The value of learning and journaling, according to this self-educated man

In his elderly years, Harry mentioned in an email to someone close to him that their regular correspondence "gives me an excuse to write about my life, at least bits and pieces of it." He also said that he would save some of those emails in a file, like a journal. The excerpts below are from those saved emails. For me and other family members, they offer formerly unknown bits and pieces of my father's life.

I've always had a thirst for knowledge, so I read a lot and even studied subjects that interested me. So, in some ways I became what is usually called a self-educated man. That may be satisfactory to some extent, but it's not the same as the education you get in a formal way – in school. For one thing, in school you're forced to study some subjects that hold no interest for you. That in itself, disciplines you, forces your mind to work in ways that you don't like. Just doing that is valuable exercise for your brain.

The greatest value of a college education is the discipline it instills. And, the truth is, that while you may learn a little bit about the basics of a few things, you don't really start getting an education until you're out of school and working at your chosen profession. I missed that for myself. Now, I have to work very hard at trying to learn something that does not interest me.

It's easy for me to learn about things that I'm interested in. There's no end of information on the internet on almost every subject you can name. The trick is to distinguish between good information and bad or phony information. There's plenty of untrue or false info on the internet, too. So you cannot rely solely on what you find there – you also have to look elsewhere if you're doing research.

A little enterprise
Anyway, for a few years, in order to make some extra money, I started a little enterprise called "Articles on Demand." Believe it or not, there is a demand for people who can write articles on any subject. So, I was asked to write articles on some very weird things – for example, a 750-word piece on the number of fresh-water lakes in the world, where they are, how much water they contain, how they were formed, etc. Did you know that Canada has more fresh-water lakes than all the rest of the world combined?

That one went over so well that I was asked to do another on fresh-water rivers in the world. Did you know that the Amazon River in South America has more fresh water flowing in it than all the rivers in the rest of the world combined? Well, to do the research for those two pieces required more than just browsing the internet and, since I had no interest in it, I found it hard to concentrate on it, but I forced myself and ultimately found it interesting. It's the compiling of figures and statistics that I found hard to put together, but the final results after a lot of hard work, I found fascinating. 

At home in 2011, Harry pointed out to dear friends his name in Years of Upheaval, by Henry Kissinger. Could this be the book that Harry discovered his name in while auditing a university course after he retired? Harry refers to those college days in the paragraphs below. The tribute in Kissinger's book: "I owe a belated thanks also to Harry Zubkoff, whose news clipping and analysis service based in the Department of the Air Force has been of enormous value to US government personnel for years and has been an invaluable research aid for my staff in the preparation of White House Years and this volume." 

From mingling to keeping a journal
The year after I retired, I started taking courses at the U. of Maryland – subjects that interested me or that I thought I knew something about and just wanted to see what was being taught in school. Each semester I took one or two courses, and I did that for the next 15 years, from 1987 to 2003.

Now I found myself mingling with students from 18 to 25, because I was taking some undergraduate courses and some graduate school courses. And once again, I found myself treated by my fellow students like an ancient ancestor – or a wise old man who knew everything (that’s what grandchildren think) and someone they could come to for advice and counseling.

[Harry was referring to an earlier reflection, included in the previous post: “The art of listening and consoling”]

And again, I found myself being consulted about all kinds of problems as though I had all the answers. And again, I found that I was most helpful to these young people just by listening to them and asking some pertinent questions – which forced them, in a way, to clarify their own thinking.

And I learned something else – that if you want someone to think clearly about whatever problem he/she has, get him to write it down. Put it on paper. Nothing concentrates your mind on a specific problem or issue as writing it down on paper. That’s why I would urge everyone – including you – to keep a journal and put your thoughts and reactions to events and situations you encounter in that journal, not necessarily daily, but certainly regularly.

By a journal, I mean a loose-leaf notebook, so you can move pages around, rather than a bound book where the pages are fixed in place. I don’t mean a diary, which is simply a daily record of your activities, but a journal, in which you record your thoughts and feelings about people and events. And try to use words and adjectives that convey precisely what you are thinking.

For example, if someone upset you by a thoughtless remark, try to describe your reaction. Were you resentful? Furious? Enraged? Embarrassed? Astounded? Disappointed? Confounded? Disgusted? In other words, it’s not enough to be upset. Try to pinpoint exactly how you feel. You will find, when you do that, that you understand yourself better and you actually are either more or less upset than you thought you were. And maybe even more understanding of the person who upset you in the first place. What exactly did you dislike about the remark? See what I mean?


Harry's little black notebook 
Well, guess what else we found in the smartly cluttered office Harry left behind? Right – a loose-leaf notebook filled with brief, handwritten entries. However, rather than a journal containing his personal thoughts and feelings, it appears he jotted fictional musings that he could go back and grab for his story-writing hobby. Or, had he grabbed these musings from the stories he'd finished? Could the blurbs be factual, not fictional? Or, maybe, based on fact? You decide. See some samples from his notebook below this photo.
 

Harry's little black notebook is undated, though he may have 
kept it while he was attending U of MD classes after he retired 
(1987 - 2003). Future generations of our family should enjoy the
 look and feel of an ancient handwritten journal.

• Why do I fly? I thought. For space? Might as well ask why I breathe. I guess, I thought to myself, sounding pompous in my own mind, it’s because I like the feeling of being part of a huge and powerful machine that’s been tuned to perfection but that takes its direction from me. The feeling of independence and linkage, operating in unison.

• She had large (gray) eyes, a straight narrow nose, a nicely rounded chin, and a determined mouth with lips that looked eminently kissable.

• The flickering fire threw pictures on the wall, shadows chasing each other around the room.

• You probably don’t realize it yourself, but you have a look – well, when you look at someone like that, I think you scare them. They suddenly realize that you are … could be … dangerous?

• I had grown adept at instilling confidence in people – usually a few kind words would do it. And after all, what does that cost?

• He looked harmless; a short bald-headed, mild-mannered man, but behind that bland exterior was a mind as agile and sharp as any I’d ever known.

• Once on the trail of something or someone, there was no turning back. Impossible to quit with the job undone, the chase not concluded.

• The expression on her face mirrored her uncertainty, her doubts, her nervousness. Still half child, part woman, she did not yet know how to deal with men like me – too old to be a boy-friend beau, too young to be a father figure or uncle!

• He saw the funny side of everything, and his lips twitched, continuously, as though he were about to break into laughter.

• Everything we did was a sort of river, just rolling along like the song says, through time and through generations, with new people just like us coming along while the old ones floated slowly away, transients on the water’s surface, passing from view and from memory. No matter how well known, how celebrated and honored, in a short period of time as history goes, we’re all forgotten, nobody caring that we lived and accomplished and died and scarcely made any difference at all to the current crop of newcomers. Not good for the ego, is it?

I haven't read Harry's unpublished stories, still piled in old cardboard boxes. When I do, I'll keep an eye out for the musings from his little black notebook. He may have shared stories with friends or relatives; did he share any with you?

Skyward reflections

Do you wonder why I chose the photo at the top of this website -- the small plane gliding through clouds? Harry's reflections below will explain. He wrote them in his late 80s, when he was writing more about his personal thoughts because (I believe) he knew he was "approaching the sunset of my life." Harry was especially inspired at the time by a young email companion who recently shared some of Harry's emails with me so I could post them for all of you. Below is a portion of one email.

Harry (in knickers) -- the 10-year-old boy 
who saw his future in the sky -- poses with 
his cousin Maury Zubkoff (I believe) in Buffalo.

When I was a kid I used to lie on the grass now and then after dark and look at the sky and wonder about the stars. I was a science fiction nut, and used to imagine myself in a spaceship exploring the universe and meeting intelligent beings from other galaxies and earth-like planets. Science fiction stories in those days concentrated on BEMs (bug-eyed monsters), all more intelligent than human beings, and spaceships that could travel faster than the speed of light.

I always wanted to learn how to fly, and when I was 16, I got my pilot’s learning permit. Also, by then I used to lie on the grass during the day and look at the clouds and think about them. And, one of the first things I learned when I started flying was about clouds and what they mean to pilots.

I think of clouds as God’s handwriting in the sky. What He is telling us with the clouds is what the weather is going to be in the next few hours and the next few days. All you have to do is learn to read them. Until modern technology came along only in the last 50 years or so, the people who knew the most about the weather were sailors and farmers – and that’s because their lives and their livelihoods depend a lot on the weather.

Sailors invented the saying about the sun: Red at night, Sailors delight, Red in the morning, Sailors take warning. That’s still true, has always been true and is still something to remember. Memorize it and surprise your friends some night when the sunset is especially red by telling them that tomorrow will be a delightful day. And, when the sun is red in the morning, tell them bad weather is coming within the next 24 hours, no matter what the forecasters are saying. You’ll be right nine times out of ten.

But think about clouds for a minute. You know, we see clouds in the sky almost every day of our lives – yet, hardly anyone knows the names of all the different cloud formations and what they mean as a sign of weather to come. It seems to me that everyone would be curious about them and want to know more about them. But, when I say so to my friends, they look at me like they think I’m nuts.

Anyway, I made it my business to study clouds, to learn their names and meanings. And, when I started teaching people to fly, weather for pilots was one of the ground school subjects I taught in conjunction with flight school. Meteorology for pilots, it’s called, and while it doesn’t qualify me to be a licensed weatherman, I do know a lot about the weather; but without the technical instruments used to measure weather phenomena, I can’t predict it as accurately as the professionals.

Harry the flying instructor, circa late 1950s or early '60s.

More on clouds 
I found a yellowed copy of an article Harry wrote, published in The AOPA Pilot magazine, April 1964, "CLOUDS: Their Message to Pilots." (AOPA is the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.) Much of the article discusses technical details about clouds, but here's a non-technical excerpt:

Everyone who opens his eyes while he's awake must occasionally notice clouds in the sky. Now, clouds are one of the best visual indications as to the kind of weather you may expect to encounter during the next few hours. Some flyers no doubt regard clouds as a menace, something to be avoided at all costs -- obstructions in the sky and nothing more. But they are more, much more.

Clouds are the handwriting in the sky. Almost all weather is associated with one type of cloud formation or another. Your ability to read this handwriting and understand its significance may make the difference between a completed flight and a statistic.

The article ends with this paragraph: Any pilot who does not understand how to use the information provided by his instruments would quickly be grounded. In the same way, any pilot who cannot read the handwriting in the sky should also be grounded.



A picture worth a thousand words

To create this picture -- one of Harry's favorites -- someone photographed the plane from the sky, printed it as a silhouette on the back of the glass, and mounted the glass on the background print of the sunset. A couple months before Harry died, his son Earl replaced the old, broken frame and was ready to hang the picture in Harry's new apartment. That's when Harry mentioned that he was the pilot flying this plane. I believed him, of course; I had no reason to doubt it after I had watched him score 100% on every recent memory test. This picture is one of my earliest recollections of Harry's souvenirs. It reminds me of the Sailors' rhyme that he quotes above on this page. You could say, also, that it represents the sunset of his life. And, though we see the sun, not the moon, I think of the Frank Sinatra song, one of several Sinatra tunes that Harry asked us to play in his last alert moments on Earth. We all know it: "Fly Me to the Moon"


I'll post more about Harry's greatest passion -- flying -- in the future. For now, here's a trivia question for people who knew him: What was Harry's favorite airplane?