POWERS THAT BE COULDN'T SEE FOREST FOR TREES.Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY Dennis McCarthy may refer to:
There's a nice little story with a big moral to it planted out in the back yard of Cassie Andersen's Northridge home. You can find it in her garden. A plaque. ``GR 108,'' it reads. That's where Andersen spent 25 years of her life as a typing teacher - from 1955 to 1980, when she retired. Guidance Room 108 at Northridge Middle School, which was a brand-new junior high back in '55 when she left her job at Lockheed Corp. to teach a couple of generations of local school kids how to touch-type. Real typing. Not this two-finger, hunt-and-peck style most young people are using on computers today, she says. Andersen still runs into many of her former students out in the community, and they all thank her for teaching them how to type. It was the most useful course they ever took in school, most of them say. They still remember the grades she gave them. Usually a C. Mrs. Andersen was hard pressed to give out A's and B's unless you could hit 60 words a minute with minimal errors. But that's not the story. The plaque is. It was planted, along with an elm elm, common name for the Ulmaceae, a family of trees and shrubs chiefly of the Northern Hemisphere. Elm trees (genus Ulmus) have a limited use as hardwoods for timber, especially the rock or cork elm (U. thomasi). tree, in front of her classroom in April 1956 at the new junior high. All the kids donated nickels
Nickels is a gambling coin game played with any desired denomination of coins. and pennies to buy the tree, then they put their names in a time capsule capsule In botany, a dry fruit that opens when ripe. It splits from top to bottom into separate segments known as valves, as in the iris, or forms pores at the top (e.g., poppy), or splits around the circumference, with the top falling off (e.g., pigweed and plantain). , which was buried under the tree. The years passed and students came and went. All the while the elm grew, its great limbs standing guard over Guidance Room 108 like a great protector protector /pro·tec·tor/ (-tek´ter) a substance in a catalyst that prolongs the rate of activity in the latter. , shading See Phong shading, Gouraud shading, flat shading and programmable shading. the room from the blazing afternoon sun. You know how September can get in the Valley, Andersen says. Unsufferably hot. ``Our door faced west, so that tree broke the sun in the afternoon,'' she says. ``I'd bring a bedsheet from home and soak it in water. Then I'd wring wring v. wrung , wring·ing, wrings v.tr. 1. To twist, squeeze, or compress, especially so as to extract liquid. Often used with out. 2. it out, hang it up, and let the fan blow on it to cool the room down. ``I'd tell the kids to sit down and don't talk because it made the room hotter,'' she says, laughing. Thirty kids talking at one time has a way of creating a lot of hot air. Andersen remembers it was sometime in the late 1960s when the powers that be decided to uproot every tree on campus and lay down tar because tar was low-maintenance, and trees weren't. ``The maintenance crews complained it took too much time and work watering the trees, laying the hose down Verb 1. hose down - water with a hose; "hose the lawn" hose irrigate, water - supply with water, as with channels or ditches or streams; "Water the fields" to let the trees soak, then going back to pick it up,'' she says. ``Tearing tear·ing n. Epiphora. the whole place up was a lot easier.'' If you sense a little anger and frustration in Andersen's words, you're on the right track to the moral in this story. When they took the big elm out in front of Guidance Room 108, they also uprooted the plaque. One of the guys on the maintenance crew asked Andersen if she wanted it. She said sure, but she'd rather have her tree back. She was looking at 12 more years or so of hot September afternoons in that classroom before retirement, and the thought wasn't exactly a cool breath of fresh air. Fans and wet bedsheets went only so far in keeping her students' minds on typing, not the bell. She asked the maintenance guys if they had found the capsule with all the kids' names on it, but they hadn't, Andersen says. It could still be buried there, for all she knows. ``I brought (the plaque) home with me for safekeeping Safekeeping The storage of assets or other items of value in a protected area. Notes: Individuals may use self-directed methods of safekeeping or the services of a bank or brokerage firm. , and after I retired I planted it in my garden, sort of as a remembrance of my career as a typing teacher,'' she says. And that's exactly what she's been doing every time she goes out in her back yard to sit and relax, or do some gardening these days. Remembering. Remembering how stupid it was to uproot all those beautiful trees on campus back in the '60s because they were high-maintenance, and tar wasn't. ``Now the emphasis is on planting trees to beautify the schools,'' Andersen says, referring to the publicized pub·li·cize tr.v. pub·li·cized, pub·li·ciz·ing, pub·li·ciz·es To give publicity to. Adj. 1. publicized - made known; especially made widely known publicised efforts of actor Kirk Douglas and his wife, Anne, who have given more than half a million dollars to L.A. schools to help turn hot blacktops into shady playgrounds for kids. ``What goes around comes around,'' the retired typing teacher says, pulling out some weeds 1. weeds - Refers to development projects or algorithms that have no possible relevance or practical application. Comes from "off in the weeds". Used in phrases like "lexical analysis for microcode is serious weeds." 2. growing at the base of GR 108. CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: Cassie Andersen of Northridge displays the door plaque from the room where she taught typing. Tom Mendoza/Daily News |
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