Palo Alto High School

Snow

2009-10-07T19:05:12-04:00

I think it was Feb 5 1976. There was about 3" of snow on the ground in the morning, and patches lasted until early afternoon. I greeted my bus driver with a big, wet snowball that exploded across his big flat windshield as he pulled up to my stop. He said, "Don't ever do that again!" Needless to say, I didn't.

Sharing Photos etc

2009-10-04T15:11:19-04:00

I saw several cameras at the reunion. How can we encourage and enable ad hoc photographers to share their pics? Many collections will be too big for this site's 800k upload file-size limit, so posting URLs to servers elsewhere is probably the best way to grant initial access.

I have a server with loads of space and unused bandwidth, so if you need it, I can collect albums together into one package and create a torrent or something to distribute it. Then this site would need only to provide the torrent file, a tiny thing by comparison.

I am also interested in distributing that nostalgic video presented during the reunion. It would be an ideal candidate for bit-torrent.

Let me know what I can do to help :)

RE: Commencement Program 4

2009-10-03T18:04:36-04:00

Images of commencement program per request from Dan Baum (awards)

RE: Commencement Program 3

2009-10-03T18:04:05-04:00

Images of commencement program per request from Dan Baum (our names)

RE: Commencement Program 2

2009-10-03T18:03:31-04:00

Images of commencement program per request from Dan Baum (schedule)

Commencement Program 1

2009-10-03T18:02:09-04:00

Images of commencement program per request from Dan Baum (cover)

Note to Past Self?

2009-10-02T13:23:50-04:00

If you had a chance to send advice to your past self (and if the courier wouldn't relay investment tips), what would you say? What one - three things do you know now that you wish you knew in high school and/or immediately after? What would (or do) you tell nieces and nephews whom you see infrequently? (I've long been an uncle, never parent, so that's my perspective).

Academically, I wish I had known that between high school and college, education would change from pushing to pulling. High school forced me to attend, and it pushed information on a mostly passive, captive audience. College was a voluntary audience, and professors didn't waste time and energy on students who weren't pulling additional knowledge out of them. I think I was in my third or fourth year at Cal before somebody told me that profs' office hours weren't for remedial study but for the students who wanted the most for their money (or the tax-payers' money as the case may be).

Personally, I wish I had known about non-verbal communication and the fact that I don't pick up on it as well as most people (not even as well as a typical man, who is handicapped compared to a typical woman). I am still almost completely blind to posture signals, and I used to be all but blind blind to any but the most forceful inflections and faces. Consequently, I never knew what people were feeling unless they told me. I also believed the words coming out of their mouths even when they expected me to "pick up on hints" that they were "just being polite" and wanted me to modify my nehavior. I lost count of the number of women I angered in my 20s because they kept using "maybe some other time" to turn down my advances. Little did they know, but that phrase quite encouraging compared to most other responses I received in that time period.

I also wish I had grasped a few things about political philosophy that flew over my head in history class... not specific policies, but serious implications of principles like citizen sovereignty (i.e. what are the corollaries of government deriving its authority from citizens?). I still desire lofty goals such as social mobility, but I favor much more subtle government involvement (less brute force), if any, to achieve them. In the interest of avoiding divisive hot topics, I won't elaborate.on specific policies here. Contact me privately (or talk to me) if you're a curious citizen-philosopher.

Crushes?

2009-10-01T16:08:39-04:00

The forums look empty, so I'm throwing a rock into this pond to see if it makes a splash...

1) Is 30 years the time to reveal any unresolved secret crushes that we were too timid to act upon back in the day?

2) Have you previously confessed and resolved all those you had?

3) How do you feel now about those who fascinated you 30+ years ago?

4) If someone had a crush on you back in high school or junior high (and is long over it), would you be pleased to learn about it now?

I think that 30 years is enough distance that we can now view with curiosity those emotional tempests that wound us up when we were younger.

I think that I have admited mine at previous reunion times, but I didn't elaborate, so I don't know what those ladies understood. At least I achieved a rapport with each, so I felt closure.

I now feel a gentle nostalgia toward the memories of girls who at various times could derail my train of thought just by walking into a room, so I am looking forward to seeing one or two of them again this week. However, infatuation itself is only a memory, probably an early casualty of age (or is it maturity?). I haven't felt a pang of longing toward anyone (present or past) in maybe 15 years.

In the highly unlikely event that any girl had a crush on me back in school, I'd be very happy to know about it now (assuming that the fascination has followed a similar trajectory into nostalgia). I offer a heartfelt hug to any female classmate who's been waiting 30+ years for it and can now find the courage to ask.