Out of all my high school teachers, Mr. R., the young man who taught 9th grade history was the most memorable even though I was blessed with many, many great teachers. When I was in school, 9th grade history was generally a course in world geography with an overview of the relationship between ethnic groups and the political boundaries that defined the countries they lived in. There was much emphasis on maps. This course was a precursor to more intense study of American and World History courses to come.

Long before I entered 9th grade in 1962, I was always enamored with maps and globes having a well-worn world atlas and a box filled with “National Geographic” maps from the earliest days of publication. I would spend hours twirling my globe with closed eyes, point a finger on a spot when it stopped, and if it wasn’t in the middle of an ocean, I would look up the country I landed on in the set of Collier’s Encyclopedia my mother had bought on time from a door-to-door salesman.

Mr. R., my 9th grade history teacher, brought all of my curiosity to life as we learned countries and capitols, cities and regions. My favorite assignment in class was the actual construction of maps. A girlfriend and I picked Africa and we set to work drawing the map on two gigantic pieces of poster board my mother bought. One Sunday afternoon, our heads were bent over the dining room table working furiously with crayons and colored pencils (years before markers) when there was a knock on our front door. It was Mr. R., who lived down the street, stopping by to give us some “atta-girls” for our hard work. His short inspirational visit that a teacher would do this just about blew our minds! He was a really nice man who genuinely cared for his students.

Mr. R. and his wife rented an apartment in a farm house that belonged to an acquaintance of my dad. Also a renter in that house was a girl in my class whose mother was reputed to be a prostitute. My dad told me that “something happened” there that caused Mr. R. and his wife to go their separate ways and the woman and her daughter to be evicted. Apparently, the landlord, who I remember as a scary, deeply religious zealot, contacted the school complaining about a person of such questionable character who was teaching children and I suspect Mr. R. was not invited back. I never learned all the details of the story but I remember feeling broken-hearted that this wonderful man was gone. The worst part of this news was that I had placed my much admired teacher on a pedestal because he really turned me on to studying and learning something I loved. That he was human too and had the capacity to make mistakes was to me the cause of much distress.

Many years later, I remember Mr. R. with much fondness for the gift of enthusiasm for learning he imparted on his students. I hope he went on to teach many other young minds.

"Easy Virtue" is, to most Americans, an obscure post-WW I British farce based on the Noel Coward play by the same name. IMDB summarizes the plot: "A young Englishman marries a glamorous American. When he brings her home to meet the parents, she arrives like a blast from the future - blowing their entrenched British stuffiness out the window." Jessica Biel, Collin Firth, Ben Barnes and Kristin Scott Thomas round out the cast of the movie as well as provide credible voices to the CD. Who knew?

Equal to the hilarity that ensues throughout this fun film that takes place on a one of those huge country estates in Britain that is on the verge of ruin, the musical score takes center stage. Songs written by Noel Coward and Cole Porter harken back to both the boozy mania and the rebirth of romantic yearnings of war-weary young Brits. The "Easy Virtue Orchestra" perfectly captures the razz-ma-tazz energy of the Jazz Age.

This is one of the few films that I equally enjoy watching and listening to the CD again. Both are regulars on my "rainy Sunday afternoon movies and music" list.

Maneki Neko (Lucky Cat)

For the most part I am a pragmatist, a believer in cause and effect, the rational. For example, there is no “luck” or fate in slot machines. If you put money in and you win, it is a random electronic event. Las Vegas is built on the ideas of “luck” and “risk.” How much are you willing to risk to get lucky? Is surviving Russian Roulette with a gun to your head a matter of luck…or chance? Or both?

The Japanese people are great believers in luck. Maneki Neko, or the ubiquitous “lucky cat” that is symbolic of bringing prosperity and happiness, graces many homes and businesses. On September 28, PBS aired a documentary on the Tsunami that struck northern Japan that highlighted the amazing survival of several people caught up in the natural disaster. A young woman and her elderly mother who did not evacuate clung to the very top of the roof of their home as the water rose and overtook everything except for the small spot they were clinging to. In violent, churning receding water, a man and his car got swept up into the torrent of dangerous debris heading back to the sea. The man got on top of the car as it hurtled toward a bridge, the last barrier before everything could be swept out to sea or piled up and crushed. Another man was standing on the bridge saw him and screamed for the other to jump onto the bridge. He did and made it. Is this luck? Chance? Fate? A good choice? An instinct to survive? I am certain that the mother and daughter who survived the roiling waters of the sea and the man who jumped to the bridge all feel extremely “lucky” to be alive.

I have known people for whom nothing goes right for years at a time. Many times their lack of “luck” is the consequence of making bad choices. But, for others, it seems to go beyond whatever conscious good or bad decisions they make, the proverbial notion of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. A near destitute friend purchased her first new car after having been stranded over and over by her old one. Right from the start, the car was a lemon, and continued to break down until, finally, after a year, it was replaced under the state’s “lemon law.” During yet another year of having unreliable transportation, she lost her job over this. If she had picked the identical little silver car next to the one she bought, would the same thing have happened. Why did this misfortune happen to her? Books have been written about when “bad things happen to good people.”

I have to admit there are times in my life where I have felt “luck” was on my side. A near-miss car accident….or ten…or a hundred. A surgery to remove a non-cancerous tumor that had an 80% chance of being malignant, and if it had been, the additional removal of the surrounding area would have caused major disfiguration. Conversely, there have been those times when I have felt that “luck” was not on my side. I think we all have similar experiences but, like me, don’t spend an inordinate amount of time analyzing them.

So is it luck, serendipity or coincidence? In the shifting sands of our lives, sometimes I feel that even hard-core pragmatists are compelled to assign meaning to experiences that upon quick reflection defy explanation.