Free The Crazyladies of Pearl Street by Trevanian Page B

was determined to broaden the minds and lift the spirits of every slum child whom Fate had placed in her care, and the classroom over which she reigned for more than a quarter of a century reflected both her mission and her personality. In her exquisite Palmer hand she wrote aphorisms and maxims in various colors of chalk on the blackboard, reminding us that 'The lost minute can never be recovered', or enjoining us to 'Reach for the stars', or warning us that 'Senseless haste is the enemy of speed'. She added new admonitions and adages when she thought the old ones had had time to soak into our collective unconscious, but because she often had to erase to make space for classwork and illustrations, it was not uncommon for only fragments of the maxims to be left on the blackboard for a week or two: messages such as 'Reach...' which was what a cowboy said when he drew his gun on a bad guy, or 'Senseless haste is... ', a baffling existentialist affirmation. There was a pin board covered with layers of constantly refreshed pictures from National Geographic and other magazines showing us what life and people were like in Africa, Asia and Europe, so we wouldn't get the idea that the universe ended at the corner of Pearl and State Streets. “There is a whole wide world out there, children, and it's yours for the taking.” And there was a large modern globe next to a globe showing the world as it was conceived during the Age of Discovery. She often compared these two to demonstrate that the accepted truths of a given time can change, and that there are new truths all the time. Most interesting of all to me was what Miss Cox called an orrery, a complex model of the solar system with wires and strings and a crank that she would sometimes turn so we could see the relative motion of the Earth and its moon, and the other seven planets (no Pluto because the orrery was pre-1930). And there was a scuffed and battered upright piano on which she played every morning, lifting her wrists high from the keyboard and holding that graceful balletic gesture for a moment before slamming down on the emphatic chords of the morning sing-song, which she believed was good for both our lungs and our souls.
    Covering every surface—tables, windowsills, bookcases, the piano top—was a gallimaufry of broken pottery, driftwood snarls, 'interesting' bits of rock, twisted metal... anything she thought might inform or inspire our aesthetic sensibilities and make us realize that beauty was all around us; and hanging from the nails she had pounded into the walls with the heel of her stout shoe, there were swatches of fabric and ribbons and feathers and colored paper, anything that caught her eye and seemed stimulating.
    Alone of all the teachers at PS. 5, Miss Cox never had trouble maintaining order, despite her willingness to let us move about the classroom with a freedom that other teachers didn't dare to permit, lest it lead to stampedes, even insurrections. She would suddenly order us out of our desks and onto our feet whenever she decided that it would be good for us to move our bodies in 'free dance' to the thumping rhythms of her piano. The sheer mass and intensity of her personality awed the class into good behavior. Even the sullen older boys who sat, root-bound, in small desks at the back of the room responded when she smiled dazzlingly at them and chanted in two bell-clear notes, “pos... ture, gentlemen! Pos... ture!” They would sit up straight, although they did so with the bored listlessness necessary to affirm their roles as tough kids. She used to bring in large prints of famous paintings to show to the class, and she would tell us why they were famous and what we should look for “...because art is for everybody.” In addition to the usual third-grade subjects, she introduced us to the joys of elocution and clear diction, “...because ideas are expressed in words, and the clearly spoken word reflects a clearly understood idea.” I leave to