My Library

"I vonder, Eengo," he began, "vat ju use for eyes [pronounced `ice’] ven ju are OOB." "Jes," I responded. "Zat’s a very good question, eesn’t it?" We had not gotten around to going any further with this back then. But now, back in the saddle at the ASPR, I did decide that we should spend some time looking deeper into this. This activity would comprise part of the 50 percent time guaranteed to me under our new working arrangement. I have already mentioned in an earlier chapter that Dr. Carole Silfen had been brought into the ASPR work. She was a perceptual psychologist, and so Janet and I met with her and handed over to her the guidelines for this type of thing. Dr. Silfen was a small woman with fine black hair I remember as naturally curly. She had pale olive skin that came off as pallor and dressed in a way that was neither fashionable nor unfashionable. She was delighted, saying "Mostly I’m asked to overview other people’s ideas, and no one asks me for suggestions or creative guidance. Parapsychologists are not interested in the intricacies of perception." To get into this, we decided first to meet several times to discuss the issues, and then to refine them until an experiment could be conceived and designed. Thus, on several days, Silfen, Mitchell, and sometimes Schmeidler commandeered the big table in the library room and locked ourselves in and others out -- somewhat to the disapproving eyes of her rulership, Fanny Knipe. "It IS supposed to be open to the PUBLIC, you know." But, bless her alligator heart, Fanny had begun to smile at me.