrs. Dolgow, and
 
2) I was reminded what terrific talent is to be found today at the LaGuardia School, reminiscent of the atmosphere at Music and Art in our time. In fact, I was so impressed that I wrote a review of the concert. Anyone who may be interested to read it can find it at: www.classicalmusicguide.com. If you scroll down to the category "Classical Music Reviews" you'll find it there.
 
Best wishes to everyone,
Donald Isler (6.29.04)

Mark Glazer

Richard,
Just a personal "Thank You" to you and the other alumni who worked so hard to put the reunion together.
I wish I had been able to attend the before and/or after gatherings but time did not allow it.
It was great seeing my fellow schoolmates from (dare I say) way back when... I am looking forward to the next time.
Mark Glazer (6.29.04)

From Debbie Un

Hia Richard,
I just took a brief look at the pics, and they are quite impressive... amazing how after all this time, I know people's names by heart! Anyway, thank you for doing all this. I'm sorry we didn't have more time to talk and get to know eachother. I suppose we'd need a Reunion Week.
Love, Debbie (6.29.04)

Steven Speiser

Dear Richard:
My name is Steven Speiser (M&A '69) and now live in Orlando, Fl. I played the flute in H.S. and classical music is my passion, but I became a psychiatrist so regretfully not in the arts. Anyway, I would enjoy any pictures of the reunion I missed and promise to go to the next one as I make to the city for conferences or to visit family etc. once or twice a year. Have a great 4th of July and thanks for helping to organize this.
STEVE (6.29.04)

Marilyn Siegel

Dear Richard,
Had a real busy week. Two trials, twelve hearings the last four days of  the week I retuned to work.
I just wanted you to know, as someone who has staged numerous large legal and trial advocacy seminars, what you did in pulling this past reunion together was simply remarkable. It gave me the opportunity to see how my old friends( like me ) have, for lack of a better word "matured", while still in many ways remaining as off beat  as we once were.
The time- travel- trip to the old school evoked a slow rush of  good memories. High school was the first time in my life I ever did well in school.@ the time I didn't know it, but I had and still have a myriad serious learning disabilities ( dyslexia, dyscalculia...)Under the guidance teachers like Mrs. Simmons, Mrs. Mirro, Mrs.Granat, I LEARNED to re-write "C" papers.  The "A" s  earned were not nearly as important as the skill of learning how to write...Thank you for setting up the tour. It was great to see it w/ so many of my old M&A  alumni junkie friends.
Nix on a Prom. It was a bad idea then and it hasn't improved w/ time. My vote: A heavy dose of Motown @ Ruthie's resplendent home and we'll all be happy.
Marilyn ( Mara ) Siegel (6.28.04)

Marcy Perlman

...Yes, it is wonderful and even profound to realize that we all walked away from our weekend with the same high. The vagueries of past memories became sharp and clear 35 years later. Faces of people I knew, and those I knew from a distance, behind the mask of adolescent shyness, clearly shone through the filigree that ornaments ours now from lives well-lived. And considering the historical times we lived in, I know each one of us has lived well, passionately and fully. I look forward to 'mini-reunions' before the 'prom-that-never-was...'....Marcy (6.16.04)

Richard Harris (email to Sean Daniel)

Steve Mencher

Don't know if folks would be interested, but about 2 yrs ago I spent some time in LaGuardia as part of a web project I did -- two segments of the project visited with La Guardia students, and featured video of them, and a lot of their original music: http://www.ovationtv.com/artszone/programs/bigbangs/welcome.html

Steve

Steve Seskin

Thanks for contacting me...I have such fond memories of M&A. I don't think I'd be doing what I have done for over 30 years if it weren't for that experience. I'm afraid I will miss the reunion. I have never been to one. I will be in Alaska teaching a songwriting workshop that weekend. Maybe the 40th! It was fun to check out the site and spark some old memories. Take care and have fun at the reunion...Feel free to post my response. I wish I could be there...

Steve Seskin
http://www.steveseskin.com/biography.html