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.")
Monday, November 4, 2013
Universal Party
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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.
Monday, October 28, 2013
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.
"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.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
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.
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.
Monday, September 23, 2013
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!!)
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!!)