Stories from my life.
From Huben's Wiki
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==My mother, Joanne== | ==My mother, Joanne== | ||
My mother joked that she was a little disappointed that I didn't ask her to walk me to my Harvard extension school courses, holding my hand as she did in Kindergarten. I responded: "Children grow up so quickly nowadays." It tickled her just right, and she roared with laughter. I love when I can play along with and top a jest. | My mother joked that she was a little disappointed that I didn't ask her to walk me to my Harvard extension school courses, holding my hand as she did in Kindergarten. I responded: "Children grow up so quickly nowadays." It tickled her just right, and she roared with laughter. I love when I can play along with and top a jest. | ||
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| + | ==Cornell== | ||
| + | I joined Triangle Fraternity my freshman year. As a pledge, there was expected to be some humorous harassment from the older brothers, and we in turn were expected to pull some pranks. It was a small house, with about 28 members, and everybody put their schedules on their doors. One day I looked at all the schedules, and realized there was a time when EVERYBODY was out of the house. So, armed with my trusty Swiss Army knife, a bag, and some tape for labeling, I removed every doorknob in the house and closed all the doors. As I was walking up the hill with the bag, I said hi to some of the brothers and walked back to my freshman dorm. After a few hours, they realized who must have done it and phoned me to come replace the knobs. A few funny consequences. Our house had the backup transmitter for the campus radio. The main transmitter went down, and they weren't able to get in to the backup. Since the brothers were pissed at the radio guys, this worked out okay. They also tried to punish me the traditional way, by throwing me into the shower. The first time, I simply shut off the water as they threw me in. The second time, I aimed the shower head out at them as they threw me in. The third time, I wrapped the shower head with the shower curtain. The fourth time, they barricaded me in the shower stall with the door to the bathroom. As I was climbing out the top, they flushed me back down with a bucket of water. At various times, I went out pretty much every window that was ground level or had a fire escape, in attempts to evade the shower. | ||
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| + | I had a friend from my home town, Norman, who was a math-CS major: so we called him Nor-Man. One day I went to visit him, and he wasn't in. It occurred to me that the locks on the doors were very old and would be easy to card. So I went in to pull a prank. I knotted a couple of sheets together, tied them to the radiator, and hung them out his 3rd floor window. They only reached down about 5 feet. The I wrote a note: "Dear Norman, I knocked and you didn't answer, so I came in the window. You weren't here, I guess. See you later." When I returned, he was totally confused because how could I have put the sheet in the window from the ground and it wasn't long enough anyway! So I explained to him and his neighbors how easy it was to card the door. The next day when he returned from classes, his neighbors had turned everything in his room upside down, even remounting his posters upside down. | ||
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| + | My first roommate, a guy named Brian, told me that I talked in my sleep. I asked him what I said. He replied "I don't know. I could only make out one word, and it worries me." "What word was that?" "Toxin," he replied. | ||
==First trip to Ecuador, 1987-8== | ==First trip to Ecuador, 1987-8== | ||
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The soda boats don’t seem to be operating now either. They were 40 foot long dugouts that would carry Coca Cola between major cities on the Rio Napo. You had to bring a cushion, because sitting on the cases of bottles could cost you your virginity (not to mention being very uncomfortable.) At one stop, a very young indigenous child was crying. His older brother grabbed his mother’s breast and squirted his little brother. :-) | The soda boats don’t seem to be operating now either. They were 40 foot long dugouts that would carry Coca Cola between major cities on the Rio Napo. You had to bring a cushion, because sitting on the cases of bottles could cost you your virginity (not to mention being very uncomfortable.) At one stop, a very young indigenous child was crying. His older brother grabbed his mother’s breast and squirted his little brother. :-) | ||
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| + | Ecuador felt quite safe to me, but there were three incidents that were risky. | ||
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| + | * I used to go in to Onore's lab at U. Catolica where he had given me a cubicle to work in. One day I came in quite early, before anybody else, and saw a small box in the middle of the lab floor with a larger box on top of it. I wondered what was in it and why it was arranged that way in the middle of the floor, but as I'm moderately polite, I left it alone. A little while later a very agitated fellow came in: "Where's professor Onore!" I told him that Onore didn't usually come in until 9:30, and asked if I could help him. He said that he'd had a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bothrops_atrox fer-de-lance (Bothrops atrox)], one of the most poisonous snakes in Latin America, in a basket, but that it had gotten out. Fortunately, he had gotten it into the little box, and he needed Onore's help to get it into something safer. Now, I'd had a moderate amount of snake experience, and had never been bitten when catching dozens of snakes, and I had actually brought snake bags with me that I had in the office. But I had only been in Ecuador for 3 weeks when I wanted to stay for a year. If I got bitten, I didn't speak the language well, it was too early for anything to be open, I had no clue where the hospital was and they likely would not have antivenom either. So we waited until Onore arrived. He got out a snake stick and we put it into one of my bags, and everybody was safe and happy. | ||
| + | * I was traveling on a field trip with some researchers, and we stopped in the southern mountains at one of the military check points to show our documents. Ecuador was still at war with Peru (since the 1940s), and so they checked everything. As I was wandering around to stretch my legs, I noticed that they had a mascot: a mountain lion! It was on a wire, pacing back and forth. I saw one of the soldiers walk by and pat the puma! I thought: "Oh, Shit, I gotta pat the mountain lion too!" So I positioned myself where it would pace past me, and as it passed I stroked its back. Yes! Then it turned around, wrapped its paws around my leg and its jaws around my knee: it could easily have crippled me. But I haev long experience with house cats, and I recognized that it was playing. The first rule when cats are playing with you is DON'T PLAY BACK! They will only play harder. So I relaxed, saying "ow" in a low voice and waited. I knew the soldiers wouldn't help: they'd shoot me before they shot their kitty. After a few seconds, the cat let go, and walked away. I made my escape with only some indentations in the skin around my knee. | ||
| + | * I travelled with a pair of Danish botanists down the Rio Napo to their study site on the opposite side of the river from Anangu. They were glad to have me along because they thought my Spanish was better than theirs. In order to go that far down the river, we had to get a permit from the Military, so I made an appointment with the local commander. He invited us in, and then grilled us as if we were CIA! Finally, he signed off, and we took a speedboat the half hour down river to an abandoned oil camp where we set up our tents inside a crumbling building. We hadn't been there a half hour, when he flies in in a helicopter with machine-gun armed soldiers hanging out the doors. Truly a brown pants moment! I wondered if we should try to hide or if we should just stand around and innocently wave. Considering that these soldiers are trained to track people in the jungle, we waved. When he landed, he said he was just checking that we had arrived safely, and the soldiers were very friendly, showing us their favorite survival techniques such as tapping the giant bamboo for drinking water. Then they flew off. I think he was just bored and wanted a joyride on the helicopter. | ||
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==Harvard Stories== | ==Harvard Stories== | ||
I hung out at Harvard, predominantly at the Museum of Comparative Zoology Entomology Department, hanging out with a number of famous entomologists including Stefan Cover, Lynn Kimsey, Scott Shaw, Al Newton, Margaret Thayer, Jim Carpenter, and numerous others. I spent a lot of time working in E. O. Wilson's ant collection room on my [[Evaniidae]]. | I hung out at Harvard, predominantly at the Museum of Comparative Zoology Entomology Department, hanging out with a number of famous entomologists including Stefan Cover, Lynn Kimsey, Scott Shaw, Al Newton, Margaret Thayer, Jim Carpenter, and numerous others. I spent a lot of time working in E. O. Wilson's ant collection room on my [[Evaniidae]]. | ||
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Lou Roth was the foremost authority on cockroaches in the world. He was best known for his enormous book, The Biotic Associations of Cockroaches. Most of his life he worked in a lab for the US government, but I knew him after his retirement when he was a Harvard Museum Associate and worked daily in an office there. We talked a lot because he was very approachable and because I study Evaniidae, which are parasites of cockroach egg cases. | Lou Roth was the foremost authority on cockroaches in the world. He was best known for his enormous book, The Biotic Associations of Cockroaches. Most of his life he worked in a lab for the US government, but I knew him after his retirement when he was a Harvard Museum Associate and worked daily in an office there. We talked a lot because he was very approachable and because I study Evaniidae, which are parasites of cockroach egg cases. | ||
| − | One year, he had a ton of species to name in a paper, so he named one after each person he knew at the museum, including me. Now, all those species looked alike, so the type specimens were based on microscope slides of genitalia. So I teased him that when he died, they were going to make a slide of his genitalia. | + | One year, he had a ton of species to name in a paper, so he named one after each person he knew at the museum, including me. Now, all those species looked alike, so the type specimens were based on microscope slides of genitalia. Somewhere in the literature, there is a pornographic drawing of cockroach sexy bits with my name attached. So I teased him that when he died, they were going to make a slide of his genitalia. |
Another day, he told me he had published a genus named Eowilsonia, named after E. O. Wilson. Then he complained that while he had named genera after several people, nobody had yet named a genus after him. I don't remember if I promised him I would, but I named Rothevania for him shortly after his death. Quite appropriate: after all, they both make their living from cockroaches. | Another day, he told me he had published a genus named Eowilsonia, named after E. O. Wilson. Then he complained that while he had named genera after several people, nobody had yet named a genus after him. I don't remember if I promised him I would, but I named Rothevania for him shortly after his death. Quite appropriate: after all, they both make their living from cockroaches. | ||
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When I was in Ecuador in 1988, I found the Aikido dojo in Quito. I went there, and Mishi Lesser greeted me at the door in English. She asked me where I was from, and I said New York. She asked where in New York, and I said Long Island. She asked where on Long Island, and I said Plainview. She was from there too! We went to the same high school and had most of the same teachers, but she was 3 years ahead of me and so we had never met. She asked me if I knew [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshimitsu_Yamada Yamada sensei], and I said yes. She said "He's coming here in two months to give tests and a demonstration!" Small world! So for the next two months, I assisted in test preparation for the students (I was first kyu, had practiced for 7 years, and was well aware of the USAF test requirements.) When Yamada sensei came, we gave a demonstration that was on all three Ecuadorean television stations, with a live audience of about 3000. I had to be his uke that he threw around, because the Quito instructor was a small woman, and it wouldn't look good for him to throw around somebody much smaller than he was. During the freestyle demonstration, he told me to grab his hair, an attack I had never practiced in Aikido, so I grabbed enthusiastically. He did a cool sankyo technique and threw me. Afterwards, he said to me "You pulled my hair hard!" Oops! | When I was in Ecuador in 1988, I found the Aikido dojo in Quito. I went there, and Mishi Lesser greeted me at the door in English. She asked me where I was from, and I said New York. She asked where in New York, and I said Long Island. She asked where on Long Island, and I said Plainview. She was from there too! We went to the same high school and had most of the same teachers, but she was 3 years ahead of me and so we had never met. She asked me if I knew [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshimitsu_Yamada Yamada sensei], and I said yes. She said "He's coming here in two months to give tests and a demonstration!" Small world! So for the next two months, I assisted in test preparation for the students (I was first kyu, had practiced for 7 years, and was well aware of the USAF test requirements.) When Yamada sensei came, we gave a demonstration that was on all three Ecuadorean television stations, with a live audience of about 3000. I had to be his uke that he threw around, because the Quito instructor was a small woman, and it wouldn't look good for him to throw around somebody much smaller than he was. During the freestyle demonstration, he told me to grab his hair, an attack I had never practiced in Aikido, so I grabbed enthusiastically. He did a cool sankyo technique and threw me. Afterwards, he said to me "You pulled my hair hard!" Oops! | ||
| − | [[File:Kanai.jpeg|right]][https://www.studiorayyan.com Omar Rayyan], an artist | + | [[File:Kanai.jpeg|right]][https://www.studiorayyan.com Omar Rayyan], an artist and Aikidoist from Martha's Vinyard, made a splendid painting of Kanai Sensei throwing a demon on a bridge in irimi nage. He very kindly provided me with a copy. As I was heading to the framing shop with the picture, I walked past a restaurant and saw Kanai sensei and two other senseis eating there. I went in and said "Guess what I've got here." When I showed him the picture, he said: "Oh! That's me throwing you!" Those were the last words he ever said to me: he died the next weekend in Canada of heart failure. |
