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Wednesday, February 24, 1971
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Hillbilly Hippie Describes West Coast Living
By PAT MALONE Kansan Staff Writer
I met an Arkansas hillbilly the other day. He has been, in his own words, "a hippie the past four years. His life has been so vast and vast that bearing on the reality that we all share,
John Woffard ("I really don't have a name; I just try to stay in the state of mind where I know who I am and I that am I") was born in Liberal in 1947. He was raised in western Oklahoma, mainly on welfare.
"My folks drew welfare ever since I can remember," he said in a soft country voice.
His family (14 children and both parents) moved to Arkansas in about 1983. John is not sure of dates; he counts the seasons, the months and the days.
"MY FAMILY for generations and generations have been hill people. It was in our blood to go back to the mountains." He said this, tipped back his cowboy hat, and chuckled. "We used to haul charcoal wood for a livin' out in Arkansas."
When John got out of high school in 1966, he humbled around for a year and eventually made it to Haight-Ashbury in the spring of 1967. He started growing his hair ("long hair's natural") after high school and just got it cut last September.
"People wouldn't give me a chance with long hair, so I cut my hair and got the best job I've had in five years plowing and pickling corn in Illinois."
HE WENT TO HAIGHT-ASHBURY "to see what was going on. I learned what a crash pad was, and I could have stayed in crash pads, but I didn't want to do that."
"I wanted to be a dealer, and make some money and have my own pad. Either that or I wanted to work with the Diggers, helping people to live. So I got tired of living in the crash pads and then found some places where the people who started Haight-Asbury lived. They were called Digger communes.
"IREMEMBER OLD JANIS JOPLIN. I seen Janis on Haight Street and she'd be wearing these real colorful shawls made of velvet, they'd have her hair all long and frized out and you crying. It almost made me cry, 'cause I thought she was 'sposed to be famous."
He first turned on to marijana and LSD when he was in Hight-Ashbury.
"I used to eat acid like candy," he said. "Every time there was a big deal or a new brand, everybody'd try it out. I quit acid when I started working with horses. I'd rather work horses than take acid, because of the energy there with those horses, and you got to learn to work with it and flow with it. I cannot let it overpower you.
"With grass, I'd rather digest it than eat it. A big garden and fix salads and stuff."
"Pretty soon you start to loving your horse and loving yourself and you don't do anything to hurt yourself or your horse. That's why I never smoke tobacco or drink liquor; it's that pollution that everybody's talking about nowadays
After the 1967 summer of love in Haight-Ashbury, John and some friends started dealing grass so they could live in a house. "That was the good old days, but grass were going for $8-$10. But we didn't get to sell dope, and we got busted."
"THE ARMY WANTED ME then, but when they found out about me smoking grass with the hippies and taking acid, I figured I wouldn't be good for the Army."
"I was praying to God, I said, 'Thank you, God, for letting me get busted for grass. And may everyone of my brothers and sisters that don't want to go to war and kill people smoke grass and get caught and get a good deferment.'"
John went back to Arkansas after being put on probation for his bust.
"But I decided that I was going back there to Haight, 'cause I belonged out there with the Diggers trying to make this a better world to live in. But I went back and people were on a commercial trip, who's got the nicest set of clothes, who's always got a good stash, and like that.
"I was living in a dealer house then. This was spring of 1968. Then this girl Sharon came back from New Mexico, and she was fit and trim and tanned and just as healthy as could be. So we went back to New Mexico with Sharon.
"When we got out there the only two communes were the Llama Foundation and New Buffalo (Scenes from 'Easy Rider' were filmed there). At Llama they're on a real spiritual trip; they don't allow alcohol, drugs, tobacco, or anything. Things are a little more ragged at New Buffalo."
JOHN STAYED at various communes in the taos. Taos area that summer and winter. In the spring of 1969, a group he was with and Five Star, a commune south of Taos.
"We had to go back on the Digger concepts eating out there. At first, we lived almost entirely on food stamps, but there were a lot of people that couldn't eat food stamps, but there weren't no reason they couldn't eat right alongside us.
"There's no other way than just sharing. There's no other way to make it and be free, to be true to each other and to get high. And that means sharing everything. You lose yourself; there is no self, you just think of the family."
The group pamhandled about $100 and went to town and bought seed in the spring of 1969. They went back to Five Star and planted 10 acres.
"We also started getting goats and
chickens on our farm. We live on less food
stamps and less money."
JOHN HAS STRONG opinions on money. "Money's the worst thing in the world to regulate things by. I been to Wall Street and seen millionaires everywhere and limousines parked all over the place. They're just playing Monopoly; I sure wouldn't want to make Monopoly a way of life like that."
The Five Star commune built themselves an adobe house that spring, six rooms with a family room, a kitchen, and four bedrooms. As as many as 40 lived there at a time, with four couples sharing a bedroom. They ate two meals a day in the house, with lunch served in the field where the men worked.
"We never ate a meal without crossing our hands and holding hands with our brother and sister on either side, and he's never a break in the circle," John said.
in the spring of 1970, Five Star changed its name to Church of the Ark and moved to a location near the town of Ledoux, N.M. They are now farming there and hope to buy some land in the mountains near there, by Rocciada. N.M.
"EVERYBODY'S GETTING cut off
to taps from the wall."
"Let's give a month, get food stamps."
"I came back to the city to make enough money to grubstake myself in the high country. All I need is a saddle mule and a team of work muses and a big old Bible. I want one of the best Bibles I can find, 'cause I think there's a lot to be learned in the Bible. I will preach and chop all the meat we eat, only stay where I'm welcome. That way I can be close to nature and still be in contact with mankind.
"I WANT TO SEE people live by the
brothers and sisters," he said.
"You ought to grab your blessings and get out of here into the country. It don't cost as much money to live in the country and you can be more happier. I believe that both parents have an influence on the child, and we've been living without a mother, without Mother Earth. It's time to go back."
John urges everyone to go to the country.
Making Our Case
Like everyone else, I sometimes have trouble figuring out what's going on around here. Everyone seems to have withdrawn ... to wait for something, to become more embittered or cynical. It seems to me that people get dangerously lonely when they're cynical; I see that embittered there, I see a lot of in-fighting and even hatred boiling within that some people like to call the "student community," and sometimes I have trouble figuring out why. Just why.
So Near, Yet So Far Apart
By BILL EBERT Student Body President
The student body is more factionalized and disjointed and divided against itself than it has been for years. Not enough people seem willing to perform even the common tasks that are supposed to be done by people around, and mostly they listen. And they feel, and they know that we all are victims of essentially the same frustrations and alienations and problems. The conflicts seem to come along with the different ways in which students are treated, shared problems and from our failure to even try to understand.
I am sure there are a lot of reasons, but I don't think that any of them can be very good. The people on this campus are so near to each other, and at the same time only a fool of competition can hurt how far apart we are. The doctrine of competition is based upon "the loss of somewhere else," widening the gaps in trust, compounding the feelings of loneliness, and, in general, forcing us to remain isolated from and distrustful of each other. Havens seemed to get to the point Friday when he reminded me of the disgusting know that we are trapped, and all we know how to get out of the trap, but we don't do it. Iowa and Tennessee streets may as well be on different sides of the globe; everyone hallucinates fear of what the other side is like, and it all seems obvious that disguising to see the petty conflicts puts up out of our minds. We here—all along the spectrum of political interests—are discouraging intentional and quick to judge. That's crap and should be recognized as crap. I suppose that the problem is the first step toward its solution, but it would make no sense to believe that such a recountion exists.
Many people seem to be watching the upending electrons very carefully, as if some magical metamorphosis is happening. A few have never seen it.
that way it will take some magic. For sometime now student government has been spinning its wheels, struggling yet failing to carry out programs and activities which in some way might justify its existence. For sometime now we've also told that student government should be done to be done would face to face with the realization that they would have to do it themselves, or it wouldn't happen at all. I still think that's the best method for any kind of work, particularly since the Student Senate has not been able to successfully supply the kind of leadership required to generate any real participation in government. The answer is that we should be prepared to explain why the Student Senate should continue to function, rather than simply saying the same things about how it should function.
When I ran for the office, I had a narrow and introspective definition of my expectations. "I'm not sure anyone could have been able to anticipate those things— often brutal and often moving at the same time— which have occurred both at KU and within the larger society over the last few years." He changed much in the last year is my own surrender to the realization that no matter what happens, no matter what anyone does, someone is going to be angry about it and will make sure that everyone knows about that anger. We could all spend the rest of our lives sitting in the bathroom so that we could be sure that we shouldn't make any angry comments about it. That alienated because alienation is easy to find and explains things without requiring much self-criticism. So it seems to me that the price of any change can be very high in terms of the toll which it may exact upon the persons and the feelings involved in the change. I think that everyone feels the pressures from time to time, and it seems as if they have learned how to deal with problems is for all of us to do what we can to serve as support and reinforcement for each other, if for we can't even try to do it, then its doubtful that anyone else will.
I am concerned about those persons who argue coercively that the governmental body for the students at this university must stay out of all non-campus affairs. I hope that those people will at least consider the issue in terms of the possibility that the University is in fact a crucial part of this community and state and nation, and
not just an a-political, autonomous, self-sufficient structure. This University relies on the political order for its very physical existence; it cannot be a-political. The status of university students' status varies as increasingly dominated by pure politics.
Universities are by nature political institutions, closely bound to and reliant upon the system which maintains them. Attacks upon the University from political interests outside the University should be adequate evidence to show that political manipulations are very much a part of the University.
Political powers and certain societal forces always seem to remind us of what our status as students really is. Correspondingly, fragmentation and bickering are exactly what the entrenched power interests outside like to see, because it's playing their game. In order to accomodate the things which might tend to emphasize cooperation rather than competition with ourselves, and might therefore tend to help them appreciate each other more, it's going to take a bell of a lot more than thirty student senators complaining about 50 per cent student representation, or a group of football fans who are upset because they may have to assume responsibility for the cost of their entertainment, or 365 Student Senate candidates who, mostly, filed office being that they could slide in uncontested. These sorts of politics are turncoal, and half of holes for us to trip on, always coming from gaining a clear view of the fact that we are all in the same leaky boat, and it filling up faster than we seem to be able or willing to bail it out.
It seems to be fashionable now to say that the "student movement" is dead or very tired, or dormant, or exhausted. People are saying that the "counter-culture has grown," and that the "positive" approaches have become the concern of the mass of students. But there is nothing more positive than the celebration of life and the freedom which it engenders. Time can continue to print its condescendingly detached view of the world as soon as one inch nearer to the truth. What used to be energy may now be pervasive and deeply embittered aphathy, or confusion, but the energy is not dead, and it's not really dying either. But it - perhaps - may be changing its form to something that's sometimes between now and our arrival at real humanity.
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Washington Window
Lobbyists May Affect Cabinet Reorganization
Bv ARNOLD B. SAWISLAK
WASHINGTON (UP1) — When Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield was asked what would become of President Nixon's plan to reorganize cabinet departments, he suggested waiting to hear from the lobbyists.
The reply may have seemed cynical to some, but the canny Montanian actually was recognized that while the President might be the best able to handle the situation.
The departments, like congressmen, have constituents. While all are supposed to serve the best interests of the public at large, the special interests whose daily operations are affected by departmental actions feel they have the biggest stake in their organization. And the lobbyists Mansfield spoke about are the voices of those interests in Washington.
Nixon's proposal to merge seven existing departments into four new ones dealing with natural resources, human resources, community development and economic development seems to make good sense. But these organizations are still largely unorganized; they have organized their operating departments into similar categories.
But there is more than good sense and precedent to be taken into account in predicting the outcome of the reorganization proposals. The view taken by the special interests—organizations like the Farm Bureau Federation and Farmers Union which now deal with the Agriculture Department and similar groups in the other agencies—will be vital.
Arguments for the reorganization, sketched by Nixon, focused mainly on the advantages of putting all government activities in the same general field into the same department. The arguments against it, while not yet fully in the open, are obvious: Farmers would lose influence in a natural resources agency compared with their clout in agriculture; union members and businessmen lumped together in an economic development department would lose the prestige and advocacy that comes with separate labor and commerce cabinet seats.
There is another power center in Washington that will be involved in the reorganization question—the bureaucracy. But the civil servants who really run the government can't come out in the open to fight the lobbyists. Because they don't know which the lobbers have the bureaucracies will be somewhat bolder.
By Sokoloff
Griff & the Unicorn
allow a variety of courses to be taught well and in reasonably sized classes, as well as allow students to work at KU. At present, our $125,000 worth of equipment and facilities cannot be used to its fullest extent, since there is only one office astronomer qualified to use it.
In conclusion, we believe that the astronomy program should be very much expanded by the help of our faculty who would so allow the majors' astronomy to follow the profession of their choosing, and allow those students who wish to pursue their careers in knowledge in astronomy to do so.
"Copyright 1971, David Sokoloff."
LETTERS
As the Department of Physics and Astronomy now stands, there are twenty-five physicists and on> astronomer. To insure that these students adequately, both to students in general-interest courses and to those who wish to major and do graduate work in astronomy, the department has ten physicists and, at least, four astronomers. This number would
Astronomy Program Hurting
Gary D. Westgren
Tonganoxie freshman
Steven A. Hawley
Salina sophomore
Ronald Sueil
Salina sophomile
To the Editor:
If the student's wishes carry any weight in regard to the courses to be taught, a second examiner should have been added.
We are among the many undergraduates majoring in astronomy at KU who are concerned about a seeming lack of faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Last fall, Prof. N. W. Storer retired after a dedicated career as KU's astronomer, and Associate Prof. Peter Wehling was hired as a replacement. With this new role, we began an effort to build the astronomy program to the level of excellence it enjoyed not long ago. We believe our effort will be successful only if more faculty are hired to teach astronomy.
Last semester 55 students signed a petition requesting a second course in astronomy which, because of the existing large enrollment in Astronomy 12, necessitates the hiring of a second astronomer. Also, questionnaires answered by
students taking Astronomy 12 this fall indicated strong interest in more general and technical courses in astronomy. Despite the fact that twenty-two students are registered as majoring in astronomy, and despite the very strong show of student support faculty in course, no new faculty in astronomy have, to date, been hired.
'My! What an unusual looking alligator!"
Those Were the Days
50 Years Ago Todav—1921
"The superintendent of Buildings and Grounds said that if the Kansas Legislature had regulated of a new beating plant to furnish the proposed Union building and for the rooms in the proposed stadium the buildings would have to close down, that's all."
C. M. Young, professor of
40 Years Ago Today—1931 E. A. E. White, professor of chemistry, planned to exhibit equipment of historic value that he found when house cleaning to get rid of outdated equipment.
mining engineering, was appointed the consulting engineer of the U.Bureau of Mines to assist with coal mining investigations.
A Universal movie scout left the KU campus without taking
10 Years Ago Today—1961
L T
any jayhawkers with him. He had been looking for "definite collegiate types," but could not find any.
**Years Ago Today**—1861
The announcement showed that the KU Young men's basketball trip to Hutchinson for a statewide convention aimed at facilitating friction between college and county Democratic youth clubs.