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September 5, 1986
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Mirac_ l e Legion Tells All Mucfr Ado on the Green
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Between the VInes
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Guarded Speech After Nat Hmtolfs sympathetic four-part srnes in The Village Voice, BAD week '86 offender Wayne Dick became Yale~ summn" celebrity. Now the free speech controvn"sy comes home to New Haven. By Tamar Lehrich.
Theater
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Playing on the Green A great play was on the New Htwtn Green. And it u;as Slwkspeare. Cool, huh? Yeah, and cool people. And they don't go to Yale By Tom Augst.
Profiles
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A House for Higher Thoughts just three blocks off campus, Gnlfin Manning has spmt 30 ;·ears cultivating an •antiquish" sensibility. By Jay Carney.
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Probing a Women's Disease The medical profession has on{)' started asking questzons about the women's irifertility disease endometriosis. And Mary LaJce Polan, the first woman to finish a residency in Yale~ OBIGYN fkpartmmt, has takm the kad in the research. By Melissa Turner.
Music
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Books
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About This Issue
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NewsJoumal
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YALE
10,000 Miracle Legion Fans Can't Be Wrong
Miracle Legion has the best shot at stardom of any local band in 30 ;·ears. Thanlc Franlc Capra and Gary Cooper. By JO' IAJy.
The Kat's Meow
A passionate, explosive /Q~;t triangle Jet amidst the rtran.t:e sands of an Arizona desert-the truth behind Gtarge Hem"man's comic stnp Kraz} Kat By John Schachtn.
'I j 1'5 + N44 I'} The
~ •...,Journal/September
5, 1986 3
Publisher M argarita Sm ith Ediwr-in-Chiej M elissa Turner Business Manager Barrie Seidenberg Managing Ediwrs J ay Carney Tamar Lehrich Designer Beth Callaghan • Production MaTUJ.ger Stu Weinzimer• Photography Ediwr C arter Brooks Associate Business M anagers Beth Cohen• Mike Sonnenblick National Sales Manager Peter Lefkowitz Associate Ediwr Dan Waterman CirculaJion Manager Debbie R osier
Staff Tom Augst• Bronwyn Barkan•• Margaret B~uer James Bennet Martha Brant Jcn Fleissner• Alison Gardy
Pearl Hu Susan O renstein• J e n Sachs K aren Shen • Lori Sherman Pam Thompson Yin W ong Peter Zusi
• J«<n/ AJinl 22, 1986
••tUMJ M~JY 16, 1986
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Mnnbers and Diuclors: Edward B. Bennett Il l • Henry Chauncey, Jr. • Peter B. Cooper • An dy Court • Brooks Kelley • Michelle Press • Fred Strebeigh • Thomas Strong Friends: Anson M. Beard, Jr.t • Edward B. Bennett, Jr. • Edw~rd B. Bennett Ill • Blaire Bennett • Gerald Bruck • J onathan M . Clark • Louise F. Coopert • J erry and Rae Court • David Freeman • Geoffry Fried • Sherwin Goldm an • John Hersey • Brooks Kelley • R oger Karwood • Andrew J . Kuzneski , J r . • Lewis E . Lehrman • E. Nobles Lowe • Peter Neall • Julie Peters • Fairfax C . Randallt • Nicholas X. Rizopoulos • Arleen and Arthur Sager • Dick and Debbie Searst • R ich ard Shields • Thomas Strong • Elizabeth Tate • Alex and Betsy Torello • Allen and Sarah Wardwell • Peter Yeager • Daniel Yergin tha' l(iv~n a 'I("("Ond time-
The New joumal encourages letters to the editor and comment on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Melissa Turner, Editorials, 3432 Yale Station, New H aven , CT 06520. AU letten for publication must include address and signature. The New joumal reserves the right to edit all letters for publication. (Volume 19. Num~r I) 77w N...,J--' it pubhlh<d au tuna dun'"! t~ JC'-1 year by The New J oumal ao Yale. Inc .• POffott Bo• 3 432 Yale Scaoion. New Ho~n. CT ~20. Copyro~lu i9e6 by The New Joumal at Yale. Inc All rip!l ~wr'Yt"d R~productlOn ~11Mr in whok or 1n pt.M wUhoul wriuen ~rm1t.t10n o( the publi~r and nfitOI""in..chie( it proh1btted. ThiJ m•~•z.m~ IJ published by v.k: CoU~t«e ttuckntl. and Yale Un1\len1ty 1.1 noc re-sponsible for ics cont~tnts E.lt"\lt"n thouund copia. of each issue: •.re dutrlbuted frtt to rMmbt":n o( ~~ VUe Un•ve.nny community . Tlw N,., / - - ' u oypc-oe< by 1M Charl1on p,.... ol New Ho~n . CT. and pnn1ed by ~ R=un<kr. Inc o1 Rocky H •D. CT l!looU<q>~n~ and accounlln~ """'"" , _ - by Caiman llo<>U<q>o~ ol N<w Ho~ . CT B.U•n~ ..,_.by Scmpllfaed 8u.,neoo ~rv~«~ ol Hamden. CT
Olr..-.: 11<1ct...- 30S Crown Str.d. Olr- 312 Phon< (203) 4~S2S Su-.nptiOI\I ~ avaalabk to lhc:aw out:Mdc thr Yak (Offtmun•t:y. Rol~•
4 The New Journal/Septe mber 5, 1986
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About This Issue
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Yale's a great place. And so's New Haven. This issue of TNJ focuses on a variety of interesting, creative and thoughtful people around us- both within the Yale community and outside. It features an article on the August production of Shakespeare on the Green (the New H aven Green)- a look into its presentation, its actors, directors and audience- by Tom Augst. Jay Carney profiled Griffin Manning, an unusual old man with eclectic ideas about art and a house to prove it. For their views on women and medicine, Melissa Turner interviewed doctors at the Yale Medical School researching a disease which causes a large percentage of infertility in women. Reaching into the New Haven music world, Joe Levy profiled Miracle Legion, a young band well- known to patrons of the Grotto. Tamar Lehrich raises important questions about the media and its power to create news with her opinion piece on this summer's hullaballoo over the Yale Executive Committee's punishment of the undergraduate responsible for the BAD Week '86 posters. And in a special review section for Yale's comic book afficionados, John Schachter reviews Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George H erriman.
Tht New Journal thanks
Rcrl.:t-ky College Branford College Dave Brendel La Rut> Brion Larry Helfcr Griflin and Vivian Manning Performance Studio Amy Seh;tn Strong Coht•n Graphk Design Skye \\'ilson Master Robin Winks
The New journal/September 5 , 1986 5
NewsJournal New Home for Hot Items Just about everyone except Freshmen will be surprised this fall when they walk into Wawa's. The store, a haven of relief for weary weenies shuffiing in, reaching for their favorite shelves by r eflex, has undergone a minor overhaul. It may look the same to the exhausted pre-med stumbling in at 3 a.m. with her eyes half-closed, but when she goes for the two liter diet Coke she may find herself with the king-size Clorox instead. And for the English major, desperate for enough coffee to last him through a night while he churns out three more papers, the mini Maxwell House jars are now next to the Dristan in the O.T.C. drug section behind the counter. "At first customers got frantic," said Linda Ostrom who is Wawa's relief manager. 'You changed the store! How dare you!' they said. We're such creatures of habit that even we [the people who work at Wawa's] would go for something on a shelf and it would be a foot away." One of the most noticeable changes has been moving the cashier counter from the side to the front of the store. "This way we can see all the way down the aisles. People were stealing from areas we couldn't see," said Manager Mary Johnson. Wawa's has also installed a full width mirror in the rear of the store which allows cashiers to see the back shelves. Because 'hot' items (tuna fish, sardines, SPAM and small jars of Maxwell House coffee) were disappearing faster than they were being sold, they have now been placed behind the counter with the O.T.C. drugs where they can be well guarded. So remember to ask for your tuna fish by name. "We've also added another sandwich area so two people can work on the sandwiches without bumping into each other," said Johnson. Specials such as "The Meatball Express" and "Mac n' Cheese" are listed on a spanking new blackboard next to the sandwich menu. And those famous two for 99cent "wa-dogs" have been moved to the other side of the sandwich section, thus preventing a long line of people 6 The New JoumaUSepu~mber 5, 1986
waiting for both sandwiches and hot dogs. "This Wawa's is not like other Wawa's," said Ostrom, who has worked for six years in the Wawa chain. "Most Wawa's are just neighborhood stores where people go for bread and milk and other things they run out of. But no one does hot dog and sandwich business like we do. People from other Wawa's come in here and are in disbelief at the business we do. We sell a helluva lot of hot dogs." W awa's also sells a hell of a lot of soda, candy and potato chips, and now devotes full length aisle space to each of them. "We've added another soda machine and our three coffee machines have been pulled out of their corner so they're more accessible," said Johnson. "No one could get in during coffee rush." One beverage Wawa's has discontinued because of low sales is beer. And the space-devouring ice chest is gone, replaced by more shelf space. To make room for bags of ice Wawa's has cut down on frozen foods,
but is marketing some of its own brands "including Wawa ice cream ," said Ostrom, "which is supposed to have less air in it than Haagen Daz." Wawa fruit bars have replaced imports from California, and Wawa frozen yogurt should hit the shelves soon. A regular customer approaches the counter. Ostrom knows her by name and asks if she wants change for bus money. The customer, an elderly woman, smiles and nods. What did she think of the changes? "When I first walked in here I thought I was in the wrong store!" she said. Then she smiled at Linda, "But it's nice this way and people know me here." Ostrom greets many custome rs by name and chit-chats while she gets their change. She feels good about the renovations. "It's more efficient this way. The flow pattern is a lot better," she said. Johnson agrees, "But the real test will be when the kids come back."
-Alison Cardy
A No-Sleeper George Hickenlooper (ES '86) and Kevin Burget (BR '86) might just have pulled the ultimate all-nighter this summer and made fllm history in the process. The two Yale ftlm majors, who both graduated this spring, had been awake for three days and nights in a row, frantically piecing together and editing The Bells of Funicelw, a feature length film on videotape they wrote and directed together as a final project for a special tutorial in film making with Yale professor Michael Roemer. Time was running short as the two rushed to prepare the ftlm in time for its !July 3 preview as part of the Yale Summer Film series shown in Davies Auditorium. Still editing with the preview only minutes away, Burget rushed off to the auditorium with the first of two video tapes that constituted the film, while Hickenlooper remained behind and hurriedly continued to edit the rematnmg tape. Luckily, he completed the second half just five minutes before the first tape was to end, rushed over to Davies and popped it into the machine in time for the audience to see the ftlm in its entirety. Hickenlooper and Burget had just managed to show a film as it was being made. ..1 was hallucinating from exhaustion while I was talking to the audience," said Hickenlooper, who along with Burget didn't see the film in its entirety that day because he fell asleep in the auditorium during the preview. Tht Bells of Funicello tells the story of the first three days of life at Yale for freshmen in the class of 1990. The characters include a surfer from southern California who is infatuated with Annette Funicello (ergo the title), and a radical Yale student from the 1970's who happened to be locked in Harkness Tower during the protests, feels guilty about it, and has thrown a continuous party in Yale's steam tunnels honoring the protesters ever since. The film starring Yale students Birk Bilger '86, Julian Fleisher '88, Suzanne Cryer '88, Ron Livingston '89, Jeff Mays '87, Carla Power '88, Courtney Walsh '87, ~1ark Wesolo~..:ski '89, and Winter Mead '87. took over 50 hours
of video tape, 123 scenes, and some 800 shots to complete. The two ftlmmakers spent the rest of the summer re-editing and polishing their two-hour long ftlm which will be shown again September 12 and 13 in the Yale University Art Gallery Auditorium. Hickenlooper said the film's visual quality and resolution leaves something to be desired, "but what really counts in a film is the story." Their professor must have thought so because despite the visual imperfections and the rushed editing, their al1nighter paid off-the film got an "A".
-Dan Waterman
Dream Record Some have said that at Yale , musicians talk a lot about starting bands but few groups ever materialize- all talk and no play. But times have changed. First students began forming new bands on campus. Then came Nadine, an eclectic music fanzine that helped publicize student bands and gave new life to Yale's pop music culture. This summer Yale and New Haven rock bands released a compilation record of songs called Some New Ruins- proof that the new interest in music here has become more than just a fad. Not surprisingly, the record was sponsored by Nadine. The album fearures two songs each from Yale bands Beauty Constant, the Rafles, Senator Flux, Cattle Collision and U Thant, and SxOxMx and Bleached Black from New Haven. It was released in the first week of June after
months of organization and production by David Levine (SY,'88). With the help of John Robinson and Teo Baldwin, two New Haven musicians, Levine recruited the bands under the auspices of I. V. Towers Records and Tom-A-Rok Productions, two companies they created to record and promote local Yale and New Haven groups. The songs on Some New Ruins "range from light rock to hardcore," said Robinson, the director ofTom-A-Rok. Of the 300 original pressings of the album, most were given to radio stations, East-Coast distributors and promoters, while the rest were placed in local record stores where they are still available for $7 .98. In addition, 700 more copies of the record are being pressed this month for future sales. The companies celebrated the album's release with a party on July 23 at the Brick-N-Wood International Cafe, a local club with live shows for local bands. Most of the groups featured on the record performed, and over 250 people attended. Robinson saw the event as a starting point for the companies as well as the record. Robinson, Levine, and Baldwin like to emphasize that their efforts are geared towards combining the talents and tastes of musicians from both Yale and New Haven groups. In fact, each of them plays in at least one of the bands featured on the record along with numerous other musicians from both the University and New Haven. "We like to think our work builds a sense of community," Robinson said. "'Everybody is able to participate in the complete musical process and nobody takes themselves so seriously that they can't give time to one another." ' If their efforts, which include the upcoming recordings of two other local bands, Psylent Zone and the Revelators, continue as planned, the dream described by David Levine on the back cover of the album may just become a reality- "you have your own band and I mine and maybe we could jam sometime and then I remember the dream; maybe this is it."
-Dan Wainman The New Journal/September 5, 1986 7
Justice, At Last
There will probably be a book. Maybe even a movie. A young radical, a lawyer, thinks he is being framed, decides to flee the country and lives as a transient fugitive hiding from the FBI. In France he falls in love. But after 13 years he returns to the U.S. to clear his name of murder and conspiracy charges. The ending? . . . . Stephen Bingham, '64, is now a free man. On July 27, 1986, after two ~md a half months in the courtroom and five days of jury deliberation, Bingham was acquitted by a 12-0 vote of charges that he had smuggled a gun into California's San Quentin prison 15 years ago, a gun that allegedly sparked · a bloody escape attempt. Jurors later spoke of too many inconsistensies in the prosecution's case and too little likelihood that Bingham had been anything more than a scape_goat. The member of a politically prominent Connecticut family, Bingham went to Boalt Hall Law School at Berkeley after Yale and a stint in the Peace Corps and had joined some friends in a makeshift lawyers' commune in Oakland. On August 21, 1971 he visited California's San Quentin prison. Bingham dealt mostly in landlord-tenant law, but on this day he came to San Quentin to visit Black Panther leader George Jackson, who was being held in m~imum security on a murder charge, to discuss a civil suit to improve prison conditions. Jackson was a trouble maker on the inside, the outspoken spearhead of the Panther~ adopted cause, the "Prison Movement." He was supposedly the most closely watched and certainly the best known prisoner in the country at the time. After Bingham left Jackson that day, there was a bloodbath at San Quentin, the worst in the prison's history. Jackson, two white prisoners and three 8 The New Journal/September 5, 1986
white guards were killed. According to prison authorities and guards, the violence began when Jackson produced a gun on the way back to his cell after meeting with Bingham. It was an escape attempt, and Bingham, they said, had somehow smuggled the gun to Jackson . Bingham thought he was being framed. At the time, the California State government, with Ed Meese as Attorney General, had been trying to discredit the prison movement as well as· the lawyers who served as intermediaries between inmates and the public. When Bingham heard over the radio that the Marin County District Attorney claimed to have "conclusive evidence" against him, he decided to flee. "Had I stayed," he said, "there would have been no fair trial, no bail, and I wouldn't have survived in the California jails with those guards. I was accused of killing three of their colleagues." Bingham first went to Las Vegas, where, with friends' help, he was able to change his physical appearance and get a false birth certificate and social security card. For the next 13 years he went by the name Robert Dale Boarts. He travelled to Philadelphia, was able to get a passport and then flew to Europe. He spent the first three years on the move through Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Italy, too afraid to stay anywhere long or to find work, but settled in Paris in 1974. Never losing his penchant for social causes, Bingham joined a group of political activists in Paris who spoke for struggling farmers. There he started painting houses for a living and enrolled in a film school, where he met and fell in love with a fellow student, Francoise Blesseau. In the later years of his hiding, Bingham travelled to _ Canada and three times crossed the border without
detection, once to visit his parents. In 1984, he and Francoise decided that he should risk life imprisonment to clear his name. On July 9, 1984, nearly 13 years after the San Quentin shoot-out, Bingham turned himself in to the Marin County Sheriff. Now Stephen Bingham is free and can start life anew, but the man who •was often described as another victim of the sixties doesn't seem to have changed too much in 15 years. A week after the acquittal, he was on the front lines with Jesse Jackson during a civil rights march. As for the future, there is talk of following the family tradition into politics. And, of course, there might be a h<x?k . .
-Jay Gamey
Picturing Women Abandon all hope of starting off first semester with easy-going summer time conversations in the dining hall. This year a raging controversy will greet all Y alies who pick up copies of two publications identically titled Womm of the Ivy League. More than a few of us already may have one of the publications . Playboy magazine's September issue featuring nude photos of women from the Ivy League schools has had a week or so head start on its rival publication, which was coordinated by women centers representing all the Ivy League schools. The women centers have raised 12.000 doll~rs to publish 40,000 copies of their version, 5,000 of which will be distributed at Yale this September.
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The idea to create a magazine more material dealing with sexuality. protesting the Playboy issue originated We were timid on that issue." Ellen in Yale's women center when Playboy Levy (DC '86), who also took an active was recruiting models . from the Ivy roll in the publication, agreed with Banerjee. "By glossing over female schools last spring. The Y alies chose sexuality we reinforced the idea that it not to respond by rallying or picketing. is embarrassing, a fault or a flaw, when "We decided to take Pla;,boy to terms in its own form," said Joyce Banerjee really it · should be celebrated." But as Schwalberg explained, "I would have (TD '86) who helped work on the been quite pleased to .print things that original idea. Easier said than done. Though · had more erotica than we did, but we didn't get any." everyone involved agreed the While some think the tnagazine fails magazine should in some way portray a more realistic, complete picture of to reach women on a . more profound women than Playboy offers, controversy level, others feel the magazine should reach a broader audience on a level surrounded the project from the very that will stir discussion and debate. beginning over how that picture would be composed. Debates ·touched on the "In my vision," said Schwalberg, "I targeted an audience that doesn't think issues of whether nude phototgraphy much about the significance of Playboy; and other forms of erotica should be people who think it's fun or have included and whether the magazine neutral feelings toward it. We already should accept men's contributions. know we have ari audience of Aurora "It would have been interesting to have included thoughtful contributions readers, that's why we printed so many from men who have also grown up copies to reach other people." But under the influence of Playboy," said Levy, who referred to the magazine as Renee Schwalberg (ES '87), who co''just a more expensive Aurora," said it runs Yale's women center. But failed to offer "any new visions of how Schwalberg stood in the minority, and women see themselves_ as creative, the I vies voted overwhelmingly to sexual, and intellectual beings. We had exclude men's contributions to the the chance to challenge the paradign• magazine. Many feared that during that dichotomizes women as either intelthe editing process there n1ight be a lectual or sexual, and we blew it." tendency not to judge men's contriIn this muddle of controversy within butions solely on their artistic quality, controversy, one thing is sure: the • but rather on the gender of their debate over what is and what is not a creator. In the end some comments realistic view of women is bound to from men were included in the continue in its epic form long after the centerfold, though not to everyone's covers of both magazines have frayed agreement. And two men were very and faded. much involved in the conception and organization of the magazine. -Alison Cardy Almost everyone involved agreed to include erotica, but again some were unhappy with the end result. "The erotica had nothing controversial about it," said Banerjee. "We needed
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The New Journal/September 5, 1986 9 •
Between the Vines/ Tamar Lehrlch
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It only takes one question to reveal where a Y alie has spent this past summer-just mention the name Wayne Dick and if you receive a blank expression, they've probably been off in Paris or the Soviet Union or maybe even Seattle. Otherwise, the latest news creation of The Village Voice~ Nat Hentoff will be all too familiar- it's the story of how a poor Christian boy from Florida came up north to a big, liberal Ivy-League school, expressed his views on the immorality of homosexuality and was slapped on the hand by the University for his "bad speech." At least that's the way Hentoff told the story. After working for a national T.V. news program this summer, I've grown sensitive to the extreme power of the media- the extent to which a small, select group of people in this country determine what is and is not newsworthy. Think about the death of' basketball player Len Bias, the promising young athlete who died from a cocaine overdose. The media dug their teeth into it, and now Reagan's giving out urine samples and shaking hands with Mexican president de Ia M adrid while promising to put a stop to drug trafficking. If the media hadn't taken hold of the Bias story, would we now be waging a nationwide war against crack? I've become wary of journalists and their motives, co nvinced that 'objective' and 'unbiased' reporting is but a m yth, mistrusting of words themselves. In mid-July, Hentoff came out with his four-part series on Wayne Dick , DC'88, who had taken sole respon10 The New Journal/September~. 1986
sibility for last April's BAD week '86 posters. The posters had satirized Yale's annual Gay and Lesbian Awareness Days (GLAD) and had parodied Professor John Boswell, Patrick Santana, JE'86, and Ned Lochaya, TC'87 (also known as Aimee Zing). The Executive Committee found his posters threatening to the Yale community and gave Dick two years' probation. As I followed the case, I began to see all too clearly the way a journalist can seize upon an event and thereby create an issue out of it, shaping it into a story which the public will swallow whole as though it were objective truth. Discussing the issue earlier this summer, I found myself instinctively wanting to defend Santana, who had brought the charges against Dick. But because I didn't know the details of the case (Hentoff pad presented them rather muddily) and had only vague memories of the BAD week '86 poster, I was left inarticulate. A sked if I'd want posters to be taken down which portrayed a different group-jocks, perhaps- in a defamatory way, I was silenced. But then I tried to explain that H entoff had taken a skewed perspective- he obviously had not tried to talk with Santana; he had
exaggerated the impact that a sentence of two years' probation would have on Dick's future . In the following weeks, I gathered articles on the case from The Voice, The New Haven Register, The Boston Globe, and Human E vents, a paper put out by Accuracy in Academia which called GLAD a "campus-wide celebration of perversion the whole m ess winding up with a dance." Yet, even with all of that paper in front of m e, I felt as though certain voices -.:were missing. Then I spoke with Carrie Costello, DC '86, and more pieces began to fall into place . I discovered that Pat Santana and Caroline Jac kson , director of the Afro-American Cultural Center, brought a grievance against Wayne Dick not for the BAD week '86 poster per se but because Dick had specifically singled out Santana-a quite important point which Hentoff conveniently had failed to mention amidst his grand theories. The grievance specified that Wayne Dick had clearly violated the University Regulation in which " . . . the Yale College Faculty has affirmed: 1. Its commitment to protect free expression and peaceful dissent and to preserve mutual respect and charitable relations
among all members of the University. 2. Its belief that physical restriction, coercion, or intimidation of any member of that community is contrary to the basic principles of the University," (Chapter I, p. 5). "The issue is not free speech," Costello said, "but protecting the rights of people who are harassed." She argued that the point of the First Amendment is to allow people the freedom of expression, and if one's speech frightens or threatens others, then it becomes a form of silencing. She considers the BAD wuk posters as having intimidated not only those individually mentioned, but the entire gay and lesbian community. "We must protect the rights of those who are being silenced," she stressed. She added that if Wayne Dick truly wished to establish a genuine dialogue and have a forum to express his thoughts, as Hentoff suggests, why didn't he sign the poster? Why didn't anyone take responsibility for it? "Wayne Dick has been presented by the media as a poor loner being stepped on by the majority," Costello said. "That's ironic considering that he actually falls into the main-stream of American thought." While agreeing with Hentoff that there's something wrong with the procedures of the Executive Committee, Costello was left confused by Hentofl's hidden agenda. "Why did Hentoff wait for the one case in favor of gay students to pick on the Committee?" Costello asked. She has helped organize an Ad Hoc Committee Against Defamation in order to
secretary. Costello said she had been told that Dick was not acting alone- that the Tory party, of which Dick is a member, created the poster during one of their meetings. So, Dick may have had the unfortunate task of bringing the poster to Kinko's, where an observant employee had helped Santana connect the face with the crime. If this is true, one can only wonder whether other Tory Party members put pressure on Dick to assume full responsibility for the act. Perhaps he had been advised that the press would be more sympathetic to a lone pamphleteer. I then hear from Costello that the poster was financed not by Dick, who Hentoff
has told us "has become the first member of his family with a shot at getting a college degree," but by the St. Thomas a Becket House, the Episcopalian bastion at Yale; that the Rev. Charles Dinkier, their chaplain, spearheaded the BAD-week campaign; and that the Yale alumni who formed the Emergency Free Speech Committee(EFSC) to defend Dick are mostly former Tory Party members. Their initial aim, she had said, had been to organize a press campaign intended to follow on the heels of the anti-sodomy laws passed in July. Is it true that the entire Tory Party was responsible for the poster? "I know Wayne," Rev. Dinkier said. "I know people in the Emergency Free Speech Committee . . . But I really don't know about that." He said that the tradition of the BAD week poster "goes way back." Are the members of the EFSC Tory Party alumni? "A lot of them are," he said. "You know, I am a membe.r of the Tory Party. I helped to found It 16 years ago." Wayne Dick laughed when he heard the rumors. "I di~ the. poster. It was on my typewnte~, In my handwriting," he said, stressmg each word. "It was paid for by me. It was not a Tory Party function, not a Becket House function. I don't even know who did it before." The New Journal/September 5, 1986 II
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Patricia C. Barnes, who covered the story for the New Havtn R egister, quoted Rev. Dinkier in her July 10th article. Yet, she failed to explain what connection, if any, existed between the Reverend and Dick. Why would she ask Dinkier his opinion of the case and not someone else? "Well, I couldn't tell you that, except that I know they're friends-that's all," Barnes said. "I do think that Nat H entoff is a majo r force behind this." She told me how reprehensible the poster was. Hentoff a major force behind the case? Wayne Dick had been the one who initially contacted Hentoff. "A friend of mine knew him, knew he was fairly objective," Dick said. "Before the hearing, Hentoff was going to write an article no matter how it came out." Pat Santana explained that while Dick's attitudes were purely incidental to the grievance, his actions were a clear transgression of the principles of the UniversitY. "Hentoff gave the impression that Dick was being 'punished' for having expresst:d antigay and lesbian senument," Santana said. "Yet, if that were true, students would probably be in front of the Executive Committee every day." W e spoke of how difficult it is for people who have never confronted prejudice tO empathize with those who have. If Santana hadn't been individually singled out, he told me, he never would have pursued the case. H e wondered tf the posters would be put up again this year- printed and copied out in Hamden or someplace. "You don't think it could happen all over again?" he asked. I didn't know how to respond. As we spoke I saw more clearly the 12 The New JoumaliSeptember 5, 1986
way Hentoff had distorted the issue. He had set up a parallel between Dick's BAD week poster and the divestment campaign's blocking of the entrance to the Bursar's office last spring. But there's a difference between sitting on the steps of a building, an act which still "preserves mutual respect among members of the Yale community," and an act of intimidation on an individual level. Hentoff then sets up a parallel between Yale's punishing Dick and Yale Law School students shouting down William Shockley in the mid-70s and preventing him from speaking when he came here to explain his genetic theories. There's a difference between allowing Shockley to express his opinion that blacks are inferior to whites, and having Shockley get up on a podium and single out specific individuals using racist language. "The issue just becomes slimier and slimier," I triumphantly said to m y friend, Joe, a few days ago. I confidently told him of the Tory Party connections; I e mphasized that the poster was unsigned; I showed him a nti-Semitic caricatures which I had found in a book on the history of the holocaust- caricatures which illustrate popular superstitions and their persistence throughout the ages. I began to draw a parallel between the fact that Wayne Dick had twisted Pat's name to become "Pet Sauznna" (emphasis added) and the age-old belief that the Jewish desire to control the bartks, the government, the world was actually a concept derived from the Satanic image . But Joe interrupted me. "Look," he began rationally, pointing
to the anti-Semitic drawings, "those are political cartoons. You don't feel they should be censored, do you?" We talked; I became less dogmatic. Frustration set in. I put it all aside for a few days in an attempt to gain perspective on a situation which has no single, definitive answers, no right and wrong. It's an emotionally-charged issue: Did Wayne Dick, or the Tory Party or Rev. Dinkier, violate the University Regulations specified on page 5? If Dick were denied the right to put up the BAD week '86 poster _in a setting outside University jurisdiction, would he be denied a right which falls under the umbrella of free speech? Censorship or slander? Free speech or defamation? Days later I sit before my notes and articles and words trying to arrive at a conclusion . Conclusions? No, unlike Hentoff I am not left with any grand conclusions. I remember the words of Sue Wise , a colleague of John R. Williams', the New Haven lawyer and c ivil rights activist who has agreed to defend Dick free of charge. "Santana showed a certain hypersensitivity that is only appropriate if you're not a public figure ," Wise said. "Once you come into a public arena, you must expect to be held e p to ridicule; it's
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naive to assume that you're not going . to get fl ack for your v1ews. So, for better or for worse, saying ..Kill the Jews," or putting up sexist or anti-Semitic or anti-black or antiAsian posters, or spec1hcaJiy smghng out someone and making defamatory statements does fall under the blanket defmition of freedom of expression. The Nazi party was allowed to march in Skokie, Illinois. Pat Robertson can run for president on the platform that Christians should control the nation. When Garry Trudeau was a Yale undergrad, he parodied not only Kingman Brewster and Rev. Sloan Coffin but also specific studentssupporters of our involvement in Viet Nam as well as anti-war protestors. Should he have been punished? I don't think so. Yes, Hentoff has justification for criticizing the structure of Yale's Executive Committee. The fact that the Committee holds all its proceedings in secret, the fact that the accused may not have a faculty advisor who actively panicipates in defending the student, and that decisions of the Committee are given without a written explanation all seem reason enough to examine the mechanics of the Committee further . However, like Costello,
I don't understand why Hentoff waited for this specific case in order to analyze Yale's structure of discipline. No grand conclusions here-leave that for H entoff- only yet another voice: Based on Santana's interpretation of the University Regulations, and in light of the political climate on campus, it makes sense that Wayne Dick was given two year's probation. H owever, there are problems with Santana's interpretation. In any community where there exists a free expression of ideas, one cannot expect the preservation of "mutual respect and charitable relations" always to be maintained- one can't expect even Yale to be a utopia. "It's good for an institution (like Yale) to prepare people for the world in ways which are consonant with the values of the country," Sue W ise said. I can't help but agree. "Whether we like it or not," she began, "the free exchange of ideas is always painful to somebody." So, Hentoffs baby- the story of the working-class student who was denied free speech at Yale- has gotten a lot of press this summer. Hentoff has created an issue out of a situation which may otherwise have been swept aside by Yale students and administrators alike. He has quoted both Yale Law School Dean Guido Calabresi and historian and author of the "Woodward Report," C. Vann Woodward, as having condemned the Executive Committee's decision. Now President Benno Schmidt, an expert in First Amendment law, must confront the issue- at least by stating, as former President Giamatti did, that he remains satisfied that the Committee Procedures have been carefully followed. Schmidt will have to speak pretty loudJy, however, if he intends to compete with the publicity received by the down-home boy from Florida, and Wayne Dick will have a lot more to say about his summer vacation than a few stories from the Marine Officers Candidate School in Virginia. . . ~-~ TaTTUlT uhrich, a umor In JY~orst, lS managing editor of TNJ. . . Tht opinions expressed rn thu stctron art those of tht individual wn'ttr.
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The Green on a late August night. · willed suitor. Seham used masks to Familiar dark shadows, sparsely define the characters. simply and to branched trees and forbidding · make them obvious types that we all recognize: The foppish suitor, the idiot stretches of grass. Welcome back to servant, the romantic hero, the greedy New Haven. From the safety of the lit sidewalk, you can see glimpses of ·a father. 'With the good daughter stage, of lights, of people moving Bianca, dressed in pink, with pink hearts dangling from lier dress, and the about. On closer view: A short woman in a wedding dress, looking like a white unladylike Kate dressed in red, with cream-puff, circles around a large black slashes across her skirt, the bearded man, embraces hinl, knees symbolism was clear. Seham chose to him in the groin, and a couple emphasize the play's light-heartedness thousand people burst out laughing. as well as its theme of role-playing by This is not the New Haven Green you using Commedia. dell'Arte, colorful streetknow and love. · theater from the . sixteenth century, characterized by its improvised A Shakespeare play is not the first thing you would expect to find while comedy and archetypal roles. The walking around the New Haven result of Shakespeare on the Green was Green. Walking by on the weekend of playful, broad comedy, well suited to August 22 during a performance of the bawdiness .of Taming of the Shrew, with the kind of physical humor that an Taming of the Shrew, you might have been surprised to see the bright reds, audience naturally fi!lds funnygreens, and yellows of satin and lace characters hitting each other, being costumes; or the sets designed to evoke chased around stage , and falling on their rears. a Paduan street scene. But for the third Putting on a play on the Green , the year in a ro~, a local theater group called Performance Studio presented center of a small industrial city, raises Shakespeare on the Green. In opening problems that neither a theater nor its up the Bard to the New Haven audience usually confront. The largest community, the Performance Studio challenge in doing outdoor theater· is of challenges how we think of theater in a course the outdoors. With Taming of the city which, outside of Yale, many Shrew, the wind blew through the sets , people assume is culturally dead. blue plastic was tied around the Amy Seham, artistic director of microphone amplifiers , and against the Performance Studio, tries to make ongoing threat of rain the Parks Shakespeare understandable by Departlnent spent days covering and making him entertaining. Certainly uncovering the stage with large tarps. the audiences on the Green followed Without the walls of a theater around the story of Tamin_f! of the Shrew, about a it, Shakespeare on the Green had no foul-mouthed, ·independent woman protection from the weather or frmn New Haven. When it fmally did rain tortured into ~ubmtssion by her strong-
on the opening night, the performance had to be cancelled; after five weeks of rehearsal, Seham and the cast would rather have been inside an air-_ conditioned theater. But taking it in stride, they rehearsed yet again and hoped for clear skies the next day. Watching theater on the Green may at first leav~ people feeling unco1nfortable and distracted- especially those who are used to settling back in their chairs in a quiet, darkened theater, expecting the action to re1nain in front ofthem on the stage. How could anyone be absorbed by Taming of the Shrew? After all, the Green ..is no secluded · park, no enchanted forest where the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream can be-guile the imagination. The best stage designers would -have difficulty disguising it as the Shrew's back yard in Padua; no one would believe it, with ambulances racing down Elm Street every hour, sirens blaring. The Green remains an urban center, a fact that a stage, some lights and costumes will not change. When you sit down on the grass, action both rehearsed and unrehearsed surrounds you. And the players might be any one. Seham creatively used the Green to her advantage. How did the audience make the transition from New Haven to Shakespeare's Padua? During th1e performance, when a stream of bag people with shopping carts streamed onto the Green, met at the war me1norial, and then paraded through the audie.nce hooting and dancing, an audience metnber asked, "Are they real The
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ew Journal/September 5 , 1986 15
bag people? I can't even tell." A line between acting and real life had been blurred. Then bag people started changing into their Renaissance costumes in front of the audience. When they went on to juggle and clown, dance, and play music, and walked through the audience introducing themselves, the audience understood that they were actors in a pre-show pageant that opened Taming of the Shrew. Joey Tomorrow, an independant artist in New Haven who directed the 2,500 gathered on the Green for opening night pre-show, intended it to help the audience make the transition from New Haven not only by making it that brought lawn chairs, blankets, and contemporary New Haven to Shakes- understandable for anybody, but also 1 ,picnic dinners to the Green, you could peare's world, in what he refers to as a by making it free. Anyone can go. "It's see that people who might never "sandwiching of time." With the set a very egalitarian function," as experience a Shakespeare play, or any theater at all, have a chance to see it. comprised of simple scaffolding, producer Kevin Sheehan described it. striped curtains, and painted tap- "Shakespeare wrote for all audiences, At one rehearsal, a woman with her estries, the Green didn't need to be but he ends up in stuffy theaters with baby daughter and her mother stopped disguised: because the audience knew rich people chortling." Open theater is to watch, finally sitting beside the stage that people were playacting, they could not only an ideal for Seham, but a for the next hour and a half. Now and enjoy it and laugh with the actors- working habit. At a rehearsal where again she would say "Jesus!" and shake even with the ambulance sirens in the two kids on bikes were mimicking her head, laughing. As Kate slapped background. Like commedia players, Seham as she gave direction to actors, her sister Bianca in the face, an "oh my Performance Studio brought theater to someone asked "Should they be there?" God" came from a group of teenagers the Green, if not exactly to the street. She responded abruptly, "They are our on the other side of the stage. Their Some might say that the poetry is audience." Beneath her common-sense tone was highly sarcastic, but they lost in such popular versions of approach to classic drama and the clapped when they left . . . forty Shakespeare; but then for Seham, if a matter-of-fact way she discusses it, minutes later. "I don't mean to be play does not keep the audience's Seham holds a deep conviction that patronizing," Seham added, "but a lot interest, the ideas will be lost. "There's theater must be accessible to everyone. of the people on the Green aren't an assumption that I'm less intel- She believes a major problem with college grads, and if they can get the lectual," she said with sarcasm. "I theater at Yale that the Performance jokes and laugh, I did something right. actually have a lot of themes in my Studio avoids is an exclusiveness that I didn't undo what Shakespeare put work: disguise, deception, identity. shuts people out: "That pretentious into his play." Making Shakespeare free to New But people say, 'We'll do Art and be quality, that elite quality in theater is intellectual over here, but not be anti-theater." The vision behind the Haven has of course required someone entertaining."' In bringing out Performance Studio and its Shake- to pay the bills, if not the actors. This elements that are of broad appeal, speare on the Green productions year, sponsors such as First Federal making the action and humor of centers on undermining the elitism of Savings, CBT, SNET, as well as the Taming of the Shrew as clear as possible, theater- the elitism of Art that sits Connecticut Arts Council and other Seham's work perhaps succeeded aloft without making itself understood, sources contributed $30,000- still where the fully professional theater but also the basic social elitism of short of paying the actors. That companies fail. "I'll be sitting there (in theater that can charge $30 a show. Shakespeare on the Green started out other theaters) totally bored, watching "Theater is for the people. We've in its first two seasons with budgets of Shakespeare. I don't understand how gotten into this thing, that you can $5,000 and $15 ,000 respectively, that that can happen. But it's amazing how only go see a play if you're a yuppie." the T.V. station WNTH has given the many productions I've seen where Seham throws her hands up. "No! production free publicity, and that a they've had the iambic rhyme, or the Theater is part of your life. You don't variety of private concerns and state British accents, but the audience did have to be exclusive about it, you must agencies have volunteered their help indicates that the city in general is not understand what was going on." be inclusive." Without theater walls, Shakespeare In the groups that passed by the becoming enthusiastic about the on the Green has opened up theater to rehearsal, or in the large audiences benefits of the annual production. For 16 The New JoumaVSeptember 5, 1986
the commercial sponsors, Shakespeare on the Green lets them give something back to customers, something more creative than bonus teddy bears or alarm clocks. The main benefit is of course to the cultural life of New Haven as a whole; Performance Studio would like everyone to see that, along with the Brian Alden Jazz Festival, they're trying to make New Haven, as Sheehan describes it, "an exciting place to be on summer weekend nights." For the Performance Studio, the act of creation is messy; not a business, but fun. When the actors could not go out on the Green opening night, Sehain held a rehearsal in which no one could speak their dialogue; it resulted in hilarious slapstick and horseplay that conveyed Shakespeare's story without words . This kind of theater cares more about the process of theater than the end product. The Performance Studio not only opens up Shakespeare to new audiences, but it makes the creativity of theater accessible to people who might not have the chance of doing it quite the same way elsewhere. In New Haven, with Shakespeare on the Green, actors have found a place and a way of doing theater that is different, fulfilling, and rewarding. Performance Studio- specifically Amy Seham- has given actors the opportunity to try diverse kinds of thea~er. Last xear the group performed Cafe Declasse, a French cabaret piece that came out of improvisational work, as well as The Wretched Garret, in which actors and the audience created a bohemian coffeehouse and ga ve readings of their own work and from classical work. Lucy Babbit, who played Bianca , will bring her fiction writing into her theater work when she helps lead the Performance Studio in "the creation of a new m ythology" when it presents Midwinter Dreams at the Palace Theater in December. "I like working with Amy," said Deanna Dunmyer, who pl.ayed Kate . "She's a collaborative artist, and lets you work with your ideas. With other directors, I might have no 'Creative imput." Lewis Duby, who played two parts in Taming
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of the Shrew, described Seham as brilliant; "Sometimes she says, I'm stupid, explain to me wh at's going on, and the actor will really have to think about it." For J ennifer Masso, who just graduated from Amity High School where Seham taught an advanced drama class, that collaboration came in the form of sympathy for her actors. "The way she directs, you want to make her happy, while also making yourself happy." Masso laughed, and added, "Amy relates everything to sex, and I can always relate to that." No one pays any of th e actors in the Performance Studio, but the quality of th eir work is professional. Many of them work full time jobs and still choose to do theater at the same timeand choose to do it in New Haven. From watching them rehearse and compliment each other on their performances, or sensing the energy and excitement on stage, you can tell that they enjoy themselves. Gregg Parkinson, still in his costume as the greedy father Baptista Minola, was breathing heavily and sweating from clowning with the oth er actors and he had a broad smile on his face. "If you want to know why people do theater, this is it." Parkinson, a computer analyst, has worked with Performance Studio since its inception in 1984. "I work all day inside a stuffy office, and then I get to come and do this." Richard Smith, who played Petruchio, observed that "I've seen a lot of productions where they don't seem interested in doing theater. Theater is about_telling stories, not going out on stage and getting attention." For Smith, such a disparate group of people comin g together and really working together indicates an honest commitment. "W hat's n ice about this is the consensus, it is theater or nothing."
Lewis Duby, who works as a manufacturing engineer, lives such a commitment; in the last two years, he has been in ten theater productions. "Sometimes during business meetings, I'm pretty tired, from rehearsals and all," he explained. "I put my hands behind my hand so that they'll fall down and wake me up if I go to sleep." His four children tell him that had he been from the right background and had the right breaks, he would have been a big star. But that's not a big concern for him. "One woman I work with saves my reviews. She's one of those people who goes to movies and , idolizes stars." He paused, and then confided, "I don't bring her the bad reviews. I'm not stupid." Duby's commitment to theater is explicable only in the light that spills offstage that is cast across his face- only if you see him shake his head, his eyes opening wider as he watches Petruchio sling Kate over his shoulder. "I love it." Because of particular atmosphere they find here, many of the actors chose to come to New Haven and continue to return to the Performance Studio. Katy McDougal works as a flight attendant out of Chicago, and has acted in theater groups throughout the United States. She visited New Haven during last year's The Tempest production on the Green, got _very involved with the Performance Studio, and "on a whim" decided to move here. "I have met more people here in the l~st year than in the last ten years. I don't know if it's the place that attracts the people or what." A new life, and people "very different from any· l'd met in years" are tied up with theater and New Haven. Unlike the highly competitive atmosphere of the Second City ensemble in Chicago, for example, McDougal does not feel that she must fight to do creative things. "I think in New Haven there are more creative types per capita with a commitment to doing things than in New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. Doing it here m~ans not getting paid, but it also means not walking on people's backs. I can't do that." In New York, where actors arrive by the
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thousands, intent on "making it" professionally, the joy of doing theater can be easily crushed by the difficulty of supporting oneself, and the creativity easily replaced by competition. In order to play K a te with the Performance Studio, Deanna Dunmyer commuted for five weeks from New York, where she is pursuing a professional acting career. "I love the New Haven Theater community. There's not an ego p roblem here, it's smaller, there are commo n factors in people's lives. And really, in New York, except for Broadway and OfT, they aren't really any better there." If other projects came up that interested her with the Perfo rmance Studio, she would probably repeat the commute and the sacrifice in pay. "I get tired of New York and of aJI the bullshitters in the business. Here, I find a much more supportive atmosphere, that you can grow in. And that's what this play has been about." When Taming of the Shrew opened under a cloudless night, you could see that theate r does not need walls, equity pay, or New York to be done as it ought to be done. Watching the diverse group of people that has come out to see Shakespeare, Joey Tomorrow observed: "Everyone needs theater in their life. Playing is an important way of releasing the tensions of day to day survival, of reinforcing family and community ties." His words may not fully describe the scene yet, but gathering part of New Haven together on the Green is a start. Certainly, the risks of an open theater remain .
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Children scamper about, the wind blows, noises come off from the street, and a family argues loudly in I talian during the performance; in effect, the · Green is still the Green, and New H aven still New H aven. ~arhland Taylor, drama critic for the New H aven Register, has consistently called such things "distractions" from Shakespeare on the Green; and if they are, it is perhaps because we are too used to sinking back into our seats, accustomed to being comfortably bored. That could explain why th e audience is reluctant to sing along when the cast exhorts it to, or why people express irritation with , the Italian family and the children who, in their own ways, have come out to. the Green to play. After all , Shakespeare's own Globe productions we r e performed with raucus audiences who threw tomatoes and talked- people who enjoyed going to the theater as much as the actors who played his drama. If you look at the actors in Taming of the Shrew, you see that the true difficulty with an inclusive theater, whether for the actor or the audience, is reme mbering how to play, and allowing one's self the opportunity to enjoy it. Their frustrations with having to work full time jobs makes theater that much more a commitment. Lewis D uby has not let ·his job persuade him from the opinion that "any kind of a rt is the basis for how you conduct your life."
Regardless of whether the actors of the Performance Studio are dissatisfied or content with the ways they make their living, taking part in the spirit of open theater means opening themselves to their own creativity. As a little girl Deanna Dunmyer h ad never let herself consider being an actress; "I was an ugly duckling, and everyone knows that only pretty people can be actresses. So I wanted to be a neurosurgeon." And though agents still complain that they cannot quite place her photo in any of the "type" piles of eight by ten glossies o n their desks, as Kate she can be beautiful, weak as a rag doll , funny, frightening, and touching, all at once. Kate is a playful wench. From watching her, you might think of the bag people racing carts on the Green, being joined by musicians sitting there and having a square dance; of two kids who, after shouting obscenties into a stage mike, performed a rap song on the stage at Seham's insistence, with the cast gathered around them; of a baby girl staring wide-eyed in wonder at a gigantic Kate and Petruchio in their colorful costumes. On summer nights, the New Haven Green is an exciting place to be.
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"The house with all the junk hangin' all over it? Sure, that's crazy ol' Griffin Manning that lives there. Go ahead on in and knock on his door; he'll talk to you ."
A House for Higher Thoughts Jay Carney
If you ask Griffin Manning why he has decorated the outside of his house with wagon wheels, bird cages, plastic horses, a model log cabin and other children's toys, he'll hesitate for a moment, and then say, "Because I am an odd sort of person." It's a description he's accustomed to offering to his wife, family, friends and neighbors, all of whom have been calling him crazy for most of his life. He isn't bothered too much any more that those closest to him have failed to understand a passion for what he calls "antiquish" things, and he now happily accepts that only people of "higher thoughts and education" realize that Griffin Manning is more than just a crazy old man from New Haven who lives in a funnv-looking house on Winchester Avenue Each time some such person, receptive to the unconventional, stops by his home to take pictures- and this has happened once every few months for the past 23 years- the occasion reassures Manning that he is not alone in h is peculiar tastes and that those who have 22 The New JournaVScptember 5, 1986
labeled h im crazy or, less affectionately, "too eccentric for his own or anybody else's good," w ill have to swallow their words. Griffin Manning turned 72 last M ay, a n d he h as been living on Winch ester Avenue, just a few blocks from Yale U n iversity's omin ous Kline Biology Tower, for the past 30 years. The neighborhood around his house is residential, and n ot u n til recently have the transient k ind of people associated with the U n iversity started to move in. Still, few know about Manning's house, and those who do e ither live in his neighborhood or have once gotten lost, on a walk or a drive through New Haven, and have come across it unsuspectingly. Invariably they have found a novelty, the unrecognized art, they might say, of a poor man. The houses on H illhou se Avenu e exude g r andeur, classic a n d uncon tested elegance. Two blocks away alon g Sach e m Street is o ne o f Yale's unofficial bord ers with the real New H aven, the ~..ely G. Mwid M emorial Lib rar~ Winchester:\venue
begins in fron t of M u dd Library, and Griffin Manning's h o u se is only three b locks away. Winchester has b een holding out against the gen trification that presses from the east. Just o ne street over, the houses h ave all been renovated: rotting boards re placed , freshly p ainte d inside a n d out, sod laid in over n ew, m o re fer tile soil, a n alar m system connected to all doors a nd windows a nd almost always a n ew fence, an u gly wire fence to keep outsiders out. But Winchester Ave., the last o ne before the lot that separates this neighborhood from a major housin g project, has been resisting. T he houses here are incongruous, not in style, b ut in degree of deterioration. In the fi rst block up from Sachem, along the left side of the street, two sets of five new row houses are going up. F ram es and plywood now, a stron g wind m igh t settle their u n sturdiness, and yet it seems t h at t~ey face a n o ld neigh borhood without h u m iliation. T wo days in a row I h a v e seen o n this b lock a young w h ite boy, abou t seven
or eight, sitting on his bicycle, riding it-if you could call it that-in the front yard of a newer house. A fence kept him in , relegated to a small patch of grass; "vv" ooom," and he stood still, balancing himself, his feet jus t touching the ground. Before the next intersection , still less than 150 yards from Mudd Library , Windsor Pharmacy draws a crowd to its comer lot. It's a good day to h ang around and listen to music, which spills out of radios from parked cars, from boxes slung over shoulders, from inside the pharmacy and the convenience store across the street , and from nearby h ouses. It all blends together, but with so much open air, it remains music instead of noise. Everyone out here has some connection to the old neighborhood, a nd outsiders receive stares to assure them that they are not passing through unnoticed. No hostility; just setting things straight. On the next block, Griffin Manning's block, a large open lot, which might one day become prime
ground for more building, opens up to the left. For now, cars fill in some of the space, grazing like old, dry cows in a field where mounds of trash, dirt and scraggly brush have replaced tender clumps of grass. Most cars in this neighborhood are a recognizable breed, dented and aging American models, built during the seventies with hungry engines and rusted shells. Some are in worse shape than others, plastic taped over a missing window or cement blocks holding up a frame without engine or tires, and these especially seem to haunt the streets. The empty lot stretches back a waysWinchester is the last street of the n e ighborhood in this di rection - and comes to an end at the foot of a 14-story housing project, built with dull red bricks and window after window, shutterless and uniform except for the broken or boarded ones, which outnumber the rest. Between Winchester Avenue and the project runs a single line of abandoned railroad tracks- remnants of the old Farmington Canal line-overgrown,
like the lot surrounding them, with weeds and trash. Across from the lot, in the middle of a block, stands Griffin Manning's house, a simple two-floor structure, narrow from the street but d eep in back, a low chainlink fence separating the small, overgrown front yard from the sidewalk . Stripped down, the house would be hard to distinguish from others nearby. But along the fence and the near side of the house hangs an assortment of wagon wheels, some large enough to have really been used at one time, and others as small as a 45 rpm single, but all painted beige, aqua or a pale blue. A two-tone plaster rooster, perched where the near-right corner of the house meets the fence, is like a fill-in guard dog. A platform, secured by wire to the top of the waisthigh gate and held up by diagonal supports underneath, stretches toward the street. On top of it sits a model log cabin, about one foot wide, six inches deep and eight tall. Just inside the gate stands an uprooted, narrow tree, the bark shaved smooth and its trunk The New JournaVSeptember
~.
1986 23
freshly painted aqua blue. One of the three or so bare, spindly branches rests against a bird cage that hangs from a corner of the front porch. Wrapped on t\'110 sides with chicken wire, it sways slowly and noiselessly, no more than six feet off the ground. Inside the cage are some of the strangest treasures. No nest or seed here, nothing really that one might expect in the average bird cage, but miniature horses of different sizes, colors and poses piled around a model car that looks like a 1920's roadster, painted red with black trim but faded from the sun and rain; and life-size birds with plastic feet molded together, their heads somehow caught between the thin gold bars of the cage, are suspended above the cage floor. A chain of silver-painted French coins, without denomination, but each the size of a nickel, weaves in and out of objects near the <.age's top. The cage resembles the house itself, a studied disorder, the kind of house that might appear in a child's fantasy. On the corner of Winchester and \1\'oodland, a man who limps and hisses through his teeth when he laughs sits behind the counter of a small, musty liquor store. '"You mean the house with all the junk hangin' all over it?" he says '"Sure, that's crazy ol' Griffin ~lanning that lives there. Go ahead on m and knock on his door; he'll talk to you." Through the side gate ,.,.¡ith the log cabin and up to the front door: Vi,ian ~tanning. Griffin's wife. answers. "I don't have nothin to do with all the junk out there; that's my husband's doin'," she says. Although 24 The l\e"' journal/September 5, 1986
she is 72, like her husband, and must use a cane to get around the house because of arthritis, she is a lively, sharp woman. and a little suspicious. "You wanna talk to my husband?" she asks incredulously, and then pauses, studying the stranger. "Well, alright, come on in. He's through that door in the back." In the corner of a dimly-lit dining room crowded with enough furniture for two rooms its size, Griffin Manning sits nestled in a small stuffed chair, wrapped in a pale green blanket. Vivian explains that he isn't ill really, just a little cold. Only his foot moves, tapping softly to jazz that fills the room, emitted at near distoruon level from two bookshelf speakers in the opposite corner. Not an inch of wall space in the dining room is left
uncovered by paintings, ornate mirrors, posters and postcards. Across the top of the service, someone has carefully arranged collections of china and ceramic nick-nacks, including sets of matching horses, some as small as a thumb, one family of painted birds and a miniature nativity scene. One table holds an assortment of old-fashioned buffet lamps, and, under another table, on top of which the stereo was playing, are stacks and stacks of records, a quick estimate of no less than 200. Griffin Manning has always loved to collect things, and his passion for music has developed into what he considers "the greatest collection of any one person" of old Gospel, Country, Opera and Jazz records. To convince the skeptic, Manning has his wifl"
The cage resembles the house itself, a studied disorder, the kind of house that might appear in a child's fantasy.
u n veil the covered table in the main hallway: more stacks of records, at least another 200. He explains that his favorites are Count Basie, Eddie Arnold, Wayne King, Nelson Riddle, Frank Sinatra, Leona Price, Dizzie Gillespie and Willie Nelson. But Duke Ellington holds a special standing in Manning's ranks. "Outside of his music, jazz, Duke Ellington was the best-dressed man, and he didn't take from the magazines," he says. "There were styles, this and that, but he was a self-stylist." Manning hesitates a moment and then his face begins to break into a wide smile "And I'm a self-stylist," he says. "If you'd seen me when I was young, Griffin Mann ing was o ne of the sharpest black men that h as ever lived." At this, Vivian :Manning's laughter can be heard from
the next room. "That's true!" says M anning. "And j u st like I am a selfstylist dresser, I am a self stylist on my house." Twenty three years ago, when he began collecting selected odds and ends from flea markets and Good \\'ill shop~ and placing them in hi<> small front yard or attaching them to the l~Kadc of his house, Manning had home improvement in mind , an int•xpcnsive way to make his home distinct lrom others in the neighborhood. Preparing to explain further, Manning straightens himself in his chair and loosens his blanket. il<either his hair nor his wisp>¡ moustache have tu r ned gray. but the knuckles of his hands are swollen from arthritis. While h is conversion of "antiquish things" into art has little to do with any kind of religious
inspiration , Griffin does b elieve th at h is moral attitudes correspond to h is decorative sensibilities. "I caJJ m yself some kind of Christian-feelin' person ," he says, "and I am for r ight against wrong for all times, no matter who you are-it makes no differen ce to me. And, just like I am odd in my belie f in right," he continues, raising his hand in front of him for e m phasis, "I am odd in the way I choose to decorate m y house." Does he consider him self an artist? "Yes, I do, somewh a t ," h e replies, "because I knew there wou ld be people like you. I knew there would be p eople that like those little antiquish things out there and who cou ld see th a t they are nice right where th ey are." Born in Hartsville, South Carolin a on May 9, 1914 to Sally and Albert Manning, Griffin Manning m oved north to Washington, D.C. at 17, hoping to find the nation's capital less severely struck by the De p ression. In Washington, Manning stayed with his sister, but work was sporadic at best, so after two years he headed. to Philadelphia, where he met and was married to Vivian Clarke in 1935. Mrs. ~Ianning used to fight her husband's eccentric tastes in household design "But I ga,¡e into him after I got really old and inconsistent," she explains. ~\\'ho cares any more; we were married 51 years ago this ~ une, and 'Let him do what he wants,' is w hat I sav now." ~i.ife in P hiladelphia in the 1930s was ~o bad," Vivian says later , "but not worse for us than the average b lack person ." 1\.f anning found a job as a Th(' :-;('"journal/September 5, 1986 25
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"Now I realize that we being here, as poor as we are, my wife and I are very lucky, because there are so many more people that are worse off than we." cook in a restaurant called Lenton's, a stroke of luck that he credits to President Roosevelt's National Relief Act (NRA). "At that time," he says, "they were working 12 and 13 hours a day, six days a week at Lenton's, but when the NRA broke out, they made them cut it to eight hours a day, so they had to hire more cooks. And I worked there for fourteen years." The Mannings and their only child , Christopher, born in 1936, lived in the same two-room apartment in a poor, all-black neighborhood during their entire stay in Philadelphia. Griffin Manning earned $16.30 a week for two jobs, and Vivian added an extra two or three dollars when she could get work scrubbing floors or washing clothes. Manning has a favorite story about the Depression years. "I remember we used to see people sittin' out waitin' for their welfare checks to come in, and there were so many people you could never imagine it. And there was a time when the mailman didn't have their checks, right in our block , and they jumped on the mailman and beat him up on the spot. Hah! I t's hard to believe, I know, but that's a fact. I mean , that's really a fact." He likes this story because "it shows you how bad it was, but it don't make you sick to listen to it. " Nevertheless, Manning remembers the De.,::-..ssion as something young people today would never believe could happen in this country. "It was the most pitiful sight you have ever seen in your life," he remembers. "To see these desperate people-and the people weren't out to rob some-
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body, try in' to rob somebody; they were just hungry, hungry and in want of a place to sleep." When the Mannings moved to New Haven in 1948, financial strains began to ease slightly, and in 1956 they were able to buy their current house on Winchester AYe. According to Mr. Manning, they were the first blacks to move into the neighborhood, but he doesn't remember any racial problems. "I have always gotten along wherever I go," he says. "And you might say I'm goin off the rocker, but I'm not. I don't fear nobody, and, as a matter of fact, when people come around me, if they be around me long enough, a whole lot of people like me, because they know they ain't in danger." Throughout his ·life in New Haven, until his retirement seven years ago, Manning worked as a cook, first at a restaurant called Restland Farms in North Haven, then at an orphanage called Highland Heig hts. From 1960-1963 he ran his own business, Grifrs Barbecue, on Dixwell Avenue, but returned to the orphanage when the restaurant fell through. Even during the smoothest times, however, the Mannings have never been far from poverty. The past seven years have been especially hard; but Mr. Manning still views his situation optimistically. "Now I realize that we
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be1ng here, as poor as we are, my wife and I are very lucky, because there are so many more people that are worse off than we," he says. "I've had [welfare) grants here in this house, 'cause we are poverty-stricken, and my wife, you hear her, she doesn't want to admit that we are poverty-stricken, but we are. The only thing we have is the check that comes in from the social security every month, but nevertheless, glad to say, we have our house paid for. We've been here 30 years, so what I mean is, we are very lucky." A lack of money has been indil'e(:tly responsible for both the methods and the materials Manning has used to decorate his house. Whenever he coqld afford it, he would go to flea markets, garage sales and even junk yards -to pick out whatever caught his eye. Manning believes that, had he been a rich man, he probably would have collected valuable antique furniture , jewelry, trinkets and "first-rate" paintings . Instead, he collected a poor man's antiques, whatever he thought had an "antiquish" quality to it, but not a single item of which has any recognizable value beyond the base cost of its materials. Anything that could stand the weather (paintings and posters were disqualified) became a potential element in Manning's designs for the outside of his house. He chose each item according to loose requirements: it should be interesting, unoffensive, and in some way compatible with items placed nearby it. However, aware that an artist need 28 T he New jou rnaV~ptember 5, 1986
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not explain his work, he politely brushes off requests for theoretical and conceptual explanations: "I only intend that people can see that this is a very special house, and that those seeing it will enjoy it." While a number of passers-by have, over the years, taken an interest in Manning's house, and, of those, several have pronounced his method of decoration 'art', it is unlikely that his work will live on after he dies. It is doubtful, especially with gentrification moving in from Mansfield Street, that whoever owns the house next will want to preserve it as it is. So the strange house on Winchester Avenue will be strange only as long as the Mannings live in it. "My mother and father taught us that God gives us three-score and ten years to live, and that makes 70," says Mr. Manning. "And both of us, my wife and myself, are 72 , so we are living on borrowed time." From inside the next room, Vivian laughs. "Where you borrowin' your time from, Grift?" she asks, and Manning himself begins to laugh. "Anyway, all fm sayin' is that, anyone anywhere who's interested to stop by a house such as mine can do so. And, to anyone who likes music, my wife and I are pleased to play records for them, because they can be safe and comfortable in this house. I am sure they would be entertained."
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30 The New Journal/September 5, 1986
At Yale, Dr. Mary Lake Polan tests a cure for almost half of all female infertility.
Probing a Women's Disease Melissa Turner Deep in a maze of silent dimly-lit hallways inside the Yale medical school, only large blue boards with white letters give the uninitiated a sense of immediate location. Maps are hard to find, arrows do not exist. Even white-frocked nurses and technicians who every now and again emerge from one of the countless identical doorways give contradictory advice when asked for directions. Knowledge here is focused; this complex system was not designed for the uninformed. On the non-descript third floor of a nondescript wing some know as Farnam and others don't know exists is the department of the Obstetrics/Gynecology (OB/GYN) section of reproductive endocrinology. Here, three doctors test a potential cure for endometriosis. Not many people know about endometriosis. It does not cripple, nor does it blind. A serious disease, though unsensationalized, endometriosis affects only women. Causing the major portion of female infertility, it can be a very painful condition. Only recently have women been aware that it can be
easily treated and cured. After all, it has only been in recent years that women have entered the medical profession. Although men continue to do the bulk of the medical research into the causes of infertility, the three doctors researching this disease at Yale are women. D r. Florence Comite, Dr. Mary Lake Polan and Dr. Karen H utchinson comprise the Infertility Group P ractice. Polan , long affiliated with Yale, was the first woman to finish a residency in Yale's OB/GYN department in 1978. Now, w1th the endometriosis study, Polan has been breaking ground in the realm of women's medicine- but both the research as weU as this pioneering woman doctor remain unrecognized outside academic circles. In the last 20 years, since the women's movement, an interest has been sparked in the medical research field of infertility. Traditionallv thought to be primarily a "'omen's problem, infertility affects both sexes almost equally. Women comprise 60 percent of aU reported cases of inferti-
Traditionally thought to be primarily a women's problem, infertility affects both sexes almost equally.
Laparoscopy identifies endometrial growths in fallopian tubes. Photo courtesy Mary Lake Po/Qn The New JoumaVScptember 5, 1986 31
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lity. Endometriosis, in turn, makes up as much as 25-50 percent of female infertility. The drug that the Infertility Group is testing is GnRHa, medical shorthand for Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone analog. Thanks to GnRHa, women who p_reviously couldn't bear children now can. Laparoscopy, a procedure in which Polan inserts a thin fiber optic tube through the patient's navel, allows pictures to be taken of the pelvic region in order to check for the presence of endometrial growths. An associate professor of OB/GYN who has received both M.D. and Ph.D. degrees, Polan has written reams of papers on endometriosis in her career. She conDr. Karen Hutchinson: "So many medical problems have been relegated to the ducts laparoscopic tests on women in 'Oh, that's just women being hysterical' category." the study before their medical treather third child, Scott. She spends cover read: Fertility and St"ility. "Boy, I ment and then again six months later mornings in the office, trying to catch had no idea how h ard it would be to to observe whether the growths have up on paper work, and afternoons by have a third child -until I did it," she disappeared. the club pool with her children, trying said, chuckling now that she had the Women have only just begun to to catch up on their lives and her stroller and baby en route to the pool enter surgical fields like OB/GYN. reading at the same time. Standing where her energetic five and seven Most women who have entered medicine in the past have steered clear beside her family-sized sedan in the year-olds waited for her. She hadn't of surgical fields, which have remained club parking lot one afternoon, she anticipated that caring for a new baby male-dominated. But Polan was born seemed harried. She bent over the while reassuring her somewhat jealous in a generation who grew up during stroller she had just pulled out of the older children would take so much the first wave of American feminism. trunk and hurriedly forced it open. energy. Somehow that just isn't surprising. Polan comes of the do-firstShe c,laims not to be as "flamboyant" as "Hang on, I'll be ""ith you in a second. one of her colleagues in medical I'm . . . . " Her words trailed off as she- and-think-about-the-rest-later school. "It was enormously stressful," she school, Or. Elizabeth Morgan, who reached into the back seat of the car. after breaking into the field of plastic She re-emerged holding a red-faced said of her residency at Yale. surgery wrote an autobiographical baby in her arms. "Oh no. He's wet "Everybody was always watching me to account of her experiences in a book again. His diaper's going to have to be see if I was going to fall on my face or entitled Th~ .Makmg of a Woman Surg~on. changed." She reached into the car not. No one was sure whether a woman would know. how to operate or Yet they shared similar experiences. once more, this time grabbing a Though currently on maternity magazine which she tucked in beside whether she might cry when she got leave, Polan has not slowed down her the baby in the stroller. Against a solid her perincl And of rourse. everything pace. Five weeks ago she gave birth to red backl'('round, the white words on its turned out just fine." On the OB/GYN 32 The New Journal/September 5, 1986
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HAIR STYLES ward of the hospital, a small room with two beds allowed residents to catch a couple hours of sleep when on-call. But since there had never been a female resident before, the room had always been a single-sex sleeper. "When I got there, the other resident asked me to sleep in the on-call room downstairs. H e said his wife didn't like the idea that he'd have to share a room with me ," she explained. "Come on. I'm tired. He's tired . What did she think we were going to be doing in there? I told him if he felt so strongly about it, he should sleep downstairs." The next day he moved. Polan said that to enter the medical world in surgery, or any field for that matter, women could not be merely as smart as their male colleagues. "We had to do everything they could do and more to compete for the same positions," she said. "And times haven't changed so much." Wearing shorts, a shirt and sunglasses, this woman with short brown , slightly greying hair seems not at all relaxed- even poolside- but she remains composed. Polan seems to be the kind of person who can do five things at one time with ease. Since her residency, Pt'llan h as practiced OB/GYN and has done a considerable amount of research into the causes of infertility, both male and female, as well as into the medical means to circumvent it, such as in vitro fertili zation. According to Polan, endometriosis, until a couple of decades ago, was thought only to be prevalent among older white women
with nervous, high-strung personalities, but research since then has shown it to be egalitarian in nature, affecting women of all age groups and races- but still a misunderstood disease. While neither contagious n or considered genetic, endometriosis still may run in a family. Because of the pain endometriosis can cause, most women seek medical treatment. The two most classic symptoms, according to Hutchinson, are severe pain during menstruation and intercourse . "Women have come in who have actually put an end to their sexual relationships because it is so painful," she said. During gynecological exams, p h ysicians can feel abnormal growths in the pelvic region or swollen ovaries, but most of the time, endometriosis goes undetected. A "retrograde flow" of endometrial tissue causes endometriosis. During menstruation the endometrial tissue flows out of the uterus, causing the bleeding associated with periods. In the "retrograde flow" case, some of the lining flows upwards into the fallopian tubes and in to the pelvic region outside the uterus. There, the tissue adhe res to organs such as the fallopian tubes, ovaries and the exterior of the uterus itself. Because this displaced tissue responds to the same hormones as the tissue in the uterus, it goes through the menstrual cycle of growth and bleeding as well. When these endometrial growths block the fallopian tubes, preven ting eggs released from the ovaries from reaching the uterus, or when they cover the ovaries
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themselves, infertilty is the end result. Traditional methods of treating the disease have ranged from hysterectomy, the surgical removal of the uterus and ovaries, . to steroidal treatments. "The ultimate cure is to remove the uterus and ovaries, which needless to say is a devastating thing to do to a woman," said Polan. Though the procedure remains infrequently used today, doctors performed hysterectomies quite routinely 30 years ago for women with severe pain. While in the last several years doctors have been burning off the growths in major surgery, now they can perform the same procedure by laser. These surgical procedures, however, only remove the growths temporarily since they do not prevent the "retrograde flow" or tissue growth. But by removing the growths, at least temporarily, the sur gery allowed these women to become impregnated. With these surgical procedures, however, the burning may cause internal scarring, which in turn can lead to another set of medical problems. Medical treatment developed in the last 20 years, on the other hand, attempts to control the growth of the endometrium through drugs. For young women who do not want to become pregnant but who want the pain to dissipate, Polan prescribes a heavier than usual dossage of birth control pills. While women taking the pill for birth control absorb hormones for only 21 of 28 days, women being treated for endometriosis must take birth control hormones every day. As a
result, these women have no menstrual ble~ding at all, causing the growths to disappear and the pain to lessen. But for women who do want to become pregnant, physicians have prescribed danazol, a steroid which induces a menopause-like state. This treatment has been very effective and often used in the last decade. It too has drawbacks for it can cost as much as $150 a month, and its side effects may cause weight gain, fluid retention, facial hair growth, acne, oily skin and the development of a deep voice. The hormone cure, GnRHa, like the steroid, induces a pseudomenopausal state, but so far has not shown similar side effects. Injected just under the skin on the arm, or inhaled as a spray, the synthetic hormone shuts off the hormones responsible for stimulating estrogen production and thus the growth of endometrial tissue. The doctors ask women participating in the program to take the drug twice a day for six months. After this period, the doctors have found that both pain and blockages have disappeared, enabling several women to become pregnant. Of the 20 women who have taken the drug at least three patients have become pregnant, and the only side effects to taking GnRHa have been the usual symptoms of menopause. But the program remains small. Since April, 1985 the three doctors have tested the drug on two batches of 10 women. Florence Comite, who has worked extensively ¡with GnRHa in treating precocious puberty, developed the endometriosis study. She applied
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for a research grant from Syntex, the drug company which synthesizes the hormone, and she then enlisted the a id of Polan and Hutchinson. The women participating in the study have been trying to have children for a long time, and almost all of them have been referred to the Infertility Group by other doctors at Yale and in the New Haven community. Since a research grant covers the expenses, these women have not been charged for their treatment. To be sure, once the Federal Drug Administration approves its release on the public market, GnRHa will probably be just as expensive as the -;teroid, said Polan. The testing carried out by the Infertility Group certainly marks progress, for it makes medicine specifically accountable to women's medical problems. A project such as this could never have been created without ambitious women such as the three who comprise the group. Polan said she has seen a considerable amount of progress in her field since her days as a resident in OB/GYN.
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While only a few years ago all six residents in her departmen t were male, this year for the first time all six are female . And she has observed the development of a network of women OB/GYN doctors in the New Haven at'ea, which she said serves as an important support group. As for her thoughts on women entering OB/GYN, she said things aren't as hard for them as they were for her. "There has been a global c h ange in women's attitudes towards th emselves and there's an enormous number of qualified women coming out of medical schools. It forces a change in how people view them; it's hard to turn them down." Now, she points out, there are two oncall rooms for residents on the OB/GYN ward. Karen Hutchinson too sees progress. She believes there has been an increase in awareness of women's medical problems both among male and female medical school graduates. Practicing physicians can now give their female patien ts a variety of options which they could not before . Similarly she believes that the general public has become more educated in the last few years- women no longer feel that they have to take "No" for an answer, or "Just sit down and relax, live with the pain." They can search for remedies which do, in fact, exist. "We've been seeing a lot more patients in the last few years. Women, I think, are more apt to pursue a problem, or at least find a physician who will address it," she said in her warm and fast-talking way. "So many medical problems have been relegated to the 'Oh, that's just women being hysterical' category- but that just isn't the case anymore."
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Polari, though, does not expect dramatic changes. What does she think will or has changed now that more women enter the field of OB/GYN? "Some people say that women are more sym pathetic to women, that women ob stetricians h ave a h eightened sensitivity to wom en's issues. But r emember t h ese are women physicians, they don't practice holistic medicine. These women have come out of a system, they have had to compete with men and have had to be better than them. They have to answer to the same tough questions, and their de~i~ion-making process is the same, not at all different." But the difference will be the "tenor of office encounters," she said. "You won't be greeted cond escendingly, you know, like 'H i sweetie, how are you?'" Yale presents the best of all worlds for these women, for women's progress here can be mapped out, tangible. Problems can be pinpointed, and solutions can be found. But even so, finding a solution to endometriosis means finding a solution to only one of an infinite number of women's medical problems. Even in this field, it will take a couple of years for GnRH a to be released to the general public, and by then it will be very expensive, not accessible to most women. And, as always, researchers across the coun try lack the funding to examine women's medical problems thoroughly. But in the short run, Polan has found an ideal place for herself a t Yale. And she knows it.
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M elissa Turner, a senior in Timothy D wight, is editor-in-chief of T N].
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MEDICAL AND SURGICAL SUPPLIES The New Journal/September 5, 1986 37
Music/Joe Levy
Lead singer Marc Mulcahy getting pixalated at t he Grotto.
10,000 Miracle Legion Fans Can't Be Wrong "Our music comes from the gut, like puke." Some bands have platitudes to sum up their sound and style, cliches more powerful than a locomotive, able both to come from and shape their attitudes in a single bound. Not Miracle Legion. They've got quips. One way to look at what's going on right now: I'm sitting in the Almar Diner with Mark Mulcahy and Ray Neal, singer and guitarist for Miracle Legion, eating a bacon cheeseburger and drinking a strawberry shake and giggling while they tell me how they ended up in a photo in The Village Voice article on the New Music Seminar . Another way of seeing things: I'm sitting in the Almar Diner looking for cliches, the big kind, the quotable ones you can hang a whole story on, and 38 The New JoumaVSeptember 5, 1986
these guys are giving me quips. "Our music comes from the gut," Mark quips. "Like puke." Not that Mulcahy is always so glib. Asked to name his big influences he cites Frank Capra and Gary Cooper. Not exactly what you'd expect from the singer/lyricist of New Haven's preeminant band. Judging from the sound of The Backyard, the group's 1984 sixsong EP on Incas Records, you were guessing Psychedelic Furs maybe, or, unimaginative you, REM. Like those bands, Miracle Legion makes guitarcentered pop that isn't afraid to be moody. But if you know Miracle Legion at all you know they don't confuse droning or mysticism with meaning, and if you've ever seen the Legion live you know how Capra and
Cooper make perfect sense. In Capra's 30's comedies Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, It's a Wonderful Life the central character's innocence and idealism are broken and a ll but destroyed by real-world cynicism, only to be validated and restored at the darkest hour by a communal outpouring of faith and love. The innocence and integrity of Miracle Legion's music just isn't that far from Capra's vision. Onstage Mulcahy seems, like Gary Cooper's Mr. Deeds, "pixalated," and when he gets down on the ground with the band ritTmg softly behind him and asks everyone in the audience to get down with him "so we can all come up together," and then actually gets everyone there to do it , well, let's just
say it's the closest thing to a communal outpouring of faith and love you're liable to get at a rock 'n roll show. Off-stage in diners, Mulcahy is considerably less pixalated, sarcastic even. Liable to compare his music to puke. Which would be fine if Miracle Legion was one of those post-punk LOUDHARDF AST thrash bands whose- medium and message is all bile and overload and electronic upchuck, or even if they were one of those smartass ultra-ironic trash-culture bands with quips and rifTs to spare. But how does that quip get you any closer to the heart of a band that plays pop songs of dreamlike beauty, songs at once haunting and catchy, driving ballads that sway as they rock? How does it take in the way Mark Mulcahy's vocals convey both mystery and understanding? Or for that matter, how does it account for Ray Neal's whalloping guitar hooks, riffs that pull you right into the center of songs? It doesn't. Ask these guys for platitudes, the big kind, the quotable ones, and they give you quips. It's like that late summer afternoon you decided to finally give up and call 'Ollie-ollie-oxen-freed' only to find the kids you're playing with are having too damn much fun to come out, come out where ever they are. "Our music comes from the gut, like puke." "And," adds Ray as I break up laughing and knock over my milkshake, "gets all over everybody, like strawberry shake." Ah, well this at least gets us closer to the heart of things, because lately Miracle Legion's music has been getting all over everybody, or at least 10,000 people. With 10,000 copies of T1ee Badcyard sold, and rave ups in the
When Mark Mulcahy performs he rocks back and forth with arms flopping loosely, like rock's Raggedy Andy. Village Voice, New York Times, and Britain's New Musical Express, Miracle Legion has the best shot at national stardom of any local act since the days of 1956, when the Five Satins cut "In the Still of the Nite" in the basement of a New Haven church. Miracle Legion Ray Neal, guitar; Joel Potocsky, bass; Jeff Wiederscahll, drums; Mark Mulchay, vocals - has been playing together for three years now. Mulchay's the group's veteran. He was drumming and singing for New Haven's Saucers in 1978 when they cut "A Certain Kind of Shy," a Phil Spector-ish slice of pure-pop for now people that still stands as one of the finest seven inches of local vinyl. After the demise of Saucers, Mark and Ray teamed up to form a farifisa organ/guitar duo called Plaid on Plaid. "I had this plaid jacket and plaid pants," Mulcahy explains by way of excuse for his painful pun on Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. "We thought it was a pretty good name. We mostly played basements. Ours." Rookie Jeff was acquired from Durham, Conn., which Mulcahy describes as "a farm team of great rock musicians. I saw him playing at a party there and asked him if he wanted to play in a band." Joel, who'd never played in a band before
becoming a member of the Legion, came in a trade with Dumptruck, a Boston group Mulcahy drummed for. "He was a friend of Mike Priggen's. We needed a bassist and Mike recommended him." Together they make the sort of folk-rock that has nothing to do with any folk tradition, and less to do with R&B roots. They have created their own sound, their own musical and lyrical vision. On repeated listenings The Backyard sounds less and less like any other band and more like, well, Miracle Legion, or Miracle Legion's soundtrack for the great lost Frank Capra movie. Maybe it's just this that accounts for Miracle Legion's unaccountable success: the band has been able to create their own sound without the ironic distance or alienation of semi-pop or avant garde rock. For an independantlabel local group this band has a knack for popping up in the darndest places - just take a look at the playlist of WPLR, New Haven's album oriented rock radio station (which places ML right alongside the likes of Springsteen and Tina Turner), or in England (where their six-city tour was nothing short of triumphant), or in Village Voice photo coverage of the New Music Seminar. "Yeah," Mark explains, "we were posing as Mitch Ryder's bodyguards. That's how we got in that picture. You remember Mitch R yder?" Mitch Ryder of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, mid-60s white soul shouter who had smashes with "Jenny Take A Ride" and "Devil With The Blue Dress: that Mitch Ryder? "Yeah. We latched onto him, we seemed to have this special rapport with him, and we were just acting as his body guards. We'd stand there with our arms folded The New Joumai/Seplember 5, 1986 39
and if anyone tried to touch him we'd slap their hand away. We were backstage with him for this artists panel he was on with Pete¡ Shelley, Dwight Yoakum, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kurtis Blow, LL Cool J, Lesley Gore. He's real out there, completely burnt, and we're making these drug cracks. Someone says ' .. oh he should meet Sid-' 'You gave him ACID? Jesus, he can't have that stuff!' Anyways, they had the first six rows reserved for guests of the panel members and it was ' ... oh you're with Mitch, aren't you, right this way .. .' and they ushered us right up to the good seats." As for landing their single, "The Backyard," on WPLR, Ray was, to say the least, shocked. Not that the song doesn't deserve airplay; hell, it should be Number One with a bullet. Could be, too. "The Backyard" is a groovesome tune built on a solid bass hook of stunningly evocative simplicity. Like the greatest pop music it makes perfect sense. It's apprehended completely; bass, guitar, drums, and voice locked into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The song has an organic, living quality; it wasn't produced, it was born. And like the greatest pop music, the lyrics (here a remembrance of things past) go straight to the heart. You are left thinking that every word of it is true, at least as long as the music lasts. But even so, it has never been the business of big-league local radio to promote the music of independant local bands. "We didn't even send them a copy of the record," says Ray. "We had this attitude of 'Why bother?' Then one night they all came to a show. Somebody said ' ... omigod, WPLR is here.' They loved us and asked us to send them a record, which we couldn't 40 The New JournaVSeptember 5, 1986
believe. Phil from Cutler's finally had to tell us 'Hey, send these guys a record, they're serious.' Being on the radio, well, that's been a real thrill for me." When the band delivers their second record there should be plenty more thrills in store. Says Ray: "We hope to start recording in November and have an album out maybe early next year,
but you don't like to say that. It jinxes everything." And, Mark reminds him, he was saying the same thing a year ago. "The Backyard was wimpy," Ray adds. "Acoustic guitars on everything. We were more rough and then we got wimpy around the time of the album. Now we're pretty rough again." That's py~ting it mildly considering the pullout-the-stops cover of Led Zep's
Ray Neal on stage; whallopping guitar hooks and riff• that pull you right into the
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203- 624-6101 Don Julian-Susan Bruce 1181 Chapel St., New Haven Mon.-sat.: 8 am-6 pm "Communication Breakdown" (a real, um, crowd pleaser) Miracle Legion has added to their set. Chances are Miracle Legion will leave Connecticut's Incas Records to sign with a British label, Making Waves. The general plan is to conquer Britain and then tackle the U.S. England is a small place, which makes achieving mass success there an easier and more feasible thing than it is here. Making sub-culture into pop-culture is a way of life for the British in a way it never (breakdancing excluded) has been in America. Their first full length album will have to be imported back to their own hometown. But the hope is that by that time ML will have risen to the top of pops in the U.K., a U.S. label will pick them up for American distribution, and everyone coast to coast will be turned on and tuned in to Miracle Legion's rock 'n roll songs of innocence and discovery . Miracle Legion mines territory that rock 'n roll doesn't usually tap into: innocence, integrity, the way memory defines the present, the way the heart is attached. Their lyrics are beautiful and simple, without the ironies that have haunted rock 'n roll since its ironic underpinnings (white kids appropriating black music styles) became clear: I t/Unlc il was the lwuest day of the ytar, Even still we starUd foes with the emÂŤrs. T1le sweetest man held on aJ the tcp of the hill, T1le swtlrlest lady held on to her mmwria. T1le world was so ~ And I was so small, Your voiu was always the loudat
of all.
The cover of The Backyard is a baby picture of Mark Mulcahy playing in his yard. Mulcahy is quick to deny the record is a childhood album ("we're not that smart," he quips), but it's clear that the band values innocence and
simplicity. "Just say hello," begins Side Two of The Backyard, "it means a lot to me." They have retained the spirit of infancy even into adulthood and recognize that adult problems are problems we've known all our lives. When they pose these problems with a THRIFT child's innocence they strike deep chords that reverberate through the whole of our memories. "Just Say H ello" is no Jonathon Richman kiddie 10% off with this ad song, but it brings mystery, childhood and Student 1.0. mystery, to adult loneliness and 274 Crown Street (At High) longing: "The only one in the tree, and 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. 865..0511 if I fall will someone pick me up? Just expires 12-31-86 say hello, it means a lot to me." According to rock 'n roll's mythos, rock is youth culture as rebellion, electrified sounds of sex or rage. "Let's spend the night together," sneered Mick Jagger; the Rolling Stones I shocked the agents of respectable responsibility the same way Elvis' swivelling hips had years before and I Prince's naughtiness would years later. But Mark Mulcahy asks "Will you wear my coat of butterflies?" In place of rebellion, Miracle Legion offers innocence; in place of sex, love. Their is not a complete acceptance of respectable responsibility. "Country Please send The New Journal to Boy," a song intended for their name _________________________ upcoming album, shows both the allure and unacceptablility of home address life. Mulcahy sings of wanting the girl next door, with her doll house you can stand up in, but something's wrong; he can't fit into the old world. "I'm not city, state, zip ready, I'm not ready to go. I've been I enclose a ch.-e-c-:k"""""':"fo_r_ _ _ __ wishing for this, but let's wait just a 0 one year $10 little bit longer." Standing on the edge 0 two years $18 of marriage, or some sort of offer extends only to those living commitment, Mulcahy sings from the within the continental United States perspective of a lost boy in and outside the Yale campus. Never Never Land, a perspective rock Return to: 77u Nnv Journal 'n roll has never known before. The Box 3432 Yale Station rejection of home life comes from New Haven, CT 06520 understanding, not disdain, and it
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The New Journal/September 5 , 1986 41
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communicates so much more than contempt. From the perspective of a lost boy comes an adult vision. The results are remarkably compelling. Sitting in the Almar Diner I pitch all this to Mark and Ray. I expect them to respond with cliches, the big kind, the kind I keep finding in their songs. 'Yeah,' I'm hoping Mark will say, 'all you need is love.' Instead I get a gut· p~ke quip. Desperate, without bearings, I play my ace in the hole: "A ... urn .. jrimd of mine once wrote me that a Miracle Legion show should be more like a child's birthday party than a rock concert. .. urn ... what do you have to say to that?" "If that's his conception qf fun , sure," quips Mark. 42 The New JournaVSeptem~r 5, 1986
This is it, I've had enough. This from a man who when he performs rocks back and forth with arms flopping loosely, like rock's Raggedy Andy. This from a man who weaves around the stage like a toddler until he finds the mike-stand to anchor himself, then grabs the mike with both hands, closes his eyes, and sings: "Yesterday we cut down the apple tree, the sound of cracking wood made my little heart tremble. I wish I didn't have to try so hard, but a little boy has a lot to remember." No quip is going to account for all that. Pressed, Mulcahy says the band's relationship to the.ir audience is "like when you used to go on vacation with your cousins. You're all real uptight the first few days 'cause you think
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20o/o Off Everything they're weird, but then you get more comfortable and relax, and everybody has a good time. The message of our shows is 'let's get together.'" Certainly their hometown shows at New Raven's premiere new-music nightspa, the Cafe Grotto (130 Crown St.), are family affairs . When the band showed slides of their trip to England in between songs at their Welcome Home concert last May, it was like they turned the place into their living room and invited the whole audience over for home movies. (It was no less boring than the real thing, but that's part of the point, dam mit.) And when the show ended with a sing-along cover of"Hey jude", I felt it all work. I left feeling more than the amped-up over-drive of rock energy. R enewed, knocked down to zero and brought back again, spiritually revitalized. Which is hardly the way I feel leaving the Almar Diner. "Any more questions? Have you got enough stuff for your project?" asks Mark. I nod. I'm lost, no platitudes to hold onto. It's when I get home that I remember two things that stop my head from spinning. The first is a Miracle Legion lyric that goes "I'm not after an explanation. Beauty means different things to me , I capture beauty in a conversation.'' The second is that right before we left the diner Mulcahy told me it would be alright to copy a demo tape he gave me and send it to that friend of mine who thought Miracle Legion shows were like birthday parties. "He sounds like a good guy," he said. I hardly had the nerve to tell Mark that my, urn , friend was really me, that I was just covering my own sentimental tracks. But I have this feeling he might understand.
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Books/John Schachter
The Kat's Meow Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman by Patrick McDonnell, Karen O'Connell, and Georgia Riley de Havenon 1986 Harry N. Abrams, Inc . $14.95, 223 pages "Jizz! . . . POW!" With this sound is accomplished the central act of one of America's proudest artifacts, for it is the sound of a brick bouncing ofT the head of Krazy Kat, the title character of George Herriman's stupendous early and midtwentieth century comic strip. What seems at first to be a simple, dimwitted slapstick routine, is, in fact, the rehearsing of a wry, witty, tender, and ironic destiny. Krazy Kat loves Ignatz Mouse, who hates all cats with a vengeful passion that finds expression in the bricks he constantly hurls Krazy-wards. The Kat, for somewhat arcane reasons, regards each brick as a "nize li'llove tokin." Officer B. Pupp, a bastion of law and order, yearns romantically for Krazy; whenever possible, he jails his rival Ignatz for assault. There is no celebration of violence here, as there is in Tom andJerry or the infernal Roadrunner. The brick functions instead as the key to a powerful love triangle; a ceaselessly comic web of relationships driven by frustrated hope, irrepressible longing, and a heartfelt sense of duty . . . no kidding. Doubters should consult the snazzy, new, paperbound collection of Krazy 4-4 The New JoumaVSeptember 5, 1986
Kat daily strips and Sunday pages just released by Abrams. Patrick McDonnell, Karen O'Connell and Georgia Riley De Havenon, the three editors of the Abrams project, scrupulously date each of the more than two hundred strips they present. In addition, they include a bibliography of Herriman books, a chronological table of his career, a note on the provenance of their material, and two introductory essays. The first of these essays is a reprint of Gilbert Seldes' appreciation of Krazy Kat, taken from Seldes' 1924 book, The Seven Lively Arts. Seldes was an enthusiastic booster of popular arts at a time when to be such was more remarkable and momentous than now. His scholarly and effusive treatment of Herriman ("a great master of the fantastic") is entertaining and readable, if something of a period piece. But he is a winy and articulate professor, and describes several Krazy Kat episodes not otherwise included in the book. The remainder of the introduction is a long and fairly detailed essay on Herriman's life and work, written by the three editors. From them, we learn something about the glamorous life of early cartoonists, as well as about Herriman in particular. With the turn of the century came the growing realization on the part of newspaper publishers that a popular cartoonist could have a powerfully salutary effect on circulation. Homegrown artists like T.A Dorgan, T.S. Sullivant (single panel men), Winsor McCay (Little Nmw), and
Herriman thus found themselves in an enviable position, negotlatmg contracts that assured them fame and fortune in the growing art departments of the nation's newspapers and magazines. Dissatisfied at one place, they could always move on- Herriman made a number of treks from the West to the East coast and back again, finally settling down with the Hearst syndicate in 1904. (Hearst loved Krazy Kat, and guaranteed Herriman a large salary to continue the series, even when other strips far outclassed Krazy in readership.) The biographical essay, illustrated with a large number of family photos, unpublished Krazy paintings and drawings of the Krazy Kat characters as well as pre-Kat strips, gives a good sense of the kind of person Herriman was: iconoclastic, a clever sort of populist intellectual, devoted to his wife and two daughters, an ardent pacifist, vegetarian and animal lover. Herriman had a life-long fascination with native American culture. Native d;
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American pottery shows up continually in Krazy Kat , often balanced precariously on the roofs and chimneys of buildings. Sometimes Navajo logograms are incorporated into the frames of the strip, either painted on furniture or formed in the foliage of a topiary tree. Herriman's appreciation of Navajo culture and his sensitivity towards the Indians' position in depression America earned him the respect of the residents of Kayente, Arizona who presented him with a blanket with his name woven into it. Their region later became the basis for the Coconino County setting of Krazy . Monument Valley is an amazing place, an alien landscape of desert, mesa and limestone formations of strange and unexpected shapes. The Mittens, the Rainbow Bridge, the Thunder Needle-all appear in the background of Krazy Kat cartoons, and all seem as if they were products of Herriman's imagination until one sees the photographs of them provided by the editors. If there is a profundity in Krazy Kat , it is probably in the settings. They are the keys to the personalities of the characters and their creator, both in the simple sense that they show his love for Arizona, and in the sense that, like surrealist landscapes, they act as representations of our subconscious visions. Certainly Herriman's Coconino is not the same place as the reservation in Arizona- his scenery is too fluid and the climate and geography too transitory. Topography, time of day
The rational parts of our minds scream: what the heck is going on here? That a mouse would biff a cat with a brick seems reasonable . . . But why is the cat so happy about it? and situation change abruptly from frame to consecutive frame in Krazy Kat . One daily strip, for example, shows the characters against a distant butte in the first picture, on a darkened plain for the second frame, in front of a tree for the third picture, and near a limestone mound for the fourth. Sometimes the moon crashes into the desert or a distant sea as it sets, kicking up a cloud of dust or foam in the process. Day changes to night if a character is sad. But what Krazy Kat mostly is, is funny . Very, very funny. Although many of the strips end with punchlines, and thus share the stru~ture of spoken gags, most by far rely on stories, drawings, and situations that are intrinsically hilarious. Every panel is wonderfully funny on its own, because every picture has its autonomous charge of humor. You do not have to know the story or characters of Krazy Kat to smile at a frame in which a scowling, scruffy, stick-armed mouse heaves a brick onto the head of a google-eyed, kinky-tailed, starchcollared cat. As it rapidly approaches the horizontal, the cat exclaims joyfully: "li'l mornings glora -there
him is -and I'm a heppy, heppy ket." The rational parts of our minds scream: what the heck is goi ng on here? That a mouse would biff a cat with a brick seems reasonable, given the historical enmity of the two species, o r at least reasonable within the bounds of comic strip rationality. But why is the cat so happy about it? Why does it speak with such an eccentric accent? And what about the scraggly pine tree on the horizon in back of them- is it preternaturally huge, thus dwarfing the house that nestles near its trunk, or is it a tiny house, and a regulation-sized tree? All of the dislocated reality that grounds humor is present here- no matter how familiar we become with Krazy Kat, the many layers of absurdity inherent in its basic concept persist. Another central aspect of Krazy Kat is its sensuous celebration of the funny sounds of English- a quality of most comic discourse which often goes unnoticed, because of its usual transparancy. Each of the Coconino characters has a distinct way of speakjng. Of these, Krazy's is the most r~markable Seldes accurately described it as "partly Dickens and partly Yiddish, and the rest is not to be identified, for it is Krazy ." Joe Storck, a mystical secondary character, lectures Krazy on spritualism; his sentence: "yovr 'ectoplasm' passes out of you r body-and soars out into the limitless ether, to roam willy-nilly, unleashed and unbound," is remembered by Krazy later: "Just imegine having your 'ectospasm' running around William The New JoumaJ,Scptcmbcr 5, 1986 45
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46 The New Journal/September 5. 1986
and nilliam among the limitless etha- Golla, it's imbillivibil ." Other characters speak with C hi nese, French, Irish-American or Southern accents, or speak Spanish (usually untranslated). What sex is this amazing Kat, who loves so unwisely and in turn is the subject of so much a rdour? No one is sure, least of all Krazy. Usually referred to as "he" by his companions and in captions, in one strip, Krazy explains to Ignatz that he is e nthralled by "a embarrassment which smacks of the connubial I don't know whether to take unto myself a wife or a husband." And, when an orphan is left on his doorstep, he wonders what to be to it: a father or a mother, "a Unkil or a Ent." We see the complex and bizarre dynamic of the love triangle evolving from strip to strip in the Abrams book. In the very first episodes, Ignatz explains that he is "destined to bounce a brick off Krazy Kat's' knob day by day." "In view of all that mouse people have suffered in the past from 'kats', who can say that Krazy is not getting what's coming to him?" he concludes, as another brick sizzles home. During a lull in brick tossing, Krazy pines : "Oh, 'Ignatz', wherefore is you, 'Ignatz' -long has I waited for you, and yet you comest not-a-less (sic)." Krazy's is a beautiful soul, loving every wrong that is done him (or is it her?); we are reminded of a simple, Christian saint. Naturally this state of affairs drives Ignatz into a frenzy of frustration. Every line of his body is continually a-quiver with rage; his mind is taut with hate. Every one of his missles of revenge is taken as a reaffir mation of love; every plot is foiled before it begins. Nevertheless he clings to the vain hope that, someday, the Kat will get his message. This leads to some wild plot twists, where Krazy and Ignatz conspire together to get the Pupp out of their way- collaborators with very different goals. Ah, the poor Pupp. He loves Krazy ("that dear, dear Kat") with a dogged, unrequited yearning. He persists in protecting Krazy , against her will, arresting the
sinning mouse whenever he finds him about his vengeful errand. Not once does he realize that this will never impress the Kat, never lead Krazy to return his love. H erriman arrived at a combination of style, concept, content and language that guaranteed that every strip would be funny, and deeply so. How could he lose? Every nuance of his characters, every element of his design was charged with wit, and their constant lack of gratification insured that they would continue their escapades. Krazy Kat is, put simply, the greatest comic strip there has ever been, and l'ierriman, one of America's finest artists. Because Krazy ran continuously from 1914 to 1944, a complete Kat would take up several large volumes, even reprinted in the sometimes annoyingly tiny size chosen by the Abrams people. Let us hope that this collection inspires enough public interest in Herriman to encourage the publishers to bring out more and more collections, until everyone interested in American popular culture and art has a shelf of Herriman books. That would make me heppy, heppy indeed .
•
john Ray &luuhto, '86, was graduaud.from Brrlc,[ey Coll'f!.' and now /ius rn Boston. Cartoo11s upn,ud courusy of Kmg
F~tzt~us
Synduau
TheNewJournal Everyone's busy this time of year, but why not take time to look into The New Journal? For the past five years Yale's best writers, editors, photographers, designers and business people have dedicated time and energy to this award-winning magazine. But we need new people, new talent and new ideas to keep our magazine alive and growing. Come to our meeting, meet our staff and learn about The New Journal. And tell us about your ideas.
ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING 7:30 P.M. Tuesday, September 9 Pierson Common Room
Yale Concert Band Sixty to seventy select brass, woodwind and percussion players perlormlng from the entire repertoire of symphonic wind music: marches, classical transcriptions & contemporary works Including specially commissioned compositions. *Saturday. Oct. 11 8:00p.m .. Woolsey Hall
Parents' Day Concert, with the Yale Glee Club, Yale Sy~ony &. Whiffenpoota ..
•Wednesday, Oct. 29 8:00 p.m., Woolsey Hall
Liberty Concert, sponsored bv Governor O'Neill's Connecticut Centennial Commission on the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, featuring Connecticut high school musicians, a guest appearance by Victor Borge, and the Yale Glee Club and Yale camarata Tickets: 432-4113 Berlioz Requl.,., with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and and Howard Untvirslty Choir ncketa: 778-1444
*Friday, Dec. 5 8:00 p.m., Woolsey Hall *Friday, Feb. 13 8:00p.m., Woolsey Hall
Winter Concert
·sunday, Apr. 12 2:00 p.m., Woolsey Hall ·sunday, May 24 7:00 p.m., Old Campus
Twftlght Concert, Including Tchalkovsl(y's 1812 Overture with live artillery and the Harknesa Memorial Cerlllon
*May 26- June 8
Concert tour of the Islands of Japan
Yale Jazz Ensemble
Yale Precision Marching Band
twenty-piece B1g Band playing everythmg from Dixieland to classic Ellmgton and Basie tunes to the latest contemporary compositions Available for per· forming for part1es & other festive occasions.
125-200 mualc1ans and others both celebrated and mfamous for a umque blend of musical and top1cal satire Pflrlormed at the fall '-football games, pep rallies and the like.
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*Thursday, Nov. 6 8:00 p.m. Sprague Hall
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*Wednesday, Feb. 25 7:00 p.m. Yale Club of New York *Wednesday. March 4 8:00 p.m.. Sprague Hall *Thursday, Apr. 9 8:00p.m . Sprague Hall
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Brown UConn Army Colgate (Band Alumni Day) Columbia Penn Dartmouth Cornell Princeton harvard
Atl Yale Band concerts, except as noted. are tree and open to the public. For more Information about any aspects of the program. call 432-4111 or stop by 301 Hendrie Hall (185 Elm Street).