Missing Images from Drake

Somewhere in the vaults of The Quax, I stumbled across two more photos of Dr. John Hopkins c. 1930 several years back, but due to computer problems they didn't download properly.  These two images had escaped name capture from Drake digital archives OCR software and so are not easily found now. 

One was a photo of him and the English Club members.  The other a group photo in which he looked quite haggard, serious, and drawn, as if the catastrophic events of 1929 had settled entirely on his shoulders. 

Cake Walk

Nearly half a century ago, because my mom had listened, watched, and heard about some vaudeville routines growing up, I learned a few of these things from her.  The only song she could remember was "Oh Dem Watermelons" (which had to be pried from her lips). 

She was strangely freer when sharing a few dance moves.  Because my grandmother was a dancer, my mom inherited a love of movement as well, and she could recall the original "Jazz" dance from WWI, the Charleston, the Lindy, and, amazingly, she knew some of the moves from the Cake Walk, which she imitated one afternoon after much encouragement and prodding.  The high stepping.  The "wing movements".  Everyone I knew was out collecting these words and movements, some of which would find their place once again onstage in performance.  Later, people of an artistic bent wanted me to retrieve any of the melodrama skits from my only repository of Vaudeville performance with the idea of breathing life back into some of these.  Aside from one joke I could only partially recall about The Bear and Mrs. Bear, I declined to pursue this theatrical research for several reasons.  Also because the very medium of melodrama meant "playing to the audience" as the script, actors, and audience knew who the bad guys were and were ready to hiss and boo loudly on cue.  Not my cuppa.

(My mom did a slower version, more like the one below)

John W. Hopkins, 1929

One of the few extant photos of (Dr.) John W. Hopkins

 Ministerial Association

The Ministerial Association has been an active organization since 1905 among the students of the Bible College.  It is made up of men and women students, professors of the Bible College and others on the campus who are interested.  The purpose of the club is two-fold: to provide social life and fellowship for the students and to support and co-operate with the university in all its activities.  Among its activities are socials, banquets, picnics, and tournaments.  This year we are especially proud of our football team who won a brilliant victory over the laws. 

 
(Drake University, 1929, The QUAX yearbook, p. 230)

Charles the Handy Man

A former resident of Williams College (1965-1971) recalls Charles the Handyman fondly.  She described him as a "seeker" who felt he had finally found the real deal with Dr. John W. Hopkins and the Understanding group.  He was a modest and humble man, but nevertheless proud of his alliance with the Hopkinses and willingly participated in their meetings and seminars. She suggests his association with the Understanding group allowed him to believe, and to feel "I am somebody." 

She recalled that as a tinkerer, Charles not only invented a new kind of carburetor, but he proudly asserted he was the second person in the world to invent phosphorescent paint.  He had applied for a patent on his paint but was denied, as someone else had just beat him to punch filing the forms.  Nonetheless, Charles was proud of his invention.

The Understanding Unit which was hosted at Williams College were to her way of thinking made up of a very honest bunch.  They were not at all the Berkeley hip, but more like older residents of Albany, as she explained.  The group meetings had the aura of a reverent and happy feeling, the mood and message was "we're in touch with the reverence in life and this is how we search for meaning.  These were people who wanted to believe."   The group she maintains gave Charles and them all a real sense of belonging.   

She believes Charles last name may have been Barkley or Bartley. (If Barkley, this is not the same person who endorsed Nike glo in the dark shoes, the famous athlete).

This same resident, on the other hand, has mixed views of Dr. John W. Hopkins, and views him as either simply off balance or off balance and tinged with the attitudes and mores of a fraudulent grifter.  This perspective of Dr. John W. Hopkins was also shared by Phil and Audrey Small, who lived on the campus in the mid-1950s.  The Smalls decades later still tended to look on the school (of the occult) as a ruse of some kind on Dr. Hopkins's part.

Selling Out the Past

The whole neighborhood has changed since I lived there.  Williams College is currently for sale, a rock promoter bought the house with the small amphitheater and glen where I would watch plays with friends, and now the Carmelite nunnery is for sale (unoccupied since 2010 it seems).

(11.5.13 Listing from

 

Telescopes: Alien Influence

Think back to the Menger video interview post (Alien Electric Pianos and Plasma TVs, Nov 2, 2013)

Advertisement for Questar telescopes, c. 1955

The Telephone

Telephone, a play presented by the Mime Troupe after appearing in Ramparts in 1970, had more of the gutter puppets plus a character who is a long distance operator who shall remain unnamed. 

p. 71- 75 (Required reading)
(The San Francisco Mime Troupe Reader
edited by Susan Vaneta Mason

University of Michigan Press, Apr 13, 2005)

"Not bad for a puppet, huh?"

In 1967, Darryl Henriques (resident in Sandy and Ronnie's former cottage) backflipped his way onto the stage for his entrance in L'Amant Militaire.  He also took the role of the puppet, Punch, who "operated inside a cardboard box offstage, and apart from the script, a sarcastic commentator and cheerleader for the audience"

(p. 168 from "They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967"

 By David Maraniss
Simon and Schuster,  
Oct 4, 2004

Animals at Williams College

On the estate, on the grounds was an abundance of bird life and animal visitors who lived wild in the Berkeley hills.  In the rentals, residents kept companion animals of cats, dogs, Belgian rabbits.  Everyone loved animals there.  And stray cats would occasionally visit me and hop in the open window of my place, which was over 12 feet above ground level and come hang out a bit.

One evening at home in my basement flat I had cooked a large casserole of tricolored noodles and left it on the stove  to cool, with the window open.  I laid down and fell asleep as sleep was rare for me then, and intermittent when it arrived.  I kept awaking to sounds of small clinking and paid no mind and fell back into my slumbers.  When I awoke, the casserole dish was empty.

Another time, I had installed a Christmas tree and made garlands of popcorn and cranberries on string.  I went away for the holiday, and when I returned I found all the cranberries missing and only the popcorn left.

I would hear thumping in the storage room now and again.

Apparently a possum lived in the storage room, a fact I found out from the essential oil compounder who'd pushed her way into the estate.  She had seen the possum in the apartment and arranged to have the creature poisoned and killed.  She told me this much to my horror and anger.  She was soon in less than two months gone from the estate of her own volition as she had opened a storefront in San Francisco, too far for an easy commute from Berkeley, and she soon went out of business.

When Esther Dyson moved into the estate in 1963, she carried a pet praying mantis all the way from the East Coast, a long cross country auto trip with her mom at the wheel, her brother in the passenger seat, and Esther in the back seat with boxes and clothes.  And the praying mantis was traveling along in a little box with holes cut out in the lid and Esther would feed and care for the mantis along the way. Esther's mom got a job for the summer teaching math at Berkeley.  She recalled Dr. Hopkins in a kindly way. 

The Coach House Residents

The Coach House residents, the body builder and exotic dancer, represented the "physicality" of the scriptures of the Understanding Movement.  Dr. John W. Hopkins allowed them to stay on in their home for nearly as long as he did in his Great Home, even though Williams College was under assault in nearly direction from a variety of official agencies.  And, as I pointed out, long about 1971, it could sometimes seem the estate itself was spinning people away.  While residents usually moved in with the express idea and notions of remaining forever on a great estate in the hills with cheap rent, the new renters all vacated within a matter of months on their own accord, and most were not replaced, as I understand.

Dr. John W. Hopkins allowed the Coach House residents to remain because of his genuine compassionate nature.

The woman worked as an exotic dancer, and in late 1971 she responded to a request to perform for some college frat boys.  The boys had been drinking, and she started to perform for them, but they had other ideas in mind.  They locked her in a back room when she tried to leave.  She found a telephone and called her boyfriend for help, and he rushed there in his pick up truck and pushed through the front door, and the four or five frat boys jumped him and beat him over the head with a hammer.  The exotic dancer was held down while one of them raped her with a mushroom shaped candle that had an American Flag design printed on it.  Those were popular in Telegraph Avenue trinket shops at the time, they were called "cock" candles.

The boyfriend roused from his bloodied unconscious state (I'm guessing at the details there) and got his girlfriend out of the place after arguing with the drunk frat boys.  The exotic dancer and body builder stopped at the first available telephone and called the police.  There was a trial in the Berkeley courthouse eventually and the frat boys dressed properly to stand before the judge, and after receiving judgement and paying their official price of punishment, they all went on to their careers and live out their lives, likely with little thought of what they had participated in that evening as they were so conveniently drunk they likely couldn't remember too much of what happened.  Or if they thought of it, they secretly figured they got away with something.  Feminist researchers could look up this legal case and draw their own conclusions.  This became a famous local case for the Berkeley feminists of the time. 

The drunk frat boys probably have found ways to justify their horrific behaviors, but Dr. John W. Hopkins and all who knew the Coach House residents were rightly horrified and disgusted by what they had done, and sought or wished for everlasting punishment for the offenders.  This in my history of Williams College is my way of assuring those rat asses are never forgotten.  I should install their real names here, but I never met them and this did not take place on the grounds of Williams College.  This is an anecdote to show how the place was under assault from all sides at once, and to explain why the Coach House residents remained on the campus when everyone else was leaving.

Dr. John W. Hopkins, a compassionate man, allowed the Coach House residents to remain on the premises of Williams College for very nearly as long as he did.  He was not about to turn them out of their home.

So you know the continuing real true history, the frat boy who raped the exotic dancer continued on in his career and life.  And moved a number of times for his own reasons.  But for decades, his neighbors would find xerox articles of this old event and the trial and judgement in their mailboxes and under their windshield wipers.  And his employers would receive copies in the mail, too.  Under the new "stalking laws" in the 1990's, he filed some official complaint, but he was free to complain, as they never could figure out who was doing all this to him, "harrassing" or "stalking" him in that manner.  I don't know, either, but I don't feel too sorry for him and hope that information and xerox articles continue to travel along with him, trailing ahead of him and in front of him, wherever he happens to go in life all the way into the distant future.  

Near Forgotten and Ancient Relics

Too bad the new owners threw out Bub the space dog's lock of hair that Dr. Hopkins once showed me. 

But for me now, as then in the past, there are reminders of Williams College and Dr. John W. Hopkins and the things he regarded as important, to be found everywhere, although the world can sometimes conspire to seem like such a mock.

Williams College Library

(Photo by Miss Daniela Thompson, Berkeley Historical Society and Bay Area Historical Society, permission for use pending).

The library of Williams College has been completely redone as evidenced by this recent photograph.  Gone are the long reading tables and chairs Dr. Hopkins and I would utilize to pour over historic and ancient works.  Gone, too, is his personal collection of historic paraphernalia as pertaining to the Understanding movement and flying saucers and visitations from the space brothers.  For me, the clean up crew's tossing his personal papers out under the Great Home's porte cochere for the trashmen to collect to get them out of the way for proper, historic, and well-financed and very expensive renovations was akin to the burning of the library of Alexandria, but you'll just think I am being melodramatic by my so saying.  But I do believe that. 

Williams College burned bright for decades in the Berkeley Hills, like a glittering rare and occult gem.  They all rightly should have had a little more in the way of genuine respect for Dr. John W. Hopkins and his fellow travelers.  He for decades was the real guiding spirit of the place. 

UFO's: "Serious Business"

Back to the good old days of Williams College under the tutelage of Dr. John W. Hopkins.  That old black Cadillac certainly got a lot of use, and so did the everyday white car (it might have been an older Pontiac sedan) as Dr. Hopkins traveled far and wide for flying saucer conventions, usually as a featured speaker, and would sometimes visit with friends and followers, maybe even a relative now and again, along the way. 

On March 2, 1960 he was by all advance reports lecturing on flying saucers at a speaking engagement in far away Desert Hot Springs, and described Unidentified Flying Objects as "serious business".

From the Desert Hot Springs Sentinal (you'll need to pay to read the article).

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel › 3 March 1960 › Page 2 - Newspapers ...

www.newspapers.com/newspage/51350262/‎

Desert Hot Springs Sentinel, Title: Desert Hot Springs Sentinel, State: ... on Unidentified Flying Objects as "serious business," Dr. John W. Hopkins, Ph.D., will ...

(This engagement does not appear to be an Understanding event, or at least the event did not make the listings in the Understanding newsletters.  Understandable, as this was a busy period for Dr. Hopkins as shown below from items gleaned from the Understanding newsletters of the time.  In February, he as President of Williams College hosted none other than Orfeo Angelucci himself for a series of lectures and meetings.  

In January and February alone, Dr. Hopkins had traveled far down the state of California to Orange, Inglewood, and Pasadena California, and then back up to Berkeley for Orfeo, then back down the state all the way to Needles, according to the Understanding newsletters. 

Understanding Understanding Volume 5 Number 1

January 1960

Saturday, Jan. 30: Dr. John Hopkins, Ph.D. (Northern vice president of Understanding) "Flying Saucers and What They Mean to You" 8 p.m., Darby Park Auditorium, 3400 Arbor Vitae, INGLEWOOD.

Sunday, Jan. 31: Dr. Hopkins, "Flying Saucers" 2 p.m., Science of Mind Church, 1164 N. Lake Ave., PASADENA.

BERKELEY, Unit No. 17 entertained James Velesquez of Santa Ana, Calif., on Dec. 9 at Williams College. The speaker explained various passages from the Bible. The Berkeley group meets for public lectures normally on the second Wednesday of the month and for business meetings on the fourth Wednesday.

Understanding Volume 5 Number 2

February 1960

PASADENA, Unit No. 12, is now the largest unit in Understanding its total membership having recently surpassed that of Oakland. Pasadena’s January speaker was Dr. John Hopkins, speaking on "Exploration Research Into Interplanetary Understanding."

 NEEDLES, Unit No. 24, heard a talk by Dr. John Hopkins Jan. 17. The subject was "Flying Saucers and What They Mean to You."

BERKELEY, Unit No. 17: Orfeo Angelucci spoke on "Eternity-All as One and One as All" on Jan. 13 at Williams College.

 

Understanding Volume 5 Number 3

March 1960

ORANGE, Unit No. 7 elected Dorothy Harper as new president of the club for 1960. Selected to serve with her were Mrs. Wilma Hough, vice-president; Mrs. Edith Dickerson, secretary; and Iver Blomgren, treasurer. The unit heard two speakers during February, Dr. John Hopkins, Understanding northern vice-president and president of Williams College, speaking on "Who Is a Contactee?" and Dr. Joseph Larson of Pasadena.

BERKELEY, Unit No. 17 elected Guy Hudson as its new president recently. Dr. John Hopkins was chosen vice-president.

 
(Understanding Newsletter information courtesy of Sean Donovan of DanielFry.com, who most currently pulled back the edition he had published and is currently rewriting portions of his ten-year research project, a biography of Daniel Fry called "Contactee".  I hope he finishes soon as I would like to read his book.)

Secret Glee

All I know for sure, and taken together with some of the other observations by then residents at Williams College, is that long about the late '60s, Dr. John W Hopkins seemed to enjoy irritating some of the neighbors of the surrounding area, like the President of the San Antonio Homeowners Road Association. 

The Concluding Episodes of Williams College

Sometime about 1971 I moved out of Williams College to a place in Berkeley that wasn't situated at a tilt and alist, with big cracks in the cold concrete floor from hill slippage and settling, and with a bathroom and shower facility I wouldn't have to share with the ballet dancers, and which also had heat.  The basement under the ballet studio could also be like a fun house, items would roll off the table like marbles, pans on the stove holding water to boil eggs had water an inch higher on one side, and the entire room was so skewed from settling that it was like an eerie optical illusion when people stood up inside.  In fact, I had to set a leg of the kitchen table on a brick, and it was still tilted enough for items to roll off despite the grabbing effect of a red and white bistro table cloth I had placed on top of the mesa.

About this same time, Dr. Hip moved out to be nearer to all the celebrity life he took part in, as he was gone there most of the time anyway, it seemed.  Farley Hall was summarily handed over by Dr John W Hopkins to a man of some mystery, an attorney or a lawyer of some kind, who no one on the estate that I know of actually met, but who they collectively didn't like or trust.  Soon, the residents on the estate were alarmed and banded together to attempt to raise moneys needed to actually buy the estate for price on the note, perhaps a bit more, and of course (despite two of the residents coming from very well-heeled families with access to familial fortunes) likely because one of them didn't like the other and couldn't full heartedly engage, this plan ran aground.  So quite soon, within a year or two, a few others moved from the estate and on to their own lives elsewhere (one studied mid-wifery in Appalachia and traveled and studied here and there in other fields, while the other with a newly awarded advanced degree was flirting with the idea of a gene bank although that would not be remunerative in any way so he became a real estate broker) with the exception of the highly physical couple (the exotic dancer and body builder) living in the old coach house, who I visited once in 1974.  At that time, there was an xray photo of the man's foot held by tape in a window of the place.  During that last visit, I felt the place was on the edge of a real abyss, and I could fairly accurately predict the final outcome of Williams College under the benign auspices of Dr. John W. Hopkins and the coming end of his tenure there.

When I stopped up to visit Dr. and old Mr. Hopkins in 1972 or so, to pay a friendly visit and to thank the Hopkins family for all their kindness and hospitality afforded to us all in the past, Dr Hopkins mentioned somewhat morosely and resigned finality that he was awaiting the arrival of "the people of color."  These turned out to be the black couple brought in to help care for the needs of old Mr Hopkins in his final year on earth.  Charles the handyman was still there then, too, as I inquired about his welfare.  

During those years, hard pressed for money, Dr Hopkins would occasionally sell off antique furnishings from the place.  The finer pieces were maintained in the Great House, while a few other items had been stored in the storeroom adjoining my basement flat.  Once when Charles went in to retrieve a chair or lamp, he left the door temporarily unlocked for his return visit to retrieve more furniture.  I went in and found an old brown flat metal suitcase with wooden ribs and leather handle, which was snapped shut with one lock (as the other was broken), and I opened that to find some old women's clothes, notably a thin and once elegant cable knit cardigan sweater that likely once belonged to Dr Hopkins's mother.  I carefully refolded the garment and placed it nicely in the suitcase again, snapping it shut with the lock.  Just as it had been when I found it.

The estate was no longer drawing people in to stay and create, as if the institute itself knew its time was coming soon. The woman who took my basement place started an essential oil business in San Francisco and soon (within a matter of months) moved out, and that room remained unoccupied I believe, merely a place that vandalous rich drunken teenagers of the neighborhood would trash and spray paint with rude grafitti.  The woman who I'd known from the poopy desert college who had inherited Sandy Archer's old place in the early days of the Mime Troupe was off on extended travel and learning, and she deposited a friend in her old place, though she too left within a matter of months as I understand to start up a coffee house hundreds of miles away.  I only remember seeing her once, long black braids and lace about the neck of her flowery dresses.  Even Ed Leddy eventually left, despite Fantasy records absorbing the rights to the the first jazz album I ever bought, and he moved to Florida to be nearer the aunt who mailed him round cylinders of rum babas.  And the peacock house guy as I mentioned was among the last to remain, but he moved in with a new girlfriend and began studying for a real estate career after an unsuccessful bid in a genetic or science consulting consortium he was part of.  Though in mid-1974, the same couple still inhabited the old coach house.  They probably had to move within a year, when the estate was taken over by a new owner of the physical grounds and buildings.

In the old days, there was a "W" on the roof of the Great House.  Which could be seen from the window of a neighbor's house higher in the hills.  Of course, the letter obviously signified W for Williams College, but I always liked to believe the W was for Cassiopeia, and perhaps that notation was a galactic directional signal of some kind for the space brothers to better make their way to the atrium for a visit with Dr. Hopkins.

Oh, yes, at the time of my residence at Williams College, I sent away $5 or $10 and became an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church, just in case.

I know what happened to old Mr. Hopkins and his son, Dr. John W. Hopkins.  I wish I knew what became of Charles.  I have a call in to an old friend to see if she might remember his last name.   
 

What Important People Do

Just to continue with this thought about Los Olivos, because the reader might not go to the trouble of looking up who any of these characters I mention are, and so remain ignorant really of how things are wound together in my personal history, I will point out that Ray Stark was once a powerful force in New York and Hollywood and continues to be an influence to this very day.  I liked the fact he would take time from his busy schedule in Hollywood to come see his son Peter perform in the Shakespeare Festival, which was a small town hokey event for a prestigious intellectual bank like the Claremont colleges (the Shakespearean acrobats and clowns assembled to entertain the audiences on their way to the plays were drawn from the boys gym class at the local high school, and they'd installed a trampoline for their physical antics).

Ray Stark

My pal Peter Stark  

What they do now

(I read through that long list, the only thing I can be directly and immediately connected with is Les Blank and his documentary about the Garlic Festival, because I developed a recipe for garlic ice cream, which I have boasted about several times in print.  That the influence of this recipe spread farther afield I cannot deny.  I never went to the Garlic Festival and I never went to the Nucleus Nuance, a hip restaurant now defunct on Melrose where the famous of the day gathered that used my recipe for a dessert.  All that exists now is the recipe, and my name in a book or a newspaper article online).

I did like the fact when I heard of this back a decade or so ago that Ray and his wife Frances started a residential home for old actors, as that could have been my grandmother living in there had she lived to be 113 years old or so, presuming she'd had the money to pay for such rents (which she wouldn't have, just living off a deceased husband's meager social security stacked up after years on the assembly line in a Detroit auto factory), and her contributions to Theatre lofty enough to be mentioned and recognized on the rental application.  Although my grandmother, when she was close to 75 years old, could still kick high, and reach the top of a door jam, which by all later reports she would still do on occasion when encouraged at a Thanksgiving family gathering.  One time, she had a little too much wine and fell down flat on the floor, but just laughed and got up and tried it again and succeeded.

 In thinking about it, when I knew Peter, I can't recall that he mentioned his mom to me, his Dad was the one typically who Peter, a young college man just trying to start out and gain a footing in life was the parent he was most concerned with, and I guess this was a reflection of Peter's personal issues of the time.  I am the one making this psychological assessment based on our conversations that I recall from the time. 

Though he was not completely self-absorbed.  Peter and I would also mention and talk a bit about the settlements in Claremont for the retired missionaries ,,, we'd think about the future sometimes, in the shallow way that youth are known to do (his family would likely never have to worry, while life was a stretch for my grandmother after retiring from vaudeville, and how all things must pass, where either of us might be going and how we might end up.)  Once in awhile, he genuinely sparkled.  We went so see a movie at a Pomona drive-in, Saturday night at the movies like all the other young folks in the Valley, a film which though he knew someone attached to the film in some indefinable way neither of us liked, so we left and drove into the hills one evening and spread out a sleeping bag (which he carried he said because he was a member of the Sierra Club), and all we did was look at the stars in the clear sky, each in our own thoughts which we did not share with one another.   

Ray by all reports really didn't like living the bucolic life in Santa Ynez, though he raised horses.  His neighbor on Camino Cielo Road, a famous actor turned politician, owned 8 cows, by all reports, and took a huge cattleman's tax writeoff on his property.  And they spray painted the grass green with fertilizing compounds when he went to visit a local state mental hospital before he reduced funding to throw everyone out on to the streets when the world at large was unprepared for them.  You can't help seeing a conspiracy sometimes, myself included.  When I was quite young, I was carried by adults on an outing of some kind, I visited this family home at the Redi Kilowatt house, but I don't recall too much of what went on there and I don't recall meeting anyone in particular, as I preferred to stay out in the garden.

Later, though, Lily Tomlin and I would talk once in a very great while about our mutual memories of relatives working in automotive factories.  Noisy awful work, a hell of a way to make a living, is what we agreed upon. That shared commonality, a temporary geographic propinquity, and a mutual friend is about all we had in common at that time, aside from a skewed view of the world.  You might see some of the things we talked about in her skits, though, so you'll have to be a detective and figure out what those might be, the spread of creative influence while tracing the intellectual history of the United States and all.  I know what they are, but you can feel free to guess and if you guess correctly, you might say this is just too coincidental and so must be a fabrication or an embellishment or just a big fish story on my part.  Whatever, history belongs to the victors, the biggest voice in media, and all those other platitudes you'd care to quote here. 

None of this has too much to do with Williams College, except I was visiting and living there during this period and these people were in my recent memory then (except for the garlic, that came about a decade later, so I've fallen off a strict chronology here) and so they were part of my cosmos, as we used to say back then.

As for me, currently, I am consumed with bringing in references to Los Olivos so that you might better understand the nature of the people who Dr John W Hopkins allowed to live on the estate, although he did not know the facts nor the aura surrounding any of the famous people I knew in that past, nor even their names, he knew nothing of my personal history.  But he allowed me to live there, and he was satisfied he was drawing people to him in some weird occult or metaphysical way to continue on in the genuine spirit of the Institute of Creative Development (overlaid with newer stricta and interpretations as developed by the leadership of the Understanding movement).

More Agricultural History

In San Francisco and around the Bay Area, the actors and writers I knew from Williams College would watch movies, too.  Although these films were in no way the polished productions one might find being fabricated in Hollywood for screens in major theater chains, they were interesting.  Here's one from 1965.

Los Olivos pt. 3

I still marvel at coincidence as related to my life and especially my time at Williams College.  Remember "Los Olivos" the play handbill and how it related to a fancy boarding school in Los Olivos that a friend of mine attended when I first found Williams College?

Here's another one involving Ray Stark, the producer.  I was friends with his son Peter in Claremont when he was going to CMC and I was a senior trying to accelerate my departure from Claremont High School. My family had brushed elbows with the Starks early on in life (I'm not sure how, but I was invited to a fancy Beverly Hills birthday party and once rode on the merry-go-round in Beverly Hills while the adults waited by the brass ring pole, and later on during a shopping trip in Westwood as I was admiring some red queen anne pumps in a shoe store, we would encounter Peter who would follow us to a gypsy tea room.  Peter was eventually admitted to the Claremont Colleges, Ray would come to the Shakespeare Festival, where Peter had a part onstage.  I would talk with Ray and Peter in the dressing room as Peter applied his make-up and make crass jokes to impress his father.

Remember how everyone in the press of the time gave a vague geography to Ray's ranch, to afford him some semblance of privacy, saying his rancho was located "somewhere in Santa Ynez Valley" ... when he was at his Elba, exiled it would seem from the new "Hollywood"?   Everyone who knew, knew.  His place was in Los Olivos. 

A famous episode in the old Zorro television program was introduced by this plot summary outline: 

“A mystery develops when a teenage girl arrives in the pueblo and asks for

directions to a ranch no one has ever heard of.”

There's only a slight correlation here.  I'm just trying to make it exciting for you all to thrill or wonder more at the game of coinkydink and this recent business about more Los Olivos connections.  You know, I stopped at the edge of his long driveway one time, several decades ago, as I didn't want to intrude on his life, we were hippie-looking types in a '49 Chevy pickup truck typically in use to deliver organic produce, and I just waved hello to the house, and hoped he caught the friendly well-wishing vibe.

Dr. John W. Hopkins and his ability to draw talented people to him to continue on with Williams College in the genuine spirit of Cora Williams Institute for Creative Development, and his acceptance of strange coincidence that just blossomed all around him, was beginning to rub off on me a bit, in so far as I thought I could recognize the lines of connectivity by taking each person and event back and forth in a logical manner, and then viewing the assembly or result of their combination.  Shaky ground for a theorist or historian, skating on thin ice for a person in a human science like sociology (both history and sociology being discilplines which any trained in real science would dismiss as mere "pseudo science"), but for a creative individual, a heck of a lot of fun sometimes, and sometimes more than interesting if not actually fun.

I remember Peter Stark telling me, among other things, his parents named him Peter and his sister Wendy from the book by J.M. Berrie, Peter and Wendy.  Poor troubled Peter, he would sneer in disbelief because his life even in rich privileged Beverly Hills where the world could be his oyster was so unlike that of Neverland, and then because other times it weirdly was.   He was troublesome, lonely, confused, and a handful as a child, in psychotherapy as a child, and he told me his folks had talked about taking him in for electroshock treatments when he was a kid in the hopes it might help him in some way!  Poor, poor Peter, I thought at the time I heard that story from him.  He was difficult as a young man, too, even for me, and I tended to make a lot of allowances for people who were my friends. He had pushed and recommended that his dad make a "new movie" that the "new intellectuals" would want to see ("Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mom's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad"), but somehow he ended up acting in a version that another person put out, and the film was not well received.  Peter though raised in show business with all those connections and all the money to back nearly anything he did could likely never compete successfully with his dad, or feel he received his father's real approval for any of his artistic adventures.  I was very sad when I learned of his suicide in New York (where apparently he spent a lot of time at Fire Island).

So I just waved hello to Ray Stark's house, way down a long driveway behind a gate, and hoped he got the friendly well wishing vibe.

 

  

 

 

Ministry

Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, 1929


John W Hopkins, Ministerial Class

The Cosmos Within

I was sorry to hear Dr Hopkins became embittered in his later years (1973-1975), as I remember him as a genial and well mannered person, but such a turnabout is almost inevitable when assaulted by the combined forces of government agencies and tax collectors.  I believe, but am not certain, he began running in to financial woe when the college lost accreditation, as that likely meant the property taxes were then recomputed at a much higher residential rate, which I am certain even then would have been horrific to consider. 

I can infer some of his anti-government attitude may have been shaped when he as a well educated young man (Phi Beta Kappa, Drake University) most likely read newspaper accounts of the day's current events, which undoubtedly included articles of dire news like we read daily today, these endless reports of devastating economic collapse that only threatens to grow worse.  Certainly the Great War.  The Dust Storms that could seem cataclysmic.

Then, that more historic economic downturn, The Great Depression and, for him, witnessing the endless foreclosures on thousands of farmers in Iowa, who lost family farms built up through generations of family labors likely did not go unnoticed.  Such Iowa foreclosures were viewed as the compounded result of an early government economic interference in elevating crop prices during the Great War (WW I) to feed the soldiers overseas.  That economic move encouraged expansion of property holdings to provide more production.  With the government then removing those price protections farmers who had borrowed on their land and crops to buy more land for growing more crops spiraled into foreclosure in a big broken shoelace kind of thing.  And the depression in Iowa started early, in the early 20s with a staggering number of bank failures in the state, all the direct result of farmers not being able to pay money to the banks on their loans and mortgages because they couldn't sell the crops .

The government gave and then the government took away ... and people suffered.  A similar thing happened in New Mexico, when the bean field farmers at the onset of WWI were awarded great and lucrative contracts which they gladly signed, but then somewhat mysteriously the bean fields were hit by a blight before the first acres could be harvested and they've not been able to grow beans a day since in the Albuquerque environs at least.  As a result, locals still look on the government as a curse and some claim they see the blight as a form of punishment or divine instruction.  But you've likely heard that story already. 

Dr Hopkins obviously benefited from and enjoyed some of the tax benefits of running an educational institution through the decades.  He perhaps even claimed more tax-deductible benefits as he early (1960) understood the importance of ordination (and I am trying to find where his "Dr" was awarded, as I suspect his was a doctor of divinity).

I understand he had mortgaged his father's farm (Rocklyn) in Iowa by the time I had encountered him again (1969), but I don't know whether specifically just to help keep the estate afloat, satisfy creditors and keep them at bay, or if he had (just guessing) been lured or enticed into some investment scheme.  That farm, which was the family farm for over a century, was simultaneously foreclosed upon when the estate went into the hands of bankers in California (Viking Mortgage, which then foreclosed on a sum of $70,000 on a near priceless property and sold the estate for a tidy profit to a handful of real estate investors who in turn sold to Larry Leon).

Jim Crow a Go Go

Because Dr. Hopkins was in steady financial difficulty, the once elegant estate had somewhat fallen asunder since the keys were handed to him by Cora Williams all those many years prior. A fact that Tofland noted, and the residents and visitors long after him noticed as well.  Others would visit the grounds and buildings and some of their impressions of the estate hearkened to the decay and rot consuming the architectural splendor of the ante bellum south and were quite remarkable.  Although it may be safe to assume that often the interiors of such mansions fallen from greatness would express more than a tinge of melancholy.  Such are the remains of some historical days.  The physical location, however, did much to help fuel the imaginations of the Mime Troupe members who were scripting the early ensemble works, most particularly The Minstrel Show.

(letter from George Starr, Professor of English, U.C. Berkeley, July 26, 2011:   "All in all the impression created by the Hopkins household in these years was a rather melancholy one, a sense of shabby-genteel decline and helplessness that would have seemed natural in a film or novel about the Deep South but rather out of place in bustling, thriving Berkeley.")

Universal Party

Dr. John Wohlman Hopkins (called John Jr) said he had his first visit from what has become commonly known as the space brothers in 1954 (see his article in the CalTech newspaper below), which was the very year his mother died.  He said he was sitting in the double basket chair (where he and his mom used to sit ) one night when the saucer descended down through the atrium. 

After that time, he met many of the great popular contactees by hosting conventions and meetings in the Bay Area plus traveling himself to farflung areas in California, Arizona, and I think Mexico.  He hosted Orfeo Angelucci at a convention at Williams College as well as Daniel Fry (founder of Understanding).  And Buck Nelson (John Jr had a little manila money envelope of black fur he showed me that was from Buck's dog after the dog went into outer space. Buck used to sell these as curios

Alien electric pianos and plasma televisions

Contactees and Music

Rare footage of Daniel Fry (who used to visit Williams College) and the benign comments of Mr. Menger concerning "aliens".  This is somewhat akin to some of the lectures we attended on the campus of Williams College. 

Not much has been written about Dr. John W. Hopkins, though. 

Willing, Willing, & Willing

I'm not sure which blog to post this on, I guess here as my geneaology and ancestral roots vaguely tangent into the Mime Troupe.  First, may I say the obvious:  everyone has a personal history, which combines into a larger family history if you are fortunate enough to be born into such a nuclear system and learn of family histories.  When you are friends with people, and grow close to them you learn something about their family history and they about yours because you share campfire stories.  Usually people who are concerned with geneaology are first driven by person curiosity, but most who continue in such delvings into the past usually seek to determine their own pedigrees, or others of a more cultural bent hope to learn more about history and people in history and their actions and places and so on.

I did not have a large supply of relatives on my father's side (though he was one of eleven children, remember kids died off early back then) so I heard a bit of my mother's geneaology from her.  She was raised by her blind grandmother in the South as the unwanted child of vaudevillians who performed on the circuit.  My mother's mother (born in 1880 or so) left home or ran away from home and joined the circus so to speak at the age of fourteen, and she became a dancer.  Though sometimes she would play in skits, too, show business being what it was (comedic skits, once she was a maid in costume).  She would turn down other job offers (for instance, a promoter on Boblo Island amusement park outside of Michigan when she first left home offered her a $5 or $7 to dive from a high platform into a small tank of water.  Another or so it was said tried to get her to dance on a platform atop a flag pole, and she considered that but declined.  Whenever I saw historic films of ladies doing the Charleston on the top of hot air balloon floating through the air, cinema shot by a crazy cameraman seated safely in a nearby biplane, I would think of my grandmother).   

My grandmother met my grandfather, Charles Willinghurst, a Southerner, on the vaudeville circuit (Great Lake States, into New York, a little into unspecified regions of the South, and once she said she played Iowa) and so my mom was born and soon shuffled off to an old wooden house in Kentucky to be brought up.  Charles Willinghurst was a vaudevillian performer as well, part Irish so he could do a step dance and a jig.  But his act, the act he was famous for (with a friend) was as a black faced minstrel, and they called themselves Willing & Willing.  They brought a third guy into the act and renamed the act "Willing, Willing, & Willing" but soon dropped him because of disagreements and went back to the twosome for performance.

I used to have an old clipping from a newspaper of the time, held folded in a book, a clipping which had nearly disintegrated by the time I even first saw it c. 1960, a large nearly full page article and photo, showing a photograph of Willing & Willing in blackface and standing next to an old wooden dray cart hauled by a mule.  A publicity shot and show announcement or review.  My mother, raised in the South, for many good reasons I felt, grew to hate her father and his act.  She even dropped the use of his name and assumed the last name of my grandmother's second husband, another Southerner, who she had met several times.

Because I was a curious child, I would ask my mother sometimes about her (painful) memories, especially the blackface act.  She said all they did was sing and dance and make jokes and white people would laugh at the antics of white people pretending to be shuffling comedic black people.  For a number of reasons (his alcoholism, punching her in the nose and breaking it to steal the three dollars she had in her hand earned from sewing a dress when she was 8 years old all so he could run to the tavern and get a much needed drink, the cruelty, the abandonment, being forced to live with someone she hated), my mother detested her father.  And she was embarrassed always that she had been raised in the South.

These were my roots, my own real painful personal history as well, but I am happy to say I shared this story with my theatrical friends, and they eventually came up with a pretty damn good spin on this story.

We were Willing, too.  Can you guess which play I am speaking of now?  That my friends who I knew from the desert college and now the friends at Williams College put together and put on?

(This is a picture of me as a kid on Catalina [August 1953].  My mother didn't even want to pose by the cart, as tourists would, let alone get into it as just the sight and the notion of the photographs brought back painful memories for her.  As to the publicity photo of her father, I like her would just keep it folded in a book until it was pulverized by time and turned to dust.).

This is a very important part of the secret and now obscured history of the early origins of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.  At least to me. (I'm the one wearing the hat)

I am obliged to mention that my mother's father and mother were indeed married when my mother was born.  My mother went through much anxiety when she was trying to get her birth certificate once and discovered the local Kentucky building holding those records had burned down.  She was afraid.  She had to get a baptismal certificate, to prove that she was who she said when asking for proof of birth to be provided elsewhere ... which she did eventually get, but the church records she looked into also showed marriage records.  So at least she was "legitimate", which was a bit of relief to her.  She was quite embarrassed to be the child of vaudevillians (actresses, dancers, musicians were regarded as the scum of proper society), and the child of divorced parents (as no one was divorced back then in 1917, those who did were regarded as loose moraled people), and the child of a blackface comedian to boot who was himself raised in the South, and then ashamed of being raised in the South herself.  Some of that personal history of hers rubbed off on me, how could it not?  It all was part of who I was and eventually became.  But enough about me.

Contactees Unite

To give you an idea of all the stuff swirling about at Williams College, this monograph on Gordon pretty much describes it.

"Gordon, Contactee"

But THIS!  The photo by George Adamski through his 6 inch telescope

That's why Dr. Hopkins selected the Adamski model as his nightly beacon, you see.  AND he had ALL the other FAMOUS contactees come up to Williams College for symposia, and bigger events at the sister building, the Claremont Hotel.

And there's another coinkydink, as I told Dr. Hopkins when I first encountered him (1964) and then again when I moved in and was first introduced to him by name (1969) that I came from .... Claremont.  But he didn't so much as bat an eyelash.

Heidi, who moved in to Sandy Archer's old place, she was okay because she came from the San Diego region (where Adamski first was contacted), and she could talk about going to the Elfin Forest (where the Units of Understanding would occasionally meet for great conferences in the San Diego region) even though she went there on hikes as a kid.  It didn't matter.  So it was ok for HER to take over Sandy Archer's residence.  It's all very very simple if you get an understanding of Dr. John W. Hopkins.

The Berkeley Unit of Understanding was still in operation so I went to those meetings (as did all of the renters on the estate) and so we were part of the unit and also some of us were described by Dr. Hopkins to the city fathers as "students" of Williams College (to get around rental matters ... especially after the complaints from Margaret Bontham, high up if not actually President of Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco and leader if not President of the San Antonio Road Homeowners Association.  She was the one excited about the feathers.  Dr. Hippocrates actually took classes from Dr. Hopkins, and once wrote a prescription for painkillers for him when he was sick and because Dr. Hip was Dr. Timothy Leary's personal physician, I understand Gene was soon questioned by authorities about this particular script.

Los Olivos

While Peter Coyote Cohon still mouths off as the spokesman for all things counterculture and because of his bloated ego which has just grown larger over the years and because of the way the media has fallen in love with him he is likely regarded as the originator and leader of all things doing to Mime Troupe ...

Well, he ain't ... and I am here to tell you that ain't so. 

Darryl Henriques was the instigator for the selection of the first play for El Teatro Campasino ... and Darryl got that from a little ad I had cut out from the Claremont Courier that was for the play "Los Olivos".  Darryl went to the play at Padua Hills and spoke with every one there and developed the first information.

That it grew from there, I will not deny.  But I'm proud to say that I had a small hand in the creation of that famous part of the REAL HIDDEN AND NOW OBSCURED HISTORY of the early origins of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.  They'll never hear anything about this in San Francisco, I'll wager.

GRAPE STRIKE PUPPET SHOW (LOS OLIVOS)

For the grape strike puppet show, the little puppet on the right held a big coin while the puppet on the left watched and rubbed his head ... Then the puppet on the right bobbed down and popped right back up holding a small hand of thompson seedless grapes.

At first, the puppet on the left would rub his tummy in a circular motio (yum might taste good!) but then!  the moment of awareness!  The puppet on the left would draw back in horror, and hold his hands to his head and fall over in disbelief, then turn to the crowd and rub his hands together like "Mickey Moose!  (very bad!!)

During Larry Leon's time as owner of what always was known as the Springfield estate (which during my time of residence there, as students, we always referred to as "Williams College"), during his improvement phase decided to tear down the rickety old "Gymnasium".  Which had a wall of mirrors for the dancers, old wall hung coat racks that would hold mufflers, umbrellas, and canes, and a large and exquisite wood floor that was always waxed with a special wax so as not to harm the dancers' feet.  I lived for several years (1969-1971?) in the basement room under what was then the ballet studio.  I took this photo in 1970.

Peter tended to handle narratives to the crowds because he was naturally endowed with a good speaking voice that drew people in to the story.  (And he liked hearing the sound of his own voice.)  He was naturally charismatic.  He had a good appearance.  The people would see him standing up front in performances talking to them, and as he was up front talking to THEM, he seemed like the star of the show (and this was the result of the way media had trained people, they'd tune in on the lead singer, the public speaker, the starring actor on the screen, the one who was paid the most was the one to be paid attention to, and they'd kind of gloss over the supporting cast or be unable to recognize this was an ensemble piece they were enjoying so much and all the actors and all the scripts went into the mix.  And in responding to that public trend, movie and tv scripts were written to show and point people to the star, who generally uttered platitudes, to my way of thinking.  The audience many times, because of their own shaping by their response to media, was just not overall sophisticated enough to really understand the puppet shows, but because of the way they were presented, just as they had been to the common peasants of the 14th century who were similarly "unlettered", people understood and responded to them just as the crowds did six centuries prior.  You see, commedia dell arte was still valid as an artform, and may be for quite some time into the future, as well.

CENSORSHIP PUPPET SHOW

At various points during the CENSORSHIP puppet show, these things happened:

The puppet on the left would move his small arms and

1. put his hands over his ears
2. put his hands over his eyes
3. put his hands over his mouth

While the puppet on the right would act out various portions of 14th century commedia del arte complete with small props

With the EYES, the puppet on the right had a small commedia del arte mask held on a stick in front of his face, while another hand came up behind the puppet's hand to stick a small stick into the puppets hand (held with a light tan velcro sewed as the puppets "paw" ... and on that stick would be a huge horn that commedia del arte actors had used to suggest a large penis, a sight that outraged the bourgeoisie and they'd go into legal battle and suppression of those troupes, too, to drive them out of existence.

The puppet on the left would pull back in shock, turn and ball up, and shiver, then rise up again in outrage.

 
When the point was made about CENSORSHIP, which was at the end,
another puppet would come up in the middle

the puppets would all move into position to imitate the three monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil) which was a way of empowering the audience to remind them how to behave, as well.

I'd see the guerilla portion of the theater here and there at major demonstrations I happened to swirl within.  That's why I can tell you of the evolution of the soldier's mechanical arm, as the years of performances stretched out.

But .... first Sandy was gone, then (oh and in between I was kicked off the stairs and I was a nobody) then Ronnie, then Darryl .... well nobody was left really who was in the initial groove.  So I would follow Darryl's spin off the East Bay Sharks, his crankies, and his shows for Chinese people in parks at the edge of San Francisco Chinatown (when the doors of China were about to be pried apart).

All that darting around across the country to race ahead of Dow Chemical recruiters, that was Ronnie and Sandy, I felt.  And Peter was merely another horse in the harness pulling.

Although Peter did go to speak with Dalton Trumbo after word came up from Los Angeles that he was writing the script from the new English translation (1968), the script and movie were based on Dalton's imagination, a fictional portion, as it turned out, something that had never happened, and so not mentioned in the book ... he took artistic liberty with that, probably because the real story was so difficult to wrap your head around) ... I mean, I'd already read that excerpt and had discussed it with my friends, and I was already wearing my French prisoner's denim shirt everywhere I went in Berkeley at the time .. and even to performances of the Mime Troupe, because it just seemed suitable somehow.  I didn't have time to go off on these events because I was studying at the university, which was very important to me, and I needed to save my juice for that.  That plus working any and all odd jobs to get by ... usually manual labor, like weeding and raking, cleaning and painting places, trimming rose bushes (very badly I might add).  Not too many of those jobs were for actual homeowners who lived in their homes, but rather landlords (who seemed exceptionally wealthy to me, to buy Berkeley properties on investment to rent to students and so make even more money).  In 1968, I maintained an interest in community activities, and walked in to the Berkeley Co-op on University to see if I could lend a hand on the board, and at the board meeting I was the only person who'd showed up!  They were all busy elsewhere.  And I realize now, I could have effectively taken that place over, but all I wanted was a j-o-b. 

The Passage of Time through a Looking Glass of Histo

I wonder about the acuity of my own memory sometimes, usually pretty sharp even under the most strained circumstances.

This photo of Sandy:  I remember seeing that play ... I was surprised when the actor on the left (in this photo) made his entrance onstage, as I fully expected that role to be played by Henriques.  My friend explained to me, oh no, Darryl had a different role with the theater, a more physical one.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, when I was at Berkeley going to school in 1964, was that Darryl had traveled up to the Bay Area to join with a group called the Actor's Guild.

So when I met up with her again, my friend Heidi was filling me in on what she and Darryl had been up to in the intervening span of time.

We were seated far back in a park, and I had travelled there from Berkeley with Heidi who had a CAR and who was Darryl's girlfriend.  We were in a park somewhere in San Francisco, and far back and could barely hear the lines because of our seating.  Of course, because I was with Heidi, we arrived very very late in the performance, it was almost the end of the play.   So I remember a snippet of that play, but I can't place the year ... as I traveled up to the bay area in 1964 and then in 1965, I traveled up there a bit more, a few bus trips, an airplane ride, a hitch hiking trip that ended up with someone giving me money to finish the trip all the way on the bus, rides part of the way with friends in their cars sometimes until I could grab a bus ... hitch hiking across towns to get to the bus station and so forth that my movements were scattered ... and I was busy with other things, as well. 

So I must have seen this in 1965 although they had obviously been performing it for awhile ... my sense is this was an early Spanish romantic piece and they'd  had to get the park authority's permission to perform in a public park.  That's when things were a little smoother, before events boiled up, and the collective decision-making came into it (which translated into a guy struggle between Ronnie and Peter, and Peter was hard to bring into line sometimes, because he tended to play differently ... he wanted to show that he shared the same values as and totally and completely understood all the longhairs and hippies in the audience and they were all together like they understood an in-joke, and Ronnie and others had a more traditional view of commedia dell arte and would try to pull everything back to its center. So it was a tug of war, and push and pull, even over the scripts and how they were written.  And it's like the guys were so busy duking it out with each other in conceptual performance concerns that Sandy's more refined approaches would be shoved to the backburner.  I kind of knew one time later, when I heard some little tidbit or piece of gossip, that this being shoved into the background and being disregarded would be hurtful, and might eventually cause Sandy to quit one day and to go her own way, though I hoped that wouldn't happen because Sandy could fight back and hold her ground.  But eventually after years that was what happened, and it was burn out because every thing else had gotten so large in simultaneity with the performances. 

A mexican vaquero costume, from a store in Mexico or maybe a distant part of Los Angeles where they sold clothes for the Mexican rodeo cowboys, which the band and players at Padua Theater would wear as well in their historic plays.   

When the little handpuppet came out with a rainbow headband, that was really a rainbow wrist band that some merchandiser had dreamed up ... to provide matching accessories for the rainbow headbands everywhere ... they sold them as sets, sometimes.  I thought they were funny, the wrist bands.  I used to be able to tell a long joke back in 1965 about a Swiss guy named Alec Sanders who came from a long line of famous Swiss watchmakers and how he'd invented a new interesting time keeping instrument.  He was a poor guy, Alec was, who broke the strap on the old wrist watch his grandfather had given him, and that was his entire inheritance from his grandfather.  But Alec Sanders was so poor because he had been disinherited by his family in all other ways, he couldn't even afford to replace the strap.  He was so removed from the family's business, he barely knew what to do to fix a watch even.  But Swiss watch makers, even poor Swiss watch makers, can be clever, too.  So he repaired his watch with some old cloth strips because he couldn't afford to buy material, and he called his invention "The Alec Sanders Rag Time Band".

But I could also, see the hurt that softly grows into a larger ache, sometimes I could sense that, when people were shifting subtly away from each other, and giving their attention to another, and I would sing a song appropriate for the moment, but change the words a bit for the current circumstances I was witnessing:

"I once knew a lass and she played as she willed
I hated for others to spake of her ill
But  now she is gone like the fleurs on the hill
For she's gone te be wed tae another"

(And that would sober the room up for a moment because they realized they recognized themselves and their own parts in the song, and would try to straighten out)

MIME TROUPE PUPPETS

The puppets were physicalized and melodramatic, and were so much larger than their small selves, they could be bigger than the audience, and become so much larger than life.

DISARMAMENT (NO NUKES)

Another of the puppet shows was about disarmament.  One puppet popped up on the left first carrying a toy cowboy gun, then a knife, then a rifle and  a black leather jacket, then a rifle and leather jacket wearing a helmet (which looked like a flak jacket police and army used to wear), and there was a quick evolution into an army uniform and a plastic rocket while wearing a helmet.  And the puppet on the right would try to sooth the other puppet and calm him, by stroking his little cowboy hat with a gentle indian feather while wearing a headband like an indian, tickling him and making him laugh, although the little puppet would handle the hair of the cowboy puppet and stare out at the audience like (I'm thinking about scalping him) but they tried to work it out and the indian headband puppet gave him a little massage and calmed himself after knocking the cowboy hat off, and a kiss like mama would give a good boy:

and with the knife he was wearing a samurai headband, and the other puppet pulled off the headband slowly while talking to him and and pleading with him, and he pulled off the samurai band and wrapped it around samurai puppet's neck while wiping tears away from the samurai puppets eyes and pulled the samurai to him and gave him a kiss and a embrace.  With the rifle and leather jacket the other puppet shivered in fear when that one popped up and I forget what that puppet did, but had the peace sign and now that puppet on the right was wearing a headband, and they battled a bit, the puppet on the left would threaten the little puppet on the right, pointing his rifle straight at the puppet on the right's belly (which he protected with the peace sign) and then the puppet on the left would stare out at the audience like he was growing in power and soon he moved his rifle up as if counting the buttons on the jacket of the puppet on the right one two three, giving a mean little nudge and push with each one, which the frightened the puppet on the right until he got to the top button, and then leather jacket turned and stared malevolently at the audience (HA HA HA!  I can blow this puppet's brains straight out if I want to) and suddenly brought his rifle up and aimed STRAIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES OF THE puppet with headband on right (Oh no!  You can't do that!  That's WRONG!  That might hurt that little creature!) and the puppet on the right, shot up the peace sign he was carrying to protect his head and turned his head and shivered in fear, but then fought back hitting the rifle with the peace sign, and again the little puppets tried to work it out .... BUT COULDN'T ... they just couldn't do it, even though the puppet on the right threw away his peace sign back of him and then spun and held his shaking hands like a magician and actually levitated the little soldier puppet a bit (and when the little soldier puppet started rising into the air, he looked confused, frightened, and SCARED and shook from the vibrations of being levitated), BUT HE COULDN'T DO IT, (THEY COULDN'T DO IT AND THEY COULDN'T LEVITATE THE LITTLE SOLDIER PUPPET NOT EVEN WHEN THEY REALLY TRIED and that puppet dropped suddenly down and disappeared down behind the stage, slightly twisting and turning as he did, and the other peace sign puppet did, too, although he was dropping from magyk exhaustion. When suddenly and frighteningly the puppet on the left appeared with the PLASTIC  ROCKET and burst up holding the big rocket between his legs, it was so large, and even threatened the audience with it!  And the puppet on the right still in a rainbow headband and holding the peace sign (now different now, an inverted peace sign to betoken the original origins of the peace sign, which was the old lymie anarchist sign meaning "No Nukes") and they battled furiously.  The puppet on the left was mad and would coil himself up and spew out nasty laughter shakes as he sprayed over the heads of the audience with his nuke rocket like it was a little machine gun (and it was over the heads of the audience, because NO!  That's WRONG! to shoot off rockets and really spray people with nuclear crap) and the puppet on th right would work furiously frightened though he was (because the nuclear soldier puppet had a little star on his shoulder now and would sometimes turn and pull back and point the rocket VERY THREATENINGLY at the little peace puppet on the right and it was like the puppet on the left would just grow in power and lapse into complete maddened lunacy and shake and laugh like I'M CRAZY, I'LL BLOW YOU ALL UP IF I HAVE TO!  And they struggled, and struggled mightily, a parry, a thrust, peace sign against the nuclear rocket, and eventually the peace sign knocked off both the rocket and the ... the rocket flew away harmless now, and the star flew backwards like a star shooting back into space (Couldn't be nuclear holocaust) and the puppet on the right had ducked down and retrieved the star and stood shaking with it, and turned to look at the audience for encouragement, then patted the star with his sweet puppet hands and swam it so gently over to the crazed puppet on the left like it was a fluttering starfish, and first tried to stick it on the crazed puppet's shoulder, but then tried to attach it to his chest (No, that's not right, no one should have THAT kind of authority over others), and then rubbed the head of the nuclear soldier puppet with the star like he was saying "Good boy!" and then just gently handed it to the soldier puppet (who was just like the other puppet now, without his scary nuclear rocket) and handed it to him like it was a precious present, a star from the heavens, a starfish from the sea, and the soldier puppet began to melt into agreement.  And they embraced at the end when we in the audience knew we were saved from nuclear holocaust, and everyone in the audience cheered!  And the puppets came out for their stage call at the end, holding hands up high (we all would be victorious!) and kept bowing and turning to each other, holding hands, and gave a big stage bow.  And show was over and audience applauded!

The puppets could emote so beautifully through body language .... they were volcanic!  their small  movements were as fluid as if they'd trained as dancers!  they were emotional! as if all the pourous physicality of the actors handling the puppets streamed through their hands like a directed electric charge and stream straight into the puppets and on out into the audience.  Their hands captured and showed the shifting emotions of the puppets playing out their parts on the little stage, the entire spectrum of emotionality.  They were amazing! And people in the audience drawn into the performance would respond to the emotion on stage, too, with body movements and slight hand movements in response.  And the audience would make sweet cooing sounds, say "AWWW" softly, and laugh in glee when the puppets kissed or hugged.

and when they bumped each other sometimes to drive the other off the stage, it was funny!

(CENSORSHIP)
Sometimes, they'd bump, then bump some more, then give a little simultaneous laugh, and stand folded over, stuck butt to butt frozen in pose.  Real old commedia del arte movements that shocked the hell out of the bougeoisie of th old days and offended them mightily.  But the people then would laugh, and we laughed now, too.
And other times, the puppets would do little dances and spin and do commedia del arte stuff, naughty mounting like doing the dirty little dog (that was the CENSORSHIP show). 

There were backstory scripts for the puppet shows, too, to allow the puppeteer to better tell the story through the hands of each puppet handler.

Sometimes, I would get heavy into writing these out as I moved into the emotions and scenes, and the overall scene of the time just as it was then (and as it is now) and I would say "OH!" and jump back from the keyboard.  And one time Peter Cohon was in the living room talking with someone else while I was writing up one these parts, and Peter just turned and gave me a straight-lipped look like he felt it, too, and it was like telepathy straight across the room.  I wrote some of those in my living room office in a cottage in Richmond.  And music would be playing as always from the underground radio station straight through the small macintosh receiver.  I felt powered by sound, sometimes, and I loved music. 

Sandy's Staging Preferences

Sandy seemed to really love the more traditional comedia dell arte and I think that's where her heart was.  She loved staging plays in front of houses and buildings that provided the scenic backdrop.  She would scour the neighborhoods wherever she was to find a perfect tudor looking house and so on to be used as a living stage set to help set the atmosphere of the historic work being presented.  Just as it was done in the old traditional days of comedia dell arte. She also insisted on costuming being as authentic as possible for the play being presented and had a friend who did her costume sewing.

Censorship

Another of the early Mime Troupe puppet skits had to do with censorship.  A little puppet came out holding a script .... soon the other puppet arrived with a little wooden vaudeville cane to pull the little puppet offstage ... this was carefully crafted so the cane never touched the puppet's neck (NO!  That's wrong!  That might hurt the gentle little puppet) and the puppet would protect his neck with the papers he had rolled into a tube.  Then ... more dialogue which I forget .... the ATTACK!  The Censor puppet grew more alarmed and rose up as if shrieking and shivered as he did in absolute outrage and disgust, and the other little puppet would collapse over the edge of the stage in laughter .... (ha! ha! you're ridiculous, Censor Puppet! Everybody's laughing at YOU now!)

Then ... the near punch and judy duel in the sun ....

The little puppets parried and thrust, vaudeville cane against rolled script, but they'd never hit each other (NO!  That's wrong!  That might hurt the gentle little puppet) but as this was the CENSOR puppet being attacked, he was brushed on the head with the script (to whistle and boing and gong sounds from backstage people) and was almost knocked unconscious by it, and then was struck by surprise he couldn't win this round of the censorship war against the little Actor puppet.  And I think at one point the Actor puppet had little boxing gloves put on his hands so he could continue this battle.  (Little bells like fight bells would sound to bring them back into the ring.)  And he would SWING and the Censor puppet would block his swing with his cane a la Toshiro Mifune and LAUGH an evil little Censor puppet laugh.  And as I recall, as the show evolved the little Censor puppet even for the first time (like Beanie, like when they showed Beanie's legs) HAD A LEG (whoever heard of a hand puppet with a LEG? This was a THEATRICAL BREAKTHROUGH) with a soft little shoe on the foot and kicked like Bruce Lee not just hit but tried to KICK the little Actor puppet below the belt ...  who defended himself with the script because it was WRONG! for even little puppets to do such things that might hurt another little puppet.  But still .... the little Actor puppet had the wind knocked out of him and seemed to be going down for the count (and the audience said OOH!) But it ended up the little Actor puppet won the fight against the Censor.  And at the end, the puppets came out for an encore from behind the little curtains and held hands like stage people do and then thrust their little arms in the air together held high (and they were still a little feisty towards each other, but they eventually worked that out before they disappeared behind the curtain). 

Great show!!

Tear Gas, Pink Slips, and FEAR!

And after I got up from the curb, after being fired onstage mid-performance by Ronnie, I continued on down the stairs, and through the crowd..  I staggered in a zig-zag out into the busy street traffic and threw myself at a bus .... I wasn't really trying to do myself in, but, you know theatrical types and street work, and I collapsed at the tail end of the bus (my best prat fall ever!) as the smoggy exhaust fogged out over the street ... and my friend Heidi came to retrieve me, and I rolled over on my back and said, "I can't seem to do anything right today."

We used to do real guerilla comedy pieces in the middle of demonstrations when the tear gas was flying and the cops were rushing us ... which worked ok, or so it seemed, until the day the clown got a little scared and ran off down an alley to evade the charging pigs.  I'd seen the look of "FEAR!" in Darryls' eyes, that day, too! 

The varieties in performance sometimes caused disturbances in us all.  And sometimes that was the result of an actor's reaction when facing the audience and picking someone to play to, and the audience interaction could be bothersome.  Sandy always looked skyward to the heavens when she moved and danced, and would sometimes bow low and reach out to the audience that way, and lovingly play into a person's eyes.