I don’t think surreal is the word I’m looking for…

After perusing Classmate’s bios and updating my own for the first time since da wedding, on a lark I Googled my high school to see if they had a website. They do.. it’s crap.. but on the faculty list I spied with my little eye the name of a beloved English teacher and inspiration: Sam Rasnake.

Sam Rasnake, who let me read 1984 because I’d already read what he was assigning, who let me play the entirety of Christopher Cross’s Ride Like the Wind as part of an assignment on “modern balladeers”, who turned me on to Stanley Kubrick’s genius, the wonder of Eric Clapton, the cameos of Alfred Hitchcock, and the insanity of Baby Jane, and who when he was denied permission to show us Apocalypse Now in class, chose to show us Porklips Now (complete with Hardware Wars and Closet Encounters of the Nerd Kind) to spite the system. He was the advisor for the school literary magazine, which took up most of my freetime for junior and senior year, and bullied me onto the Quill and Scroll newspaper staff in my “spare time.” The man who inspired me to enjoy writing even more than reading, sit for the AP English test, and even pursue Creative Writing for a college degree.

There’s a picture in my mind of the coolest, long-haired, left-over hippie teacher…

and when I just Googled him, I found not much has changed appearance-wise, at least., when I found his photo on the “Poets 4 Peace” website. He’s also editor of the online zine, Blue Fifth Review… and though I just put the link there, I beg you not to go. The site is … a classic.

Anyway… talking to him again might be cause for actually going to a reunion.