During my freshman year at Reseda High I encountered two of the most significant teachers of my life: Barbara Rosenblatt and Bernard Goodmanson, both English instructors.
Mrs. Rosenblatt introduced us to Shakespeare and poetry. We studied the sonnets and actually performed Julius Caesar in our classroom. I played Caesar and it was great fun being stabbed by that dirty rat Brutus Covino.
Mrs. Rosenblatt made iambic pentameter accessible to my otherwise Beatles & Stones-addled brain. That was her great gift, a key that allowed access forever into the vast workings of the great bard.
In the forty-two years since her class, whenever I see or read Shakespeare, I often recall Mrs. Rosenblatt’s ability to tune us into his often complex language and to ease our comprehension of his plays and poems.
Mrs. Rosenblatt was just 24 when she taught us, and it was remarkable how she could quote from the great writers as well as from John Lennon and Mick Jagger.
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Bernard Goodmanson was by some accounts an eccentric among the stodgy teachers at straight-laced Reseda High. But his laid-back demeanor concealed his skills in teaching poetry and creative writing. He was also the sponsor of the school poetry magazine, Buji.
He would review some of our classmates’ poems in class, and I have never forgotten his delight when he’d discover a gem and praise it to us, explaining why it was “good” in his view. If you look over an old Buji today many of those verses and haikus are still noteworthy.
Even Lance Parton benefited from Mr. Goodmanson’s tutelage. Lance was normally not one for flowery speech, but who can forget his “Symbolic Poem” contribution to Buji where he actually used numerical footnotes in the body of the poem, with fully annotated, numbered explanations afterward indicating what each word “symbolized.”
While teaching us how to learn to write, Mr. Goodmanson occasionally drifted into politics. One of my favorite Goodmanson Vietnam war era quotes:
“Communists drink water. Americans drink water. Does that mean that Americans are communists?”
Goodmanson encouraged us to keep files on the topics that interested us. On his suggestion I bought my first file cabinet, and remember lugging it home in my VW Bug after removing the passenger seat to make room. I still have that ancient grey legal file cabinet, and it is partially filled with articles from 1967 forward about LBJ, Nixon, war, Vietnam, capital punishment, track & field, baseball, communism, religion, drugs, abortion, etc.
My wife refers to it as “Bernie’s Box.”
–Derrick Garbell