Educated at Lafayette College and the University of Pennsylvania. He was Assistant Headmaster at Friends Select school, Philadelphia, PA and Headmaster at Moorestown Friends School, Moorestown, NJ.
A personal account of this great spiritual force of education.
Today, when I got the mail, I received a death notice from my old high school, that a man we called, Master Alex (Alexander M. MacColl) who was a teacher and Assistant Headmaster (he was the real one, the other shook hands with people and that's all he did) when my friends Rye, Sebastian, Gloria, Helena, Harrie,Margaret, & Gordon and I were at Friends Select School (founded 1689)...In the 3 years, when I had left the former"prison" that claimed to educate me, and was going to Select, I learned more and better, under Master Alex's reign of hard assed knowledge than anytime before or since.
Also, Master Alex, had a wry straight faced sense of humour. Rye and I were on that special list of "the bad boys"....Comments like, "I appreciate that the 2 of you want to volunteer for school repairs. Yes the cupola room needs looking after, I have hired some repairmen to fix it and so you should be relieved that you don't have to go up there and devote your precious study time to fixing our school. We have our own tools. (of course we had been going up there fooling around and smoking Rameses Egyptian Oval cigarettes), this is not the Soviet Union. We do not search people, BUT if you are going to smoke, not only don't do it in the building, But when you leave today look around and if at any distance, you can clearly see any school window, don't light up, or even do something idiotic like holding hands just to piss me off...oh, no, and I did hear about a bunch of students marching around the band shell and back and forth around the school, with some pretty damn fine art work, yelling at the top of your lungs, "We want an art gallery"...oh no...don't even
consider it.....do you understand Mr Ballard...if you think you'r e Oscar Wilde,then I suggest you reread The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Mr. Sebastian, already, we know that Vaudeville is alive and well, you have taught us ALL that, too many times...and oh Jameson-Strang, when you come in on Monday, from a party of intellectuals and South Philly rockers listening to Ray Charles records, please, please, I beg of thee, wear a clean suit jacket. We can tolerate dust from buses and even dandruff....dry cleaning fluid ! My God, No!..it confuses people. The dry cleaning fluid used at the little shop down the street from my apartment...well, it smells a lot like Chivas Regal...and I know how you love clarity in all things, so please don't confuse the rest of us. By the way, since you guys – that means Ballard, Jameson-Strang, Sebastian, Toner, & Vogel, don't eat lunch, we have decided for those who wish to boycott the caf, that you have the free option of attending an ongoing Russian class if you chose..."
Or the time Robin McIlvaine IIIrd farted in Master Alex's course on International Law and its development......."MY GOD !, Another one like that McIlvaine, and I'll kick you out of the school. Everyone !!! Open the Windows !! I said "NOW".
"Gentlemen, Ladies, where were we....?"
Master Alex MacColl was a combination of John Cleese, The Alexandrian Library, a
master politician, and a tough, loving father, a reincarnation of Cicero. This
Visionary in All Things - We all loved him. I was talking in an email with Gloria Gaghan - a classmate, former lover, and friend. She now lives in Ireland. Anyway we were talking in 2007 and she was quoting Master Alex,"Gloria your grades are fine, but you are working at less than 10% of your genius. I certainly hope that somehow and somwhere that great genius of your wakes up from its bed of roses and talks to the rest of the world....." Gloria writes under a pen name (not given out). She did write one book under her own name about St. Brendan the navigator. Her nephew, Stephan made the movies Traffic and Syriana...Helena Peat, who nicknamed me Caiyros, was practically in love with Master Alex.....But he never fooled around. He was Total Straight Arrow.
Master Alex MacColl was a Visionary Genius whose Great Work was to go through the blood, sinew, bone, air, and myriad rhythms of the human beings that he taught and spoke to, befriended, but never took advantage of, who say knowledge itself as an omni-living spirit, within which we should merge – individuality intact, laughter intact, and humility cared for gently in a world beyond praise.
May the galaxies that reside inside and by your spirit's side, Rock On !
See ya around the Campus !
Alex's estate went manily to Orphans' Charities...which is wonderful but odd, because I never knew that before today...and for years...that has been my main charitable interest...somehow it rubbed off on me from him, because I became interested in orphans about the time I left high school.....
Photo: on yesterday's email's bottom - ("Mr Jameson-Strang 2 apostrophe 's's following one another like argueing lovers, and then, really, does an email actually have a "bottom"...take a dip in the Danube and rephrase it...the whole school is counting on you, I beg of thee...."
Height: approx ^ foot I -2 inches
Hair: Black and early balding
Eyes: Light Green
Glasses: No one ever saw him wear them, so I don't think so. He wasn't an egotist If for some reason he did have glasses and hide them from us, the would have to have been black hornrims.
Attire: casual slacks. Dark colored Edwardian sport coats with thin lapels. But I do remember he had one hideous light brown stripped jacket and on tweed (darker tweed).
Presentation: He could be as funny as John Cleese. If his point was obscure it was deliberately so. teaching or lecturing, he was very demonstrative with his arms and hands. Sometimes for days he would carry hunge piles of books and manuscripts and at other times, he would carry nothing at all. Also he like to play with yardsticks, using them as pointers and sometimes twiddling with them. His facial expression could be serious yet kind and he had a wide grine quite often. The few times I saw him angry, he looked like a Scottish warrior wanting to go after Longshanks...but there was always a joke at the end of it.
One time Gloria's father who was a kin of Walter Winchell type reporter (he gave Gloria and me backstage and front row passes to all the shows he didn't want to review (which, of course, were the cool shows...His best friend was Charleton Heston, that alone speaks volumes of neocon crap) Any way Jerry Gaghan called Allex up and basically threatened him....Alex came up to Gloria (I was there) When and said "Your dad just threatened me, and I told him it would take me a while to get all the proper licenses in order to have a duel on the playing field, and since I was challenged, I had my choice of weapons, and I chose that we might just throw cinderblocks at each other until we were both dead.....and then I told him to go take a dip in the danube....I would do a lot of studying for an imaginary test, Gloria, and stay away from your dad.....We run a school here, and you simply don't threaten educators...." and walked off...he was torqued...but nothing bad happened. Jerry Gaghan called him up and apologized and asked him if he could have the quote about cinderblocks. "I thanked him and told him that in that case my 'tell-all" novel would be supressed as my act of gratitude. Again, Jerry, said thank you and I told him, 'don't thank me too much, I can't write...that broke him up and the war is over, Gloria. Why not when you go home tonight, put on an LP of Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun, and tell him its a school exercise in musical criticism ?"
If you look at the photo you can see he had a gold or gold-like tooth.
As far as we know, he never drove a car. At least when he was in Philly.
Also, Alex got Rye appointed school poet and head of the literary magazine The Caldron and each year Rye would have a poem on the yearbook Title page. Rye would always put in something truly weird and we would watch to see how "uncleverly they edited it out. One year it was fabulours...the excised the several phrases and put in ........... (dots)......It comes out...Rye and I are laughing...Alex comes by and without stopping walking...he says......looking at Rye,,,"And how is Mr Verlaine this day....now that his rants against 'Holy Church" and Motherhood' are excised..."
Rye fired back..."Next year it will be in German..." and we laughed.
Without losing a step, Alex, says, Die Jahrbuch Ausschuß hat ihrer Zahl , Mein Dreist Ritter." and disappears down the hall.
I say to Rye, "What did he say?"
And Rye replied, " The Yearbook Committee has your number, My Bold Knight."
Later, Rye went up to Alex and said, do you think Chris is a Knight as well?
No bold knight, he is a frog-Prince waiting to be kissed...." We laughed about it
Anyway, this guy had the power to take good people who didn't fit who were bright and confusedly commited to something, and send them out into the world with a sense of love, a copy of the Joe MIller jokebook, to walk in Voltaire's footsteps and to have their very own sword and shield. From his influence I got the idea of the Syndic...combining, the ideas of Cicer, Voltaire, Buddha, Jesus, the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) Herman Hesse, Joyce, and others. I have become whether I like it or not a militant and weird educator. Im not saying Im the best, mind you, but I sure am militant....And to be a militant educator, I believe one has to be immersed in constant learning...
Psy-Ops, few people know what that means......in 11th grade Alex was teaching the fundamentals of Goebbels and Mao's propaganda styles, how to assess this crap and so on and that the magic bullet of immunization was/is going deep into yourself, knowing yourself, not needing popularity, give love instead of always wanting it..demand good solid Aristotilean proof, for things spiritual you were on your own, and my God, laugh...have some fucking fun with who you are...not what you've been told to be...Teach Others...the knowledge is useful, but there is something else going on beyond definition...and to find that and then hand it away, so you can find that, and hand it away, forever, and ever, and one day.
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