Heidi Watts

Just ten years ago this month I sat in the audience  at  SUNY  Cortland and listened to my son, Richard, deliver the  Valedictorian's  address  to  6000 people.  I was  overwhelmed  with maternal pride,  heightened by my absolute  conviction  that  I  could  never  do  anything like that.   After all, I failed  Freshman  Speech  three  times  when  I  was  in  college  and  I  always get  collywobbles  every  time  I have  to  stand up in public. Asking a question in Town Meeting is a  rare  act  of  courage,  and  addressing  fifty entering P.D.. students · isn't easy. But learning from our children  -  and  our clients - - and our  experiences;  doing  things  we never  thought we could do - is what this talk is ab...

 It’s true that I was born and raised in the Boston area, but I hadn’t heard of Joan Baez when I returned to Boston in the fall of 1957 to get a master’s degree in education at Harvard and, subtext: (catch a husband).  I was returning from Tacoma, Washington where I had been teaching English at a select girls boarding school. A part of that story is on my blog with the title (“A Date with Vergil Peterson.”)  As soon as I got to Cambridge I found an apartment on Boylston street, just a few blocks from Harvard Yard and appeared on Sunday morning to become a regular with the Cambridge Quakers. Since volunteering is a good way to meet people and get drawn into an organization I volunteered to teach First Day School (Sunday school) - after all, I was supposed to know something about teaching and about adolescents. There was another newish member of The Society of Friends who also  volunteered. His name was Al Baez, a mathematics professor of Mexican descent, working at M....

“Tell me about quarantine and I will tell you mine.” I have been quarantined before. That first time a big red sign appeared on our front door which read QUARATINE in large black letters and was signed by the Board of Health. It said in effect, no one can enter here, and no one can leave. Our whole family was in lock down though not by that name. I had come home from first grade, age 5 (because my birthday was late in the year ) with a sore throat and a fever. My mother called the doctor (in 1936 doctors came to your house, as a matter of course). The doctor pronounced my sore throat,  “Scarlet Fever,” a potential killer for the old and the young, and an illness which often led to other infections in the ears, eyes, and respiratory system. Groceries were delivered just off the road at the entrance to a long walk which led up to our front door. I was allowed another big red sign to put above my bed. “Board” and “health” were among the first words I leaned to rea...