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.

DUBIOUS CONFUSION

TRUTH IN THE SHADOWS

 AND HARD TRUTHS

     We are at a couple of challenging junctures in American history. 
     The growing clamor and controversy over vaccination of children is evidence of a profound division.

     As social commentators have noted, the far left and the far right have found common ground in their skittishness toward vaccines. The nexus of the issue is the right of individuals to think and act as they wish vis a vis the well being and greater good of the general society.

     The other issue came to mind as we made our annual visit to the Monarch winter migration grove in Pismo Beach.

    Again this year fewer of the winged beauties were evident. There are a couple leading explanations and they are related to what civilization has done and is doing to the natural world.

    Decimation of wild spaces, pesticides, herbicides and other effects of changed agriculture and modern building have thrown nature out of balance for these winged beauties.

     That is the point of Naomi Klein's latest book,This Changes Everything:Capitalism vs. the Climate. 

     Even liberals and environmentalists are gun shy in raising her premise, for fear of being considered "too radical."

       With a lot of research and scientific scholarship Klein says the world's economic system and our planetary system are at war. 

       She covers food production, consumption, energy use and production, pollution of air, water and land, resource management practices and can measure how the bottom line of economics and especially profit motive trumps rivers, lakes, landfills, oceans, crop management, and etc. Protection of resources, even to worry about something like monarch butterfly populations, costs money and corporate boards are there to maximize earning and stock value. Regulations that might mitigate natural damage add costs and/or decrease earnings. 

       People are frightened by what Klein says. Her research should be read.  Truth is sometimes a 2x4 over the bridge of a nose or more gently an annoying prophet disturbing the peace of a dinner party or social tea.

      People are entitled to their views but when we live in a wired global village there are instances when the commonweal takes precedence.  Health is one such instance. 

       It is preposterous that suppressed or eradicated diseases are making a comeback in an age when science has never been more advanced.  There may be genuine concerns about efficacy and delivery of vaccinations, but this strange stew of resistance based on conspiracy theory, fear, superstition, half baked notions and now politics is frankly evidence of how silly we have become. Silly, maybe even stupid and with extraordinarily dangerous consequence.

THROWBACK SWEETHEARTS

   Not sure of the occasion in the early 90's, but it pictures,

 front to back, my youngest, Katherine, now finishing nursing school after a BS and a year of advanced permaculture study, my god-daughter Celia, now a PhD and working in Childhood Trauma psychology, my sainted late mother Mary Helen and a younger less gray version of your blogger. 

     I'm still concerned about the future that awaits those two bright, and still bright, faces.

    See you down the trail.

TRULY INDEPENDENT

HOW DO YOU DEFINE RADICAL

   Today's sentiment was launched by thoughtful observations of Jed Duvall and Stephen Hayes who authors the extraordinary blog The Chubby Chatterbox.

   You can read Jed's thoughts in the comments of yesterday's post on the Gettysburg anniversary observations.

    The Chatterbox, which is linked in the column on the right, got my wheels turning.

   This is always a day of melancholy. On the one hand it prompts a childhood sense of joy and delight. On the other it recalls true patriotism, devotion and sacrifice adjoined to how we modern Americans regard the day as little more than a reason to eat, drink, be merry and watch bombs that sparkle instead of those that have more lethal outcomes.

    After all is said, I come down on the thought that more than anything this is a day that should celebrate conviction and principle. John Adam's did not attend 4th of July celebrations, despite his contribution to our birth. He did not because he noted the Declaration was "declared" on July 2nd and he thought that should be the day of observation. The formal declaration was adopted on the 4th, but the actual separation from England occurred on the the 2nd.

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not. (The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784, Harvard University Press, 1975, 142).

That is an example of the American spirit. 

JULY 4TH REFERALS

If you have not seen the Gettysburg post

from yesterday,Here is an easy link 

And a true reprise-worth considering again-

A UNIQUELY AMERICAN DAY

Do your self a great favor today.

Take a couple of minutes to read

the Declaration of Independence by linking here.

Here's something to add to your conversation at a barbecue or party today.

Two of the framers and signers of the Declaration

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third 

Presidents of the US, died on July 4th 1826, the 

50th Anniversary of the signing.

Both men had been ill.  Jefferson asked his doctor

"Is it the Fourth yet?"

"It soon will be," Robley Dunglison replied.

Later Jefferson awoke to say,

"I resign my spirit to God, my daughter to my country."

Adams was asked if he knew what day it was.

"Oh yes.  It is the glorious Fourth of July. It is a great day. It is a good day. God Bless it.  God Bless you all."

He lapsed into unconsciousness. Later he awoke and said

"Thomas Jefferson.  Thomas Jefferson survives."

Actually Jefferson had died a couple of hours earlier.

It remains an amazing coincidence that the two men, infirmed and dying  held on to life until the 50th Anniversary of perhaps America's greatest day.

Happy Independence Day!

See you down the trail.