The professor

“A teacher affects eternity(永恒); he can never tell where his influence stops.”

----Henry Adams

He was eight years old. A telegram came from the hospital, and since his father, a Russian immigrant, could not read English, Morrie had to break the news, reading his mother’s death notice like a student read in front of the class. “We regret to inform you...” he began.

On the morning of the funeral, Morrie's relatives came down the steps of his tenement building on the poor Lower East Side of Manhattan.

At the cemetery, Morrie watched as they shoveled dirt into his mother’s grave. He tried to recall the tender moments they had shared when she was alive. She had operated a candy store until she got sick, after which she mostly slept or sat by the window, looking frail and weak. Sometimes she would yell out for her son to get her some medicine, and young Morrie, playing stickball in the street, would pretend he did not hear her. In his mind he believed he could make the illness go away by ignoring it.

How else can a child deal with death?

Morrie's father, whom everyone called Charlie, had come to America to escape the Russian Army. He worked in the fur business, but constantly out of a job. Uneducated and barely able to speak English, he was terribly poor, and the family was on the public assistance much of the time. Sometimes, to make money, Morrie and his younger brother, David, would wash porch steps together for a nickel(镍币).

One morning, David couldn't move. He had polio(小儿麻痹症). For a long time as his brother was taken back and forth to a special medical home and was forced to wear braces on his legs, which left him limping Morrie felt responsible.

So in the mornings, he went to synagogue(犹太教会堂) and he stood among the swaying men in their long black coats and he asked God to take care of his dead mother and his sick brother.

And in the afternoons, he stood at the bottom of the subway steps and sold magazines, turning whatever money he made over to his family to buy food.

In the evenings, he watched his father eat in silence, hoping for-but never getting a show of affection, communication, warmth.

At nine years old, he felt as if the weight of a mountain were on his shoulders.

But a saving embrace came into Morrie, s life the following year: his new stepmother, Eva. She was a short Romanian immigrant with plain features, curly brown hair, and the energy of two women. She had a glow (光) that warmed the otherwise murky atmosphere his father created. She talked when her new husband was silent, she sang songs to the children at night. Morrie took comfort in her smoothing voice, her school lessons, her strong character. When his brother returned from the medical home, still wearing braces from the polio, the two of them shared a rollaway bed in the kitchen of their apartment, and Eva would kiss them good night. Morrie waited on those kisses like a puppy waits on milk, and he felt, deep down, that he had a mother again.

There was no escaping their poverty, however. Because of the Depression, Morrie’s father found even less work in the fur business.

Still, despite their circumstances, Morrie was taught to love and to care. And to learn. Eva would accept nothing less than excellence in school, because she saw education as the only antidote to their poverty. She herself went to night school to improve her English. Morrie's love for education was hatched in her arms.

He studied at night, by the lamp at the kitchen table. And in the mornings he would go to synagogue to say Kaddish-the memorial prayer for the dead for his mother. He did this to keep her memory alive.

“What will you do? Eva would ask him.

“I don' t know,” he would say. He ruled out law, because he didn't like lawyers, and he ruled out medicine, because he couldn't take the sight of blood.

“What will you do?”

It was only through default that the best professor I ever had became a teacher.

The first thing you notice at Nate Otto’s house is a 1967 Oldsmobile 98, an old car. Inside is a small, 100-year-old reed organ ( 簧风琴). It’s just a small taste of what’s in Otto’s house: self-playing, old-style musical robots called player pianos. Some sound and look as good as they did a century ago. Some are awaiting repair. Otto, a 29-year-old, has decided that it’s his job to bring player pianos back to life.

As the owner of Rum River Restoration, Otto believes he’s the only full-time player piano restorer ( 修复师) in the state of Minnesota. He specializes in Jazz Age objects that once were ubiquitous in America but now are largely forgotten except by collectors.

Otto believes in doing things the old-fashioned way and tries his best to make player piano restorations as real as possible.

Otto views the player pianos that he fixes as kinetic art ( 动态艺术) pieces. The classic player piano, or pianola, was first developed at the end of the 19th century. It was seen as a thing that helped to change American musical tastes, spreading new styles of music such as jazz to middle-class people. In their successful days, most of the pianos made in the U.S. were player pianos.

By the 1920s, however, the rise of radios and record players provided an even easier way to listen to music, hurting the sales of player pianos. The market for the instruments finally disappeared with the 1929 stock market crash ( 股票市场暴跌) and the Great Depression.

Keeping a player piano going today is a little like restoring an old car: It takes time, love, money and so on. A full rebuild of a player piano mechanism might take 100 to 150 hours of work and cost $5,000 to $8,000 on average, Otto said. But it’s worth it for some people to once again hear an instrument that brought generations of family members together to listen, sing and dance.

I used to think education was the most important thing in my life. Recently my attitude has begun to change, although I still hold that it is essential for everyone in the world today. As a top junior student in my college, I was asked to make a speech on how to learn English well. Standing in front of the audience and facing so many freshmen, I was trembling. I didn't remember any word that I had prepared. I ran out of the conference room without finishing my speech, leaving everyone puzzled. I cried that night in my room, feeling that I was a loser. Studying takes up so much of my time that I feel unable to really develop myself. I am just storing knowledge, yet I fail to communicate with others. I have received many awards in school, but they don't necessarily reflect anything about me. I don't know how to socialize. When I leave school I fear I will be of no use to society.

I realize that everyone has his own way of living. I want to change my lifestyle. Of course I will keep studying. Yet I plan to look for a part-time job, which might turn out to be a good chance to get to know society. I still believe that working my hardest makes me happy. I will still stay on in college. But I will not allow it to shelter me from the real world.