{"id":2028,"date":"2010-08-10T15:21:57","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T19:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stacyhorn.com\/unbelievable\/?p=2028"},"modified":"2010-08-10T15:22:42","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T19:22:42","slug":"staff-meetings-at-the-parapsychology-laboratory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/?p=2028","title":{"rendered":"Staff Meetings at the Parapsychology Laboratory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every Monday night the Parapsychology Lab staff would get together in the library for what they called Research Meetings. Later, it turned into a daily morning gathering called the Coffee Hour. Everyone would file in, sit at attention, and wait for Rhine to appear. He \u201centered the room in a fashion unmistakably demanding attention and authority,\u201d Klaus Schmidt-Koenig, a former Lab Research Associate described. They might discuss their current experiments. Or a newspaper article. Or one of the many reports they received from the field. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe meetings were casual and excited, highly structured, but not formal, not boring,\u201d one former attendant wrote. And interesting people were always stopping by. For instance, during the month of November, 1964, Eddie Albert, Pearl S. Buck, and Burl Ives dropped in for a visit (on different days). <\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who had an idea spoke up, one way or the other,\u201d remembers psychologist Gertrude Schmeidler, an occasional attendee who Rhine once tried to lure into joining them at the Lab. \u201cWhen all had had their say, heads turned to Rhine and there was silence. Then he spoke, telling us the decision … There was no pretense of being first among equals; Dr. Rhine was first.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cHe ruled the lab almost like an old fashion German professor,\u201d Schmidt-Koenig described. \u201cAnd he didn’t like to be interrupted,\u201d Rhea White, another former staff member, added. \u201cIt made him lose his train of thought.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"staffmeeting1\"<\/p>\n

But Louisa Rhine had a sense of humor about her serious husband. She’s the one on the far right in this picture. Someone told how she’d sometimes make affectionate fun of J.B. when he was being particularly serious. The staff would do their best to smother their laughter, but J. B. would sense the change of mood in the room, stop, look out over the top of his glasses, and wonder what the fuss was about. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every Monday night the Parapsychology Lab staff would get together in the library for what they called Research Meetings. Later, it turned into a daily … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piV6u-wI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2028"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2040,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2028\/revisions\/2040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.echonyc.com\/~horn\/unbelievable\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}