3p, first two pages front and back third page single sided, mimeograph on matte off white paper. Has Molly Gregory's report on community work for 1942-1943 and has the preliminary roster for the American Seminar. Faculty- Mrs L Olga Schwartz (new secretary). Visitors- Horace Champney, and Mrs Gertrude Stenderhoff (mother of Marge). Staple in top left corner, one horizontal fold.
BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE COMMUNITY BULLETIN
College year 10 Summer Bulletin 1
Monday, June 14, 1943
CALENDAR
There will be a meeting of the Board of Fellows and Gorman Mattison and Bob Orr on Wednesday morning at 11:30 on the benches in front of the Kocher Cottage.
There will be a meeting of the office executives (Dreier, Kurtz, Mattison, Orr, Straus and Wunsch) on Wednesday afternoon at 2:30 to discuss the division of office responsibilities.
DATES
American Seminar: July 1- August 12
Summer School: July 5- September 18
Work Camp: July 5- September 18
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Josef Albers leaves this afternoon for the East. He will give a course in Design and Freehand Drawing at the summer session (June 21 to July 14) at the Lowthorpe School in Groton, Mass. From July 16 to July 22 he will give a course at the Museum of Modern Art for teachers. Mr Albers will return to Lake Eden on July 25 to participate in the Summer School Program of Black Mountain College.
Heinrich Jalowetz is spending the three weeks vacation in New York City. They plan to return to Lake Eden on July 5.
Oliver Freud, the song of Sigmund Freud, has been appointed by the Board of Fellows to teach science in the Black Mountain College Summer School.
Dr Freud received the degree of Diplom Ingenieur at the Technological Institute in Vienna in 1915. He worked for more than fifteen years as a construction engineer in Central and Eastern Europe at railroad-tunnel constructions and industrial buildings above and under ground, especially in reinforced concrete; and worked in a planning and calculating office as well as in supervising building yards. He was known in Berlin as an expert for difficult constructions in concrete and steel. In May 1933 Dr Freud was forced to emigrate to France. He worked for the next eight years in Nice as a photographer, specializing in industrial and commercial work (reproducing pictures, sculptures, documents) in his own establishment which he lost in consequence of the German occupation.
Dr Freud will be accompanied to Lake Eden by his wife, a painter.
NEWS FROM 1942-43 STUDENTS
Jacqueline Tankersley was sworn into the WAVES on Thursday, June 10. She writes, in part: “I am now on inactive duty and should be sent away in about a week. We have a month of boot training at Hunter College in New York before being sent to another school for special training. I’m glad I decided to join the WAVES. I think I’ll like it and I’ll know that I’m doing something in the war effort.”
WITH FORMER STUDENTS
New Addresses
Lieut John J Kasik, 0-1645091
1716 College Street
Columbia, South Carolina
Corp Jack M Stix
Hq Co, 59th Signal Bn
Fort Jackson, South Carolina
A/C William F Hanchett, Jr
Squadron E-2, Block 9
AAFCC
Nashville, Tennessee
Private Fred M Stone
Company A
35th Trng Bn, SGRTC
Camp Crowder, Missouri
BMC COMMUNITY BULLETIN- Summer Bulletin 1- page 2
WITH FORMER STUDENTS- New Addresses
Pvts Tom Wontworth and Emil Willimetz
Company E, 272 Infantry
APO 417
Camp Shelby, Mississippi
PFC JF Wolpert
211 Ash Stroot
Hays, Kansas
Will Hamlin is working now for the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation on East Sixty-Second Street in New York City, (formerly the Human Engineering Laboratory of Hoboken, New Jersey). Will writes: “You may know a little about the work they do, it’s a matter of giving a series of tests developed over a long period of time, designed to distinguish between and measure ability in certain basic aptitudes such as the power to think in three rather than two dimensions, fluency in inductive and analytic ways of thinking, dexterity in manipulation of tools and so forth. No world-shaking discovery, the tests do however have much value in showing some people why they aren’t happy in their present jobs and in suggesting fields in which they might fit better, in helping high school boys and girls to decide on colleges and to get some idea of the lines in which they have the largest change of success, to give anyone a better idea of what he can do… me, so far, I am learning about the tests and the aptitudes they measure, giving a few of them, and taking care of much of the office work. As soon as possible (as soon as they can get me barely trained) I’ll start giving most of the tests and helping with the experimental work that goes on all the time.”
Jack Kasik writes: “I’ve been in Columbia since the 25th of May and have been on the run since the first day…. My duties are with the 112th Signal Company which is attached, at present, to the Columbia Air Base, a medium bomber training field, and they multiply every week. At present, I am communications, motor, mess and training officer.” Jack was a week-end visitor at Lake Eden.
John Stix writes: “I’ve moved… for the better somewhat. At least now I’m back in the Signal Corps operating bigger and better radios, but still lodging for work in which I can really become absorbed. My transfer… was supposed to lead to a photo unit but, because of my GI training it couldn’t and didn’t…… Appeared before a so-called Field Selection Board for ASTP and my application was approved. That means only that it was forwarded to ‘Higher Headquarters for further consideration’.”
Jerry Wolpert writes from Hays, Kansas: “Sue is here with me and I live off the base in the small town twelve miles away. My duties here are not very trying… I am a clerk in the headquarters squadron here. This is an air field for heavy bombers which has been expanding quite rapidly the past month. I might be here for the duration, and then I might be sent out within a few weeks.”
Tom Wentworth and Emil Willimetz write: “Due to the great numbers of BMC students scattered throughout the land, it is only natural that many of them should have gathered here at Camp Shelby, better known as the pressure cooker of the South. This multitude consists of two: EW and TW…. The Army, with its fine handling of the human element, has not only seen fit to place two such in the same division, but also in the same regiment, battalion, company and platoon.”
SPRING AND SUMMER FINANCES
Gifts of pledges totalling $6,532.18 have been received to date in the financial campaign that began on April 1 and will extend to August 1. These receipts include a grant of $1,000 from the Whitney Foundation, two gifts above $1000 from parents of former students, one above $1000 from a member of the US Armed Forces, and 18 smaller contributions from old friends of the College and from former students.
The goal of the present financial drive is $25,000.
BMC COMMUNITY BULLETIN- Summer Bulletin- page 3
MOLLY GREGORY’S REPORT ON COMMUNITY WORK: 1942-43
It would be hard for me to list or even summarize all the work which has been done by the community this year. Mac could, but he isn’t here.
We started out the year with the bare essentials of living here completed, but completed only to an extent which made existence possible. It wasn’t particularly orderly, and many jobs had been carried just far enough to be usable but not maintainable or efficient; many pipes were still exposed; a good many windows didn’t open or close; the roads were navigable only in the dryest weather; many of the faculty quarters were reminiscent of summer camping, even in the winter; The farm seemed colossal because no one was quite sure where it was heading or what would happen next.
There are still yawning, unfinished areas but on the whole the progress has been more than gratifying; and, if we go on at the rate of this year, we will face the possibility of getting spoilt and decadent. There isn’t a faculty member uninsulated, and very few unscreened. The heat runs through blanketed pipes. The roads are often free of ruts and rivers. The hogs are reasonably safe in expecting new quarters by the end of this summer. The dairy cows anticipate grazing near the barn next summer. Several tables and chairs have lost their tendency to wobble. The music department has give hundred board feet of shelving and can look toward identifying some studding and one “cubicle” as the “practice cubicles”. The art department has also used some lumber in shelving. Voigt, Sneed, and Company, have two acres of promising vegetables really under control. We have eaten a good deal of pork, milk, and two definitely edible steers: The chances are good that we will be able to have some more. The milk ones are clean. There is a machine shed. A last terrifying note is that there are lawn benches around that we can sit on.
To balance this, woods threaten our corn and new pasture; the hogs are still anticipating a fence; the region near the drama shed is a scandal. The lodges are faintly archaic; the front of the shop is a dumping ground, and the hens, not for scientific reasons, but through inherent ability to adjust, continue to live, lay, and hatch with no feeling for home.
On the whole, we are more comfortable, less oppressed by the endlessness of getting things done and more directed. The work has been done steadily and quietly and with little complaint or demand for recognition.
Last year, or part of last year, students had more responsibility in planning the work than they have had this year. This year, at the start, there was a work planning committee, independent of the big Planning Committee which was to work with Mac from day to day. Actually this committee, as a committee, hasn’t functioned well and has seemed needless. Some people have been disappointed. To me it seems to have been logical and right in the end and the moral shows where we should head next year.
It didn’t work for two reasons: First the people on it were picked arbitrarily to plan work and search their minds for rather intangible problems of education and psychological upbuilding. The work was too diversified to treat in a groupish way, and the initial planning and outlining of work by the planners was not clear enough to be taken over by a group and carried out; whereas, last year we worked together on specific and essential building projects. Now, however, although the first committee is dead, there is a functional one, really taking on work. Several students have taken responsibility for areas to be “maintained” and have kept ahead of repairs: The milk is cooled, and the cans are cleaned daily; Insurance and farm records are kept. The music library is catalogued. Bookbinding, mail carrying, office work, and store management go on as suborganizations under the work program. As the work becomes clearer and more stabilized, this could become our whole organization with technical advising and additional planning of work which requires large groups. This has its important side, too.
BMC COMMUNITY BULLETIN- Summer Bulletin 1- page 4
We decided last year that the work program should be more inclusive and all work done in the community should be called community work. To really follow out this conception every single member of the community would set aside an area of time to be devoted to community work and the division of responsibility; and caring for the community ideally, would be complete.
As it works now, there is often a vague feeling that one can request almost anything of the work program, suddenly calling on a mythical source of labor. So the work program sometimes bogs down.
Theoretically we all could have a functional responsibility in the Community Work, and that responsibility would include its physical existence, our entertainment, and the administration.
One recommendation would be that gradually more people, faculty and students, take direct responsibility for the planning and organization of the community work as the work becomes clearer.
THE AMERICAN SEMINAR: PRELIMINARY ROSTER
Members
Archie Abbott, banker. Born in Russia; was graduate from the University of Karkoff; was trained in banking; lived in France from 1918 to 1942; devotes his spare time to the study of painting.
Rita Abbott. Born in Russia; studied in Moscow and at the Sorbonne in Paris.
R Alvarez de Toledo, mathematician. Born in Vienna, Austria; studied at Universities in Bologna, Innsbruck, Munich, Berlin, Vienna; has taught mathematics, history, geography and Latin; arrived in America in December, 1941.
Oliver Freud, engineer, son of Sigmund Freud; arrived in American on April 27, 1943.
Mrs Oliver Freud, painter.
Mrs Elizabeth Hirschfield, musician. Born in Mainz, Germany; studied at Conservatories in Mainz and in Frankfort on the Main; specialized in chamber music and accomplishments; arrived in the United States on July 4, 1938.
Helen Huckel, writer and psychologist; Born in Prague, Czachoslovakia; studied at the University of Prague; studied psychology in Berlin.
Lily Koerber, writer. Born in Moscow. Studied in Switzerland; received her Doctor of Philsophy degree at the University of Frankfurt on the Main.
Lotte Leonard, musician, for many years one of the most prominent concert singers in Germany, now at the Cincinnati College of Music. Was a member of the 1942 Seminar. Henry Leonard, for many years connected with the Ullstein Publishing House in Berlin.
Wilhelm Lovinger, lawyer. Born in Munich, Germany; practiced thirty years in district and superior courts in Munich; travelled widely.
Victor Ornstein. Born in Czechoslovakia; received his Doctor of Laws degree at the University of Vienna; was presiding judge of the Supreme Court, (original division) in Vienna from 1918 to 1938; arrived in American in 1941.
M Vishniak, journalist. Born in Moscow; lived many years in Pairs. Was a member of the 1942 Seminar.
Mrs M Vishniak.
b) Tutoring staff:
Mignon Cousor of Foxcroft School in Virginia. University of Dublin.
Mrs Walter Gothman, PhD in French. Bryn Mawr College.
BMC COMMUNITY BULLETIN- Summer Bulletin 1- page 5
Elizabeth Kellogg, teacher in the Westover School in Connecticut. Graduate of Bryn Mawr College.
Rosamund Tuve, Associate Professor of English at the Connecticut College for Women, in New London. PhD from Bryn Mawr.
Note: The Bryn Mawr College origin of the tutors is entirely a matter of chance, there being no personal connection with one another or with the fact that Herbert Miller, the Director of the Seminar, was formerly a professor at Bryn Mawr.
NEW SECRETARY
Mrs L Olga Schwartz from Brooklyn, New York. Born Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Has done secretarial work in advertising and in insurance fields. Last position was Private Secretary to David F Broderick and Assistant Secretary-Treasurer of the DF Broderick Companies. Wife of a Captain in a dental corps, Third General Hospital, now oversees.
VISITORS
Horace Champney, Research Psychologist and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Antioch College.
Mrs Gertrude Stenderhoff, mother of Marge.
TO 1942-43 STUDENTS
THE SUMMER BULLETIN, to be issued weekly, will be sent to any address from June 14 to September 13 for one dollar. This amount will pay for mimeographing paper, stencils and postage.
Make checks payable to Black Mountain College.
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dr Horace Champney will talk informally this evening in Room 10.
Ted Dreier will leave Lake Eden for the East on Sunday, June 20. Mail will always reach him at the Harvard Club, 27 East Forty-Fourth Street, New York City.
He and Bobby at Bolton Landing, Lake George, New York from July 1 to July 14.
