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Title

Black Mountain College Bulletin Newsletter (Vol. II, No. 4, January 1944): College Makes Plans for Summer

Date
1944
Century
20th century
Medium & Support
Ink on paper
Object Type
Archival Documents
Credit Line
Black Mountain College Collection, gift of Barbara Beate Dreier and Theodore Dreier, Jr. on behalf of all generations of Dreier family
Accession Number
2017.40.026
Copyright
In Copyright, Educational Use Permitted
Courtesy of the Theodore Dreier Sr. Document Collection, Asheville Art Museum
Description

Announcing plans for Summer Quarter, Work Camp and plans for the Art Institute and Music Institute. Other announcements include pilot plan for Dr. Fritz Hansgirg's Magnesium Plant and the Southern Conference to be hosted at BMC in January. Also includes financial notes and faculty profiles.

BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE BULLETIN Newsletter
Volume II Number 4 January, 1944
COLLEGE MAKES PLANS FOR SUMMER
Black Mountain College has begun to make plans for its Summer program which will include, in addition to a regular Summer Quarter of eleven weeks, beginning on July 3, an Institute of Music that will run concurrently with the study program, an Institute of Art that will begin on July 18, and a Summer Work Camp.
The Summer Quarter will be a continuation of the regular academic study as provided under the new year-round plan. In this set-up, however, a number of courses will be offered that will be complete units in themselves.
The Work Camp will be similar to the camps of the three preceding summers, with emphasis upon farm work and construction.
The Music Institute will be personally directed by Dr.Heinrich Jalowetz, Professor of Music at Black Mountain College and for a number of years officially connected, as conductor, with many of the leading orchestras of Continental Europe. He will be assisted in arrangements and instruction by the other regular members of the College Music Department, Frederic Cohen, Dr. Edward Lowinsky, and Mrs. Trudi Straus, and several visiting outstanding musicians. Detailed announcements will be sent out from the College office during February.
In commenting upon the purposes of and his hopes for the Institute Dr. Jalowetz said, in part:
“The stupendous task of reconstructing our shaken world will demand from us an increased willingness to bear them. And how are we to reconstruct our shaken culture? In the Arts, we shall have to find new foundations on stricter principles, now that impressionism, expressionism, and the experiments of yesterday are simply a part of history. Yesterday- to come to our present theme- the interpreter of music was often a wilful, improvising demon for whom the score was the cue for a magnificent exhibitionism. Today he increasingly recognizes that his first duty is fidelity to the composition while he interprets. He has learned responsibility.
“This does not mean that he mechanically transmits the composition from the score to his audience without the intervention of his own personality. He has to bring to life the music that is presented to him as rigid and dead ciphers. This revivification demands not merely technique but human feeling and even a special type of imagination.
“The interpreter therefore is not only an actor. He is a thinker. He must be able to understand the structure of a piece of music, the historical processes from which it sprang, the traditions to which it belongs. If he is to recreate it in the decisive irrevocable instant of performance, he has to know all this and, in addition, to grasp the affective character of the piece.
“All music is to a certain extent conditioned by the instrument through which it is expressed. But in all times the specific styles of different instruments, of different instrumental and vocal groups, influenced each other so much that it is impossible to be an interpreter of one style without understanding the problems and techniques of all. Since the music of the great masters never had merely technical sources, a training in musical interpretation should not follow the single track of technical problems in one field. The instrumentalist, conductor, singer, chamber music player should face- occasionally at least- the problems of interpretation in all fields.
“The Music Institute, Summer 1944, at Black Mountain College will enable him to do so. The whole problem of faithful and imaginative reception of modern and older music is to be approached theoretically and practically by artists of different musical spheres. All the students of the Institute are expected to participate in classes, lectures, and discussions conducted by a faculty
Black Mountain College Bulletin Newsletter January, 1944
Volume II Number 4
Issued seven times a year, in August, September, November, December, January, February, and April. Entered as second-class matter November 4, 1942, at the Post Office at Black Mountain, North Carolina, under the Act of August 24, 1912.

Of artists who are performers of international reputation and lifelong experience as well as teachers and writers on the subject of interpretation. They are pioneers of music that is new or forgotten, or not yet rightly understood. Since the perfect interpreter has always been a fighter for the work he represents, he has to create a style that embodies the composer’s idea. Only those interpreters who have been able to understand and to communicate a new idiom have been able to grasp the works of the past as they really were: works of a present time, and therefore to give them the character they had in the time they were written: the character of something amazing and new.
“The Music Institute will be open not only to those people who can take active part but also to those who come as auditors or who participate only in discussion. It will be a meeting place for instrumentalists, singers, conductors, composers, teachers, critics, for music professionals and amateurs. Performances and concerts will be the fruit of general cooperation. Rehearsals will be open to all.”
Art Institute
Josef Albers, who for ten years was a teacher at the Bauhuas in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin and has been at Black Mountain College since its opening in 1933, will be in full charge of the Art Institute. He will be assisted by Jean Charlot and other visiting experienced artist-teachers and scholars of reputation.
The Art Institute will be designed especially for art teachers and serious art students and will emphasize contemporary art problems and methods of teaching. Every effort will be made to present both aspects of teaching: through practical studies and through theory and history.
There will be courses in the fundamental disciplines, including Drawing, representational and from nature; General Design, studies with material, construction and combination; Painting, with an emphasis upon composition; and probably, also, Carving and Modeling. Among the specialized courses will be Color, its function and use; and Textile Design, the practice and theory of weaving and techniques for limited equipment.
There will be lectures in Art History, with an emphasis on cultural and social significance; Typography and Advertising Art, with exercises; and Modern Planning, in Architecture and Landscaping.
Two panels have been planned. One will be on “Art Education Today”; the other will be on “The Teaching of Art”.
A detailed program for the Art Institute will be sent out from the College early in the Spring.
Magnesium Pilot Plant
Carpenters from Black Mountain and student workers of the College have completed the pilot plant for Dr. Fritz Hansgirg’s experiments in developing processes for cheap production of magnesium. This plant is a small wooden addition to the Chemistry Laboratory, a science building created out of the frame structure that was used as a bath house when Lake Eden was a summer resort.
Dr. Hansgirg, Professor of Chemistry and Physics, has been at Black Mountain College since the Fall of 1942. He is the inventor of many industrial processes, including the carbothermic magnesium reduction process. He received his doctorate at the University of Graz. He was at one time Research Chemist with the Fanto Oil Company in Austria; he was the founder of the Electrothermic Company in Switzerland, honorary lecturer of Applied Chemistry and Electrothermic Processes at the University of Mining and Metallurgy in Austria, Consulting Engineer and Vice President of the American Magnesium Metals Corporation, and designer of the Henry J. Kaiser Magnesium Defense Plant at Permanente, California.
Dr. Hansgirg’s recent researches, in which he has sought to develop a process for extracting magnesium from olivine, has been thus far so successful that he intends to organize a company that will own the patents and promote the future development of the process so that it can be used on a commercial scale.
In commenting on his project Dr. Hansgirg said in part: “Since other processes for producing magnesium that have so far been developed cannot produce metal as cheaply as my process will, the changes for a large commercial development seem very favorable. There have been many predictions that the Post war Period will be the beginning of the age of light metals- the change from an age of steel promising an industrial development of the first magnitude. The economical production of magnesium this change; and since olivine occurs in such large deposits in this section of the country, the State of North Carolina and this whole region may be in a particularly favorable position to participate in this development.”
A Gift to the College
Dr. Hansgirg has announced to the Board of Fellows that he is proposing to give to the College twenty percent of the interest in the company which is represented by the value of the patents. The total stock of this company will be $12,000 of which $5,000 is to be represented by the patents. The College’s share will thus be $1,000 in stock. According to Dr. Hansgirg, the rest of the capital needed has already been subscribed.
Financial Notes
The following report has just been issued by Theodore Dreier, the College Treasurer:
“The financial condition of the College is still a precarious one, though definitely improved since a year ago. Most of the friends of Black Mountain are familiar with the crisis that was faced in our having to move the College to a new location and in having to build a large portion of a new plant just as the nation was becoming involved in the war. The aim has been to get enough of the new plant built so that the College could continue for the duration, after which it is hoped that the plant can be expanded to accommodate 125 students. At present, we are limited in accommodations to about half this number. Some increase in faculty housing is also essential, though the building required here will not be proportionately as great as that required for additional student space and for adequate library, laboratory, and theater buildings. In all, it is thought that approximately $250,000 will be necessary at pre-war prices to provide all the additional housing that is necessary if the College is to attain the full size contemplated.
“The tenth annual report of the College auditor, Professor William Morse Cole, has just been published and is available upon request. Several points of interest in his report are as follows: 1) Total gifts received for 1942-43 amounted to $29,379.90, whereas fee reductions granted for student aid were $24,829.32. 2) The total cost of operation for the year was $65,285.66, whereas the income from student fees before fee reductions were subtracted was $65,749.81. 3) Showing up of the process of building the new College plant due to the war was reflected as follows: $14,422.88 (or $8,130.71 more than depreciation) was spent on permanent assets in 1942-43 as compared with $25,180.94 in 1941-42, and $37,250.28 in 1940-41.
“The Treasurer’s office reports that from September 1 to January 31 gifts amounted to $12,004.48 were received. $5,862.54, available from before September 1 and $3,000 in pledges still due, make a total of $20,866.54 available for this year in all. About $10,000 is still needed for this year, in addition to the fund which is always required in advance for another year to come.”
A student-faculty campaign committee, of which Dr. Clark Foreman is chairman, has just been appointed and is planning campaigns which, it is hoped, will put the College on a sounder financial footing than has hitherto been possible.
Southern Conference
Black Mountain College was host on January 22 and 23 to the Executive Board of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, a group of Southern leaders, among whom were: Mrs. Charlotte Hawkins Brown, President of Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, North Carolina; Tarleton Collier of Louisville, Kentucky; Dr. James A. Dombrowski, Conference Executive Secretary, of Nashville, Tennessee; Roscoe Dungee, editor of the Black Dispatch, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Dr. Clark Foreman, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Black Mountain College; Gerald Harris, President of the Alabama Farmers Union; the Reverend Clyde Helms, Baptist Minister of Columbia, South Carolina; and Miss Lillian Smith and Miss Paula Snelling, editors of The South Today, of Clayton, Georgia. Dr. Foreman, President of the Conference, acted as Chairman of the meetings.
In the two days they were at Lake Eden the Southern leaders made plans for their annual conference, held two informal meetings with the students and teachers of Black Mountain College to discuss problems of democracy, and drew up a statement of policy and action.
The Board directed a letter to Senator Mead of New York, asking him to lead the fight for cloture in debate on the pending poll tax legislation, and for passage of the Bill, HR7.
In their statement the Board declared that betrayal of the “masses of Southern people” by their representatives is involved in the attitude of Southern Senator opposing anti-poll tax and soldier-vote legislation.
The Board also assailed the action of a group of Southern railroads in defying the “free and equal opportunity” order of the President’s Fair Employment Practices Committee and urged action to meet “the challenge”.
“In the open defiance of the order to grant job opportunities without regard to race, creed or color”, said the statement, “is implied not only a denial of democratic principles, but also a grave and far-reaching danger of intolerance of the law, wide-spread contempt for institutions of government and continued affront to established authority”.
The statement advocated adoption of uniform nation-wide classification of freight rates to end the discriminatory rate system now existing, the system “which Vice President Wallace recently said keeps the South in a colonial status subservient to the monopoly money markets of the Northeast”.
Other actions include:
Expression of regret at the Senate’s failure to provide for Federal aid to education and for renewal of efforts in its behalf
Endorsement of the Murray-Wagner-Dingell Bill to extend and increase social security benefits
Recommendation of “adequate” Federal tax legislation to provide swifter payment of the war costs, elimination of inordinate war profits, renegotiation of war contracts, and reduction of the danger of inflation. Opposition was voiced to the provision to require financial statements of cooperatives and labor unions as a move toward their impairment.
Support of food subsidies as instruments of inflation control, support for living standards, and reduction of war costs
Advocacy of full support of the programs of rural rehabilitation farm ownership and cooperative ventures under the Farm Security Administration
Request for elimination of racial segregation rules in public transportation and commendation of the efforts of Virginius Dabney, editor of the Richmond, Virginia, Times Dispatch, to bring about an end of bus segregation in that city
Publicity
“Black Mountain’s Tenth” is the title of the feature article that appeared in the Education Section of the December 27 issue of Time.
The February issue of Life Story carries three pages of pictures of activities at Black Mountain College, Descriptive matter gives an account of the construction done on the campus by attending students.
The Johns-Manville Company, national dealers in industrial building materials, will use photographs of the Studies Building at Black Mountain College and an outline of the educational policies of the institution in a Spring issue of their bulletin to their salesman. “We want to show the possibilities of corrugated asbestos in the construction of schools, dormitories and similar types of buildings where fire proofing and low maintenance are important consideration,” writes one of the Company’s officials.
Faculty
The January, 1944, issue of the College Art Journal reprints Anni Albers’ “Works with Material”, the essay contained in Black Mountain College Bulletin Number 5.
A short article entitled “The Status of Contemporary German Poetry” by Dr. Eric Bentley appeared in the Fall Number of the Rocky Mountain Review. The Autumn 1943 issue of Books Abroad: An International Quarterly contained his essay, “German Writers in Exile: 1933-43”. His review of “The Heritage of Symbolism” by E.W. Bowra appeared in an early December issue of the Nation. Dr. Bentley is under contract to finish in the next few weeks his book, A Century of Hero Worship. Excerpts appeared in the Winter Number of Accent under the title: “Notes on Carlyle, Nietzsche, and Stefan George”.
Dr. Clark Foreman and Dr. Herbert Miller are directing a combination Sociology- American Government course this Quarter. The Students in the course are taking as one of their projects the making of a survey of the town of Black Mountain in collaboration with the Citizens Committee of the town.
Mary Gregory, Instructor of Woodworking, is in the Baker Memorial Hospital in Boston, convalescing from an operation on one of her shoulders.
Dr. Fritz Hansgirg talked to the Asheville Rotary Club in November on “Magnesium”.
Kenneth Kurtz was the Black Mountain College representative at the Annual meeting of the North Carolina College Conference held in Greensboro in November.
Dr. Edward Lowinsky has returned to the College after a leave of absence of six months, necessitated by the uncertainty of his military service status. Dr. and Mrs. Lowinsky and their young daughter, Naomi Ruth, are now living in an apartment in Black Dwarf Cottage.
Dr. Lowinsky has been asked to contribute an article for a forthcoming book to be entitled Music in the Renaissance.
During the Fall Quarter, Dr. Herbert Miller gave a number of addresses in Western North Carolina. Among them were: a talk at a luncheon meeting of the Asheville Rotary Club on “Some Observations on the Future”, an address to the Western North Carolina Schoolmasters Club on “Peace Plans”, an address at a luncheon meeting of the United Nations Association in Hickory on “Post=War Problems”, and talk on “The Refugee in America” at a dinner meeting of the X-Club in Asheville. In December, Dr. Miller was one of the speakers at the Massachusetts Conference on Social Work in Boston. Dr. Miller will teach Sociology at Temple University this summer during the second half of the Summer School.
After an absence of a year and a half from the College because of illness, Dr. Paul Radin has returned to Lake Eden to continue his classes in anthropology and Latin American History. Mrs. Radin is planning to come to the College in February.
In October, Dr. Erwin Straus addressed the staff of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital in Boston on “Depersonalization”.
Trudi Straus participated as violinist in the two concerts in Winston-Salem by the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra in January. She will play in the February concerts at Duke and in the March concerts in Raleigh.
Margaret Strauss, a graduate of New Jersey College for Women, has been appointed Graduate Assistant in Physics and Chemistry and assigned to help Dr. Fritz Hansgirg in the preparation of laboratory equipment for experiments.
H. MacGuire Wood, Instructor of Building Construction, has gone to Florida to recuperate from an illness that forced him to discontinue his work at the College last Fall.
Robert Wunsch was the guest speaker at the annual banquet of Delta Kappa Gamma, the Regional Chapter of a National organization of outstanding women teachers, at the George Vanderbilt Hotel in Asheville in October; he spoke on “The Teacher’s Place in Post War Reconstruction”. During the same month he spoke to the Parent-Teacher Association of the Grace High School in Asheville on “Teachers and Parents and Children”. In November, he met for a discussion on educational philosophy and techniques with the Staff of Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa.
Annual Business Meetings
At the Annual Business meeting of the Corporation of Black Mountain College the Faculty reelected Robert Wunsch Rector for the 1943-44 Session. They appointed Dr. Heinrich Jalowetz and Dr. Erwin Straus to the Board of Fellows for three year terms and Frederic Cohen and Dr. Fritz Hansgirg for one-year terms.
At the Annual Business Meeting of the Board of Fellows, Theodore Dreier was elected Treasurer for the 1943-44 Session, and Kenneth Kurtz was named Secretary.
Art
Josef Alber’s article, “Manual Work and Handicraft in Relation to Future Architecture”, will be published in a symposium on American Architecture and City Planning in the Post-war Period.
Mr. Albers will give a course in Design, Color and Freehand Drawing at the Summer Session, June 19 to July 14, at the Lowthorpe School in Groton, Massachusetts.
The College is now exhibiting a group of paintings by Will Henry Stevens, a Southern artist. These paintings, abstract studies, include the following titles: “Moss Grown Planet”, “Fire Fringes Green”, “Sand Takes Flight”, “Somber Vitatlity”, “Shapes Come Alive”, “Life Transcends”, “Of the Sea”, “Brown Irradiance”, “Intangibles” and “Solar Mist”. Of his work, Mr. Stevens says: “It has been my experience and I believe the experience of serious creative artists generally, if they have the good fortune of working over a long period of time, gradually to depart from the representation of surface appearances and to develop symbols expressive of cosmic values. Art is certainly based on emotional understanding, that which lies back of appearances, on the creative power to reconstruct in audible or visual terms the feelings and moods of the artist, which, if he foes deep, are universal”.
The Board of Fellows announces the appointment to the Faculty for the 1944 Summer Quarter of Jean Charlot, an internationally known artist. Mr. Charlot, now an American citizen, was born in France. For some time he lived in Mexico, where he did murals for the Mexican government. Also an archeologist, Mr. Charlot was a member of expeditions in Yucatan for the Carnegie Institute of Washington, especially at Chichen-Itza between 1926 and 1929. After coming to the United States,
Mr. Charlot gave lectures and classes at the Art Students League in New York City and at several colleges. For three years he has been a resident artist at the University of Georgia, in Athens. Mr. Charlot has done a number of murals in the United States. These are at the Church of Peapach in New Jersey, at Mac Donough, Georgia, and in Athens, Georgia. His work is widely exhibited. His paintings are in the Metropolitan and Modern Art Museums in New York City the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Uffizi in Florence, Italy, and in other galleries. He has given many one-man shows. Mr. Charlot spent two weeks at Lake Eden with his family last summer and sketched scenes of the rural life of Western North Carolina. He gave a slide-illustrated lecture to the students, teachers and guests on “Mexican Tradition and Art”.
Drama
The major dramatic production during the Fall Quarter was Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest”. It was directed by Robert Wunsch. The settings for the farce were designed and created by Louise Minster, a first-year student, and the costumes for it were the creative work of Marilyn Bauer and Jane Slater. The second performance of “The Importance of Being Earnest” will be given at the Lee H. Edwards High School in Asheville on March 3 as a feature of the Third Annual Western District Festival of the Carolina Dramatic Association.
Mrs. Anne Linker, a New York sculptures and dramatic critic, has given to the College Drama Department her valuable collection of framed engravings of the Sadler Wells actors under David Garrick. All the engravings were made and hand-painted in the Eighteenth Century.
Under the direction of Dr. Eric Bentley, students of Literature and History gave two programs of dramatic readings on the Dining Hall stage during the Fall Quarter. On the first program Dr. Bentley, acting as Chairman, made commentaries on contemporary history and literature and illustrated his remarks with readings from the poetry of Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, T/S/ Eliot, W.H. Auden, Bert Brecht and W.R. Rodgers. Students read scenes from the “Private Life of the Master Race”, an unpublished drama by Bert Brecht. The second program included the reading of “The Man of Destiny” by Bernard Shaw and “Miss Julia” by August Strindberg.
The students in Dramatic Production have begun rehearsals of August Strindberg’s “The Stronger”, Eugene O’Neill’s “Before Breakfast” and Sutton Vane’s “Outward Bound”, the chief dramatic project for the Winter Quarter.
Robert Wunsch will act as Chairman of the Third Annual Western District Festival of the Carolina Dramatic Association to be held in Asheville on March 2, 3 and 4.
Black Mountain College will participate in the North Carolina State Dramatic Festival and Tournament in Chapel Hill in March. Students in Dramatic Production will enter the contests with Lady Gregory’s “Spreading the News” and with costumes and miniature stages.
Betty Kelley, a fourth-year student majoring in dramatics, is writing a three-act fairy play for the Asheville Children’s Theatre. It will be produced at the Plaza Theatre in Asheville for an audience of Western North Carolina elementary school children on April 29.
Black Mountain College was presented at all of the monthly Institutes of the Western North Carolina Dramatic Association, held in Asheville during the Fall Quarter. Robert Wunsch acted as Chairman of the Number Institute and spoke on “Animating the News”. Students in the Dramatic Production Class presented Jane Mayhall’s “Funeral Scene” and Will Hamlin’s “Mr. Whitcomb and the Horse”, two radio scripts. At the Institute meeting to be held at the Lee H. Edwards High School in Asheville in February 5, Marilyn Bauer and Jane Slater will speak on “Economic and Artistic Costuming for Amateur Performances”. They will illustrate their remarks with costumes created by them for the production of “The Importance of Being Earnest”.
Music
The members of the Music Department gave three evening concerts during the Fall Quarter. The first of these concerts was an All-Beethoven Program, given early in October by Trudi Straus, Gwendolyn Currier, Frederic Cohen and Dr. Heinrich Jalowetz. It included: Trio, Opus 1, Number 3 for Violin, ‘Cello and Piano; Sonata, Opus 96 for Violin and Piano; and Trio-Opus 70, Number 1 for Violin, ‘Cello and Piano. The second concert, presented also in October, included Johannes Braham’s Sonata in D Minor for Violin and Piano and Max Reger’s Sonata in C Minor for Violin and Piano. This program was played by Trudi Straus and Dr. Jalowetz. In December Frederic Cohen played a program of keyboard music consisting of a Rondo by Ph E. Bach, Minuett and Gigue by Mozart, and Sonatas by Scarlatti, Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven.
Gretel and Dr. Edward Lowinsky and Trudi Straus gave a concert on Saturday evening, January 22 in the College Dining Hall. The program included: Hugo Kauder’s Suite in G and Suite in A, two numbers for Violin and Piano; Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto in A Minor for Violin and Piano; Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E Major, Prelude and Fugue in F Minor; and Vivaldi’s Concerto in D Minor for Violin and Piano.
Radio
During the Fall Quarter, Ruther Miller and Maja Bentley, two Black Mountain College students, wrote study notes on “Grieg and His ‘Peer Gynt’” for Radio Station WISE in Asheville. These notes were printed and distributed in January among the grammar school children in Western North Carolina to help to prepare them for listening to three broadcasts of Grieg music on Victor records.
Ruth Miller is writing scripts for two dramatic programs on Stephen Foster that will be broadcast from Station WISE in the Spring.
Betty Kelley will write two radio scripts on her original fairy play. They will be presented by Black Mountain College student actors in March at Radio Stations WISE and WWNC.
Former Students
Aurora Cassotta and Bruno Piscitello were married on September 11 in Witchita Falls, Texas. Private Piscitello is stationed at Sheppard Field.
Born to Mr. and Mrs. Alvin Eisenman a daughter who has been named Susan Sangree. Mrs. Eisenmann was formerly Hope Greer.
Alexander Eliot, who has been writing and directing propaganda shorts for overseas distribution for the Office of War Information, has applied for a commission in the Navy.
Born to Corporal and Mrs. Leo Greene on October 25, in Spokane, Washington, a daughter. She has been named Jeremie Barbara. Mrs. Greene was formerly Hyalie Yamins.
Will Hamlin is now an administrator and test interpreter for the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation in New York City. Last Fall he played the role of Salonicus in Ronald Mitchell’s “Set It In Troy”, produced by the Columbia Theatre Associates of Columbia University..
Gisela Kronenberg, who was graduated from the College last Spring in psychology, is not a research assistant at the Illinois Neuropsychiatric Institute of Chicago.
Nan Oldenburg is student at Radcliffe College.
Barbara Payne has transferred to the University of Chicago.
Frank A. Rice has left the New York Public Library, where he was in the Music Department, to accept a position with Rosenback, a rare book dealer.
Nancy Russ is doing secretarial work for the Navy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Junelaine Smith was a Christmas holiday visitor at Lake Eden.
Sue Spayth Wolpert is writing for the News, the daily newspaper of Hays, Kansas.
Sybil Yamins is a secretary in one of the Red Cross offices in New York City.
In the Service
Among the former Black Mountain College students who are now overseas are: Private Homer Bobilin, Corporal Doughten Cramer, Lieutenant Thomas Brooks, Private Frances Foster, Lieutenant John J. Kasik, Sergeant John M. Stix and Technician Third Grade Evelyn O. Tubbs.
Private Homer Bobilin, who was stationed for several months on the New Caledonia, has been transferred to the New Hebrides where he is now with the Air Force.
Dyckman Corbet was recently confined with pneumonia in a military hospital at Fort Crook, Nebraska. Recovered from his illness, he is now an aviation student at Creighton University in Omaha.
Erik Haugaard is a cadet pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Corporal Peter Hill is in a Harbor Craft Unit with the Fourth Engineer Special Brigade at Camp Gordon Johnston in Florida. During a recent twelve-days furlough he was a weekend visitor at Lake Eden.
Air Cadet John E. Deaver is stationed at the Advanced Navigation School at Ellington Field, Texas.
Private Robert H. Marden has been transferred to Scott Field in Illinois.
Private Herbert Oppenheimer is with a medical detachment at the Station Hospital at Camp Forrest, Tennessee.
Don Page, a member of the Class of 1943 and of the Army Air Forces Officer Candidate School in Miami Beach, Florida, was graduated and commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in November. He is now stationed with the Army Intelligence School of the Army Air Forces in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Lieutenant Page visited Lake Eden in December.
Master Sergeant George Randall, stationed at Camp Gordon Johnston in Florida, is in a unit that is at present training thousands of men to drive amphibian trucks. Sergeant Randall is in charge of the entire office staff of fifty secretaries.
Private First Class Claude Stoller is in an A.S.T.U. Unit, stationed on the Campus of Pasadena Junior College in Pasadena, California. He is taking a course in engineering at the College. Sergeant Jack Swackhamer is stationed with Mountain Troops at Camp Hale in Colorado.
Lieutenant Norman Weston is stationed in New Orleans with the Quartermasters Corps in the United States Navy. He was a visitor for one day at the College during the Fall Quarter.
Private Paul Wiggin is taking basic training for the Air Corps in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Memorial Trust Fund
Largely through the efforts of Dr. Charles Lindsley, who taught chemistry at Black Mountain College from September, 1938 to September, 1941, a Memorial Trust Fund has been set up at the College for Lieutenant Derek Bovingdon, a former student who was killed in maneuvers in Washington State last Spring. This Trust Fund will provide scholarship loans to students who could not afford to come to Black Mountain College. The trustees of the Fund are Mrs. Barbara Sieck Bovingdon, the widow of Lieutenant Bovingdon, Mrs. Gertrude King Bovingdon, his mother, Dr. Lindsley, and Theodore Dreier, who, as Treasurer of the College, is Ex-Officio Treasurer of the Fund.
Contributions to the Fund to date have come from classmates of Lieutenant Bovingdon during his stay at the College, from the teachers, from his friends and from members of his family and members of the family of his widow.
The Fund will be a help not only to the students who will benefit from it directly but to the College in that it will make the College more nearly able to carry out its policy of admitting students on the basis of their merit and their promise of future development regardless of their financial status.
Lieutenant Bovingdon was graduated from the Army Air Forces Flying School at Douglas, Arizona, on the morning of January 4, 1943. That afternoon he was married to Miss Barbara Wieboldt Sieck of Winnetka, Illinois, who had been a classmate at Black Mountain College. Lieutenant Bovingdon was killed in a bomber crash on March 29, 1943 near Ephrtia, Washington.
Roman Mackiecjzyk
Lieutenant Roman Maciejczyk, a 1942 graduate in anthropology of Black Mountain College, was instantly killed on November 24 in Utah when the heavy bomber in which he was acting as navigator crashed and exploded on the salt flats near Wendover Field. Very little is known about the accident but it is supposed that a heavy fog was one of the causes of it. The bomber, that had been in the air for more than five hours, was circling for clearance when the crash occurred.
Lieutenant Maciejczyk’s body, accompanied by a young fellow-pilot, was taken to Sherman Oaks, California, the home of his mother. The funeral will be held on December 2.
Memorial Services for Roman were held at the College on Sunday afternoon, December 5. Robert Wunsch commented briefly on Roman as a student and as a soldier then read excerpts from recent letters from Mrs. Rebecca Mangold, a close friend of Roman. A string trio played the slow movement of Beethoven’s Trio Opus 97. Jane Robinson Stone then read “Of Few Days”, a sonnet which she wrote soon after she had heard of Roman’s death.
In the Service
Ensign Robert S. Babcock will complete his training in the Navy Supply Corps School at Wellesley, Massachusetts early in February. He expects to be assigned as Supply Officer either to a CB outfit or to a destroyer in the Pacific.
Corporal John Evarts expects to be sent overseas within the next thirty days.
Lieutenant Bedford Thurman, assistant Special Service Officer, acted as Master of Ceremonies at a recent War Bond Show held at Lubbock Field in Texas. On November 27, Lieutenant Thurman was married to a Lubbock girl.
Corporal Willo Von Moltke, an Apprentice Teacher in the Art Department at Black Mountain College during the Fall Semester of the 1940-41 Session, was a Christmas holiday visitor at Lake Eden.
Campus Notes
William Worse Cole made his tenth annual audit of the College Books nursing November.
After ten years as chef at Black Mountain College, Jack Lipsey left in October for Atlanta, Georgia, to accept a government position for the duration of the war. He is helping to train cooks for military service units.
Rubye Lipsey is now teaching three classes in shorthand in the Business Department of Morris Brown College of Atlanta University.
During the Fall Quarter Doris Bollen, one of the secretary-students, gave instruction in typing to a war convalescent at Moore General hospital. Roxane Dinkowitz gave tutorials in grammar and reading a wounded soldier.
Barbara Anderson, Marilyn Bauer, Gwendolyn Currier and Jeanne Wacker have passed their Senior Division Examinations and have been admitted by the Faculty into the Senior Division.
Roger Banks, formerly a student at the nearby Farm School, has been appointed assistant to Ross Penley, Superintendent of the College Farm.
Theodore Dreier III is now a student at Putney School in Vermont.
Student Officers
Gwendolyn Currier of Westfield, New Jersey, is the new Student Moderator at the College. She was chosen to succeed Sam Brown, of Wilton, Connecticut, who was the chief student officer for 1943. Sam Brown, Kathryn Carlisle of Denver, Colorado, and Jane Robinson Stone of Andover, New Hampshire, were selected to complete the student officer group. Gwendolyn Carrier is a third year student whose chief academic interest is in music. She plays the ‘cello.
Visitors
Among the recent visitors at Lake Eden, in addition to the lecturers, were: Cadet Henry Adams, a former Black Mountain College student now stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia; Mr. and Mrs. John Christen of Washington, D.C.; John Edsall and Jeffries Weyman, Professors of Biology at Harvard University; Miss Elizabeth Gernow, dietitian at High Hampton Inn at Cashiers, North Carolina; Paul Greer, Farm News Editor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch; Private Toshio Kumabe, stationed at Camp Shelby in Mississippi; Fernando Leon, a former Black Mountain College student now working with the Chrysler Corporation in Detroit, Michigan; Lawrence Lieberfeld, a naval architect in the United States Maritime Commission in Washington, D.C.; Staff Sergeant Kendric Lynch of St.Louis, Missouri; Robert Nichols, a sergeant in the Amphibian Command at the Camp Ford in California; former student John Stix, as a visitor from Fort Jackson, in South Carolina; Mr. and Mrs. Barney Voigt, former members of the College staff; and Norman Weston, formerly the Assistant Treasurer of Black Mountain College and a student in economics here.
Mrs. Allan Brown, the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Herbert Miller, and her two daughters, Petra and Elizabeth, have been visitors at the College for several months.
Lectures
The evening programs at the College during the Fall Quarter and the early part of the Winter Quarter included a lecture series, attended not only by members of the College Community but by soldiers from the Moore General Hospital at Swannanoa and the Headquarters Weather Wing of the Army Air Forces stationed near Asheville. The speakers for the series included members of the College teaching staff and visitors. Among them were: Clark Foreman who spoke on “The English Mind”; Grady Hardin, Minister of the Methodist Church in Black Mountain, who addressed the College on “The Place of Religion in Modern Life”; Dr. Anup Singh, biographer of Nehru and an authority on Indian and the Far East, who spoke on “India and the War”; Eric Bentley who gave a lecture on Oscar Wilde preceding the College performance of “The Importance of Being Earnest”; Herbert King, Associate Secretary of the National Student Division of the Y.M.C.A., who spoke on “The Negro in Contemporary American Life”; Irving Brant, author of Road to Peace and Freedom, who talked informally to the students and teachers on “Washington and the Post War World”; and Karl Knaths, the noted American artist, who gave a slide-illustrated lecture on “Trends on Modern Painting”. Each of these lectures was followed by a general discussion.
Work Report
The Community Work during the Fall Quarter was done by fifty-eight students each working approximately eleven and a half hours weekly at various necessary jobs within the College.
At the beginning of November the entire Work Program was reorganized. The responsibility, formerly assumed by MacGuire Wood, was taken over by the students, who appointed Nell Goldsmith and Ruth Miller as the Work Coordinators. In the new organization the emphasis was put on keeping people, for longer periods of time, on jobs they preferred in order to speed up efficiency and the learning of a skill. Regularity was stressed wherever possible.
Work in the various areas was fairly evenly divided. There was mining, as well as construction; there was wood chopping; also coal hauling; there was some work on the Farm.
The Mica Mine, that was begun in the late Summer, was considerably developed during the Fall Quarter, from a small surface-level tunnel in the hill to a sixteen-foot shaft with several deeper tunnels at the lower level and a long tunnel, about fifty feet long, emerging at the side of the hill for drainage and for further excavating. Arthur Gibson, a local miner, was hired; later Arrie Gibson, another minor from a nearby region, was hired. With the aid of student labor these two miners took several hundred pounds of mica out of the mine. Since the Government, to whom the College is selling the mica, requires that the sheets be of a certain quality, size and thickness, organized groups of students and teachers and wives split, trimmed and inspected the mica. Seventy-six pounds of mica have been marketed since the project was started.
A pilot plant for the production of magnesium by Dr. Fritz Hansgirg’s new method was built during December and January as an addition to the North end of the Science Laboratory. The main construction was done by professional workers, but a small part was left to the student workers. A crew has begun to install the machinery.
Construction work on the music cubicles was resumed. The first cubicle, when completed, was equipped with a small wood stove so that it could be used during the winter months. A crew is now at work on the second cubicle, but the work is going slowly because other jobs are continually deemed more urgent.
Pearson Mundy and Bas Allen, with constant student help, completed a new coal bin at the front of the Studies Building in the Fall to replace the dilapidated one there before. Locust logs were used in the log-cabin construction on the job.
Continuous miscellaneous jobs were carried on during the Quarter. Drainage ditches were dug, plumbing and electrical facilities were maintained, general campus clean-ups periodically made, the milk was cooled, work slips were checked, repairs of all kinds were made; and, for a time before the holidays, the furnaces were attended by students. During the vacation Ross Penley kept the fires going, but student responsibility was resumed at the beginning of the new Quarter.
During the Fall a yard was cleared and fixed up below South Lodge for drying clothes. An air pressure tank and connecting blow torch were installed in the Chemistry Laboratory for blowing glass.
The Winter’s supply of fuel was hauled from the siding at the Grove Stone Company periodically by hard working, very efficient crews. All in all, about six carloads of coal were brought to the College and distributed to the College and distributed to the various cottages.
Woodchopping was the most regular job of any size carried on at the Farm. Definitely-assigned crews cleared land each day with results more satisfactory than those experienced on any other similar continuous job.
The corn at Grove Stone Field was cut, stalked, stripped of its ears, and finally brought in for fodder in the course of the Fall Quarter.
Construction at the Farm consisted of a re-arrangement of stalls in the large barn to provide room for the dairy cattle there. Derek’s stall was moved to the small barn, and space was provided there for the beef calves.
The Beef Shed addition to the back of the large barn has been started. Pearson Mundy and Walter Davis are now concentrating on its completion.
The fence was completed, and the hogs were moved to their new quarters on the other side of the hill from the barn in early Fall. The old hog houses were razed, and the land where they stood is now being cleared away.
From the garden to the kitchen came the last of the summer’s yield of potatoes, beans, and cabbage. Three hogs, two steers, one calf for veal and one goat were butchered and sent to the kitchen.

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