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David Mitchell

Imagine that! 

We got ousrselves through one whole day without even mentioning Tucker, or Don.

But the sun still came up in the East this morning.

Life is good.

(Gotta love this irony - they have both hired the same "entertainment attorney")

David Mitchell

Another icon of our youth passes.

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Quote from today.... "It's a myth that Joe Biden is actually running for President. He's not. It's just the managerial class using Joe Biden as a front to advance its own agenda. To them Biden's cognitive impairment isn't a bug. It's a feature. The Administrative state more effectively controls its puppets when they are hollowed-out husks of themselves. The fact that it's elder abuse is just a cost of doing business for Biden's handlers."

Exactly why the Biden annoucement was released via video in the dead of the night. He can't be trusted to get through a live announcement and take questions without disastrous encounters. He won't be allowed to debate for the same reason. Everything those running this administration are doing is for the purposeful "fundamental transformation" of our Constitutional Republic form of governing toward a One World Government. This "transformation" is happening all around the globe.

Mark Schweickart

Some musings from comedian Steven Wright:

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back.
99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand.
I almost had a psychic girlfriend.... but she left me before we met.
If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?
OK, so what's the speed of dark?
How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?
Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
I intend to live forever ... So far, so good.
What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

John Jackson

OK, Mark, since you asked for details about what I do...

The  first ten years I was out of school, I worked at Bell Labs and got familiar with (but did not invent) a piece of optical technology that can be used to measure refractive index and thickness of very thin films (like the ones that are used in computer chips and many other high technology devices).  Bell Labs had no interest in commercializing the technology so I left (on good terms) and started my company which has now sold more than 1200 measuring instruments to technology companies and universities in 45 countries.  But, to keep this real, my company is small (with a single product) and it serves a niche market.

I’ll leave it at that – that’s my elevator speech and whenever I try to provide any more details, technical or otherwise, I find my listeners’ eyes start to glaze over very quickly.

But I will relate a story involving both Bell Labs and the Big Bang theory:

During my time at Bell Labs I worked on a couple of different projects and one of them involved developing computerized vision systems (which were really in their infancy at the time).  I’d like to say I did pioneering work in that field but I did not.  However, at one point I visited a guy at another Bell Labs location in Holmdel whose sole job it was to take large (18” x 18”) photographic plates (made by large astronomical telescopes) of galaxies and nebulae, digitize them and then use computerized techniques to make the images sharper to provide more detail.  The visit wasn’t that helpful to me because my work was much more mundane and practical, but at one point my host said “Would you like to go and see the radio-telescope that Arno Penzias used to win his Nobel Prize”?

The physicists who proposed the Big Bang theory had predicted that there should be faint cosmic microwave background radiation with a very precise frequency  that seemed to emanate from every direction in the universe.  And Penzias, a Bell Labs physicist, using a large radio-telescope he designed in the late 1960’s, was the first person to observe and measure this radiation, which has been called “the echo of the Big Bang”.  The radiation Penzias detected (at exactly the frequency predicted and emanating from every direction in the universe), though searched for, had gone undetected for more than 30 years.  It was by far the strongest evidence that had come along since the Big Bang theory was proposed in the 1930’s and is considered to be more or less the final empirical proof of the theory.  He and his Bell Labs collaborator Robert Wilson received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.

To get back to my visit, I did visit the radio telescope that day and, as luck would have it, Penzias was there showing visitors around.  I got to briefly shake his hand and spend a few short seconds in his presence – my 15 seconds of fame.           

Joseph D. McCarthy

John

Wasn't there a company located on Ackerman Road (between Kenny and Olentangy) that sold machinery that scanned material (mostly metal) to determine if it matched specifations for thickness?  I think it was named something like Industrial Nucleonics.

Even though I am not inclined scientifically; I think what you have done is impressive.

Joe

Michael McLeod

That's absolutely cool, John - your brush with greatness. It's just nice to have a memory like that. Feels like an honor, one you never forget.

My fan-boy brushes and crushes are more in the pop culture realm. I once interviewed Muhammed Ali on the set of a made-for-tv movie he had a bit part in; I shook hands with Bruce Springsteen after a concert in Mobile Alabama - right after my wife at the time gave him a big kiss - and years ago I was among a group of film reviewers who interviewed Paul McCartney, who was plugging an animated film he was involved in, at the old Park Plaza Hotel in NYC. 

Forgive me if I've mentioned any of that before. Just makes me smile to have those memories. 

David Mitchell

Joe,

John's little device is impressive.

He visited Mary and I at our apartment in the Univesrity of Denver Married Student housing project many, many, years ago. I beleive he was there on business and be had one of his little devices with him.

He set these two small metal boxes on the table and proceeded to demonstrate it to us. One contained a tiny laser beam and a tweezer-like pincer that held a single micro-chip, and turned it slowly as it bounced the laser beam off the cjip and into some sort of light reading thing-a-majig. And then the second litle metal box spits out this metalic tape with numbers printed on it (like an adding machine tape only made of foil, not paper). Those readigns were multi-digit numbers that told something about the thickness of the layer of silicone on the micro-chip. 

You know, kind of like the sort of thing the rest of us would sit around and invent in our spare time. 

And if memory serves me, he told us his only competitior sold a similar machine that sold for $40,000 apiece, while John's sold for $19,000 and was more accurate. I think it has sold many times over, all over the world.

Now wouldn't you think, that having walked John home (on the way up Schreyer Place to Tom Litzinger's house every single day from about 4th or 5th grade till high school, I would have received some tiny royalty for my good counsel and guidance?

Michael Boulware

As a part time job, I cut fairways at Rolling Meadows Golf Course in Marysville, Ohio. At times, we have political discussions. One of my friends is a right wing, Fox News viewing, ultra conservative, retired highway patrolman. He told me I had Woke views. I said thanks and the typical response from someone raised in the 50's and 60's, "Yo Mama". He had never heard that term before. I gave him the example: "You were such an ugly baby, the doctor slapped Yo Mama instead of you at birth." This member of the Woke society wants to know who remembers any of the YO MAMA jokes? 

Michael Boulware

Dve Mitchell,

Sue and I purchased the Litzinger home on East Schreyer place and lived there when our twins were born. I taught and coached football at Watterson durig that time. The Watterson nuns used to babysit for us during the Watterson football games so Sue could get a break. During that time, Sue worked full time as a teacher in Groveport, tended to three kids under 5 years old, never missed Mass, kept a clean house, and always had a great attitude. How she did all that is beyond me.

Tom used to come over and shoot baskets on the hoop he put up on our garage and reminisce. 

John Jackson

Joe, your memory of Industrial Nucleonics is correct.  Their equipment measured thickness of products  manufactured in continuous sheets or rolls and worked by measuring how much these products absorbed radiation that passed through them (the thicker the material, the more the radiation was absorbed).  My instrument uses laser light and a different physical principle to allow measurement of much thinner materials.  But its most important feature is it also measures refractive index very accurately - I sense eyes glazing over so I’ll stop…

And, Dave, I’ve been meaning for some time to reimburse you for those very valuable  grade school consulting services – look for a check in your mailbox very soon.

John Jackson

Mike, I’m terrible at remembering jokes but I grew up at 160 East Schreyer Place and remember well the Litzinger house in the next block up.   I spent many an hour there whiling away the time with Tom, shooting baskets and doing what grade school kids do.

And here’s another Schreyer Place connection involving the Class of ’66.  I attended kindergarten at Peter Pan Playhouse (at the foot of Schreyer Place and High St.) for two years - not exactly sure why two years other than my mother probably just needed a break.  If memory serves me correctly our very own Janie Albright Blank also attended for one of the years, although we don’t remember each other (ships passing in the night).  Janie, am I right on this or do I need to amp up my mental clarity by doubling my Prevagen and Balance of Nature dosages?

David Mitchell

Mike B.

I was not aware of your purchase of Tom's old house. 

But you are lucky it even had the garage still standing. As I posted before (a couple of years ago), Tom and I were having fun with matches (both of us in the early stages of pyromania) and piled up a bunch of dead leaves behind the corner of the garage, and lit them on fire. The neighbor saw us and yelled for Kay (Tom's mom) to come out and stop us. It hadn't gotten to be a big fire yet and the garge was saved. 

We were 5 at the time.

p.s. I spell it with an "a" (tsk, tsk)

---------------

John,

Finally!

David Mitchell

Mike M.

Speaking of brushes with the rich and famous, I once rode the elevator at work (in Denver) with Woody Allen. He was in Denver, filming "Sleeper"and they used a bunch of weird looking, futuristic buidings in Denver and Boulder for the backdrop.

Years ago, while on a vacation in Pueto Vallarta, my wife and I kept seeing an intersting threesome sitting near us on the breakfast patio each morning. The place was pretty shishi and we had our own cliff side pool for our suite. I realized later that the actor was a British guy I had seen years before in "The Battle of Britian", and his name was Ian McShane (Deadwood). The couple he was sitting with was actor and director Sidney Pollack and his wife. Pollock directed a few of our favorite films - "The Way We Were", "Three Days of the Condor", "Out of Africa", "Tootsie", and others.

And of course my earlier story about Steve Hodges and I riding the elevaotor at the Disney Hotel in Anaheim with Michael Jackson - whom Steve did not recognize.  

David Mitchell

Mike B.

How could we forget the term "Yo Mama"?

Michael McLeod

Maybe I am splitting hairs here and maybe I'm just unaccustomed to Dave's badass personality and street-punk accent but I didn't think it was "YO mama."

I thought it was "YOUR mama."

However you say it, it's smartass shorthand, amiright?  -- an implied insult of your mother that leaves it up to your imagination to wonder if the sentence, had it been completed, would run something like this:

"Your mama is so stupid she once got hit by a parked car."

Feel free to offer your own examples now that finally this forum has something important to mull over.

Joseph Gentilini

Boy, I am loving all of these recent messages about John's business (too complicated for me to understand), but I am really impressed!!  Nice job, John. 

I have no wonderful stories about meeting anyone important, although I was on an elevator in NYC when Nelson Rockerfeller (sp?) was in the same elevator.  I was too intimidated to say anything.  The Franciscan priest, Father Mychal Judge, was the chaplain for the NYC Fired Department and was listed as the first person to die at 911, praying at the Twin Towers.  He had come to Columbus to conduct a funeral for a man who had died of AIDS and who lived in NYC but his family was in Columbus.  He conducted the funeral because a Catholic priest refused to do it because Steve died of AIDS - so much for Christian Charity!!  Anyway, I was able to talk to him and we had a good conversation - he knew another man I knew - and he invited me to comve over for coffee the next time I was in NYC.  Leo and I went to the city once, but that morning the poor box at the Franciscan Church had been robbed and Father Mychal was unable to visit.  Anyway, I guess that may count as someone important.  I have always thought of Father Mychal as being a saint and there is a DVD about his life called "The Saint of 911".  

Does anyone know what happened to Tom L?  I saw him once in a gym and then never again.

Joe

Michael McLeod

Joe. That's a touching story. I keep forgetting that we lived through predjudicial times before and we're obviously living through them again. I keep telling myself enlightenment comes in waves but so does the backlash against it. I'd say it's like reliving a nightmare but since I'm woke that would be mixing metaphors.

Mary Ann Nolan (Thomas)

John Jackson, I worked with AT&T and then Lucent Technologies in National accounts and would often take  our customers to Denver to the Labs there. I remember one time we had a customer and his consultant out there and we were taken up to see and hear one of the first voice over IP calls ! Needless to say everyone was clapping and cheering and the customer was of course sold! 

Sorry to interrupt the boys club😵‍💫😳😆

,

David Mitchell

Joe,

My life-long buddy, Tom Litzinger died a few years ago now, from complications of several conditions - according to young Doctor Thomas Lizinger, his (rather famous) son. We made mention of Tom's passing here on the Forum at the time. 

I think it is long enough ago to openly explain what he shared of his main health issue - a very serious case of manic depression. Back around 1984 or so, I bought him a plane ticket to visit us in Denver.  He had been seperated (or divorced by then) from Mary (the other Mary Margaret Clark - Watterson '67) and was giving up the real estate business he inherited from his mother.

After a few days with my wife and kids (including a Bronco game) we headed out for about a 4 day treck into the mountains - Steamboat, then down to Aspen, and on down to Tellurid to visit my other best friend, another Tom from a farm near Circleville, Ohio -  then a new real estate broker in Telluride (a job I had talked him into where I began my real estate career). While driving, Tom and I talked and talked and talked.

Tom got very open with me and gave me a first-hand detailed account of his condition. It was both eye-opening, and frightening. But we had some wonderful shared hours as we drove. We got back home a day before his flight, then I drove him out to old Stapleton Airport and waited with him in the terminal. I started saying something about how great the week had been and he gave me a response that caught me completely by surpprise and scared me to death. He said "Yeah, maybe too good." I asked him what he meant and he said, "I was having such a good time I decided not to take my medicine" (Lithium).

He had explained to me the irony the condition - that one goes through these great emotional "swings" (his word) of up and then down, and that lithium helped to even that out. But the problem was that when you were on an "up", you didn't feel like you needed the medicine so you skip taking it, and in a few days without it, you drop into these horrible lows that bring about terrible behaviors - including violence.

About two days later, my dad called. He asked "Have you talked to your buddy Tom since he came home?" 

I said "No, why?"

Dad said, "Well, I just was with him at the hospital and he's in pretty bad shape".

Tom had  gone through a nightmare "low swing", tearing up an old house he was renovating down on campus, including throwing his bicycle out of a second story window where it landed on a cop walking by. Tom had also done some serious personal injury - thus the reason for the emergency room visit. I was dumbstruck! And felt a horrible sense of guilt.

There is a lot more that happend in the following years that I will spare you - some of it involving his good buddies Steve Royer, Steve Polis, Kevin Ryan, and others. Through it all he still always had one "gaurdian angel", his youngest brother Danny, who was there to "resue" him (take him to a hospital) on numerous occasions. 

After moving back to Columbus, I had several more frighttening episodes with him that drove us apart - at his request!  I moved to So. Carolina and had no contact for years. But when I came up for the 50th (a magic night for most of us). On teh following day (Sunday) Keith Groff and I drove over to visit him at his apartment in that housing and care facility on Old Henderson road. The three of us had about an hour together and it was simply wonderful!  We reminisced, we teased each other, and we laughed. When Keith and I got back in Keith's car, I could not hold back the tears.

On my next visti (maybe that 70th Birtday party at Janie's condo?) I had arranged with young doctor Thomas to go to dinner with his dad and Keith - a perfect foursome. But a day or two before that night, young Thomas called to say his dad was not feeling good enough to go out, so we cancelled. 

I beleive Tom died shorty therafter, and I was devastated!

Young Thomas called soon after to explain that his dad suffered from three related conditions - all stemming from the depression.

Since about age 4, peeking back and forth at one another between the pews in our old OLP quonset hut church, I never knew a more likable guy. 

David Mitchell

No Mary Ann,

More female voices ....pleeease!

Janie Albright (Blank)

John, your memory about Peter Pan is accurate but you left out that Colleen also went there! 

Joseph Gentilini

To Michael Mc - yes, I am afraid prejudice still has a hold on many people, but this refusal for a Catholic Mass because Steve died of AIDS happened in the 90s (as I remember).  Hopefully, that will not happen again but since this man had a partner, I suppose some priests would consider them major sinners and so refuse the Mass.  So much for God's mercy - the priest did not offer this!

To David M - thanks for filling in the details on what happened to Tom L.  I had heard he suffered from depression, but I did not know the extent of it.  For the BP type of depression, Lithium is recommended and usually works as long as the person stays on that medication.  As a counselor, I had some clients with the BP depression and they were fine as long as they took their medication.  Many stopped exactly for the reason you gave: when they were 'up' they did not feel the need for the Lithium and stopped.  Once it was out of their system, however, the lows came and some could not deal with it.  I had two client who committed suicide because they could not handle the effects of their depression. Very sad.  May Tom rest in the peace of God where all his issues are resolved.  Pray for him.

David Mitchell

Joe,

Thanks for adding your comments about Tom Litzinger.

I almost closed my post with an inviation for you to comment, based on your proffesional experience, which I gather from your book is quite extesnsive.

An interesting story about Tom and I was about his father-in-law - the very popular and well liked life insurance general agent Denny Clark. While I was contemplating moving back to Columbus, Tom called me and put me on a group call with he and Denny Clark.

Mr. Clark proceeded to offer to buy either the northern Ohio, or southern Ohio regional franchise for REMAX (then a new company originated in Denver) for Tom and I to own and operate. About a year earlier, I had completed a week long Realtor continuing ed. course, sitting next to a guy named Dave Liniger. Liniger was a total jerk and I thought this new company, with a new commission concept he talked about, would never get off the ground. I said "No" to Tom and Mr. Clark - that I wanted nothing to do with Liniger or this crazy REMAX idea. The rest is history.

One last interesting note to add;  

During his mid-life, I believe Tom went through nursing school (correct me if I am mistaken on this) and became the night nurse at the homeless shelter on the near west side. Seeing him there at the desk in his grey pony tail and that dismal faciity left quite an impression on me as I was leaving Columbus. He had bought an old house near there in the "bottoms" and made me promise not to give his address or phone number to any of our old circle of close buddies.

Tom deserved a better life.

Just found this - our last visit on Henderson Road - day after our 50th

David Mitchell

I remember when Tom was the Duke of Earl

Time to move on to happier thoughts