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.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
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.