9p, one sided pages, 9 horizontal folds, staple in top left corner. Mimeograph on matte off white paper. Mentions that Placement test of English and Math will be given during the week; Upper Division exams will be given during the week beginning March 11. mentions that some weaving projects of student are being shown at an exhibition of modern textiles at the Skidmore College. Visitor- Dr Samuel Guy Inman.
BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE
Community Bulletin Bulletin 20
College Year 12 Monday, March 5, 1945
CALENDAR:
There will be a news summary and commentary this evening at 6:45 o’clock in the Lobby of South Lodge. Dick Bush-Brown, Bill McLaughlin and Herbert Miller will be the speakers.
The students will hold their bi-monthly meeting in the Lobby of Sout Lodge immediately after the news cast.
The Board of Fellows will meet in Bob Wunsch’s Study on Tuesday afternoon at 4:30 o’clock.
The Faculty and Student Officers will meet in the Faculty Room on Wednesday afternoon at 4:30 o’clock.
On Wednesday evening, March 7, at 8:15 o’clock Louis P Benezet, Professor of Education at Dartmouth College and a classmate of Herbert Miller, will lecture in the Dining Hall on “Who Wrote Shakespeare?”
There will be a reading od Moliere’s “The Miser” in Bob Wunsch’s Study on Wednesday evening after the lecture.
Dr Samuel Guy Inman will address the College on Saturday morning at 10:30 in the Lobby of South Lodge.
Gretel and Edward Lowinsky will give an all-Romantic program of violin-piano compositions on Saturday evening in the College Dining Hall.
NEWS ITEMS:
Twenty-one colleges and universities throughout North Carolina are on the revised lecture schedule of Dr Samuel Guy Inman, Adviser to the State Department on Latin American Affairs and a member of the United States delegation to the Mexico City Conference of the American Republics now in progress, who will appear in North Carolina the weeks of March 8-22, immediately following the Conference in Mexico.
As a result of his appearance in this State, North Carolina will be the first in the country to get from a State Department official a first-hand analysis of the results of the Mexico City Conference.
His series of addresses arranged by the Southern Council on International Relations under the lecture-institute program of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.
A native of Texas, Dr Inman has been a lecturer on international affairs, particularly those of the Latin American countries, at Columbia University, Yale, Vassar, Pennsylvania, the Universities of Hawaii, Chile, Santo Domingo, San Marcos, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Quito, Panama, Madrid, Geneva, Bagdad, and Mexico.
He was United States delegate to four Pan-American conferences and is a radio commentator and participant in OWI broadcasts.
Dr Inman is co-author of a new book, What the South Americans Think of Us.
A former director of refuge service of the League of Nations for Latin America, Dr Inman’s denunciations of Franco have been published in La Prensa and La Nacion in Buenos Aires. According to his estimates, eighty-five per cent. Of the Argentinians are pro-United Nations and democratic.
Dr Inman will spend Saturday and Sunday at Lake Eden.
BMC Community Bulletin –2- Bulletin 20
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
On Wednesday morning, March 7, Bob Wunsch and Bill McLaughlin will talk on Black Mountain College to the students and teachers of Biltmore College in Asheville.
Bob Wunsch will act as critic-judge of the Hendersonville winter drama festival on Thursday and Friday evenings.
Placement Tests in Mathematics and English Composition will be given during the week. Upper Division Examinations will be given during the week beginning March 11.
Black Mountain College textiles, the work of students and of Anni Albers, are now being shown at an exhibition of modern textiles in the Skidmore College Gallery in New York.
Alice Stieglitz has been accepted by the Admissions Committee. She will enter the College as a student sometime during the week.
Two dramatic groups in West Virginia are planning to produce, during the Spring, Betty Kelley’s “More Straw for the Scarecrow,” a three-act fairy play for children. Those groups are the Junior League of Parkersburg and the Childrens Theatre of Beckley.
Bessie Miller, substituting for Herbert Miller, will speak to the Women’s Missionary Society in Black Mountain this evening on “Three Days with Gandhi.”
REQUEST:
Students and teachers are requested to write evaluations and criticisms of the seven-days Interlude and hand them either to Bill McLaughlin or Bob Wunsch. They will help to serve as a guide for future Interludes.
LAST WEEK IN REVIEW:
The event of the week was the Interlude, the seven-day respite from classes. Students painted, read, wrote short stories, sunned.
Jane Slater and Marilyn Bauer took written examinations in art on Friday and Saturday.
Gretel Lowinsky, Dorothy Carr and Anna Schauffler gave a violin-viola-cello concert at the Stephens-Lee Negro High School on Friday morning for the benefit of the school’s Library Fund. They played Boccerini’s String Trio in D, Ravel’s Pavane for Cello and Piano, Haydn’s Capriccio for Cello and Piano, Mozart’s Minuet for Violin and Piano, and Beethoven’s Duet for Violin and Cello.
On Saturday evening, a dance group, composed of Curtiss Cowan, Patsy Lynch, John Reiss, Nancy Smith, and Elizabeth Zabriske, gave an informal program. They danced “Bitter Fruit” and “Space Play,” created by Nancy Smith, and “My Dear Ulysses,” created by Curtiss Cowan, Jean Keiser read the poetic accompaniment to “Space Play.”
The week end hikers were: Jagna Braunthal, Max Dehn, Eddie Dreier, Ted Dreier, Molly Gregory, and Lorna Pearson. They left Lake Eden on Saturday morning, spent Saturday night on the Craggies, and returned to Lake Eden on Sunday afternoon.
WITH FORMER STUDENTS:
New Addresses:
Mrs Jose de Creeft (Lorrie Goulet)
218 Greene Street
New York City
BMC Community Bulletin –3- Bulletin 20
In the Mail:
Lieutenant Thomas Brooks writes from Belgium on January 26: “I was a witness to an all-out effort by the Germans to make a break-through. Our tanks with the doughboys of the Second Infantry Division held where the Jerries expected to break through. We had four frantic and confusing days. In Jack French’s psychology we called such as this a traumatic experience....The battle was grim- and this was reflected in the attitude of everybody on the line as in the second and third positions. I was a new hand at the business, but I and the rest of the Americans were rather at a loss because the Germans were attacking. Nobody had thought the Germans had the quantities of equipment they were using. We were confused by the rumors that came of progress on other sectors. Some of these rumors put the enemy deep into France and others said that it had been an unsuccessful attack on all fronts. We wondered what was the truth. It was very trying, to have so little knowledge of the ‘big picture’....after those four days I came back to what, rumor said, was an area even out of artillery fire. I woke the next morning to heavy shelling; and, after having become completely relaxed for the night, I had a strange reaction. I had lost all sense of humor (of even the bitter type), I was tired, nervous and more angry at the Germans than I had hiterto been. I had never before known more compete disgust and rage....We are now taking a pleasant break after all the fuss. We are near to the front and suffer some discomfort from this, but the sector is mostly quiet. We have had a great deal of snow, some in gentle falls, but most of it driven by wild storms. We work at keeping the tanks in top trim. We have painted them white and made other modifications for winter. Now there is very little to do....I get tie aplenty for reading when there is something to read, but I have gone through all that the company has that might appeal to me. Now I argue with anybody who cares to join me in confused debate or sit and chat with a drowsy crowd bent on recalling past days in the States or in England.”
Lorrie Goulet de Creeft writes from New York City: “Jose and I are painting and sketching continually. In the mornings, when the weather is tolerable, we go walking in Central Park. As soon as spring comes, we will be cycling every morning...”
Francis Foster writes from Asia on February 20: “I am still, as far as my interests are concerned, idle. Occasionally I make a map or two, the rest of the time I ride planes back and forth, carrying papers and typewriters and thing....I’ve had no mail in three months..”
Private Otis Levy writes from France on January 19: “At times this pace is as peaceful as North Fork Valley; then we seem to be far from war....my first impressions of war came when I went to Cherbourg and saw the skeleton cities. Later I was to get stronger impressions. All of it has made my lonely, just a little more human, and perhaps a little more bloodthirsty....There are a lot of laughs, thogh, more good times, and never any boredom.”
Private First Class Emil Willimotz writes from somewhere in Germany on February 6: “Was with a heavy heart that I read in my last BMC Bulletin that Tommy Wentworth is dead. In our year of training together I learned to appreciate his rather shy intelligence. His analytical manner towards the Army failed to make many friends for him but paved the way for some really fine discussions between us during those cold and endless days in the Mississippi pine woods. Tommy and I were separated on arriving in England last summer, and I never made contact with him again. From your information, I learn that he was in my Division, although in another Regiment. He was, most likely, killed in our rather costly fight for Brest. We ran up against some of the best fortifications on the Continent and against some crack German troops. Tommy was a good soldier in training and was curious about everything- even combat. But then intelligence is of little use in war. War has no sense; and, although we may lose a million Tommies, we who are left will not be one whit brighter for it....Understand that Ike is now in France- probably in Germany by now. Hear, occasionally, of the fighting his outfit is engaged in.
BMC Community Bulletin –4- Bulletin 20
It is our shame that the American-Japanese must outdo themselves and expose their lives in order to all your suspicions of them. The same is true of our Negro troops. It takes a closed heart to find the spirit to keep fighting under those circumstances. But the fight must be fought before anything else can be done. The only hope is that the end comes before we have lost all of our Tommies....As for myself, there is little to say. Our division has a name for aggressiveness, and we see much of the fighting. Five days’ rest after Brest, and we were fighting in Germany. Have been here ever since. Am in a front-line rifle company in the weapon’s platoon. Although, my main preoccupation is with the light mortars, they have been trying to make a commando out of me because of my knowledge of German. Been wounded only once, with only thirty days off the line. Something of a record for the number of months’ combat. Outside of this, life is routine. We cheer for the Russians, pray for ourselves and keep our fingers crossed....Hear from some of the old BMC gang. Mattie Engelhardt is over here as a do-nut girl. Keep looking at ARC uniforms, but, so far, no Mattie!”
News Items:
AA Babcock writes from Evanston, Illinois, that Bill Hanchett has gone to California “for the last bit of training before going over. Liberator Bomber is his ship. Hes first pilot. Loves it..”
WITH FORMER MEMBERS OF THE STAFF:
In the Mail:
Bob Babcock, writing from Cairo, Egypt, describes a vacation trip during December: “The trip was superb..Bill Charlton, a flight leftenant with the RAF, up from the ranks and fifteen years in the British Army stationed in the Near East, went with me as planned. He is a hearty, jovial, genuine type, about 39 but even at such a great age appearing younger- one would guess 34. He knew Palestine and the Transjordan, knew motor car in case anything went wrong, was on his first leave in a long time. A thoroughly enjoyable type to have along for a week or ten days. We left Saturday morning, early, in a fog which cleared by the time we reached the beginning of the desert at Ismalia. Then a long tedious journey across the never-ending desert, across the Sinai Peninsula. At first there is nothing but wind-blown dune sand, with the road sort of rolling up and down the hillocks across a path evidently made by a drunken camel. There is nothing but sand and the road, or so you think, until suddenly you see a few camels wandering leisurely about, in search of random grass; and there on the next hillock is a Bedouin, living God knows where, drinking, God knows what, unless he puts a bung in the camel’s hump. Gradually, the hills give way to rocky young mountains and take on color, and the ground becomes rough and hardy. This is the rainy season, even in the desert, which occasionally gets a few inches. Where the water has run down from the croding hills, in wadis, a small grown brush has grown up; and one can follow the dry water course by the green line up into the mountains. It is cold in the open jeep, but we have drawn from the Army temporarily magnificent parksa, which are two garments in one, completely white on one side for snow-terrain camouflage and completely brown on the other. I want some after the war, superb for skiing or any winter weather. After a long time, in which we debate whether or not we are going to have to use the extra patrol tin strapped on the read, we reach a patrol point, in the middle of nowhere in the desert- a few mud houses and tenets and some petrol pumps. These are timed to take care of truck convoys on route across the desert from Egypt to Palestine and back. Of those convoys, we saw many. Gradually, bits of the desert itself, or what look like desert, are ploughed up. Then you see an Arab, a Bodouin, with a wooden plow of single blade tilling the soil begin the over-present camal. What will grow there is a mystery, unless it be shriveled-up potatoes or grass for camel feed. Occasionally you see the Arab’s home, some skins propped up tent-fashion, surrounded by twigs to break the wind. His woman,
BMC Community Bulletin –5- Bulletin 20
Completely shrouded in black, even with a veil, and bare feet, will be working in the field with him or sitting in front of the hut building a fire. Then Beersheba, the first sizable town, and the desert begins to fall away and the land becomes arabic, still without trees, however, or with just a lone row of cypress outlining a farm or a cemetary. This is still an Arab town, even though we are in Palestine, dirty, barbaric, unplanned, uncleaned, of mud huts and narrow streets and black-dressed women and filthy children. From there we swing out to the coast up up to Tol Aviv, the modern Jewish town outside of Jaffa. What I had come to see was not Biblical history in Palestine, but a sense of what the country looked like and felt like, and, in particular, some concrete images on which to pin all the arguments about Zionism and Pan-Arabism and the Palestine Question. The first of these images was Tel Aviv (you know its history, I presume: completely new, completely Jewish, a sort of shrine for tradistinction to the Arabs). We got there late at night and stayed in a second-class pension, but in the morning we spent several hours just driving and walking around. Jaffa is Arab. If you did not know where the boundary was, you could guess. You can see the difference as you walk across the street. Jaffa is ancient and dirty. Its streets are narrow and ill-kept; its methods are ancient. An Arab store is a hole in the mud structure, or, sometimes, a more permanent structure of stone or cement blocks; but it is a hole, nevertheless, protected at night from the street by a steel shutter which is pulled down and in the daytime is opened, shop, living quarters, workhouse and counter directly spilling over on the sidewalk. The street is a place for walking for the Arab; he cannot comprehend motor cars, consequently is in constant unheedful danger of being run down. But Tel Aviv is like a bit of incongruous Switzerland plunked down here on the Mediterranean. The buildings have balconies and are clean and white and pink. The streets are wide and tree-lined and clean. A walk down the main thoroughfare on a Saturday evening is like a crowded, well-ordered stroll down a smaller Fifth Avenue. In its order, its cleanliness, its modernity, its well-planned, well-thought-out, well-regulated life, it is utterly unlike anything else in the Middle East. The contrast is compelling and overwhelming. One is tempted, perhaps, to draw too many conclusions from it. The city is also crowded with soldiers of all nationalities on leave; as a consequence, it Is gay and alive. Street signs and shop advertisements are in Hebrew and English. The conversation one hears is really international; French, German, Yiddish, Arabic, Hebrew, Hungarian, Russian, Slavic, Turkish; but Hebrew and English predominate.
“From Tol Aviv northwards along the coast, along about noon. Here the country is settled and charming. There are power lines everywhere, quite a distinction from the rest of the Near East. And orange groves and grapefruit groves and tangerines and vineyards, surrounded by mimosa, used as a hedge, or by cypress trees. It looks like parts of Italy, really. Then through Haifa, which is another Jaffa with a good harbor, past the ancient cities of Tyro and Sidon (possibly called Sour and Saida on your map), great ports in the days of Roman galloons, but now Arab cities, going to ruin, their glory forgot, their piers and breakwaters tumbling into the sea; past the remains of Roman aqueducts, which occasionally still function, to Beirut. All the time there were high hills to the East; by the time we got to Beirut they have developed into mountains. Consequently, Beirut is surprisingly lovely. The peaks around it are snow-capped, but it is warm enough there to go swimming in the Mediterranean at the city’s front, which a few hardy souls are doing. All of a sudden one has gone from Italy and France, for Beirut is French in speech and in character. Its population is truly polyglot. We spend two nights and a day here. It is a large city with its streets climbing hills away from the sea. The American University is pretentious and handsome. Our hotel is right on the water. Behind the city the view is breathtakingly beautiful, with violet-colored hills covered with red-roofed stone houses jumping up into snow at something over 8,000 feet. I get the business quickly done; we spend two nights at night clubs where American jazz (our universal export) is played.
BMC Community Bulletin –6- Bulletin 20
“Emil Coury, the storekeeper in my office in Cairo, has a fairly in a place called Breumanna, up behind Beirut; and I have some presents home for Christmas, as planned. In Syria the name is Khouri?- Where is Habech Khouri, his father? - which I say twice without any luck. For a long amount there is dumbfounded silence; and then the answer is halting English, ‘I am Haboob Khouri’. It is some time before he can think to ask us in, when I tell him who I am; then he does so with a burst of tearful affection. ‘Next to having Emil here. I am happiest at having you. You will stay a week? You will eat with us? Will Emil be here for Christmas? We have bought a turkey. He is now in the yard getting fat. Everything is planned for having Emil here’. I give my apologies, thinking all the time how really easy it would have been to have brough Emil along with us, if we had just thought about how much it would have meant. We are taken inside a largish stone building of two stories, and then into the only heated room, which has in it a wood stove, a few wooden benches and chairs and a table. But it is a large room, and the benches are good ones. There is a rug on the floor and a sort of appearance about the house- a bunch of artificial flowers on the entry hall table, mirrors in the dining room, a large cabinet- that he is well to do, as the town goes. Mrs Coury is there, and she all but takes me into her arms. It is a long time since they have spoken English. (They had lived in the States from around 1910 to 1930, in upstate New York. Emil has seen the city once only, a few months ago, in sixteen year.) ‘How is Emil? Wil he be here for Christmas?’ I say that he is well and happy, that he cannot come for Christmas, that he is playing a great deal of tennis, and is very busy. Is there anything specific you would like to know? ‘You have said he is well and happy; that is all I want to know. He writes. But you will take the place of Emil. You will stay a week? We can arrange dances. We have plenty of beds. Ah, you cannot. Damascus? But we must call Nadia and my brother-in-law, the priest. You will have something to eat?’ So they fill us up with tea and toast and jam and figs, a big plate of them, all sugary, which I do not like but nibble at anyway and fill myself up with tea and cakes. We sit in this room, not saying a great deal, and the Khouris go in and out worrying about what they can give us to eat and what they had better pack up for Emil for Christmas to go back with us, and I say again that Emil is well and happy and plays a great deal of tennis, and they say that if you are his boss, then he must be very happy, for you are a fine boy and it is like having Emil with us, having you. ‘Will you go back to the States after the war?’ I ask. ’No, we are too old, but we have two sons in America, in the furniture business. God keep the war away from you,’ Soon Nadia appears. She is Emil’s cousin. She is attractive, American in appearance. Speaks English well and sees to our food requirements while the two parents sit and look at me and sigh. And then the priest, Greek Orthodox, in a black skull cap, long curly hair and a long black and white beard, curly at the ends, a fine dignified figure of a man, small but upright, with a deep resonant voice. It is explained that he is important in the priesthood, and he makes no attempt to deny it. He sees me and kisses me on the cheek. ‘Zat is for Emil. God bless you.’ And he sits down and stares at me. I inquire about the road to Damascus and explain how satisfactory a jeep is for driving. Charlton tells a long story about this being his first trip to Syria. And it is time to go. They send him others which they had been saving for Christmas, I say goodbye and shake hands. Mr Khouri accompanies me to the car. There are tears in his eyes. Finally, he can restrain himself no longer. He reaches over and kisses me on the cheek, ‘That is for Emil., and then on the other cheek, ‘That is for you. Come again. Come any time.’ And we are off.
“The first thing I did when I got back was to arrange for Emil to get special leave for Christmas. It looks as if he will get there.
BMC Community Bulletin –7- Bulletin 20
“Then over the mountains to Damascus. On the sea side the beauty of the heights and trees continues; but afterwards there is another valley and then another row of mountains, ragged, barren, eroded things, treeless and cheerless, like Tibet in one's imagination. It is desperately cold, but there is no snow, just a driving rain and bleak, jagged, uncomfortable mountains. Damascus, the exotic, is a complete disappointment. It is mostly native bazaar and a few European street; French and Arabic are the tongues. It is winter here, bleak, grey; and the city is uninviting, unkept, shaggy and tumbled-down and dirty. The next morning we tour the native markets....Thence down the inside track to Tiberias on the Lake of Tiberias or the Sea of Callilee, through bleak meerland and rugged uninviting hills, until one sees the lakes which remind one of the finger lakes in upstate New York except for the lack of trees. No trees anywhere. One has the constant thought that what these countries need is a thousand Johnny Appleseeds.
“Tiberias is no great shakes, and we got ensnared by a sergeant of the Palestine Police who clung tenaciously to us, but who did us one great favor; that was, to take us to a Jewish Communal Colony, which is one of the things I wanted mostly to see.
“There are lots of these Jewish Colonies in Palestine, some of them communal and some of them quite capitalistic. This one is called Afikim and lies in the Jordan Valley, for contrast just next to a typically decadent Arabic village. You go through a barbed wire enclosure that is guarded by soldiers from the colony, up maybe a quarter of a mile of muddy rutted road and stop in front of a white water tower with flowering vines on it. Off to the side in the distance are grapefruit groves. There are barns to the left, and, on the right, tree-lined paths leading to largish white buildings. There is a semblance of a lawn and the beginnings of a flower garden. It is just before dinner; and, coming out of the fields and out of the barns and out of the box factory are men and women in rubber boots and trousers and dirty jackets;; they are going toward the houses. There are children everywhere, in shorts, of all sizes and both sexes, and all of a sudden, while we were waiting for our host to come, I realized that this was something I had seen before and which I understand and in which I felt at home. There was a camaraderie among the boys and girls, and a sort of joint shrugging off of physical work by the men and the women mixed up together; there was the same muddy road and semblance of a lawn and beginnings of a flower garden that said I was back at BMC. I don’t know what I expected, but not this, this with which I was almost immediately, and, with a curious sense of buoyance, familiar. Immediately I had a thousand questions to ask and a hundred things to see. We spent one evening and all the next morning there; and everything I saw increased the memory and jerked at it in little ways and started new trends of thought en route. I would take thirty pages to explain it all, and I can’t. There are seven hundred or more people in this colony; of this number three hundred are children. ‘The only immigration which hasn’t been stopped,’ as one man put it. There is an attempt in so far as possible to be self-sufficient. Most of their food is grown, except sugar and coffee and the like. Their main profit-making schemes are a box factory, a trucking concession complete with trucks and garage, and hopefully, since there is no free market as yet, grapefruit. The profits from these things go to buy essentials of clothing, tobacco, some food, building materials, etc. They sell their saleable commodities to a cooperative, and they buy essentials from other cooperatives. Their doctoring and dental schemes and schooling for the older children are on a cooperative basis, shared with neighboring colonies. No money ever changes hands within the colony. Each draws from the clothing department or tobacco department or whatever the things which are needed. In turn, each works according to his ability. Perhaps the most interesting and new thing is the treatment of the children. As soon as he comes from the hospital, a baby is put into a nursery. There are ten nurseries in this colony, for all-age groups. They do not live with their families who, as one person put it, are relieved of all the drudgery of parenthood and have all the pleasure. The parents see them after work and on holidays; or rather the parents spend time with them then, for the children are everywhere. There is a nurse and, eventually, a teacher
BMC Community Bulletin –8- Bulletin 20
Assigned to each age-group; and the houses of nurses and teachers are by far the best. They all eat in a common children’s dining hall. The adults all eat in another common dining hall, which doubles as a recreation and assembly hall also. When we were there, there was a stage at one end, partly set up for a play that was to be given that night. Once a year, at something which they automatically called a ‘general meeting’, officers are elected, the budget for the coming year is decided upon, and committees are appointed. The officers assign people to different work, usually in accordance with their preference. But there are certain jobs which are considered undesirable, such as dishwashing; and they are rotated on a six months’ basis. Cooks, nurses, teachers, field workers, factory hands- anything requiring skills- are more permanently assigned; but rotation is possible. I talked a long time in French with an ex-journalist from Hungary who had been in the colony only for a short time. He was about forty and worked at manual labor in the plywood factory- really a coupe of large barns with modern but not too impressive machinery, situated in the fields near the entrance and not far from the dairy barn....I asked this chap how he liked it. ‘It is hard on me, standing all day long, since I’ve never done manual labor before; and the summer was very hard on my wide, since it is deep rarely hot in the Jordan Valley; but you should see my children; I am building a new world for them. They will not know the meaning of money nor of persecution. They are healthy and happy. Look at them. This is a society for them.’ And when he said ‘my children’, he was referring not only to his own two but to the colony’ children, as though they were his. Most of the people were like that tired-looking; but their faces would come alive and dreamy when you talked about ther children and what they will do for them. ‘Next year we will build two more decent houses and maybe add to the cow barn. We shall be able to put in a thousand more walks, and double the library, and send two children off to Tel Aviv for further schooling. One of our goals is there now; and when she comes back next year we will have two of our own teachers, along with three borrowed ones. And maybe the year after we shall be able to afford another chair in each of the married couples’ houses (rather rooms, since each couple has but one largish room).’ It was the only really alive thing I have discovered in the Middle East. One went away refreshed, as if a cool breath of air had come your way. Even Charlton felt it deeply. It is maybe not our way, but it is a way; and it is alive and vigorous, and it is building something permanent, even if it is only another poultry shed. Incidentally, the children speak and learn only Hebrew until the fifth grade, when English is compulsory. Later on they take Arabic as well. But all the parents that come there have to learn Hebrew in order to communicate with their children.
“From thence, with a long backward look, down to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which are fakes. Most disappointing. All one learns from them is how stupid people can be over their faiths, what extraordinary glamrackery they can put up and call beautiful and blessed. After visiting them, one agrees with Lenin that ‘Of all the opiates, religion is the worst’. As a sociological lesson, one should visit the Wailing Wall, a high stone wall of which the first five layers are though to be the remains of Herod’s Temple and the next three of Soloman’s. The remaining ten belong to the Mosque of Omar, the Mohammadian Temple which is on the other side. Outside of the grotesque and barbaric wailing and gnashing of teeth- old women reading from the Koran, men of all shapes and sizes weeping and kissing the stone and chanting in unison before this unbeautiful and unsanitary rock- much of the time is spent in taunting, in so far as the police fail to prevent it, the opposite religion. Arabs, if they can, drive cattle along the Wailing Wall, in order to desecrate it. Jews pile filth in the Temple of Omar. Priests from both of them engage with each other and with the Roman Catholic counterpart in actual fisticuffs over the right to wash a certain stone laid in a floor, said to be the floor over one of Christ’s tombs, until the law said that no one could do it. The stone has remained unwashed for five years. There are three rival claimants to the Tomb of Christ, two of the manger in which He was born. We took a guide through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, said to be built over one of these mangers. He swore this was the eldest church in Christendom, built in 350 A.D. the most simple architectural student could have refuted him. I
BMC Community Bulletin –9- Bulletin 20
Asked him, therefore, to explain the decorated Corinthian columns that support the rood and that were probably not created until around 1200. Charlton was disgusted with me, but I could not help getting angry at the guides and at the commercialism and at the obvious fakery, and most of all, at the atrocious decorations; mother of pearl altars hidden in half light by gold and brass incense burners, hideous tapestries covering the manger and the stable, spurious candle-surrounded poster art, depicting the famous scenes; and all glossed over with the fatuous piety that demands the bowed head and quiet voices and dim lights. The area around Jerusalem, however, is quite lovely, with its olive groves and red-tile roofs and grim, but green, hills.
“Hence back here, in one long day’s drive, with the jeep behaving beautifully, with time out en route to uproot the only thing approaching in appearance a Christmas tree which we could find not behind barbed wire- a small bit of cedar.”
IN TODAY’S MAIL:
Barbara Sieck Bovingdon writes from the Netherlands East Indies on February 25: “It didn’t take long to be on our way to the South Pacific after we started training in Washington- two weeks of classes at the American University, then two weeks’ extension training at the USO in Baltimore, three weeks’ office work at Headquarters, and then off we went. We landed in Dutch New Guinea and spent a week there in more orientation and in getting new assignments. Now I am in the Netherland East Indies, a backward area but still further up than they usually send new girls. As yet we have had little feeling of the real war that is going on out here- more first hand information perhaps, but still not the reality of it. I did go out on a mobile Air Evacuation run and saw some of the recaptured prisoners and casualties...I have been temporarily assigned to a stationary canteen and, although I do like it, am very anxious to get my own club (still on paper as yet) as I was originally classified as a club worker. Up until now the canteen program has had much more importance on this base than the club. Our canteen, ‘The Sad Sack,; is mainly for feeding the transients, and we are open from 3:00 AM to 3:00 PM. The shifts are divided between the two of us, and we serve the standard office, juice, doughnuts, cookies and sandwiches- How far removed is our setup from the picture they gave us in Washington! Dirt floors, no running water, no screening, no modern conveniences- yet what we do is quite affective. It's going to be a most interesting experience, and I’m ever so happy to be here...”
Barbara Sheddon writes from Atlanta Georgia: “I still hear from a few Black Mountain people, although only an annual opistle from most of them. Mary Hughes Pendergrast, who is still living in Cincinnati, has two children, a little boy about four and a baby girl born last June. I visited her two summers ago on my way to Cleveland and had such a good time recalling all our College experiences. Mrs. Georgia writes of Dan in the Marines and Nathalie finishing college this year in Oregon and Dr bust with his work at Cornell....As for Barbara- I have been working ever since I left Black Mountain, and, after completing a secretarial course, have spent most of my time in offices. For the past two and half years I have been in the Texas and Pacific Railway office here, and, as the only girl in this office, have had to assume much responsibility of the detail work in an offline railroad office....So I am still in the ranks of the civilians. My plans to join the WAVES didn’t go through, so I have had to content myself with Red Cross work. Have worked at Surgical Dressings for two years and recently have completed the Nurses’ Aide course and, after office hours, serve as a night Aide at one of the hospitals here..”
