Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

In 1966, when I was eight years old, my birthday present was a Vac-u-Form. For those unfamiliar with this “toy,” here’s how it worked:

Shaped like a rectangular box, the Vac-u-Form had a heating plate on one side and a vacuum platform on the other. Between them, a “window” was hinged so that it could swing to cover either the plate or the platform. To operate it, you first put a mold on the vacuum platform; the kit supplied several molds of cars, boats, etc., but you could put any small (heat-resistant) object on there. Then you put a sheet of styrene plastic in the “window” and closed it over the heating plate. When the heat sufficiently softened the plastic, you swung the window over to the other side, covering the mold on the vacuum platform and, using the side lever, pumped out all the air. The vacuum sucked the softened styrene down around the mold, making a 3D impression of the shape beneath. With a razor, you trimmed off the excess plastic, freeing the molded pieces, which you could then glue together and paint, making a toy boat or car or whatever was used as a mold.

Think about that for a second.

My parents — by all reports and observations two reasonable and responsible adults — gave their eight-year old child an open hot plate with which he could melt plastic to create shapes which he then cut out with an X-Acto knife, glued together with airplane dope, and colored with flammable paints. All unsupervised.

Different world, eh? (more…)

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Ronald Achilles Giambastiani
05 Nov 1929 – 13 Jul 2016

My father taught me many important lessons: lessons that shaped the way I see the world, the way I approach my work, the way I conduct myself, and the way I treat others. Naturally, he taught me the basics — “Don’t play with fire,” “Always look both ways,” and his favorite, “Never turn your back on the ocean” — but his most formative lessons were often just bits of wisdom he tossed my way with the casual nonchalance that one uses to state the patently obvious. Well, they may have been obvious to him, but to me, they were revelations.

Last week, Dad passed away. Since then I’ve been thinking back on the relationship we had over the years — sometimes rocky, sometimes smooth — and reviewing the many, many ways in which he made me who I am. These lessons, for him but the work of a moment, were each an integral part of who he was, an irreducible truth, so simple and clear that they required no further explanation.

They still have great pertinence to my daily life, and so I thought I might share them with you during the next several days. Five lessons from my father: On Creativity, Parenting, Opportunity, Humility, and Love.

Watch this space.

k

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