2p, first page is double sided and second is single sided. Mimeograph on matte off white paper. Students present- Renate Benfey, Maja Bentley, Sam Brown, Dora Harrison, Betty Kelley, Liese Kulka, Isaac Nakata, Ruth O'Neill, Irene Sagan, Jane Slater, Ralph Tyler, Barbara Pollet. Staple in top left corner, one horizontal fold.
BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE COMMUNITY BULLETIN
College Year 10 Bulletin 32
Monday, May 31, 1943
CALENDAR
Barbara Heller will give the weekly news summary and commentary this evening at 6:45 o’clock in the lobby of North Lodge.
Dr Hansgirg will show the film of scenes from “The Elves and the Shoemaker” this evening in the Dining Hall after the Mozart class.
The regular weekly meeting of the Faculty and the Student Officers will be held on Wednesday afternoon at 4:30 o’clock in the Kocher Room.
Dr Straus will address the College Community on Wednesday evening, June 2 at 8:30 o’clock on “Mary and Martha, or About Pragmatism”.
The Board of Fellows will meet in Room 10 on Thursday afternoon at 5:00 o’clock.
The Black Mountain College broadcast on Friday afternoon, 2:00-2:30 o’clock, will be an A Capella concert. The program will include: “O Jesu dulce”, an Italian spiritual song of the early sixteenth century; a Passion motet by Josquin des Presz; a German lied by Heinrich Isaac; two Italian carnival songs; “Freude Chanson” by Orlando di Lasso; and a German drinking song by Orlando di Lasso.
Student actors will present Paul Green’s “Fixin’s” and Noel Coward’s “Fumed Oak” on the Dining Hall stage on Friday evening, June 4. The performance will begin promptly at 8:30 o’clock.
There will be a talk on “The Music of the Renaissance” by Edward Lowinsky on Saturday evening at 8:00 o’clock in the Dining Hall. This talk will be illustrated with slides and with music by the A Capella group, two numbers on the organ and two compositions by the string quartet.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Twelve students have been admitted into the Upper Division. They are Renate Benfey, Maja Bentley, Sam Brown, Dora Harrison, Betty Kelley, Liese Kulka, Isaac Nakata, Ruth O’Neill, Irene Sagan, Jane Slater, Ralph Tyler, Barbara Pollet.
Marge Kocher left on Sunday with the children for New York to join Larry. The Kochers will return to Lake Eden the middle of the month.
Mac and Emily Wood left this morning, by car, for their home near Rochester, New York. They will return to Lake Eden on August 1. During Mac’s absence from the College, the Community Work Program will be directed by Bob Orr, assisted by Molly Gregory.
WITH FORMER STUDENTS
Leonard Billing will be among the twenty-nine volunteers from Buck Creek Camp to leave tomorrow for Coleville, California where they are needed to fight forest fires. The camp to which he will go is in the desert near Rono, Nevada and near the mountains where there are several “spike” camps.
Private Dick Brown give an account of a day in camp in Atlantic City, New Jersey “First of all, they gave us the usual hour and a half of calisthenics in an hour, then rushed us to the gas chamber. That’s really a lovely place. We are all bunched outside and they set off charges of gas for us to sniff- one at a time. If you take more than a sniff, you may as well lie down right there. I’ve been resmelling one of them all day long, but so has everyone else, which puts me at ease. Then this afternoon they gave us our camouflage lecture. It usually takes two months but since we’re all college men, we get it in three hours. Camouflaging is another extremely interesting subject, to me at least. The art of pitting your wits and talents in disguising an object against the enemy photographers and reconnaissance appeals to my sporting blood and arouses a competitive spirit in me…. To a person with any sense of bettering himself or just exploring new fields the Army, Navy or Marines is the golden opportunity. I really can’t understand all the beefing about how
BMC COMMUNITY BULLETIN, #32, Monday, May 31, 1943- page 2
WITH FORMER STUDENTS (continued)
Unfair it is- why to people who have the good fortune to have a head and two eyes, there’s just no end to what the Army can do for you.”
Ruthabeth Krueger Conrad writes from Newton Centre, Massachusetts: “This summer I am to play in the Lanier String Quartet… near Eliot, Maine…. Mr. Jamieson, Normie and I went to the play at Radcliffe that Leslie (Paul) was in…. Leslie did wonderfully… She acted as though she really knew just what it was all about… Normie is busy in Signal Corps school every day… He expects to be in the regular Army by the end of June.”
Air Cadet Bob Marden writes, in part, from the University of Tennessee: “The regular army life seems to tend to split the individual into two parts- one, the physical self that obeys orders automatically, keeps in stop and position, and swears at the sergeant. The other part, the mind, often goes along on its own track. Of course, here at college, we are doing some studying…. One of the aspects of the other boys here- supposedly largely the cream of Southern colleges- that annoys me considerably is their apparent dislike or dread of considering any subject on anything but a superficial level. The few times when something approaching real discussion began, it was killed in a few moments by a burlesque. Somehow they sees ashamed of any evidence of intellectualism. There is a great deal of noise to cover up some uncertainty or ignorance, which makes them feel uncomfortable. They are really terribly unsophisticated, altho, they would deny this loudly, thinking the term applied only to social graces. This will undoubtedly be a good group to fight with, altho dull to live with. The pitch of life is so much at the surface level.”
Ensign Bela Martin writes from “Island No. 3 somewhere in the Pacific” on May 1st: “The mosquitos are much more malicious here than they were in the last place from which I wrote. Here we have the malaria mosquito which we combat with nets at night, with slaps in the daytime, with atabrine tablets at meal time. Atabrine does not prevent malaria but keeps it in a subdued state. You can see fellows scattered about among the cocoanut trees scrubbing their clothes with a brush and strong soap on top of anything flat they can find. The water is usually carried in tin helmets or empty food tins from the kitchen. Of course, there is no iron, but just to feel clean now and then is our biggest luxury out here. I never appreciated water so much before. The shower is a drum of water piped up the side of a tree, with a can with holes in its bottom, to form a dripping spray. The water is pumped up by working by hand a fuel pump from a wrecked airplane. There are usually four or five naked fellows standing in line slapping mosquitos while awaiting their turn… I’ve been over enemy territory but haven’t yet encountered anything, although my neck has been on a swivel watching for anything to pounce on us. On this, my first trip, too, I had a little trouble with one gas tank which wouldn’t draw like it should. I had a hell of a time working with the emergency pump, shifting tanks, trying to get use out of every ounce of fuel in order to have enough to return. Because of the effort expended I used up twice as much oxygen as did anyone else. Moments like those make one feel good to get his feet on the ground again. I really learned the lesson of gas conservation when I once returned to the field after a long hop, and just as I touched the ground the engine quit cold- out of gas. I felt like kneeling down and kissing the ground that time. Sometimes it seems like pure luck that one gets up, then down safely again. There was the pilot who took off and when only one hundred feet in the air had his engine to cut out. Down he started, headed for the trees. When almost at the level on the tree tops, his engine caught again. As he pulled safely up again, he said, “I’ll take over from here, Lord”.
At night, in bed, we can hear a lot of chattering in the palm trees. At first I thought it was monkeys. It comes, however, from very brilliant red birds called macataws that fly together, in formations of two to four.
By the way, have you read the latest diary of the war out here?
BMC COMMUNITY BULLETIN, #32, Monday, May 31, 1943- page 3
WITH FORMER STUDENTS (continued)
Some of the fellows have been collecting Jap souvenirs. They either pick them up off the ground or trade whiskey or money for them. Among the souvenirs are helmets, rifles, bayonets, knives, pistols, swords and shells. The more morbid collect skulls and teeth, preferably gold teeth.”
The Thursday, May 13 issue, London edition, of Stars and Stripes the daily newspaper of the United States Armed Forces, give an account of the arrival of the WAAC in Britain. The following is an excerpt from the story entitled “They’re Feminine- but Soldiers”: “The senior noncome is Sgt. Evelyn J Tubbs, of Wyoming, Del. A former student of Black Mountain College, NC, she was later a secretary and statistical clerk. The sergeant is shorthaired and serious but refuses to suggest that the responsibility of being topkick was the reason for her seriousness. ‘They are a good bunch of girls, and don’t cause trouble’, she declared... Sgt Tubbs is one of the veterans of the WAACs (If veteran is a permissible term for a WAAC). She joined the corps last August and has held her rank for several months. “
ANNOUNCEMENTS (continued from page 1)
Gorman Mattison is leaving for Washington DC this afternoon to find out what chances there may be for the obtaining by Black Mountain College of a unit of the Army’s Specialized Training Program for Colleges.
WITH FORMER STAFF MEMBERS
Born to Mr and Mrs Jack French at the Iowa State Hospital on Wednesday, May 26 at 4:00 PM, a son. He will be known as John RP French III.
FOR THE WEDNESDAY MEETING
Plans for the last week of the Spring Quarter.
Special plans for the Summer Quarter.
Recommendations about packing furniture and books for the summer.
Upper Division plans (continued).
Spring Quarter reports on student work.
Candidates for graduation
Cynthia Carr
Gisela Kronenberg
7) Will Hamlin’s application for a leave of absence.
NOTE: Each staff member should:
Hand in to advisers classwork reports on all students.
Write a classwork summary on each student.
Talk with each advisee about his summer plans and plans for next fall and make a report on this conference to the Faculty.
