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      4 Should this drawing not speak for itself, the following explication attends the patent application: “Referring now to FIG. 3, the control circuit includes transducers 31 and 41 connected in opposition by resistors 43 and 44 and supplied with current from a source of direct current power 35 which may be a battery. The transducer ends of resistors 43 and 44 are connected respectively to the control electrode, in series with resistor 43A, and cathode of a vacuum tube triode 46. It is obvious that one or more transistors may be used in place of the triode. The control electrode of triode 46 is coupled to a saw-tooth generator 49 by means of series capacitor 39. The saw-tooth wave modulates whatever signal is received from the transducers 31, 41, and even when no signal is received from the transducers, the anode-cathode current is modulated in accordance with a saw-tooth wave. The anode of triode 46 is connected in series with a relay winding 47 and a direct current source of potential 48. The relay winding operates two armatures 50 and 51, each of which in turn operates two pairs of contacts. Armature 50 is connected to one terminal 52 of motor 15 while the other terminal 53 is connected through another pair of contacts 54 to a ground or common conductor 55. Conductor 55 is also connected to the terminals of two sources of potential 57 and 57. The contacts on armature 50 are arranged so that, when the relay winding 47 does not pass current, the motor 15 is connected through one pair of contacts 50 to battery 57. If the relay is actuated, contacts 58 are broken and a second pair of contacts 60 is closed, thereby sending current from the second source of electric power 50 to motor 15 to cause it to turn in the opposite direction. In this manner the direction of the motor is controlled to turn so that portion 22 may be lowered, or when the contacts are operated to turn in the reverse direction, to raise portion 22 and move it away from the object being measured.”

      I HAVE A THREE-AND-A-HALF YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER, AUDREY. She lives with her mother in New Jersey. I see her a half-dozen times a year, as often as my academic schedule allows.

       I never meant to become a father; I sure didn’t plan to become one at fifty-three, let alone a long-distance father. Life has its own agendas.

       The first and only other time I came close to fatherhood I was twenty years old. I’d gotten my high school sweetheart pregnant. Though I’d moved to New York to study art, on visits home Laura and I kept seeing each other. She was a shy, quiet girl, and we spent most of our time together in pursuit of means to avoid talking to each other.

       During one such visit, I impregnated her.

       Summer, 1977. Together with a group of other Pratt students, I sublet a Soho loft. One of the students had two kittens, Sacco and Vanzetti. Soho was much grittier back then. No boutiques, no Balthazar, its cobblestoned industrial streets noisy with trucks and strewn with graffiti.

       The professor from whom we sublet left behind cans of purple, pink, and gray latex paint and a few large sheets of paper. I carried these up to the rooftop, where I spread the sheets out, their corners held down by bricks. With a set of lettering stencils, a roll of masking tape, and a very rough plan, I went to work.

       Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns were my heroes. The paintings I did that day, surrounded by ventilators and tarpaper, owed everything to them.

       Under a breezeless summer sun I worked all day long and into the evening. The forecast was good; not a cloud in the sky. I left the results to dry and went to sleep in my windowless white cube of a room built into the center of the loft.

       The next morning I awoke to purple, pink, and gray paw prints everywhere. I raced up to the roof. My paintings were all destroyed.

       An hour later Laura phoned with the news. She was three weeks pregnant and said she would not consider an abortion. I reasoned, argued, pleaded. My words echoed off the cube’s white walls.

       Later that same day, the lights went out. Except for a few places in the Far Rockaways, the whole city went dark. Four thousand commuters had to be evacuated from the subways. Anarchic mobs ravaged neighborhoods. Thirty seven hundred arrests were made. Con-Ed called the blackout “an act of God.” Father Gabriel Santacruz of Bushwick disagreed. He told his candlelit flock: “Tonight we are without God.”

       A week later, at the Burger King across the street from the Planned Parenthood in Bridgeport, Connecticut, as my mother and I sipped twin milkshakes together in pained silence (a slab of bright sunlight slicing through the plate glass window, bouncing off our table), Laura had the life scraped from her womb.

      Thirty-three years later, my daughter was born.

      United States Patent # 2,736,353, INDUCED QUADRATURE FIELD MOTOR. “This invention relates to alternating current motors having the general characteristics of synchronous motors, and has for its primary object the provision of a motor having higher output at lower speed than a conventional alternating-current motor of similar physical size.” Filed Nov. 25, 1953.

      V.

      What You Knew

       Bethel, Connecticut, 1970

      AS SOON AS YOU ENTERED THE NEW TEACHER’S CLASSROOM you knew things would be different. Instead of their usual regimental rows, the desks were arranged in a large oval, with the teacher’s metal and Formica desk shoved into a corner like a miscreant. The room’s cinderblock walls were covered with canvas or corkboard and festooned with images of authors, scientists, poets, world reformers, and leaders: Lincoln, Einstein, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, Socrates. There were reproduced paintings by Picasso, Klee, Cezanne, van Gogh, and Vermeer, poems by Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost, “Desiderata” (“Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence”) Kipling’s “If” (“If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you”), and other poems and posters:

      “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

      “War is unhealthy for children and other living things.”

      “Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?”

      From a phonograph soft strains of classical music emanated.

      The one standard item in the room, the chalkboard, had been transformed into an object of curiosity by the words scrawled in large letters across it:

      EVERYTHING YOU’VE LEARNED IS WRONG

      Under this in smaller letters the new teacher had written:

      The statement on the handout is true.

      As you took your seat the teacher made his way around the circle of desks, handing out mimeographed sheets still warm and reeking of chemicals from the spirit duplicator. The sheets were folded in half. Unfolding yours you read:

      The statement on the blackboard is false.

      From the bottom of the sheet the teacher had you tear off a thin strip of paper, then asked how many sides the strip of paper had.

      Several students volunteered: Two!

      If I told you I can make one side of that strip of paper you’re holding disappear, the teacher asked, what would you say to that?

      Manifestations of dissent. Impossible! No way! It can’t be done!

      Having borrowed a strip of paper from Mary Beth Lumpkin, the teacher twisted it and curved it into a loop. With a piece of Scotch tape from the dispenser on his desk he taped the two ends of the loop together.

      He handed the result back to Mary Beth.

      Please draw a line down the middle of both sides, he instructed her.

      Mary Beth Lumpkin drew one line. There was no other side.

      Question your assumptions, said the

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