rose kelly of south heidelberg township, born in 1932, will be a featured guest for the upcoming poetry reading for this project at the berks encore senior center in wernersville on tuesday, november 29 @ 11 a.m. alongside her will be willie kramer, a special guest from the first volume of poetry in this project.
rose worked at western electric which later became at&t and had a few other names as well, while it lasted in muhlenberg township. a photograph of her and some of her employee thank you gifts for her many years there are below, followed by her full poem because it's so science-rich that you really need the whole set of words to grasp it well, compared to a usual long excerpt.
we didn’t wear gloves way back when. they handed me
the smallest mask they had sitting
around, since most were
larger, for men. i had a few different jobs while at western
electric, where i’d started in 1959,
first at the laureldale
plant, before they moved us all to the edge of muhlenberg
township. a specialist of the knife
at one point, i sliced
and grew raw crystals. some folks twist their heads slightly
to the side, when i explain this old
job of mine—bought
out by at&t—that visual indicator of their confusion fashioned
into how they lean and furl their
eyebrows just a pinch.
it shows that many people haven’t heard of a career like this.
yes, i cut and parented crystals, using
grey, metallic masses
of germanium, or some gallium arsenide, and i synthesized
them with a crimson, almost raspberry
jam-hued red phosphorus—
that powder catches fire if it drops, and sometimes it did.
i wore a monkey suit, like an astronaut,
situating a glass crucible
of the elements in an old cannon with a water jacket around
it. i sealed the top with a lid while the heat
feathered something new, a boule.
about eight hours later, you had thousands of electronic chips
to segment out of that boule, new ingredients
for transistors, things like that.
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