A parent being called to the school because their child had misbehaved was as serious as a parent being called to the police station because their child had robbed a bank.

Their educations ended with high school - my father going to work as a clerk and then salesman in a company dealing in printing and stationary, and my mother working as a secretary and then bookkeeper in a firm of wool merchants.

Going to school and working for good marks, indeed working for very good marks, was a serious business.

About 1900 my parents came to the United States as children from what was then the Polish area of Russia.

I was also interested in chemistry, but my parents were not willing to buy me a chemistry set.

The experimenter dealing with nature faces an outside and often hard world. Natures' curriculum cannot be changed.

I read everything: fiction, history, science, mathematics, biography, travel.