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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, May 10, 1968
Paris--edging foward
We do not know who was keeping Paris up his sleeve as the one mutually acceptable site for the proposed top-level talks between representatives from Washington and Hanoi. Nobody had talked much about the French capital as a locale during the month that it has taken for the United States and North Vietnam to go through the complicated and protracted but hardly delicate minuet pattern apparently needed for face-saving before finding a place acceptable to both to edge toward negotiations. But from the start Paris has seemed about as ideally suited as any third-party's capital. Now that agreement has been reached on this initial point, we can say that patience while each side went through the preliminary ritual was worthwhile.
But President Johnson was wise, in making his news conference announcement, to sound what he called "a cautionary note." He rightly said: "This is only the very first step, and there are many, many hazards ahead."
Hanoi is still insistent on what it will be sending a representative to Paris for: "to decide with the United States side the unconditional cessation by the United States of its bombing and all other acts of war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (i.e., North Vietnam) and later to talk about other matters related to the two sides." The implication is that North Vietnam will not talk about anything else until all United States bombing and other warlike acts against the North have stopped. Certainly the North Vietnamese will do their utmost successfully to follow through on their implied condition. But if their utterances prior to April 3 had been stuck to literally by them, they would not be now briefing the representative whom they will be dispatching to Paris for the talks on May 10. Consequently it can be assumed that there may be some "give" in what Hanoi still represents as its irrevocable position.
On the other hand it is unlikely that Hanoi will either willingly or easily give up its long-term aim of uniting North and South Vietnam under a single government inspired by the teachings which Ho Chi Minh has always made his. Side by side with these teachings goes the tactic of negotiating while continuing to fight. The United States knows all about this from its experience of a decade and a half ago with the North Koreans at Panmunjom. Thus there may be days ahead just as difficult on the battlefield as at the negotiating table.
But the long-drawn-out Panmunjom talks in the early 1950's should enable the United States better to understand the tactics of the other side now in 1968—and to avoid some of the pitfalls. The important thing still is that the agreement on Paris confirms the assumption that both the United States and the other side in Vietnam seem to think that each might be able to safeguard its interests better by now beginning to talk instead of simply continuing a murderous conflict.
Reprinted from
The Christian Science Monitor
“... Goldberg resigned! ... Goldberg resigned! ...”
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester, $10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 60044. Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
Of waste of two kinds
To the Editor:
KU students have done it again this year. Every spring they find a new sandbar to play on, and every spring they find that sandbar closed to them after a few weeks. In light of the current "demands" presented to the chancellor and the movement to make students more aware of the racial situation in Lawrence, this business with the sandbar appears relatively minor, but nevertheless it is an indication of why KU students find strong community resistance to many of their recreational activities.
The current sandbar in dispute is the large one near Eudora. During the past weekend there have been numerous parties there, and Sunday, when the owner saw what had been done to his pasture south of the river and to the sandbar (which he owns), he decided that students would no longer be welcome there. I talked to this man that afternoon, and during the conversation he stated that he had no objection to students using his
Record review
sandbar for recreation, as long as they did not destroy property or leave messes, but since this has not been the case, he would have little choice to but close it off. His reasons for this (and they are undisputable) are that the many cars driven on his clover field this spring have extensively cut its commercial value and that the amount of beer bottles, beer cans, and other debris left on his property are objectionable to him. In short, he has been forced to take an apparent anti-student attitude because his rights of property were not respected.
'Triangle' ignored
By Bob Butler
It's a shame that with all the trivia polluting the airwaves today some excellent music goes relatively unnoticed and unappreciated. Such is the case of "Triangle" by the Beau Brummels, an album which has been out for almost nine months and which has received great critical acclaim but almost no support from the record-buying public.
You may remember the Beau Brummels as the group which released "Just a Little" and "Laugh Laugh" in the spring of 1965.
That summer they released two albums which were well above the rock and roll standards set by the "British invasion" that year. After signing a contract with Warner Brothers, the group produced a bomb called "Beau Brummels '66." To show you how bad it was, it included "Louie, Louie."
There are now three members of the Beau Brummels. Sal Valentino, the group's vocalist, heads the list with a range and emotion-packed delivery that is nearly unequaled in rock. Even the cobwebbed "Nine Pound Hammer" takes on new meaning under his voice—sometimes joyous, sometimes lamenting, but always beautiful.
But now we come to August, 1967, and the release of "Triangle." Downbeat magazine, in a classic example of understatement, gave the album a three-paragraph review. Downbeat did manage, however, to say that "Triangle" was the most perfect rock album it had ever reviewed. Maybe it really isn't all that good, but it's pretty close.
Ron Elliott is the group's guitarist and arranger-composer. Elliott has developed a style which I can only describe as "Folk-Baroque-rock," a combination of chamber-like orchestration and modern folk composition which makes "Triangle" one of the most unified albums I've ever heard.
Rounding out the group is Ron Mcagher, whose bass-playing provides a driving beat which seems to merge perfectly with the string and brass accompaniment.
After listening to this album for almost a year, I must admit that I really can't make up my mind what it's all about.
Perhaps the idea which appears to me most is that of an old man looking back on his life: the loves, the laughter, the sorrow and, most important, the sheer joy of being able to "roll your eyes and wiggle your toes." But this album is of that rare variety that doesn't sledgehammer the listener; it allows him to make up his own mind.
I am sure that the driving on the field was mainly due to students' ignorance of its value to the farmer (although no one bothered to search for the owner of the land and ask his permission to use it), but the leaving of debris cannot be attributed to ignorance; in fact, no excuse at all can be made for it. It takes little effort to dump one's trash in a proper area and requires only a small sense of responsibility, but most students using the sandbar have utterly failed. For such "petty" things (to us) we are being denied the use of an excellent recreational facility. Perhaps in light of this, as we consider the questions of student power and racial crisis, we should also consider our personal habits and respect for rights of property. Let's not transfer the slovenliness of Strong basement to other parts of the Lawrence area.
Alan Schueler Bartlesville, Okla., senior
Alan Schueler
★ ★ ★
Dear Residents of Hashinger and McCollum:
To all those who have been or will be involved in the telephone marathon, if you have that much time to waste, someone must be failing somewhere. Either school is too easy for you or you are wasting your time, energy, and money by even being here. In view of recent events around the country, and even in Lawrence, all should agree that our society has problems which need to be solved. If all the energy expended into the marathon could be used to give one crippled child a happy moment, or feed one family a decent meal, then it would be worth the effort. But as it is now, if you think you are impressing anyone by talking on the phone for so many straight hours, forget it because you're not.
Bill Kornfein Mission junior
Book review
Patten's Mersey poetry laments lost child-world
By Scott Nunley
"Before playtime let us consider the possibilities of getting stoned on milk."
Liverpool's Brian Patten, 22, makes poetry with a Mersey beat. Much of his language seems uncomfortably musical on the printed page, demanding the electronic freedom of the stereo LP:
"Please Mr. Teacher, Sir
Turn round from your blackboard,
But no bank to cash it in
The whole class has its hands up,
"Little Johnny's Confession," Patten's first volume of poetry, has just been released by Hill and Wang. With a longing for the innocent world of childhood—and a distaste for the chill loneliness of "maturity"—Patten's poems lay a casual background of conversation against which striking images flare:
We're in rather a hurry."
Through the latter bug rug
With a cheque for a dream
"Through the tatter bag rag shouldered years
Or the colloquial has its say so calmly:
Limps an old woman with a well-worn soul."
"Standing outside cinemas without much hope of getting in,
Cluttering up twelve year old girls, without much hope
of getting in..."
Although Patten attempts in a long "Prose Poem" to describe his attitudes toward poetry, the best revelation of his poetic intentions slips out simply in his lonely "Lament for the Angels who've Left my Street":
"Help me to record things of importance,
To record the sounds our lives make in bumping together
I want an angel to help me record these things
And they will be for your records statements.
And they'll be far from overpoetic statements
And they'll be true ___
And they'll be true . . ."
Unfortunately, Patten is too confident that his statements will never be "overpoetic." The half of this thin volume that must be called the least successful fails in a forced bog of poeticisms:
"But let's unclip our minds
And let tumble free
The mad, mangled crocodile of love."
Or in the selfconscious opening of "Maud, 1965":
"Maud, where are you Maud?
With your long dresses and peachcream complexion
In what cage did you hang that black hat night?"
These are the overindulgences of a young poet, and Patten's recent works are certain to more closely approach that goal to "record things of importance" which he has set for himself.
At his most delicate, the details of commonplace scenes already have become painfully alive:
"Whole families waking!
A thousand negligees, pyjamas, nightgowns All wandering warm down to breakfast How natural and
How secure! and
Others coming out the far end of dawn Having only drizzle and pain for breakfast
Waking always to be greeted with the poor feast of daylight."
Brian Patten's first volume, "Little Johnny's Contession, is as contemporary in its medium as the work of Dylan or Simon or Lennon. Its major theme is the tragic loss of the child's pure world, and its major direction is within-wards.
If we do not (literally) hear more from Mr. Patten, it will be a sad loss to the increasingly sensitive ears of this generation.