I am conscious of Charlie Chaplin looking at me while standing next to my new fish tank.  The Tank and Charlie are behind me as I work at this screen. Of course you are asking: What is this all about? And, of course, there is a story attached to what I have just described.

I was gifted with Charlie, who is erect due to a metal stand pushed up behind his coat and is about eighteen inches tall, by Saliba Sarsar, now Vice President and Academic Dean at Monmouth University and Assistant to the Provost. Saliba’s road to academic success began when he was discovered by the Reverend John Grauel in Jerusalem where Saliba was working as bus boy in a restaurant. John Grauel  brought him to the United States, housed him and sent him first to Brookdale Community College and then to Monmouth where his academic studies began and returned to teach and be an administrator at Monmouth after attaining his doctorate at Rutgers.

His mentor at Monmouth was Janet Wennik, then Chair of Political Science. I got to know him partly because of where he lived and incidentally because of his connection with John Grauel.  First, about Father Grauel who was a Methodist Minister. I think I met him once but I knew about him because of his being the only Gentile aboard the leaky ship, Exodus, the infamous ship that was prevented from leaving Italy and landing in Palestine. He attained some fame for this act of befriending refugees and then launched a life-time of work helping Jewish and Israeli causes as well as his pastoral Church duties.

John Grauel chose to live in Roosevelt, New Jersey which was to some extent a utopian community. It was designed by the New Deal thinkers as a return to the land by blue collar workers mired in New York City. The community was designed as low cost housing in a bucolic setting in the middle of farm land in central New Jersey.  Actually, Roosevelt, NJ evolved into an artist’s colony and Saliba finished growing up there.  He was deeded the house and its possessions by John Grauel after John’s death.

Saliba took me and a class to visit Roosevelt because I was teaching a course on Utopian studies.  He didn’t know what to do with Father Grauel’s property and especially the detritus of a life-time of collecting things that caught the eye.  He offered me Charlie Chaplin and he has been a companion ever since.

I never saw Charlie look at the fish tank next to where he stands but he looks at my efforts on these essays with what I hope is approval.