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Helen Butterfield

Dearest, most beloved fellow Websterites:


It is I, Helen Butterfield, one of the many girls of 1970 with long dark hair and long long skirts, so perhaps it's hard to ring any bells with such a description.  Hmmm, let's see....  In fall of '70 I was often to be found playing the soprano & sopranino recorders on the beautiful front "Admin. Lawn" with Amber (Janice) Joculvar (who also taught me how to play recorder in the 1st place -- as well as so many Other Thigns: thankee,Mees Moose!!), as well as finger-picking my autoharp on many a breezy morn out thar.  Lived first in Loretto Hall 4th floor; then Maria 2 with dear Ellen Stoddard; then apartment down on Big Bend Blvd. with Roz Hooper.  Main hanging-out chums included the same Misses Rozmo & Amber, incredible 12-string guitarist & singer Rusty Luthe, Maro Zules & Lynn Comely, beautiful Katharine Anne Piotti & Catherine Trice; the other half of the Incredible String Band's separated-at-birth quadruplets, aka Stephen Twombly & Peter Eliot; Margie Mustin, Johnny Weiss, Bo Rambo, Bo Veaner, the ever-radiant couple Frank Aker and Annie Sailor, Michael Wee, dearest Chris who's ended up practically running The Nat'l Geographic Society; Wendy Bamberger, Annie Kennedy, Chris Dawson -- and various theatre folk including the pro's like the ever-gentle & ever-kind Grady Larkins; Mike Genovese & Arthur Rosenberg; and our fellow students at the Theatre Conservatory such as beloved Michael Paca Thomas, Gregg Berger (where IS he?), the fabulously talented & ever-dear Stelli Siteman, ravishing Carrie Houck w/the unforgettable laugh, Ellen Foley (nicknamed "Fooley" back then, remember?), gorgeous sweet-hearted Pratt & her motor-sickle, Cathy Ochterloni (she of the memorable nickname "Ouch"); et cetera.  There are others whom I still love dearly but now, 24 years later, I can only see their faces and not remember the names. No offense!  I wrack my brain trying to remember!

And you?  Where are you/how are you/what marvelous adventures have you been having?

Since the Reunion Website asked for a brief bio-sketch, here it is: Have been living in Vermont but had to return to the somewhat-near DC area for various reasons: a very sad move indeed.  But the 100 acres up by Craftsbury Common are still owned as permanent promise of return & sirening sinecure.  Now I have the joy of living in the woods at Bear Dance (my "place") full-time, doing lots of art and being in shows when I have time & inclination for an opening.  Bear Dance is a wonderful house rather like 3 barns stuck together end-to-end, and I've 2 & 1/2 acres of woods and a bit of open land for growing zillions of glorious sunflowers and vegetables.  Also 2 circus-dog Schipperkes, Satchel and Chloe (pardon the glaring lack of umlaut for that latter but this package has none: Foxy, you gots any, darlink?....)  Earlier on I'd mentioned to many of you my 1st darling wild-woman Schipperke named Whistle Pig, but alas she died at a far too young age 4 years ago of kidney failure from a misdiagnosed Lyme Tick bite (the vet thinking it was mere spider bite): please vaccinate your pets, friends; & ride herd on even your "best" vet-docs!  Various indoor/outdoor cats sally about here, too, including StarFish, Owl, Party Shoes & Hummingbird.  Also many bald eagles in the wind; as well as bluebirds who soar down to land on hands when called to; pileated woodpeckers, orioles, endless hawks, ravens, and the like.  This blessed & much-beloved Bear Dance is on a tertiary dirt road, & thus I'm lucky enough to live in total isolation, hermit-style, with no sound of cars or anything else, other than birds -- and no street lights at night, so the stars hang brilliant & big as pomegranates.  Yes, please come visit at Bear Dance!  You'll be so very welcome, & you'll also feel how this marvelous place embraces one gently with peace and joy.  

So where are YOU?  Who's on this list?  I remember Webster with SO much love, and feel it was an incredible gift to be a student there in the 1970-74 era. Webster was literally BURSTING with talent, tales, energy, joys, musics, ideas, fancies, faery-hunts o'the woods at night, visions & visions of visions, dreams, loves, and art-art-art-art-art..................YES we were so lucky, dear friends!

Much love & many thanks to every one of you

from

Helen Butterfield

PS:  If anyone nows where our great English Dept. prof, Dr. Larry Blades, is at this point in the 21st Century: please let us know!  He moved to San Francisco shortly after Our Gang left Webster -- & no one I know has been able to find him again.

Ira Carter

Originally from: Jacksonville, FL

Currently residing: Wine Country, California

Family: Happily married with one daughter

Current Gig: Document production specialist. Yeah, it's a mouthful but the most accurate way to describe it. 
Part graphic designer, graphic artist, web author, tech writer, project manager, almost anything on a computer for a buck.

Hobbies: art, deejaying, spending too much time on the listbot

Politics: anarcho-syndicalist

Clique at Webster: Menace posse from 3 Maria - 1971, Tom Ray, Deborah (Caringella) Schneider, 
Uncle Rush, Carole Evans, Paula Russell

Still see: Deborah, John Kyle, Laura Brown

Between then & now: hippie, waiter, cook, marriage, divorce, working at printing trades in Bay Area

Worst kept secret: Nice person behind the caustic exterior.

Best kept secret: Always like to keep a hole card so there's still the capacity to surprise.

  Bill Eldred 

A Random Access History of Me Since 1974

4/3/99


To Be Continued

Sail on QE II when it breaks down mid-ocean 1982
1985 Marry woman who lived with Ken Stack and dated old high school friend before I met her.
Testify before US Senate Committee on environmental conditions in China 1993
Testify before NY Grand Jury 1988
Get rained on by Chernoyble fallout, Scotland, 1985
Drive-by Harrisburgh, PA. as three mile island accident begins
Shake hands with Roger Ailes 1991 - on documentary assignment
Fall into coma, almost die 1978 - ?fever of unknown origin?
Kidneys fail 1979
Dialysis 1979- 1984
Blood transfusions 1979-1982
Kidney transplant 1984 (girls kidney)
Dracula & Frankenstein adopted as metaphorical heroes (I live on blood of others and use their body parts).
KelvinZero becomes alter ego - ?a theoretical state?  absolute zero - a theoretical being - me.
I realize I have an existence disorder (My Mac computer says ?this object has been insufficiently created so it cannot be destroyed? - actual dialogue box message when trying to trash a file. The computer was talking about me.
They take my spleen out 1982.
1974-1975 Graduate School, Wash U. Urban Planning
1974-5 Manage Slum Property for Lipton Realty
1985 Move to Bleecker Street in Village
1986 Move to east Village
1987 Move to SoH0
Work for St. Louis Community Development Agency 1976-78 
Do permanent damage to downtown St. Louis by helping to build downtown mall.
1989 Move to Union Square
1993 Move to Williamsburgh Brooklyn
1994 Move to Park Slope Brooklyn
1994 decide to live as nomad
1989 decide cities are evil
Study media ecology 1991-1993
Study deep ecology 19996
Study theology 1995-1998
Coin term: Kronocentricism meaning that the earth time of humans is significant and providential, excluding the possibility that we are but an interim step in the plans of the great watchmaker. 1995
Study and undertake video documentary 1985-1992
Credited for ?additional camera work? for 1992 Oscar winning documentary
8/8/88 - get my first computer
1991 begin work on a ?general theory of everything?
1984-1991 Publish articles for minor trades on housing, environment, and video.
1994 Conclude the Western Canon must be expanded to include Gumby and Eco-feminism.
I think to myself that I am like Bill Clinton 1992
I realize I am like Bill Clinton 1998
Eve Coulson finds me because I am on front page of Princeton newspaper.
1975 Predict the then unknown Jimmy Carter will win Democratic nomination.
Work in Washington, DC on Presidents Council on Wage and Price Stability
Disastrous trip to Africa in which travel companion breaks nose and I get sun poisoning. 1988
Formulate theory of metropolitan dispersal to small towns & rural areas because of Internet 1983
People laugh at theory 1983-1997
Time Magazine cover: Dec. 1997 ?Why Americans are moving to small towns?
Predict I will die being hit by a car driven by the ghost of Jackson Pollack 1993
1991 Spend afternoon with Michael Dukakis
1992 Realize I like nature better than MTV
June, 1994 Found the "Republic of Elysia"
1991 Begin Art
1998 Art Muse leaves


Eldred - March 2000  (another story here)


This is a story of a boating mishap near dusk. I felt primal fear and panic knowing I was lost in the swamp with a dead outboard engine. No way to swim or walk out, without drowning or sinking in muck. The greenhead files were on the attack, (greenheads are like fighter plane versions of horseflies, except they come in plague proportions, like a scene from the Amazon River) and I am dressed in a T-shirt and cotton shorts.

To make a long story short, I put out a distress call on the universal hailing frequency, and got a message back - that took the form of a "feeling" - "Eldred, trust the force".

Then I realized the "force" was the tide. I had run against the tide to my lost position - and in fact got completely lost as the tide began to change. If I waited, my reasoning went, the tide would carry me back past the dock.

I was at least five channels isolated from the main current, lost is a classic backwater. I nudged the boat the center of the channel, and just sat there. Then, after about 3 minutes, the boat began to inch its way in the direction of the tide.

I then rowed the boat to follow the tide to the next channel intersection, and sat in the middle of channel waiting for the incremental tide to show me the way. The tidal inching began again, in the direction of the next channel, and I rowed with it. By the third channel, the tide was manifest and swift, and the way to main river was clear.

Reaching the main branch of Stow Creek, the outgoing tide was going at about 10 knots. Now the challenge was to catch the tide at the correct angle going around the last bend before the dock so I would not miss it. I had made this maneuver unpowered before, and it took alot of rowing. Now, I was more stressed and exhausted - but I caught the dock and made it back to farm safely.

This may be a male thing, but I felt really lucky and exhilarated. I had though my way out of the situation. Or had I ? I got back to farm looking like Charlton Heston after the chariot race and feeling like the Old Man in the Sea. 

Swamp running is a great exercise for the mind and the body. It's you, the boat and  the engine on a flat undifferentiated plain of green saw grass on blue water. You rely on a sense of direction, visual memory, and guessing. I  felt like the kid in the hedgerow in Kubrick's THE SHINING, but Jack Nicholson was metaphorically represented by nature.

THE END
 

Richard H. Fox


August 1970-December 1972    Webster College, 1972 tailspin
January 1973-December 1974   Worked in Worcester, rebalanced
December 1975-May 1976    Returned with direction...  adopted Jason Dog in the Summer...   graduated History/Political Science
August 1976-December 1976   Grad School SUNY-Binghamton/Political Science - liked teaching hated the academic life
January 1977-April 1977   Wandered back to St. Louis, took MAT courses at Webster; wrote a lot without direction
May 1977    My grandfather's second wife passes away - I returned to Worcester for 3-6 months to be with him...   been a long six months...  while hanging out, I start managing a truck fleet for a regional food distributor...   meet Ann, who is at UMass Medical School, through my childhood friend Hoff - Hoff is working for Data General and is installing hardware and writing software for the UMass Hospital - one of his work study guys is Breed who is Ann's cadaver partner...   meet Ann at Breed's for dinner - we all laugh ourselves sick as Jason Dog barks...  decide to stay a while longer...   Jason Dog is jealous at first but soon realizes that two people are better than one...
November 1977    Moved to Data Processing to back up the one systems analyst, Charlie, who knows the company's software...   we hit it off and I discover the elegance of software design...   take courses, fill up my office with certifications...  stop writing poetry and prose for assembler, Fortran77, MIDAS, C, CPL, and other such stuff...
August 27, 1978    Ann and I marry - Jason Dog, Ann, and I head for Vermont for our honeymoon...
December 1978   Company has explosive growth, Charlie leaves for softer pastures...   become MIS Manager responsible for programming and operations groups...  on call 24/7, begin dreaming in Fortran77 and Primos (the Prime Computer OS)...  develop a love and admiration for minicomputers even though they crash monthly and need repairs late at night...   knowing how to fix and recover this stuff earns a pointy wizard hat...
May 1979   Ann graduates Medical School; does 18 months of internal medicine residency, switches to psychiatry so she can have time with her patients (among other reasons)...  does a fellowship in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy...   gets involved with the New Women's School of Therapy (eg. The Stone Center)...
December 18, 1981   Dan is born during residency...  discover parenting is the best part of life...
December 19, 1984    Adam is born during the fellowship...   three years and a day, but we made that allotted three month window for conception...
January 1986   Company is sold...  they make me a Vice President...   they make seven other people VP's...    we have less authority; need multiple approvals to get pencils with erasers...  back to the bureaucracy...  president/mentor at company resigns...  chaos ensues...
January 1988   Ann goes into private practice...
March 1988   Company is acquired by two plumbing supply guys from NYC who had recently sold their business and are building condos off Central Park...   chaos increases...
January 1989   Old mentor is brought back...   I'm moved to Warehouse Manager(?!?) for a few months when Jim, the Warehousing Operations Manager, and a friend, leaves for a new job...   realize they want to keep me away from the data; never did look where I wasn't suppose to - kinda like being a lawyer or therapist or harem guard - sanctity of data, you guard it but never look at it...  become Director of Special Projects...   design expert systems that mimic old mentor's purchasing and transportation knowledge...   best systems I ever wrote...    they learn from historical patterns; correct errors made by (and could have replaced) purchasing and transportation/routing departments...
December 1989   Company is carpetbagged, plumbers eventually go to jail for $18 million worth of thievery and deceptive practices...   bankruptcy judge is disgusted and says it's the worse mess he's ever seen...   250 people on the street in the midst of a strong recession...   my software vaporizes...
January 1990   Homemaker...   have fun with the kids...   volunteer at the school...   relive all those ed classes...
July 1991   Jim and I take the plunge - start A & D Cold Storage, Inc. - lease the now vacant food distribution facility...  the old company was like a family, we gather the best people and go forward with the mission to provide for families and make it a place people want to go to when they wake up in the morning...  make the jobs creative, let people be productive so we can pay 'em more and provide benefits that will take care of their families in any eventuality...    very scary for first two years of ups and downs...
Fall 1991  Started coaching youth soccer...  had a blast, more of that teaching stuff...    went undefeated in 1992 as a traveling team - had the honor of coaching (or rather putting on the field and watch with my jaw dropping) Worcester's best player Diedre Quinn who, as a 7th grader a few years later, started on the high school varsity...   took a half for boys to realize that it was a girl called "D" who was making them look so silly...   she'll be a star in college...
January 1996   Receive my own block on WCUW after subbing and programming miscellaneous shows for about a year...   at first the format is all music, soon developed the Interview/Guest Hosting Series...   book weekly guests, mainly performing from songwriters from across the USA, a mix of live music, conversation, and my guests' recorded picks...   begin hanging out with songwriters...   develop web site for the series along with interview narratives posted to FolkDJ-L and the web...  expand into various concert series...   find all kinds of weird Webster ties...
Fall 1996   retire from coaching when Adam starts middle school and plays for my old team...   lucky timing, because he can now beat every which way on the field...    a good thing, really...
Fall 1997   realize that Dan is already a better programmer than I'll ever be...  he starts POSTMARK.NET and I go to him for help with CGI, Linux, and C++...   can still teach him a few tricks...  very few...   but this is also a good thing...
February 1997   Ann retires...
January 1998   After spilling my stories in long narrative emails, songwriter friends encourage me to write poetry/spoken word again...  which I do late at night on weekends...
October 1998   Reunion 1998 - I am inspired by all of you...   and reevaluate all my doubts about college memories...   yes, Helen, it was special!  it was magic!  we stay true to the course we set out back then...   which makes me feel proud and joyful about us!
October 1999    I am inspired again by Clan Webster...
August 1999   Begin performing at open stages after a songwriter friend puts a footprint on my back...   become a regular and then contributor to The Poetry Oasis...
January 2000   After six months of hopeful waiting, finally a member of Judy Ferrara's Poetry Workshop...   inspired to focus and squeeze the last drop out of every word...
January 18, 2000   My brother's birthday...   wrote this...   will likely change it later...

Marcie Mitler


I grew up in Westchester County NY.    I spent HS being a musician, artist and political activist and Webster was the perfect next step. I was tear gassed several times in DC protesting the Vietnam War, saw just about  every rock concert performed at the Fillmore East and in NY city and labeled as  "at risk" during HS.  I was rejected at every college I applied to except for a handwritten note from Webster saying I was just the kind of student they were looking for.

I loved Webster.  I danced at Webster, had incredibly wonderful experiences with people I loved but got phobic about flying so I  transferred to Emerson College a theatre school in Boston. Lots of Webster folks were here at the time.   I didn't know a soul at Emerson and graduated having a good theatre background and dance training but not the experience of Webster which I missed. 

After college I sang with a band  "J.T.'S Mardi Gras Band and the Lawn Chair Ladies". Continued my dance career performing, teaching and choreographing. Eve was even a student of mine. Performed a great deal through the 70's and early 80's.

Married in 1981, danced intensely until son #1 Sam was born 1984.  Son #2 Noah was born 1988.

Somewhere in there I got a masters in counseling and after son #2 was born I began to use it.  I couldn't keep dancing and spend the kind of time I wanted with the boys, so I began to work part time seeing mainly survivors of childhood trauma in private practice.  I have an office in Cambridge, live in Cambridge, the boys go to public school here and I work the exact amount I want.  20 hours a week on work I love, feel good about, feel a political commitment to and I still get to spend lots of time with the boys. I do some lecturing at colleges about incest and childhood abuse.

I am now in the midst of mid-life crisis, trying to figure out what I will do when the boys are grown. How to have more fun, connection and enlightenment.
 

michael goldberg in webster daze

Michael Goldberg's

Three Dog Night

michael goldberg at Reunion 99

At Webster College I was a Resident Counselor, an R.C. There were RAs, Resident Assistants, too.  They were the cops, more or less.  Mostly less.  We were the sensitive ones, more or less.  Susan Weingarten with Carol Arnold led the staff of John McVicker, Lew Prince, Eve Coulson, Nancy Edmunds, Oliva Gude, Tim Noelker, Ira Slotkin, Wendy Bamburger, Gary Jenkins, Marcus Trice, Bill Eldred, and one or two others, I’m not sure.  The staffs from other years mix in my memory (help me if I’ve forgotten someone please).  Free room and board in exchange for lending an ear, holding a hand, drying a tear, being on-call, and handling the occasional emergency.  The important part was that we learned a great deal from Susan, from Carol and from each other.  And if I delivered one night of real service to hurting soul, it was worth it to the school as well. I think maybe I did, we all did.

In February of 1972 Susan and Carol took the staff to Trout Lodge near Potosi for a retreat. It was a T-Group in the parlance of the day.  We did various exercises over the course of the weekend, designed to encourage us to risk ever more honest communication with one another.  As cynical as the world has become about psychobabble touchy-feely interaction, I learned, and I liked it.  Partly, it led me to a Master’s in Counseling Psychology.

On Saturday afternoon, often the darkest time in a T-Group experience, Susan was asking us to learn more about non-verbal communications.  She pulled John McVicker to his feet and began pushing him, lunging at him.  John just held Susan at arm’s length, not allowing her to rock him or get closer, but not pushing back. Susan was very strenuous and this went on for some time.  The exercise ended with no emotional release. 

This scene disturbed me.  I did not understand what Susan was trying to express.  I thought she meant that she was angry and was pushing John away.  I couldn’t get this to make sense because Susan loved us all, or so I thought. I was completely surprised to see Susan act this way and could not imagine what John had done that Sue was so angry.  I later understood that she was angry because she wanted to get through to John, but felt he wouldn’t let her.  I didn’t get much about anger in those days.

This ended about 4 p.m., dinner was at 5:30 or 6, and we were to reconvene at 7.  I decided to take a walk.  I needed to do something.

It had snowed heavily a few days before, warmed on Thursday and Friday, and then refrozen on Saturday.  The trees were covered in ice.  The snow had a heavy frozen crust.  There was no wind but the air was very cold.  The sky was overcast but light.  The beauty of the woods was breathtaking, but I couldn’t enjoy it.

I began to trudge through the wood on no particular path.  It was rough going and my shoes were poor, my coat not much better.  But the cold and strong discomfort with what I had seen and the overall tense point of the weekend drove me.  Each step seemed deafeningly loud.  The crunch of the snow crust being broken.  The bed powder snow and leaves below meant each step was work.  The air was perfectly still so when I stopped there was no noise, just the ice covered trees, the snow and the light gray sky.

I trudged through a field of trees and up a hill, working hard.  Just over the top I came to a Jeep trail.  Two tire ruts running through the trees.  I followed the trail, walking in the left tire track.  The crunch on the path was just as loud but the plunge of my foot was a little less, so the walking was easier.  Crunch crunch crunch crunch.

I could hardly think because of the noise.  I did not want to go back to the cabin because I didn’t think I could be part of the group until I had resolved the discomfort somehow.  I felt puzzled and tense, and I did not know what to do for myself.  These feelings were very strong.  I’m walking.  I’m mulling.  The snow is crunching loudly.

Suddenly I hear footsteps running up behind me.  I register only that the are very close, unheard until the last minute due to the sound of my steps, and that it’s an animal.  I spin around and cross my arms in front of me, and scream in fear.  It’s all on instinct and happened very fast, uncontrolled. 

I scared the daylights out of the dog, but not half as much as he scared me.  My heart pounding, I squat down.  He was running up to me like the friendly dog he was and when I screamed, he diverted to the other tire rut in the trail.  I called him over, patted his head, rubbed his neck, and apologized while my heart beat calmed.  In a minute he was on his way.

I turned and continued to walk, smiling in relief and waiting for my heart to get back to normal, crunching along.  Maybe five minutes later I hear footsteps running up behind me.  I wheel and put my arms up, my heart surges again, but not as much.  This time I didn’t scream although I think some sound came out.  I squat down for the second dog that approached from the other tire track.  He stops and looks at me, but does not come over to be petted.  He seems to be smiling but not as friendly as the first dog.  He stands still for ten seconds and then heads down the trail after the first dog.

I turn and start walking again, smiling in relief and shaking my head in disbelief.  I’m still tearing the silence with the sound of my steps.  My heart just gets back to normal when I hear footsteps coming up behind me.  I have a speck of adrenaline left but I’m now expecting a dog.  A dog it is, running through the woods maybe 5 feet off the trail and parallel to it.  He doesn’t stop but he looks over at me as he passes.  He’s does not seem friendly.

Now it’s getting really weird, but I decide to walk on.  Crunch. In maybe 15 minutes I come to a bend in the trail.  It curves to the right and down and 50 yards away splits and creates a little island of 2 trees and some evergreen bushes and scrub.  As I round the corner there is a sound from those bushes and they move.  I stop dead still and listen.  I wait.  Nothing happens, but I am afraid and I do not want to approach that place.

After 3 minutes or so I drop to my hands and knees and as quietly as I can move to the side of the trail.  I manage to get off the path and lean against a small tree.  I’m breathing, listening and holding very still.  I’m waiting for it to go away.  I’m pretty sure it’s a dog, but I’m afraid anyway.

I was staring in an unseeing way into the air, my eyes pointed maybe 30 degrees above the horizon.  Now a black dot appears in the sky.  I’m transfixed.  The dot moves toward me and gets larger until it seems about 3 or 4 feet away and six inches around.  Black amorphous shapes emerge from the dot, which now seems like a hole, and glide past my face on either side.  Slowly the shapes take on more definition until they look like drawings of caricatured Chinese monks in long flowing black robes with long craggy pointing fingers and baldheaded.  The are pointing at me and looking at me.  Each one has a different face and posture.  The come slowly.  This flow continues for a few minutes.  I’d say that about twenty or thirty men glide by.  I’m just watching.

Then the shapes stop coming from the hole, which then recedes to where it appeared in the sky and disappears.  Immediately the bushes rustle down the trail.  I’m not afraid but I still don’t want to go near them.  I get up and walk back to the cabin.

For a long time I didn’t tell this story to anyone.  I just kept it.  I’ve not done much interpretation of it because it’s holy to me.  I think that it was an opening of another plane to me and I treasure the experience. I think I was being admonished to have faith.

Back at the cabin the group (and I) found some resolution but not for everything.  I think John and Susan spoke later and it seemed better but not completely.  I loved being an R.C. and I still love these good people, but what I remember most from that weekend was the three dog night.
 

ann louise in webster daze

Ann Louise Famighetti's 

Bridge - From Michael and Mystical Dogs to Zoe

ann louise in westport

Michael, your story is a  wonder. ( I love wonder. ) The  response  to your search for understanding  and  balance ... fears and  boundaries challenged... the weird and inexplicable  so rich with meanings  in a  language we all speak way  down deep and almost understand in 3-D space/time minds. Beautiful telling, thank you.

I'd like  to relate two tales involving dogs. The first one also involves Zoe, as  it  was at  her house in  the woods of New Jersey many years ago. She had two Australian Shepherds at the time, it was winter, it was cold and it was night. We huddled under blankets and quilts and the wood stove was going, but it wasn't until the dogs  joined us and we all snuggled down together that we were really cozy....and then I had my AHA!...this is a TWO DOG NIGHT...THEREFORE A THREE DOG NIGHT IS NASTY COLD! Honest. Before that, I had no clue what that meant. Anyway that's the light side.

The more serious dog  story is  this  one. At the  time of this tale, I'd spent a decade or so  deeply involved in Native American paths of spiritual relating, some years involved with Archie Fire Lame Deer, son of John Fire -some of you may know him.  A rift had formed in our community, Archie, not a subtle man,  subtly  asked that the sweat lodge be used to heal this painful break. So it was set that I was to sweat with Archie and "the transgressor" (all perceptions, I know, I know) in order to  reestablish  understanding and  balance between us and within the community. I was doing this willingly, but with many fears in tow.  In preparation, about a week before the sweat was to be, I went into a meditative state. My intentions were to meet my fears, as best I could, before the sweat, so as to be more open and available to the  event. I went deep, and there was a yellow dog motioning me to follow, so I did. He led me across an  open grassy area to....not a lodge, but a mausoleum, with 3 stone steps leading to a little grassy landing  out side  it's  small door. The dog waited for me by the door as I hesitated at the top of the steps. This is NOT what I expected. It quickly caused fears to rise inside me. But I'm here to meet my fears, I said to myself, and it's kinda like a lodge (read: safe place), low and dark,  close to the earth,elements,spirit, death and rebirth - all lodge stuff.  Deep breath, okay, doggie, I'm coming with you. I follow the dog into the mausoleum, took my usual lodge seat across from the door and sat.  It  was holy, this space, and fears not withstanding, I gave over to trusting spirit. The dog circled behind me, raised itself up on hind legs, forepaws on my shoulders and head resting atop mine. Yeah, just like a  shaman wearing a skin.  I felt ministered to, that something was changing  on a level I didn't have access to. My fears, which seemed now to deal with death and loss in very  human terms,  were soothed in a very  round way (body, mind, spirit,et.al). After a time of this ministering, the dog  got  down and I followed it out of the darkness of the mausoleum into bright sunshine. Never saw where the dog got off to. I felt great, though I couldn't  readily see what this experience had  to do with my intention of  preparing for the upcoming Lodge. Well, as the saying goes, Spirit knows best. On the day I thought I would be in the Lodge,  I was  instead being driven past mausoleums, because I was burying my  father.  Ain't  that a grabber?
 

Zoe Blatchley

Zoe and Jerry's Trip to England


Have a great trip to London, Cris!

Say hi to the Tate for me if you get there. I haven't been back since the summer of '74, a 6 week "open education" experience based at Furzdown College.  Jerry and I had a grand time pal-ing around town to the museums, galleries, restaurants, street markets, etc. (I still have a bangle made by Tibetan refugees I got then.) Got stuck in the tube for an hour and a half coming back late from the theatre (an odd production of "Streetcar Named Desire" with Julie Christie doing a terrible southern accent as Blanche) because of an NRA bomb scare. We would play 'guess the female impersonator' ... Jerry would see a (to him) great looking woman, and I'd have to say, "Sorry Jer', there's a surprise wrapped up in there." Couldn't go up The Tower because of bomb threats, and had to walk around a cordoned off area because digging for a building foundation discovered an unexploded bomb from WWII.  Indian take away was much preferable to the college fare. The only place I got to out of town was Stonehenge. Because I HAD to. Loved the pubs and the old ladies pounding out old tunes on a piano. Jerry is? was a GREAT dance partner. The Germans at the course were real party animals, but were for awhile intimidated by the older Norwegian in the course. He'd been imprisoned by the Nazis and the young Germans were full of guilt and imagined he must hate them. A heavy session cleared the air when this wonderful, kind man gave them absolution. Can you believe I went 6 weeks with $100.00 spending money?! (I don't remember the exchange rate.)

Almost forgot... I appreciated the distance from Watergate. The London coverage was thorough, but lacked the hysterical deluge of US media. I remember watching one of the diehard Nixon fans in our group break down as we watched the resignation, wondering how someone's mind had to work in order to ignore everything that had gone on.

Oh and Jerry's dear parents came through London on a whirlwind tour before she passed on. They took us out to dinner at an Elisabethan style restaurant with straw on the floor, mead, buxom waitresses almost falling out of their drawstring blouses. His mother wanted to walk out of there with everything that wasn't nailed down for souvenirs. We hid a two handled loving cup in my sweater that I had till it broke a few years ago.

Maybe I'm in trouble now, but Jer', I have wonderful memories of your mother. Didn't she send live lobsters via jet to you at Brompton after one visit? And as I understand it she spent the last week before she went into hospital for the last time preparing meals to freeze for her husband. I remember a visit when she sat me down and asked me to tell her anything I could about her son, how she wanted to know what he was like. Now that I wonder what my son is like when he is away from me, I understand more of how she felt.

Coming back into Kennedy, Jerry and I were asked to take the school's cases of camera and other equipment through customs in the company of an older teacher in hopes they'd think we were a father and his kids and let us through.  It worked.
 

Mary White (used to be McKenna)

Webster Memories


Here I am in my client/server class learning SQL, taking a little break for a moment to say hi. Glad to see everyone in Westport. Has brought back many fond memories. Some of my memories:  walking the halls of 4th Loretto hearing 'Jesus Christ Superstar' mixing with 'TOMMY', 'Tapestry', Sweet Baby James, 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', 'Purple Haze', Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, CSNY etc...peasant blouses, patching bellbottoms, Sam Conviser building a throne-like chair in the tv room on 4th Flr Admin, Ben Kloepper doing creative statuary with Barbie Dolls and a glue gun--also on 4th floor Ad Bldg, Seena Kohl smoking cigars in Anthropology 101, Michael Salevouris performing as Napoleon in a Theatre Dept in-house performance of the musical 'Applause, Applause"--same music but rewritten lyrics---to portray the French Revolution and the beheading of King Louie and Queen Marie Antoinette--thus the name of the show, "Chop,Chop; Clump, Clump". IT WAS WONDERFUL. Watching 'Nosferatu' on the 3rd flor of the Ad building as part of a film appreciation class...it was the first silent film portrayal of the story of Dracula. Scared the shit out of me....Getting 3 credit hours for sitting through all the episodes of "CIVILISATION". . .thanks to PBS. . . .Gloria Steinem and Robin (???) from MS magazine speaking in the lounge in Loretto to a packed room...asking all the men to leave about 30 minutes into the discussion..and the women making the men leave. (some hard feelings there!) Margaret Mead speaking at the Loretto Hall followed by a one on one with all of us Anthro/Sociology/Psych majors at one of the houses. Piercing blue eyes and a cane, limping. I was in awe of her. Sitting in Loretto auditorium with maybe 15 other people listening on a Sunday afternoon to Albert King play unbelievable blues guitar. Couldn't believe I was there...couldn't believe no one else was!

Playing bumper pool in the basement & pinball, too. Got to be pretty good. Philosophy classes with Tom ????-he had us write an essay on how Plato would present the argument "Make Love Not War"...also Art Sandler for Philosophy of Language; Nadia Ramzy for studies of American culture...

It was a wonderful experience; and, now that I've found all of you again, I know I am not the only one who felt that way about it.

[PAUSE]

Oh, I've been reading the past msgs..trying to work my way backward from the start to follow the various threads. 

Got a message from Ben --I swear it was Barbie I saw Ben using his glue gun on...he says not so. Must have dreamed it. Or maybe it was some of those fumes I didn't inhale....can't remember... I didn't know there was anybody before Barbie?! wow.

It was Gloria Steinem and a black woman who was an editor at MS in the early days of the magazine...just remember her first name as "Robin". Not sure of the last name. They came to speak at Webster.  It was quite a big deal. My mother-in-law at the time, Rob McKenna's mom, flew to St. Louis to be there.  She was one of the original women on the Ohio "Commission on the Status of Women". Actually, it was she and Rob who introduced me to the concepts of feminist thought, etc. Lyn McKenna is her name...an artist and ceramic potter.  I see them once a year every June or July when they come to the Cape. Other memories I have--reading tarot cards in the cafeteria with Katie Anderson, Michael Caulkins and a bunch of other theatre folks...someone noticed that everyone who was gay kept getting one particular card...can't remember which one.  I refused to have mine read. Already knew the truth about myself but couldn't face it yet and didn't want the cards to give me away. I remember using the ditto machine to run off tests for one of Lawrence (I think that was his name?) Kelly's history classes...he taught History/Political Science w/Salevouris...kind of tall, lanky, blonde hair. Two of my fondest memories:  the day I arrived.  My dad, age about 60, (a lifelong Republican--need I say more?) drove me to Webster... my mom wouldn't go because she didn't approve of my changing schools.  It's a good thing she didn't as I doubt she'd have let me stay once she saw everything when we arrived.....a bunch of young men with long hair, beards, some shirtless, some not, were on the front lawn in front of Loretto Hall playing electric guitars and singing. Sitting and watching them were a bunch of young women in peasant blouses, tie-dye, some jeans, some long skirts, mostly sans bras. We pulled into the parking lot and, before my dad could even get out of the car, "Purple" was standing by the driver's side door. Clad from head to toe in purple, he stuck his hand out and introduced himself to my dad, saying, "Hi, my name is 'Purple'" ...."I'm here to help your daughter move into the dorm." I was speechless. So was my dad. I thought it was wonderful...I have NO idea what my dad thought but it is a true MIRACLE that he didn't lock the car doors and drive away with me inside!!!  About three weeks later, my parents called me on the phone out in the hall on 4th Loretto....they wanted to come get me and take me away so I could go back to the college I'd come from---the Univ. of Arkansas. (I went there because my brother had 10 years earlier...a much different time. I didn't fit in and was miserable and had the grades to prove it so my older brother talked my parents into letting me change schools.  He lived south of St. Louis and suggested SIU-Edwardsville or Webster.  During the summer I visited both schools...the rest is history as they say).  Anyhow, I told my parents I was fine and that they didn't need to worry about me. I made a 3.8 that semester so then they were convinced.  My other memory is of Ed Falco (from New Jersey and an art education major, blonde, tall, thin and a heart of gold) and his girlfriend, Tricia Gibney (from Vermont, short, red hair) doing the jitterbug in one of our dorm rooms to Elton John's "Crockodile Rock"...They were great..Ed would "thro" Trish between his legs...they could've been in the GAP ads that are on tv now...in fact, they were BETTER than the GAP ads!! Wish I knew what happened to them....

Well, enough nostalgia...gotta go!
Peace,
Mary

PS...Oh, Katie Anderson and I got tired of hearing everyone say "Far Out" and "Heavy" so we took to saying "Distant"....that's REALLY Distant" and "Obese, baby, obese". Funny what we remember.
 

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