Also, someone I never particularly liked. I guess I really did not like very many people at Newton High School. After many years of marriage and two children, he left her unexpectedly, for a flight attendant he had met on one of his business trips. Truly his loss. As we spoke, I asked about her children. I found out her daughter was studying art in Fort Lauderdale. She added, “And, I’ve got this son.” I swear every time I hear those very words, I know exactly what is coming next, because I was one of those sons.
She told me he had some crazy idea he was going to make a living as a glassblower. Needless to say, I was shocked. She started to tell me he was studying to do scientific glassblowing with a very famous glassblower in a school in South Jersey. I immediately took over the conversation and asked, do you mean Salem Community College?
She was surprised that I knew his school, I then asked, is he studying with Paul Stankard? At this point she was shell shocked and said yes; then insisted on knowing just how I knew about her son and the school and Paul.

I explained that I was a working glassblower and I had in fact also studied with Paul many years ago and that we were still friends.
So, right there and then we were connected in a very deep and meaningful way. Which played itself out later on during my journey, part of the glass thread that just seems to be my story.
One of the many things I never really learned in high school and for many years to come was that even though someone may never say anything to your face, they are almost always ready to talk trash about you, behind your back. Human nature is to spread negative stories and in some cases embellish and color them with their own perspectives and opinions, accurate or not. Regardless of any damage that may occur from their interpretations or embellishments. The other part of that is, once those negative words and feelings are created, true or not, they continue to fly around the universe and sometimes create really bad things that come flying straight back at you like a freight train and hit you right smack in the middle of the forehead, BAM.

So, part of this story is all about the vast number of times I had to be hit in the head over and over again before I started to understand. Today I believe, be kind with your words and actions, because they always come home to roost.
Along the same vein, high school and the stupid and thoughtless things we do at that time in our lives, the things that just kept resurfacing, for many years. We all have such events in our histories.  In my mid-50s a couple more people from high school resurfaced. It just never occurred to me that I could and did affect people in any way at all, let alone the bad way. The thought they would remember my transgressions for 30 or 40 years was way beyond my understanding. I have done many things I really wish I had not done. I try hard to not spend too much time there. Years of therapy, understanding from committed lifelong friends, alcohol and lots of illicit drugs have helped immensely in developing some insights and understandings. So here are just a couple of the many foolish incidents.
As you will read, I spent my middle school years in a disciplinarian school situation. I was finally released back into the public school system my sophomore year. As was my way then and to some extent even now, the trouble started on the very first day of school.
Young men’s brains don’t really begin to function until well into adulthood. Mine only started to fully function after about age 50.  But physically we are men at about age 15 or so. I wasn’t really that different, at age 17. I was the size I am today; much more muscular and fairly fit. So here I am starting a new chapter of my life in a new school- a reboot as we say today.

On the very first day I was propped up against my locker checking out the local talent when someone I did not even know came up to me and said, “I know you, you meet me on the football field today after school or I'm coming looking for you.” I really did not know this person, anything about him or anyone at all in the school, and certainly there was no one who would stand by me in a fight. But I had just come from a very tough all boys’ school with very tough borderline juvenile criminals, so I figured I could handle myself with some stupid hick farm boy.
After the school day, I hiked up to the field only to discover that this person had rallied about two dozen football players and a few stragglers to watch him kick my ass. What happened next surprised everyone. I literally beat this guy into unconsciousness.
No one else was willing to risk that outcome, so everyone dispersed. At the time I never realized how a single incident like that becomes a permanent part of one’s history and shades all future experiences. I went on to have a lot of difficulties in my remaining years at Newton High School and most of them could be traced right back to that very day on the football field.
But here is the strangely interesting part; before Facebook, there was an internet app called classmates.com. like many of my contemporaries I registered and waited to see who else would register and maybe contact me. The very first person who visited my listing was this very same person I had hurt so badly as a young man. He never actually contacted me, but he did troll me while I was active on the site. I sometimes wonder how that drubbing in front of his friends and fellow students affected his life.

Like most of us, as time flies by at warp speed, I keep wondering, just who am I and how did I get here? What is this life experience about and where is “here”? To get a better understanding of this guy James Stone; you will have to spend some time hearing where I actually came from, at least in this lifetime.
Let’s start with my parents. I am the second child of Renee Rudich Stone and Michael G. Stone. Renee and her family were Holocaust refugees from Romania. During the spring of 1938 a friend of my grandparents visited them in Bucharest and told them they were on an arrest and deportation list, headed to the concentration camps. Their arrest was planned for the following day.
Of the four members of her family, my then 18-year-old mother was the only one who could speak English, one of five languages she spoke fluently. Within hours her family gathered whatever they could carry and boarded a train to the port where they began their escape.
Because my grandfather was a man of prestige and the family had some resources, they were able to get passage on a boat to Paris-where they waited until they could gain entry into England. From there they boarded the Scythian, a Cunard Lines ship, and made their way to Ellis Island where they were granted legal asylum and given the opportunity to become American citizens.
They ended up finding a meager way of life in an immigrant community in Queens, Long Island. I was born in Flushing Hospital in Queens, where I was delivered by Dr. Glass.  Yes, that is correct, “Dr. Glass.” This was the very beginning of the glass thread. More to come about this later, I guess you could also say that I come from queens instead of regular parents.  That is a joke.  
My mother told the story that when she first saw me at birth she cried because I was so deformed and ugly. She used to say that I was all bones with a big deformed and bruised head, shoulders and big balls. I’m not sure how much of that changed over my life. My Grandmother Goldstein told her not to worry, that I would be fine.

My father-who was named at the time, Mayer Goldstein-was the youngest son of a Russian Jewish immigrant family that had arrived in the U.S. some 20 years earlier. His father worked in the needle trade on the Lower East Side of New York. My grandfather was a bigamist with a wife here in the U.S. and a first wife left behind in Russia. Apparently when he came to New York City he thought that his wife and three sons left behind in Russia would never be able to get out, so he never talked about them and just found a second wife, my Grandmother Yetta, married her and made four more babies-of which my dad was the youngest.
My grandfather was married to two different women in two different countries, at the same time. As is fate, Grandpa’s two wives eventually met up, yet another story unto itself. Unfortunately, my grandfather died very young. His family was poor, very poor. Unlike today, in those days education in New York was sacred and was only for the children of the privileged class, children of poor immigrant families went out to work to help support their families, as was the case with my father’s family.
Both my parents were very intelligent people. On my mother?s side there was no doubt that both she and her sister would attend college and attain degrees. They all also worked fulltime to help support their families, so night school was their only option. My mother?s choice was to become an engineer. But in 1938 there were no colleges in New York that would accept women into their engineering programs. She had some type of high school diploma that she brought with her from Romania. It had her name Renee on it, but I?m guessing that it was probably written in Romanian. She used it to apply to New York University School of engineering at the Heights campus. The admissions office, not realizing that it was the female spelling of the name, sent her a letter of acceptance. So, in the fall of 1939 this 19-year-old Romanian immigrant found her way to the campus, the correct classroom and started attending her first class. (Insert picture here)

BBefore the first class was even over the dean of the engineering school came to the door and called her outside to question what she was doing in the class. She told him that she was attending school. He told her that was impossible. She asks why. He said because the school did not admit women into the program. She showed him her letter of acceptance and asks why they don’t allow women into the program. His only response was that they did not have facilities for women. She boldly asked “Just where you go to the bathroom?” he responded right there down the hall. She held up her hand in his face and said wait right here for just a minute, she turned around and went into the bathroom, closed the door and locked it. She came back to a rather flustered old man, one Thorndike Saville and said plainly “Don’t worry, it has a lock on it, it will do fine.”
That was the beginning of a long friendship between her and Thorndike and also the very night Renee met Michael.
Mayer, as my father was called in those days, was also a very bright young man. In the early 30’s in the Lower East Side there was electricity, but not much of it. Apartments were mostly lit with gas lights and candles. As a boy, dad was interested in all things mechanical. He understood electricity, plumbing and building things from a very young age. He was the youngest and his older siblings were very hard on him. Because he was forced to leave school at age 12 and get a job to help support his family, they all called him stupid. He was also the smallest of the family men; so, he was mercilessly physically abused by his siblings as well, including his older sister. Even when I was an adult, my old aunt Gittle, his sister used to brag to me about how she boxed his ears when he was young.
Dad’s mechanical abilities started early. At age 12, all by himself he was able to wire his family’s apartment with electric lights, before anyone else in the building had even seen electric lights. He went on to wire many of the family’s apartments and homes on the lower east side. At that point he gained some respect. So, finally he was allowed to go back to night school. He still had to work, mostly in the deli and meat packing business, but he was allowed to finish high school at night and apply to NYU School of engineering; where even though he had a very Jewish name, he was accepted. After all, it was New York City, the gateway for immigration in those days.
On the first day of school, Renee being the only woman in the class, became the center of everyone’s attention. My dad, who was far from shy, went up to her and said “Why does a girl have such a big slide ruler?”

The match was made then and there, in an instant, because the important things in life always happen in an instant. My father lusted after her slide ruler and my mom was star struck by this very handsome, forward, Lower East Side guy. He had broad shoulders, a large chest and big arm muscles from years of hard work. In those days Dad looked very much like Clark Gable, very dashing with a mustache. (Insert dad’s army photo) Mom went home and told her parents that she had met the man she was going to marry. And that’s how it all began. I still have that very slide ruler of my mothers, someplace.
Both went on to multiple engineering and business degrees from NYU, 40 years of a mostly happy, always loving marriage, making four babies and owning a stupidly large, gentleman’s farming operation in northern New Jersey. Both ended their careers working for the Department of Defense at Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, New Jersey. Both had long and successful careers in designing weapons of mass destruction for the military. Mom developed missile guidance systems and Dad developed chemical propellants. They were very popular during our government’s efforts in Vietnam. They had the highest military security clearances. 
My father was the first in his entire family to go to college. His college years were interrupted by the Second World War. Because of his deli experience he ended up someplace in the Army Air Corps supply chain, supplying food, booze and arms to the servicemen on the front lines. He was stationed in India for most of the war (look for the glass thread). He wrote my mom regularly from his post. At some point he sent her, as he always claimed, a friendship ring made from an Indian star ruby. Mom made the mistake of showing it to his older sister. Gittle, his sister took mom to a family event and announced to everyone that her brother and Renee were engaged to be married- which was not exactly the case. Mom and Dad told very different sides of this story. Mom always felt badly that Gittle got involved and that the Goldstein women sort of railroaded dad into the marriage. As you will see, I understand that feeling all too well.
After the war, the G.I. bill allowed Dad to finish engineering school at night. During his last semester he started to look for and apply for a job. Even though he was a straight “A” student, all of his job applications were rejected. He was quite disturbed and talked to one of his engineering school friends named Ray Gluck. Ray flatly told him that he was being rejected because of his name. From his name it was clear that he was Jewish and, in those days, there was raging antisemitism in manufacturing.

Ray suggested that he try and submit applications with a less Jewish sounding name. Dad reapplied, to the same companies, with the name Michael G. Stone. He got offers back from most of the same companies that had previously rejected him as Mayer Goldstein. He ultimately took a job with a company called General Aniline in Wayne New Jersey, which ultimately became GAF.
 Yes, anti-Semitism was and is alive and well in this country. Dad was the first person in his family and one of the first in his generation to go to college and graduate. His mother was still alive to see his graduation from NYU. When they called him up to get his diploma it was issued as Michael G Stone. Mom was sitting next to her when they announced his name. That was the first time that Dad’s mother had heard that he had given up the Goldstein family name-and the Stone family was born. 
From the time my father was young he dreamed about owning land, a farm in the country. After Mom and Dad married and had made three babies and found decent work. Mom agreed to allow Dad to purchase our first farm, a beautiful 110 acre spread in the heart to the Great Swamp in Northern New Jersey. And that's where the story really begins.
As my adult life has gone by, I have experienced moments that convince me that we are nothing more than pure energy, having a human experience. Our energies are all connected. As I work through this story, look for the energy connections, which I now call “The Glass Thread.”
As one of the many recent examples of the glass thread that binds us all together, today while in our new studio in Escondido, California, we were paid a visit by one Rosemary Woldin. Someone traveling through San Diego, someone I had never met before today.

As I sat and listened to her talk to Carol, I thought there was something very familiar in her sound. I stopped to listen a little closer. In a flash I got an impulse to ask where she was from. She responded: Brooklyn. But I sensed something else, some indescribable energy. My curiosity was in full swing.
As I probed deeper, it turned out that she was also from New Jersey. More questioning revealed that she owned a home right down the street from my dad’s first farm.
But it gets better. My dad had to sell his farm to the U.S. government because it was part of the Great Swamp Preserve efforts. New Jersey’s governor at the time, Governor Frelinghuysen, in an effort to save the swamp from being taken over by the Tristate International Airport Authority, helped hatch a plan to make the land a federal wildlife preserve. It was a big battle between the governor and the Tristate Port Authority.
Rosemary not only worked for the TPA, she was in New Jersey working for them when the battle was raging and was aware of my dad’s exact property on Pleasant Plains Road. Now fifty some years later, a couple thousand miles away, she was standing in my studio talking about my dad’s property.
Unfortunately, the time came when Dad finally succumbed to the pressure and sold his beloved farm - which is now part of the Great Swamp Preserve. With all of my heart I wish that had not happened. How different our lives might have been had we stayed in the Great Swamp. 
Another recent example of the energies of connection and the glass thread, a chapter of my life took place in the deep south of India, during a very special time. That was an incredible journey filled with magic. But that was 1969, almost 50 years ago.

So last week we had a rather insistent young man pressure us into accommodating him and his wife, on short notice, for a glassblowing experience. I was teaching another student when they arrived. Through the glass doors into the gallery, which is also the entrance into the studio, I noticed the couple arrive. There was something very familiar about them, some energy I can’t describe, just a feeling. After finishing the class, I went into the gallery and introduced myself. The connection was electric and I felt it as we shook hands. There is always a lot of energy transfer through our hands when they touch. But these young people were about the age of my own children, way too young to be part of my life in India, I thought.

I asked my usual barrage of questions-like have you ever blown glass before? What brings you to my studio? And a few other polite inquires. Then I asked directly, where are you from? Their answer in perfect English, without any trace of an accent, was California. I sarcastically responded “Ya right.” OK wise guys, where are your parents from? Vijay and his wife reluctantly answered, India. I wasn’t quite prepared for what happened next. Where in India?
They both still played coy and answered “the south.” Where in the south? They responded, “a small place that you have never heard of.” What is the name of your small place? That place that you are so sure that I have never heard of, in the south of India?
Vijay finally said Trichinopoly, his wife said Chennai. I said, “do you mean Madras.” “She said yes.” So here we go yet again. The glass thread is strong.
I told them I went to college in Trichinopoly in 1969 and had stayed many times with friends in Madras. Vijay knew my college and his wife’s family is actually married into the family of my dear friends from Madras, the Ratnams. Bam! There we go again, connected by the energies of life.
About a week before this incident, I had another example of the connection of the energy of life via the glass thread. I have a casual business friend Matt, who spent his working life as jeweler, but actually got an MFA in Glassblowing from the famed Marvin Lipofsky. But he had abandoned his glass career and spent his working career as a jeweler.
As a professional courtesy, after a 30 plus year hiatus I gave Matt a chance to get back in front of the furnace and touch the hot gooey stuff.
Access to molten glass is very limited. After his furnace session he was in the gallery speaking to Carol about his hobby as a member of the San Diego Jewish Men’s Choir and that they were always looking for new members. Carol thought that was a great opportunity for me and they encouraged me to give it a try.
After a few rehearsals the choir leader said I should join and take part in their next public performances. But I needed a tuxedo. I really have no need for one and wasn’t interested in spending that kind of money for something that I might only use a half a dozen times. She then told me about a member who, for some reason, had a warehouse full of tuxedos. I hadn’t yet met him, because he had missed a few rehearsals. His name is Steve Markowitz. I was awe struck. I described a guy I had met weeks before at an art show-someone who had bought a small piece of my art at the show. It turned out that Steve and I had a mutual friend named Bullet. I told her I had his number and I would call him. That act within itself was a huge coincidence, right?

A few days later I called. I was amazed at the huge coincidence that I ended up joining the same choral group, right? Well, it just gets better. When I called, I first spoke to his wife Fiona. We chatted and just before she handed the phone to her husband, she said “Isn’t it funny? The world just keeps getting smaller and smaller all the time.” I spoke to Steve next. First, we talked about our mutual acquaintance and that he thought we had met before. Then we spoke about the coincidence of joining the same group. Then we get down to the business of agreeing on a deal for the tuxes. I asked if he would be willing to trade for glass art. He readily agreed and told me he has loved glass for a long time.
I was curious just what that meant. What made him love glass and what does a long time actually mean? The bells were already ringing in my head. He said he used to manage a glass gallery in downtown San Diego.
I was shocked. A chill ran up and down my spine and all the hair on my arms stood straight up. The glass thread was wagging again.
As you will read, I began my present course in the summer of 1986 when I visited the Betsey Lane Gallery in Horton Plaza. A skinny young man who ran the gallery told me about the glassblowing program at Palomar College and that they were taking registration right then, that very day, for the summer program. I walked right out the door of the gallery to a pay phone right outside their door.
I dialed information and called the college. It was a Friday afternoon. I asked about the program and indeed registration was open till the end of that day. They had only one seat left. I immediately drove all the way to Palomar and grabbed that last seat and finally got on my present glass thread path.
Steve Markowitz was that very guy who, on that very fateful day in 1986 gave me the information I needed to take the next step in my journey.  Up to the point we reconnected at the show I had not seen him, talked to him or even knew his name or thanked him for the 33 years of this present journey. Bam! There it goes again.
A journey is made up of all the various steps we take to get to our ultimate destination. Some steps are large, some are small. Sometimes we go in the wrong direction all together. It seems to me that when you are walking your path, if you make a mistake and get on the wrong road, the universe has a fantastic way of helping you make a course correction. 
I was introduced to glass in the most serendipitous of ways. I did some work in glass, and then veered off course. Then something happened and I was steered back to the glass road. This has happened several times in my adult life. Once in 1974, then again in 1978, again in 1986 and finally in 2001.
One thing that has amazed me repeatedly, from the moment I was forcibly pulled from my mother’s womb, is that it was at the hands of Dr. Glass. I never really thought much about that until I finally got on this present glass road - really only on the hot glass side. I never really thought about him or the glass road as a stained-glass artist or as a fuser. Even when I did the biggest fusing job of my career, for a local synagogue, I failed to realize I was on the very path I was meant to be on. And so, the odyssey begins.