SPHS Class of 1960 – Conversations

Hi everyone…just had another thought. (Paul Simon, my hero, wrote a pertinent song…”think too much.”)

Read a nice essay in the NY Times Book Review..check it out HERE.

The main thrust is that even if we forget most of the detail of what we read, we are made different in some way because of the reading..even if we didn’t learn what we wanted to…for instance high school textbooks, we retain stuff that makes a difference.

I apply the theory to people we’ve met that fade in memory, or have, at least, dropped deep enough in memory to avoid easy recall. I think we’re changed..altered…made better, hopefully, by everyone we have known. I’ve been beating myself up for what seems to me to be a woefully inadequate recall of some people I’ve known…now perhaps I can ease up on myself. Perhaps we’ll all grant each other and ourselves a period in which we can, with some grace, recall…reacquaint…reconnect..with each other.

Let’s “reunite.”

Pete Temko

Hi classmates! Is anyone out there? Anyone want to comment on anything class related? Memories, reunion commentary, philosophies about what the implications of an actual 50th (!!!!!!!!!) reunion are?

I, for one, have been in pure and radiant denial about what this is about, but a switch of a sort clicked in my mind the other day. A half-century out of high school has so many layered meanings. For some reason the approach of this reunion has kind of made what followed high school directly seem to have passed quickly and without much attention. I’ve never been tempted to attend a college class reunion, though many have, I know. In many ways, my college years shaped who I am more directly. Still…as we approach November I seem to take college for granted, while high school looms larger..at least for the time being. Maybe because I took my higher education in fits and starts. Our high school years, for most of us, were compact and highly integrated. We splintered and scattered after that…and the re-gathering is significant..and to me seems larger than relationships with specific people we knew in high school. There’s a latent affection for everyone from SPHS that is brought out by the reunion. Its amazing how that community that we formed without intention lingers in our hearts.

I’m hoping that along with the lavish setting to which we’re invited there is a lot of focus on a group that’s larger than any of us…I’ll look forward to talking with everyone, especially, perhaps, the ones that my feeble memory has buried in the rubbish heap of burnt synapses at the back of my head somewhere.

Anyone else with thoughts…hopefully better expressed than these!

Visit the website often…new pictures are being put up in our Then and Now…we have over 50 of those sometimes amusing pairings now…check in the various slide shows as well…new candid pictures of our classmates are going up all the time.

Pete Temko