Looking Back: 33 – send in the clowns

Barbara Streisand, Send in the Clowns

     My old university friend, P., was living in Springfield in the Connecticut River valley when I loaded my car and left our condo in Worcester in the Spring of 1971 barely half a year after our wedding. I badly needed someone to talk to simply to unload my emotional garbage on someone who would listen critically but without judging. I telephoned him and asked if it was alright to come down to Springfield and spend a few days at his place. I outlined the situation and he unhesitatingly said yes, come and stay as long as you need to.

tornado on the Connecticut River -
Springfield, MA, June 2011

        So, I drove to Springfield in my car loaded with all my personal stuff and over the next few days P. and I renewed our old friendship from UMass and reminisced about how great it had been in those halcyon days seen now through a glass darkly. Little by little I talked about the circumstances that had led me to this latest crossroads on my meandering path. Why did I get married? Don't know really, it just sort of evolved. Did I love my wife? Thought so at first, but obviously not deeply enough for the commitment of a marriage. What bothered me the most? Loss of my freedom and feeling trapped by the costly life style expected by my wife and her family—at least as I perceived it. Was I ready to walk away? Yes. What was I going to do next? Face the music.

       I called M. and told her where I was and asked if it would be alright to meet and discuss the situation and where we would go from there. She was restrained on the phone and suggested that I come to our apartment and talk it over. I preferred a more neutral setting but she had a little boy from a previous marriage and said it would be difficult to get away from him. I had gotten fond of little Chris and didn't relish the idea of an emotional meeting both of them, but agreed to meet there anyway.

        Accordingly, I returned to our apartment. Chris was there and that made a long wrenching discussion along the lines I had discussed with P. all the more difficult. Little by little, however, we were able to agree, not without recriminations, but with a glimmer of understanding that I hadn't expected, that she would file for divorce charging me as the party at fault. We parted with a modicum of amiability and acceptance. I think the presence of the little boy had a beneficial effect on our overstretched emotions. Afterwards, I felt guilty and depressed but at the same time as if a storm had passed and a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

        The divorce, uncontested by me, was granted on June 25, 1971 about seven months after our wedding and finalized six months later, ironically on December 26, 1971—my 30^th birthday.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 32 – the marriage from the asylum

    I'm meandering a bit in the labyrinth of my thoughts and getting ahead of myself. While attending graduate school evenings I continued working at the State Hospital to pay for the tuition and fees as well as the rent for my apartment and food. The day shift, of course, was prime time in the institution, when most of the off-ward activities took place. This was how I got involved in the Art Therapy project for my Masters Thesis. I also got assigned to various wards in a kind of staff rotation policy to keep people on their toes I suppose. It kept me on my toes alright, but the fickle finger of fate also came along and knocked me off my feet. A kind of temporary insanity overcame my better and more sober judgment.

       It amuses me, now, to say I met M., my first wife, in an insane asylum in 1970. She was a professional Registered Nurse on one of the wards that I worked on. But she was nothing like Nurse Ratched in Ken Kessey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. She was from a wealthy and prominent family in the city, but she was far from being the “debutante”. She was, although expensively well-dressed, imbued with the new Aquarian ethos of the period—harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding, and all that. And I had also been caught up in the anti-war and social liberation revolution sweeping campuses across America in the late 60s. So, we both seemed to have a lot in common, at least at first blush. She was already a professional nurse and I, although merely an aide, was a BA working on a Masters with seemingly bright future prospects. We began to see each other socially and one thing led to another and suddenly there was talk of marriage. Considering our different socio-economic backgrounds I never felt entirely comfortable with the idea. Much against my better judgement and wallet I had to buy expensive clothes from boutiques to be presentable at a country club wedding reception. I had been a K-Mart shopper until then. But wedding plans take on a life of their own and develop a certain force of inevitability and a momentum that is difficult to stop despite a nagging little voice in the back of one's mind.

wedding reception  -
with my parents, my brother (best man) and his wife

        We were married (in my boutique suit) in November, 1970 and moved into a new condo that was far more expensive than my previous apartment. I also had to have surgery for a deviated septum which took a long time to heal and would develop nose bleeds at inopportune times--like, one time, in the middle of a party. Not a pretty sight. Anyhow, without going into the grim details, the marriage lasted about six months and ended in separation, and divorce about another six months later. It was my fault. I simply wasn't ready to settle down to a married life style. I had had misgivings beyond the usual pre-nuptual jitters, but plans and arrangements had gone too far and I hadn't the courage to call the whole thing off. The wanderlust was on me and I felt hemmed in with the demands of married life, work and study. There was also the pressure to achieve on an economic level that I could neither realistically aspire to reach on a teacher's salary nor one that I was entirely comfortable with on the country club and golf set social level which, in my perception, often seemed affected and acquisitive—even less than genuine. It may have been working class snobbery or maybe I just wasn't sufficiently “Republican” to appreciate the luxuries of the life style of that economic level.

        At any rate, things went from bad to worse at home and one day I simply packed up my things, left a note, jumped in my car and left while my wife was out. I went to see an old college friend in another city and stayed there talking with him for a few days while determining what I would do next. Of course I owed my wife an explanation, and was conflicted between leaving her in the lurch and needing to be free from a relationship that I felt unsuited for.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 31– the thesis

     Here is a quote from ARTherapy journal.org that perfectly sums up the rationale for doing art therapy with children:

Children are naturally creative, and it is usually easier for them to draw a picture as opposed to answering questions directly. They may be reluctant or even hostile about discussing certain topics. Creating artwork is a non-threatening venue that allows kids to tackle tough issues in a creative way. Talking to the children about their drawings or paintings and helping them interpret the art can provide therapists with the opening they need to get at the heart of the problems affecting their young patients.

Art Therapy Journal

       After arming myself with green lights from the Worcester State Hospital Art Therapist and Eleanor McKuen, the classroom teacher, and doing some basic research among the literature on art therapy, I approached the department head at the college and proposed the topic for my Master's Thesis.

       First of all, I introduced the concept and the circumstances that generated my interest in it. I also explained the interest and enthusiasm of the Art Therapist and the classroom teacher and their willingness to advise me in the project. The professor, who would be responsible for supervising the thesis, then wanted to know what methodology I proposed to use to collect the research data and analyze it.

       I explained that I planned to attend an actual classroom for emotionally disturbed children, with the teacher's permission and participation, for a specified number of times so that the children could become accustomed to and comfortable with my presence in the room. The children thought of me as an “art teacher”. I did not give them any “art lessons” per se, but encouraged them to draw anything they liked using whatever medium (pencil, crayon, paint, scissors, glue, etc.) they liked. When a child finished a work to his/her satisfaction (most of the children with emotional issues were boys, by the way) I would encourage the child to “tell me about your picture” and I tape recorded the conversations. I would then bring the pictures and tape recordings to the art therapist and we would discuss them. Finally, once the project was completed I would organize and analyze the data, summarize my conclusions and write the thesis. The department head approved the topic for my thesis and I was awarded a Masters Degree in 1973.

the work of a happy child

       Art therapy isn't necessarily confined to children with severe emotional problems, but can be beneficial even in a normal classroom environment as long as the children feel comfortable enough to express their deepest feelings and not to repress their natural inhibitions—such, perhaps, as harboring negative feelings toward a parent.

the making of
"Mommy Dearest"

       During a project with a 6^th Grade class in my own art class many years later I was startled to see a perfect example of the complete artistic expression of a boy's feelings towards his mother, who was what we call a “Kyoiku Mama” 教育ママ [Education Mom] who put a lot of pressure on him to get top grades and get into the best private junior high school. The picture, which I somewhat sardonically call "Mommy Dearest",  needs no explanation and I didn't discuss it with him. He was probably able to release a lot of repressed hostility towards his demanding mother in the process of creating the picture without actually striking her down with lightning or drowning her in a raging sea. He was a bright student and I believe he went on to a good school. 

"Mommy Dearest"

      I don't know if he ever showed her the picture of “Mommy Dearest”.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 30 – I meet a mentor

     The several conversations I had with the Art Therapist at Worcester State Hospital marked an end to my period of drift and pointed in a new direction. I discovered by chance something that interested me enough to consider going to graduate school. The combination of working in a psychiatric environment and becoming acquainted with the field of Art Therapy as a non-analytic therapeutic process that seemed ideally adaptable to troubled children encouraged me to look into graduate programs for educating and certifying special needs teachers in the area of emotional disturbance in school age children.

        As I had done years earlier working full time at a printing company and taking evening classes at a junior college, while working full time at the State Hospital, in 1970 I enrolled in the graduate program at Fitchburg State College in the town where I was born. I attended classes in the evening continuing education program for a Masters Degree in Special Needs Education focusing on what was labeled “emotionally disturbed” children in those days. That designation may no longer be considered politically correct; it seems to be termed “social/emotional disabilities” nowadays.

        I had the great good fortune to meet a very special teacher by the name of Eleanor McKuen who was also studying for her Masters Degree in the evening program. She was already a special needs teacher working in the Worcester Public School System, and had a class for emotionally disturbed children in one of the city's neighborhood schools. She was a fountain of information and insights into education in this area and invited me to visit her class to see for myself firsthand whether it would really suit me or not.

holding my newborn niece and my
"Little Brother" Lance

        I took her up on the invitation and spent a day in her classroom and quickly realized how suited she was to the job. She made me feel welcome and communicated that welcome to the eight kids in the class who reciprocated it. I wondered if I had the character and patience to do as wonderful a job as she did. I suppose I was a little in love with her. I was also in a relationship with someone else at the hospital that seemed to be taking a serious turn, but that's another story.

        I was much impressed with Eleanor and her class and decided to pursue my diploma. I also joined a “Big Brother” program in Worcester and worked with one of Eleanor's boys named Lance who was in foster care in a group home in the city.

        In due course I had to come up with an idea for the Masters Thesis and conceived of the idea of doing research and an experiment in art therapy in a classroom for emotionally disturbed children. I consulted the Art Therapist at the hospital and discussed the feasibility of such a thesis and whether he would be willing to help me. He was most enthusiastic and offered what help he could. Then I discussed the idea with Eleanor and asked her if I could work with her students for the experimental part of the thesis. She was also supportive and excited by the idea.

       Now, all I had to do was convince the department head at the college.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 29 – a window of opportunity opens

     In due course, I was able to move from the second shift to the day shift. Being on the day shift gave me a wider diversity of things to do besides playing Pinochle. There were more activities for the patients in the daytime and more of a need for the aides to take them here and there in the hospital.

Art Therapy with children 

       One day I was told to escort some patients to “Art Therapy”. Immediately on hearing “Art Therapy” I was intrigued. I had taken some Art and Psychology courses at the university, but I had never heard of using art as a kind of therapy and was curious to see what it was all about. I brought a few of our patients to the Art Therapy room. While they were there I had to wait for them, so. I had a chance to look around and watch what was going on pay particular attention to the Art Therapist. I didn't talk to him that first day and when the time was up I took the patients back to the ward.

Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night

       The next time I brought some patients to the Art Therapy room I introduced myself to the Art Therapist and asked him if he minded talking to me about what he did with the patients and how he used art as a therapeutic device. He was surprised, I suppose, by an aide showing an interest in his work so I told him that I had a B.A., did some drawing myself and thought the idea of art therapy interesting. After that, whenever I brought patients to the room, he was delighted to show me their work and explain how they often expressed their fears and anxieties symbolically in the forms and colors they chose or in magazine or other pictures they might choose for a collage.

       He explained that he didn't “interpret” the pictures, that the process itself was therapeutic and sometimes cathartic. He would also let the patients talk about their pictures and how they felt about their work. The picture on the right is pretty self explanatory about the boys feelings towards his parents. The therapist might nudge the conversation towards exploring why the boy is so angry with them. This process could help patients to resolve some of their issues and improve enough to leave the hospital.

       We talked about symbols and how they work in the sub-conscious mind and can be difficult to interpret. Some symbols are thought to be universal, as in Carl Jung's archetypes, and can be interpreted fairly consistently. One of the most easily recognizable archetypes is the Marlboro Man. He represents the virtues of masculinity: strength, independence, self-reliance. Furthermore, he is the warrior and hero of myth descended from Odysseus and Achilles. The highly successful Star Wars movie series owes much of its popularity to archetypal symbols. The most endearing one, of course, being the Sage personified or caricatured by Yoda. Other symbols can be highly personalized and may not even be understood on a conscious level by the individual creating them. Discussing an individual's work can lead to a surfacing of the symbol into the conscious mind and contribute to an understanding of the issue(s) that led to the patient's being in the hospital.

       An idea began to germinate in my mind. I started thinking about the possibility of going into a graduate school program in special needs program for primary school children with emotional problems.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 28 – the cuckoo's nest

main tower of the old WSH

     It was probably not something you would want to approach on a dark stormy night. There was something about the aura of the building complex that gave it the aspect of a Gothic horror film. It was a huge labyrinth and resembled a prison more than a hospital. It was, in fact, both.

        In the days of my employment there, Worcester State Hospital, a.k.a. Worcester Insane Asylum and Worcester Lunatic Asylum, housed thousands of patients either on voluntary or on involuntary court-ordered commitment. Mental illness is completely impartial and democratic. It strikes all classes, all races and all ages. Some patients were “chronics” and it was actually their home. Others were “acutes”, having an episode of Schizophrenia or Manic Depression or any other not clearly diagnosed illness, who would stay for the duration of their episodes, be treated (mostly with drugs) and released back into the community until their next episodes. Many “acutes”, after years of such episodes, became “chronics” and stayed in the institution until they died.

        I don't remember clearly, but I suppose it was with some trepidation that I started my first day on a locked ward. I was accompanied by the second shift nurse supervisor who escorted me to the ward to introduce me to the nurses and other aides on duty. She unlocked the door and opened it and showed me how to work the keys and emphasized the importance of not forgetting to lock it back up. It was at that moment that I fully realized that this was, indeed, a kind of prison and wondered what on earth I had gotten myself into.

Louise Fletcher's brilliant portrayal of Nurse Ratched

        The door opened onto a long corridor with either doors or openings to small ward rooms along the right and left walls where the patients slept. There was a young man sitting on the floor unmoving and unresponsive to a “Hello”. The corridor was painted in nondescript institutional green and we proceeded down to the nurses station adjacent to the day room roughly halfway down the corridor. The head nurse, an RN (registered nurse) was a largish pleasant matronly woman of about 50. The LPN (licensed practical nurse) under the RN was all business, no nonsense and the real ruler of the roost. Think Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cockoo's Nest * without the intellectual pretensions. She was more on the mop and bucket level. She instructed me on my duties and the rules and regulations of the ward, emphasis on the “rules and regulations”.

Paul Cezanne - The Card Players

        The job was basically taking care of the non-medical needs of the patients. Aides escorted patients to off-the-ward activities such as meetings with doctors, occupational therapy, recreation activities, etc., interacted with them in the day room, chatting, playing cards, etc. and, of course, supplying the muscle when a patient got violent or otherwise out of control and had to be physically restrained. This aspect was the part of the job I detested, but I think that certain types of aides liked the sense of power it gave them.

        And so began my first full afternoon on the no-social-life 3 to 11pm shift—unless you consider playing pinochle with Schizophrenics and Manic Depressives a social life. I learned that the young guy sitting on the floor was a catatonic named Rick. Rick was still sitting there in the same position when I got off my shift. I said: “Good night, Rick.” No response. I unlocked the door and let it clang shut behind me.

* One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kessey

To be continued...

Looking Back: 27 – losing the fear of losing one's mind

     No, I didn't commit myself to an insane asylum, I applied for a job in one as a psychiatric aide at the Worcester State Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts. There was no mention of any "two-week-gap" in my resume and I got the job. I had a job and an income and the keys to the loony bin.

Worcester State Hospital (before it was demolished)

        WSH was organized into 8-hour shifts: the plum day shift, 7am to 3pm; the no-social-life afternoon shift 3 to 11pm; and the graveyard shift 11pm to 7am. I eventually worked all three. I started out on the no-social-life afternoon shift. After a few months of learning the ropes--how to tie a straight jacket--and a little seniority (with a high turnover rate advancement was fairly rapid) I moved to the day shift. Later, when things in my life fell apart, I moved to the graveyard shift. 

        I don't intend to regale you with tales from the lunatic asylum (* Ken Kessey, far better than I could, was remarkably astute in depicting his asylum characters and their situations), but rather my own evolution in the course of about two and a half years working and, in a sense, living in that singularly fascinating world and concluding that sometimes the only difference between me and the inmates was that I had the keys--and having that responsibility made all the difference. 

        In his biographical novel of the Dutch Painter Vincent van Gogh, Irving Stone put mental illness in perspective in a succinct few sentences. Van Gogh had been having hallucinogenic episodes due perhaps to epilepsy, poor nutrition, absinthe and severe stress in his relationship with another painter, Paul Gaugin, while they lived and worked together in Arles in southern France. In one famous psychotic episode following an explosive disagreement with Gauguin he cut off one of his ears and gave it to a prostitute in the brothel he had been frequenting. He, like many people in similar circumstances, feared that he was going insane and in fact agreed to go to St. Paul de Mausole, an insane asylum in St. Remy some 25 miles from Arles, on the recommendation of the local doctor who had treated his severed ear. After a few days confinement he came to terms with his fear. ** “Vincent was glad that he had come. By seeing the truth about the life of madmen he slowly lost the vague dread, the fear of insanity. Bit by bit he came to consider madness as a disease like any other.”

          So, like van Gogh, for me the “madmen” became patients with an illness like any other—people like me but who were prone to an unfortunate illness that somehow scrambled their circuits.

To be continued...

* One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kessey

** Lust for Life, Irving Stone

Looking Back: 26 – Good-bye campus life . . . Hello, real world

Fuller and one of his
geodesic domes

     In June of 1969, one of my discussion group friends, MD, joined Buckminster Fuller's World Game Seminar in New York City. P and I helped her move to an apartment in the West Village before I had to go back to Amherst for my summer classes.

Andy Warhol

the Factory

        One of M's friends in Manhattan was associated with Andy Warhol's second Factory on Union Square. One day she invited us to visit the Factory around the time Warhol was recovering from a gunshot wound inflicted by a disgruntled radical feminist who had been a marginal figure in the Factory scene. Warhol was there, looking rather more pale than usual, but he was very friendly and accommodating in showing us around the factory. All I can say is that it was a really funky and innovative atmosphere that fully lived up to its reputation as a hip and hedonistic hangout for artistic types and people from a kind of latter day demi monde. It was an unforgettable experience.

        Good times (bad times) come to an end although the memory lives on. But, in the real world you can't live on memories. With graduation, which I finally achieved at the end of the Summer of 1969, came the end of the GI Bill checks and the State housing grant. In short, it was time to move on and get a job. Graduation broke up the old gang. Some went on to Graduate School, P joined the army, my roommate M set up a commune in the Berkshires and married a Gentile and is now the CEO of a line of gourmet sauces Chef Myron's Sauces, and I went back home to look for work.

"I guess this means NO?'

        Liberal Arts degrees don't qualify you to do much without further training or higher education on the graduate level. I was neither sure if or what I wanted to pursue in a graduate program, nor did I have the money to do it. When in a state of indecision it's best to do nothing. But, I needed an income and I applied for a management training position in a bank. I got to an interview and things seemed to be going well, until the manager noticed a 2-week gap in my, shall we say colorful, resume. I hadn't been aware of the fatal “2-week gap”, and reacted with surprise and, I guess, incredulity at such a silly, in my estimation, fine-tooth-combing of a resume. The man all but accused me of dishonesty and trying to cover up some nefarious deed (like doing time, I imagine) which simply would not do in a bank employee. That was the end of the interview and the end of my stab at a conservative workaday lifestyle. The university experience had affected me far more deeply than I had realized.

        Still, I needed a job and an income. I figured if a bank didn't want me, maybe a mental institution would. (Although you'd probably have to be slightly insane to crunch numbers in a bank all day long—full blown schizophrenia seemed far more interesting.)

To be continued...

Looking Back: 25 – * “...a nation at war with itself”

The Legend of Woodstock 1969

     Neither MB nor I had enough credits to graduate at the end of the Spring term in May 1969. We both had to take some summer courses to earn 120 credits to graduate, so we extended the lease on our apartment to the end of summer. We were out riding on M's motorcycle one day in the early summer and, unfortunately, I was not an experienced rider in those days. I was riding pinion when we leaned into a curve in the road and I (feeling that we were going to topple over) leaned in the opposite direction. Since I was heavier than M, he was unable to compensate for my weight and couldn't negotiate the curve thanks to my stupidity and we flew off the road. I went flying about 10 feet through the air, landed on my right side and broke my right wrist and arm. M broke his collarbone. To my shamefaced relief, M was unbelievably generous and forgiving as we rode in an ambulance to the hospital. His motorcycle, miraculously, wasn't badly damaged. It was comical how we managed to get to classes in my VW for a while. I could steer the car but couldn't shift with my right arm and wrist in a cast and sling. M's collarbone was broken on the right side, but he could shift with his left hand while I manipulated the clutch and accelerator. We got pretty well coordinated in a very short time and we both learned to write with our left hands.

original poster for the
Woodstock Music Festival

the scene at Woodstock

       It was in August of that memorable summer of 1969 that the Woodstock Festival was held, famously, in a dairy farmer's pasture in Bethel, in upstate New York. Woodstock was the defining moment of the counterculture revolution in 1960s America. All of the best aspects of the movement came together at Woodstock, especially its emphasis on community, opposition to the Vietnam War and its ideology of peace and love and good music and dope. The festival is, of course, legendary for living up to its ideals. M, being more attuned to the hippie movement, went to Bethel with some other friends and attended the festival. Neither I nor my other friends did, we went to the beach in Rockport instead. Hearing from M about the weather and mud conditions that actually occurred at the festival we were rather glad that we hadn't gone. (That was before it had become legendary, of course.)

       In May 1970, the turmoil over the Vietnam War and the recent political assassinations came to a head in Ohio at Kent State University. As a result of the killing of four and wounding of nine other students on the Kent State campus by the Ohio National Guard rioting broke on campuses all over the country and spread to the capitol in Washington DC. President Nixon was taken to Camp David for his safety.  * “The 82^nd Airborne was in the basement of the executive office building, […] they're lying on the floor leaning on their packs and their helmets and their cartridge belts and their rifles cocked and you're thinking, 'This can't be the United States of America. This is not the greatest free democracy in the world. This is a nation at war with itself.'” 

       Can a nation so divided against itself stand as a free and open society, I wondered?

* Counsel to the President, Charles Colson.

Riots following MLK assassintion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6DlWkBYiRs

Kent State Shooting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZzkEIYIBYE

To be continued...

Looking Back: 24 – the late 60s in a nutshell

 motel balcony on which MLK was shot in Memphis, TN

     1968 seems, in retrospect, to have been a watershed year. The Vietnam War was becoming increasingly problematic for students approaching graduation with the prospect of losing their draft deferments. The violence going on in Vietnam showed no signs of easing up nor of ending in anything that could pass as a victory. Worse still, was the reverberating unrest at home in increasingly violent protests and demonstrations on college and university campuses. And then the apostle of non-violence met with his own violent end in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. Martin Luther King was gunned down on a motel balcony under circumstances that have always remained cloudy.

assassination of Robert Kennedy

        The turmoil in the fracturing social fabric was reflected in the presidential campaign of that year. It was a year of violence, political turbulence and civil unrest. Riots occurred in over 100 cities following the assassination of King. Adding fuel to the fire, Robert Kennedy, a Democratic presidential hopeful, was shot and killed in Los Angeles in a hotel restaurant kitchen on June 5, 1968, again under circumstances that remain unsatisfactorily resolved--the second Kennedy brother to fall to an assassin's bullet. 

police at the Democratic National Convention, 1968

       The now famous Democratic National Convention of August, 1968 was held against a backdrop of nationally televised rioting by police and protesters with chants of “Hell no, we won't go!” (to Vietnam) degenerating into taunts of “Pigs are whores,” spiced with roiling clouds of mace and tear gas. The convention eventually nominated Hubert Humphrey as its Democratic presidential candidate, but it was said at the time that that night America voted for Richard Nixon, who had campaigned on ending the Vietnam War.

with my niece and Lance (a boy I was
working with as a Big brother)

        Nixon was sworn in as President in January,1969. Things seemed to calm down for a while on the campuses while we awaited the promised ending of the Vietnam War. It seemed a long time coming, but life went on on campus as usual. My roommate, M and I deciding to stay together, pooled our State living allowances and move off campus. I had my Volkswagen and M had a motorcycle, we rented a 2-bedroom apartment not too far from the campus and got on with our classes and activities. I was a History Major with no particular minor, choosing elective classes as the spirit moved me. M was majoring in Psychology but seemed more interested in cooking. In fact, he was something of a gourmet chef. When he cooked we ate very well, when I cooked it was hamburgers and hot dogs. While I was still more interested in our discussion group activities and my elective subjects, I did give my Major coursework more attention and pulled my grades back up to A and B levels and eventually graduated with honors.

        Euphoria rang out the 60s, but horror ushered in the 70s.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 23 – a new Renaissance

original Broadway poster

     Even through tumultuous times everyday life goes on and so it did during my years at UMass. The university was a place that I had been missing without really knowing it. I was, frankly, something of a misfit in my previous life choices. But, here in the university I thrived in a socially and intellectually stimulating atmosphere. It fit, I belonged here as I had not belonged anywhere else before as a young adult. I met people who thrived on ideas without sacrificing the emotional component attached to them. Ideas were emotions and emotions were ideas without the restriction of conventional norms and restraints. It was a remarkable sense of freedom and possibility that no slogans about those concepts could begin to compare. It was like coming home after being lost in a vacuum of conformity, like coming out of a musty closet full of last year's out of style clothes—stepping “out of the drab camouflage into the gaudy plumage” * of a new life. The pot and hash came in, the hair got longer, the clothes got funkier, the grades plummeted (temporarily), the music turned to folk and rock bands and rock operas, and friends were made for life and cherished. God! What a time it was!

        I was 26 in 1967 when I drove my Volkswagen bug to Amherst to begin my Junior year at UMass. I was assigned to one of the older dorms and was feeling a little self-conscious being surrounded by younger but more experienced college students. Attending evening classes at a junior college was a far cry from the world of a full university campus. The university housing administration may have taken that sense of awkwardness felt by older students into consideration in making roommate assignments, because my first roommate was also an older student and a veteran.

        At first it seemed like a good idea, but in just a short time it became obvious that we were not well-matched just because of our ages and military backgrounds. Just as I had been a non-conformist misfit in the Navy, my roommate was a misfit in college. It got to the point where I began to think he was a borderline psychopath, nervous, jumpy, angry and always grumbling about campus life. He seemed to idolize the military in retrospect. I tried to avoid him as much as possible until he eventually dropped out of school and I had the room to myself for the rest of the term.

lifelong friends from university days

        Around this time I met P and we became friends and began hanging out together. He told me about a group of people who got together in a discussion group and asked me if I'd like to attend a couple of discussions to see if I'd like to join. The university was gradually changing from below, from the grass roots with the growing counterculture movements happening on many campuses. Younger, more innovative, professors were attracting interested students to form their own courses outside the traditional course offerings. These discussions were informal and generally unstructured and not for credit, but were animated by interest and enthusiasm.

longer hair and other flamboyant...

...affectations of appearance

        After attending one meeting I immediately joined the group and met two young women, MD and J, who also became friends and who, along with P, have remained so through the years although we may not see each other for years at a stretch. In our meetings, we might discuss esoteric philosophical concepts, the latest advance in computers, how to build a geodesic dome, eat with chopsticks in a Chinese restaurant, build a campfire, you name it! I began to take a deeper interest in photography, while diversifying my formal course studies to include graphic arts, music appreciation, psychology along with my History major classes.

my roommate's wedding in the Berkshires

       I moved to a new dorm and met a new roommate in 1968. MB was also an older student, my age, and a Navy veteran. Although different in character and personality MB and I got along very well. At my invitation he also joined our discussion group and became an active and avid member. I was more or less fence sitting about the counter cultural changes going on all around me, but MB jumped right in, grew his hair and beard, brought dope into our dorm room and without much effort enticed me off the fence into the world of dope and folk music and a remarkable liberation of the spirit—and a neglect of formal classes and conventional university life. I felt really alive but my Major grades dropped to the C range while the more interesting elective classes stayed up in the A and B range. But, “Time it was and what a time it was, it was.” ** It was Aquarius *** rising and we seemed to be rising with a new age of unlimited possibilities, expanding awareness and changing times.

        Some of my favorite music from the era:

Simon and Garfunkel, Bookends Theme

Aquarius

Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin' sung by Tracy Chapman

        Yes, the times they were a-changin', but not necessarily for the better.

* MacDermot, Rado, and Ragni, Hair

** Simon and Garfunkel, Bookends Theme

*** MacDermot, Rado, and Ragni, Hair

To be continued...

Looking Back: 22 – Transition

     In a way I had the “good” fortune of being sandwiched between two wars (Korean and Vietnamese) so that my expenses-paid-see-the-world and draft-avoidance-inspired decision to join the Navy (I couldn't see myself crawling through the mud holding an AK-47 over my head) in 1959 was by and large “peacetime” service (except for the major annoyance of the Cuban Missile Crisis when my long-awaited release from active duty was suspended for the duration). There was no GI Bill for Tuition Assistance for 'tweeners' when I was released (thankfully on schedule and sans nuclear holocaust) from active duty in 1962. I paid the tuition for my classes at Worcester Junior College out of my own pocket. Tuition costs hadn't yet gone through the roof in those days.

University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA

        A GI Bill for Tuition Assistance for my category was passed by Congress during my third year attending WJC. If I could get accepted at an approved four-year institution it would be possible to quit working and attend full time for a couple of years. I applied to Northeastern University in Boston and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. UMass had the double advantage of accepting all 54 of my junior college credits plus a Massachusetts State living allowance assistance for veterans. All systems were go for being able to earn a Bachelors Degree within two years, so I quit my job at Colonial Press and headed for Amherst in the Fall of 1967.

        I was some five years older than most of my classmates, most of whom had entered university right out of high school. Having had prior military service when I matriculated I was not directly threatened with the military draft that was disrupting the lives of many of the young males at the university. By then the full horror of the daily body counts on television, both Vietnamese and American, was in abundant evidence. Students were becoming radicalized, joining the anti-war movement, demonstrating with sit-ins and some taking the desperate measure of going to Canada to avoid the draft. Still others felt it their patriotic duty to support the war. Campus splits began to show in wearing apparel, music preferences, preferred forms of entertainment and intoxicants. You couldn't be on campus in that time and remain on the fence. Perhaps only in sympathy and inclination, but you felt compelled to lean one way or the other. For me it was a no-brainer, although not personally threatened by the draft, my sympathies lay with those who were and who opposed the war on moral, not ideological, grounds. Sadly, the disastrous and enduring results of that ill-starred conflict continue to foment global chaos and erode the fabric of our society in violence and fear today, but I do not intend to dwell on that.

To be continued...

Looking Back: 21 – Changes in the wind—again

     No, things are definitely not equal and the one thing we can be sure of is that things will change. A couple of changes that argued against my settling down to a conventional life were occurring almost from the day I started working at The Colonial Press.

The Colonial Press, Inc.

       The first change was in the then new techniques (now obsolete with the advent of word processing and desk top publishing software) of type setting. Soon after I started working in the composing room a new type of typesetting machine, photo typesetters, were introduced in the lino-type division. Without going into the technical details, phototypesetting eliminated the need for dual process typesetting and lead extrusion by using photographic paper that created a finished photo of the text ready for paste up. This was an enormous improvement over the cumbersome process of using heavy lead. So, I had accepted a job that was already doomed to go the way of the horse and buggy. In retrospect I probably had the foresight, or intuition, to see the handwriting on the wall. By 1977 The Colonial Press, Inc., once the largest printing company in the United States and the printer of the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy Assassination, was out of business.


       The second change was an internal one, restlessness--the old call of the road—the impulse to seek and shape my own changes and not wait for them to happen to me. I was getting bored with routine and wanted intellectual stimulation. Travel experiences while I was on active duty in the Navy had made me curious as to how, what historical forces, had shaped the places I had merely glanced off the surfaces of during recreational port calls. To slake my curiosity I decided to pursue some college history courses a couple evenings a week at Worcester Junior College in Worcester, a large city about half an hour's drive from my home.

with me bro. and his sailboat

       After a semester or two I found the courses stimulating and wondered if I might not enroll in the Associates Degree program. Since I had not been in the college bound track in high school I lacked certain required courses for a degree. I discussed the issue with a counselor at the WJC who told me about a way to fulfill the course requirements by taking some “remedial” algebra and science courses right there at the junior college. That's exactly what I did for three years of working full time days at the Press and attending evening classes at the junior college a few evenings a week, by which time I had accumulated 54 credits, almost half the number required for a full Bachelors Degree.

me cuz. doing his Elvis thing

BBQ - Summer of 1967

       By then it was 1967. Although I was engrossed in my own pursuits and enjoying life, I was aware of things happening in the broader society, specifically the Cold War I era proxy war variously known as (depending on your point of view): the Second Indochina War, the Resistance War against America or, most famously, the Vietnam War—the ultimate game changer of my generation. It eventually caused an ideological schism in American society that has never really been healed. Had it not been for a fortuitous change in my economic situation, I might have remained on the right side the schism, instead of the left (wrong?) one.

best man at me bro.'s wedding

To be continued...