Burning Down the House

February 12, 1979...I was sitting in Joe Palermo's Biology II class.  Mary Jean Bunting talked about just seeing the Talking Heads on Saturday Night Live singing "Take Me to the River".  She wasn't impressed.  They had just released their second album entitled "More Songs about Buildings and Food".  The album title alone was a statement of their creativity.

But we weren't in class to discuss music.  We were there to learn from Joseph Palermo.  Mr. Palermo was a relatively new teacher at Indian River High School in Frankford, De.  The first class I took with him was Biology I in the ninth grade.  My family had moved to upstate NY for two years , and when we returned home to Delaware for my freshman year, I was a year ahead in math and science.  So they put me in sophomore classes.  It was odd being a ninth grader in tenth grade classes.  The feeling of not knowing exactly where I belonged took me a couple of years to get over.  Or maybe I never did.

Mr. Palermo was a breath of fresh air in the midst of that transition.  I had my epiphany of the value of education in the eighth grade .  I had latched on to two teachers at Honeoye Falls-Lima Middle School - Kenneth Pike who taught science, and Doug Powell who taught mathematics.  Their love of the sciences had grown on me, and I started a habit of using teachers as role models.  Early in that 9th year, Mr. Palermo was one of the teachers who took that place.  He was young, energetic, and full of fresh ideas.  He didn't do things the way everyone else did.

Neither did the Talking Heads.  Their fifth album, interestingly entitled "Speaking in Tongues", contained the song "Burning Down the House."  It has an extremely interesting and complex rhythm near the end of the song with a combination of instruments, predominantly percussion.  Much of the music I listen to tells a story with words.  This doesn't.  I think the words and voices are there only to make a sound to go along with the music.  The story they tell is in sound of the instruments and voices together.  A whole nother world of creativity.

For some logistical reason, I had ended up with my given class of '79 in Biology II with Mr. Palermo.  He did not remain in high school education.  He left soon after our senior year to pursue Sports Medicine.  I'm sure he had a successful career in that field, but high school education lost a valuable asset when he moved on.  Perhaps he found where he really belonged.  Fortunately for us, my classmates and I were on the receiving end while he poured himself into teenagers for those few years.  Thanks Mr. Palermo.