Just Kids From the Bronx by Arlene Alda Read Free Book Online Page A

other than material issues in life. It’s what bonds the species. It is the only thing that has no intention other than to make you feel you’re part of something larger. It really serves as an alternative to religion. And it’s experiential. It reaches a different part of the brain. You just see something and you are changed. And everybody who sees that same thing and is moved by it now shares that feeling too. And you share something that can’t be sold. Something that can’t be made into a commodity. Leonardo’s The Last Supper , although it was created as propaganda, as most religious paintings are, makes us feel a spiritual longing. A longing to share an experience with others. That’s the only reason that I can imagine that art exists.
    This is my life. Art chooses you. You don’t choose art. You become possessed. This is my commitment and I’ve never deviated from that.

 
    MILDRED S. DRESSELHAUS

    Physicist, recognized for her original work in nanotechnology and carbon molecules; Institute Professor and Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering, Emerita, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    (1930– )
    When I was young, we moved from Brooklyn to the Bronx, to one block from the Bronx House Music School, where my older brother had a violin scholarship. What happened ultimately was sad. My parents’ resources all went into that move, but my brother’s teacher, who was the reason we moved, died a few months after we got there. So people at the school recommended that we go to Greenwich House in Manhattan. That’s what we did, even though it was a long ride on the subway from the Bronx to downtown.
    My brother was the talented one. He was very devoted to the violin and worked hard at it. He was also a good performer. He started playing violin when he was three, getting scholarships from that age on. I got a scholarship only because he had one. I think my parents and the school both thought I was going to be something like him, but I wasn’t. I loved music, but I always liked academics more, even though music became the gateway to opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise.
    The kids growing up in our neighborhood didn’t normally leave the neighborhood. They just stayed there. Roosevelt High School was our district high school. It wasn’t too bad but it was just satisfactory. It wasn’t Hunter. I found out about Hunter High through the music school and the middle-class parents whose kids were there.
    As part of my scholarship to Greenwich House, I ran errands for them and became a music critic, starting at about age eight. A couple of years later I saw the movie Fantasia , which made a terrific impression on me.
    For everything that I did I had to write a report. That was good training for the future. Everything that I did there turned out to be pretty valuable, but who would have known that at the time? Even in public school, my teacher said to me early on in sixth grade that attending class would be a waste of time for me, so she gave me work to do for the school. I was like an administrative assistant, learning how to run things. And that’s been kind of useful in life too.
    I had no help for passing the exams to get into Hunter High. The teachers told me, “Forget about applying. What they ask on the exam is nothing that we teach you here.” Which was true—but I learned it by myself, getting into Hunter High by having a perfect score.
    The problem in junior high school was basically the behavior of the kids. The teachers had almost no time for teaching. They would just try to keep order, which wasn’t an educational experience. For instance, we were told to go to the bathroom at home before we went to school, so we wouldn’t have to go while we were there. It seemed that going to the bathroom was a bit dangerous because girls would get mugged there.
    My mother was the breadwinner in the family. She started working at an orphanage, which was a twelve-hour-a-day job. She also had