

### Pomona College, 50 Years On

### ::

### Recollections from the Class of 1970

Edited by Joseph Fraizer

Copyright © 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,

or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

Cover photograph courtesy of David F. Smith

" **North Clark with Ontario and Cucamonga Peaks in Background"**

1968

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. These poems and stories are the copyrighted property of the authors. This material may not be redistributed in whole or in part to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this ebook, please encourage your friends to download their own copies from their favorite authorized retailer. For free. Thank you for respecting the work of the authors.

From the Editor

The initial idea for this book came from Tina Blair. She and Phyllis Hagstrum Meshulam requested submissions from our classmates, collected those submissions, and performed preliminary editing. Bethami Auerbach, Tina, and Phyllis reviewed the final version of the book. My role was to format each contribution, do minor editing, resolve any questions with authors, and, ultimately, assemble all the material into final form and publish it. We are publishing the book in two forms – a printed version available at www.thebookpatch.com and this e-book version.

To the poets: The most challenging material to format was poetry. E-reading devices will wrap a sentence wherever they need to. Preservation of line length cannot be guaranteed. Thus, the visual structure of a poem may not be displayed as the poet intended. Apologies.

Errors and omissions: The writing and editing process is never perfect. If you see a mistake, please let me know (iconmine@gmail.com). In the world of e-publishing, making corrections is just a matter of uploading a new version of the document.

Thank you to all who contributed to this book.

Joseph Fraizer

Introduction

In October, 2017, at the time of the inauguration of the newest president of Pomona College, Dr. Gabrielle Starr, a call went out from the Alumni Office inviting us to share stories about "why Pomona is meaningful to you." I did not share a story – even though I kept meaning to. That was the spark, however, for this book.

While we were at Pomona College, from 1966 to 1970, the world changed, and we students changed the college. As the nation went through conflicts over civil rights, the environment, and the Vietnam War, we played these out on our campus. As a shocked nation mourned the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, and the students at Kent State and Jackson State, we grieved with angry sit-ins and demonstrations. Speakers were brought to campus: Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, Jerry Rubin, Sloane Coffin, to name a few. We went door to door to share our opposition to the bombings of Laos and Cambodia as well as Vietnam.

We also worked to lower carbon gas emissions and we celebrated the first Earth Day in April, 1970. We hammered the administration and finally got a Black Studies Center. We formed committees to get equal hours for women, who had dorm curfews, whereas the men did not. It took three years, but we succeeded. As one of our writers puts it, we started out a 1950s campus, and we moved it into the late 1960s. These writings capture some of that spirit.

All the while, we learned, we had fun, we grew, and Pomona's legacy has guided us through our lives. Those memories are included as well: pranks played, classes that captured our imagination, and professors we enjoyed. Dr. Leonard Pronko, with his Kabuki productions and French literature classes, is the professor most often cited in our memories. In addition, the calls for stories and poems for this volume have sparked many remembrances shared by email. These recollections were not necessarily submitted for this work, but they have enriched our discussions as we celebrate our 50th reunion.

My thanks to all the contributors, to my coworker Phyllis Hagstrum Meshulam, to Beth Auerbach for her help, and especially to Joseph Fraizer who has done all the book formatting and editing. May this book help document a special time in Pomona College history.

Tina Blair

Class of 1970

Table of Contents

Christopher Askew – Roget's Perplex

Christopher Askew – Moments

Christopher Askew – War & Peace

Christopher Askew – The Gift of the Spider Woman

Christopher Askew – An age-pertinent illustration

Bethami Auerbach – A Transfer's Tale

Roxanne Bartlett – Amanda Dabbles in Danish

Christine (Tina) Blair – We Danced

Christine (Tina) Blair – We Mourned

Christine (Tina) Blair – The Gift of Being Me

Henry Breithaupt – The Tree and Bush

Tim Burrell – My Pomona College Experience

Steven Clarke – Pomona Memories

Lisa Gray Fisher – Oresteia

Joseph Fraizer – The Dynamite Headache

Joseph Fraizer – Cool Jazz with This Way Out

Michael Garrett – Riches Borne in Trust

Phyllis Hagstrum Meshulam – The Lyrics of our Lives

Phyllis Hagstrum Meshulam – Summer of the Moon Landing

John Halleran – Eager, Thoughtful, 2 out of 3 ain't bad

Al Herlands – Meet the Candidates, May 1970

Brian Johnston – Claremont's violin prodigy, lost and found

Brian Johnston – "Thank God for Christmas"

Bill Keller – Reed with Shoes

Kenneth Liberman – Today's Surfing Report

Joel Lorimer – Bum Rap 12 31/32

Jim McCallum – Jim's little story of 326 words

Jim McCallum – I stand with Dreamers

Erma (Wright) Manoncourt – Pomona Reflections: I remember...

Kathy Mikkelson – Free verse memories of Pomona 1966-1970

Nancy Place – Sophomore Summer

Pat Price – Incipit vita nova

Bart Scott – Claremont 1966

David Smith – Musings, Hi-jinx, RFs, and Other Less-Than-Academic Activities

Cary Stump – LICENSE PLATES

Kel Vanderlip – What I learned at Pomona College

Elizabeth Jefferson Young – Temples

Elizabeth Jefferson Young – Faith Rediscovered

Elizabeth Jefferson Young – Changing Directions

Linda Schaffer Yedlin – Thoughts about Pomona

_Not incidental among the benefits of the liberal arts education are the acquisitions of both an extensive vocabulary and the experience to occasion its use._

### Roget's Perplex

by Christopher Askew

I know of no piece of the whole human muddle

more likely to keep our best judgment at bay —

more likely to addle, unsettle, befuddle,

discomfort, disquiet, disturb and dismay;

to bother, bewilder, bewitch, and bamboozle,

to agitate, captivate, exercise, ail,

bedim and bedazzle and frazzle and foozle,

discomfit, distemper, divert and derail;

to cozen and chivy, occlude and confusticate,

mix up and mess up, becloud and bemuse,

to take in, to fake out, disrupt, discombobulate,

diddle, disorient, daze and confuse;

to humbug and buffalo, hoodwink and hornswoggle,

jumble and jangle, beguile and boondoggle,

mortify, mystify, maze, faze and fuss;

confound and discountenance, pother, nonplus,

to freak out, to weird out, to wile and to worry,

to disconcert, discompose, fluster and flurry,

to boggle, to baffle, delude and distress,

to torture, to torment, hagride and harass;

to upset, unhinge us, derange and distract us,

to rattle, alarm us, disarm and impact us,

to feint, fleece and flummox, perturb and perplex,

to devil, unravel and pester and vex —

than sex.

_Not all education, of course, is academic, and not all growth is of the mind,_ Deo gratias _. Our shared moments in a Santa-Ana-freshened Maxfield Parrish setting with those of like mind and heart shaped so much more than our intellects, built so much more than our careers._

### Moments

by Christopher Askew

Never mind that we crossed paths

among the avocado trees

Forget the bright wind tossing

auburn strands across your sagebrush eyes

Forget your sun-warmed hands

that held my arm as if I were a prize

to cherish, not a passing rambler

tumbling down the desert breeze.

Never mind we sat, your arm in mine,

beneath the orange-blossom skies

Forget we lingered as the sunset lined

your upturned face with gold

Forget how lilac shadows swept the hills

bade jasmine flowers unfold

to bathe us in their sweetness

as our small talk settled into sighs.

Never mind that we lay side by side

as seaside night turned bright and cold

Forget we fell into the well of stars

and, on the still-warm sand

soared through uncharted nebulae

in silence, 'til you found my hand

and pressed it to your heart

and pledged together we'd grow old.

Never mind our past

our precious moments shape us as we stand

but know however long the journey

you remain my promised land.

_The core of the traditional liberal arts education is a continuous breath-snatching immersion in the swells and troughs of human experience (symbolically encapsulated in that 45-minute water-treading exercise required to graduate), mostly through the mechanism of reading. So much reading, in fact, that one may find the orbit of one's later life perturbed by what one_ hasn't _read._

### War & Peace

by Christopher Askew

I've never read _War and Peace_.

In my youth it was just too long a journey for a dyslectic

to embark on. Even after I made friends with words

and spent all spare hours in books, my reluctance lingered.

I had seen _Dr. Zhivago_. I sat through _The Cherry Orchard_.

Mostly awake. With those and nesting dolls and borscht,

I figured I knew everything I needed to know about Russia.

In time I confessed this to my Significant Other.

Imagine my lack of surprise when on my next birthday

she gave me a beautiful leather-bound copy - gold embossed,

supple calfskin, thin paper like they use in Bibles. Still

thick as a cinder block.

Inscribed on the flyleaf in a flowing hand, "To my darling

daughter: on your sixteenth birthday, more about the human

condition than I hope you will ever need to know. Love, Dad."

(Not me. I'm nobody's daughter and way past sixteen.

The S.O. is cultured but cheap.)

I made a real effort to read it. On planes, in waiting rooms.

Always with me. Vacations, business trips. (But not the beach

or the bath - S.O. forbid! I left it on the coffee table to

impress friends until it was used as a coaster once too often.)

With all that opportunity, I got up to maybe page twelve.

I didn't want to not read it, but the concatenation of negatives

confounded even my shrink, who told me unequivocally that

had I spent half the time reading that I spent worrying about

not reading, I would have nothing to worry about.

Eventually the S.O. took this failure as a referendum on our

relationship and left with a ski instructor, a handsome hunk

without a reflective bone in his chiseled body.

So here I am, slumped in my chair, awash in defeat, my feet up

on an impressive gold-embossed supple-calfskin Bible-paper

footstool containing wisdom about the human condition

I'd hoped I'd never need to know.

### The Gift of the Spider Woman

by Christopher Askew

It was Jonathan's fault.

Spring of junior year, someone's graduating-senior music-major friend Jonathan – someone said at dinner – wanted to leave a mark.

Someone thought Jonathan wanted to make a farewell gesture, to depart bearing his added riches in trvst in one hand and with the other waving a back-handed appreciation of all that was worthy and wonderful about Pomona and the Music Department of Fruits and Nuts. Someone elicited aid.

**This was in Oldenborg,** the newly minted a-mighty-fortress-is-our-god center for international (and inter-gender-al) studies. The food was good, the table round, and the company redefining by example the depth and scope of the term nerd with every utterance. From between bouts of banter and straw-wrapper air-hockey emerged a venue – Little Bridges, unanimously agreed on as the only appropriately mythopoeic site – and a raw grand geste – spanning the balcony gap. Someone was pleased.

Remember that thing you do with a ruler, graph paper and too much time on your hands, making a parabolic curve out of straight lines drawn between successive points on the X and Y axes? Successive points not unlike the balusters in Little Bridges' balcony rails? You could draw the lines using rope. Dramatic, but heavy. Expensive. You'd need a lot. Or clothesline. String. Less expensive, but still. Thread. Black thread would be cheap, easy to handle, and mysterious.

**Someone went and got measurements.** Someone else got the graph paper, marked the points, drew the lines. Everyone looked at the result and went, "Hmmm."

Look at that picture of the straight-line parabolic curve you just Googled. Simple. Elegant. Restrained. Compact. Even doubled, it would leave so much of the actual space across the hall un-spanned. For all its iconic beauty, it was not the exuberant gesture we had been imagining.

Someone wondered why didn't we just connect every post to every other post? Someone was eyed sternly. Someone shrugged. Someone else did the math, "About seven miles of thread." Everyone grimaced. "About 30 jumbo spools." Everyone breathed. Someone else said, "Let's do it." So we did.

Next day someone arranged for Jonathan to open Little Bridges that evening to practice on the stage piano and, coincidentally, let us in. Someone else went out and bought the thread. Everyone gathered in the balcony after dinner and began the work.

We weren't really going to connect every post with every other post. That would be unnecessarily redundant, someone was practical enough to realize. Connecting every post on each long side to every post on the other two sides should do it. It did.

**We worked in pairs.** Someone tied a thread to the baluster closest to the stage on one long side and walked, thumb on spool on pencil, unrolling thread and keeping tension, along the rail to meet someone else at the crossing, who ran the spool around the post nearest the near corner (twice, to maintain that tension) and handed it back to the first person, who took it back to the first post, wrapped it around twice and walked it back to the second person, who wrapped it around the second post from the corner, handed it back and so on, with the first person always wrapping around the first post and the second person working their way post-by-post across the balcony and up the other side to the post nearest the stage. From there the thread would be trotted back around to the second post from the stage on the original side and the team would repeat the process, again and again for each post on that side. Meanwhile, a second team wove a mirror image, starting from the post nearest the stage on the other long side. Others of the company provided guidance, sparkling repartee, relief and occasional snacks.

It was a long night. Jonathan practiced mightily. Campus security checked in a couple of times, and the mice scurried. Eventually Jonathan ran out of steam and plausible deniability and left, and with him the light. Not a problem – we were thoroughly practiced at working by feel in the dark by this time in our college careers, and working with black thread is a by-feel exercise at the best of times. The operation concluded smoothly, with a minimum of drops, snags, breaks, lost threads, or harsh words, and we left. Someone grumbled, sleepily. A byproduct of working in the dark with black thread was that we had no idea what the finished product looked like.

We found out next day at choir practice. It was invisible.

Fresh new clean black thread is really black. By itself, it doesn't interact much with light. If you're not looking for it, it does little to give itself away. Nobody was looking for it, so nobody saw it. Coming in out of the Southern California sun, even those of us who knew at least in theory what we were looking for could barely make it out. At first.

There is a seminal experience in the life of the searching mind that occurs when an idea connects with another idea and starts a resonance that spreads from oh yeah to then this and if that until a whole universe of yes is spread out before your inner eye, vast, intricate, overwhelming in its limitless possibility. This was like that.

As our eyes grew accustomed to the hall's light and we could begin to perceive distinctions between shadows, sections of pattern appeared Cheshire-like in the space above the seats until the whole web snapped into view, vast, intricate and overwhelming.

**Not what we had expected.** Not a graph-paper drawing, but a surface at play in the light: lines and spaces, an etching in air so thin as to seem two-dimensional, like the water's surface from underneath. Unanticipated asymmetries in baluster width and placement had kept the pattern from rigid mathematical precision and gave it a surprising lilt of theme and variation – certainly appropriate to the venue. The eye followed, a line here, an interchange there, world lines of a diverse community in motion. So much movement in something so perfectly still. We'd caught the exuberance.

"Holy --!" someone started to say. "Oh yeah," said someone else.

After that, watching people discover the web was like watching freshmen discover the mountains right there all the time on the first clear day in November. Sitting in the balcony, attending to the concert, oblivious until a plane someone made out of their program flew out and down and down and stopped in mid-air. Then their vision would shift and the universe of yes spread out before them.

**We built better than we knew.** Though concocted quickly and out of expediency, the back-and-forth cross-over process, the gift of the Spider Woman, wove a strong gossamer fabric that maintained its integrity for many months despite accumulations of dust and concert programs. Music Department head Bill Russell swore it helped the acoustics of the hall, and had it left up until it could no longer support itself, well into the following year. And the image of that mystical plane of myriad intersecting lifeways floating in that hallowed space will last lifetimes.

Jonathan left his mark.

**Pleased, someone suggested next time** we put luminous paint on the thread. And the laundry room on the Chinese side of the Oldenborg basement might be a good place to work....

An age-pertinent illustration from Christopher Askew

A Transfer's Tale

by Bethami Auerbach

**So there I was,** in the reception area at Anna May Wig Hall, September 1967, a new sophomore transferring in. The important stuff first, my Smith-Corona electric typewriter and my record player with snap-out stereo speakers, all the rest outside in my Dodge Dart with its generous trunk space and goofy push-button automatic transmission. Pomona, better late than never. But not quite yet – there's history.

Pomona had winked onto my radar screen in junior high, when its standout team knocked out five competing colleges in 1961 to retire as undefeated champs of G.E. College Bowl. I watched College Bowl to play along and, incidentally, to check out the schools that fielded teams. The Pomona team was agile, fast, and multi-talented without seeming, to my twelve-year-old sensibility, dorky or obnoxious. (That it included no girls apparently didn't bother me.)

Thanks to its running the College Bowl table, and its appealing size, Pomona had stuck in my mind when the time came to apply to colleges. Its cachet dimmed, however, next to the bright shiny object that was UC Santa Cruz. The school of the hour in the mid-'60s. Newly opened (some of us would live in trailers), innovative, free-form. Nestled in a hilly woodland yet minutes from the ocean. A world apart from urban L.A. My best friend was sold; who wasn't? That was that. I didn't apply anywhere else.

By the second quarter of freshman year at UCSC's Stevenson College, I felt – in the words of Miss Clavel from Madeline – that "something is not right." Untethered, I dipped into a grab bag of class offerings, from Shakespeare's plays to economics to Latin American literature to calculus and physics. (What the heck was I doing in those last two?) The physics professor took us down to the amusement park by the beach and put us on the ride that demonstrated centrifugal force. The queasy sensation after getting off that ride mirrored my academic trajectory. No direction home, a complete unknown. Where would I spin off next? Would this patchwork cohere into anything?

**More than that,** I didn't quite fit in. I was over my head and hadn't seen it coming. Back at Fairfax High School in West Hollywood, we called our crowd the Pseudo Gang, and that tongue-in-cheek tag summed it up. Smart, but not suck-ups; marched with Student SANE to ban the bomb and later sat in for equality; smoked pot up at the Observatory to make the most of the view; took our guitars to hootenannies, Dylan our lodestar. All this, along with my new rawhide jeans and cowboy boots, should have positioned me for Santa Cruz. It didn't.

I never could plug into what was creative or lively there. To my antennae, many kids emanated a way-cooler-than-you air or a hard, jaded edge. There were a lot of drugs, and not just pot or hash. Probably I was too young, just seventeen when freshman year began and shy with strangers. It was '67's summer of love, a bit curdled. Maybe I'd always be too young for that scene. We giggled through an afternoon when the local mom of a classmate opened her kitchen so several of us could bake up banana skins in her oven, a mellow-yellow letdown.

But my skin crawled whenever one swaggering girl in that group, pale-eyed and tough as a walnut, would toss out an escapade from her time (indeterminate) on the bus with the Merry Pranksters. One day at the breakfast table she shared details about her vaginal warts, seemingly connected to something deeply Prankster. Not in seventy years have I heard anyone else mention vaginal warts. Luckily, I still don't know what they are.

Time to chart a course correction. The fraught process of inventing itself long past, Pomona, jumped back to mind. The only downside was Claremont's proximity to L.A.; Santa Cruz was a comfortable 350-mile buffer from home and my parents. My application went in, followed by one campus visit and a meeting with Dean Walton that spring, all now hazy.

**So there I'd landed,** Anna May Wig Hall, September 1967, but whoosh, it looked like 1961. Would I see the College Bowl team in their narrow ties walking along Bonita Avenue? Recollection has a way of exaggerating, but it seemed like every Wig resident passing by that afternoon wore a blouse with a Peter Pan collar, accented by a circle pin. And for good measure, a couple of girls in pastel sweater-and-shell twinsets. Freak out! As a certain home-town Claremont guy might have said.

And how did I look to the Wig-ites in my faded jeans and the leather sandals handmade by a Santa Cruz "cordwainer"? After settling in, I spotted a bit more variety among the residents, but the tone of the place was Throwback City. (If I've offended any former denizens, or the admirable Mrs. Wig, I apologize.) I supposed that – freshmen and other unwitting transfer students aside – many girls had chosen to live here precisely for that throwback ambience, not simply because the dorm was relatively modern, non-funky, and tidy. How did Jean Walton, from our brief interview, ever get the idea that Wig Hall and I were a match? I didn't wear gloves to our meeting.

Had I screwed up, boomeranged too far to the other end of the spectrum, in opting for Pomona? It was one thing to feel too young and tender for Santa Cruz; something else to feel like too counter-culture for Pomona, where I'd now cast my lot. A cruel joke? I couldn't pull up stakes again. Wig residents ate their meals in the Harwood dining room, where more girls did look like 1967. But they sat in their own little clusters, some of them sprouted from the sponsor groups that had played a formative role in freshman life before I got there, bonded cub packs checking out the new terrain.

Transfers had to learn from scratch who their classmates were; each of us was handed, and pictured in, the Class of '71 LookBook only. Yes, I'd been assigned a Class of '70 roommate. We didn't dislike or annoy one another, but we had nothing in common and didn't become friends. I also was assigned a likeable senior "big sister," but hardly enough to close the gap. Not enough either was the interestingly different senior, all ennui in a black turtleneck, who rotated onto duty at Wig's front desk. Once she held out a handwritten page of verse to a guy who leaned in expectantly. With aplomb she told him, "That's _bad_ e.e. cummings, and e.e. cummings is bad."

**Classes that first semester** gave me a better sense of what Pomona could offer, even if I still was finding my academic way. "Statistics for Social Scientists" with Mr. Bentley, four mornings a week at 8 am, got me out of bed, amazingly, with real enthusiasm. Monsieur Pronko, for beginning French, may have been the most talented teacher I had at Pomona – a high bar. I took four more classes with him. Mr. Frazer, for creative writing, was distressed when I later went to law school ("I could have made an artist out of you"), but became a mentor and ally for the rest of his life. My fish-out-of-water sensation every time I walked into Wig Hall remained, though, and a lonely feeling it was.

For a couple of months that semester I went out with a senior who lived off-campus. An escape from the never-never land of Peter Pan collars. It also left me with an enduring mental snapshot of the door to the men's room in the Wig lobby. Instead of an "M" or a shape in pants, the indicator was a top hat and gloves – or was it a walking stick? Passé before Wig Hall even opened. Sometimes, before we left, the senior would swing through that men's room door and emerge with a couple of rolls of toilet paper tucked inside his jacket. We would laugh about the anachronism that was Wig Hall, and I was comforted to know that it wasn't just me.

It was up to me, though, to do something about it so that my expectations and Pomona – and Pomona and I – could better mesh. Squirming through a second semester in Wig was out. On a small campus, and with what I'd learned about myself, the bread-crumb trail led easily to Oldenborg, a modern fortress of a dorm built only a few years after Wig, but light-years fresher in its vibe. Not only because it was coed with mostly single rooms but because of its mission, to enhance both foreign language learning and Pomona's challenging international relations program, which was beginning to reel me in. Now that I was studying French, living in Oldenborg's Spanish section offered the chance to keep my Spanish alive, as did the lunchtime language conversation tables.

Oldenborg was diverse almost by its nature and certainly when compared with Wig. Hip kids and oddballs; left-leaners and the occasional straight-arrow young conservative; kids who dreamed of lives abroad; kids hungry to understand the "isms" that drove and swayed international politics. Oldenborg offered native-speaker graduate student residents, colloquia on issues of the day, and field trips to restaurants matching its babel of languages. With its mix of sophomores, juniors and seniors, one's friends, study-mates, boyfriends, and girlfriends drew from a pool that was not only horizontal but vertical -- younger and older. Pomona became much more piquant and also more comfortable almost as soon as I moved in. It was becoming the Pomona I was looking for.

Oldenborg, Hotbed of Irony, 1968

Photograph by Bethami Auerbach

Hanging out in the Spanish section lounge or at the round table with newspapers and magazines in the front common area could end up in an intriguing exchange. A fun and clever bunch gathered by the t.v. set to watch Laugh-In together. The arid isolation of Wig was gone. Peggy Brock Cacciamatta, '71 – we shared a connecting bathroom – became a lifelong friend. There also came friendships with fellow Class of '70 transfers who, like me, had migrated to Oldenborg – Peter Phillips, Phil Doughty, and Danilo Cacciamatta among them. Phil (now living in Sicily) dreamed of walking in Antonioni's footsteps, and he made me a movie star – one of six Claremont students he cast in his senior project film in the roles of three couples. I played the rejected girl who catalyzed the action; whatever that implied, I glowed at the Garrison Theater premiere.

Oldenborg students could get an international zing without leaving Southern California. With my then-boyfriend Chris Jones, an Asian Studies major, I went with the Chinese section for an exotic meal in L.A., no sweet-and-sour gunk. A few days later, I opened the door of my Dart in the student lot to find a frozen duck thawing in the front seat; once it was prepped and marinated, my hair dryer became a cook's tool, trained on where the duck hung in Oldenborg's residents' kitchen. There we took our best shot at replicating the Peking extravaganza served downtown. Another time, Chris and I accompanied Dr. Housley, Oldenborg's director, to Ontario Airport to collect a new graduate resident arriving fresh from roiling 1968 Czechoslovakia. A coterie of Hells Angels chose that time to congregate at the airport, and Chris managed it so that the new arrival was spared a disorienting mega-dose of culture shock.

Beth Demonstrating Radical Chic, 1968

Photograph courtesy of Jim McCallum

I'd moved into Oldenborg the same spring '68 semester that I was sold on IR by Mr. Armacost, a sage, self-assured, and utterly absorbing lecturer (and about to leave Pomona for a career in government and diplomacy). National rupture, international upheaval and the Vietnam war snaked through our lives, and it felt like a riveting peek behind the curtain when Armacost weighed in as events unfolded.

Fast-forward: in 2013, while touring what was once a mass bomb shelter in former West Berlin, I recalled his pronouncement from 45 years before: "If a third world war comes, it will start over Berlin." Well, no one hits them all, and he did hit it right in fueling my enduring curiosity. Even if my 2020 brain is stuck in 20th century Europe while this runaway train of unfolding political history veers all over the map.

**2020. Looking back,** what else did I miss out on, or luck out of, as a transfer student?

No creepy weighing-and-measuring ritual. Never knew it existed until later.

No Class of '70 freshmen baring their unhappy souls en masse to Dean Walton. Still curious about that.

No Western Civ. My lame excuse for what I don't know once time spirals back before the French Revolution.

No swim test, until there was. Another freshman ritual that the gate-keepers, in my case, had overlooked. I got a call in my room the week before graduation. "I'll be at the pool in ten minutes," I said. It was one of those socked-in late spring mornings, not bathing suit weather. I jumped in the water, cleared the last hurdle, and finally caught up with my class.

About the author

Bethami Auerbach is an environmental lawyer in Washington, DC, living in Falls Church, Virginia, with her husband and their dog and cats. Despite Pomona's best efforts to take the fun out of swimming, Beth has been a lap-swimmer for over 40 years. Twenty years ago she realized her dream of a backyard pool. On dry land, she still gets into Oldenborg mode and is taking intermediate Spanish conversation – usually behind in her homework. Prompted by overseas trips, she dives back into one language or another – Spanish, French, German (her long-lost first language), Italian (a bridge too far), or else expands on her dozen words of Catalan. More of all that when she retires.

Amanda Dabbles in Danish

by Roxanne Bartlett

oh come on

it can't be that hard

after all

I know other languages

Latin and French

conversational Russian

two years of Spanish

a smattering of Sanskrit

why shouldn't I try

to pick up some Danish

got a couple of weeks

until they arrive

three guests from Roskilde

two of them strangers

here on vacation

staying with me

for five full days

I'll make them feel welcome

with phrases in Danish

I know it's crazy

to start this so late

but I'm awfully good

languages come to me

I plug them in

and presto they work

folks understand

it's a bit like magic

just like a puzzle

swiftly solved

I'm in the swim

nearby university

boasts a bookstore

I drive there and park

browse the aisles

find the section

Scandinavian languages

I buy a dictionary

phrasebook and text

complete with CD

then I'm off for home

begin my regime

drink lots of coffee

spend hours on end

listening to words

cramming them fast

into my memory

moving my lips

my tongue and my mouth

the trouble's the sounds

they're caught in the throat

hard to distinguish

I imitate them

approximate them

not really sure

I've got the hang

I think oh well

this all will jell

if I just press on

so for day upon day

I persevere

learn all the usual

turns of phrase

hello and goodbye

how to get on a train

purchase a paper

ask for directions

order a meal

be polite

requesting a room

now the moment arrives

to head to the airport

and meet my guests

they'll be renting a car

so I take the bus

go straight to baggage claim

wait an hour

suddenly

bedraggled travelers

flood the room

I recognize

my dear friend Hanne

it's been twenty years

but she looks like herself

we rush together

we hug and she turns

introduces the others

husband Lars

and companion Bitten

they all speak English

exhausted yet cheerful

they say it's been seventeen

hours on the plane

stranded in Iceland

we grab the bags

heavy and cumbersome

we lug and talk

their car rental's ready

we pile inside

I'm in the back

with Bitten beside me

I'm giving directions

they're speaking Danish

I'm completely at sea

can't comprehend

this stream of sound

I decide to trot out

a couple of phrases

I say them to Bitten

she eyes me blankly

asks what do I mean

I explain in English

she gets it now

says I said something else

my days of study

gone for naught

we arrive at the house

and troop inside

I dredge my brain

for a bright remark

ask Bitten in Danish

if she'd like a glass

of good red wine

her eyes light up

she shouts

please now

About the author

A four-year participant in Oldenborg and Olney language lunches, I lived at Oldenborg for two years, and was forever honed by the experience.

We Danced

by Tina Blair

We danced at Pomona

when the Singing Rabbi

came with joyful guitar;

around the Coop fountain we circled

hands held, high and low,

around and around

up and down steps,

weaving through the campus,

blessed by the gentle winter light.

We danced at Pomona

in the Oldenborg lounges

when studies stopped late

windows and doors shut tight

holding in the smells of incense and pot

moving to the Beatles, the Stones and the Doors –

"People are strange when you're a stranger...."

Music haunted the dark.

We danced at Pomona

in teach-ins and sit-ins

in meetings with our demands

for equal hours for women

for a Black Studies Center

in marches through the streets

against the war –

for what are all these

but dances for justice and peace?

### We Mourned

by Tina Blair

Shock, grief, guilt and anger –

We mourned when King was killed;

Peaceful resistance lost with a shot;

We white students huddled in our dorms;

Riots in the streets of L.A.

Shock, grief, fear and anger –

We mourned the student protestors killed by the National Guard –

First Kent State; then Jackson State;

Violent demonstrations and student strikes,

Universities shut down.*

Shock, grief, disbelief and anger –

We mourned when Robert Kennedy was shot

In our own backyard;

Hope silenced, history changed;

Nixon will win again in '72.

________

*Governor Ronald Reagan closed the California universities in light of all the student strikes, calling students "communists." We had plans to shut down Pomona as well, but our savvy new President, David Alexander, announced that Governor Reagan had asked him to close our college and that he had refused. We, of course, then joined in resisting Reagan by keeping the college open. Many of us, however, did wear black armbands over our graduation robes.

### The Gift of Being Me

by Christine (Tina) Blair

**I call myself a "foreign service brat,"** or what is known nowadays as a "third culture kid" (TCK). TCKs are children raised in foreign countries not as immigrants but as citizens of the parents' nation, while living as expatriates in other countries. These parents often work for their nation's military or diplomatic corps, as international business managers or as missionaries. My father was an American diplomat; I was born in Morocco and grew up in Italy, India and France, with only a few scattered months and years in the United States.

For us TCKs, reentry into our home country is an enormously difficult transition. We are now supposedly home, but "home" is a new world for us. We are expected to know the rules (often unspoken), to display appropriate behavior, to be comfortable with culturally-specific creations such as money, patriotic songs, clothing, etc. And yet all of these are new to us. We even often speak our native language with a slight accent, setting us apart. We find ourselves to be awkward, uncomfortable, and often frowned upon, disdained or, when young, teased. We learn not to share our own experiences, because they are of other countries, and we are accused of flaunting our international travels. And so we find ourselves silenced, hiding who we really are.

This reentry experience, which I had had twice by the time I entered Pomona, was also my experience. My return to the United States in 11th grade was difficult for all the reasons just cited. My reentry was aggravated by the fact that I was an excellent student, in part due to my demanding years in a French lycée. Girls in the mid 1960s were not supposed to be "brains." I learned to keep quiet, for the most part (I was fortunate and found a couple of expats who became good friends).

**The year we were admitted to Pomona,** the college made an important admissions decision, welcoming a sizable number of international and TCK students. Janet was the first one I met, down the hall in Harwood. She had been living in Ankara, Turkey. "Oh," I said, "my best friend in Delhi went to Ankara! Do you know Peggy?" And, so I learned that my American friend from India had become her best friend in Turkey. That was the beginning of other TCK discoveries, most notably Terry from Korea who knew my friends from India; their father had become the American ambassador to Korea after his tenure in Delhi. And there was Louise, who had lived in Vietnam and then Thailand and spoke both languages. She taught me some Thai expressions before I left to visit my parents in Bangkok over Christmas.

There were many others – as a group we circled the world, often only one connection away from each other. We could share our stories of travel and of culture shock, our love of exploration, our ambivalence about being "home" in the United States. In addition, we were supported by, and were support to, the international students. In fact, my frosh year roommate was Marianne, from the Philippines, a joyful pairing for two out-of-country women.

**I also discovered that** it was acceptable to be smart and to study hard. It was not only okay, it was expected. I liked that. I also liked the required balance of study and exercise – frosh were required to take two physical education courses each semester. Ironically, I learned to ice skate in southern California. I took modern dance; I swam. And I learned to take breaks, sit in the sun, backpack, and go to concerts at Little and Big Bridges. I could integrate a smart internationally-shaped mind with a healthy active body, my TCK self with American culture. I could become truly me.

About the author

The Rev. Dr. Tina Blair is a retired Presbyterian minister, author and professor in the field of Practical Theology and feminist studies. She taught in Texas and California, where she has also been Director of Doctor of Ministry programs. She returned to her roots as an expat when she served as a pastor at the American Church in Paris, France.

The Tree and Bush

Henry Breithaupt

**Those who took History 1** remember the large auditorium lectures by several History Department faculty, coupled, as they were, with small section meetings during the semester with one faculty person. My advisor (and in many ways a "life coach") Dr. Burdette Poland was a historian of the French Revolution. Dr.Vincent Learnihan (known to some as Vince the Prince) was a medievalist with a tendency to defend the Roman Catholic Church.

During his lecture on the French Revolution, Dr. Poland described the bloodshed during the Terror period in the Revolution. He then noted that Dr. Learnihan had inquired of him as to the comparison of lost lives during the Terror as compared with the Roman Catholic Inquisition. Dr. Poland reported a statistic as to blood shed during the Terror, but noted that "this blood was shed to water the Tree of Liberty."

In one of his lectures, Dr. Learnihan reported this colloquy between colleagues as to the loss of life and his knowledge of Dr. Poland's views about the watering of a certain tree. Then, somewhat scowling at the assembled students, he said, dismissively: "Tree of Liberty? What about the Bush of Faith."

**We were blessed with great professors.** Their memories and particular encounters still inform my life.

About the author

Following graduation, I had a brief flirtation at Yale with Clio, the muse of history. I forsook her for law school at the University of Oregon. Then law practice in Portland for 26 years and 17 years as the judge of the Oregon Tax Court. One wife, three children and, so far, two grandchildren have added to the fun.

My Pomona College Experience

by Tim Burrell

**The most important thing** I learned from Pomona College occurred before I was admitted. I met with Bill Wheaton, the Director of Admissions. I was a Junior in high school and he said "Why don't you apply to be admitted to Pomona College?" I said "That's impossible, I am only a Junior and could not be admitted." He said "You should not let little things stand in your way." That phrase has been ringing in my ears ever since, whenever there is something impossible. I did not know that every fourth year he was allowed to admit whoever he wanted to create a more interesting student body. Students like me are referred to as Wheaton's follies. He checked with people he knew at my high school and Chadwick School, where I went for 10 years, and admitted me. For the rest of my life, I have realized that something is impossible only because no one else has solved it. He taught me to do real estate developments and deals that were impossible, and it was supposed to be impossible for me as a single attorney to represent the Hacienda Heights neighborhood and win an environmental law suit against the City of Whittier and a major developer.

If school had started a couple weeks earlier, I would have been 16 years old. The first day of school, I was like a puppy trying to meet and greet everyone. Late in the afternoon, Si Macy was the last of our sponsor group to arrive. He introduced himself, opened the door to his room across the hall from mine, threw his suitcase on the floor, fell face first on the bed and fell asleep. Later, it was time to go to dinner and a meeting to start our college life, so I thought I should wake him up. That was not possible, as his friends had thrown a going away party all night the night before. He became one of my best friends, the best man at my wedding and we built houses together. He taught me that you do not have "to color inside the lines."

Water polo was a major part of my college experience. My sponsor, John Howard, was a star on the team and my hero, so I became a water polo player, a sponsor and got married on campus, just like him. I was the college's first four year letterman in water polo, although I got on the varsity my first year by dumb luck. My mother did not want me to play sports my first year, and wanted me to concentrate on school, so I did not go to the early practices. John Howard convinced me to try out. We had one game where Coach Platt had to pick the varsity, I had a lucky game and he picked me. I did not deserve varsity status, as John McElwrath was a better player.

**My sponsor group was amazing.** We had a moment of exuberance when we took the portrait of Anna May Wig that hung in Wig Hall. Several of us were hanging around in the lobby when "Crazy Al" Herlands took the portrait off the wall and we passed it around. When no one said anything, we walked out with it. One of our group had relatives who lived in Claremont, so we hid it in their attic. We wanted to trade the return of the portrait for allowing the Pomona women to have a much later curfew, clearly a quid pro quo. We appointed our English major member to create a ransom note made from clippings from magazines & newspapers as we thought we were clever to avoid any handwriting. Al Herlands recently sent me a picture of it and with the benefit of my advanced age I can say with certainty that it is the world's worst ransom note.

"Cluck Cluck. I could hit it big with beavers but we're willing to lose this distinctive picture if you promise every girl a 3 a.m this Saturday night (December 10th). The answer must be made public Friday. Another inside job from dad's kids. Your pillow won't talk. You start out good you end up good."

(Photographer Unknown)

This event created a furor where even the Board of Trustees met to consider our demands. They rejected our proposal, saying that it would set a precedent that whenever someone wanted to have a late date night they would do something like this. Anna May Wig was having some medical issues, so we had to come up with another proposal to give the picture back. Leslie (Taylor) Howard was John Howard's magnificent girlfriend (later his wife), and she had baked him a green cake. Our nickname for John Howard was Dad. We were pestering John and Leslie, so John said there was a green cake in Dad's room. We thought he was trying to get rid of us to be alone with Leslie, but we discovered an actual green cake, which we devoured. After that, whenever one of us wanted to get some alone time with a date, we said there was a green cake in Dad's room.

So, we said that we would trade the portrait for a green cake. You can tell we were not experienced thugs, as anyone who knew this story would know who had the portrait. Again, the Administration rejected our offer. However, the women of Wig were better negotiators than the Administration. They baked a green cake and put out the word that it was sitting on the counter in the foyer of Wig, ready for the exchange.

So, we had a planning session. How do we exchange the portrait without getting caught? We would turn off the lights in the Wig foyer at the circuit breakers so no one could see us, dash in with the portrait wrapped in gift paper, hang it on the wall, grab the cake and drive off in a borrowed Volkswagen with the license plates obscured by wrapping paper. Anyone on campus would know this Volkswagen so the obscured plates seem humorous now. This pathetic plan does not rise to the level of Sophomoric, which is appropriate as we were only Freshmen.

I was part of the team to turn off the lights. We needed to let the "run in and run out" part of the team know when the lights were off, so we had Al Herlands talking with the woman on the front desk, saying things like "Gee, the lights just went off up here, did they go off down there?" He was supposed to signal the "run in and run out" team when they went off. I did not want to flip all the circuit breakers and turn off the entire dorm, so I flipped what I thought were the right ones, and the lights in the lobby stayed on. The woman at the front desk kept saying, no the lights are still on down here. After several more attempts at turning off the lights, we just went for it. Al remembers that we had one of our members dressed in a Kimono with a bag over his head to come in with the portrait. We hung the painting, grabbed the cake and piled into the Volkswagen. Si Macy was an amazing driver, so he sped us away with our ill-gotten gains. There is a French saying that forbidden fruit tastes sweeter, and the cake was delightfully sweet. We never were caught for this college prank, which I attribute to a benevolent approach by the administration.

**Pomona taught me** how to be the "Prince of the Last Minute." Freshman year is always exciting. My Sophomore year, I was roommates with Bob Filbey, the water polo goalie and the quintessential free spirit, which was delightfully distracting. My Junior year, I was a sponsor which took a lot of time. I started my Senior year living with Al Herlands and Ted Gleason, then got married. So, I studied at the last minute, yet got good grades. This helped me in Law School, as I ran a sewing machine business to pay my way through school, and studied at the last minute. As a trial lawyer, I was able to deal with all the last minute issues thanks to the Pomona training. I just passed the test to become a General Contractor, normally a long process, using the Pomona technique of highlighting 26 books to get it done in a couple months.

My major in Psychology was an obvious choice, as I love to figure out what makes people tick. Professor Gabriel was my favorite, as he taught me how to create experiments that meant something. Si Macy and I did a senior thesis that is still top secret, but my favorite was developing Operant Conditioning of Autonomic Nervous System reactions, where you can train people to raise or lower their blood pressure.

My wife, Judy and I loved playing with Si and Cecilia Macy at their house in Palmer Canyon, nestled in the woods next to a stream. Sigma Tau's cabin in the hills was amazing, and I took too many drunk students on winding roads and across small streams in my Volkswagon Bus, the one with the flowered curtains. On occasion, I hauled the keg to and from the party, with the passengers drinking all the way down the hill. Studies show that the teenage brain is not fully developed and this proves it. The Friday Kegs in the Wash were a great way to start a weekend, enjoying friends in the warm California sun in that garden setting.

Sigma Tau required that we pledges take all the women to class one Saturday morning. True to my last minute habits, we did not have any transportation. So, we borrowed a farmer's wagon, fixed it to work with my VW Bus and "Crazy Al" Herlands and I had to sleep on the wagon next to Big Bridges Auditorium to protect it. Talking all night cemented our friendship. Amazingly, some women students were brave enough to ride on the bus-towed wagon and we were lucky that the transportation worked without any problem.

**Al Herlands helped me** get into law school as he and I took the LSAT together our Senior year. It was so hard that when we broke for lunch at our house, Al convinced me that we should have a beer. It was so good, we had another for dessert. Relaxing must have been what I needed as my high percentile performance got me into UCLA Law School as the test score was better than my grades.

My best day at Pomona was December 20, 1969. Judy and I were married in Little Bridges Hall of Music under two Christmas trees that we decorated with friends that morning. Dave Schlim, my water polo buddy, a hulk of a strong man surprised us when we finished decorating the hall. He played the Theme from Romeo and Juliet on the piano for us. I knew Dave could pound our water polo opponents, but I did not know he could play piano. Judy and I just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. We have two children, Laurie and Jeff, who each attended Pomona, and six grandchildren.

Graduation day had huge emotional swings. Just before the ceremony, Al Herlands told me Ted Gleason, our roommate and sponsor group member, had died from cancer. I met Ted the first day of school and he departed on the last day. I swung from that low to a high when Tom and Jenny Tanner shared a secret with me that they had just been married, as they wanted Jenny's name to be Tanner on her diploma. Since I was married, they trusted me to keep the secret which made me feel great. I still wish I had taken Al up on his offer to switch places with him, so that he would walk across the stage in my place and I would take his.

**Pomona taught me to do the impossible,** showed me how to be the "Prince of the Last Moment" and helped me marry my elementary school sweetheart. Thank you.

About the author

Tim Burrell was born in Santa Monica, California, a fifth generation Californian, and grew up in Palos Verdes, outside of Los Angeles. He attended Chadwick School and Robert Louis Stevenson School, and was admitted to Pomona College as a high school junior. Tim went to UCLA Law School and passed the California Bar in 1973. In 1975, he joined the family construction company, Burrell, Ltd, and started his own firm, Burrell Realty. He has written two books on real estate, speaks at national real estate conventions, and teaches continuing education classes.

Pomona Memories

By Steven Clarke

**I have learned over the years** how diverse our individual experiences at Pomona were. Even at a place as small as Pomona, there was apparently lots of room for different views of the college and different paths to follow. So for what it is worth here are some of the experiences and remembrances that make up many of the stories I tell my children. Maybe you shared some of them, maybe you didn't!

**In the beginning.** A few mild shocks in my first semester at Pomona. The first one came immediately after arrival on campus. I suppose it was my fault for not checking things out more carefully, but I didn't realize that "coeducational" Pomona had the living and dining facilities for men and women separated at opposite ends of the campus – keeping us as far apart as possible when not in class! While I think that it was possible for women to dine at Frary and men to dine at South Campus, I don't recall this happening very often. This wasn't what I thought I had signed up for!

Second mild shock – lots of my classmates, including myself, really had wanted to go elsewhere, particularly Stanford. I remember seeing in the incoming mail in Walker Hall piles of transfer applications to Stanford. How many of them were filled out I don't know, maybe not too many because as the semester went on, the charms of Pomona College became more apparent. But in the period where many of us were disenchanted, some hint of this apparently made its way to the administration. The Dean of Women, Jean Walton, invited our whole class to an evening meeting in what I recall may have been the common room of Mudd-Blaisdell or Harwood Court. Dean Walton opened the floor for discussion and one after another of us rose to complain. One common complaint was that the students here weren't very interesting. Dean Walton listened for a while, and then summed up the situation. From what she heard, she concluded that maybe the speakers were right – none of us (including the speakers) were in fact interesting people.

That was the third mild shock. Was Dean Walton right that we weren't interesting? I think we each thought – well I am an interesting person – maybe my classmates are too and we aren't just communicating very well! After that, things went much better. Thank you Dean Walton.

**Other memories** from our first year in Claremont. Darcy O'Brien taught a just wonderful "Freshman Seminar" on Wednesday nights comparing American society and literature of the 1920s to the 1930s. I'm still doing the reading (and re-reading) for this class! I never knew this at the time but Darcy was the child of two actors of some renown – George O'Brien and Marguerite Churchill. I later read with interest his 1985 account of his Hollywood childhood "A Way of Life, Like Any Other." Unfortunately, Darcy left Pomona in 1978 to go to the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma where he wrote a book about the Hillside Stranglers of 1977-1978 Los Angeles. He died at the age of 58 of a heart attack!

Freshman year I roomed with Jim McCallum in Walker Hall. On Saturday nights when none of us had dates (OK, all of you classmates who were totally experiencing the sexual revolution at the time can know that this wasn't us and certainly not me!) we expressed ourselves in other ways. One time by deciding to have a hot dog cookout with a little fire on the linoleum tiles of the floor of the room. Somehow we managed to melt the plastic waste basket.

We got turned in by the maid (we had maids then!!??) and I believe the Assistant Dean of Students (Aldrich?) called Jim and me in for questioning. Jim was two to three years older than I was (I skipped a grade and had a November birthday and Jim spent a year in Europe before coming to Pomona) and I was even more immature than that age difference might suggest. So Jim just told me to let him do all of the talking – he told the Dean that he was stressed by his Chemistry homework and was smoking too much and that caused the fire. The Dean fined each of us I think $1.27 for replacing the waste basket.

**But the athletic requirements** were perhaps more troubling. As part of our mandatory freshman first semester gym we had to take part in what seemed to me fairly intimate Greco-Roman wrestling matches (you women can look this up on Google Images except that I think we wore much less clothing). On another dateless Saturday night, a bunch of us were horsing around in the Walker Hall lounge showing off the wrestling moves we learned and I ended up skinning both of my knees on the hard plastic "rug."

When it came time for the official class wrestling tournament, both of my knees were covered with scabs. At first, many of us tried to lose (you got points off for not fighting which helped) so we wouldn't advance to the next round and have to do it again, but then usually the testosterone kicked in and the fight began in earnest. In my case, however, as I was losing, my scabs came off and the blue plastic mat was soon covered with a fair amount of my blood. I think the coaches may have really gotten off seeing that – even better than our mostly naked bodies covered in sweat.

Another part of the gym requirement was a swimming test. That I took and passed. However, in my senior year, I got a notice from the athletic department that I hadn't passed. I went to the gym office to complain, telling them that I had body surfed under the warning flag in Hawaii and certainly could swim. This didn't change anything for them and they told me I still needed to do it and that students were known to show up at graduation with wet hair. But another side of Pomona kicked in – I was told that whenever I swam I could call up the coach and he could watch me and check me off. I never did this and still graduated – presumably with all of the political and social disruption at the time, Pomona decided to pick its battles.

One last high note for my Pomona gym requirement – for my last six required courses I took archery with Mrs. Cawthorne over and over again. I got good enough to have her give me a special bow. She was a marvelous woman.

**My parents** were both brought up in New York City and both let me know clearly that the only culture in the country was on the east coast, mostly notably in NYC. I had originally accepted admission at Cornell, but in August of 1966 they sent me the campus humor magazine. I didn't find it funny – they talked about how miserable life as a freshman was there – you couldn't drive a car until you were a senior, you probably couldn't get a date until then anyway, and as a first year student you lived in a Soviet-style high rise at the bottom of an icy hill. So I called up Pomona and said "Is it too late to change my mind?" They were very nice about it!

But I still had a taste for the east and jumped at the opportunity to go on the Swarthmore exchange spring semester of sophomore year. It was myself and I think seven women from Pomona. Students at Swarthmore were a bit odd – they thought anyone leaving California for the Philadelphia area was insane and at the same time were dismissive of Pomona academically.

I remember being in a physics lab with an experiment from perhaps 1930 and remembering the very advanced physics lab I had the semester before at Pomona. But that experience did get the east coast out of my mind until I left to go to Cambridge for graduate school.

**One last remembrance.** An absolutely terrific and inspiring faculty member in the Chemistry Department, Neal Cornell. He taught a year-long biochemistry course that I took as a junior and sealed my academic fate – I've been teaching biochemistry at UCLA for 41 years. As with many young and highly gifted faculty at Pomona, I think he gave so much to us students that he got burned out. He left several years after we graduated to do research at the National Institutes of Health. It broke my heart when I learned that he died in 2000 at the age of only 62.

About the author

Steven Clarke was a joint Chemistry/Zoology major at Pomona and graduated in 1970. Since 1978, he has been on the faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA, where he teaches and conducts research on the biology and chemistry of the aging process.

Oresteia

by Lisa Gray Fisher

**Through a stunning life lesson,** I learned never to mock the Greek gods.

In the spring of 1968 Pomona's theatre arts department undertook an ambitious production: _The House of Atreus_ , three plays in a new translation of the _Oresteian Trilogy_. We worked all semester in preparation for the performances, most of cast in all three plays as leads or chorus members. Rehearsals were immense, costuming an elaborate artistic endeavor of mask-making and _kathurnae_ construction, and stage blocking a precise choreography. Half the performances were to be held in the Wash on a May Saturday and Sunday afternoon, ending at sunset; the other half, evenings in the theater.

I was one of the Furies in the final play, those formidable deities who chase Orestes into hell. The Wash had a subterranean concrete tunnel that served perfectly as the Underworld from which we Furies emerged through a trap door.

Friday near sunset after we finished our final dress rehearsal in the Wash, I found myself, still fury-clad, standing center stage in adrenalined exhaustion. Between the open gates far upstage rose Athena (Jeff Jones). As the reigning goddess, Athena towered more than twelve feet over us, twice Jeff's natural height thanks to a table and extreme _kathurnae_. I decided, unwisely, to expend my final energy taunting the deity.

"Oh, mighty Athena, goddess over all, oh, mighty-mighty one, long and tall, oh, most mighty Athena..." I was bowing and backing up as I mocked the goddess, fluttering my hands in pseudo-obeisance, when abruptly I fell backwards into hell. Straight down on my head into the concrete tunnel, where I passed out.

**Oh, mighty Athena.** During the opening afternoon show, I lay in the infirmary, rueful and sore, but determined to transcend a chastening concussion. By that evening I was back on stage, performing with newfound reverence for the Greek divinities.

About the author

Since graduating from Pomona in 1970 with a degree in English and Theater Arts, Lisa Gray Fisher has enjoyed a multifaceted career as a teacher, mother, editor, and writer. Her first novel, _Full Body Wag_ , was published in 2015, and her second, _Memory's Fire_ , will be released this spring.

Athena with the Furies and Orestes. May, 1968, the Wash.

(Photographer Unknown)

Elektra offering libations to the gods.

(Photographer Unknown)

The Dynamite Headache

by Joseph Fraizer

Disclaimer:

All persons depicted in this story are fictitious. Events, places, and products portrayed are fictitious or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and is not the intent of the author.

**Memory is a tricky thing.** By now we have all discovered this fact.

During the school year 1968-1969, junior year at Pomona College, I kept a set of notebooks in which I recorded daily events: classes attended – or not, books read, people and places visited, drugs taken, music enjoyed, and so on. Still have them. Most of the entries are brief. Many are cryptic, written in a kind of code that becomes more indecipherable with the passing of time. The events I will describe appear nowhere in these notebooks. No names are named. And even though I have an intriguing account of that long-ago life, this part of it is missing. I do remember the events, but not the names of other participants. And I do remember who brought the dynamite to Claremont.

I did not meet the dynamite-bringer until the beginning of sophomore year. We were not in the same sponsor group. He left Pomona after the first semester for parts unknown; more accurately, un-remembered. He left the dynamite behind, stored in a trunk in the Walker Hall basement.

Why did the dynamite-bringer bring dynamite to Claremont? The stock answer is because he could. I believe his family business involved construction and, sometimes, demolition. Dynamite was accessible, available, and he knew how to handle it. I'm sure he thought there might be prank opportunities where a stick of dynamite would be just the thing. I doubt there was a political motive or agenda, even though you might jump first to that conclusion.

Fortunately, someone in his sponsor group knew about the dynamite, suspected it had been left in storage, and gathered together a few of us to figure out what to do about it. I do not recall how or why I was pulled into the situation. There were no more than five or six of us involved in this nascent scheme.

First problem: Get the trunk out of storage.

Someone in the group – not me – forged the necessary paperwork and jumped through administrative hoops to get the trunk released from storage. Presumably security for student property held in the Walker storeroom was not particularly tight. First problem solved.

Second problem: What to do next.

My dorm room, Clark III, became dynamite-central, perhaps because I did not have a roommate; no additional individuals to read into the enterprise. As expected, the dynamite was in the trunk – 20 sticks of the stuff – along with a couple dozen blasting caps.

**For anyone whose only exposure** to explosives is from Road Runner or Bugs Bunny cartoons, a brief historical and technical note:

Dynamite was invented by Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel, the Prize giver; it was patented in 1867. Nitroglycerin is the active ingredient. Powdered shells, clay, or diatomaceous earth is used as a sorbent. This mixture is packed into cardboard tubes, thus the term sticks. Over time the nitroglycerin can separate out from the sorbent. Dynamite sticks are about 8" long and 1.25" in diameter. The cartoons usually have TNT written on these sticks; TNT is trinitrotoluene, a completely different explosive.

The standard way to detonate dynamite is with a blasting cap. The blasting cap provides the high impact shock required to set off the larger explosive package. They come in many forms. The caps we were dealing with were electrical, small metal cylinders with a length of wire attached at one end.

One of the fundamental rules of explosives handling is keep the dynamite and blasting caps far away from one another. Also, keep the blasting caps away from electrical sources and guard against static electricity.

**The sticks were weeping,** the paper wrapping was slick with nitroglycerin. This stuff was past its pull date. Recommended shelf life for nitroglycerin-based dynamite is one year after manufacture. This dynamite was put into storage in the Fall of 1967. Now it was Fall, 1968. Or perhaps early Winter. It was becoming unstable. Dangerous.

We discussed how best to dispose of the explosive materiel.

Blow it up – certainly the most fun. But not without risks.

Turn it in to the proper authorities – a different kind of risk. Too many questions none of us wanted to answer.

Leave it outside the Claremont Police Department, anonymously. Right. You can imagine the panic that might have triggered. And again, too much risk.

Drive down to Watts, find the Black Panthers, and give it to them. Serious risk and real danger of personal bodily harm. How would you know you were dealing with the Panthers and not an FBI informant or undercover LAPD asset. Why would the Panthers trust us, a bunch of white college boys? But we did discuss it, and we discussed our ultimate responsibility for how it might be used.

In the end, we decided to neutralize the dynamite.

The good news: dynamite is water soluble. Overnight immersion in a wastepaper basket full of water and, hey presto, no more explosives. Someone in the group – again, not me – must have had chemistry expertise. He knew the solution to this problem.

The bad news: electric blasting caps are not water soluble, or anything-else soluble really. Other than blowing them up, there is not much you can do to destroy blasting caps.

**So waste basket in hand,** I went into the bathroom across the hallway and filled the container with water and carried it back to my room. We placed the sweating dynamite tubes in the water with great care. Once they were fully immersed, risk of explosion was much reduced. Water would work the neutralizing magic in relatively short order. Which brought us to...

The third problem: Disposal of the evidence.

I'm sure we discussed a number of alternative solutions, but do not remember any except what we ultimately did. The main problem was the blasting caps. They had to be disposed of in a way that gave maximum assurance they would cause no harm or damage. In the end, we decided the best course of action would be to take the dynamite sticks and the blasting caps up into the mountains and bury them. Two of us volunteered for the task. Why did I volunteer? Probably didn't have class the next day.

We borrowed a car from someone. Got a shovel from somewhere. I emptied the nitroglycerin-water mixture from the waste basket into a toilet, carried the soggy cargo downstairs and out to the car, concealed – somehow. We took the blasting caps, probably packaged however we had found them – in a bag? A box? And we drove off toward Mt. Baldy.

But I am a little ahead of the story.

**With the evening festivities at an end,** discussions complete, decisions made, and explosives almost neutralized, the members of the enterprise went off to their respective rooms. I was left alone with a waste basket full of soaking dynamite sticks and two dozen blasting caps. I probably did some reading; lots of books to read for Contemporary Fiction or one of my philosophy classes.

As the evening progressed, a dull ache started in my head. The pain slowly increased in intensity until it became a sharp, pounding headache. A dynamite headache. Turns out breathing nitroglycerin vapor and handling the explosive can cause this painful reaction. It is a sensation unlike any other I have experienced. A sickening throb. I suppose I slept – eventually. I suppose the ache had abated by the time we headed off to Mt. Baldy. At the time, I did not know the cause. Now that I do know, I would not choose to repeat the experience.

**We took the well-worn road** out of Claremont, my name-forgotten comrade and I, up into the mountains. North on Mills Avenue, across Baseline – then a rural area of orange groves, weeds, rocks, and gravel, now a suburban maze – to Mt. Baldy Road. As we wound our way through the scrub brush and stunted trees of the southern California foothills, we passed many anonymous side canyons leading away from the road. Eventually, we picked one of these canyons, pulled off the pavement onto uneven dirt, and parked the car.

Before opening the trunk and exposing our illegal goods, we looked up and down the road. No one coming. What could be more suspicious than a couple of young guys with a shovel, a waste basket, and some other stuff in the middle of nowhere? That is certainly how we felt as we crossed the road and made our way up the rubble-strewn canyon. No trail to speak of. Nothing to see here. Just an infrequent water course, bone dry now, as it probably was most of the time.

After two or three turns of the canyon, we stopped and surveyed the scene. Out of sight from the road. Nothing of interest in view. No reason anyone would choose this nondescript arroyo for a hike.

We decided the best place to bury the materiel was some ways up the hillside. Minimal risk of rain exposing the stuff or people stumbling on the cache. We scrambled twenty-five feet or so up the slope, angle of repose, no gentle grade there, and dug a couple of holes as best we could in the dirt and rock.

In went the caps and sodden cardboard cylinders. We filled the holes and hid our work from curious eyes, should anyone wander into this canyon. Back to the car, shovel in hand, a careful look up and down the road, and back to Claremont.

Mission accomplished. Problem safely solved. Dynamite headache gone.

**Fifty-plus years on,** what is left of this explosive stuff? Probably very little. The dynamite went into the ground pre-neutralized. Wet cardboard tubing and sorbent material would break down rapidly and join the rocky soil of the hillside. The more robust metal-jacketed blasting caps would take a little longer. Soil moisture and cycles of freezing and thawing would corrode wires, rust out and rupture metal cylinders, and dissolve the detonating material contained therein.

If these events occurred today, were discovered today, the members of the dynamite disposal enterprise would be branded domestic terrorists. Evidence would be assembled to fit the narrative. The FBI and Homeland Security would claim another victory in The War Against. A testament to the growth of our collective paranoia. Not a good one.

About the author

Joseph Fraizer graduated from Pomona College in 1970 with a degree in philosophy and a concentration in Chinese language, literature, and culture. He is an artist, author, and film maker, and had a lengthy tech career in laser design, engineering, and manufacturing.

### Cool Jazz with This Way Out, Oldenborg, 1968

Photographs by Joseph Fraizer

Marc Grafe, Eric Sundquist, et. al.

Photographed in low light with a hand-held 35mm camera.

The second photo is a multiple-exposure happy accident;

the camera sprockets ripped through the film.

Riches Borne in Trust

by Michael Garrett

**The summer of 1969** brought with it three momentous events.

In June, my 21st birthday. An adult at last! A month later the future was upon us as Apollo 11 landed on the moon. On August 19th, without informing our families, my girlfriend Mary and I were married in a brief ceremony at the Monterey County Courthouse. Our baby was due in March.

To say I was clueless would be a generous assessment.

**We returned to Claremont** in September for my senior year at Pomona. Mary and I took up residence at 884 1/4 Central Avenue, a choice address formerly occupied by my friend Jeff Jones who'd graduated the year before. Our new home consisted of the back half of Bob Wilson's detached garage. Buffalo Bob, as he was known, was a ubiquitous character of uncertain employment who lived up front, at 884 Central. His white van, painted in the style of the times with psychedelic buffalos, was familiar throughout Claremont.

Bob maintained an impressive, odiferous collection of reptiles and tortoises in the living room of 884, and kept a pair of tapirs, four hundred pound Amazonian ant eaters, penned up in the back yard. The entire compound was, in all kindness, a hovel, but it was surrounded by leafy shade and the sweet scent of an orange orchard.

Our marital bed was a thin mattress laid out above the rafters on a sheet of plywood just inches from the nail studded roof. It was accessible by ladder. Lying there in the dark, worrying over our future, we would hear the restive tapirs, crashing against their plywood enclosure, late into the night.

**I was a Theater Arts major,** enthusiastically confident that the obscure art of scenic design would provide our little family with a living in the "real world." In the mean time, in an act of mercy, Pomona came up with a job for Mary working as a secretary in the English Department. Dr. Fred Mulhauser, the chairman, was her boss. She sat at a desk in Holmes Hall, just inside the door of an office shared by Professors Fred Bracher, Darcy O'Brien, Steve Young and Dick Barnes. These accomplished men of letters, who could be so intimidating in class, welcomed Mary with generosity, warmth and kindness.

There was also a small part time job for me as a student supervisor in the old theater scene shop across the walkway from the Holmes Hall stage door. On that venerable stage we learned the creation of magic. In my four years, Pomona Theater produced an impressive range of theatrical events; the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "Yeoman of the Guard," a 60s era Happening called "Cutting," and Leonard Pronko's lively Kabuki productions of "Miracle at Yaguchi Ferry" and "The Demon's Magic Mallet." Dr. Pronko was supported by a cadre of ladies from Little Tokyo in Los Angeles who would arrive to dress student actors (and Dr. Pronko) in a stunning array of authentic Kabuki costumes. Sharp claps of wooden blocks articulated the stylized sword play of classic samurai weapons that flashed but never actually touched.

Who can forget the sight of Steve Jones, putting aside his football pads to command the Holmes Hall runway as a sneering Ronin Samurai? The larger Garrison Theater stage saw performances whose power I still feel fifty years later; Katie Hultgren in Brecht's "Visions of Simone Marchard" and Tim Shelton in de Ghelderode's sad farce "Pantagleize." And lest we forget, there was Dick Barnes' high flying "8th Avatar, a Raga Rock Fire Opera" presented with enormous gusto at the abandoned Virginia Dare Winery in Cucamonga. The venerable Greek Theater in the Wash was resurrected with our majestic production of Aeschylus's "Oresteia." Heavily masked performers towered on stilts amid the oaks, retelling the ancient, bloody tale of warnings, betrayal and revenge. Bring your lunch.

**Before the baby came,** we moved into a college owned house at 130 East 7th street. Mary, by then heavily pregnant, at last had a proper home with a real bed that didn't require heaving herself up a ladder. Some classmates avoided us, as if pregnancy might be contagious. Others stepped up. When our daughter Rebecca was born at the beginning of March, Steve Jones, in an act I will always revere, organized a baby sitting roster. I could attend class and Mary could go to work. I still see Steve in a cowboy hat, sitting in a chair on the front porch, rocking himself and the baby while he studied. Others gave counsel. Lisa Gray Fisher spoke hard truths to me that needed to be spoken. Always forthright and honest, Lisa remains a treasured friend to this day.

**My senior project** was sets and lighting for the spring production of "The Black Crook," an 1890s melodrama replete with period Olio acts. It was, in all aspects, a massive undertaking. I marvel from a distance of 50 years at the wellspring of energy we so confidently tapped to create it. Every waking hour, when not in class or home with the baby, I was at the Garrison Theater, building sets. The project consumed me.

And then, just before we were due to open in May, National Guard soldiers fired upon protesting college students at Kent State University, killing four. In a time of serial outrages, this was the worst. These were college kids, like us. Shot down. In America.

I remember vividly our cast and crew meeting in the Garrison Theater green room to determine a course of action. Cancel or perform? "The Black Crook" had a huge cast, drawing performers from different classes and some of the other colleges. Sober and sick at heart, many rose to speak. Some thought it wrong to play the fool on stage at such a time. Others felt the show must go on, an act of outrage could not be allowed to silence the arts.

In the end, several students withdrew with honor. For the rest, the play went on. Mary, two months removed from giving birth, joined the chorus of villagers to dance on stage, babe in arms. In both its scale and general silliness, "The Black Crook" provided a brief but needed counterpoint of joy in a dark and depressing time.

The Village, from "The Black Crook"

The Forest, from "The Black Crook"

The Grotto, from "The Black Crook"

Photographs by Michael Garrett

**Pomona took care of her own.** I guess it's the nature of things that we're bound to be selfish when we're young. We look from a center point out at the periphery and imagine that the world revolves around us. Maturing, we gain the ability to observe ourselves from the outside.

With Rebecca now on the cusp of 50, I admire anew the courage and grace presented during that time by my pregnant young wife. Setting aside her own dreams, Mary arrived in a town where she had no roots or friends. She overcame with good cheer the bleak circumstances of our housing and our relative penury. The English professors for whom she worked were solicitous of her situation and supported us in so many unseen ways. They made every allowance for Mary as a new mother. Prof. Bracher insisted on giving us a sofa and matching armchair. Darcy O'Brien and Dick Barnes shared personal moments with Mary to offer encouragement. They all threw a baby shower for her.

Knowing we could no longer fit in at student gatherings, Steve and Carol Young graciously invited us to faculty receptions at their house. All but invisible to me at the time, these small mercies, in retrospect, made a major difference in our lives as young parents. Many of these good people have passed, but in speaking their names, they are not gone.

**I've sometimes pondered,** as I suspect we all have, the words carved into the gates of our college. How might we quantify these added riches we are instructed to bear in trust? In what manner can we pass them on? They do not, it's clear to me now, rest in some Johnny Appleseed sack of facts and formulas waiting only to be cast upon fertile ground. For me they are the larger graces that attend knowledge.

Kindness, dedication, generosity and humor.

Curiosity. Belief.

Hope.

Those riches.

About the author

After graduating from Pomona, Mike Garrett enjoyed a long career in the entertainment industry, creating sets and lighting for theater, dance and motion pictures. After a Watson Fellowship year in London, he worked for several years in San Francisco at ACT and Pacific Ballet before joining Phoebus Lighting where he remained for 40 years. Though he and Mary parted after 7 years, they remain good friends. He lives with his wife, Cal Arts alumna Valerie Baadh in Carmichael, California.

The Lyrics of our Lives

by Phyllis Hagstrum Meshulam

with apologies to John, Paul, George and Ringo

I was going to Pomona,

leaving home after living alone

for so many years – not an only child

but with one much older sibling.

Then, suddenly, a bunch of us

all lived in a yellow submarine

known as Harwood Court,

a sponsor group full of faculty brats

and ones with foreign immersion in our pasts.

Mostly kind and caring, our sponsor once claimed,

"Come, a surprise, it'll be fun," then

delivered us to a public shaming,

the weighing and measuring of frosh women.

We researched the meanings behind our names.

There was Brenda, flaming sword,

Janet, the gracious one, Trina, the pure,

Pat, upperclass noble neighbor, who played along,

myself, green leaf, and lovely Rita,

little pearl, and later meter maid.

A day in our lives would begin at Harwood

dining hall with us clothed and ready for class,

except Sundays when it was okay to wear a bathrobe

to brunch, as long as you had panties underneath.

"How would they know?" someone wondered.

"By checking for dandruff on our slippers?"

another guessed. Trina, raised in the Philippines

with different clothing styles, pushed the rule

"Dresses or skirts at dinner" by putting a skirt

on top of her long pants. Do you want to know a secret?

We were here, there and everywhere, wondering

if all you need is love, and a good education, for sure.

I'll remember Marston Quad field forever, with

concerts, including B.B. King, which scarcely seemed real,

and strolls, and breaths of fresh air on the way to class.

(In spite of the dragon Smaug that hid Mt. Baldy in those days.)

Lots of pals, but I could have been eligible

for Sergeant Pepper's lonely hearts' club band.

I went to dances and played the wallflower,

or the fool on the hill, overheard guys appraising,

"there must be somebody here" while ignoring me.

Still a dancing partner did once say, "You're very nice

to sweat next to." Heard jokes like "The Pomona doll –

you turn her on and she turns you off."

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

Walking alongside campus center one day,

I received news from a passing convertible –

"Martin Luther King has been shot and killed."

That powerful blackbird would not sing in

the dead of night or ever again, except in

precious footage in our hearts and minds.

I needed a fix cause I was going down.

The Texas tower assassin's shadow hovered and

does to this day. His happiness must've been a warm gun.

In the draft lottery, guys got assigned a place in line

to fight in the war that was deforesting families

and landscapes our whole four years.

We thought about a revolution, but our vigils and

marches were just saying, "Give peace a chance."

Semester abroad – should I go?

Having lived overseas a lot, I wasn't sure.

Got advice. "Just go someplace different."

Greece? "Do you have a boyfriend? No? Go.

You'll get lots of attention." Cheryl and I

were known as the Pomona odd bods because we

went to unusual places. I lost my hymen to a Greek.

But before long we were back in the US,

back in the US, back in the USSA.

All this is very much yesterday now – though

I do wonder what the Ukraine girls were up to

to make him sing and shout – but mostly we're asking

will someone still need us, still feed us when

we're seventy-four, the inverse of 47, of course.

I just must say that I've gotten by with

a lot of help from dear friends,

many of them Sagehens.

### Summer of the Moon Landing

for Ina and Kiku and

that summer in Seattle

by Phyllis Hagstrum Meshulam

A hundred of us dancing

at the good buddies' ball,

but after lights-out, and

at the first irritation,

one is alone again...

– Jacques Brel

moon light

despite so many stuttered repetitions of carbon paper self

i arrived at age twenty a whole summer

turning over a fresh leaf of butcher paper

a new-to-me metropolis ocean and city splashing

against each other colored shipping containers

stacked in a rubik's cube rearranging the world

three little maids from school braided together

like the french braiding of each other's hair

half full

arches flattened hiking in flats the elevator shaft hills

walking for work we could walk to

mattresses on the basement floor

kosher wine like bruised pears

peanut butter rationed onto co-op bread

nori slap in the face at ocean's edge

moon dark

a pending lottery boys our age under glass

with the chance to enact their own underage death scenes

hearts stretched around my skeleton made of glass

humans landed on the moon we watched through soot and ice

grown men hopscotching planting a flag

ina said _isn't that just like our country go someplace new_

unspoiled immediately litter?

moon with her tiny new flag tattoo

a blank-faced marble bust of earth

a round powdered loaf companions sharing this bread

half empty

summer friendships like parenthetical expressions easily deleted

come august (come, the rest of my life) kiku stayed ina and i

and two flash-frozen salmon flew as far as chicago

meaning to take one fish apiece but they had frozen

inseparable

twangs of woodstock radiating from the radio

me stuffing my stuff into semester-abroad-suitcase

decades later a yellow alley light another summer night

metal staircase still volcanic on our warming globe

the same moon glides stutters through her phases

encircled again breaking bread again alone again

broken again

About the author

Phyllis Hagstrum Meshulam got her BA in Theater Arts from Pomona College in 1970 and her MFA in poetry and fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 1999. In between, she taught everything from high school English, to elementary school Spanish, to preschool, with an in-between period of stay-at-home mothering. She is the author of _Land of My Father's War_ , winner of an Artists Embassy International Prize, and a teacher with California Poets in the School.

Eager, Thoughtful, 2 out of 3 ain't bad

by John Halleran

**My educational history before Pomona** was certainly different. Born on Long Island, I attended a private Day School until 7th grade, when we moved to Arizona and I attended a one room schoolhouse. My teacher volunteered to test me on Arizona history and government, two prerequisites to allow me to skip eighth grade and enter high school. Two Arizona high schools later, I went to a boarding school in the Berkshires of Massachusetts as a freshman again (language requirements) before returning to high school in Arizona as a Junior (too many credits to be a Sophomore) and then on to graduate from Claremont High. A CHS friend took me on a bike tour of the colleges and I decided on Pomona. It was my only application and I guess my background was sufficiently diverse that Dean Wheaton cooperated and said yes.

I was 16 when I arrived at Pomona and not as buttoned down as my shirts. As a local, the Administration asked that I live at home until Oldenborg construction finished and a room opened up in Clark V. Our sponsor group was akin to 4077 meets Band of Brothers. With Ted Gleason, Tim Burrell and myself, we may have had the youngest and oldest freshmen.

At the end of first semester, I think we had the highest (Eric Sundquist) and a couple of us tied for lowest GPAs. I had excelled in highly structured schools but, clearly, freedom was not my scholastic friend, and it was years later that I was diagnosed with ADD. It took me 3 days to schedule my Come to Jesus moment with Dean Beattie, who opened with "What took you so long?" I told him his letter suggested that I seek my college education elsewhere and I didn't know what to say, having previously always been among the top of my classes.

He chuckled and suggested that I had 300 classmates who would make the same statement – woof, a different outlook and compression of the curve that hadn't occurred to me. He suggested that I would not have been admitted if I couldn't do the work, so he advised that I knuckle down and work harder and smarter. I did, and I also learned not to schedule 8 AM classes, but while my GPA recovered my class ranking didn't. See Tim Burrell for further sponsor group stories.

**Odds and ends.** I remember Si Macy climbing around the roof of Clark V with a TV "antenna" of 3 - 4 coat hangers on a piece of wood as we tried to catch a signal (not) from somewhere to watch Super Bowl I, blacked out in LA. Al Herlands and I played a 1,000 games of cribbage – Brother Al – put your hands on the radiator and send $5 care of this station. Ted Gleason got pulled over by CPD while slaloming the dotted line on Harvard, after they'd already rolled up the sidewalks. License please, but he settled for home address and threatened to write a letter to Ted's folks.

George Phillips as The Beast won his weight class of the Freshman Wrestling Tournament – Dave Brown ran the gym in a rubber suit to make weight to win <150 pounds class. Junior year Dave returned from summer break with an early edition service dog – Irish Setter named Casey (as were all the pups the breeder had).

Pomona offered no athletic scholarships – we played for the love of the sport. I started playing soccer in 5th grade and it was a great mind/body balancing factor and produced some of my longest friendships. Bob Hall and I were the only '70 classmates to play all four years. The first two years we were a three-college team/club – the varsity clobbered everyone, but SCIAC complained about the disparate population base and the overabundance of foreign students helped.

Junior year the team split into Pomona and CMC/Mudd and in the PC-CMC games we played against former teammates. Rugby was a Claremont Colleges team – my handicap was that I was neither big nor fast, but my teammates accepted the skinny kid, taught me the game and it kept me in shape for soccer. Wayne Pierpoint decided to bulk me up – 6 weeks of serious weights and Frary overeating moved me from 149 to 153 and we gave up the experiment.

**I was a Philosophy major** because it had the least number of requisite courses and I figured the goal of college is really to learn to think. I appreciate that Pomona now has a Liberal Arts Major. I was graced to have M. Pronko for French, he was just an amazing professor and person. Another favorite professor was John Kemble and his Naval and Maritime History. It was a different tack, that the driving force of civilization was maritime expansion. The naval side was more interesting because he had been a naval officer on Halsey's staff in the Pacific and WW II wasn't that far in the past. Fr. Winance, who taught Medieval Philosophy, preferred classes on Marston Quad – he was a Catholic priest who'd been imprisoned by Mao.

Our four years at Pomona were a tumultuous time. Vietnam was building in 1966. Second semester Sophomore year MLK was assassinated in Memphis and RFK in LA during our finals. LBJ retired after one term and Nixon was elected. My favorite Mufti was "Eager, Thoughtful, 2 out of 3 ain't bad."

Senior year saw protests on campus and the occupation of the ROTC offices. I was co-chair of Judiciary and will never forget some muggy afternoons in Harwood Dining Hall. The never answered question was who threw the brick through the window. A few years ago I found my notes from the deliberations on penalties. I started the meeting soliciting thoughts which ran the gamut from expulsion to not our place to judge. I suggested suspended expulsion. Everyone laughed, but after a couple hours of argument without consensus, Mrs Crosby turned to me and said, "Suspended expulsion?" It was close to year end. We didn't want friends to miss graduation and the administration hard line didn't want it to happen again. Suspended expulsion! As a graduation present, DC gave us the uncertainty of the draft lottery.

Madras and penny loafers to tie-dye and sandals.

About the author

After graduating in 1970 with a degree in Philosophy, I sweated out the draft with a middling number. I spent the next decade coaching soccer and in retail management, but working mainly as a litigation paralegal. Chris Warden '73 suggested Insurance Claims and I've worked in property insurance claims management and catastrophe events ever since. Although mainly retired, I still do the occasional litigation support gig. I've lived in South Pasadena for forty years with my wife Pamela; our son, Tim, graduated from Pitzer in 2009 and moved to San Antonio with his wife Katie Pace, Pitzer '08. In my semi-retirement. I am working on a degree in Mixology specializing in rum and Tiki.

Meet the Candidates, May 1970

by Al Herlands

May 1970:

The school was in turmoil over the shootings at Kent State. Many classes and finals were cancelled, replaced by teach-ins.

At the same time, there was a special election to fill our vacant Congressional seat, the candidates included two former Republican Congressmen, a Stanford-educated Republican doctor, and our own Myrlie Evers '68, wife of assassinated civil-rights leader Medgar Evers. Neither the Sigma Tau Fraternity, nor I as an individual, were well known for political activism, but the confluence of influences led us to organize a "meet the candidates" event that was covered by Los Angeles TV stations.

Myrlie lost that election, but found other avenues to fulfill her convictions, culminating in becoming Chair of the Board of the NAACP. She and classmate John Payton, who became President of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (which is separate from the NAACP) were most inspirational Sagehens.

Claremont's violin prodigy, lost and found

by Brian Johnston

**One of the highlights** of my experience at Pomona was the tradition of the Music Department presenting a major choral-orchestral work in May. In our time it was the 3 B's: Bach (B minor Mass), Beethoven (Missa Solemnis and 9th Symphony) and Brahms (German Requiem). These days the Music Department tends to eschew standard repertoire like these in favor of worthy but lesser known works. That is laudable in a way, but my daughter Jenny, a junior at Scripps who sings in the Pomona Choir and Glee Club, has little familiarity with masterpieces like those we tackled. I still get chills hearing or playing those works, remembering how it felt to get to know them from the violin section of the Pomona Orchestra.

**During our sophomore year,** a student from Japan named Yukiko Kamei entered Scripps as a freshman. I heard from the grapevine that she was a terrific violinist, so I was excited to learn that she was giving a little solo recital, I think in Walker Lounge, of Paganini caprices. She was indeed terrific and a delightful person, and I got to know her. She started commuting to LA to study with Jascha Heifetz, and after about a year she left Scripps and moved to LA to spend more time with Heifetz.

Before long she become his assistant in his teaching studio, remaining with him for more than a decade until he retired from teaching in the early 1980s. I lost touch with her for nearly 50 years, until I was in the market for a new violin in 2015. I decided to be systematic about it, and I went to four of the premier dealers in New York, tried out all their violins that I could remotely afford, and then persuaded them to let me compare the sound of my favorites from each dealer side by side in one room. I selected one that had papers from famous dealers from 1925 to 1980, stating that it was a 1741 Guadagnini and, according to one certificate, it had been previously owned by Heifetz.

There was even a photo of him playing what was purportedly that violin. It had a terrific sound, but I was a bit dubious about the Heifetz connection, and thought I should check it out. I remembered that Yukiko had been with Heifetz for years and decided to try to look her up and see if she recalled him owning a Guadagnini. It took a while, because she was using her married name Kurakata, but eventually I found that she was practically in my back yard, having left her solo career in LA and Japan to join the San Francisco Symphony around 1992. So I had been seeing her on stage (I frequently attended their concerts) for years without recognizing her!

I left Yukiko a message with the Symphony, not sure if she would remember me. She called me shortly thereafter and we had a great chat. She recalled details from our Claremont days that I had forgotten, such as when she played Wieniawski 2nd Violin Concerto with the Pomona Orchestra when I was concertmaster. She was delighted to be back in touch, and we have been close friends ever since. I have taken a few lessons from her, and she and her husband were gracious enough to come down to Santa Cruz to hear a chamber music concert in which I played a couple of years ago.

**As for the violin,** she put me in touch with Jeffrey Solow, a well-known cellist in Philadelphia who was part of the Heifetz-Piatigorsky circle back in the 1960s and '70s and a student of Piatigorsky's — and whose mother had owned a Guadagnini violin. (Interestingly, his brother owns an auto repair shop in Santa Cruz that I have patronized.) Jeff thought the violin seemed "the real deal" although neither he nor Yukiko recalled Heifetz owning a Guadagnini — but he couldn't rule it out since Heifetz had been a collector of violins. The clincher came when I sent photos of the violin's papers to an expert on violin labels, papers, and provenance in Philadelphia named Philip Kass. He pronounced the papers as fraudulent, so I reluctantly shipped the violin back to the owner, who had been quite mysterious from the start.

I ended up buying a different violin which I'm very happy with, and I just visited with Yukiko last Saturday during intermission at an SF Symphony concert. She has four grown sons and lives with her pianist husband Shunsuke in a spacious house in SF. She has warm memories of her brief time in Claremont.

**Post-script:** Just before sending this off, I noticed that on Heifetz's Wikipedia page there is a list of violins he owned. It includes a 1741 Guadagnini...but there is no reference.

### "Thank God for Christmas"

by Brian Johnston

**One of the downsides** of Pomona's Semester System of that time was that, at least for me, the Christmas Break wasn't that much of a holiday; rather, it was a reprieve from deadlines, a blessed gift of time in which I could catch up on all the work that I had fallen behind in and write the papers that were due before Finals.

Of course, the two weeks' break was never long enough to enjoy the holidays AND get caught up. But at the beginning of the break it seemed a blessing, and one year as the break was approaching, three of us — Rob Fryer, Glenn Ford and I — decided that we should make an observance of the occasion. We somewhere obtained a piece of heavy paper suitable for a banner, maybe 10 feet square, and wrote in large letters THANK GOD FOR CHRISTMAS with the aim of hoisting it to the top of Smith Tower for all to see.

To get it up there, late one night we used a sling shot that I had probably saved from high school days to throw a thin line, I think fishing line, over the cross-bar at the top of the tower. The end of this line was then tied to a heavier line that was in turn attached to the top of the sign so that we could pull the second line back over the cross-bar, thereby raising the sign to the top of the tower.

To secure the sign to the face of the tower, we bent wire coat-hangers into large hooks and attached them to the four corners of the sign. The hooks attached to the bottom of the sign were attached to separate lines. In this way, when we hoisted the sign to the top of the tower, each bent coat-hanger could be hooked into the louvers along the sides of tower. Then the lines were slipped out, leaving the sign affixed to the tower without any attached lines. The tricky part was doing all this quietly in between rounds of the Campus Security guards, as we did not expect them to approve of our shenanigans in the middle of the night.

**I don't recall** how long it took the authorities to remove the sign, or how they did it, but we were pleased that our anonymous handiwork could be seen by all for at least the following day.

About the author

Brian Johnston graduated from Pomona College in 1970 as a chemistry major and music minor. After spending a few years oscillating between science and music, including a couple of years in Switzerland and England, he secured a PhD in biophysical chemistry from UC Berkeley followed by post-doc stints at UCSF and MIT. After running an academic lab, he founded the biotech firm SomaGenics, now located in Santa Cruz, CA, which he has led for over 20 years. He continues to play violin and viola in orchestras and chamber groups including the Santa Cruz Symphony.

Reed with Shoes

by Bill Keller

**One valuable thing** I learned at Pomona was how to write on deadline. The ability to conceive, report and compose a paper the night before it was due – though it was assigned weeks earlier – may not be what the college had in mind, but it has served me well over the half century since graduation. (True to form, I am submitting this on January 15.)

The late '60's were, of course, a dizzying time of political and cultural turmoil, but when I cast my mind back for memories besides the obvious, the one that surfaces is less than profound.

When I was contemplating college, my short list was topped by Reed, that reputed temple of radicalism in Oregon. I have no idea why, unless it was a declaration of independence from my mother (Wellesley) and father (MIT). My dad was a west-coast volunteer interviewer for his alma mater, and knew the academic landscape well. He suggested I take a look at a little college called Pomona, which he described as "Reed with shoes." I did, and I realized my dad knew me better than I'd thought.

To digress for a minute, I also applied to Stanford, with which I have a complex history. I was born in that university's medical center, which was close to our home in San Mateo, and my father died there almost 60 years later. My nephew was a midfielder on the national champion soccer team. I've been invited occasionally to lecture there. But back in 1966, I got the skinny envelope – and this was when the admission rate at Stanford was 62 percent. I now regard this as a stroke of good luck.

Pomona was less selective and just progressive enough: _Reed with shoes._

It's always struck me as a karmic prank that I ended up rooming with Dave Smith, a surfer from Santa Cruz, who went shoeless in all seasons. I have vivid memories of extracting bits of glass with tweezers from his heavily calloused feet after he stepped on a broken bottle. There's a metaphor lurking in there somewhere.

About the author

Bill Keller worked 30 years as a reporter, editor and Op-Ed columnist at The New York Times, and was the founding editor of The Marshall Project. He is an emeritus trustee, and the proud father of Molly Keller '19.

Today's Surfing Report

by Kenneth Liberman

**In January of 2018,** I headed to El Salvador and Nicaragua for some surfing. After a week of warming up at a remote tubular break in southern El Salvador (Punta Las Flores), I and my board took the bus to Nicaragua, where I found my way through that fabulous country to an idyllic A-frame wave (having both left-breaking and right-breaking shoulders emanating from a single wave) at Popoyo, an unplanned town of rustic surf lodges run mostly by Italians. The wave was incredibly clean, fired much more vigorously to the left, but it also had easier but larger waves breaking to the right. Both waves carried on for 60 or 70 yards. I became a master of that right and mostly let the young locals have the left.

Both directions broke on reefs that required vigilance to avoid, especially at low tide (I was only partly successful). I surfed my heart out for a month, catching hundreds of waves. It may have been the peak month of my surfing life. After some work in Nicaragua and visiting family in El Salvador, I returned home to Rancho El Socorro in Baja California, where I continued to surf until the end of the California surfing season, which as usual petered out in early May.

I spent June, July, and August at my cabin in the Klamath Mountains, backpacked a hundred miles and meditated by my waterfall and pools. Wildfires drove me out in September, and with the five contiguous counties ablaze, I drove home to Baja California. Wildfires kept searing the hillsides in southern California and even northern Baja between Tijuana and Ensenada, and ceased only when the desert commenced near where I live.

Happy to be able to surf again, I eagerly waxed up my surfboard for another season, but despite decent waves I discovered that I could no longer stand up! Maybe all of that backpacking had affected my back. I was pitifully slow, like an old man.

**I had turned 70 in August,** and it seemed that along with that I lost the flow of my stand-up. Well, that had happened to me before, so I went to a longer board, but the problem persisted. It was like becoming lame. Whatever could have happened during a measly four months? To my honest surprise, a month of attempting take-offs did not improve matters. I went out every morning, but my feet were unable to locate the board in a timely fashion, and I kept wiping-out. It was embarrassing, although most of any friends who might have judged me had either been forced to give up surfing, had shifted to knee-boarding or paddle-boarding, or had passed away. I would have been proud to declare that I was the only 70-year old surfer among my cohort still standing, except that I couldn't stand!

After a second month my struggling paid off, and I could manage to stand up effectively on the longer board, so I switched to a thick medium-sized board, whereupon the problems of my clumsiness commenced anew. It took another disheartening month of determined morning sessions to repeat my improvement with the medium-sized board, whereupon I shifted to my shortest board, shaped in Oregon by Gerry Lopez. The struggle with that was briefer, and finally in mid-January I moved back from the short-board to my favorite "hybrid" board, shaped by the skilled San Diego board designer Rich Pavel, which by then felt very ample in size, and I had few further problems.

I was surfing again: _the kid was back!_ But it had taken me four months to achieve it. I recall the observation of the aged surfer William Finnegan in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Surfer's Life: "Getting old as a surfer is just a long, slow, humiliating process of becoming a kook again." Let no one doubt that getting old is humiliating.

**After an entire February** of unusually calm winter seas, during which some of the sand returned after the big waves of January had battered our beaches, the second week of March finally brought a robust swell. Just before dawn the wind was blowing offshore strongly, and huge waves rose out of the ocean: more than a dozen of them stacked up behind each other at 19-second intervals, like an invading fleet as far as the eye could see.

There are few things more exciting in nature than the commencement of a clean swell. The longer the intervals are between the waves, the larger and more forceful the waves will be. This was a proper groundswell, and at low tide it was pounding the boulders of our break. The offshore winds blew the spray of each massively breaking wave some five feet into the air behind it like the a horse's mane, wave after wave. It was amazing and menacing at the same time.

I studied the swell from the top of the dune, as I do each morning. There were some wonderfully shaped right-breaking shoulders, but they too bore incredible force, and no board of mine would be able to ride their length fast enough before they closed out on me. But the energy they displayed was dizzying, intimidating, and tempting. After some time, I noticed that in addition to this basic swell there was also a peak set of three waves that would turn up about every ten minutes, and these waves arrived as a seven-foot high wall with a two-hundred-yard face that closed down powerfully, all in one heave.

I measure the power of waves – their thickness, really – by how high the spit rises after each wave crashes. When I saw the three waves that composed that first set, my thought was, "Oh well, that puts an end to any fanciful ideas about surfing this swell." But then, those clean looking right-handed shoulders reappeared, and they were not so big, and much more consistent than the super-set. They were only four-to-five feet, and these kept tantalizing me. Still, they were powerful too, only bearing smaller explosions. A combination of curiosity, fear, and desire overwhelmed me.

This dilemma kept me studying the swell there on top of the cold, pre-dawn dune, with a freezing east wind blasting me until my eyes began to water. Ten minutes later the next super-set arrived, and like the first it completely closed out. A washing machine of whitewater hurtled toward the shore. No way – there was no surfing that. I would have to line up inside the line where the supersets were breaking and simply eat three waves every ten minutes as I pursued one of the smaller waves that possessed a rideable shape. I had not surfed for four days, so I needed to go out. I decided that I would place myself amidst those inside waves, and the ten-minutes between the supersets would probably offer me sufficient time to find a few rides, some leftover scraps of the big swell.

**I hopped back down the dune,** spent half an hour doing my constitutional half-hour of pre-surf yoga (necessary in my old age), suited up, and headed to the beach. The water was not so cold, and it was about six degrees warmer than the air temperature (56 as opposed to 50). My body quickly heated up the water inside my 5mm hooded wetsuit as I paddled. And there was a lot of flow to paddle against, but I made it out without incident. At least during the previous months of struggling I had regained the strength in my arms and shoulders. The waves seemed a bit less well-formed than what I had seen from the dune, so I let a dozen of them go by as I recovered my breath. Then the three waves of the super-set arrived on time, and I spun underneath my board three times. By the time they had passed, I had been shoved fifty yards down the beach. I decided that I needed to be less choosy, since I needed to catch some waves before the next super-set arrived, and because surely those set waves would end up making this a short session of surfing.

I needed to find a ride quickly. I passed up several waves that were too small, then several that had no form at all. A decent wave arrived, and I caught it but it closed out right after the takeoff. Still, the energy it had was amazing! It was like receiving electroshock therapy, and my entire body felt charged by it. I spun around and paddled back out, when another superset arrived. I decided it would be just as easy, and more fun, to ride the three feet of foam, hop up, and play with the energy. Wow. The board was like riding a bull, so much fun. As much as I was able, I drove it to the left in order to make up for the current that was still pushing me to the right. That peak wave had so much energy that it left me vibrating. The paddle back was simply good exercise, and gave me a way to channel that newly acquired energy. Fortunately, on this morning the super-sets were separated by ten minutes, which gave me all the time I needed to paddle back out.

Back in the lineup there was a momentary lull, so I sat on my board and caught my breath again. Then one of those perfect medium-sized shoulders that I had spied longingly from the top of the dune headed toward me.

I spotted it at once, spun the board around, easily took off in the wave's barrel, found my feet in one quick spring, and was already in perfect trim with the board the moment I landed. Without delay I was fired along the wave's face like a speeding torpedo. Oh my goodness, what incredible energy it had! Due to my speed I easily made the next section, and after two quick pumps I also made a third section. But as I had observed from the dune-top, the wave was going to close out ahead of the speed of my board. As the wave was about to slam shut, I dived off the board into the wave's face just before it would have sent me alongside my surfboard cycling in the soup like a spinning top.

Phenomenal. I had snagged it all. It was the most energy my spine had absorbed since Nicaragua more than a year before. It was better than joy, and my nerves kept ringing.

**There is nothing like surfing,** and nothing like a surfing life. I hope to squeeze out another year.

About the author

Ken Liberman spent 30 years teaching sociology, phenomenology, and Buddhist philosophy at the University of Oregon. Now retired in Baja California, he has just finished his ninth book, Filosofia ed Etnometodologia (Mimesis, Milano). He is presently writing a sociological study, _Tasting Coffee: an inquiry into objectivity_.

_The title of this poem is "Bum Rap 12 31/32" (or 12.6) and it's one in a series of poems based on a reading of Jack Kerouac's_ _Dharma Bums_ _. Originally I read a chapter at a time from the novel and wrote a stream-of-consciousness poem based on each. Gradually I included other material, and reports to Kerouac about my own experiences. This is the sixth poem I wrote after reading chapter twelve and it's a report to Kerouac after a reading of_ _In Watermelon Sugar_ _by Richard Brautigan. Much of the imagery in the poem is blatantly stolen from Brautigan's novel, although watermelon sugar has been replaced in the poem by a then less legal substance._

Brautigan was in residence at Cal Tech in 1967; he's the Wizard in the poem. Kerouac refers to himself as Ray in his novel, so that's what I call him in the poem. Likewise, Japhy is poet Gary Snyder and inBoil is the villain in Brautigan's book. I'm writing this in prose form in the name of special conservation.

### Bum Rap 12 31/32

by Joel Lorimer

Though I am obviously mired in 12, Ray, I did recently jump ahead in time, doubly, bubbling, to 25, at random, to find you and Japhy back in the woods, logger heads. Now allow me to jump back to Claremont, 1967, when the Wizard of Words, the Real Sir Surreal, was nearby in marvelous body, Zen spirit, Great Soul.

We lived in the midst of great mysteries though we knew not it was he who birthed them. Often on Sundays the eucalypti levitated, airing their roots. Frogs and salamanders could be seen in the fountains with eggplant and eglantine, entombed in small crystal caskets, though they did not glow. In the mess hall we made hash-hash which restored order and mystery to the mess of our lives. I lived in iDorm, but soon move to iDig where the overhead lava vent, adorned with lava lamps, supplied us with heat. Where we discovered the long-forgotten pneumatic tube, lava-driven, which took us directly to the top of Cucamonga. (Was the Wizard present at the Cucamonga Rap Down? I believe so, at least in Zen spirit.)

On Saturdays we fought off the smog with diatomous dust devils. To savor our victories we then would strap ourselves in chairs made of hash-hash and drink in honor of inBoil unto the very verge of suicidal self-mutilation, when we would giggle and thus save ourselves. On Fridays the sun would always be covered by clouds of mushrooms which might rain raucous raisins. And oh, on Thursdays, the trout streamed down the mountains and had us for lunch, a feast of bison and hash-hash, all hush-hush, with aperitifs of silent springs.

On Wednesdays flamenco flamingos danced in the fountains tickled by the tombs of tiny tree frogs. On Tuesdays we observed the robins adorned with lilac, dancing lila. On Mondays, in the dusk and dawn of aqua suns, we observed the void.

And when he came to town, by chance or design, invisibly, we would always perceive something potent, a pulse of breath and life in everything surrounding us.

In iBard heaven where you, Ray, are king, is he not your courtly bard, the bard among bards? Or is he not become divine, walking silently, invisibly among you, so you perceive him as did we, as potency, as poesie, all watermelon sugary.

Jim's little story of 326 words

by Jim McCallum

**In 1965,** as I prepared to move from Tucson to start college in Claremont, The American Field Service suddenly selected me for a year as an exchange student in Switzerland. When I called Pomona to ask advice, the Office simply congratulated me, wished me a great gap year abroad, and urged me to return in 1966 without bothering to reapply.

It was a great year in an advanced, liberal Swiss Hochschule and living with a wonderful family. I experienced many amazing changes. I returned home as a ragged rebel, not at all the closely shorn Goldwater volunteer as I had left, and much more suited to a campus undergoing rapid social/political changes.

My years in my sponsor group, KSPC station, Student Life paper, student/faculty/trustee committee, several years living and serving as RA in Oldenborg and random other official activities were all learning experiences – as was sharing a Walker room with Steven Clarke, who helped me through Chemistry. In the light of my ineptness with chemistry, I decided to change majors from the sciences to International Relations.

Steven and I learned to get in trouble by catching a room trash can on fire (just once); I made regular forays to visit best friends at Scripps; went to Kegs; raided orchards for fruit; and indulged in my special treat of leading "skulking" expeditions to find and explore unlocked rooms, rooftops and tunnels. And of course I studied and learned from the very best.

Along the way at Pomona I also learned that many good things occur unexpectedly and accidentally. Do not let occasional setbacks cause despair! And as happens in hitchhiking, the longest waits usually result in the best rides and new friendships.

**These and many other Pomona experiences** led to a fundamental conclusion: "I have never been very skilled at foresight and planning: I'm so much more familiar with nostalgia and mild regret." And it always works out for the best.

About the author

After graduation, Jim spent a year studying counseling at the School of Theology at Claremont. He then moved to the Santa Barbara area while working at a company that manufactured silicone breast and penile implants. He eventually went to London and Edinburgh and wandered around several other countries (Barcelona!) until Jim, Peter Philips, and Friends took the Orient Express to Istanbul and had a variety of adventures and then Jim returned to Claremont and worked at Huntley Bookstore until he camped his way up the Coast to Seattle when the car broke down and Jim worked at the University Bookstore to pay for repairs. Getting bored, Jim enrolled himself without real qualifications into the UW Institute of Marine Affairs. Mid-program, his Chairman took umbrage at Jim's childish remark about the Washington DC bureaucracy and sent Jim to Silver Spring MD NOAA Headquarters to experience the bureaucracy — which he did for four years until being appointed a non-voting member of three Fishery Management Councils as a legislative and environmental assistant to the Coastal States. Almost accidentally, Jim then became a professional staffer advising the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. When Newt Gingrich and gang took power in the House and suggested that most of the Democratic staff look for jobs elsewhere, Jim returned to NOAA in Hawaii and then in Silver Spring in a number of Front Office tasks until he retired happily several years ago. Jim continues to be useful by volunteering at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, helping Pomona as a member of the Alumni Board, working with several Asian American organizations, and trying to stay involved in politics. And taking naps.

Jim McCallum, 2016

"Assisting many Obama heroes with hundreds of kiddies at the White House Easter Egg Hunt during the last pre-Trump happy days."

(Photographer Unknown)

Pomona Reflections: I remember...

by Erma (Wright) Manoncourt

**Today – a small pause** and the memories come rushing back about a personal transformation that began at Pomona and has influenced my life and guided my career choices. Let me explain – we were two, with very different backgrounds but joined by race, out of 300 plus students in the Class of 1970 – together with other classmates, but also apart. It was a kaleidoscope of change beginning with a journey to self-identity – from Negro to Black and then African-American – a proud acceptance of African roots and an increased realization of my links to the larger African Diaspora – no longer just a 'minority' but part of a larger community of people of color.

Having lived abroad most of my earlier life, I rediscovered my home country – the good, the bad and the ugly. My four years at Pomona was a heady time – Afros, dashikis, mini-skirts and most of all a political awakening – the civil rights movement, women's rights, protests against the war in Vietnam, hippies dropping out to join a counter-culture, the Black Panthers (Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown) and Power to the People!

The campus was also a microcosm of change – being an exchange student to a Historically Black College, hiring African-American faculty, and eventually the establishment of the Black Students Union for the Claremont Colleges – a place to share collective concerns and be heard by school officials and classmates who meant well but often didn't understand. Yes, there was study, classes and living in different dorms – a serious period, but my time was also filled with fun and laughter – in fact, my increased awareness meant changes in the routine, mundane – a switch from watching American Bandstand to Soul Train when I should have been studying OR dancing and listening to the Four Tops and the Temptations, not just the Beatles and the Rolling Stones – however, I could 'twist and shout' with the best of them! Oh yes, it was also singing along with Aretha Franklin and Joan Baez – as the beat went on – and listening to Gregorian chants while studying and cramming for exams (yes, indeed)!

A thirst for knowledge and undecided about a major – should it be history or psychology?... what the heck I kept it simple and did a double major after all, complementing it with French study (international career aspirations) and modern dance classes (for the soul).

**I believed that the world** was inherently good but had to change and as Americans, we had to be better, much better; and Pomona, like the country, had to be a place and an opportunity for everyone, no matter the skin color. We had to be the change we wanted to see. My personal growth was nourished from support received from my roommate and friends – both black and white – who appreciated our differences and saw them as opportunities rather than obstacles.

At times, we laughed to keep from crying, argued and disagreed as friends often do, but never lost sight of the commonalities that bonded us and our belief in the power of friendship. Final flashback – walking down the aisle with a BA diploma in hand – the first degree in the history of the Wright family – and seeing the proud expressions of my parents and sisters who had traveled from Taiwan to attend the graduation ceremony.

**Pomona was a transforming experience**. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't change a thing – it taught me on how to "walk on shifting sands," to question and search for the truth, not just the easy answers, and to be fearless when facing the unknown. The journey continues......

About the author

After Pomona, I received a MSW degree from Clark-Atlanta University and PhD in Health Behavior/Public Health from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Besides university teaching, I was formerly a United Nations official – serving in UNICEF and the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) during the West African outbreak. Still active, I am currently President of a small international consulting firm.

Free verse memories of Pomona 1966-1970

by Kathy Mikkelson

Touring beautiful campus on a sunny spring day with my parents; admiring the snow covered mountains; and having a student smile at me as I walked across the quad

First day of school when there was a smog alert; we were barely able to see Mount Baldy; having it hurt to breathe; and wondering if I had made a terrible mistake to come to Pomona instead of Beloit, the only other college I had applied to and been accepted by without ever having visited the campus

My father dropping all my clothes on their hangers off a closet rod he was carrying and into the gutter; lots of swearing; and then a tearful goodbye

Rooming with another Kathy (French, now Page) also from the Bay Area; my being thrilled and her being slightly disappointed we had so much in common

Our bed in the Mudd dorm which folded up into the wall

Making good friends among people living on the same hallway

Having maid service once a week

Having rolls and butter and ice cream every lunch and dinner, resulting in a ten pound weight gain after a year

Eating ice cream sundaes at Griswold's

The rule about men and women each having one leg on the floor during very limited visiting hours (could it have been only on the weekend?)

Passing the visiting room in the Mudd floor where a couple's heavy necking resulted in disciplinary action

Having to dress up for dinner on Sundays

Wearing dresses and skirts to classes

Wasps falling from the ceiling during Physical Ed classes at the old women's gym

Spending a lot of time at the Honnold Library trying to keep up with Mr. Poland's history of western civ homework and needing to walk up and down the interior steps to take a break from all that sitting and reading

Having Mr. Lernihan send my roommate Kathy home from his history class because she came to class without shoes

Writing a letter to the editor of the college newspaper protesting that the Quaker students' right to silently protest the Viet Nam war was being violated by the loud music blared at them from the boys in the dorm across from the Coop; finding out that the boys had posted the letter on their bulletin board, were scribbling nasty things on it, and being upset; and being wisely counseled by my friend Peggy Tompkins that one could not expect to be friends with everyone and still stand up for your principles

Getting free tickets from Pomona for all the concerts, lectures, and plays and taking full advantage of it

Experiencing watching John Abbott's fabulous footwork in my first ever soccer game

Inviting Fred Teichert to a Sadie Hawkins dance when my first choice, John Abbott, was already taken, and experiencing that Fred was such a good dancer that for years I thought I was one too

Signing up to be a copy editor for the Claremont Collegian because I had never worked for my high school newspaper and meeting husband-to-be, John Doggett, when he became President of the black students' union and I volunteered for the assignment to interview him

Eventually becoming editor of six college newspapers, which sounded impressive, but having to write all the stories myself because there were no reporters working under me

Being told I could avoid compliance with the 2 a.m. curfew by "going over the wall" and, being very literal-minded, actually scaling the wall instead of just walking out of the dorm without signing out

Sneaking up the inside stairs of John's dorm at CMC; once running into a proctor in the stairwell and being relieved not to be challenged; having to sneak into the men's bathroom; and having John bring me breakfast in bed, where I had to wait until visiting hours officially began

Biking all over the Pomona and CMC campuses on my one speed bike and falling off of the bike in a panic when I saw a police car after midnight on my way to see John

Fearing I was pregnant because my parents gave me at puberty a book about how babies were made but neglected to tell me how not to make babies

Having to go to Planned Parenthood to get birth control pills; worrying someone I knew would see me there; and being horrified to hear my name being loudly shouted out by the nurse

Going to In'n Out burgers whenever we missed the dining room hours and finding it funny that these hours were often missed because of in and out activities

Engaging in heated arguments with fellow students and alumni about the necessity of having a black studies center on campus; the night a bomb exploded in the mailroom of one of the classroom buildings, blowing off part of a secretary's hand; and worrying about John, who with other black ROTC students checked out their guns and went into hiding until the secretary and her husband publicized that they did not blame black students at the Claremont Colleges for this horrific act

Confronting the provost of the Claremont Colleges at his residence on the Scripps campus concerning the black studies center, along with other supporters; seeing the fear in his eyes; and feeling guilty about being part of a mob that might have gotten out of hand

Jumping over rocks in dried up streams on Mount Baldy

Heading off to Joshua Trees National Monument in our shorts on a warm spring day, only to get stuck in the snow and having to use John's ROTC coat to stop the car wheels from spinning so we could head back to campus

Living in Oldenborg starting in my junior year; having to listen to half an hour of French on the radio each morning and speak French at lunch every day

Sneaking John into my room at Oldenborg; somehow fitting into a single bed; having a fire alarm go off and worrying that if John left the dorm we would get in trouble but if he did not leave the room he could be killed in a fire; and being relieved that it was only a drill

Spending a wonderful semester abroad in Besançon, France with a French family with five children

Taking independent study classes from Mr. O'Brien in black literature and history; studying French with "mamzelle" Crosby, with her heavy Texas accent; hearing the jangling bracelets of Gretchen S. (you English majors know who I mean) during her lectures; and going to Kabuki plays performed by our beloved Mr. Pronko

Enrolling in an intensive German course the summer between junior and senior years and taking five courses fall semester of senior year so I could get married (it turned out to be my "starter marriage"), graduate early and move to New Haven, where I eventually went to law school; and the embarrassment of having one of my English teachers giving me a B+ and wondering if I had really read Gulliver's Travels, which was on the exam (I had, but I had to plead being overwhelmed by all I was trying to do)

And finally, remembering all our classmates who are no longer with us, including Susan Angell, Bob Hall, Larry Rose, Carl Sautter, Mark Zetin, and others whose names are no longer in my memory

About the author

Kathy Mikkelson graduated from Pomona College as an English major and got her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1973. After clerking for fellow Pomona alumnus Stephen Tamura, a justice with the Court of Appeal in San Bernardino, she worked for a short time for the law firm of Cooper, White and Cooper in San Francisco and spent the rest of her career with the Office of the California Attorney General in the Natural Resources, Lands, Environment, and Civil Rights sections in San Francisco and then Oakland.

Sophomore Summer

by Nancy Place

**I grew up at the beach** in Republican Orange County, CA. My world was suburban and white Protestant. My acceptance into Pomona continued my trajectory into that privileged world. However, the summer after my sophomore year I was invited by Mark Isaacs to work on research centered on rates of youth recidivism related to the institution of family courts in NY State. Never having traveled much on my own (except to Girl Scout camp!) I was excited to spend the summer in New York City. My mother, however, said that I could do this only if I had a place to live before I left. The one person I knew in NYC, a friend who had been a senior in Wig when I was a freshman, told me that I could live in her apartment for the summer. My mom was floored – she never expected me to meet her requirement – and so I left for NYC that June.

Most of my job that summer involved reading and coding young offenders' files. However, the worlds these files revealed were astounding to me. The children I read about had lives I had never imagined. One boy joined his dad in setting fire to his mom's apartment building. Two elementary age youngsters hijacked a subway train. Kids stole food to feed their families. Children worked hard to keep the rats away from their baby sisters and brothers. Occasionally I would go downstairs to the courtroom and watch the proceedings, and once I made a home visit. I was absolutely amazed. Life in the U.S. was unbelievably hard for those kids and so unfair.

I returned to Pomona that fall wanting to understand what I had seen and experienced. I switched my major to government, chose opportunities to work with children in the Pomona Unified School District, selected courses about children and learning like the preschool course at Scripps, wrote my thesis on desegregation in the Pomona Unified School District, and sought out opportunities for new experiences and travel like those offered by semester abroad and Volunteers in Asia. After a few false starts, thinking that perhaps juvenile court law or pediatric medicine was the way to go, I found that I enjoyed teaching children and was good at it. So I stuck with that.

**In all of the different places I have lived and taught,** I have never forgotten the lessons that I learned that summer in NYC. All children deserve good food, good health care, a safe place to live, a loving community – and opportunities to make choices about how they want to live their lives and who they want to be in the world.

About the author

Nancy is a retired classroom teacher and university professor who currently lives in Seattle and Winthrop, WA.

Incipit vita nova

by Pat Price

**My pre-PC life** was somewhat chaotic – death of various family members, financial exigency, ill-health, and a sense of general upheaval meant that when I considered college, I was serious, knowing that if I were to attend college, it would be up to me to make it happen, working, with help from my single parent, a grandparent, the Veteran's Administration, and scholarship help from the State of California and Pomona College.

I had never been east of Oklahoma City or Clayton, New Mexico, where every summer we went to visit elders, including my 80+ year old great grandfather, who might "go" at any minute. (He lived into his hundreds, long after I graduated.) Travel meant quiet times in hushed households. Imagine my feelings on meeting my sponsor group, world travelers all, AFS, British public school, military, diplomatic, and scholarly travelers. Curiosity. Adventures. My world opened up in week one! Suddenly it seemed possible to have adventures, to boldly go...

Classes in my various majors offered many visions of a world beyond Santa Barbara county, or even New Mexico... Literature, history, languages, art, botany, religion... I only finally settled on a major after the comparative literature major vaporized in my junior year. I didn't have a great language, just a couple of pretty good ones, so Mrs. Armstrong (may her memory be for a blessing) helped me determine that my best chance of graduating on time was to determine which possible major had the most credits on my transcript. Voila! Art History.

**When I qualified** for junior semester abroad, I know I wanted to spend more than three months in Europe once I got there. My roommate, Brucie, and I wrote dozens of letters to every possible job site listed in the various work abroad for students pamphlets and books. No reply. No reply. Finally, one. Winchester excavations sent an invitation to join their digs. No experience necessary, just boots and a strong back. Physical labor. Smart though dirty colleagues. Intellectual puzzles. Enigmatic objects.

Three months of shoveling, troweling, running light and heavy machinery, regular lectures on the various sites by Martin Biddle, the supervisor of all sites. Thus began my long-term fascination with material culture and the lives of those long dead. This experience ignited a love for the European Middle Ages and the British Isles which still motivates me.

This adventure, and many more that followed, would not have been possible without adventuresome friends and the personal contact with professors that PC provided. Poland in History, Steven Glass at Pitzer, Walsh in Art History, Whedbee in religion, many others. And later, when I became a teacher myself, they provided inspiring models for ways to approach the material and the students.

**Three day bus trips** , peace marches, young Friends, folk dance, hitchhiking (don't tell Mom), and some pretty crazy jobs, challenged the so serious student who entered Pomona. Coursework and hands-on experience offered new modes of perception. The breadth of experience I was provided there prepared me for whatever came, and what is still to come.

About the author

Patricia Ann Byles Cathcart (Salzberg) graduated from Pomona in 1970 with a major in Art History and minors in history and literature. MA in English, minor in Classics. PhD in Medieval Studies. Worked professionally in a variety of environments including Archeology (Great Britain, US, and Iran) and teaching both high school and college. Taught at University of Louisiana-Monroe; St. Mary's College-Minneapolis; University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Palomar College and MiraCosta College (San Diego), and California State University-San Marcos department of Literature and Writing where she served as utility infielder, teaching pretty much everything: World Literature from the beginning of time to 1785, British Literature, Folklore, Sacred Texts, and many others.

Claremont 1966

by Bart Scott

Mt. Baldy from the north was glaring down

On the quaintness of the college town:

Bicycles and golf carts;

Raw lust and broken hearts,

The most educational stuff around.

Thoughtful and reverent, we entered there,

Forging ahead through the opaque air.

We weighed the women

We wrestled the men

As our parents graciously ponied up the fare.

Our nights of study were hard and long,

The urge to continue the discourse was strong:

Academic commentary

In the mead hall of Frary,

Where our meals were graced with Prometheus's dong.

Hard work inexorably led to hard play;

The students were busy when the books were away.

Imbibing excesses

In the wash's recesses,

Ending with golden showers on a dorm doorway.

There was something happening there,

Something you could sense from the air

From frat-room basements,

Through window vents,

Came an herbal scent without compare.

We entered a college still stuck in the 50's

Academics: superb; social context: kind of iffy.

The school gave us knowledge,

But we changed the college

And carrying those gifts has been pretty spiffy.

Chirp.

About the author

(If it wasn't for sprung rhythm

I wouldn't have no rhythm.

At all.)

I was in the class of 1970, but left during the Great Diaspora in February, 1968. After driving a truck and serving three years, nine months, and 18 days in the U.S. Navy, I came back to Pomona in the class of 1975, so I get two reunions for the price of one. I'm now a street lawyer in Sonoma County.

Musings, Hi-jinx, RFs, and Other Less-Than-Academic Activities

by David Smith

Attrition

Pomona was not a good match for everyone, and the men of Norton Hall 1966-67 bear witness. Of twenty-three students on the first floor, including three upper classmen and our sponsor, eleven either dropped out, took more than four years to finish (the record is seven years), left for a semester to recuperate, or transferred to another institution.

Combat Frisbee and Bowling

The Seamen of Norton Hall met frequently in the evenings for Combat Frisbee which consisted of teams at opposite ends of the hall flinging saucers trying to decapitate their opponents. Our aims were not always the best, and the glass ceiling light covers suffered at an alarming rate until only a few remained intact. Apparently, the dean (Aldrich?) got word of the carnage and came to discipline us, but his accusation was greeted with, "What breakage?" He surveyed the hall and finally left assuming that he had been misinformed. Happily for us, he did not look in the bathrooms and discover the new homes of all the broken fixtures which had been exchanged for the undamaged ones now sitting above the war zone. After the long hall briefly became a bowling alley, the hole in the drywall was a little harder to conceal.

Henry's room

Our freshman year, Henry Breithaupt returned to Norton to find almost the entire contents of his room, right down to the rug and electrical outlet covers, set up in the Norton Courtyard, with only the bed remaining. Henry confirms with this note:

"If memory serves, I was the person with nothing (except a bed?) in my room. The occasion was the first Super Bowl game between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs. We rigged an aerial to pick up a San Diego station as LA, the site of the game, was blacked out. I was an ardent Packer fan and, at one point in the days before the game, declared: 'All I need is God and the Green Bay Packers.' Taking me up on that, my sponsor group buddies emptied my room of everything (except the bed?) the evening before the game. I slept in my "cell" and celebrated a Green Bay victory the next day."

ROTC

The Viet Nam War was raging, and each Thursday a favorite modus operandi for protest by the men of Norton Hall was to place their stereo speakers in the south windows facing the football field, where the cadets drilled, and turn up the volume before locking their doors and heading to lunch. Leading the pack was David Krumme, the bass player for Sam's Train, who had a huge amp and speaker that blasted "Taxman"; but others with only modest setups also contributed (my little $12 Westinghouse clock radio was pitiful by comparison). Consequently, the commands could not be heard, and confusion reigned on the parade grounds. I do have to thank ROTC for some of my spending money as a few of the future lieutenants came regularly for haircuts (in all honestly, they were terrible) in order to pass inspection.

Pennies

As I recall, this one occurred in several dorms. The trick was to push hard from the hall on the victim's door, and then slide a penny into the crack between the door and the jamb leaving so much pressure on the latch that the handle could not be turned from the inside. Some of us on the first floor went out the window after being "pennyed-in"; but others on the second floor missed a class until released by their jailors.

Paper Capers

One sponsee found his room filled to the ceiling with crumpled newspaper. Not escaping the list of RF victims, I awoke after an evening of being over-served to find unrolled toilet paper three feet deep covering the floor of my room. Reportedly the gang scoured the campus and filched every roll they could find, in one case even reaching in an open bathroom window.

The Christmas Tree

If memory serves, this event happened near the end of first semester our sophomore year, but the majority of the perps were previous freshmen in Norton. Very early in the morning, one member of the gang slipped through an open window into the basement of the Frary Dining Room, opened a door, and admitted the other conspirators who, with the morning staff due to arrive any minute, absconded with the as yet undecorated Christmas tree and carried it across the campus to the home of President Lyon. After erecting the tree on his lawn and performing a rousing rendition of "God Rest Ye Merry President" we returned to the scene of the crime where I'm sure the cooks had no suspicions whatsoever regarding the absent tree and a single full table at 7:00 a.m.

Birthdays

Birthdays usually meant a dunking in the Frary Fountain. Mine is in July, so I thought I was safe. Not so as they nabbed me on my half birthday in January.

After the Dunking

Left to Right: Charlie Henderson, Rob Fryer, Bart Wilson, Bill Keller, Dave Jay, David Smith, Joel Lorimer, John Uphold, Henry Breithaupt, and Brian Campbell.

Photograph by Sue Nelson Smith

The Norton Plaque

The statute of limitations has long since passed on the longest running prank, but to protect reputations, the participants in this caper shall remain anonymous.

The Plaque, photograph by Jim Cory

One of the Seamen from Norton Hall (BTW Edwin Norton was the first dean of the college faculty) left for greener pastures in Berkeley, and on the occasion of his marriage, three dorm mates, as described by the groom, "appropriated the plaque from Norton (which was on the outside wall by the east entrance), checked it into baggage and flew it up to Berkeley for my wedding." For the next forty years it sat in his basement until by happenstance we reconnected, and he expressed his desire to return it. "Why I was made the caretaker of that albatross and why, against all odds, I managed to hold onto it, I have no idea. I have no problem with continuing my stewardship, but was wondering if there might be some more appropriate resting place for it." I replied, "As for the plaque, I think only a few of us knew that it was gone (I had only learned recently). Rather than have it end in a dumpster, I think the best course would be to ship it to President Oxtoby..." which he did.

The PC archivist wrote, "I just wanted to let you know that the plaque has arrived. Thank you so much for sending it to us. I have been contacted by one of your former dorm mates who has expressed a wish that the plaque be returned to its original place at Norton Hall. We are, in fact, trying to locate the plaque's original location so that we can put it back where it was. If you, or any of your former dorm mates, recall exactly where it was, we would appreciate your help." Luckily, I had one group photo from a friend and replied, "If you look in the attached photo, over the shoulders of the Nortonites you can see a corner of the plaque just to the right of the door."

Nortonites and the Plaque

Left to Right: Jack Cedarquist, Steve Colley, Bill Keller, David Smith, David Krumme, Fred Coleman, David Jay, Henry Breithaupt, Jim Buskirk, Steve Strong, Brian Campbell, Steve Fredman, and Gary Rose.

Photograph by Joel Lorimer

As of the 45th reunion, it was still in storage at PC, so I need to write again and ask that it be remounted.

About the author

After a career as a diagnostic radiologist in Milwaukee WI and Grand Junction CO, David Smith retired and is enjoying the outdoor life of the high desert and western slope of the Rockies.

LICENSE PLATES

by Cary Stump

**License plates are used** by some of us to share something about ourselves with the world.

Some years ago I had a license plate frame made that says at the top "I'd Rather Be" and at the bottom instead of a passion or hobby it says "Here Now."

I am still desirous of spending more of my time awake to the present instead of preoccupied with my thoughts.

Another time years ago I decided I was ready for a personalized license plate. I went to dmv.ca.gov and searched for a verb or affirmation. All the good ones were taken, but I discovered there was availability linking two words together. I narrowed it down to "YES DO" or "YES BE."

In a moment of clarity some years ago while reading a book on spiritualism, I realized that for me it wasn't as complicated as an entire book full of words. It was that I simply want more Joy, Beauty, and Love in my life. I still see the bookmark I wrote those three words on. I added the fourth word Truth to clarify the kind of Joy, Beauty, and Love that I want more of.

The desire for being has been part of my life. But probably more so the desire for doing. I chose the "YES DO" plate. I've decided to work half time in my seventies and I would say I'm still focused on doing. Maybe when I get further into retirement I'll change to "YES BE."

What I learned at Pomona College

by Kel Vanderlip

**Some of us were slower studies than others,** and I was way out on the slow side of that curve. This created interesting problems, not all of which I wanted to confront. But early in my senior year, an optometrist in Claremont told me I couldn't read, because my eyes didn't work together. Over 3 months, using exercise and prisms, I learned how to get both eyes on the same word in the same sentence.

In 16 years of wearing glasses, no one had noticed this defect. No teacher had seen a problem. No one thought to look for an eye coordination problem. Everyone just treated me as a poor student, lazy, or indolent.

So, I really did learn something at Pomona College: how to read. I've been learning ever since.

Can your kids read? How do you know?

About the author

Kelvin Vanderlip graduated with a degree in Economics. He worked for Union Bank, went East to get an MBA at Cornell, and joined Price Waterhouse, including stints in Switzerland, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the National office. When microcomputers became practical, he turned independent developer and systems administrator in the open source world – thank you, Linus Toorvalds! Kelvin is semi-retired and lives in Portuguese Bend, California.

Temples

by Elizabeth Jefferson Young

The pine grove towers,

columned row on columned row,

an ancient temple where dryad dogwoods

dance the mysteries of fall before the high altar

on a needle carpet deep as any oriental silk.

Pungent resin fills the air, heady as frankincense.

The distant susurration of the wind recalls

the prayers of priests and people to an ancient god.

This poem was inspired by my studies in Classics and Art History.

### Faith Rediscovered

by Elizabeth Jefferson Young

I wandered lost in the universe, questioning

or depressed; or, perhaps, I was depressed

because I wandered, all my questions unanswered.

Then, one day, you stood at the slate board,

lecturing and drawing the detailed and most

improbable life cycle of parasites for our delectation;

pure love of knowledge-shared suffused your brow.

Suddenly a random question was flung

across the lecture hall, aimed with a certain

crude hurtfulness against a Jew who had

lived the era of the Holocaust in Europe.

Do you believe in God?

Silence, hot as any lava, flowed across the hall.

Gems of beauty and love, of a life well-lived

flowed from your lips...quietly, quietly.

I do, you said.

The universe is so complex and wondrous

that I believe God was there before time

unknowable to fling a billion, billion

galaxies across the universe.

That was all I needed to ease my aching spirit.

If you, a world-renowned scientist who could

trace the brief, complex lives of our smallest enemies,

a man of art who could make a violin sing,

a man who nourished his family and fed his friends,

believed in God, I could surely explore my own

faith in the midst of a scientific world without shame.

I still rejoice in that quiet hiatus during parasitology

lecture, that shining moment of connection,

that turning point from spiritual childhood toward

a more mature spiritual journey.

How I regret I failed to thank you.

This poem is dedicated to Professor Yost Amrein.

### Changing Directions

by Elizabeth Jefferson Young

**The moments that will change** the direction of our lives are rarely marked by flashing neon signs and arrows. Such it was with my experiences beginning in the fall of my junior year at the College Infirmary on Indian Hill Blvd.

I am not sure why, but I had returned to campus a bit early. I was trying to figure out how to earn ten dollars to pay for the very inexpensive and generous full-coverage health care insurance offered by the college. My absentee father had returned the bill with a terse note saying his insurance would cover any problems I might face and that he would not cover the extra ten dollar fee.

I remember thinking this response was crazy; but, yikes, it was due in two days and here was I with no baby-sitting jobs lined up. Faculty families were not yet clamoring for child-care services so early in the year.

That night, I wasn't feeling well when I headed off to bed. I awoke later in excruciating pain. I don't think I was thinking very clearly at that point; and, as a child from foster care and a tenuous family situation, I was unused to answering to anyone but myself for my actions and my whereabouts. In any case, I found an acquaintance to drive me to the infirmary, but neglected to tell the RA where I was going and why. I later received a gentle scolding from the dean of women students for that omission.

When we arrived at the infirmary, the door opened to quiet, to serenity, to soothing hands. After the usual interminable list of questions, there came the blessed relief of medication, a diminishing of pain, and, finally, sleep.

**I awoke to suffused, golden light** and to the low murmur of professional voices. That peace and hazy, golden light are the core of my remembrance. I have tried to suppress the memory of my first pelvic exam and the mis-diagnosis of 'female' problems.

This was the beginning of a major turning point in my time at Pomona College and in my experiences as a student. I would spend the rest of the semester in intermittent severe pain from a kidney stone, sweating through my studies and my tests, passing hours beyond count in multiple physicians' offices, culminating in surgery for a parathyroid adenoma over the Christmas break. During the Spring Semester, one of the college physicians, Dr. Toni Wood, generously took me into her home to recuperate.

Because my father had not covered a ten dollar bill, he was walloped with large co-pays and a number of uncovered bills. His response was to immediately drop payment for my room and board, which were not covered by my scholarship. I became that rare bird at Pomona, an off-campus student, working every spare hour to earn my own way.

**These incidents not only ended** my experience of usual college life, but also changed my focus of interest away from Classical Languages and Art History. I would end up staying an extra year on a grant to complete my pre-med studies and would choose to spend my professional life in care-giving.

About the author

After graduating from Pomona, Elizabeth Jefferson Young became an R.N. and worked for a number of years in the field of high-risk labor and delivery. She and her husband Rev. Frank Young, an Episcopal priest, have three adult children. Elizabeth enjoys reading, needlework, and gardening; she writes some poetry and volunteers in her church and community.

Thoughts about Pomona

by Linda Schaffer Yedlin

**The very best part** of Pomona College for me: friends! The amazing, lifelong friends I made at Pomona and who have changed my life so much for the better. I am grateful for the humor, understanding, intellectual stimulation, pushback, and love I got from the wonderful people I met at PC and maintained contact with thereafter.

However, my feelings/memories about Pomona have been strongly affected by my "rearview mirror" look at the school. The entitlement of so many of its students continues to rankle, as does the not-so-distant actions vis-à-vis the undocumented campus workers. When people ask me about the school, I feel obligated to mention both of those things. They have drastically colored my view of my years there. For most of us there was an extreme lack of understanding about our privilege; this understanding only developed for me as I became more politically aware.

**A more diverse school** would have meant a more diverse group of "old friends" for me. I believe this aspect of the school has changed; I certainly hope so.

About the author

Linda Schaffer Yedlin graduated from Pomona College in 1970. She continues to try to work for a better world.

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