To the Editor,
As the yearly retreat to the diploma mills nears I thought your readers would like to know of the continued existence of some essentially less repressive alternatives.
Especially since 1960, there have existed an increasing number of very small, essentially student run, institutions that would now most aptly be considered “counter-community” colleges. The first was Mark Golden’s experimental personalist college, Emerson, in Pacific Groves, California, which is mentioned in Saul Landeau’s anthology on the New Left.
For the past year I have been assisting in the re-establishment of Blake College. It is the brainchild of Raymond Peat who was at Emerson the first year and also assisted in a general education project at Urbana College. Located in Mexico from 1962 to 1965, Blake first advertised extensively through Mensa, the international upper 2% IQ organization.
The college has developed an approach which has the real feel of William Blake’s emphasis upon the supremacy of imagination as the creative, ongoing learning experience over the mere residue of memory
The sole requirement for graduation from Blake is 85 percentile score average on the graduate record which may be taken anytime after the first term at Blake (the present charge is $200 “per term,” which begins whenever a student arrives). We have no separate administration, the fellows are the non-profit experimental educational corporation which is the college and the education is a free (and almost constantly Zen-like) Summerhillian experience which breaks down all “teaching” “learning” distinctions.
Blake is now located in a single house in Eugene, Oregon.
Current concerns of the Blake community center on several projects related to the “Panic Philosophy” of Jodorowski, the leading Latin American mime; whose discoveries parallel those of Goodman’s Gestalt Therapy, attempts to extend Reichian scientific theories, and the development of a creativity, bodily perception oriented language theory based upon Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological answers to Sartre’s overly isolated brand of existentialism, breaking free and can no longer tolerate the comparatively rote learning of residue should consider some of these alternatives: For admission to Blake write Luke Carpenter, Registrar, 301 W. 11th, Eugene Ore.
If anyone would like local info, oration on Blake or would consider founding their own counter institution on this more Rogerian oriented pattern they could contact me at BR 2-1524.
Albert Micheal Weber, Fellow, Blake College 1966-67
Detroit
Dear editors:
This is to notify you of a new campaign to bolster the sagging image of the President. I am initiating a “Grass Roots” campaign to re-elect MacBird for President. Would you notify your readers to please send their notes of encouragement to President MacBird so that he would not fink out and would, instead, toss his hat into the ring for re-election.
Grass Roots
Campaign Manager, Peter Gregonis
Detroit
Dear Editor:
Kathryn K. no longer lives at this -address. Cancel this subscription or I shall take legal action to stop it. I will not in anyway have anything to do with your asinine filth paper.
James Carter
South Haven
Editor:
After reading the story on the Leroy killing [“Who Killed John Leroy?”, FE #36, August 15-31, 1967], I have one question to ask the impotent old men who supposedly run the city of Detroit. If you’re so damn sure a shot was fired from the car Leroy was riding in. Just why wasn’t a simple 60 second Paraffin test taken? I’ll tell you why. Because someone was afraid that eight National Guardsmen would be, and should be, charged with murder.
Thank you for listening to me.
“Boo”
Hazel Park
To the Editor:
Politeness and proper language, for a long time, was replacing profanity and rudeness everywhere in our social relations except in our lower depths. There it flourished unabated as always.
Rudeness in speech and action were obstacles in the struggle for status. It therefore had to be avoided. Those on the topside of social relations welcome a practiced and encouraged this urbanity It was a means for cementing the relations and prevented them from being unruffled.
Depending on the context, rudeness is a means of ruffling relationships, or a method of class rule. In a master slave situation politeness is more economical, more effective, and offers less wear on the conscience.
This politeness in many areas of our culture is being replaced by calculated impoliteness. Particularly among the Hippies, on campus and in the new left. Why?
Workers swear out of rage born of impotence when caught in an intolerable situation. Or they swear to add emphasis lacking an adequate vocabulary. Or they resort to it when they are in an indignant and defiant mood.
The Hippies swear when they want to shock or ruffle social relations that they reject, but cannot change. Since this rudeness in speech and dress is not a real threat to the status-quo, TIME is able to smile upon the movement as wayward children.
Many in the new left not only swear, but they resort to radical rhetoric. Revolution, radicalism and reforms are the scare words. But they are used so intermingled as to make the words meaningless. They lose all precision and are impoverished.
Should one therefore not be rude? Well, that isn’t the point. Nor is rudeness. In- the current conflict rudeness is derivative; it derives from revolt. It is an elementary and ineffective form of it. The depths of our contemporary crisis requires a more conscious, consistent and conclusive objective.
John Zupan
Southfield