2 February 2013

Circular No 587


 

Newsletter for alumni of The Abbey School, Mt. St. Benedict, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.
Caracas, 2 February 2013 No. 587
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Dear Friends,
Here is a small video on history:
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Don Mitchell <idmitch@anguillanet.com>
15/12/2012
Thanks, Ladislao.
It is published at:
The home-made language you refer to in Circular No 576 was “Pig Latin”.
This was a famous children’s code language in the 1950s and 1960s.
You took the first letter of each word and put it at the end of the word, and added an “A”.
With practice, you learned to do it as fast as you could speak.
So, “My name is Don” in Pig-Latin became, “I-ma ame-na si-a Onda”.
This is pronounced as the words are spoken, not as they appear on paper.
So, the sentence is pronounced in Pig Latin as “Eye-ma aim-na sigh-a On-da”.
Every child should learn this secret language.
Keep well.
Don [in Anguilla]
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Abbot John Pereira
01/22/13 @ 8:12am. :
Fr Hildebrand is doing quite well.
Dr Neil Peters paid him a visit this morning and he was very pleased with the care that he is being given at the Mount.
He is quite happy with our nurses.
We have a stand-by tank of oxygen in the infirmary to be used if needed.
We have taken him off the drips as he is now taking his medication and food (mostly puree and liquid form) orally.
Please keep him in prayer.
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Monday, February 4, 2008 7:33:54 AM
Very eloquent, John. And, to think I believed only I suffered there!
I have often thought that it was the WW II experiences that so many of our Monks went through that shaped their characters and behaviour while they were in Trinidad.
Pain and despair was a determining part of their lives.
One of them, I no longer recall who, once confessed to a group of us boys that he had become a Monk because of his experiences in the War.
We learned that many of our Dutch Monks had been enslaved as young men by the Germans.
They had been taken to Germany and put to work as forced labour in the Rhur Valley factories.
They were housed in camps and forced to produce weapons and other manufactured goods for the German war effort.
They were all severely and regularly ill treated, and many of them were killed.
They were kept for years on starvation diets and beaten regularly for insubordination or other infractions.
When some of them returned to Holland after the war, they discovered their homes destroyed and their families disappeared.
Some of them, filled with despair and religious fervour became Benedictine Monks.
Their tortured souls turned up in Trinidad to become our teachers.
I recall that on more than one occasion in the classroom, when a teacher stretched to write on the blackboard, specks of red would appear on the back of his cassock.
I always believed it was blood.
They were widely believed to flagellate their own backs with barbed wire scourges.
Some of them smelled continuously of oil and ashes, from some sort of self-imposed penance.
It was only years later that I came to realise that it was probably a boy in the class flicking red ink at the teacher.
I still think the original rumour was more vivid and revealing.
The "tapping up" and "hedging" that features so large in my memories of my many years at Mount (1955-1964, if I recall) could not have continued unchecked for so many hours each day without their having allowed it.
Keep well
Don
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Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 3:57 AM
Well now way. I did meet some great people at mount.
Re the night of the reunion.
No one there knew.
I made sure to keep it on the quiet, not even my wife knew, until I told her in the car on the way home.
It was also why I made sure that I was the last person to leave.
I had no intention of either, stepping down or getting someone else to stand up for me.
After I left mount I went to school in England, they were the same types there, but Mount taught me something. Stand up.
You put a number of people in close proximity and you will get conflict.
Example Nigel Ferriera, Barry Ferriera and Wayne Chang.
We all grew up in Valsayn.
I was fighting with those three long before I went to mount.
Today we are friends.
Nigel and I talk on the telephone,
Barry came to my house about 3 months ago to get some scenery photographs because he paints.
Wayne never passes me with out hailing out.
No hard feelings, we were boys.
I was never Mr. Popularity, Mr. Sportsman or Mr. Scholar.
Combine that with a very outspoken attitude and there is conflict.
My wife calls me a "Mr. Shit Magnet"
But there is a major difference between school boy fights and blatant cruelty.
I leave you with the words I try to live by
The conditions of a solitary bird are five:
The first, that it flies to the highest point;
The second, that it does not suffer for company, not even of its own kind;
The third, that it aims its beak to the skies;
The fourth, that it does not have a definite color;
The fifth, that it sings very softly. (This is the one that I personally find most challenging)
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On 2008 Feb 03 , at 09:25 PM,
gevelyn1@bellsouth.net wrote:
John,
Enjoyed the pictures.
I always considered you a great friend and recall us fighting each other just to please some unremorseful worm.
We should have joined forces back then and opened a can of whipass on Mr Bully.
Don't relapse.
Recall the good Times.
Your brother
Glen
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John Gioannetti <mate@tstt.net.tt>
Monday, February 4, 2008 9:21:34 AM
Don,
It looks like I have opened a can of worms............GOOD
Re the Monks and WWII
Quite a few of the old boys are now in the legal profession. You too I believe.
Of the priests I knew, Fr Augustine, who was considered the sternest, was in my opinion the fairest.
Fr Odo, an excellent math teacher.
Azizul use to show me his Koran and explain it to me, he is another that will always have my admiration and respect as, he taught me to respect different religions, and that at their very base they were all the same.
Because I have dyslexia, written subjects were hard for me.
I was more into Mathematics, Physics and Art.
And although I was not good at it I always enjoyed Llewin Mackintosh's History classes.
Russel Cunah, he was more in your time than mine.
Russel and I became quite friendly and helped me through some tough times.
We had a lot in common: Motorcycles, Programming, we used to camp together and he would even lend me his car to take girls out who were not allowed on a motorcycle.
You and many others say it was good, it made us hard, it made us men.
I too say that, I am today very much a product of MSB
Like I say u want my money for an association, put it to good use, not to glorify that institution that was evil.
This may be coming across as sour grapes, believe me it is not.
But I do believe we should not romanticize the institution.
There are many skeletons on that hill.
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I have the following assessment on Mr. Rais.  Have you taken a math class with him???
I want to tell you about Mr Rais.
He was my arithmetic teacher when I went to boarding school in Trinidad at 9 years of age.
This was a long time ago.
The main teaching tool then was the chalk board and a wood-backed duster to wipe it clean from time to time.
Mr Rais made me learn my tables.
He taught additions, subtractions and multiplications.
It must have been very boring for him.
He used to pace up and down the spaces between the desks as we did our class assignments.
He would peer over my shoulder at my exercise book.
Every time he noticed an error, he would rap me on the top of my head with the wooden back of the duster.
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"Don Mitchell CBE, QC" <idmitch@anguillanet.com> wrote:
OK, folks.
This is an invitation to join in a discussion of Ladislao's old MSB Circulars.
There is no big deal in it.
You don't even need a grandchild at hand to be able to join in.
Just try these simple instructions.
2. Read the Notes. It is just for general guidance. You can immediately forget them. You won't need them further for this exercise.
3. Scroll down. You remember how to!
4. You come to "comments" at the end of the Notes. Click on it! A little window opens.
5. Type a note in the window, just a couple of words. Sign it with your name if you want us to realise who it was posted the words.
6. At the foot of the notes you must "choose an identity." Choose one. I have picked my user name "idmitch".
7. Click on "Publish my comment".
8. That's it. You have now published a comment on one of the Blogs. After I have got around to it, it will appear on the site. When the next person clicks on "comments" he/she will read what your comment on the Blog was!
9. You are now ready to visit all the other Circulars, and to type in whatever comment you want to make in any of them. Up in the top right hand corner you will see the links to the old Circulars by year. I have posted all of 2001 and of 2013. They are going up at a regular pace.
Happy viewing.
Don
PS: If Ladislao should publish these instructions in a Circular, remember that you cannot click on the link above to get to the Blog. You will have to "copy and paste" the link to your browser in the usual way.
(Editor Don writes: The information above is old and out of date. I have long ago discontinued the “comment” feature on the early Blogs, since no Old Boys, only Spammers, were using it.  It was a pain having to go to the Blogs several times a day to delete the spam.  I have left “comments” open only in the Circulars for 2013 and 2012.)
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Ladislao Kertesz at kertesz11@yahoo.com,
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Photos:
11PD0008MSBEDI.
541277LK12FACEBOOK,
12NB4701AJAXREUNION
60816LK12FACEBOOK,








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