(11.5.13 Listing from
Friday, November 15, 2013
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
(11.5.13 Listing from
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Telescopes: Alien Influence
Think back to the Menger video interview post (Alien Electric Pianos and Plasma TVs, Nov 2, 2013)
Monday, November 11, 2013
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)
p. 71- 75 (Required reading)
(The San Francisco Mime Troupe Reader
edited by Susan Vaneta Mason
"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"
Simon and Schuster,
Oct 4, 2004
(p. 168 from "They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967"
By David MaranissSimon and Schuster,
Oct 4, 2004
Saturday, November 9, 2013
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
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.
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).
(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 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.)
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.
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).
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).
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
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.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
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:
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.
Monday, November 4, 2013
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).
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.")
(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
.jpg)
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.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
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.
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.
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.