J.O.A.T are four first letters of a descriptive phrase, JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES. I am still embarrassed by the memory of having placed that title under the picture of a fellow faculty member at Robert Treat Junior High School.  I did not know how to label him remembering he was not a regular faculty member. He served in a variety of capacities, a nice guy and possibly a political appointee.

For some reason I was chosen to be the faculty advisor of the school

Yearbook.  In those days, a relatively competent typist like me could use a format provided by a company that did these things and I became the sole member of the staff of the Robert Treat Junior High School Yearbook.  I found it challenging and have ever since enjoyed writing for publication and for a need to express my opinions about almost everything.  This evolved into my daily production of an essay on some topic that involves ideas, issues and reflections on how the times have changed in my lifetime.

In some sense, I have been a Jack-Of-All-Trades.  As a teacher, I have taught at about every level and received the tribute of a principal at that same school, Robert Treat Junior High School, who gratuitously called me one of his “crack teachers”.  Since then I have done many things. I became an exponent of using unconventional methods of teaching to reach my students that caused some other teachers to complain.  I also made puppets and built several large and portable stages. Teachers need to be shaken up, try new things, and adopt unconventional methods in order to deal with unconventional young minds.

I have also tried to be a musician (I can only in a limited way play the guitar, ocarina, the dulcimer, banjo, violin and shofar).  I have built three dulcimers. I also built and strummed away in gloved hand on a washtub base.  I am interested in singing and am currently a member of a Temple Choir.  My exploits as a carpenter resulted in many things being built and a lot of things needing a coat of paint to cover mistakes.  The same could be said for my plumbing exploits.

The biggest departure from teaching and writing has been trying to be president of a 36-year-old condominium of 52 units.  Right now, I am learning how to solicit bids for painting and am renegotiating the contract for the upkeep of the roof.  I am taking a course on civil government (the brand developed in Miami/Dade County) and am learning about the problems that have been created in trying to shoehorn too many people in too limited a space in a tropical land.

I should have asked if it was all right to use the letters J.O.A.T before I published that yearbook.  It has bothered me ever since that he was upset by it.