Spring term opens January 9

WILLIAMS JUNIOR COLLEGE
BERKELEY
ENROLL NOW

Spring term opens January 9

High school graduates, regardless of previous scholastic record, may attend WILLIAMS JUNIOR COLLEGE and transfer to University of California or Stanford, without examination, as sophomores or juniors.

Faculty of High Attainment
One-Year Pre-Nursing Course Now Offered
Courses in JOURNALISM and
CREATIVE WRITING

Ask for Catalog
Williams Junior College
Arlington Avenue, Berkeley
Phone Ashberry 1994

(Berkeley Daily Gazette, December 26, 1932, p. 4)

Retrieved 11.30.11
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gSExAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MeMFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4251%2C6282335


(Just an aside. "Faculty of high attainment" is certainly an apt description of Vassar's own Maud Makemson , who taught astronomy and physical geography at Williams Junior College simultaneously while working at UC as a research assistant and taking graduate courses in astronomy.

Retrieved 11.30.11
http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/faculty/prominent-faculty/maud-w-makemson.html)

Maud took her 11 astronomy students from Berkeley on an overnight expedition to view a total eclipse of the sun on April 28, 1930.

(Popular Astronomy, Vol. 38, p. 537)
Retrieved 11.30.11
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1930PA.....38..537M/0000537.000.html

1937, Partial Scholarships for Writers

The Williams Institute School of Authorship began offering partial scholarships for writers, according to The Berkeley Daily Gazette, January 11, 1937

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=RZkuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=vaMFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4802%2C1118155

1936, Mind Training

In 1936, the Williams College Institute of Authorship was beginning its fourth year of operation, according to this article in the Berkeley Daily Gazette, August 21, 1936.

"The Williams College faculty has been given the benefit of the most advanced psychological findings in mind training through summer courses at the Institute by such world authorities Count Alfred Korzybski and Dr. Alfred Adler."

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1970&dat=19360821&id=NpcoAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IgYGAAAAIBAJ&pg=4529,4569875

Curtis Zahn, student at Williams School of Authorship

I'm not sure why people always mention Irving Wallace when namedropping esteemed participants of the Williams school of authorship. Curtis Zahn attended as well. He seemed pretty interesting.

"Poet and playwright Curtis Zahn (1912 – 1990) may not be a well-known name, but his legacy lives on through the work of the Pacificus Foundation, a literary arts group he founded in 1959 that not only preserves his work but offers financial support to emerging talent in the fields of poetry, short fiction and drama.

Born on November 12, 1912, he was the son of Oswald and Edith Zahn. His paternal grandfather had been a doctor serving Southern California prior to the Civil War, and his father was a businessman. Raised in Los Angeles and Coronado, Zahn briefly attended the University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State College (now University) and the Williams Institute and School of Authorship in Berkeley. Inheriting his father’s love for sailing, he served as an able-bodied seaman on an oceanography expedition in 1938 and parlayed that experience into writing a fish and game column for the San Diego Tribune-Sun . He served at that paper throughout World War II, except for one year during which he was incarcerated in a federal penitentiary for declaring himself a conscientious objector to the war.

Zahn began his literary career concurrent to his journalistic work, founding a group of short story writers in San Diego. In the mid-1940s, he moved to Los Angeles, and began contributing poems and plays to various publications like Cross Section, 1945 (L.B. Fischer, 1945) and Experiment Theatre Anthology (University of Washington Press, 1950). By 1951, he had acquired oceanfront property in Malibu, California, on which he built a villa-like home of his own design along with adjacent studios that served as a venue for writers’ workshops attended by such notables as Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller and Christopher Isherwood. Around the same time, Zahn became a professional painter and collagist and served as chairman of the Malibu Art Association. In 1959, he founded the Pacificus Foundation and he dispensed typewriters or small amounts of cash to assist new writers.

By the 60s, Zahn was earning attention for his stage plays, many of which were first produced in Los Angeles. His one-act satire, Conditioned Reflex, was produced Off-Broadway in 1967. Like many, Zahn lost his home in the Malibu fires of 1969, but undeterred he found a new location for his writers colony, designing and building a redwood home in a hillside near Los Angeles. That dwelling, which contains Zahn’s original furnishing, framed family pictures and his art work, serves as the headquarters for the Pacificus Foundation, which annually presents the Curtis Zahn Poetry Prize in its founder’s honor."

Curtis Zahn died at age 78 on September 24, 1990.


(Retreived 11.20.11
http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/archives-cc/app/details.php?id=8844&return=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bu.edu%2Fphpbin%2Farchives-cc%2Fapp%2Fbrowse.php%3Fletter%3DZ)


"The Reactivated Man" is but one of his plays. "A nightmarish black comedy about a man being operated on by two possibly insane doctors for the removal of his guilt complexes. Originally produced at the Edward Ludlum Theater, Los Angeles."

Alfred Adler, 1937

Flyer for August, 1937 Seminar
Scheduled for the Williams Institute in Berkeley, California
Proposed Western Headquarters for Adler in the U.S.

(Retrieved 11.30.11 http://www.adlerian.us/Page1b.htm


(Alfred Adler was important to Williams College for a number of reasons.  But he also had famously and locally published his reminiscences of World War I.  In a second S.F. Chronicle article, dated February 10, 1929, Adler is quoted extensively describing the suffering in post World War I Austria. He speaks of the 100,000 Viennese who are unemployed; of the psychologists, medical doctors, social workers, and teachers who are staffing the clinics for the children of poor families; and of the lack of money to pay these professionals. He is quoted as having said," I felt throughout the War as a prisoner feels. The only solution to the problem of future wars is for science to organize the world so as to make war unnecessary, and to educate mankind to become more socially adjusted and more interested in each other." (2)


from: http://pws.cablespeed.com/~htstein/adler-sf.htm

Understanding Volume 6 Number 9
September 1961
VISTA unit #4: John W. Hopkins of Williams College lectured to this unit during July, on "The Music of the Spheres."

(all issues of Understanding newsletters scanned and posted by Sean at Danielfry.com)

The Spring Mansion

(The Spring Mansion as it appeared in the Spiral, yearbook of the Williams Institute, 1927 [BAHA Archives, gift of Larry Leon]
http://www.berkeleyheritage.com/berkeley_landmarks/spring_mansion.html

Darryl Henriques was the instigator behind bringing "It Can't Happen Here" back to stages across the US recently.


Nation-Wide Reading of It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
Published on The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/)

| November 2, 2011

IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE (CAN IT?): Fascism in America? Nah, it can’t happen here, people said. But Sinclair Lewis, Nobel Prize–winning author (and a Nation contributor), challenged that shibboleth in his 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, a dystopian fantasy in which a folksy, Huey Long–style demagogue is elected president and soon becomes an American Hitler. In 1936 the WPA Federal Theater Project mounted twenty-two simultaneous nationwide productions of the novel, which Lewis and John C. Moffitt adapted for the stage. In October, in commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of those productions, about twenty-two theater companies and universities across the country staged readings of Lewis’s play.

The instigator was California actor and comedian Darryl Henriques, who calls the Federal Theater Project “the greatest flowering of theatrical talent the country has ever witnessed” and says his idea for the revival “had everything to do with what’s going on in America.”

“We have a form of fascism that hides behind the illusion of elections, a government that is wholly owned by the corporations and consistently ignores the well-being of its citizens in order to enrich the rich.”

Most of the readings took place on October 24—the date of Black Thursday, the 1929 stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression. In Seattle Arne Zaslove mounted a lavish reading with the Endangered Species Project, dedicated to putting on “the great plays you seldom see.” Producing director Mark Seldis of the Ghost Road Company in Baldwin Hills, California, says of its performance, “It was clear from audience reactions that It Can’t Happen Here certainly resonates today.” Mike Smith Rivera of Burning Clown Productions, who held a reading in New York with the WorkShop Theater Company, says “much of the discussion was centered around” Lewis’s prescience “in foreseeing many of society’s present-day problems”—problems currently dramatized by Occupy Wall Street.

As Federal Theater Project director Hallie Flanagan once put it, dictatorship comes in “an apparently harmless guise with parades and promises…[but] the promises are not kept and the parade grounds become encampments.” RICHARD LINGEMAN


https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nation-Wide-Reading-of-It-Cant-Happen-Here-by-Sinclair-Lewis/152921454785776

Everyone who resided at Williams College had a job to pay the rent, and were generally fairly active people when not at work. Darryl had a part time gig at a cheese store on Vine Street, close to the Shattuck Co-op, which had just expanded their imported cheese section and was now offering budget blocks of Finnish lappi, muenster, and gouda.

Leading up to a quieter side street away from from the busy parking lot of the Coop where Volvos and Volkswagens and other small imported cars vied for parking, the corner of Vine Street and Shattuck offered a popular laundromat on one corner where the tubs and driers constantly revolved, one Maytag always had a quarter stuck in the slot, allowing for a perpetual free wash. Across from the laundromat was a large restaurant called Pantry Shelf. The waitresses wore pastel uniforms and the hovered behind a real soda fountain in the rear that served a bit of NY, a deli menu including chocolate egg cremes and celery spritzers. That was a very friendly place which welcomed every customer, and the waitresses remained working there for years.

The cheese store, where better heeled patrons shopped, was just down the street from the original Peet's coffee. Because Darryl was well liked at the cheese store, he was able to take time off work when touring with the Mime Troupe. Darryl would work in the back and sometimes behind the counter in a white apron slicing off orders from huge wheels of imported cheese. Within a few years, the cheese store became a worker's collective.

His friend had a part time job as a temporary employee delivering mail for the post office, and would drive around Oakland with her dog in the truck and delivered mail. One time, her dog ran off while she was around the corner delivering mail. She knocked on every door enlisting neighborhood aid to locate the missing animal. She tapped at one door and saw a flutter of curtains like someone was peeking out. She tapped again, and a gruff voice barked loudly, "Whaddya want?" She explained the circumstances through the closed door and the door was opened by a large man sporting a huge Afro dashiki. She'd interrupted what she said looked to be a Black Panther meeting, with guys in large Afros sitting in large African basket chairs, the walls of the entry decorated with an animal skin with African shields and arrows on top. She did find her dog that day. When budget cut backs arrived she was temporarily laid off with a muttered promise she would likely be rehired down the road, so in between she snagged a job walking horses at dawn at Golden Gate Fields.

Ed Leddy toured more often than not with the Marine Band.

Gene Schoenfeld maintained a medical practice in addition to his publishing and busy social life with other famous icons of the sixties and he was not around the estate too often. The man residing in the peacock house, which was an immense single floor space with kitchen and bath below a rehearsal studio, though from a fairly well-heeled family who owned a music publishing company, relied on a student stipend and worked as a teaching assistant while finishing the dissertation for his PhD.

I worked part time nights as a waitress in what I regarded as the hippest blues and jazz club in the East Bay and was enrolled as a fulltime student of history and literature at UC Berkeley while I lived below what was being used as a dance studio in the old gymasium on the estate. My boyfriend worked at Leopold's, also known as Leopold Stokowski Memorial Pavilion, which was primarily a record and tape store which was owned by the students of Berkeley and which was founded with the idea of distributing profits to support community endeavors.

A couple who rented the big two story carriage house almost no one ever saw -- he was a professional muscle builder and competitor and worked in construction, while his girlfriend worked as an exotic dancer. They were likely in residence the longest of any renters, surely from 1966 and to late 1974 if not beyond.

Altogether, the total rents each month collected by Dr Hopkins in the mid- to late-sixties may have soared to close to $1500 a month, out of which Dr. Hopkins paid the PG&E bill, water, and trash pickup for the entire estate (except for the carriage house as I recall which I believe was on a separate meter), material costs for repairs or improvements and maybe property taxes. As we asked little of Dr Hopkins in the way of improving the property, perhaps he and his aged father pretty much lived off what was left of those meager rents. Charles, the handyman, was given free room and board by Dr. Hopkins in exchange for working about the estate.

While people can argue the residents were the lively ones and existed apart and were most interesting all on their own, it was Dr Hopkins afterall who met and approved or selected residents from the rental applications and so he determined who would live on the estate.

Ed Leddy was a jazz trumpeter best known for his work with Stan Kenton, but Leddy also was a player at the Lighthouse and all the famous places that helped birth and nurture the cool jazz of the late 50s and early 60s known as West Coast jazz. He appeared on many lp's which were testaments of the shift from big band to be-bop. (The image on the right is Ed's own scrapbook of newspaper clippings of his music tours primarily those with the military.)

As one of the more curious coincidences, he'd played on one of the first jazz lp's I ever bought, West Coast Jazz in Hifi. At that early point in history in Los Angeles, my sister knew some jazz musicians, and coincidentally again was introduced to Ed Leddy who had given her a small can of rum babas, a confection that his aunt in New Jersey had mailed him on his birthday. This had to have been 1960 or so that I opened and ate the rum babas.

In 1968 or 1969, I didn't put together that I might have even heard of Ed Leddy until I saw Ed Leddy himself walking down from the manor house one day with a package. His aunt had sent him a birthday present, his favorite, a can of rum babas. What's more, the confection was put out by the same company, so it was an exact duplicate of the delight I had ingested nearly a decade prior. I was truly surprised when I saw that.

Ed had attended West Point Academy and played in the US Army bands. He toured around the world with them and played everywhere towards the end of WWII. Apparently he'd reenlisted after that as he was rumored in the mid-60s to be playing in the US Marine Band. He often traveled with them which is why he was so seldom seen on the estate. I remember seeing his scrap book on the table in Darryl's cottage once. His scrapbook is pictured above, purchased from Ebay by a military collector.

In 1969, a person Ed used to play with had recently died, and there was a record jacket near the turntable in Darryl's cottage. I noticed the title "Burrito Borracho" and Darryl and I laughed a bit about that as Borracho was the name of the character who Darryl was playing on a Mime Troupe tour.

Mostly the conversation drifted to Latins who make music and art, as "Latin" and "Mexican" was on the air with the Mime Troupe and an offshoot El Teatro Camposino as they were performing together at that time. And Darryl even was onstage once with El Teatro, back when the names of the characters were identified by signs hung around the necks of the actors. And Johnny's record aside from the copy we'd just listened to was nearly destined for the scrap heap drowned as it was in the oceans of rock music being released, as was a recording called Cuban Fire which was similarly doused and one which would likely never again see re-release until some music historian took interest. So the conversation that afternoon was something about the transience of art.

The West Coast jazz scene of the early 60s had nearly disappeared with the bursting popularity of rock and roll recording, with Los Angeles nearly as the hub. Most jazz players who wanted to continue with jazz relied on European tours, some relocating permanently to Europe in order to play jazz regularly. Other jazz musicians took on jobs playing television and sessions and tours with rock and roll bands who needed musicians to actually play the music. Ed survived by touring and playing with the US Marine Band.

Because we shared an interest in a particular delicacy, I told Ed about a wonderful restaurant called the Balabosta down on University near Mandrake's, the blues and jazz club. I had the idea he might want to stop into Mandrake's sometime to catch some of the major jazz that was pumping out of the club. I ran into him at the Balabosta one time, each of us seated at different tables covered with red and white checked cloths. We each had set before us a small dish of their famous chocolate baba a rhum.


http://www.jazzwax.com/2007/10/somethng-else.html
Retrieved: 7.30.11

The Williams College Tennis Court

In early 1967, on one of my first trips to the estate to visit people I knew who'd moved in there, I heard stories of how those theatrical types had just entertained themselves by recreating a famous scene from the Antonioni film "Blow Up" on the estate's tennis court. Peter Cohon, Ronnie, Darryl, maybe Sandy ... I don't know for sure who was on the court that day.


I'd just seen "Blow Up" over in Albany, as had half of the East Bay. All I remembered thinking was those mimes sure were noisy, weren't they?

There was a small cornet hanging from a braided cord on the wall of the cottage that Sandy and Ronnie were handing over to Darryl and his friend. And Ed Leddy by all reports had given a trumpet lesson or two to one of the residents of the cottage recently.



(Photo of Ronnie Davis and trumpet
"Vietnam veteran R.G. Davis, one of the founders of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, rides his bicycle to an Iraq war protest in San Francisco while playing "Reveille" on his bugle. Chronicle photo by Deanne Fitzmaurice"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2003/03/22/BA125137.DTL
Retrieved: 7.28.11

Ed Leddy: Jazz Trumpeter

Darryl's cottage was quite large, an unpainted wooden structure with steeply pitched roof covered in forest green tarpaper. The great room boasted an ancient gas furnace which was never that I recall used, as that would have been futile because the room was wrapped around with windows. The floor of was covered with an equally ancient huge single piece of linoleum of indeterminate well-worn design, nailed in place around the edges and peeling away from the walls. That was layered with large braided woolen rugs or rugs with floral borders acquired on various thrift store outings. Furnished with couches, upholstered side chairs, occasional tables, and bookshelves with books and papers falling into each other.

The outside door led directly to the great room. A hard right turn from the entry door carried visitors into the kitchen, which was large enough to hold an ample kitchen table and three wooden table chairs all set beneath the window which afforded a view of the shrubbery outside. And a 1930's gas stove with a sink next to it set into a short wooden counter with shelving underneath for pots and pans, an area that was covered with thin curtains held in place by small brass curtain rods. There was a small gas wall heater in the wall of the kitchen that adjoined the bedroom, which was farther to the right through a door. That was at a different level because of the natural geography of the estate, built as it was on a hill, so you had to step up a stair or two into a small hallway and two steps carried you past the shower and bathroom facilities and on into a bedroom expansive enough to hold a bed, looking glass in a standing frame, two dressers, large woven baskets with lids containing clothes. That room, too, was wrapped on two sides with windows, under which on one side had built-in large cupboards and shelving.

Another cottage, set almost directly across the estate on the southern edge of the grounds, was much, much smaller and more primitive. This structure truly was ramshackle in appearance, and despite framed windows and a small step up porch under a small covered porch roof looked to be a building that had originally been erected to hold gardening tools, but which over the course of time had been improved and expanded upon. This small unpainted wooden cottage, no bigger than ten foot square, with a door once painted blue was the rental residence of a mysterious resident who was seldom seen on the estate. Squeezed inside was a bed, an easy chair with reading lamp, a small dining table with one chair, a stove for cooking and heating. There was a kitchen sink and towards the back, though I never saw this area, was the bathroom and shower. The tenant who was seldom seen was Ed Leddy. Ed lived on the estate for some undetermined number of years, certainly from 1966 to 1971, who knows how many other years on either side of that span.

Darryl Henriques: Comedian in Residence 1966-1969

So Ronnie and Sandy relinquished use of the desirable cottage and the Mime Troupe went on tour. Darryl Henriques the next season portrayed Borracho in "Olive Pits", a play which opened the tour in Delano and eventually won the troupe an Obie that year.

Although history remembers and often mentions Peter Cohon's (he wasn't Peter Coyote just yet) role as writer and actor, as I recall, Darryl was the only performer whose image was pictured on the poster, his face beamed out from the middle of a large blue star. That poster is missing from the San Francisco Mime Troupe official site, and to my knowledge the only place on earth you can view it is the lobby of Dell Arte International, 615 H Street, in Blue Lake, California.

While in residence at Williams College, Darryl Henriques stayed busy with the Mime Troupe throughout the year and especially during performance seasons. As a Mime Trouper, Darryl handled the crankies and made paper movies of his own. He was also an actor in the early plays about the parking meters and the telephone credit cards which the Mime Troupe performed at Provo Park in Berkeley among a number of other locations.

Darryl founded the East Bay Sharks, a Musical Theater Group, which also performed in parks throughout the Bay Area, including the park in San Francisco's China Town. The East Bay Sharks also performed onstage at the Freight and Salvage Coffee House and Mandrake's, both popular Berkeley venues of the time.

Sometime during this period, Darryl traveled to Mono Lake to be in a movie called "Shoot the Whale", which is still offered for viewing at places like Pacific Film Archives.

The cinematographer for "Shoot the Whale" was Philip Makanna, who'd recently aired a short cinematic piece on local PBS television station KQED (see San Francisco Cinematheque below).

Darryl moved from the estate sometime before close of 1969. Before he did, one of his visitors was an old college friend, Barry Leichtling who had run a rock palace in San Diego called the Hippodrome briefly in 1968 and who'd gone on to co-write a script and appear in a film, which had been released briefly to popular acclaim before being withdrawn for decades, now regarded as a cult classic, called "Captain Milkshake."

Darryl moved from the estate in 1969, but many of the scripts and ideas he'd been working on there found realization within the next short period of time.

In early March of 1971, the East Bay Sharks shared a bill with Commander Cody at Mandrake's where Darryl likely ran into film student Bill Farley when Bill was tending bar at the club. Eventually Farley made a documentary (2006) about Darryl, called: "Darryl Henriques Is In Show Business" and Peter (Cohon) Coyote found his way into that film.

And to conclude, Darryl Henriques is in show business.



http://www.cfiwest.org/sos/archives/newsletter/about.htm
Retrieved: 7.18.11
From Darryl's resume:

About Darryl Henriques

Member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. 1967 Park Season and National Tour of Obie winning L'Amam Militaire.
Founder of East Bay Sharks Musical Theater Group in San Francisco Bay area. Appearing in parks, schools, and nightclubs. 1972-76.
Writer and performer on Scoop's Last News Show on KSAN FM in San Francisco Bay area '76-'86. Voice of The Swami from Miami, Joe Carcinogenni, Jacques Kissmatoe, Rev. Clyde Fingerdip.
As a stand-up comedian has performed at benefits for such groups as the Rainforest Action Network, the Sea Shepherd Society, the Alliance for Survival, the Abalone Alliance, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Various Waldorf Schools, Fair, Media Alliance, etc.
Author of 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Pave The Earth, Ulysses Press.
Darryl played Nanglus, the Romulan Ambassador to the Federation in Star Trek VI, the Undiscovered Country.



Darryl Henriques, partial filmography
http://www.blockbuster.com/browse/catalog/personDetails/28066
Retrieved: 7.28.11

Darryl Henriques, partial filmography
http://www.moviezen.com/celebrity/darryl-henriques/filmography
Retrieved: 7.28.11

Darryl Henriques, partial filmography
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Darryl_Henriques
Retrieved: 7.28.11

"Olive Pits is an adaptation of Lope de Ruede's sixteenth-century farce, El paso de las olivas. The original is a short skit about a husband and wife who begin counting the profits from their olives the day they plant the olive tree. Olive Pits was banned at California State College at Fullerton. The Jack London Society had invited the troupe to perform it on their campus in February 1968. However, after learning from administrators about the troupe's use of obscene language in A Minstrel Show, the Faculty Council voted to forbid the performance. Four hundred students and faculty attended an anti-censorship rally on campus, then walked off to an orange grove where the show was performed."

The San Francisco Mime Troupe Reader
by Susan Vaneta Mason
(University of Michigan Press, 2005)
pp 57-58

San Francisco Cinematheque

"Originally aired on KQED TV (PBS) in San Francisco in 1969, the Dilexi Series represents a pioneering effort to present works created by artists specifically for broadcast. The 12-part weekly series was conceived and commissioned by the Dilexi Foundation, an off-shoot of the influential San Francisco art gallery founded by James Newman. Newman, who operated the Dilexi Gallery from 1958 until 1970, saw this innovative series as an opportunity to extend the influence of the contemporary arts far beyond the closeted environment of the commercial gallery.

"Formal agreement was reached with KQED in 1968 with the station's own John Coney designated as series producer. No restrictions regarding length, form or content were imposed upon the works, except for Newman's stipulation that they be aired weekly within the same time slot in order to gather an audience.

"Of the 12 artists invited to participate in the Dilexi series (Julian Beck, Walter De Maria. Kenneth Dewey, Robert Frank, Ann Halprin, Philip Makanna, Robert Nelson, Yvonne Rainier, Terry Riley, Edwin Schlossberg, Andy Warhol and Frank Zappa), ten of them completed new works, and two, Andy Warhol and Frank Zappa, submitted extant works. The tapes and films are far-reaching in their approaches to the medium and the circumstance of the broadcast series.

"'If the 60s meant anything as a unifying principle or idea, it meant a lack of caution that I don't see around much anymore. Certainly, there is nothing like the KQED of the 60s. You could barely get past the reception lobby today at Channel 9 with a proposal for a Dilexi type series. It was wide open: all the facilities, color quad studio cameras, location film equipment, whatever, were available at what was calculated to be their cost, an amount not to exceed $1,000 per production. The artists were commissioned for $500 each. It seemed daring at the time, perhaps it was. Anyway, we just went ahead and did it and, to a degree, it worked.'"

Makanna's piece was "The Empire of Things", an experimental narrative, using a text by H.L. Mountzoures which describes a post-apocalyptic culture.

San Francisco Cinematheque
1991 Program Notes
THE DILEXI SERIES
Curated and presented by Steve Seid

http://www.archive.org/stream/sanfranciscocine91sanfrich/sanfranciscocine91sanfrich_djvu.txt
Retrieved: 7.18.11

Sandy Archer and Ronnie Davis: Cottage Residents to 1966

Bay Area theater people had close ties with Williams College during the 1960s at least.

One of the cottages, in fact the one which journalist Phil Small had rented previously, had a steady line of theater people in residence for the better part of a decade.

Until 1966, R.G. Davis and Sandy Archer rented and used the cottage. Each of their names are legendary to this day in theater circles.

Sandy Archer is well loved and remembered for her contributions as an actress, teacher, and overall inspiration to theater throughout Northern California. R.G. Davis (or Ronnie as he was known to people closer to him) is the founder of what has become the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Trained as a dancer and in pantomime, "after studying with French mime master Etienne Decroux, R.G. Davis founded the Troupe in 1959" as an experimental project of the Actor's Workshop, "creating pieces, some silent, some with words, that were considered avant-garde. Today it would be called performance art. So, in fact, the first year of our long history we did perform pantomime." In their earlier performances the troupe was named the R.G. Davis Mime Troupe.

In fact, it was R.G. Davis's arrest mid-performance that "thrust the Troupe onto the stage of the Bay Area arts community" on August 7, 1965. "The Mime Troupe's performance of Peter Berg's adaptation of "Il Candelaio" by Giordano Bruno was stopped in mid-performance by San Francisco police on orders of the Recreation and Park Department. The Mime Troupe's permit had been revoked on grounds of obscenity. After the police arrest Director R.G. Davis, subsequent organizing efforts thrust the Troupe onto the stage of the Bay Area arts community." The subsequent benefit either to raise bail bail or pay for court costs attracted the attention of promoter Bill Graham, and so began a long relationship between the SF Mime Troupe and Graham. The Mime Troupe won the lawsuit, establishing the right of artists to perform uncensored in city parks.

Unlike most theater companies around the world, the Mime Troupe took its politics seriously. Even in the 1960s, Mime Troupe shows were not just busted for “indecency” and “obscenity.” The performances most often harassed were the most controversial like the devastating civil rights parody that was A Minstrel Show and the biting anti-war farce L’Amant Militaire, which a Des Moines, Iowa critic slammed as “shocking”, “unpatriotic”, “blasphemous”, before confessing “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed an evening of theater more.”

(From Mission Local
The S.F. Mime Troupe Turns 50
by Mark Rabine
December 10, 2009)
http://www.sfmt.org/company/archives/50anniversary/articles/missionlocal12_10_09.html
Retrieved: 7.26.11

In early 1966, the SFMT was taking the show on the road. Sandy and R.G. also had another place to live in across the Bay and had been maintaining the keys to this cottage for occasional use. A fellow Mime Troupe actor, Darryl Henriques, knew of this pleasant, quaint, infrequently occupied, and most desirable Berkeley cottage and suggested that Ronnie and Sandy turn it over to a friend of his who was moving into the area and needed a place to live, which they did do. Darryl's compelling argument to convince Ronnie and Sandy was their having use of two houses was "bourgeois".

Another visitor to the estate during this same period was Julian Beck, founder of The Living Theater. I recall seeing the Living Theater present "Frankenstein" in Berkeley. But long before that performance, I was shown a black and white photograph of Ronnie and Julian standing together in conversation on the great patio near the mansion.

It's probably because I associated with some of these people back in the mid-sixties and being steeped in moving through the same times that I find myself relishing these memories.




http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sandy-Archer/134897503226235
Retrieved: 7.18.11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Mime_Troupe
Retrieved: 7.18.11

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/21/obituaries/etienne-decroux-is-dead-at-92-master-of-modern-french-mime.html
Retrieved: 7.18.11


Audioclip of Ron Davis in 1998 in the interview by Celine Deransart and Alice Gaillard for the film "Les Diggers de San Francisco".
Contains actual footage of Mime Troupe Bust in San Francisco
http://www.diggers.org/mime_troupe_bust.htm
Retrieved: 7.18.11
http://www.sfmt.org/company/archives/minstrel/minstrel.php
Retrieved: 7.18.11

Staging the Revolution: Guerrilla Theater as a Countercultural Practice, 1965-1968
By Michael William Doyle
[First published in Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s, New York: Routledge, 2002]
http://www.diggers.org/guerrilla_theater.htm
Retrieved: 7.18.11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Beck
Retrieved: 7.18.11

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_theater
Retrieved 7.16.11

The purpose behind the Mime Troupe, according to founder R.G. Davis:

"The radical stuff we did in the '60s was a combination of avant-garde and rejection of bourgeois theatrical stuff. Anyone, especially Joan Holden, who talks about the Mime Troupe talks about it as if it was a political entity and not an art entity. And we were art people, avant-garde people. We did events and happenings and I performed with other artists who were also breaking rules, Tape Music Center and dancers and young painters from the Art Institute. I then got political, but that was because I thought that political people were more interesting. People joined us because we were ready to open up to ideas, anything that was subversive, radical, disruptive, entertaining and freewheeling. Then I left the Actors' Workshop and decided to play to audiences that seemed to be volatile, people who were active. I would say that's the definition of a radical theatre group. Otherwise you're playing to the bourgeoisie and telling them that they're stupid, or what the Mime Troupe does now, tells the middle class that they're really sharp and that the stupid people are in government."

(Encore: R.G. Davis
by Sam Hurwitt)

Ronnie Davis when discussing agit-prop:

"When the Mime Troupe first went to the streets to do short skits, crankies (paper movies a la Pete Schumann), and puppet plays, we didn't try to insult or assault people; we decided to teach something useful. We began by teaching general city-folk how to stuff parking meters with tab-tops, using a simple puppet-and-actor skit to inform them of the.free use of parking meters. Another skit in this vein, telephone credit cards, was also designed to teach people something useful."

R.G. Davis, "1971: Rethinking Guerilla Theater", in Performance (1), Vol. 1, No. 1, December 1971

The New Radical Theatre Notebook
by Arthur Sainer
1975 p. 50

The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company: Visitors 1968-1969

Realtors trying to sell Williams College or what is called John Hopkins Spring Mansion or just "The Spring Mansion" these days are challenged in the current housing market, and the current owners have reduced the asking price from something like $6.5 million.

The realtors confide publicly to the press that "there were a lot of wild parties there in the sixties." Maybe there were. Dr. Schoenfeld mentioned to me he'd hosted some large parties at Farley Hall, but I don't think that's the kind of party the realtors are winking at. And certainly the occasional campfire sit-a-round where we barbecued corn on the cob to celebrate a birthday wouldn't qualify as winkable, not in anybody's book. Nor would those late Sunday afternoons the residents spent at a small line of weber cookers on the great patio. Could basting and turning or even admiring the stately Washingtonia palms ever really be regarded as winkable in any way?

I suspect when merchants are signaling to the press about "wild parties there in the sixties", in an attempt to spice up a property description, such historic gossip might actually be a cultural memory handed down to posterity about the times when the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company rehearsed at Williams College.

That makes sense, because theater troupes and dance groups all knew of Williams College as a place in Berkeley that offered rehearsal and dance space.

This theater troupe, The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, because of sheer numbers really needed a large performance space. The company attracted a multitude of members, maybe 20 or 30 or even more if counting the musicians, all of whom drifted on and off the estate, joining together for an evening of long rehearsal that went on far into the night. There was dancing, and music. So I guess that could qualify as a party.

The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, under the helm of Daniel Moore, began creating what he called a poetic sacred folk theater. From 1966 to 1969, the troupe alternated presentation of two plays: "The Walls Are Running Blood" and "Bliss Apocalypse". In each, there was a lot of pageantry and ritual, costumes and masks and painted bodies, flags, props, planetary imagery, prayer scrolls, thunder, lightning, gongs, horns, cymbals, more combinations than can be outlined in a single sentence. The performances were powered by music, and, according to Moore, "the music cut through to the other world, domain of all possibility."

"The intention underlying both of the productions was the transformation of evil and dark energies, such as were driving the Vietnam War, into positive and light energies, through a cathartic initiation, which the central hero had to undergo."

"The impetus and inspiration for the theater company was manifold: Zen Buddhism, which Moore and others of the company were studying at the time, primarily with Zen Master Shrunryu Suzuki in San Francisco, the very vivid and public poetry of the time, by such luminaries as Allen Ginsberg, and its application to open-air ritual theater, as theorized by Antonin Artaud, the music and dance of folk theater, such as Balinese Gamelan rituals, Tibetan monastery rituals of evocation and exorcism, Kathakali of India, etc. and the general wild imagination of the era. Initial poetic "scripts" were written by Moore, with changes, inclusions or deletions, as the members of the Opera Company began rehearsing, trying different things in the kaleidoscope of states we were in at the time,though the final arbiter of changes (usually negotiable) was always left to Moore."

The plays, with singing and chanting, shouting and undulating, like ancient drama went on for hours. At one of their first performances at Live Oak Park in Berkeley, the whole event was closed down by the parks director.

"Just before the 10 p.m. crack down Sunday, the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company completed its ceremony-drama, the 'Quest for the Inner Eye of Truth'. Costumes, gestures, music and words woven by the Floating Lotus led a procession of spectators into a spontaneous dance."

Because one of the residents of the estate shared that she had been drafted to dance on a picnic table at a park with the troupe, one can guess the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company had rehearsed at Williams College at least from September 1968 until sometime in June 1969.

Dr. Hopkins liked the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company and he attended some of their performances at nearby Hinkle Amphitheater.

When the troupe rehearsed at Williams College, afterwards many of the actors and dancers availed themselves of the shower in the rental home that used to house the peacocks. The man living there was pleasant enough about it, and didn't seem to mind the comings and goings.

On the other hand, the neighbors, or to be more precise one neighbor, seemed to mind the comings and goings of the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company. Under the aegis of the San Antonio Road Neighborhood Association, a barrage of complaints were launched to the city containing reports of noise, parking issues, great numbers of people swarming about the estate, blue jeans caught drying in the sun on a balustrade, and, what seemed the greatest cause of alarm, one which caused the highest level of outrage, an automobile. As it turned out, this vehicle was not owned and operated by any of the tenants on the estate but rather by one of the visiting actors. The automobile was noticed as it was driven up San Antonio Road and then as it had been parked on the estate premises for many hours while the actor was in prolonged rehearsal. The automobile which excited the inexplicable high state of offense and outrage was a large out of date convertible, something like an early '60s Pontiac, as big as a whale, and covered entirely in feathers.

As it turned out, there was no one left to possibly complain about and have evicted. The Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company were already in the process of leaving the estate because they'd been offered living and rehearsal space at an abandoned lumber camp near Santa Rosa and the group moved out of Berkeley entirely.

But as a result of the neighborhood association's noted complaints, the city thus beckoned to duty by upstanding citizens responded, and city building inspectors were assigned to visit and examine all the rental structures, inquire about numbers living in each dwelling, count electrical outlets in each building, advise tenants against the use of extension cords, and so on. So the residents of Williams College had to continue dealing for a time with the administrative aftermath that had erupted as one person's response to feathers glued to a convertible.

So the moral of this story is, if you weren't there, at least try to be accurate about it when recounting history, even if you're trying to make a sale in hard economic times. In the meantime, read the entire "Bliss Apocalypse" and use all the powers of your imagination and pretend you were there.


http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2010/08/05/bignsturdy_cement_palace_in_berkeley_now_15m_less.php
Retrieved 7.26.11


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_Lotus_Magic_Opera_Company
Retrieved 7.26.11

http://www.danielmoorepoetry.com/theaterNote.html
Retrieved: 7.26.11

September 28-29, 1968 Live Oak Park, Berkeley
"Love and Peace Fest Bummed by Fuzz"
From the Berkeley Barb, Issue 163
http://berkeleyfolk.blogspot.com/2010/12/love-and-peace-weekend-part-ii.html
Retrieved: 7.26.11

I believe Dr. Hopkins had a number of models he'd periodically rotate on table display. I remembered the one above on the table when I stopped up once to the manor house, as I had made note of the strange hieroglyphs. There was a little man inside the cockpit, but the plastic bubble covering the cockpit was a bit opaque and hazy. This was likely the original model from 1954, manufactured by the Lindburgh Company.

Usually, the illuminated model was in steady use in the John Hopkins Spring mansion, and the saucer was lit up every evening it was there.

(Image courtesy Kimberly A. King, of Altamont, TN, Amazon Customer)

The Beacon

Beginning in 1966, the first year I first began visiting the estate on an infrequent and irregular basis, I was made aware that Dr. John W. Hopkins had installed a small beacon in the manor house.

This beacon was visible, through the windows of a great room that looked out towards the porte cochier. Resting on the top of a mahogany occasional table was a small plastic model of a flying saucer. Though always in view, the saucer was more noticable at night at night when it was plugged in and lit.


Dr. Hopkins never explained to any I know why he put the model there nor why he lit it at night when he was on the grounds. I thought it was a unique personal touch, and I was always strangely reassured by seeing the saucer illuminated at night when I walked past the great house on my way home. Just seeing that little bright saucer made me feel like a wayfayer seeing the porchlight welcoming me home, and that was all was well with the world.

The saucer may not have been exactly the same as the image above, which is the Adamski model. I recall Dr. Hopkins's model being a solid white plastic, which when glowed from within when lit like a nightlight and which had a small red bulb atop encased in a plastic bubble.

Here is a link to download the complete book by George Adamski, Inside the Space Ships.

http://www.universe-people.com/english/svetelna_knihovna/htm/en/en_kniha_inside_the_space_ships.htm
Retrieved: 7.25.11

Inside the model kit:
http://obskuristan.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/adamkitinside.jpg
Retrieved: 7.25.11

History of flying saucer model kits:
http://www.strangemag.com/scalemodelenigmas.html

Dr. Schoenfeld's Visitors to Williams College: Timothy Leary 1969

If realtors now marketing the estate want to enliven their spiels about Williams College with colorful figures drawn from history to pass along interesting tales about those days of yore, they might mention Dr. Timothy Leary in quick passing.

He walked around the grounds once.

You can play prospective buyers Country Joe's 45 on a little turntable and sing along with the intro before you tell them the whole story:

"Have you heard the tale of Dr. Hip?
(He's a pip!)
Though the common cold might rule you
And the whooping cough might fool you
These are nothing for the famous Dr. Hip
(Doctor Hip!)


Dr. Schoenfeld at the time he was in residence at Farley Hall was also the Timothy Leary family's physician. When Dr. Leary came to the East Bay to run for governor of California which developed into a prolonged speaking engagement, the series now known as the Berkeley lectures 1969, Gene invited him up to Williams College. Gene recalled to me (7.14.11) that when he gave Timothy and Rosemary a tour of the grounds, they said the estate "reminded them of Millbrook."

That's what I mean about mentioning Tim Leary in passing. That's all there is about Tim Leary and Williams College because everything else having to do with him happened elsewhere.

Although in 1969, Dr. Schoenfeld served as a consulting editor for The Psychedelic Review and may have read the publication at his residence. I must remind the current reader that although Gene knew Dr. Leary, early on Dr. Schoenfeld found himself at growing odds with Leary's prosylitizing.

And as for the colorful anecdotes, try to work in this one. Paul Krassner recounted one of his typical big fuzzy tales from the era that he pinned to Dr. Schoenfeld, though that particular event occurred after Gene moved from Williams College, it can show that Gene was influenced by his proximity to theater people while on the estate:


"speaking of Gene Schoenfeld's pranks, when Tim Leary was in prison and supposedly revealing secrets, a press conference was held in Berkeley to denounce him; Gene came dressed in a kangaroo suit (it being a kangaroo court, y'see) and a cream pie he hoped to smush in Jerry Rubin's face, only it had Saran Wrap on it and with his kangaroo mittens he couldn't remove it and his plot was foiled (but if he had
used ALUMINUM foil...)"

For a real-life account of why Dr. Schoenfeld disguised himself in a kangaroo suit and boxing gloves, by all means read Harvard Psychedelic Club by Don Lattin (Harper-Collins, 2011), pp. 200-201.

Just try to imagine Dr. Hip in motion with a cream pie. But you don't have to imagine what the podium looked like, because here it is, with Leary's associates discussing their doubts about his credibility.


(from inkwell.vue.168 : Paul Krassner: Investigative satirist
permalink #158 of 301: Paul Krassner (paulkrassner) Thu 12 Dec 02 11:00
http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/168/Paul-Krassner-Investigative-sati-page07.html#post158
Retrieved 7.15.11



http://books.google.com/books?id=yNylsx9HD28C&printsec=frontcover&dq=harvard+club&hl=en&ei=xDcuTvOMNZCgsQP2tIgT&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAjgU#v=onepage&q=gene%20schoenfeld&f=false
Retrieved 7.15.11

Dr. Schoenfeld's Visitors to Williams College: Rhena Schweitzer, 1966-1971

Gene Schoenfeld was a busy man during his residence at Williams College, but I would encounter him now and again on the estate. One time, he lit one of the pathways for me by flicking on his motorcycle headlamp, twisting the handlebars as if he were aiming a flashlight, and so I was able to make my way down the slope in the dark of night.

One of Dr. Schoenfeld's more notable and surprising guests during that era was Rhena Schweitzer, the daughter of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who another resident on the estate remembered meeting at Gene's home at Farley Hall; she still regards this encounter as one of the genuine privileges of her lifetime. She recalled Rhena to be a sophisticated older woman whose very European bearing was memorably elegant and her conversation or observations quite intelligent and sophisticated. When Albert Schweitzer died in 1965, Rhena assumed the duties of running the hospital her father had founded.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer's sweeping worldwide celebrity during his lifetime is most difficult to explain now. He rarely appeared on the radio or television, and he became immensely well known only through his books and articles published about him or his works. The name Albert Schweitzer became synonymous with good deeds.


(Photo of Rhena Schweitzer from The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship
Antje Lemke (far right) with Albert Schweitzer’s granddaughter, Christiane Engel, and daughter, Rhena Schweitzer Miller at Chapman University)
http://www.schweitzerfellowship.org/features/giving/endowed_abl.aspx

Retrieved 7.25.11)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhena_Schweitzer_Miller)
Retrieved 7.24.11

(Photo of Rhena Schweitzer and Dr. Albert Schweitzer
by Erica Anderson/Syracuse University’s Schweitzer Collection, via Associated Press, 1963 from NY Times Obituary 2.28.09)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/world/africa/01miller.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1311639014-OPAjGuJbYCHjRUU1J86+xw
Retrieved 7.24.11

Physician Takes a Lease on Farley Hall 1966-1971

In 1966, Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld saw a newspaper ad for a place to rent in a Berkeley newspaper, dialed the phone number for his initial inquiry, and eventually rented Farley Hall on the campus of Williams College. Farley Hall was a building once used to house the English department at Williams College, and Gene remained in residence there from 1966-1971. Dr. John W. Hopkins was Gene Schoenfeld's landlord during that period.

Dr. Schoenfeld is an iconic figure from the sixties who continues his work and publishes to this day. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley, Schoenfeld early in his career worked with Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Gabon, Africa in 1960, served as a Ship's Surgeon for the American Lines in 1964, after which he settled in the Bay Area to continue his practice. He remains a highly respected and much beloved figure certainly for Bay Area residents.

Dr. Schoenfeld's column on health matters was first published in the Berkeley Barb c.1967, and his Dr. HIP Pocrates column soon appeared regularly in the San Francisco Chronicle, before being nationally syndicated. Schoenfeld's column remained in print steadily from 1967-1973 and was revitalized 1978-1979.

As an early claim to radio fame, Dr. Schoenfeld appeared first on the hip underground radio station KMPX (Jive-95) founded by Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue c. 1967. Dr. Schoenfeld was one of the first, if not the first, doctors to answer call-in questions live on the air. Gene continued with his broadcasts when the radio station moved up the dial to become KSAN, and soon he was broadcasting weekly (1971-1972). Everyone, but everyone, in the Bay Area and beyond knew Gene Schoenfeld as "Dr. Hip".

(Eugene Schoenfeld, M.D. Resume
http://www.eugeneschoenfeld.com/resume.html
Retrieved: 7.15.11

On March 7, 1969, Dr. Hip was featured in Time magazine in which he outlined his concerns:

"Why does he write his ill-paying column? Someone, he feels, should minister to the barricade brigade's medical ignorance, and "the best approach to any serious problem must be education." Now Grove Press has published a collection of his columns called Dear Doctor HIPpocrates — Advice Your Family Doctor Never Gave You. Yet Schoenfeld, at 33, has no desire to rise above the underground, 'where I don't have to censor my material.' Instead, from his ramshackle little bachelor home in the Berkeley hills, he continues his public-health work and the column for the sense of fulfillment it brings."

(Note to Time: Farley Hall was hardly a "ramshackle little bachelor home in the Berkeley Hills", but I guess that's how you preferred to write about anything to do with "hippies" or "the underground" at the time.)

(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,839789,00.html
Retrieved 7.24.11

Here is a recent online television interview, where Gene talks about the golden years of the '60s and working with Dr. Schweitzer at his famed leper hospital in Lambaréné.

I remember that Dr. Schoenfeld always had a large photograph of Albert Schweitzer, obviously clipped from a newspaper, tacked on his bulletin board at Farley Hall.

The memory of Albert Schweitzer continues to inspire and be held dear, as this one statement about him best shows: "Schweitzer, however, considered his ethic of Reverence for Life, not his Hospital, his most important legacy, saying that his Lambaréné Hospital was just 'my own improvisation on the theme of Reverence for Life. Everyone can have their own Lambaréné.'" 1]

1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer
Retrieved: 7.24.11

http://www.archive.org/details/JonHammondDr.Hippocrates_EugeneSchoenfeld_akaDr.HiponHammondCastKYOURADIO
Retrieved: 7.24.11


(Photo of Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld by Alvan Meyerowitz, 2009)
(Photo of Dr. Albert Schweitzer in Lambaréné, Gabon, Africa, 1960 by Marilyn Silverstone)
http://www.magnumphotos.com/Catalogue/Marilyn-Silverstone/1960/GABON-Dr-Albert-SCHWEITZER-NN132056.html
Retrieved 7.24.11

Jerzy Kosinski, Professor of Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences (1955-57) Dines at Williams College

In compiling a list of the illustrious people who visited Williams College in the sixties, or who found themselves strolling about the grounds in some way, in just glancing at the names I sometimes puff myself up with self importance and allow myself to boast to myself about all those many famous people I've encountered in my life, or at least back in a time when the social lines were wavier and there was a bit more freedom of social movement.

What follows is drawn from a series of recollections that I put together in 1999 in the hopes that some theme would emerge to allow me to make a point about something, and the incident I am describing occurred nearly thirty years prior. Remember, this is a small incident in a small city that had massive political protests nearly every day then and much thumping of heads with nightsticks and all the real violence was meted out as punishment and handed down by the authority figures nearly every day.

That's pretty much what was going on down near the University every day at the time I met Jerzy Kosinski.

Perhaps partly as the result of such recent external stressers and the prolonged effects of tear gas on my system, as an unfortunate though temporary consequence I was moving into a state of anti-social behavior at that time, which presented itself as not knowing what to say in conversations I'd listened to over recent meals, and whatever might have happened in the way of political or social upheaval at the University campus was soon followed by a dinner party at the estate.

This gathering assembled downstairs in the building which in more ancient times had been used to house the estate's peacocks in inclement weather. I had been seated next to Jerzy Kosinski, who was in the area for some polo or dressage competition across the Bay. Dressage, if I need to explain is a very elite and expensive form of equestrian competition, far more demanding back then than now. The young hostess dedicated herself to that exacting and, I again remind you very, very expensive discipline, a form of training steeped in history and ritualized competition of specialized movements, which she devoted herself to wholeheartedly and it was nothing to be sniffed at.

So Jerzy was there. Jerzy was garbed in a tan, nearly military-looking outfit, with epaulets and high banded collar. The cut of his jacket was a bit stiff in appearance. Though utilitarian tan in color, the cloth had a luxurious expensive sheen, and was from an expensive imported and polished cotton or a gabardine.

Although I was seated next to him at the table, there was little conversation between us. I know where I was at, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. But he did not have a lot to say to any of us at the table. Either he was moody or we were obviously too "alternative" or "poor" or some of us "Berkeley" for his tastes. That’s why I have to tell you what he was wearing.

At that time, I had read a few things by him, and though "The Painted Bird" was the most famous of his achievements, I wasn’t about to talk to him about that.

I had several years prior read his semi-autobiographical novel, "The Painted Bird", a book which brought the everyday realities of war to light in such sheer creepy savagery that I could not for the life of me bring up that topic at the dinner table.
I remembered the cover of that edition being a painting taken from Hieronymous Bosch, as if to hint at the unimaginable hell held between the covers, so Hieronymous was off topic for me, too.

That evening, Jerzy was a bit difficult for any to engage in conversation over dinner. He gave off weird vibes, I thought. He didn't want to connect with anyone, it seemed to me. He kind of gave me the creeps, I recall that impression distinctly but I assumed that was because of where I was at.

In learning more about him since, he kind of survived by moving through life insulating himself by staying mostly in the company of the immensely wealthy. He may have been disappointed that he'd been invited to an opulent and expansive estate and was forced to dine with people who weren't his real kind of people, and the home cooked meal although a perfectly roasted beef and potatoes was served at a kitchen table in a side building. This gathering had nothing whatsoever to do with Williams College as a school, and I mention this encounter only because I am name-dropping famous visitors to the estate, the artists and creatives and the literati, especially those during the sixties when I was in residence who'd I'd actually broken bread with if not shared a few words with.

Up to this time, Williams College only claim to real literary fame was carried on the shoulders of Irving Wallace who had attended the writing school at Williams Institute back in the '30s. While enrolled there he had an imaginary interview with a thoroughbred racehorse and sold his first story to Horse and Jockey for five bucks. His book "The Chapman Report" had been given another life on the big screen as a popular movie of the '50s. Irving Wallace. No comment from me that evening, not on Irving.

I am the first to admit that Kosinski did not so much put pen to paper at the dinner party at Williams College. But his presence there, which was unknown to me until I'd arrived for dinner seating, can with a bit of imagination fall in to the realm of odd coincidence. I was as I said in an anti-social mood, also in part because I had recently eavesdropped on a late-night conversation in Buddy's Cafe, at the corner of 10th and University. Buddy's was close in vicinity to the local racetrack, and offered a Racetrack Special (a breakfast for 99 cents) designed to appeal to the habitues of the ponies. Even though I knew from reading beatnik histories and could offer up a colorful remark on Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady hitting the track at Golden Gate Fields, I could find no opening to allow me to extemporize on this theme. And the fact that another resident of the estate actually snagged a part-time job as a cold walker in the very early mornings at that very racetrack off I-80. So I didn't talk horses.

Anyway, I was in an anti-social mood because it seemed theworld was falling asunder all around me. There was all that crap going on around the campus, which I had to go to every day for classes. Then while having a cup of coffee on a workbreak late one evening, I'd quite recently overheard John Fahey at Buddy's Cafe telling ED and Gloria Denson something about how people in the Manson family had come up to Berkeley and had visited the offices of his record company. I couldn't hear all he'd said, but as I was seated at the counter, hearing a bit about this, even the name Manson, my blood began running cold. I remember turning around to see who was recounting this story, just as the narrator pronounced, "And everybody caught the clap" and I vividly recall the angry expression flashing across Gloria's face.

The coincidence is that Jerzy Kosinski himself had narrowly avoided what would have been a much deadlier encounter with this group, and that story was just beginning to circulate as well. So I couldn't in any way bring that up as a topic of conversation at the dinner table, either. I just didn't know what to say to Jerzy.

All of this followed directly on the heels of an ill-timed comment I had made at work one evening. A remark which was made in a humorous way and tossed out casually in public. My comment, as I was joking around with another waitress as we'd been asking each other the typical introductory question of the time we each heard dozens of times each evening, "Hey, what's your sign?" In so doing, we determined we were both air signs or had some astrological connection or similarity, which was followed by a playful observation on my part, "Wow, we're sisters of the zodiac". A person overheard this comment about "The Zodiac". Likely being a person who was influenced by the newspaper headlines of the day, the eavesdropper left the premises and summoned the police. The following evening as I reported to work, my boss was obliged to direct the detectives to me to listen to my explanation.
And as this was a fresh experience, the significance of which I was still digesting, I couldn't work it into dinner table conversation, either.

I should have called this post "Dasein" as that would have been a nifty literary allusion to the working title of one of Jerzy's more famous works. But also because "Dasein" basically is used to describe a person’s current state and time of existence and I have been trying to describe where I was at that particular moment in history.



http://www.johnfahey.com/Blood.htm
Retrieved 7.8.11

What's with Cora Williams's Math: We're Going into the Fourth Dimension

I have just experienced several hours of what I can only describe as "Missing Time." It all started innocently enough this morning by taking an innocent peek at Cora Williams's book "Creative Involution", which segued wildly into skimming through a PhD dissertation that in a cursory reference (although that by-the-way was presented in the highglossed academic prose and specialized vocabularies invented for graduate students to use when communicating with their dissertation committees) just skated at high speed through Cora Williams's assumed influence on Ezra Pound. So it seems Cora Williams because of a theoretical assertion weilded a distant influence from afar, sparking alive a pulse of shared insight which might underlay the poet's own "metaphysical/artistic/mathematical" role in the invention of the Vortograph.

I confess my energy has been seriously depleted from reviewing many pages of minute, disparate, and disconnected elements all of which were written about either in a dated arcane prose or a frustrating specialized language.

Before I collapse from mental exhaustion, and being unable at this moment to muster the intellectual vigor necessary to generate a display of conspicuous cognition or even to prepare a long winded summation, I will provide the broad stokes below.

Before I do, I will remind the reader that "Creative Involution", as an innocent looking brittle half-century-old book, was retained on the shelves at the Williams College library. I am confidant that Dr. John W. Hopkins had examined the contents of this slim volume there, as indeed I had done though later in 1969 when I was seated at one of the long tables in the reading section of the library.

"Creative Involution" has long since fallen from print, and is available rarely and then only from the hands of rare book sellers. You may, however, if you wish, read a digital version of "Creative Involution", in fact the original 1916 edition which Cora Williams and her own Williams Institute published.

(You can have your choice of reading formats here, "Creative Involution")

Also in 1916, a major publisher, Knopf released the book to a larger public. Maintaining the original title "Creative Involution", the author was Cora Williams (self-described in the fronts piece in a bordered box as a "Sometime Instructor of Mathematics University of California"). In her opening paragraphs, Miss Williams explained she had selected the topic and the title not so much as a challenge, but as a response to Bergson's "Creative Evolution (pub. 1911). When the Knopf edition of her book was published in 1916, the asking price was $1.50 (The publishers weekly, Volume 90, Part 1, pg. 1038).

Who else read it, aside from me and probably Dr. John W. Hopkins? Ezra Pound read "Creative Involution" soon after publication, and in 1916 gave his broken shaving mirror to a photographer and fellow metaphysical and artistic traveler named Alvin Coburn who assembled the shards into a new camera and took a "Vortograph" of the poet.

"Pound's own influence for using fourth-dimensional images has been established within Canto 49, written in 1937, where he calls "the fourth; the dimension of stillness ..."

"Pound was aware of the fourth dimension through other sources, such as H.G. Wells, Poincaré and Fenollosa, who were also influenced by Charles H. Hinton's ideas on the fourth dimension. Ian Bell links the fourth-dimension within Pound's works to the images of the atom, the molecule, and crystals, noting Pound's desire for clarity and transcendence led to readings of Charles Hinton's The Fourth Dimension, James Huneker's interpretations of Gourmont's materialism, Gourmont's Chemin des velours (1902), where "the physics of thought" led to a conclusion of the concrete image, and Cora Williams' Creative Involution, whose mathematical thesis explained "the conduct of certain crystals and molecules ... as a fourth-dimensional activity" (I Bell, Critic as Scientist 221)."

(The Scientist in Modernist Literature: Degeneration, Dynamics, and Demons by Shari Jill Clark, B.A. M.A., a dissertation in English submitted to Texas Tech University for completion of PhD in May, 2001. pg 198)
http://etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd-06272008-31295017306118/unrestricted/31295017306118.pdf
retreived 7.23.11

cited: Ian F. A. Bell, Critic as Scientist: The Modernist Poetics of Ezra Pound (London and New York: Methuen, 1981.) Pp. 221.

All you really need to remember is that "Coburn's 1916 vortograph shows the prizmatic effect of using crystals in
photography gave a material basis for Pound's vision." And remember that after taking that photograph of Pound, Alvin Coburn almost immediately threw his camera and photography aside for the rest of his life, destroyed almost 15,000 photographic plates, nearly his entire life's output, and spent the remainder of his years studying metaphysics.

All this just proves is that you can never tell how people will receive knowledge and what they will do with it.