Confessions of a Radical?

 Brothers John and Jim

your blogger circa '66

what to do about the establishment

   Surely many of you heard or took part in debates about "trusting or changing the establishment." Establishment was the cultural shorthand for the power elite, especially what later generations of politicians came to call "Washington and Wall Street," Eisenhower's "military industrial complex" or even more recently the swamp. It was also about how we lived, loved, thought, and behaved. 

    Change it from with in or by revolution? My brothers, pictured above, were inclined to revolutionary change. As their older brother I was already invested in journalism, observing and reporting and had been since high school.

    We had lively debates often joined by our parents both of whom were political veterans, studied people in addition to being WW II participants. There was no "generation gap" as such with unfixable fissures, but our family had a diversity of opinion.

    John, on the left, two years my junior was of the SDS/Weather Underground mind set. Jim was simply the brightest of the three and a poet philosopher, free spirit and gentle soul who broke with convention in almost every way. I guess I was a pragmatist, relying on reason.

the evolution of a "radical"

       My involvement in campus politics (that candidate for class senator on the far right is a baby version of your blogger) combined with my professional work as a street and police beat reporter in Muncie edged me in my own direction.

       I would sometimes ride with cops on a Saturday night as they rounded up drunks and broke up fights, which in blue collar Muncie was a full deployment. The way some of the detainees were beaten with night sticks seemed at odds with the sociology courses I took.

      It was the mid '60s and the Klan still marched, and blacks were denied access in some establishments. I covered sit ins and marches and got tossed down stairs by a Klan leader.

      All of this was a vastly different world than my beautiful campus and the vibe in the fraternity house. I began to cogitate. Academia would not, nor should it, insulate. Like the world, our campus was changing. 

     I raised issues of equality and civil liberties in Student Senate where I served my freshman and sophomore years.
    I got behind a Professor's declaration of Human Rights-ground breaking and long before feminism and LGBTQ entered the public mind. It was at a time when blacks were treated as less than full citizens in housing, banking and access.

     The writing seems a bit leaden and ponderous but it was 50 years ago and I was a kid.

the radical box

     I became an advocate for the abolition of dorm hours-that moved me onto the "radical" list. 

      Colleagues in the long and complex battle to eliminate women's hours were Jeff Lewis, Jon Hughes, and Jim Davis.

      Jeff went on to a vibrant career in public policy, marketing and later in opinion research. 
     Jon became a noted photographer, writer and professor who drove the establishment of a journalism school at the University of Cincinnati. 
     Jim Davis is the creator of Garfield the cat and presides over the Paws empire. 

      Butting heads with a University administration and government was a tall order but we were eventually successful. That changed the campus landscape and culture.

     I ran for the University Judicial Board (Supreme Court) my Junior year. I felt restrained by the traditional campus parties  and sensed the world was changing more rapidly than we were responding. The Judicial Board in my senior year would be a way to move ideas.
     The 1968 political campaign loomed and there were explosive issues of war and peace, civil rights and change that stirred me.

      Brother John shaved most his beard and cut his hair to 

"get clean with Gene", Senator Eugene McCarthy, the anti war democrat. John worked for McCarthy and above is seen serving as a body guard and beer drinking pal of actor Paul Newman who campaigned for McCarthy.

      I suffered my first campus election defeat that year as our  party was swept by a vigorous opponent.

progressive arises

       I came back my senior year with different ideas. I had been studying the emerging intellectual political movements of Dadaism, Herbert Marcuse, the Provos of Amsterdam, the Diggers of San Francisco, intellectual anarchism, Rudi Dutschke, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and others. All of that was a far stretch for a state university in the mid west.

   A ready ally was a fraternity brother who may be the deepest thinking and most intelligent person I know. People still marvel at how he ate through Philosophy classes and professors. He went on to a fine career serving as an attorney, prosecutor, Judge and just maybe the Rolling Stone's greatest fan. He's traveled the world to see them. 

   Ed was always up for a good joke and we thought we'd try to introduce a few "new ideas" to what we saw as the moribund political culture on campus. We created PUP-the Progressive University Party.

    We got pilloried by the campus newspaper.

    In the cartoon below-Ed is portrayed as speaking to the reporter. I am the pup.

   The editorial was more precise than the cartoon.

Fine Arts Building, Ball State University

Photo by Encyclopedia Brittanica 

   We had in fact accomplished something. We were able to "unite" a divergent group with a unified objective.

    The historic arts building displayed a giant US flag on a main hallway. The flag was old, dirty and even a bit frayed. PUP was able to get cooperation from the conservative Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), the Young Peoples Socialist League (YPSL), Young Republicans, Young Democrats, the fraternity council IFC, sorority council Panhellenic, the Newman Society and others, that the issue of the flag should be addressed and something needed to be done. The flag had been there for decades. Ed and I took delight in thinking we were able to bring all of the extremes and different groups together. We though PUP would be politics with a sense of humor.

   These are notes from one of our brainstorming sessions as we began to articulate what would become our manifesto.

    We would not have signed off on all of these-in fact the fight over what to select would be interesting, but this demonstrates the range of thought in our "thought group."

     Abolition of Hours, one quarter housing fees, pass fail in general education courses, faculty evaluation, equal student representation, discussing changes in tenure and department  chairman reports hold up as solid ideas.

     But life intervened. The day after our "flag union" I was involved in a serious auto accident. I was riding in the front seat, in an era before seat belts were the norm. I was thrown through the windshield, was jerked back through, and tossed from the car. I suffered a compound skull fracture, breaking 

everybone in my face and would have bled to death had it not been for fraternity brothers and a Muncie police officer who was also a Ball State student. I was in a coma for a while and when I came back to campus I struggled to graduate, work and get healthy.

      My days of "radical" politics were over. After that I spent almost 5 decades in journalism and broadcasting and left the politics to others.

      I came across these papers in an old file as I have been working to organize some of my archives for the Indiana Historical Society that has curated some of my early journalism and investigative reporting.

      A few of us from that era were together recently and we concluded the late 60's were without precedent and peer.

      From here it all seems so playful and hopeful. 

celebrating the fava

  Lana's green ways delivered us another bountiful year of our beloved fava beans.

for your amusement

a dancing chair

    

        See you down the trail.

"BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE" and A WALK IN HARMONY

A PIECE OF HARMONY

    A long lens from Gail and David's captures the panorama of Cayucos and Morro Bay framed by the iconic Morro Rock, Hollister Peak and some of the other "Seven Sisters" peaks that spine the Central Coast toward San Luis Obispo.

      It was one of those spectacular days for a walk along the coast. 

     Hidden away on a quiet cove is a "Chinaman's house," a remnant of local history.

     There was a time when Chinese settlers lived in homes on the shore, often hanging over bluffs.  They harvested and dried kelp for export to China. Historical accounts say George Hearst, father of William Randolph Hearst, forced many of the Chinese to leave by pushing their homes into the sea after he purchased property where they had resided. 

      The current owner has improved the historical building as an isolated get away cabin.

       This stretch of coast offers pristine nature.

  There is a simple joy in an invigorating and mind clearing walk.

     Selfie ops for our eldest Kristin and her fiancé Richard.

  Or a quiet meditation and breather as evidenced by "Ducky," Gail's trusty companion.

THE FIRST NEW YEAR IN CALIFORNIA

Ours that is.

     It was our first Christmas season after being married in April. It was also my first trip to California. We arrived on the 29th or 30th, enough time to get in the swing of the "pickin" New Year's eve party. 

       

Photo Courtesy of Jim Cahill

On the Strand in Manhattan Beach California

      Setting the Scene:  We were lodged at the above house in Manhattan Beach, occupied by our friend Jim, who shared it with a few other guys. We got a room made empty by the travel of one of the musicians who lived there.

     It was directly on the beach and the sidewalk strand. This Indiana boy had never seen anything like it.  Bicyclists, skateboarders, runners, walkers, roller skaters, people on stilts, hand walkers and more and all in a continual parade.  The beach was a show unto itself.  Volleyball players, Frisbee fliers, boogie boarders, picnickers, and all of this in the glory and full tilt life you'd expect of 1969 California beach life. I was indeed a long way from home Toto!

     Some how we had survived the first day and were in the mode of setting up the house for a party. Jim had given Lana and I an assignment to walk to the grocery and liquor store to pick up a few supplies. We were heading up the hill away from the beach when we were stopped in our tracks by blood curdling screams and then a series of what can best be described as whoops and growls. In a flash, from an alley way came two figures running down the street. Both were nude males, that was obvious. Their identities were not.

     One of the lads was wearing a kind of Tasmanian devil mask and he was the creator of the screams. Behind him and in apparent pursuit was a fellow in a Richard Nixon mask, carrying a kind of spear and offering the war whoops. 

     "New Year's eve in California" I said to Lana who looked entirely confused.      

       It was an era when Jim, and our artist friend C.W. spent hours a day playing. Musicians drifted in and out of the house on the strand, and some of the folks in the neighborhood have gone on to stellar careers and fame. The party was to be a gathering of many of the players from the beach community. The music was indeed wonderful, the crowd was mind boggling and the best I could manage was to sit back, lean against a wall, be amazed and enjoy the whole scene.  

       During the course of the evening we met an older fellow who had done a "little singing and little acting" and said he had been "trying to leave LA" for more than ten years.  He said "it's impossible. You just can't get away." He told us he had "left 25 times" and was "always drawn back."

       Lana and I thought a lot over the years of how we might get to LA, particularly to the beach communities where friends lived.  We visited a couple of times a year for many years, but life's flow did not include a Southern California address. Of course we've all added a few orbits around the sun and many of the crowd have dispersed. Those funky beach communities have gentrified.

     Jim is still a SOCAL resident. He's the guy who opened the door on the Central Coast to us, all of those years ago when we made the first of many trips with him to Big Sur. We stopped for coffee and a snack in a little coastal village named Cambria. The seed was planted, the bait was set, the die was cast. 

     We are closing in on 8 years as Cambria residents. I think I'm like others who sometimes take offense at how quickly it is all passing. There are times when I wish my time machine was in working order, just to go back for a visit. 

Thank God the memory file still works and there are photos that now accuse us of youth but also remind us of how rich  life has been. 
      A variation of the California dream, inspired by that first trip, has come to fruition. We come to the end of the year in a place we consider beautiful, laid back, peaceful, full of creativity, wonderful people, eclecticism and eccentricity. Who knows, those Manhattan Beach revelers in masks could be fellow retirees up here. Another escapade like that might get the locals talking, but then again….

    See you down the trail.

      

THE TROUBLE WITH NEWS

   Sunrise was too pretty to ignore. My admiration of it woke up that corner of the brain where vexing thoughts are caged, waiting to leap into a blank space. 

   One of the troubles with the news business is the derogatory but not inaccurate sobriquet for a style of news "If it bleeds it leads." To be clear that means if it is crime or disaster, tragedy, plane crash, wreck, fire, explosion, or etc. it's the first story of a newscast. Fortunately not all television news rooms operate by that ethos, but too many do. The more competitive the market, the more likely there's a station that follows that path.

   NIGHTCRAWLER starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a stringer (freelance) photographer is a well done examination of the pathology of that kind of news, as played out in Los Angeles.

    One of the brilliant elements of this film is the extraordinary visual treatment of Los Angeles at night. Oscar winning Cinematographer Robert Elswit offers a rich and stunning essay. Seeing his work, especially the open sequence, is worth the price of admission. 
    Director Dan Gilroy plumbs the exploitative, crass world of sensationalism that passes as a kind of tabloid television.  Rene Russo, who coincidentally is married to Gilroy, is marvelous as a desperate news director, once a beautiful young reporter now trying to hang on to a job at a low ranking station by spiking the ratings with overnight gore gathered by Gyllenhaal.  

     Gyllenhaal's character is a solitary whacko. I think of him as a slick cousin or even brother to Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Gyllenhaal's performance is incredible. As Jon Stewart joked he only blinked twice in 2 hours. Indeed Gyllenhaal's eyes and manic delivery are so riveting it'll give you the creeps.  It is a great character by which Gilroy can explore the senselessness of exploitative content and the tyranny of ratings.

     I know of situations where station reputations and staff integrity have been destroyed by this cheap and trashy management and style. Still, there are enough viewers who thrive on tabloid journalism that it exists.

PROFESSIONAL and/or Citizen Journalists

  How deeply should newsrooms go in utilizing or pandering to social media? The debate continues and the first episode of NEWSROOM, the excellent Aaron Sorkin HBO drama mines the issue set against the Boston Marathon bombing.  

   NEWSROOM is to journalism what WEST WING was to politics, only much better because it is more realistic, drawn from real critical judgements and experience. Plus the acting, writing and directing are all worthy of the multiple Emmys.  

BEEN THERE-DONE THAT

   As a television news director I guided an evolution of a traditional and historic news organization into digital news gathering, processing and dissemination.  We changed the technology on which we wrote, edited and the cameras we used to capture the pictures.  Our remote trucks changed from microwave to satellite. We changed our work flow from television only to television and Internet. We moved from thinking only about the big screen to feeding computers, pads, and phones. We changed our graphics, our presentation style and our pace. In changing how we worked, we also advanced the output and our approach to thinking about what is news and how we cover it.  

    I've been retired a few years now, but even back then we were starting to wrestle with blogging, the ethics and legality of using material from personal phones or on line chatter. Now Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other micro blogging and social networking realities impinge on how a news shop operates. I'm not sure they've got it figured out, or properly.  But as my old friend and former broadcast journalist the Catalyst AKA Bruce Taylor cajoles me, don't worry about it. You can't do anything about anyway.  It's another generation's problem. Yea, probably so. But it makes great fodder for film, television or having a drink and bullshitting, or posting about.

     It may still wake me, but Bruce is right. It's someone else's job now.

DIVERSIONS

Late Afternoon

 Evening

Post Sunset

Neighbors
could have been the national bird

Heavy Weather on the way

Turning on the night lights

THROWBACK TO A GOOD DAY

    My late brother Jim, at the wheel and yours truly enjoying a day of golf in the late 70's or early 80's.  Dad was an extraordinary golfer, Jim and I not so much.  But we had fun.

      See you down the trail.

BOLD MOVES

SIX YEARS ON

    A rest stop outside Bakersfield six years ago yesterday was the setting for our first sunset as transplants in transit. 
    Friends and associates were incredulous when a couple of boomers, rounding 60, pulled up roots and stakes and rode into the sunset, headed west where we knew no one.  Things like doctors, dentists, new driver licenses, where to shop, how to get there, finding friends, new climate and all the details of life were riddles.  It seemed natural to us, not as big a deal as seemingly everyone else wanted to make it. After all when we married we left for a spring and summer to explore Europe-two green kids on a mission of discovery. Later we built a cabin home deep in a rural woods despite my boss's warning  "every day can't be a picnic." Six years ago settling in California read well on our gyroscope.

     Six years ago today, when this frame was snapped, she was ready to begin what has been a creative renaissance. I have watched with pride. Art shows, awards, collectors and buyers, productivity and an artist's emphatic embrace of life.  Mine has been so much richer because of Lana and our exploration of the last six years. She has grown more confident and more beautiful.

     I suspect most of us are inclined toward habit and routine, following the path that is known and comfortable, allowing few, if any, surprises.  Settling in a new home in a village on the California central coast half way between San Francisco and Los Angeles is a guarantee against the routine of the previous life. 
     Please excuse the obvious self absorption of this post but we celebrate our "bold move," convinced it has provided renewal. The other night as I soaked in our spa, watching a meteor shower, hearing the buzz and zip of the cosmic sky show, overwhelmed again by thousands of light pricks in  the velvet depth of space, I thought of myself as a "Californian." I have become what my father did as a young lad, only to leave it to return to Indiana as his father began an ailing journey to death.  Dad always held to that piece of California in his youth, longing for the time when he could return.  That was to be the work of my generation.

      What sweetens this "celebration" are other people.

Notably, a couple of mentors who are coming for a visit this week.

    Bruce and Judy.  He was the experienced broadcast journalist who broke me in when I joined a metro news team.  She was to become his gracious wife who opened a world of sophistication, literature and kitchen magic to us.

    Free spirits, travelers who have taken life on their terms, they were "encouragers", "inspirations," certainly by example.

    And we note those we celebrate with-- frequently-

   Griff and Jacque.  They came for a visit in 2007.  They came back. And they came back.

    And now they live but six minutes away, just through the shire and a mere 100 steps from the Pacific.  They too, packed it up, abandoned mid western winter and what they knew. As Griff says frequently, "I get it!"

    None of us are kids.  We've reached a time when many seek the shelter of certainty, knowing pretty much "all there is to know," being confident "that is just the way it is, and so there."  But something in the transformation of the last six years has kept the dials moving, the channels open, the exploration underway, the learning as daily as breathing.  

    Attitude, lifestyle, examples, and much more conspire to make this bold move a good thing for us. I think a lot of it has to do with the fresh air and light.  I asked an artist/ neuroscientist if he thought the renaissance could have begun anywhere else but in the light of the Mediterranean south, which is the same as the light of California.  After much rumination he offered that "light works on the brain in wondrous ways, unlocking, perhaps, forces that impel or even compel creativity."

    A case in point is perhaps the ringleader.

    Doesn't this look like a pied piper capable of luring aging mid western boomers to the land of the Beach Boys, Eagles, Grateful Dead and Manhattan Beach Blue Grass, even if a few years on?  He did start early.

    High school friend and Ball State fraternity brother Jim began longing for California in 1968.  He made the bold move when we were still kids and quickly became a magnet that drew us for repeated visits, holidays, vacations and the birth of our own longing.

     On one of those early visits he drove us up the coast to Big Sur and the rest is, as they say, history-removed of course by rearing two daughters, careers, aging, and rounding 60! But he finally landed a couple more. And there is no way to say thank you, emphatically enough.

     Bold moves.  It just takes some of us a little longer to get there. But what a great place to be.  

     See you down the trail.