Frosty and still, and early,  this 5 A.M. on the morning of
December 15, 1985.  Walking about the living-room   in
his bedclothes Sam  Goldberg , violinist,  vacantly examined  the
miraculous snow-flake ballet descending from the high heavens to its
earthly melt.

Staring through the  tall French windows of his
stately house in Boston’s fashionable  Concord suburb he watched the
streetlights flicker and go out.  There was still plenty of time
before he had to go to the garage and start warming up the car.  At 7
there would be the drive to Logan  Airport to catch the plane to Denver
for the noontime ( Rocky Mountain Time)  performance  of Handel’s
Messiah by the Colorado Symphony.

"Breakfast is ready, Sam".  Calling him from the
kitchen and getting no response, his wife  came looking for him. Sharon
had been up since 4 ; she would be returning to bed after he left.

Dressed in a red robe, her hair done up in curlers, 4 years younger
than he was , she looked 10 years older . Sam was very fit for a man of 62 .
" Just a minute, Sharon." He returned to the bathroom
and washed up at the sink.  The heavy  demand for Sam’s
talents  would keep him in the West for the next eight  days. His
schedule didn’t bring him back to  the Boston area  before his
Christmas day appearance with the Boston Philharmonic in Symphony
Hall. With a bit of luck he and Sharon could then spend the evening
with their 3 children, Abe, Simon and Rebecca, all grown to
maturity with  their own families and concerns. He would take them to  a
good kosher restaurant in Brookline.

A brief respite!  Sam dried his face with a towel, threw on a bathrobe and slippers  and shuffled into the
dining-room. After Christmas,  Sam wasn’t expected  home again until January 11th.

The interim would see him  trekking through snowstorms to
engagements all over the country, as well as  several
abroad.

We ought not to give the  wrong impression: one shouldn't
conclude from this  that Sam and Sharon  felt under
any  pressure to  make the best use of the available time.  On the
contrary, they saw perhaps too much of one another. Sam only worked two
months out of the year.

On his way into the dining-room, Sam paused to adjust
the Hanukah decorations on the mantelpiece over the
fireplace; then he verified the time from  a small pendulum clock.
Standing at the dinner table before  lowering himself  onto  the soft
cushion of his custom-made  upholstered chair , he  emitted a sigh of
 fervent contentment. The aroma of coffee and clatter of dishware signaled
Sharon’s imminent arrival. While he waited  he relived, as he was
fond of doing,  the high moments  of his graduation in June of 1946,
at the top of his class, from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He
chuckled at the high hopes that teachers, family  andfellow students
alike had placed in him, and simpered as he contemplated, once
more, the cleverness with which he had disappointed
them all!

All the  faces of the teachers beloved of his youth
rose up again before his mind’s eye: kind, dumpy and wise Professor
Baumgartner, chairman of the Violin Division; the brilliant,
exquisitely groomed  Professor Spinelli for  composition; Professor
Lutoslowski, always in a hurry, never on time: piano. Each and  every one of
THEM had assumed that he , Sam Goldberg,  would work like  a
HORSE at the plow for all the rest of his days and STARVE for ART !
But he , Sam Goldberg the violinist, had quickly laid to rest their
European  Conservatory old-fogey foolishness: HE had done  the
UNFORGIVABLE,  and  THRIVED!

Sharon, sad and unsmiling, came in from the kitchen dragging
a tray holding cereal, coffee and eggs.  He planned to retire in  3
years, bringing to an end  a very successful, in fact extraordinary,
though far from brilliant, career. Age had not mistreated him. He
was only slightly overweight, in good health for a man in his 60’s, his
glasses prescription stronger because of  fading eyesight, his hearing
unimpaired. The tonsure of silver hair stretching behind his ears
around the back of his head only added further distinction to his
bearing as a respected senior musician.

As Sam reminded himself, he lived like a celebrity
from doing the bare minimum of work  -  "like Jascha Heifetz!",
he cried, talking out loud to  himself,  " I probably earn more, I bet
you", he gloated inwardly , " in real  dollars, than Baumgartner,
Spinelli and Lutoslowksi ever did -  all put together !...And in
America!"  he cackled so loud that even Sharon, who  had lost most
of her hearing over the decade, could hear him, " MONEY is  where
it’s  AT ! MONEY’ S WHAT COUNTS!"

"Eat up, Sam... you have to leave soon. "  His habit of talking
to himself in public had gotten worse  as he aged.  His reflections were
continued in silence  : What was my secret of success, I wonder ?   It
was not the first time he had asked himself this essentially rhetorical
question: CLEVERNESS !  , just for starters.  Then... A TOTAL LACK
OF  AMBITION.....Finally... A HARD-NOSED PHILOSOPHY OF
LIFE! ....A  capacity for "realism"! ...  beyond the ordinary, far beyond
that of every other musician I’ve ever known ... ..

"SAM" , he  congratulated  himself, not in the least put  out  by
the shamelessness  of his self-satisfaction,  You’ve got that primitive
grasp on the verities of life that puts you in the company of the
likes of Rockefellers, Vanderbilts , Gettys!....

Sharon watched him with concern. He didn’t realize
that he was getting old, but to her the symptoms were obvious.
She seriously  worried that he might not make it through this
Christmas. After his return in January she intended to  put pressure on him
to retire, or at least reduce his commitments . They had enough money;
it was only force of habit that kept him at an occupation that was
no longer required of him. Or was he being driven by something
else ? No one understands what motivates artists. She certainly
didn’t understand Sam, and she’d been married to him for 32 years.
cccccccc

 Sam entered as a student at the Curtis Institute in
1945, just after the war.  A  few months at Curtis  led Sam to
the realization   that, leaving aside his own  opinions on the genre,
(which were  mixed ) , the  listening public had firmly rejected
modern or contemporary classical music. Popular music was the
obvious alternative, but had no appeal for him.  Why , he
argued, should he spend the rest of his artistic life rubbing shoulders
with people he  considered his artistic, mental and technical
inferiors?

In his third year he reached an even more radical conclusion: that
concert audiences had little use for most of the standard
classical repertoire as well. How often did one see a concert hall display
poster advertising Mozart’s 2nd Violin Concerto? Salieri’s operas?
Hummel’s piano concertos? The Mendelssohn String
Quartets? Any symphony of Dvorchak’s except the  New World  ?
 It was patently self-evident that the majority of
music lovers only wanted to hear  a small number of established
masterpieces  played over and over again  in exactly the same way.

The realities were enough to discourage any  serious ,
security-conscious  young artist, and Sam briefly considered dropping out of
Curtis and enrolling in medical school.  Then his imagination
went to work, and in due course  he discovered a  silver lining within
the dark cloud of professional music. Any qualified  musician who
invested  his energy into  mastering a few shrewdly  chosen  war-horses
could forever afterwards chuck out the sentimental garbage about
suffering in garrets and snubbing the Philistines and  working for
nothing  and live out his allotted span of days surrounded by  all
the blessings of comfort and wealth.  The remaining residue of work was
more in the nature of a hobby: cultivating the agents,
institutions and grateful audiences who would  reward  him handsomely for the
undeviating rendition of the tried-and-trusted.

He continued to weigh the career options in classical music up
to the end. Providing neither money nor job satisfaction, teaching
was definitely not one of them.  At  his senior honors recital at Curtis
in May of 1946  Sam presented the Paganini Concerto in Eb , the
Wienawski Concerto in D minor and the  Bartok Unaccompanied
Violin Sonata. More fiendishly difficult pieces  do not exist in the
violin repertoire.

By graduation day  he had narrowed the list down to a single indestructible paradigm:
the first violin part of the orchestral accompaniment to
Handel’s Messiah, a score technically  accessible to  any talented
elementary  school student after two years of Suzuki method .

Of course it should be noted that for accomplished musicians
there are no easy pieces in  the classical repertoire.

During an interview  on the PBS series, "Live From Lincoln
Center", Itzhak Perlman once explained that Mozart’s violin concertos, although
lacking in  every gymnastic  device present, for example,  in any of
the  concertos by Paganini  , are in many respects more difficult to
perform in  public.  There is total exposure on every note,  no tricks to
make the facile sound complicated, no display of brilliant effects to
disguise poor musicianship or faulty intonation.

Even so simple a score as the first violin part of Handel’s  Messiah will resound, when
played by a musician at Sam’s level, as  far above the rendition  of
your generic orchestra violinist, as the ravishing bouquet of vintage
Chateau-Laffite  Rothschild will soar above that of ordinary table
wine. Sam devoted 3 years,  from 1947 to 1950, to  the
attainment of absolute mastery of the Messiah score.  Every note was
committed to memory, all  bowings revised a dozen times,
fingerings many times more.

This experimentation with minor technical improvements went
on for another decade , and never completely stopped at any time in
his career. He sought out and studied every  recording in  the
catalogues. He read  the musicologists, analyzing the score
theoretically, historically and  artistically. In the hope of gaining
insight into the oratorio’s deep structure, he went so far as to
explore the writings of Heinrich Schenker!  Ultimately
he knew every note of every orchestral part, the chorus, and all the
vocal soloists, as thoroughly as any conductor.

It is  rumored  he once stunned Leopold Stokowski, of
fabled and prodigious memory, by pointing out an  error in
the bassoon part undetected by the maestro. While acquiring this
proficiency, Sam supported himself by freelancing. Several orchestras
wanted to make him their permanent concertmaster. He turned them
all down; Sam knew what he  wanted. Within a few short years he
had convinced everyone in the music  business that his
presence on the stage at a Messiah performance  galvanized orchestras
and audiences alike in a way that no-one had ever imagined possible.

Mind you,  this was a young man, still in his twenties. Once he
started playing, everything cohered; the effect was indeed amazing.
Musicians who had performed in the Messiah  a hundred times over
suddenly found new life in what had seemed a tedious obligation.
Either on stage or in the audience, to watch  Sam at the helm was to
be witness to a revelation.  Orchestral sound gained incredible
homogeneity, sophistication, style. Conductors were known to say
that Sam rendered their role superfluous, he knew  the music so
much better than they did.

For concert hall managers, ticket agents, trustees and
orchestral boards of directors,  it was the testimony
of the Box Office which told  them everything they needed to know. By
the early 1950’s , Sam could -and did- call the shots. He never played
anything  in public but this one piece,  never accepted a position
lower than concertmaster, never  gave autographs, or solo
performances, or lessons. He banked his first million just before the
Kennedy assassination. Financial insecurity was henceforth  a
thing of the past . Wise  investments gave adequate protection to
his old age.

By his own lights his crowning achievement was in the creation
of a brand new profession within music: roving Messiah
concertmaster. By the early 50's  his career was already settling into
a stable rut whose momentum would carry him through the next
four decades.  From January to March , and again from May to November, Sam Goldberg’s
fingers did not so much as graze the strings of either of his  prized
Old Italian Masters violins, an Amati and a Guarnerius .

Getting back into shape, which he did in the months of March and
November respectively, was pursued in a leisurely manner. He
disciplined gradually, pacing himself through a strict though not
strenuous program  of exercises, etudes and scales, supplemented by  jogging
and  workouts. He also went on a diet, not only for his physical well-
being, but also because the concert season invariably brought many
invitations to  banquets, not all of which could be declined ,where
excessively rich food was on the menu.

A month’s steady training sufficed for the cruel workloads  of
Christmas and  Easter. Between Thanksgiving and Twelfth Night
and from the end of March to the beginning of May, Sam
 slogged between 120 to 150 gigs! Since his  fees ranged from
one to as much as five thousand dollars per concert , his yearly
income before taxes was never less than $250,000.

Most of his  effort was directed towards lining up engagements for the two seasons,
 in about 50  cities  and towns across the United States, and  a dozen or so in the rest of the world :
every year took him at least once to  Montreal, London, Dublin,
Sydney,  Tokyo, Copenhagen and Bombay, with less
frequent commitments  from  Djakarta, Rio de Janeiro, Capetown, occasional
appearances in  Paris, Stockholm, etc.

The overwork fell short of killing him outright, though  the return more compensated him
handsomely for the misery.  For 8 months out of the year Sam was
free to do as he damn well pleased. Though excessively arduous,
even  punishing  during  these brief intervals, his profession
demanded neither inventiveness,  resourcefulness, dedication,  risk,
or  imagination . The venue for the exercise of these faculties was
manifested in the  intricacies and details of making arrangements:
scheduling, travel, connections, cost cutting , emergencies, accommodations.

 Sam loved every minute of it. The birth of the home computer
had  brought the decisive miracle to Sam’s career. His library  of
diskettes held information worth millions, a multi-layered, cross-
referenced encyclopedia of road maps , mileages, auto repair shops,
filling stations .... up-to-date schedules, prices, specials, package
deals, long distance and short distance options for trains, airline
companies, major bus lines,  short lines, urban and rural transit
systems .... seasonal hotel accommodations .... daily, sometimes
hourly  weather reports across the country and  around the world ....
restaurant locations,  menus  and prices .... local addresses for violin
repairmen and music stores .... large address books filled with
information about all the agencies and personalities in the  music
world necessary for the management of his affairs .

Had he so wished, Sam could have set aside  part of his free
time for developing a lucrative, and much less taxing, business
as a travel consultant for other musicians. Using the resources
available in  his information retrieval system one could arrange  travel
between any two accessible settlements in the United States with
no more than 4transfers between  trains and planes, local buses and
taxis, often with  savings  at  30 to 50% over  the big companies
such as Greyhound and  Amtrak.  Juggling the connections,
striking a balance between time and cost, implied a talent for
precision timing.  Not for nothing had Sam  graduated
at the top of his class at Curtis :  is violin-playing anything else ?

Yet as was recognized by everyone, himself included ,
he had no ambition. He no more wanted  to be a business
tycoon  than he did to be a great violinist. His goal in life , oft
proclaimed in fatuous detail to friend, family and associate as "Sam’s
practical philosophy", was to do as little work as possible, yet
 live like royalty.

It just happened to be the case that this view of the
world had,  over almost 4 decades, translated itself into a calendar of
two months of back-breaking labor followed by 10 months of delicious
hibernation.

Sam was enormously proud of himself. While one might not
agree with most of his self-satisfying justifications, there
is no doubt that he had to be given credit for shrewdness: if there is
one musical masterpiece that the Christian world will continue to
listen to after a billion replays, it is the Messiah. Handel’s Messiah
will outlast McDonald’s hamburgers. As long as Christianity
remained a force in the world, Sam’s nest-egg was indestructible. Nor was he
considering new  strategies for survival  in the event of its’
sudden demise.

In the United States, his fixed engagements as a Messiah
concertmaster included  Hartford, New Haven, Providence,
Portland, Burlington and several other small New England towns;  4
in Boston ; 8 or more  in  and around New York City ; Buffalo;
Syracuse; 2 in Philadelphia; Anchorage; Miami; Charleston;
Louisville; Cleveland; Detroit; 3 in Chicago; St. Louis; Phoenix;
Minneapolis;  San Juan, Puerto Rico;  Birmingham; 2 in Atlanta; 4 in
Chicago;  Houston; Seattle; Denver; 2 in Salt Lake City; 2 in San
Francisco; 5 or more around Los Angeles, etc.  These were
guaranteed, while others were re-negotiated  from one year to the
next.

After 40 years in the profession of course, Sam
hardly needed to hustle. Within the music world everybody knew him as
" Sam, the Messiah Man". Many legends circulated about him.  One
of them centered on  a booking agency in New York where,
every  year shortly before 11 AM on the third Monday in September,
the  entire staff gathered around the telephone. As they waited
they placed bets on  the exact minute  when  Sam’s call would come on
line. This ritual had been going on for at least 20 years. Sam
always called between 11 and 11:10. In the first ten years he always
introduced himself with "Hello. This is Sam. How’s the Messiah
doing?"  Then he dropped the "This is Sam" part. Once , so the story
goes, someone picked up the receiver and  barked, without waiting
for his  voice: "Messiahs for Hire, Incorporated!"

 Trade humor.

Christmas Day, 1985.

The Boston Symphony Messiah concert
was scheduled for the 3:00 matinee. 1  The wind was high, the day
bitterly cold. A steady snowfall had begun early in the afternoon.  At
2:30 , true to form, Sam Goldberg’s Lincoln Continental pulled up in
front of the stage entrance on the north side of Symphony Hall. He
stepped swiftly out the front door, retrieved his instrument case from
the back , then handed the keys to the doorman whose job was to
take his car  further  down the street to his reserved space in the
orchestra parking lot at the far end of the monumental building.

To get there on time Sam had raced through heavy traffic
from  Logan Airport. The holiday's  wrestling match
with the iron law of wages  had begun the night before  at a
gigantic midnight mass concluding  an Evangelical Congress at the St.
Louis Convention Center.  There had been no sleep for him
that night: a plane  flew him to La Guardia  airport in time to
preside over a 9 A.M. Messiah at the Union Theological Seminary in
New York City. His brother, a rabbi on the faculty, sat in the
audience. His refusal  to stand during the Hallelujah Chorus may
have been due to religious scruples, or it may also have contained an
implied reproach of   his brother’s attitudes .  Sam didn’t wait to
find out: a chartered limousine took him to Newark airport, where he caught
the 45-minute  Continental Airlines commuter shuttle  to
Boston. At 2 A.M. that night  he would be on yet another plane back to
Chicago!  Then onwards  to Detroit and  Ann Arbor, Michigan,  and St.
Paul, Minnesota.

A vortex of snow whirled like a tower in his wake
as he hurried through the doors . A doorman cleared
the way; Sam returned no greetings. During the holiday season  one
could  not have uncovered so much as a mustard seed of
benevolence in his calculating  heart .These were THE MOST LUCRATIVE DAYS
of the year. From the  long  travail  beginning with the
midnight mass the night  before and ending with a guest  appearance
with Pinchas Zuckerman’s chamber orchestra in St. Paul,  Sam raked
in  $50,000. A Hard-Nosed Philosophy of Life

No Ambition
Good Agents
Unrivaled Excellence
Up-to-date  Databanks
Precision Scheduling

Sam hung his hat, coat and scarf on a rack in the performer’s lounge,
then dashed into the  Men’s Room for some quick grooming.

Within 15 minutes of his arrival he was in the wings,
pacing the musician’s lounge. The priceless Guarnerius  was
withdrawn from its case, the strings tuned, the bow tightened and
rosined. Warming up with scales or passage-work hardly seemed
necessary: had he not already played the score twice over in less than 16
hours? Nor was it necessary even to review the  slight variants in the
different editions used between St. Louis , New York and Boston: Sam knew
them all.

A droll recording of  chimes playing the horn solo from
Wagner's Siegfried   recalled the audience to their seats. The
auditorium's amplified  din subsided   as  the musicians began
walking onto the stage  in small  groups. Lights dimmed as Sam,
followed by Seiji Ozawa, now in his 14th year as permanent
conductor of the Boston Symphony, entered from the left.

With the consummate stage presence of a  veteran of 4
decades of public service Sam returned the applause from an
eager audience by a deep bow at the waist. He placed a thin
handkerchief on his left shoulder; his was of the old-fashioned school that did
not use shoulder-rest gadgets. His ear picked up the ambiguous
"A" from the oboe which his strings ,  following  minute
adjustments,  transmitted to the rest of the orchestra. Fans waved to him from
the audience; he winked at them as he  sat down. Comfortably seated in
the concertmaster’s chair, his gaze casually examined the
ranges of sentimental pseudo-Greek bas- reliefs at the base of
the ceiling. He recalled what Isadora Duncan had said about them: "You
worship plaster Gods!" "I wonder how much", he asked himself
with a rhetorical smirk ,  "she  left in her  bank account? "

Orchestra musicians treasure their ancient jokes;
some of them probably go back to the Middle Ages. One of more
recent origin, speaks about the viola  player who dreams that he is
sitting in an orchestra  playing the Brahms Requiem. Upon awakening
he finds himself in an orchestra, playing  the Brahms Requiem.
40 years of conditioning had worked on his nervous system so as to
place him far beyond the protagonist in this dour anecdote , far
beyond either dreaming or sleeping,  or even hypnosis . The proper analogue
to  Sam’s spiritual achievement is rather to  the workers on automobile
plant assembly lines, whose mental survival depends  on their
capacity to totally block  out  their minds while on the job . One might
describe Sam as someone who had fashioned himself to be , to a
consummate degree, the perfect artifact of modern capitalism : a
technician ridiculously over-trained for the production of an single absurdly
specialized task.

These observations are important for the understanding of his
distress when, starting with the fugue that enters midway through
the Overture , Sam acknowledged the encroachment of a
relentless, irritating though strangely welcome  rumination,
utterly unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. Despite all his
conditioning and will power, his mind now refused to shut down on
command.

With an obstinate energy that caught him off balance, he found
himself picking up and pursuing a train of reasoning that had
actually begun the night before in St. Louis,  during an endless
harangue he’d been forced to listen to on  divine intervention and
the Virgin Birth.  By the time of the entry of the tenor recitative ,
" Comfort Ye My People", a host  of nagging reflections  had
swollen to  the proportions of an obsession. No noticeable effects
were translated into  his playing.  At 3  AM in the morning ,
blindfolded, drugged,  and fast asleep , even comatose, he  could still
render a Messiah without faltering or blemish. This is what Sam
was thinking:

Now, you take this man, Jesus. I consider him as just
a man, mind you. Remember: just a  man. I’ m a Jew, ( they don’t
let you forget it) .... I’m never going to believe the   Christians’ "Son
of God" cockamamie  ...

Between you,  me  and the  metronome , believing in
God is already a crock, if you  know what I mean.  I never met anyone
who ever made a dime crying Hallelujah and crawling before  an old man
with a beard , begging for forgiveness  ..... So I’ m a lousy  Jew,
 too  , all right? So why should I worry about his  so-called Son , I ask
you?   .....But you know, his birth was a good thing for me  ......  Hey !
 I’ ve made a fat income from it all my life... and for music in general
....they   tell me that Christmas carols are  like a soup kitchen for
jazz  musicians  on the skids....and his death gave  us  Easter, too, a
real blessing  ...as a matter of fact,  the    goyim  consider his death
more important than his birth,  otherwise there wouldn’t  be any
religion... and , say, when you really  come down to it... . he went on, with a
disturbing sort of momentum,

....The  way this man, Jesus, died, couldn’t have
been accidental
...... He was just a man, remember; just a man .... a
man, not  God.... for  the  Holy Scriptures  say that He rose  up in the
flesh and appeared to his disciples  after 3 days.....and they
believed in Him.....and again on the road to  Emmaus...and only
doubting Thomas  refused to believe...until he touched the
wounds.. ..( what utter balderdash ! ) .....and then the Church  fathers
 went  out into the desert, and fasted...and  the martyrs were
persecuted by Rome... but then Rome acknowledged  Christianity as its state
religion...and it took  root in the two  Empires, East  and West
..... then came the Dark  Ages .... and  the Faith conquered  Europe....
and  spread all over the world  ....

Startled, Sam shook his head as if waking from a dream :
what’s this all about?    But he soon fell back into the same  train of
thought :.... then, in the  18th  century, George, the  English monarch
imported from Germany,  brought Handel  along with him  .....  who
conquered  the English musical  world  .... and  King George the  First
commissioned  the Messiah    ....   or maybe it was George the
Second  ....  I  don’t think it was  George the Third, that’s the
American Revolution...I don’t know, I’ m not a musicologist!   I’ m
not even  a violinist when you come down to it, or rather I’ m a funny
kind of  violinist..... so that millions of Christians around the world
would flock  to performances of the Messiah at Christmas and
Easter,  year after  year for centuries,  .... so that

I, SAM
GOLDBERG, COULD DRAW A  GUARANTEED INCOME FOR
FORTY YEARS WITHOUT HAVING TO  LEARN A SINGLE GOD-
DAMNED NEW PIECE OF MUSIC!...or  pretend that I really enjoy
living like an artist, that is to say like a DOG , or be forced against
my will to be  creative,  or show initiative, or invent some  kind of
ambition IN THIS MISERABLE, CUT-THROAT,  RUTHLESS,
VICIOUS AMERICAN  ECONOMY!!
Sam Goldberg’ s violin obbligato,  written by himself 20 years
earlier  to  accompany the alto aria " He Was Despised
And Rejected, A Man of Sorrows And  Acquainted With Grief "  , was
always the high point of any of his  Messiah concerts. There
existed a  dedicated following of music lovers all over the country  who
came to his concerts solely to experience the transport of ecstasy
delivered by the sound of his lyric violin sobbing above this aria.  As
he  began to draw the soft strains that raised the illusion of  an
amber glow over the trembling strings, Sam could scarcely restrain
himself from crying out:

" WHAT ALL OF THIS MEANS IS THAT CHRIST DIED FOR
ME - FOR ME ALONE! CHRIST HAD TO DIE SO THAT SAM
GOLDBERG COULD LIVE!! "

Like the sun emerging from the edge of a vanishing
storm-cloud, Sam’s stiff  grimace  crinkled across his face.
Smug satisfaction  rippled from ear to ear. Observing the
cleverness he’d demonstrated in reaching this  conclusion had given
him great pleasure.  But now  it was time once again to hew the
line: his special relation to Christ could be debated  in his 10 months
of  leisure.

Calling upon almost half a century of habit, Sam
again totally emptied his mind.

Yet with an upsurge of mounting horror he found
himself, for the first  time ever in all his days as a Messiah
concertmaster  , thinking about the meaning  of the words written in
the libretto!

......" He was despised and rejected, a Man of Sorrows and
acquainted with  grief. "   Responding to a strange agony moving
through the depths of his interior oppression, Sam moaned  softly to
himself:

"  I, too, am acquainted with grief!...Didn’t  Julie, my daughter,
die in a car accident when she was  only 15? ...And when my
mother died while I was on tour, I couldn’t miss even a single day
to be at her bedside. ...It didn’t  matter that I loved her as much
as any son can love a mother ... she had to  die alone!...And the
doctors say there’ s trouble with my heart...They’ll  soak me for all the
money I ever made , then throw my body into an  unmarked
grave......like Mozart!... And property values are dropping  in
Concord  .... too many ethnics, like Sharon and me. We’ll have to move -
in our 70’s  !

....And Sharon, I know she doesn’t love  me, I’ ve
known it for many years...."   .  Sam wept copiously.  The musicians
seated  at the adjacent stands were too thoroughly engrossed in their
chores to take  notice.

 "  ...Despised...Rejected.. Rejected of Men! That
describes me exactly,  just as it did that man , Jesus...’ He gave
his face to the smiters!’  And, Oh,  DON’T   I know what that means! I
know how they all hate me, ME, SAM  GOLDBERG THE MESSIAH MAN!,
because I graduated at the top of my  class, and GOT RICH through
mastering a single score and playing it for  the rest of my career! OH
THEY HATE ME ALL RIGHT!
Like a moth returning to the scorching flame , his mind feasted
obsessively on its  torment :

" I am Sam Goldberg, the Messiah Man, despised and rejected of
men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief!

BEHOLD AND SEE, IF THERE BE ANY SORROW LIKE UNTO MY SORROW!!...."
By a powerful effort of will  Sam managed to pull himself
together. Anyone observing him at that moment would
quickly have seen that he was  in the grips of a major spiritual
crisis. But why should anyone have thought that something was  amiss ?
The audience couldn’t see him very well. The players were
busy. His violin playing was, if possible, above even his usual
standard of flawless perfection.

Yet somewhere in the middle of the chorus ,  " The
Lord Gave The Word " , there came that irrevocable  moment when
the deep truth he’d sought through  these two long hours of
misery exploded into consciousness, when Sam’s  suffering  psyche  was
rent by the force of a grandiose revelation:  It arrived at the
end of a long interior discourse  that  went something like this :

".....Jesus was a Man of  Sorrows... I, too, am a Man of Sorrows...Jesus
has been called ‘The  Messiah’ ....  I, too, am called ‘The Messiah Man’...and
Jesus died for me  ALONE , so that I could live!

WHAT  CAN THIS MEAN? WHAT ELSE CAN THIS MEAN?

.......Jesus was born... ( Behold, a Virgin shall conceive ! ) ....Jesus
preached to  the multitudes; those who had ears to hear, heard ; the
others did not....He healed the lame and blind, raised the dead....He
suffered and died on the Cross , the Prince of Peace... Then the
disciples  proclaimed the teachings of their beloved
Rabbi. ...The Temple in  Jerusalem was destroyed by  the Romans , 70
A.D  . ..The Jews dispersed, my ancestors among them... Constantine
converted to Christianity , A.D.  336.....Then begins  the long
line of Popes... Charlemagne, feudalism, the Middle Ages .....
European classical music develops, very  slowly ,under  the patronage  of
the Roman church..... Luther, Calvin... Henry the Eighth  and
the Church of England.... Elizabeth, the golden age of English music
and letters.... Cromwell, the demise of music in  England...the
Restoration, which chases out the Puritans and brings music back into the
churches... 1688, the Glorious Revolution; James the  Second is
booted out,  .... William of Orange  is  invited over from Holland...Then Parliament
asks George Ludwig,  Elector of Hanover, if he wants to  be king...1702...He  instructs Handel to join  him in
1712...... WHO  COMPOSES THE MESSIAH IN 1741 !  WHICH  IS PERFORMED
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN DUBLIN, ON APRIL 13, 1742 !  ...

Wasn’t there some kind of calendar reform about then?  ....
Where was I ?
.... Sam paused, only for a brief moment, before going on ....  Mozart arranges the score for  large orchestra
....a  Messiah  cult   evolves  around Christmas  and Easter, together with evergreen trees, wreathes, bunnies, turkeys,
reindeer, Santa  Claus... To the sole end that SAM GOLDBERG, ALSO A JEW, COULD  KNOW FULLNESS OF LIFE!!"

There was not a minute to be lost. As the Hallelujah Chorus
burst  over Symphony Hall , Sam sprang to his feet and cried:

 "I  AM JESUS CHRIST! I, SAM GOLDBERG, AM GOD’ S
OWN SON! GOD SO  LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE SENT ME,
SAM GOLDBERG, HIS ONLY  BEGOTTEN SON, SO THAT YE
MIGHT HAVE ETERNAL LIFE!!! "

The  audience was on its feet  bellowing  the Hallelujah Chorus
at the top of its lungs and unaware of what was happening. But
Sam’s wild antics were being played out in full view of the entire
Boston Symphony . Seiji Ozawa went on with his conducting,
indicating to the  startled musicians that they should continue to play
on as if nothing were the matter. He'd dealt with worse crises  in his
35 years as a conductor. He paused long enough to bend down to  the
principal cellist and give him instructions to rush offstage, alert the
security guards  and telephone  for an ambulance. The curtains
would come down at the termination of the Hallelujah Chorus.  F or
the moment there was nothing  else  to be done : Sam had to be
allowed to rave at liberty. His Buddhist father, he reflected, would
have provided an apt proverb.

" They all crack up in this racket" , Ozawa murmured to himself,  bitterly, in Japanese,
"Each in his own way, sooner or later, they all go down."
fffffff

1 A glance at the appropriate old newspapers will confirm that this is
just a story.

__________________________________________________
-Notices-

Archive

 There is now a Roy Lisker Archive at the Olin Library of
Wesleyan University in  Middletown, Connecticut. Starting May, I will
be bringing up journals and other documents from the Hudson Valley
to begin the enormous job of arranging, sorting and cataloguing all the
papers accumulated since the late 50's . Ultimately  the archive will
contain notebooks, journals, working drafts, manuscripts, personal
documents, copies of published books and articles, etc. A  complete file
of all issues of Ferment and New Universe Weekly ( 1980-81) will also be
available for use by the Wesleyan community, scholars and the general
public. Suggestions and ideas are welcome.

Amplitude of the Cosmos
 This collection of 8 experimental narratives has now been
published by XLibris. An excerpt from the book "3 Weddings" can be
read at
< www.xlibris.com/AmplitudeoftheCosmos.html>  . On this page one
can also find information about purchasing the book.  The list price is
$16.
 
 Paris , March 7-17

      On the evening of March 7th, in fulfillment of a promise made 6
years earlier, Ferment's editor boarded a TWA plane for Paris  to attend
a meeting organized by a  committee that has been set up  to bring the
life and works of the great mathematician, Alexandre Grothendieck, to
the attention of the scientific world and the general public.

 In June of 1994 I did some fund-raising for a project of a more
limited scope:  locating Alexandre's whereabouts. This goal generated
some controversy, given that most of us agree  that people who want to
be left alone should have a right to do so.

In this case, given the extreme condition of AG's  psychological state, which fluctuated on
insanity, his importance for  modern science and, above all, the
ruthlessness with which he himself had just violated the privacy of
many  of his colleagues by publishing a memoir ( Recoltes et Semailles  )
filled with vicious personal attacks against all of them, it was felt that,
for his own good and to keep open a dialogue which he had sought to
sabotage by these base expedients, one had the right at least  to see for
oneself that he  was in good health, nor wandering about out lost
through the countryside of southern France, and if he was prepared to
discuss  the accusations he'd made against so many. I'd also observed,
during my first visit with him in 1988, that although he shuns and
rejects company he is actually very lonely, and in fact does appreciate it
when anyone, briefly, vaults the hurdles he's placed against visitors, if
only to say hello.

 It turned out that finding him was the easiest part. He is now
living somewhere in the Pyrenees. His self-imposed visitors' list is  more
restricted than the federal government's for Leonard Peltier. Although
direct communication with him is next to  impossible, there are
neighbors in the village where he resides who look after him. Thus,
although he is known to come up with ideas like living on dandelion
soup and nothing else , they see to it that he  maintains a proper diet.
These neighbors keep in touch with AG well-wishers in Paris and
Montpellier, so one doesn't need to worry about him

 Although I did raise the money to go to France, living interfered
with life, as it always does. Even as Alexandre has buried himself in the
Pyrenees, so I buried myself in Middletown, Connecticut. As Voltaire
said before taking up permanent residence in Fernay, "Tend Your
Gardens" , and I have been doing just that. All the same, I was
conscious of having disappointed the contributors to the 1994
Grothendieck search,  and still kept alive the hope of eventually going
over to France for that purpose.

 Then in 2000 I received an E-mail message from a London-based
editor, Harvey Shoolman. Among other things, Harvey  is the managing
director of the British Academy Isaac Newton project. In this E-letter he
described the Newton project:

ÒÉ.. a  vast scholarly undertaking to produce a printed and electronic
edition  of the (eventually)complete Newton opus. We are beginning with
the vast unpublished manuscript archives in theology and alchemy....as
you know  Isaac Newton  spent most of his time on this material rather
than the mathematics and  dynamics. A team of over 40 international
scholars are transcribing the mss and providing detailed scholarly
annotation. Eventually we intend to put this free on the web.....
 
 Through the Newton Project, Harvey became interested in 20th
century mathematics. By typing the name "Grothendieck" into Internet
search engines, he soon uncovered the advertising for my "Quest for
Grothendieck" series written up in Ferment in the early 90's. A
correspondence ensued; this led to a meeting over lunch in a North
Indian restaurant on the Lower East Side of New York. Harvey,
connoisseur of London's world renowned Indian restaurants, assured
me that the food  was not very good.

He may be correct; we both agreed that the service was terrible. However we did manage to speak
for over an hour: on the agenda were an AG biography; given  that the
biographies of his parents are more fascinating than any fiction, this
would involve more than a century of European history; a conference
based on his life and work; translations of  his mathematical opus,
political writings and memoirs "Recoltes et Semailles " and " La ClŽ des
Songes "; and websites devoted to all these things .

 By the beginning of the year 2001   , we'd gotten several people
interested in support of all of these  projects . Since most of them are
French or residing there at the present time, a ( very!) informal
consensus emerged that we would all meet in Paris on a certain date,
which did not come into focus as  the weekend of March 10th and 11th
until a few days before I flew over there.

     Touchdown at  the Charles de Gaulle airport was at 7:30 AM on
Thursday, March 8th. Although more familiar with Paris than even my
native town of Philadelphia,    I managed to get thoroughly confused
and found myself wandering about outside the Gare du Nord  in the
pouring rain for half an  hour. The main problem, of course, was
fatigue. The slow imbibing of a cafŽ creme  , ( 18 francs, double the
going price because I had to sit down) , straightened me out. By 11 AM
I was walking through the door of the IdŽal Hotel   on the rue de Trois
Bornes   in the 11th Arrondisement.

 The room had been reserved and paid for by Leila Schneps,
algebraic geometer at the University of Paris , and passionate
Grothendieck enthusiast: it was her timely grant that eliminated the
final hurdle to my attendance at the meeting.

 The next morning,  Friday , March 9th I set out to find Leila  and
her co-worker and ex- ,  Pierre Lochack. Their offices were listed as
being at  the Jussieu science faculty , a bewildering  collection of many
medieval towers spread out like rooks on a lunar landscape. After
numerous inquiries I discovered that the tower in which  all the
mathematical thinking at U -Paris had been concentrated, was
completely gutted. All that remains are locked doors, corridors filled
with rubbish and empty classrooms. The new headquarters are at  175
rue de la Chevaleret

( Metro Chevaleret)  about two miles away, a labyrinth of buildings
loosely connected by unreliable corridors. After many false starts and
visits with informative secretaries, Leila and Pierre were discovered,
pacing back and forth in the throes of intense mathematization,  in the
Algebraic Geometry unit on the 7th floor of Batiment A .

 The 3 of us sat around in Leila's office talking about what we
wanted to accomplish at the upcoming meeting. The people involved
were ( 1-3 ) ourselves;  (4) Harvey Shoolman coming over from London,
(5)  mathematics historian  Alain Herreman, and (6) Colin McLarty,
chairman of the philosophy department at Case Western University.
     Before coming to Paris IÕd learned about a biography written by
Hanka Grothendieck, AlexandreÕs mother. There was a photocopy of it
in PierreÕs office. He went to get it and  returned bearing a pile of 16
volumes holding  two thousand or more pages! Evidently the writing of
immense biographical memoirs is a family tradition. The biography,
crudely typed,  is in German.

 For us the interest lay in the last two volumes in which she speaks
about meeting and marrying Alexandre 's father, Sasha (Alexander)
Shapiro. AG grew up in  the anarchist circles of Berlin between 1928
and 1939. Desperately poor, hounded by the police, moving from loft to
warehouse without any fixed address, Hanka Grothendieck  ( AG's last
name comes from his mother, his first from his father)  wrote for an
anarchist journal called "Der Pranger "  ( The Pillory  ), which also
carried contributions by Emma Goldman, Karl  Kraus, and another ,
more famous Alexander (Sanya ) Shapiro. The biographies of the two
Alexander Shapiros intersect in so many places that there must have
been a co-mingling of their life stories. The fascinating problem of
untangling them may tax our resources for some time.

     Several ÒBourbakiÓ events, seminars and retrospectives, were
scheduled over the week at the Institut Henri PoincarŽ  , the math-
physics  faculty near the Luxemburg Gardens where I  enrolled in 1969.
On the next day, Saturday, a seminar was scheduled to let out 3:30.
Pierre and I arranged to meet with Harvey Shoolman and Colin
McLarty, then  drive us back to the rue de la Chevaleret where Leila
would join us.

  Colin is  chairman of the philosophy department at Case Western
University. From the study of toposes      he became interested in Žtale
cohomology     , and through that, all of AG's work . Recently, Colin
has become  fired up with the ambition to write a biography of AG, to
cover  both the complex and fascinating details of his life,  his vast
mathematical output,  and its impact on the rest of mathematics.

    Settled in once again at Leila's office,  the 5 of us  brain-stormed
for almost 5 hours on AG's genius, personality, present whereabouts
and biography; the fascinating problems surrounding Sasha Shapiro's
identity and career as a very active anarchist in Russia, Belgium,
Germany, France and Spain; the relationship of AG's research to
mathematics;  his quarrels with Deligne, Thom, DieudonnŽ , Serre,
indeed with every one of his colleagues ; how to located articles written
by Hanka in the 20's, and so on.......

    At 8 we decided to continue the conversation at an Ethiopian
restaurant, about a mile away ,though still in the 13th Arrondisement.
There we were joined by Alain Herreman.  Alain is producing a
Ôsemiotic investigationÕ of AGÕs  mathematical discourse. As the History
of Mathematics  appears to be treated with undisguised contempt by
the French academic world, ( he told us that all historians in the
mathematics department entitle themselves 'mathematicians' to protect
their right flank) , he has no university post but works on grants from
the CNRS (  French equivalent of the NSF), and teaches in a lycee.

      Even as  we consumed the dinner our exhilarating high-level
chatter consumed the time . Bowing to HarveyÕs insistence that we try
to concentrate on issues related to AG, approximately 7 projects were
eventually filtered out  :


    (1) Putting all of AG's writings in mathematics, both published
and unpublished, on the Web. Various possibilities suggest themselves;
there was general if not unanimous agreement that  photographing
images, rather than scanning or typing everything in by hand, was the
best way to begin.  A mathematician named William Stein, at Harvard, has begun
doing something of this sort.

    (2) Putting Recoltes et Semailles    on the Web. A small excerpt,
translated into Russian,  is already there . Mainstream publishers have
refused to touch it:   the publisher Odile Jacob for example, will only
publish the first 400 pages provided that all the real names are replaced
by fictitious ones.

     (3) Translating Recoltes et Semailles   into English.

     (4) Translating all of AG's  work in mathematics, both published
and unpublished

     (5)Transcribing and/or publishing the work AG's   notebooks
since he abandoned of mathematics in the 1970's. In 1995 he made a
present of these to Jean Magloire, with permission to do whatever he
wanted with them.

     (6) Colin's biography project, to which we will all contribute.

     (7) A historical retrospective conference honoring AG. This is last
on the list at the present moment, given the problems of holding such a
conference while its subject is still alive and non-communicado.

    Now Harvey is out looking for grants. He's somewhat distrustful
of me since he's worried that my  'bohemian'  perspective on the world
of ideas may not sit well with the starchy institutions that give grants
for scholarly projects. On the other hand, Leila is all for putting my
"Quest for Grothendieck" on the Web right away! Not everyone
appreciates the credibility of wandering fiddle-playing as the means for
uncovering the whereabouts of a great mathematician.

    When I left on March 17th, Colin was still in France, visiting
places  important  to AG's life history. Among them is the village of Le
Chambon , where he and his mother were protected from the Nazis
throughout the Occupation. This village is quite famous; under the
leadership of the protestant priest Andre TrockmŽ , it saved the lives of
thousands of persons. One can read about it in  the documentary "Lest
Innocent Blood Be Shed", by Phillip Hallie

 In the previous issue of Ferment it was stated that I'd only
received one article on the topic of education, but  that someone else
had promised to send me an article . That article has been received,
though not quite in the form IÕd expected. Bowing to the authorÕs
evident wish, he shall remain anonymous:

Dear Roy,
    Much embarrassed, I must retract my offer to supply an
article, even anonymously , to FERMENT. After our talk
last night, I experienced the queasy feeling that I may have
made a bad decision for myself. In short, my views on
education are so well known ( read notorious) in this
community, that the anonymous author of my article might
reveal himself inferentially, even through the grapevine.
During this first half of my tenure-review period, IÕve
received several signals from on high that IÕm being
ÒwatchedÓ. Should the unthinkable happen, IÕd end up in
an unthinkable situation.

    In any case, please accept my sincere apologies for what
no doubt seems a cowardly act. I would have been honored
to be published in FERMENT, but this is 2001.

  I am consoled that there will indeed be another issue of
FERMENT and look forward to reading of your recent trip
to Europe.
        Best regards,

An article  in the form of a poem,  has been received from Tony Connor,
poet, playwright and emeritus professor of creative letters at Wesleyan
U:
A Lesson
Whatever the lesson was
she found herself with class-time
remaining, and thirty kids
to be kept ( at least ) amused.
The warm, varnished-pine school-room
striped with chalk-moted sunrays
was restless with turning heads
as text-books and minds were closed.

She was a youngish woman,
bright Ðeyed, and often smiling
in that depressed, war-time place;
I was a thirteen-year old,
as useless as tangled string,
for all my ÒpromiseÓ and ÒbrainÓ.
Her favorite, nonetheless: -
she looked my way when she smiled.

She began to talk about
punishment: the leather strap-
every teacherÕs last recourse-
still used throughout the high school,
what did we think? Hands shot up
cleaving the sunrays, where motes
swirled whitely. She held the class
close in her kind, clever rule.

A much-strapped lout said his dad
thought it was scandalous; his pal
swore it made you sore all day;-
everyone clamoured to speak.
I saw and watched the motes swirl,
and fade  - as the sunrays did,
leaving the hullabaloo
and the wall-clock's jerky tick.

The teacher looked round the room.
Is there anyoneÓ, she said
through my chalk-dusty daydream,
who's never had the strap? No
hands were raised, then my hand slid
upwards. Her smile was the same
as ever, clever and warm;
she raised one kindly eyebrow.

So you've never had the strap?
she asked incredulously;
In all your schooldays  never ?
I nodded. The sun  came out,
striping the air again. My
goodness! she said. Well, just step
to the front, Mr. Connor
she liked me, I have no doubt.

Now, hold your hand out, she said.
Hardly free of my day-dream,
I felt the strap's stinging slam
across my stretched-out fingers,
Motes swirled. The bell rang ÒHometimeÓ.
I stood there with my lesson Ð
whatever the lesson was.

Take Back Education
By Jacqueline Grace

 In this article I will use the word ÔeducationÕ in two different
ways. When I use the word or one of its derivatives without quotes, I
mean it in the old sense: An educated person is one who has read and
thought about the wisdom of the ages. A person who has an education
may or may not have obtained it at schools or colleges. When I use the
word ÒeducationÓ, I refer to a bureaucracy that has sprung up in the
past forty years or so. This bureaucracy controls the licensing of public
school teachers and corrupts their educations by turning them into
ÒeducationsÓ .

 Before I begin my rant, let me tell you who I am : IÕm a cowgirl in
my heart, an intellectual and a democrat by early childhood training,
and a mathematician by education. I make my modest $33,000 per year
by my modest wits: I teach mathematics. IÕve been a salaried non-
professor at a branch of the State University of New York for nigh unto
12 years. During my tenure at SUNY New Paltz, I have taught some 100
classes, at least a third of which were specifically aimed at future
elementary and high school teachers. IÕve even written a book for the
geometry course for elementary teachers that IÕve taught umpteen
zillion times.

 My thoughts about what future teachers need to know about
geometry have been prolonged, if not deep. Geometry is huge ( just
geometry Ð forget for a moment about the gigantic remainder of
mathematics). Geometry is part of our very psyches. We are able to walk
erect because we maintain perpendicularity to our spherical perch in
space. The principles of carpentry and surveying from which the study
of geometry probably sprang may be older than history.
 I try to include the practical, the sublime and the historical in my
classes in geometry for elementary teachers. There is much knowledge
to impart and little time in which to do it. My course is very full.

 Recently IÕve come up with a vivid image of how I would like my
students to turn out.
 But first I must tell you who my students are. I can easily put
them in three categories:

 (1)  The Men. For awhile I was amazed and chagrined (since I am
female) to find that my male students in geometry for elementary
teachers, though they comprise only about one tenth of my students,
were almost always at the tops of my classes. In other math courses I
have found that men and women perform pretty much the same. Not in
this course! IÕve since made the conjecture about the reason for this
male superiority: a man who chooses to become an elementary teacher
has, first of all, made a real choice and not just fallen into the field for
lack of a better idea.

Second, he has made an unusual choice. This
makes him, I believe, surer of his vocation as a teacher, as well as
making him more inclined to show that his unconventionality is
warranted by his performance. I donÕt worry about men in my classes.
Rather, I often depend on them to ask questions and show enthusiasm.

 (2) The Moms. These are women in the twenties, thirties, forties
and occasionally in their fifties who are returning to college in the hopes
of beginning first or second careers as teachers. The moms are the equals
of the men in their competence and enthusiasm. If all my students were
men or moms, I wouldn't be writing this article.

 (3) The Coeds. Although many of the young women in my classes
who are fresh out of high school are excellent students for whom
choosing a teaching career has been a carefully considered decision,
these are in the minority. The typical coed in one of my classes has
chosen "education" as her major precisely because she thinks it will be
an easy major. In particular, she doesn't like math, and doesn't see why
she has to take it in order to teach in elementary school.

My guess is, that whether she is conscious of it or not, she doesn't really believe that
she has to learn anything at all in order to become a grade school
teacher. This idea took root in her mind, I believe, when she was in
grade school and her teachers, products of "education" colleges
themselves, didn't like math and didn't know much else either.

 The basis I use to question myself about whether I am succeeding
with my typical coed "education" major is this: Could she fill the
schoolmarm role in a western movie?

 I imagine the new schoolteacher alighting from the stagecoach,
travel-weary but perky. She has one suitcase, a prim but dusky
demeanor and her eastern education. What, I ask myself, would she
have been able to do in geometry?

 Well, there would probably be an old lawyer in town ( or a
banker or an engineer) who would invite her for tea or sherry, perhaps
for educated conversation or perhaps to discuss a case. She would need
to hold her own discussing Euclid, Euler and Gauss, axioms and
theorems, logic and proofs; i.e., she should have some knowledge of the
history of geometry and of its purely theoretical aspects.

 I can imagine the townsfolk coming to her with practical
questions. How long should the rafters on the barn be if the height of
the roof is six feet and the width is thirty feet?  How many cubic yards
of concrete should we order for the garage floor? She would need to
have some facility with the many applications of geometry.

 And, most importantly, there would be the students she teaches:
the future lawyers, physicians, engineers , and ....teachers. Above all,
she would need to have something to impart to them. She would need
to have some depth in her knowledge. She would need to be educated.

( And, oh my friends, the coeds in my class do sorely need to be
educated; I say this from vast experience.)

 Of course I never feel as if I am sending my coeds out fully
educated in geometry, but I have the schoolmarm image and I work
towards it.

 Mathematics, art, literature, theater, history, philosophy, religion:
these are OLD. These fields represent what education is about. They are
gigantic stacks of accumulated knowledge added to by generation after
generation since the dawn of Education. If we have education for any
reason, whether it is education for the elite or education for the masses,
we have it to pass on accumulated knowledge.

 The hard sciences - physics, chemistry, even biology and geology -
and the somewhat softer sciences - psychology, sociology, economics,
political science - all of these are also rather old and therefore have
accumulated reservoirs of knowledge which are available and necessary
to convey to future teachers so that they, in turn, can convey at least
some of this knowledge to their students.

 Even courses in say "Art and Schizophrenia", or "Slavery and
Music", or "Economics and the Fall of the Berlin Wall", or "Aids and the
Theater", or "Female Entrepreneurs of Upstate New York", or even "
The Literature of Minnesota Sado-Masochistic Lesbians" - any of these
could qualify as reasonable electives for future teachers in the 21st
Century.

 Knowledge is rampant. There is much, perhaps too much, for
future teachers to learn. Taking into account that many of the future
teachers of America have learned very little up until the time they begin
to sit in college classes, we college teachers have quite a responsibility.

 The fact that many, perhaps most, of my students don't know
much when I first encounter them is related to the curricula which they
are forced to follow for their majors. My students' inadequate public
school teachers followed the same curricula in college . In fact, from the
time when my students were in grade school until the present, the
number of "education" courses which future teachers are required to
take has increased.

My students have to spend an entire semester
taking nothing but "education" courses. It's called their "professional
semester". Don't ask me what they "learn" in these "education" courses;
I've never been able to sit through one. But, whatever it is they are
"learning", it isn't making them good teachers. That is easily seen by
looking at the current state of America's public schools.

 There is a modest place for "education" departments at
universities. Progress has been made in the study of learning disabilities
during the past few decades and it seems reasonable for a future teacher
to take one course in special education.

Testing at all levels could become the other specialty of "education" departments. Let them figure
out, without being too obnoxious about it and spoiling their samples,
whether grade school, high school and college students are learning
what they need to learn - what we, the older generation of historians,
philosophers and literati want them to learn.

A future teacher's
education would be enhanced by a course in educational testing and
statistics. Unless she plans to devote herself to the learning disabled
when she becomes a teacher, she should be required to take at most
two education courses. The remainder of her college time should be
spent in the all-important pursuit of knowledge.

 She could, if she feels the need and if she is willing to spend an
extra semester in college, elect to devote a semester to student teaching
in the public schools. This need'nt be a requirement, however. A year of
internship ( which would not be included as part of her college
curriculum) for the teacher-to-be at the beginning of her career would
be just as good. This internship option would also enable educated
people who don't have "education' degrees to more easily become
teachers.

Such people are now badly needed in the public schools,
because there is a shortage of teachers and because the schools are
presently being stifled by frightened and small-minded "education"
bureaucracies. The classrooms of our country would benefit from
opening up the windows and doors and letting the sweet breezes of
fresh perspectives and unconventional ideas blow through.

 Teaching is a noble profession. One becomes a teacher only if one
is educated. One becomes educated by reading, thinking about and
studying the wisdom of the ages. It's as simple as that.

 Teaching is not for everyone. Those coeds who are thinking about
their nail polish colors and looking for an easy major should probably
go into marketing or communications and leave the teaching field to the
people who find knowledge valuable.

 If we as a society are too tired or bored or stupid to get educated,
starting with our teachers, if we are too lazy to take back education,
then we are one step closer to an Orwellian state when justice means
coercion, love means torture and education means ignorance.

 For the sake of brevity, Alexandre will often be referred to  as "AG"  .
 which is not the millennium because our calendar should properly begin with the birth
of Socrates,  a well documented philosopher, rather than Christ, a largely legendary one.
 Someone must have remarked at some point in the last 4 centuries, that the irresistible
appeal of Paris lies in the fact that, block by block, it is the most 'user friendly' city on the
globe .

 An alternative, more fundamental,  formulation of set theory invented by AG
 There are many ÒcohomologiesÓ in modern mathematics. I am familiar with de Rham
cohomology , relating integration to topology. Barry Mazur, a first class  contemporary
mathematician, has stated that it  took him 10 years to understand etale cohomology.

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