Dick Katz was a hugely underrated pianist with a penchant for Duke Ellington voicings and introductions
 

Some fifty odd years ago I worked for the Coal Board as a research scientist. Although based in London I regularly visited the coalfields and must have been underground in at least twenty pits – not really much fun when you either walk a mile with your head bent or bang it on the low roof. The pit ponies did better! It is illegal for the roof to be so low that they could scrape their backs. I recall two other things about the mines, there was the miner who told us “if you scientists want to help me, you could fit a mini-motor to my shovel”. There was the fact that many of the underground workers could not speak a sentence without using the F word at least once, but I never heard the word in the canteen when there were women serving.

In 1955, I decided that I had had enough of crawling around coal mines and was fortunate enough to obtain an appointment as a research assistant at a place I had never heard of in a city previously unknown to me, other than that it was in the United States. I found myself at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio. Apart from eventually granting me a PhD, Case is also well known for the Michelson-Morley experiment. These two gentlemen measured the speed of light with sufficient accuracy to refute the “Ether Theory” and to lay the basis of Einstein’s theory of Relativity. Of course, as soon as the local Jewish matriarchs discovered that there was an unattached Jewish male from London in their midst, they could not wait to introduce me to a visiting Jewish teacher from Manchester. A year later, Amelia and I were married and we subsequently produced three little Americans. We stayed in Cleveland for ten years, with a year out as visiting professor in Oslo. This came about because when I got my PhD I was offered a permanent post at Case Institute and I told them that it had to pay enough for us to visit our families in England every few years. I was told that there were three visiting professorships going, in Oslo, Rome and Bonn. I rang Amelia and asked if she’d prefer a year in Oslo, Rome or Bonn. She chose Oslo on the grounds that the climate would be healthier than Rome and that memories of Germany were too recent for Bonn. Oslo turned out to be a good choice as Rome and Bonn expect visiting lecturers to speak Italian and German but no one expects foreigners to speak Norwegian in Norway.

We had a wonderful year. There is (or was) a very friendly Jewish community in Oslo and Norwegians are very friendly. The children (by then our two girls were two and three) chattered to other children in Norwegian but we never really got the hang of it. Virtually all adults speak English in Oslo.

I recall a visit to Washington when I parked the car on a twenty-minute meter to take the tour through the White House. When we reached the White House there was a long queue so I walked up to the policeman at the gate and asked where there was a better place to park the car. “Do I hear an English accent?” he asked, and off he went on a long account of his experiences in wartime London. “This is all very nice but what about my car?” I asked. “Be my guest,” he said and we marched straight past the queue and through the White House. It takes about ten minutes and we just made it back to the car in time. I thought we would get lynched but no one said a word. In 1965 we came back to London.

Because of my consulting experience while at Case, I was offered a job in Unilever’s marketing division. Amelia became a teacher at Yavneh, the primary school recently created by Wembley Synagogue in Middlesex, England. Today, when she runs into a small Wembley grandchild, she says “I remember his (or her) parent when I taught at Yavneh”.

Around 1970, when in New York on business, I was looking for a taxi out-side my hotel to go to Lever Bros. Two bearded individuals, one carrying a guitar, asked if I was going past Grand Central Station as they were late for a recording session near there. I agreed to share the ride and asked who they were. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber were most grateful for the ride. I have often the thought that if I had said No, they might have missed the recording and maybe the world would never have heard of them.

In 1973, there was a conference in Tel Aviv and my boss agreed it was appropriate for me to go. I told my secretary to book flights and she came back to say that the travel department was not allowed to book to Israel because of the Arab League boycott. I went to the company secretary who agreed that I could go provided the company name did not appear on the list of delegates. When I arrived, the first person I saw was one Oozie Friedman whose lapel badge said “Lever Bros. – New York”. Of course, observing the Arab boycott was illegal in the United States. Amelia and I very much enjoyed our first visit to Israel. Around this time I ran into a young manager at Van den Bergh Foods Ltd, the worldwide margarine makers. He was responsible for what were then two quite small brands. One was Flora and the other was Tomor. I said to him “if you can make Stork taste like butter, why can’t you do something about the taste of Tomor?” He said that the rules on Tomor were quite small and the rabbinical restrictions were such that it was not worth the cost of reformulating it.

Times change! Today, Flora is the country’s leading margarine and that young manager is a main board director at Lever. I am retired. Tomor has been sold to Rakusen and Wembley has succeeded where the mighty Unilever could not. We have a Van den Bergh brand much to our taste: Martin, our rabbi!

Article by Maurice Sasieni

Scientist & Professor Peter Sasieni BA (Hons) MA (Cantab) MS PhD

Professor Sasieni has become involved in chemo prevention of cancer and he set up, and is director of, the only British clinical trials unit specializing in cancer screening and prevention.

When in second grade, her teacher took her notebook and later asked, who wrote those poems? Rita replied; what’s a poem?

Her poetry and other writings have been published in Proteus, Best Poems of 1960, The G.W. Forum, A Search for The Soul, All time Favourite Poetry, Great Contemporary Poems, Amidst The Splendor, Best Poems of 1997, among other books and publications.

Rita tries to give through writing, because she has received so much from so many, through words.        
 

In 1918 Joel Sasieni started his own London pipe making firm. Joel died in 1945 and his son Alfred Sasieni became the successor to his father`s business. Alfred sold the firm in 1979 to another company, which concluded the Sasieni Family tobacco Dynasty, although Alfred continued as a director for some years.

Sasieni was one of the great collectible and smokable pipes of England's recent past. Today, however, they are no longer produced by the original company.

Joel Sasieni began his career working as an apprentice tobacco pipe maker for Charatan and left to manage a "new" pipe making operation for Alfred Dunhill in 1910. He left Dunhill in 1918 to start his own London tobacco pipe making firm. His son Alfred took over the company reigns after World War II.

The majority of the pipes were exported to the United States, where they were renowned for their famous Eight Dot and Four Dot series of "firsts". Ironically, these same pipes were sold in Britain and other European countries with a One Dot configuration on the stem and for years U.S. tourists passed them up as "rejects," rather than as the high grade "firsts" they really were. The company was sold in 1979 and today the pipes are produced by a completely different firm, primarily for sale in the United States.

Although today`s Four Dot Sasieni pipes are excellent value, it is the pre-1979 One, Four and Eight Dot Sasieni's made by the original family that hold the most interest and value for collectors.

                                       Albert Einstein           Douglas MacArthur             Gerald Ford

                                                     Bing Crosby                   Clark Gable                     Gary Grant

 

In Memory Of Joel Sasieni
 (1883 - 1945)