5p, one sided pages, mimeograph on matte off white paper. Staple in top left corner. With supplement; anounces that Irving Brant will address the College Community on Washington and the Post-war world on Thursday evening; mentions that all students register for winter quarter on Sat morning. Visitors- Sergeant John Stix, Mr. & Mrs Barney Voigt, Lioutenant Don Page, Herbert Solow.
BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE COMMUNITY BULLETIN
College Year 11 Bulletin 10
Monday, November 29, 1943
CALENDAR:
Kathryn Carlisle will give the weekly news summary and commentary this evening at 6:40 o‘clock in the Lobby of North Lodge
The Board of Fellows will hold its monthly business meeting in Study 10 on Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 o’clock. Ted Dreier will present the 1943-44 Budget; and the Money-Raising Committee, appointed by the Board, will submit its recommendations for Christmas holiday activities.
The Faculty and Student Officers will meet in the Kocher Room on Tuesday afternoon at 4:30 o’clock.
The students will hold their regular weekly meeting on Thursday evening at 7:00 o’clock in the Lobby of North Lodge.
Irving Grant, author of Road to Peace and Freedom, will address the College Community on Washington and the Post-War World on Thursday evening in the College Dining Hall.
On Saturday evening, December 4 in the Dining Hall, Frederic Cohen will play a program of keyboard music consisting of Rondo by Ph. E. Bach, Minuett and Gigue by Mozart and Sonatas by D. Scarlatti, Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven. The concert will begin at 8:30 o’clock.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
At the last Tuesday afternoon meeting of the Faculty and Student Officers it was agreed that:
a.) All students will register for Winter Quarter courses on Saturday morning, December 4
b.) All advisers for the new students- appointed by the Admissions Committee at the beginning of the Session- will be automatically dropped at the end of the Fall Quarter. Each new student will select an adviser (this adviser may be the student’s Fall Quarter adviser.)
c.) The Fall Quarter adviser of each student will send home to the parents of that student a report on the student’s Fall Quarter work.
According to an agreement made with the Music Department in September the drama students will begin rehearsals of “The Importance of Being Earnest” on the Dining Hall stage this evening. The play will be presented on Wednesday evening, December 8, beginning at 8:30 o’clock.
Herbert Miller will leave this afternoon for Boston where he will speak at the Massachusetts State Conference for Social Welfare. He will return to Lake Eden on Monday morning December 6.
Bob Wunsch and a member of the drama students will attend the December session of the Western North Carolina Dramatics Institute on Saturday morning, December 4 in Asheville.
Visitors:
Sergeant John Stix was a week-end visitor from Fort Jackson in South Carolina.
Mr. and Mrs. Barney Voigt were week-end visitors from Knoxville, Tennessee.
Due to Arrive:
Lieutenant Don Page will arrive tomorrow for a visit of several days at Lake Eden.
B M C COMMUNITY BULLETIN- 1943-44 BULLETIN- #10- Page Two
Herbert Solow, Education Editor of Time magazine, wires that he will arrive on December 2 for a two days visit at the College.
Sergeant John Stix will return on Saturday for a twenty-four hours visit.
WITH FORMER STUDENTS:
New Addresses:
Corporal R.L. Bliss, 11094139
H. and S. Co., 271st Eng. Bn.
A.P.O. 360
Camp Carson, Colorado
Mrs. Caleb Foote (Hope Stephens)
1625 Buchanan Street
San Francisco, California
Fernando Leon
111 Highland Avenue
Highland Park 3, Michigan
In The Mail:
Homer Bobilin writes from overseas: “South Pacific is all we are allowed to say. I haven’t been assigned a unit, as yet. The air corps is my hope…..My plans of being a ‘fixed station operator’ went out the window as soon as they gave my my overseas physical, but now I’m sort of glad. I’m classified as a low speed operator; but code school drudgery is in the past, and I can now start putting what I learned into actual use. Is there any chance of getting the B.M.C. Bulletin sent here. I would appreciate it more than ever now.”
Fernando Leon writes from Highland Park, Michigan: “I moved in today in an apartment with two other boys graduated already from the Chrysler Institute…..”
Notes:
Hope Stephens Foote is teaching, in the Booker T. Washington Settlement House in San Francisco, little Negro, Chinese and Filipino children in the mornings and helping mothers in the afternoons.
AGENDA FOR TUESDAY MEETING:
a.) Remaining Upper Division Plans for entering students
b.) Beginning of discussion on Fall Quarter work of students
c.) Plans for the Winter Quarter
COMMUNITY WORK SUMMARY:
(Week of November 22 through November 27)
The pressure tank for blowing was installed and connected up in the chemistry laboratory.
Despite the one-day holiday almost fifteen pounds of mica were trimmed in the Mica Room. This represents increased efficiency, due largely to the greater application to the job by the workers.
The stanchions were put in for the milk cow stalls.
The screen door between the Kitchen and the Dining Hall was made more nearly sound-proof with a covering of Masonite.
With the arrival at last of the long-awaited carload of black coal for the furnaces, coal hauling began and continued in earnest
B M C COMMUNITY BULLETIN- 1943-44 BULLETIN- #10- Page Three
Crews worked on morning and afternoon shifts. Due to arrive next week, any day, is a carload of stoker coal. Plans are being made to get unloaded quickly.
Nell Goldsmith
From the Farm during the week came five bushels of Irish potatoes, nearly three bushels of onions, three hampers of cabbage, and a hog. Two hundred and eighty quarts of milk were brought to the kitchen.
Janet Heling
*written in pencil, “November 1943”
SUPPLEMENT TO BULLETIN 10
(A command account by Janie Robinson Stone)
Thanksgiving Day was a holiday at Lake Eden.
Of course, most of the day was spent in getting ready to be festive; but, when the magic hour (i.e. 6:00 o’clock) struck, the Community was suddenly transformed into a group of teddibly gay sophisticates. For those who had been “giving thanks” all day it was a relief to walk into the Lobby of North Lodge and find it warm, friendly and well-stocked with the special brand of Black Mountain Cocktail- this dryness is to me- but who would refuse wine before dinner?
Promptly at 6:30 the educational elite sauntered, casually, over to the Rhododendron Roof to be dined, wined, danced and utterly charmed ( we were still being sophisticated) by the decorations; well-balanced leaf studies, two enchanting female figures, cleverly constructed from Slater’s felt (no, there is no shortage of woman power;’twas just a whim)and masses of the most unusual native rhododendron, the type possessing white, red and yellow lacquered leaves among the more common green ones;
And did we say entertainment? Yes, after dinner.
Movies of ante-diluvian times at Lake Eden were the first order of the evening. People we hadn’t even seen for years popping up out of ditches and foundations. There were even some of us who are still facing ourselves here in “this other Eden.”
Mr. Bentley, Miss Pollet an Mr. Swackhamer (the Egbert) brought relief from scenes of labor, singing arias and duets on theme of Connie Co-ed, Progressive Education and the Non-Muscular Intellectual who didn’t get drafted (Mr. Bentley being the Non-Muscular).
Flight to Poland was accomplished by some scraping of chairs. We found ourselves seated in the Grand Ballroom, eyeing two individuals faintly resembling Mrs. Stone and Elsa Kahl as they lept from mad mazurka to Russian Waltz (it was the ballroom version, not the peasants, for we were still being sophisticated.)
Never let it be said that Black Mountain students can’t adapt themselves quickly to a changing world. Before any of us could say “emotional maturity”, there was Mile. Pollet back on stage as Catherine Parr, being just too adamant about watery eggs and Alexander’s horse. Slight hysteria came from the audience as Henry VIII (mundanely known as Addison Bray) leaned into the candle and calmly allowed his plume (gathered in the fields) to go up in flame. Henry remained unperturbed and paunchy, exhibiting what is commonly known as presence of mind.
The common presence of mind, i.e., of the Community as a whole, was shortly thereafter displaced by Liese Kulka who insisted upon confusing us with quick vocal shifts from soprano to bass (she was singing incidentally) with accompanying facial and arm gestures. By the time she began to sing a duet with herself, in perfect harmony, we were ready for anything. Anything turned out to be Swackhamer (Egbert, again) who appeared in time to be falsetto at the proper moments.
And did we get a bird’s eye view of ourselves as a Community? Yes, we did. The scene was a corner of the Reading Room, that silent, conductive-to-reflection section of the Dining Hall set aside for blowing smoke rings. Student Moderator Samuel Brown and Miss Carol Ostrow dead-panned through a blasphemous version of our hallowed weekly Community bulletin, concerning the vicious circle that is Ted Dreier (he’s on so many committees); and let’s be a new College every quarter!
Indeed, by the time we were confronted with a mass of howling Russians, we ourselves were babbling feebly in what seemed to be less understandable than basic English. They danced! They stamp. They even cheered while Fran de Graaffski became oratorical, rhetorical, historical, yes, and danced some more. As is usual, there was one gallant member of the male population to stamp and shout with the best of them (again Swackhamer, Egbert) as Mme. Bentley and Mile Klepper charged back and forth in boots.
SUPPLEMENT TO BULLETIN 10- PAGE TWO
The shock effect of Earl Carroll’s lengthy women (shown by Dr. Hansgirg and projector) was somewhat, uh, soothing after such hilarity. However, we did hear a few thoughtful whistles from the audience. It was dark though, so we couldn’t see who was thus inclined.
It would probably be unfair to say that we went from the sublime to the ridiculous; but when seven young women whom we thought we knew suddenly appeared before us, displayed fourteen (we think it was fourteen,) legs clothed in red woolen tights from bonoath deceptive skirts, and launched into a breathless (as unto gasping) version of the Can Can- Is the illusion created? We assure you, it was no illusion! And what’s more they did it twice, with tableau at the end. We were practically back in the Nineteenth Century.
Sometime during the evening there was general dancing* also mulled wine. Part of our sophistication had worn off, enough at least so that we didn’t mind warm wine spilled down the back or faint patches of pale yellow and white paint from our own native rhododendrons, yes.
We might say that it was an evening, but wewon’t, mainly because it was a party, and a good one!
*Music and drum accompaniement, too. And just guess who played the drums- Swackhamer, Egbert; but you must have known.
