4
Friday, June 25.1971
University Summer Kansan
Russell L. Wiley: Man With a Living Dream
By JACKIE RAYMOND
"We are fighting for the very life of the camp but somehow I think we are going to win." The letter was signed with the Fountishing, Spenserian signature of Russell L. Wiley, director of the Midwestern Music and Art Camp.
A kaleidoscope of memory followed. A mantaining erect and proud in his immaculate white suit, bowing with sately, dignified grace to the crowd shifting uncomfortably on the splintery wooden benches, feverishly swaiting the night's menagerie of bugs . . . the soft, melodious strains of Irish Tune that fill the air, the whirling clouds of night air , . . . the perspiring but glowing faces of more than 100 youngsters gathered from 34 states to dedicate their talents for six weeks
Russell L. Wiley
to a unified goal the hush that followed the brief, unexpected announcement that *the league* had agreed.
the words of the stirring poem he delivered by the chancellor on the evening of fifty anniversary of the camp as he presented to Wiley the silver tea service, purchased from the dimes and quarters collected from the pockets of those dedicated youngsters from 34 states . . . the unabashed flowing tears from the man who had fought battle, countered him and who, in doing battle, had countered them enemies, but what dream come cheaply?
Memory has a way of diffusing time, for this was nine years ago. Now the camp was entering its thirty-fourth year, a year that has threatened to put an end to the dream of the man who conceived, nourished and cherished the year financially in life, after a highly successful year financially in life when it grossed more than $33,000, the slide began—a slide that had quickened steadily.
... a dream and an ideal
Although more than 30,000 youngsters were solicited beginning in the early winter months of this year, only some 90 responded. The reasons are diverse and understandable, but diversity and understanding do not pay bills. According to Wiley, this camp is different from others throughout the country, unique in that it receives no subsidy. As other divisions were added in subsequent years—divisions such as Journalism, speech and science—there was a suffice of their deficits from the music and art divisions. But not so this year with each division being notified that it was on its own financially.
Whether the country's economy will shift upward in another year in time to salvage the camp, whether this man of idealism has learned in time the lesson of greater practicality and whether he can shift his apostasy in time to turn the tide, one knows not.
But one does know that the world today is better place for such a man—a man of heart—a man who carries on a love affair with youth—a man with a dream that will not die.
Editorial Policy
For any readers who might want to criticize the Kemper Kanan, the editors have this to say: If you don't like what you read, write your own.
If sufficient interest is shown, a regular column for "non-journalists" will be incorporated in the last three issues of the paper.
As rude a statement as this may seem, it is, in essence, the Kamper Kansan's editorial policy for outside writing. Editorials on camp, comments on political and social issues, and any articles of creative writing by campers are strongly encouraged.
Artists, musicians, scientists,
forensics students, other persons—all have the opportunity to express
their opinions and demonstrate their talents. For more information contact Debbie Gump at Room 512,
McColum Hall, telephone number 4-6168 or Mary Keenan, Room 503,
McColum Hall, telephone number 4-6163.
Kamper Kansan
Kamper News Office—112 Flint Hall
864-750-3921
The Kameran Kampai, camp newspaper at the Midwestern University, held a news conference during the five week camp. Assignments it is written by the university's professor were submitted.
The opinions expressed in the editorial column are those of the editorial start of the newspaper. Guest editorial views on art and politics, and other topics expressed in the Kamer Raman are not necessarily those of the Midwestern Mart and Art camp or the University of Minnesota.
Managing Editor
Designer Dearborn
Deborah Karp
Deborah Karp
Jill Hewlett, Florence Purcell
Editor in Chief
Mary Krewan
John Corpus Christi
John Corpus Christi
Photo Editor
Leigh Spinning
Regina Legnias
Bernell Juhnke, Compe Mower, Gale Ann Nortor
The Last Puff and Jimmy
By JOHN CORPUS
For as long as I can remember, the small wooden porch attached to the chipped, white-painted house, the field behind the Bixley's, and the smoky, acid-fasting air were home. Living here in Coldwater was going to Jimmy's Manle Street and similar discontounts.
Now, as I walk through the deserted streets, I can't help burst the pulse from The Plant: that large organ beating from one corner of the town, pumping blood into the town's veins, rich thick blood. Pumping all those eyewatering clouds of Cold Whip out over the long cylindrical tubes, up into the sky, and into the heads, stomachs and pockets of the people of Coldwater. Ah, how they would open him like this, damn that, and meantime swallow the interior to savor quiver and shake from the inside out as the acid would eat its way down their threats and as they gasped, smiled and said, "I love The Plant."
But all that's left of that mechanical monster is this plaque.
I don't want to think about the Plant. Even though it is impossible, I like to think of myself sitting on the front stoop of the house, staring at a wall that contains all that smoke and that constant pounding.
"The Plant" it says, to all those passing in front of the sootied silent columns, the gray packet fence and more than half-century of memories. Why must it be the only thing to do? It has completed a task equivalent to mentioning an entire town! Hasn't it done enough?
The Bixley's field was beautiful after 1971 on every first Tuesday and Wednesday (the days The Plant shunt off, according to law, to give the air a break). The Bixley's field had everything you might want a field to contain when you were 12- green grass. It was hard to get through it, but that blood that was pumped in just wasn't the right type. It was the wrong shade of green.
For some reason, the Bixley's field had been saved, I would do my thinking there. All that beautiful, soft green grass caressing my soles seemed to penetrate my teeners and brush wistfully against my naked feet. It set my mind thinking; wondering about Mr. Kyle. The Plant where he worked, why the Bixley's leaf, and why snakes slither away from you.
My mother would be no help to me on those days when my feet became excited. She was only my mother on those days, working with her tools in the kitchen. She was a busy woman trying to keep five kids fed and clothed with the pension she received from her way, section F and snakes made her scared and nervous. or was it that I was too bad?
She had told me that once--that I was a little too daring to defy authority and a little
"Why can't you get a job like other boys, down at the Plant?", she would say to me while working at the desk. She would then lay them in bed. "I didn't know it was answering and start asking about Jimmy."
I was a little bestest about telling her about Jimmy at first. "How bold, how adventurous, I fighured her to say, "Going all that way up to the tenant section and having cookies and milk yet! You shouldn't take cookies from them like that, Herbie." But she understood.
While picking asparagus I spotted Jimmy's shining speeches gleaming through the brown tinted bushes along the gravel road. I hadn't seen this boy in school or church or at any Coldwater function. His bony fingers grasped the rubber-ball end of the bicycle horn and squeezed it weakly. The sound signaled for his to come out of the small yellow cubicle in the classroom. It whimsical remark that set them back to laughing and joking. She grabbed the handles of Jimmy's chair and wheeled him back inside. That was the first time I saw him.
Three days later, a dozen cups of asparagus, ago the sun continued to shine down on that
Eyewatering Clouds of Cool Whip
As I would leave the house each of those three days (to pick asparagus?) Mother would ask, "Why this sudden craving for asparagus?"
When I finally met Jimmy, I tried not to stare at his leg as I approached him.
It was a beautiful friendship. I became so that I didn't even stare at all at Jimmy's leg. We would long walk takes, me pushing him, him pulling me; to Maple street, down to the Coldwater post office to pick up the pension checks (Jimmy's ma got one too) and around the Plant. I even wheeled him into Bibley's field. Jimmy would cling to my shoulder and I would lift him from the chair and set him down on his chair. He would remove his shoe and sock from his foot and rub his small white foot through the tall grass. It was a new experience for Jim. I wondered if he could feel it through the strange material that composed his other foot?
He smiled. I clenched the can,
"Asaorauza?" handing him a can.
Bixley's field still looks somewhat the same. The grass has grown knee-high and there are even some new sprouts coming up along-side our foundation.
The Plant looked so silent sitting below the hill. It had once been the cause of a migration to Coldwater. Three and four generations grew up around its great furnaces, belching stacks, and driving pulse that ticked with precision and power and rang with the sounds of "employment," "money," "life." I so much had wanted to stop, "Stop," I would have done it. I would field gagging for air, "Stop." I would think I pondered over my homework trying to keep the reek from entering my nostrils, "Stop," would dream.
"Anybody here?" What an echo! It used to be if you yelled like that you could barely hear the echo above the yelping dogs and The Plant.
The tears would flow down to my pillow making uncomfortable pools against my cheeks. The wheelchair would again race down the hills being screened by the dense Sunday afternoon shift's work. "Stop." I commanded to the chair which was hurting Jimmy down the steep hill near The Plant. "Please, stop."
By the end of the summer, those who would be needing employment had left Coldwater because there was nothing left there to live for. For once there was quiet. Terrible quiet. I felt the grass beneath planning an all-out attack on the buildings and streets of Coldwater. The process had begun. It made no sense. No one would stop it. As if I asked to stop Jimmy. Jimmy's death was alarming 1. . . Coldwater wasn't dead yet. The smoke from the plant still clung to the roots and vines of things. The death of a town is so slow.
Lonely Faces, Do I See ... Lonely Faces, on my Memory
Photo by STEVE WHITLOCK
Alone Among a Thousand
A Camper's Loneliness
By DEBBIE GUMP
As the car bearing the only contacts to warmth, his parents, pulls up in from of McColm Hall, the novice camper is greeted by the excitement and backpacked up by four equally forbidding structures. His first thought is that the monster is going to rear on up in its rear rooms and begin rampaging through the campus, and then nothing between Daisy Hill and the Kaw River.
Then, the unloading begins. First, himself, and then his parents. Next comes the luggage, the only thing standing between him and the front doors. With the help of two somewhat over-eager adults, all the equipment thought necessary to survive six weeks at this lonely place has the last chance before the desolate plains of Kansaas, is moved inside the seetherm.
Real privacy, the freedom of privacy,
meaning it is free to be assemble at his own will.
The security of the privacy of an individual
If only it weren't so big, he thinks, he could try to take it on, as act's equal. But McColum Hall, armed with its multitude of implications, is too much for one to privacy.
are housed, there is almost never a way to obtain privacy.
So, he is forced to be sociable, and if he can't handle a social nature, and isn't ready to accept the responsibility of giving up the job, he may have to down narrow hallways, into antiseptic lobes and ride the sometimes operable elevators down to the main lobby, a lobby that is full of humanity. People laughing, singing, playing with their hands. A humanity of which he isn't a part.
The only way to exist in an area so filled with bodies is to get himself into a group—quick. If he waits too long to gather up what courage is there, then all the solid groups are formed before he has a chance to plan a move. If he manages well, a result of this clumping form of dispersal is an atomic complex, thousands of atoms swirling around in the tightly closed environment of a dormitory hall, composed of the nucleus and the outer electrons. It is the existence of these nuclei that makes leaving a home base for half a summer so great a task. The protons in the nucleus are far away; we leave their sphere to join one of the inner electrons. The electrons are left on their
Entities Separated
By MARY KEENAN
A man and a woman
Sat alone
Coldly drinking tea.
They chatted
Noncommittally,
Lethargic and blase.
Behind them
Bombs were bursting.
A child died from no love.
Starvation flourished
On the ground,
While prices soared above.
"Pass the sugar," said the man,
"My tea needs
Something sweet.
'It's pleasant
Sitting in the shade,
Away from all the heat."
A young girl walked the streets
At night, looking
For a friend.
Computers cranked out
Numbers. Numbers
Dictated trends.
"Have an ice cube," said the wife,
Rubbing lotion
On her arm.
"The office must be
Gruelling when
The weather is this warm."
It's easy to see why such thoughts exist. In the morning the lonely camper wakes up to a counselor taking the minimum amount of time to make sure he's awake, a wing full of "belongers" who are either too sleepy or too worried about the upcoming crises to ask how he's doing, a breakfast amid hundreds of people he doesn't know, individuals concerned about nothing but having breakfast as inconsiderately as possible.
most terrifying. It's got a name, it's the 'take a deep breath and jump' method. The forlorn camper must take it upon his own initiative to worm his way into a nucleus. Usually, it sounds more fighting than it actually is. The nucleus of your chosen atom seldom has enough stimuli to last six weeks, and, as a result, welcomes fresh energy.
A drunk was lying
In the street,
Already old at ten.
Everyone had
Gone to hell.
War was waging men.
It is possible to become part of a nucleus. One way it is to have an understanding neutron as a roommate. By this method, the electron goes into the current passing through his room.
But it is the period of time before one of these methods is used that can lead a camper to the thought, "I'd rather be home. Maybe I should call to check up on things," or "Who needs people?" I've lived most of my life by myself, so what's six more weeks?"
The camper whose day is like this is like a man enclosed in a small room painted completely white. For the duration of the camp he may never get any stimulus nor any change in his body. For the camper whose day is like this as well go home. He is wasting his money. For besides the information gained through classes, there is the information gained from people about people. It is this second type of information that is what the soul is not fed, then the mind cannot digest.
Then there is the bolder mark. The electrons begin to forsake the nuclei and form a shell, similar to our atom.
And yet, they stayed
Too busy, too deaf
To hear the plea.
Preoccupied with weather,
They just coldly
Sipped sweet tea.
The last way to get into a main stream is the
Lonely Faces
By STEVE WHITLOCK
"Lonely faces all around the city, men afraid but not ashamed to pry."
Away from the warm glow of friendly conversation, away from the little cherished love at home, away from those things familiar, all stand alone.
The mere vastness of the campus is enough to suggest the insecurity and insignificance of a man, no matter how tall in stature or maturity.
"Lonely faces, do I see . . . lonely faces, on my memory."
The world is too vast and too needy for anyone not to care—to care about someone, something or anything that has not significance to the sun; to care that what you may do no matter how small a deed or how large, will make someone think, to think that his life is not completely decayed; but more important, simply to care.
Lonely eyes I see them in the subway, burdened by the worries of the day,
"Men at leisure but they're so unhappy, tired of foolish roles they try to play."
In times when the living is such a grim task, a simple smile brings a sliver of sunlight into a dark and dreary existence.
It takes such a minute amount of time and effort to simply reach out and communicate with someone not just as someone passing by but as an individual person who has something special to offer that no one else has to offer, their personality and being.
The simple diversity of people make them an individual, something special and worth knowing. Each and every person has experienced something that no one else has and ever will.
To exist is human; to live life, really live it to the fullest, is the true utopia.
"Lonely voices crying for the surprise, lonely voices sounding like a child.
"Lonely faces, do I see, lonely faces, on my memory."