Editing revision 1 of GlennHeisler

Rest in peace, Glenn Heisler, my "Communications" teacher in High School, 1952-2017. When Parkview Education Centre was being designed, the teachers had a hand in creating their programs and spaces; Glenn's was the evolution of Industrial Arts: "Communications." I signed up, and my life changed utterly. He had built a classroom with VCRs, all kinds of electronics, and a complete print shop. Glenn was a big, handsome bear of a man with a short beard, dimples, and killer smile, and as a gay teen I was smitten at first sight. Somehow that salacious energy got transmuted into wanting to be the absolute best student. We wired up a circa 1930 telephone switchboard to a half dozen phones around the Communications and Construction lab and called each other. There was a PORTABLE videotabe recorder there - a crazy weird, reel-to-reel one the size of a suitcase with a big strap to go over your shoulder - but it was a PORTABLE TV recorder. No one had ever seen one before. We recorded and rebroadcast school events. We built a telephone that modulated a laser beam to send sounds across the room. In a highschool. In Bridgewater. In 1979. The print shop was replete: there was an ENORMOUS process camera - 4' x 5' originals, 18" x 24" film, a darkroom with double-doors and controlled water temperature taps for both camera film and press film developing; a light table for stripping, a plate burner and a horrifyingly dangerous power guillotine. I became the master of the 11 x 17 offset press. We - I - printed all of the school's regular publications. There were lunchtimes when I took a photo of a school event, on film, ran down to the Communications Lab, developed the film, made a print, made a neg, stripped it, burned a plate, ran off a couple hundred prints on Kromekote paper, cut 'em down and had postcards of the event to had out at afternoon classes. That summer, Glenn recommended me to the owners of Ye Olde Print Shoppe on main street in Bridgewater, and at sixteen years, I worked in the darkroom and ran my own offset press there eight hours a day. Glenn had also installed a reel-to-reel tape recorder and MONSTER soundsystem, and whenever I hear Blondie's Heart Of Glass, I think of walking in there with the whole room shaking to it. Glenn, it was in your lab that I first got printer's ink under my fingernails, and it's been there ever since. Thank you.

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