So, on a dark and stormy autumn night in 1970 – I’m not making this up – Perigoe and I drove to Toronto’s west end, knocked on the door of a sprawling home and were met by a young woman in a bikini. We heard that brothers Riff and Mitch Markowitz were looking for writers for a spooky kids’ show. In 1970, my best friend and classmate in Ryerson’s Radio and TV Arts course, Ross Perigoe, and I weren’t about to wait for graduation from the program to write professionally. Radio & TV writing team of Ross Perigoe (r) and myself. If you read the Wikipedia file, producer Rafael (Riff) Markowitz claims that Frightentstein was entirely his idea and that he invited “a room full of creative friends to a spaghetti and champagne dinner party (to) brainstorm the idea.” That’s not the way I remember it. It starred, among others, Vincent Price (as the horror host), Julius Sumner Miller (as the mad professor), the Wolf Man, Billy Van (as Count Frightenstein, the 13th son of Count Dracula) and Fishka Rais (as the Count’s incompetent assistant). If you missed the 1970s and children’s TV from that era, you also missed a quirky kids’ show originally produced at CHCH TV in Hamilton, and then syndicated worldwide years afterward. Want to know more? Roll your camera and I’ll tell you.” “I co-created it with my writing partner Ross Perigoe. “Have you ever heard of the TV show The Hilarious House of Frightenstein?” she asked. She had one more question to ask, but she wanted to be sure it was OK to ask it on camera. But she gestured for me to stay put for a second. ![]() No matter what you believe, or not, about prayer, Presence, and creation, you’ll be delighted.The reporter had asked her final question about my appearance at a regional theatre in Alberta that afternoon. Take a few minutes to feed the child within watch an episode or two of Demonstrations in Physics. ![]() Miller’s physics was a call to prayer, a joyful time to marvel at some small part of creation and to soak up the Goodness flowing through it all. Rumi, the 13 th century mystical poet of Islam wrote: “The beauty and grandeur of God belong to Him the beauty and grandeur of the world of creation are borrowed from Him.”įor me, Dr. Most religious traditions see the Holy One reflected in creation, and creation as a way to encounter that Sacred. Francis and Bonaventure extolling God’s presence in the “book of nature.” For Bonaventure, God is “fountain fullness,” spilling out of and over everything, in all life, outer as well as inner. Miller delight in how things work reminded me of Sts. Like Thornton Wilder said in “Our Town,” saints and poets do, some. Scientists like Montagu and Miller are not the only ones to understand the importance of such presence. In his book, Growing Young, anthropologist Ashley Montagu listed these qualities among others in the childlike nature: “…curiosity, inquisitiveness, thirst for knowledge, the need to learn, imagination, creativity, open-mindedness, experimental-mindedness, spontaneity, enthusiasm…joy…”Īlong life’s path, many of us lose that childlike amazement at the world around us. We can’t see the extraordinary all around us if we aren’t present where we are, looking with open eyes and heart. In addition to adding “enchantment to the soul,” as Miller said, it also opens the soul to receive Grace. Something else came to mind as well: What a gift to retain the wonder and abandon that are natural for children as we become adults. Those memories flooded back as I watched the episode this morning. ![]() You just learn something you didn’t expect to learn.” If it didn’t go as planned, “Oh well, an experiment never fails. Let’s do it again” (and he and she would). Miller’s frequent expressions: “That’s beautiful. For years, after my daughter disappeared into the basement to build and conduct her own experiments, she would call me down to demonstrate them and echoed two of Dr. Miller loved sharing the wonders of physics in the everyday world from air pressure, to heat conduction, to, one of our favorites, Bernoulli’s principle. We all enjoyed them, but my oldest daughter, now a physicist herself, was the most faithful viewer.ĭr. We didn’t have cable, so my parents taped it for us. Miller’s show aired on PBS and was a staple in our house. I smiled as I watched the lesson on air pressure, a 14-minute delight of knowledge and unabashed enthusiasm. His email today included a link to a show he had rediscovered: Professor Julius Sumner Miller’s “Demonstrations in Physics. So was wonder.Ī longtime friend who attended school with my daughters and was a frequent visitor to our house, still keeps in touch though he lives most of the time in Southeast Asia. “My name is Julius Sumner Miller, and physics is my business.” That’s how he opened every show.
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