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Anita Harris Speaks to Cornell Reunion Class

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On June 12, 2021, I had the privilege of introducing the class of 1970 happy hour at our 51st reunion. I talked about my published and forthcoming books and the idea of historical and individual spirals in history and in life.
Link to video.

Here’s the script, which may not be exactly what’s on the video, but all-in-all, I was glad to see so many friends!

Hi, I’m so glad to see everyone here, and especially that we’re all still here after this difficult year. I know that some of us are disappointed not to be in Ithaca—but the good part is that friends from far away can be with us.  One such friend said he would join in if I provided free drinks…which I am…in my living room.  CHEERS!

51st ANNIVERSARY OF GRADUATION 1970
 I’m sure you know that this is the 51st anniversary week of our crazy graduation. With those three walkouts, and the demonstration on stage where Morris Bishop, the distinguished historian and leader of the processional hit someone over the head with the baton he was carrying… Many people think that it was Dave Burack—my gov instructor—who got hit over the head …Burack swears it was his roommate…In any case, the demonstrators got hauled off stage and into a cop car…The bear at the top of the mace got bent and has never been the same—nor, I think,  have we.

 I remember that really well…which is amazing because people were  passing a JOINT when we were standing in the graduation processional…and I was definitely stoned.

I WROTE ABOUT THAT IN MY BOOK, ITHACA DIARIES which is based on the journals I kept as an undergraduate: it starts with me arriving at Cornell freshman year carrying the pink suitcase my uncle leon gave me for my bat mitzvah—goes through draft card burnings, demonstrations against the war,  the straight takeover,  MY LOVE LIFE, WHAT WAS I THINKING Kent State…and  ends on graduation day….when, to my amazement,  I even led a demonstration.

I WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT ITHACA DIARIES LAST YEAR, AT OUR FIFTIETH but with the pandemic that really didn’t work out. So this year, Sally and Kathy asked me to introduce the social hour– they told me several times to be brief and to keep in mind that this is supposed to be a HAPPY hour. So I’m not going to reminisce a whole lot…I will just move the story ahead a little, wax a bit historical and philosophical, and then we’ll breakout out the drinks.  I mean..join the breakout sessions.

                                                                                    *

SINCE ITHACA DIARIES CAME OUT, I”VE BEEN WORKING ON TWO SEQUELS.

THE FIRST SEQUEL IS ABOUT MY FIRST YEAR OUT OF CORNELL— and I imagine that many of us went through similar experiences.   After all the turmoil on campus, and changes in the late sixties, I had no idea what to do with myself. (And of course, I was an English major…need I say more?) But as a fledgling feminist, I wanted to prove that I could do things: that anything a guy could do, I could do, too.  I got a bunch of short-term jobs.

WEST VIRGINIA First I got a job with the ILR School that took me traveling around the country to several hospitals,; in West Birginia, I had my first look at coal miners with black lung disease.

I WORKED IN A  POLITICAL CAMPAIGN  where one of the pols spent his days pretending to read the newspaper while staring at my legs…

THEN I WENT ON A ROAD TRIP cross country with two Brits I didn’t know, whose names I found on a bulletin board. They were both named John John, John, and I  drove cross country in a big black buick =–u drive it—and picked up every derelict and druggie, all the way from Miami to San Francisco.

AFTER THAT, I WORKED WITH DISADVANTAGED TEENS IN THE PHILADELPHIA GHETTO…AND FINALLY, I WOUND UP IN HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA.  

That’s where the first sequel, which I’m CALLING PHILADELPHIA STORIES  ENDS.

HARRISBURG

SO, THEN, THE SEQUEL TO THE SEQUEL:  HARRISBURG
IT TURNED OUT THAT THREE OF OUR CLASSMATES, ED ZUCKERMAN, FRED SOLOWEY, AND VINCENT BLOCKER, WERE ALSO IN HARRISBURG, EACH FOR HIS OWN REASONS. WE AND SOME OTHER PEOPLE ENDED UP STARTING A NEWSPAPER THERE, IN CONNECTION TO A MAJOR POLITICAL TRIAL— IT WAS THE TRIAL OF THE HARRISBURG 8., WHICH HAD AN INTERESTING CORNELL CONNECTION. 

HARRISBURG 8 TRIAL
BERRIGAN: You may remember Dan Berrigan the anti war Priest, and poet who was deputy director of  Cornell United religious work. Anyway, while Dan Berrigan was in prison, Nixon’s FBI Director J EDGAR HOOVER ACCUSED DANIEL’s brother  Philip , who was also in prison, of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and blow up underground heating tunnels in Washington DC.  Also accused were  former ILR Professor Eqbal Ahmad, and six others—mostly nuns and priests. I’m not kidding, I’m not kidding.

So, Ed, Fred, Vincent and I started a newspaper called the Harrisburg Independent Press—or—HIP- around the trial of the Harrisburg 8. That was how I became a journalist, the paper was amazing.

And, for the last few years I’ve been working on a book on my experiences at HIP.

A FEW WEEKS AGO, I WAS WORKING ON THE CONCLUSION. And I started wondering what the heck am I doing, why am I time traveling, going back into the past all the time?  

ONE REASON IS PERSONAL : AS WITH Ithaca diaries, I needed to understand on a personal level, just what had gone down, to get things straight in my head, this was such a formative period, in order to figure out what to do next.  

BUT ANOTHER REASON IS HISTORICAL/SOCIETAL.

WHEN I FIRST STARTED WORKING ON THE HARRISBURG BOOK, TRUMP WAS JUST COMING INTO OFFICE, AND I FELT THE COUNTRY WAS DIVIDED, much as it was in the late 60s and early 70s.  I thought it might be interesting to draw some parallels between the present day divisiveness along the lines of  race, poverty, ethnicity, and corruption… and what was going on back then, under the Nixon administration, with race relations, the Vietnam War, dirty tricks and such.

SPIRALS: BROKEN PATTERNS:
 Then I thought about my first book, it’s called Broken patterns, and it’s about our generation of professional women in relation to our own mothers and grandmothers. It describes a spiral pattern in history—a spiral pattern that I think holds true for Individuals as well.

WHAT DO I MEANBY SPIRALS?  HERE I’d LIKE TO PONTIFICATE, A BIT, IF YOU WILL INDULGE ME…

Many of us—myself included—tend to think about progress in a linear way. That is, that to progress, we move forward in a straightforward path toward a goal.  But the older I get, the more I see that life sort of emerges in a series of starts and stops—that we get just so far, in moving toward a goal—maybe we reach it; maybe we get blocked… and then, as a society or as individuals, we tend to pull back to reassess, to reintegrate our own pasts, our country’s past, in order to move forward, once again.  

TODAY A TURNING POINT IN A SPIRAL
I think that now as a society we’re at a turning point in a spiral that’s kind of similar to where we were. 50 years ago. Now, as then, society is divided. Many have moved toward equality but others have been left behind.   As you know, there are issues of race, poverty, war, environment, how government should work, what kind of nation we want to be.  BUT despite all of the disruptions, the divisiveness, the protests,  the violence, I feel heartened that many of us are looking back historically, to understand how we got to this place so that we can regroup to find new ways of doing things.  I know that I’m painting with a rather broad brush—but I believe that==or I HOPE that– retreating a bit to reassess, will allow us move forward as individuals, and as a society, once again. END PONTIFICATION

COMING TOGETHER FOR OUR 51st
 In the same way, coming together for our 50th, or 51st reunion, gives us the chance to look back, to heal, to understand, to figure out where we’re at in order to find new ways to move forward in our own lives. I’m hoping that in our social… er happy hour, we’ll have a chance to catch up, figure out where we’ve been, where we are now, and  what adventures come  next as we enter this new phase in our lives.  TOAST WITH GLASS

One quick reminder—please use chat to catch up/share info or addresses with anyone you want to stay in touch with after the social.  

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Cornell author and professor emeritus James McConkey dies at 99

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Jim McConkey & Anita Harris, Cornell Booksigning, 6/6/2015
Jim McConkey & Anita Harris, Cornell Booksigning, 6/6/2015

It is with great sadness that I share the news that my beloved mentor and freshman writing instructor, the acclaimed writer and professor James McConkey died in his home on Oct. 24, 2019 at the age of 98. He was buried at Greensprings Natural Cemetery on October 28, next to his late wife Gladys and son Cris.  

I had the good fortune to join Jim, his son Larry and Daughter-in Law Diana for dinner in Sturbridge, MA, just a few weeks before his passing. He was in good spirits but seemed tired…but, then, they had just driven 7 hours on their way back from visiting another one of his students in norther Maine!

McConkey was my freshman writing instructor in 1967–I used to go out to his farm to exercise his horses–and he helped me through the Straight Takeover and such. (He told me recently that he sat with Dan Berrigan during the Barton Hall Takeover; also counselled President Perkins–and tried to be a voice of reason throughout all of that). We stayed in touch for some 50 years– He and I held a joint book-signing in the Cornell Store during my 45th reunion…and I am glad I got to seem him just before he passed away. 

Jim, his son Larry and daughter-in-law Diane McConkey were on their way back from visiting another of Jim’s former students on Northern Maine (9 hours from Ithaca?) and invited me to dinner at the Publick House, near Boston, where I live, and where they were spending the night. At 98, he told a few funny stories about his mother, who lived to 100 at least…and I  joked that his social life was better than mine. He was still driving–and told us that he would be driving the ten miles from his farm to lunch with friends several times the next week. He seemed frail–but sounded fine when I called to thank him a few days after that dinner.

Goldwin Smith Professor of English Literature Emeritus at Cornell University until he retired in 1992, McConkey was a beloved teacher and mentor for more than four decades.  He fostered many gifted writers who flourished under his keen and kind tutelage.  His own career as a writer spanned almost 50 years encompassing 15 published books as well as numerous essays in The New Yorker and The American Scholar.  He was a critic, biographer, scholar, editor, short story writer, essayist, and novelist.  

But James McConkey will be best remembered as the creator of a unique form of writing, what he at one point called “autobiographical fiction,” and later “life writing,” a magical, almost mystical weaving of his memories into transcendent truths.  In 1960 he experienced an epiphany that was “the basis for the kind of writer and person I became. It really changed me.”  That moment was precipitated by the sense of desperation he felt at the resumption of nuclear testing by first the Soviet Union and then the United States.  Abandoning conventional third-person narratives, he began searching for intuitive relationships between “intimate experiences, through memory, and personal observation.”  “

Whatever my wish,” he wrote, “I had not escaped fiction; I had simply made myself the central character of a story, finding in my own experiences and dreams a greater authenticity than I could in those of any character I might invent.”  Through the years he built a personal and powerful narrative of his life and of those around him.  It is a legacy within which his voice remains sharp and clear.  What shines through is the man himself:  kind, generous, witty, thoughtful, modest, humane.  An exemplary teacher, he maintained personal and creative relationships with many grateful students until the day he died.

Born in Lakewood, Ohio in 1921, McConkey attended Cleveland College and served as a U.S. Army infantryman during World War II.  Injured during the war, he was discharged in November 1945 and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Western Reserve University (later Case Western Reserve) in 1946 and a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1950. Before coming to Cornell, he taught at Morehead State College in Kentucky, where he founded and directed the Morehead Writers Workshop.  After arriving in Ithaca in 1956, he became instrumentally involved with the new creative writing program and Epoch magazine, as well as the English department at large, where he taught courses in modern fiction and nonfiction.  In 1965, McConkey founded the Cornell Council of the Arts and initiated the popular Mind and Memory course and its related lecture series in 1996, exploring creativity across various disciplines. In the late 1970s, he organized one of the most memorable cultural events in Cornell history, the Chekhov Festival.

McConkey was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship award in 1969, and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award in literature in 1979.  A former student established the McConkey Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Award in 2008.  His collected papers (1948-90) are housed in Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

James McConkey was predeceased by his wife of 68 years, Gladys McConkey, a former research chemist and editor of The Engineering Quarterly at Cornell, who died in 2013.  His second son, Cris McConkey, a passionate advocate for social justice and environmental causes, died in 2015. His nephew Dale Steigerwald, who lived with James, died in 2018.  Survivors include his son Larry McConkey and wife Diana, son Jim McConkey and wife Kristin, grandchildren Katie and Braeden, several nieces, a cousin and countless friends including Mike DeMunn, who lives on the property, and his beloved dogs, Buddy and Bernie.

The Cornell Department of English is planning a memorial service on May 2, 2020.   Contributions in his name can be made to: Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve, PO Box #415, Newfield, NY 14867, or online at www.naturalburial.org.

–Anita M. Harris

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Cornell 1967 Res Club Fire Survivors Seek Info, Redress after 50+ Years

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In a letter to the editor of the Cornell Daily Sun, (January 24, 2019) 26 survivors of the 1967 Res Club fire and family members of those who perished call for the university to openly acknowledge the University’s mishandling of the situation some 52 years ago.


They suggest that such acknowledgement–which does seem to be under way given the leadership of Cornell President Martha Pollack– will decrease the likelihood of another such tragedy occurring, at Cornell or elsewhere, in the future.

The fire, along with two subsequent fires at locations where Phud survivors were living and an investigation that never identified the perpetrator of what was apparently arson, were reviewed in the New York Times on April 13, 2018.

After the article came out, 13 survivors of the fire from the classes of 1967, 1969 and 1970, along with three relatives of one of the deceased students, met with President Pollack. They requested a public apology on behalf of Cornell for the institution’s actions (and lack thereof) before and after the fire.

Their actions, the letter points out, ” included housing students in a dormitory that did not meet fire codes of the day, lacking sprinklers, multiple exits and fire doors.

“There was also a shocking lack of support offered by the University to the fire survivors, their families and the families of the dead, in sharp contrast to the outpouring of support from the Cornell and Ithaca communities.”

In researching Ithaca Diaries, I was told that information about the fire could be found “somewhere in the [University] archives,” which seemed utterly daunting to me.

The group seeks the opening of all the Cornell archives related to the fire, including but going beyond the material supplied to the New York Times. This would include records of the Cornell Police Department, which was involved in the investigation along with the Cayuga Heights Police Department (which had primary responsibility), the Ithaca P.D., the New York State Police and the Tompkins County District Attorney.

In the letter, the group also requested both a permanent physical memorial to be located in a prominent site on campus (such as a “reflection garden”) and “living memorials” in the form of scholarships named for each of those who died to be awarded to students pursuing degrees in the victims’ areas of study.

President Pollack has suggested a lecture series named, each year, for one of those victims, according to the letter.

Here’s a link to the letter: https://cornellsun.com/2019/01/22/letter-to-the-editor-cornell-must-do-more-to-remember-res-club-fire/

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Ithaca Diaries Excerpt: Cornell Res Club Fire–50 years later

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  • On April 13, 2018, the New York Times published an article about an investigation into an event that took place 50 years ago at Cornell…the Res Club Fire… in which eight students and a faculty member died–soon after we got back from Spring break.  I commend amateur sleuth  Bill Fogle for  his efforts to shed light on those terrible events…and hope that, at the very least, a memorial site  will be established at the university. 

Anita Harris at Cornell, photo by Vincent Blockeron those terrible events.

 

 

 

As a Cornell freshman, I attended the memorial service–and wrote a story about it…which is included in my 2016 book, Ithaca Diaries, and presented here.  I’d welcome your comments and remembrances. 
Anita M. Harris

April, 1967

My first day back, April 3, 1967, a grad student is charged with selling $30 worth of LSD.  The next day, the Straight Board of Managers suspends its decision banning the solicitation of draft card burning. On April 5, there’s a picture of a monkey eating a banana on the front page of the Sun.  It is captioned “Students Go Ape over new fad of banana peel smoking.” [i]

That night, eight students (including three freshmen) and a professor die in a horrific fire.

It’s at the Residential Club—a dorm housing mostly students in the new six-year PhD Program. Two boys and a girl who died were freshmen “Phuds”. The others were senior and graduate women and Professor of English John Finch.

The authorities don’t know what caused the fire. They do know that it started in the basement. That there were no sprinklers because the 15-year-old brick structure was supposed to be fireproof.  That most of the damage and deaths were caused by smoke. That some kids made it out by climbing down from second-story windows down ropes made from sheets. And that a lot of kids who couldn’t get out through windows that had horizontal panes you had to crank open, and screens, were found dead.  In bedrooms, the lobby and hallways.

A Phud freshman who escaped from the basement tells the Sun, “It started about 4:10 [in the morning.] I woke up. Heard a lot of noise. Someone was running around. It was John Finch. He yelled, ‘Get out. Get out!’ Then I heard someone yell ‘fire.’” The student turned on his light, woke his roommate. “The lights went out seconds later. We heard no alarm. There were a helluvalot of people screaming like mad, trying to wake people up.” Professor Finch ran out of the building, went back to arouse the occupants, but was trapped and never made it back out.

It’s horrible, terrible to believe. In the Straight, some kids are freaked out; others are playing the jukebox and acting like nothing happened.  In a girls’ dorm, someone calls the fire “stupid and useless.”  Eighty guys who live in the Founders Hall dorm sign a petition protesting the lack of regard for the safety of human lives.  In my dorm, Dickson, women living on the basement level forcibly remove iron bars from the windows of their rooms.  One of them says it took her and another girl 15 minutes to get the bars off four windows. I’m thinking that if there were a fire, they’d roast. Later, a residential advisor persuades them to replace the bars because “someone might try to get in.”

Ithaca Mayor Hunna Johns expresses deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the dead, and requests that all flags in the city be flown at half mast. Some professors cancel classes for the day, and many students skip classes that are held.  A State Senate committee resolves to look into safety provisions at colleges throughout New York State. President Perkins returns from a meeting in Paris. [ii]

On Friday, April 7, they cancel 2 o’clock classes so that everyone can go to the memorial service. I didn’t know any of the people who died and I have never been to the Res Club so this is not registering with me. I feel numb and wonder if I am emotionally cold, when so many people are crying. Still, out of respect, I decide to go.

Later, I write for (Professor James McConkey’s writing class:

 Circus

Large moist snowflakes feel like icy fingers tapping against my face; their coldness leaves a tingling imprint on my skin. I walk, scuffling my shoes against the gray pavement, and I feel the cold mist wrapping itself around my ankles. Water creeps up into my shoes, sneaking through the stitching of the soles and climbing up the absorbent cotton of my stockings.

As I near the chapel, I stop to look at the line of somber umbrellas that sways back and forth, up and down with the wind. One umbrella is improperly dressed for the occasion; it is loudly striped black and white and looks like a circus big top.

The line of mourners moves forward slowly. I link onto its end and feel emptiness behind me. More people join the line, then more; they are like waves slapping against a coastline, one always coming to cover the emptiness of the sand.

We walk with our heads bent. A large-stomached policeman whose shiny orange vinyl raincoat hangs from him like an overturned sand bucket stands and says something to the crowd; to me, he looks like a fireman clown.

Someone says there is no room left in the chapel, and the line dissipates.  I walk up the chapel steps and try to look inside. From a tiptoe position I can glimpse part of a stained glass window; the light arc around it looks pinkish and warm.

The big clowny policeman mounts the chapel stairs and stands, with his feet planted apart, facing me from atop the landing.

“No more room in there,” he says, folding his arms across his chest.

A sad-looking boy with a pale face and drooping cheeks tries to pass by the policeman. The policeman reaches out and grabs the boy’s arm.  The boy looks up and explains quickly, “I think they would have wanted me in there.”

The policeman lets go of the boy and shrugs his huge shoulders. “Well, nothing I can do…I don’t know how you think you’re gonna get through—it’s jammed.” The policeman swings his arms at his sides and rolls his weight from the balls of his feet to his heels as might a dancing bear. The boy turns and walks slowly down the stairs.

I follow the boy into another building to listen to the service over a public address system. Mourners, eyes downcast, sit cross-legged on the floor, staring down at the beige rug. A voice from on high booms forth.

It talks about God.

I pick at the rug.

“God is good, God is kind, God is everlasting…”

I smell the wet wool of my coat and touch it. The fibers are long and as I run my fingers over them they feel like the hair of [my high school boyfriend] Jerry’s arm.

A girl sitting near me is resting her hand on a boy’s knee and I resent her. You have no right to seek happiness, or even to seek sympathy for your sadness, I think. People have died. Be filled with sorrow, but do not try to share it. They died and you live and are glad. So you come and you sit here and some noble voice is telling you that God is good and you are to understand or accept.

God has so willed. God, God, God.  My belief? Death happens. Life happens. When I live, do not tell me it is the will of God and it is good; when I die do not tell me it is the will of God and it is good. When I die, I die.

My foot falls asleep. I knead it, but it feels like a fat dead toad encased in a black cotton stocking. I scrape my finger nail against my instep and the tearing, kneading sensation reminds me of the time I stepped on a branch of rose thorns. I had been forbidden to go barefoot but my mother forgave me for disobeying and helped ease my suffering.

This is pain, I think. You deserve it; you are alive. Learn to love the pain, for you are guilty. You are alive and they are dead. The voice is still speaking of God. A girl plays with a button that reads, “Snoopy plays Rugby.” The girl with her hand on the boy’s knee  bows her head; the boy fondles her neck. My foot tingles. Finally, the organ music begins.

As I walk home, I stop to look into a puddle of water left on the sidewalk. In it is reflected a black tree with long, knobby fingers of branches contrasted against a pale sky. The wind is blowing; ripples distort the image.

The water forms in the shape of an elephant drawn by a child: it has pointed ears and a huge, long trunk. I recall reading in my biology book: Were there no environmental factors limiting population growth, the number of living descendents of two elephants would, after one hundred thousand years, completely fill the visible universe. [iii]

Over the next few months, there are more fires, apparently set, in places the Phuds move into after leaving the Res Club.  In May, a report finds that the university was noncompliant. A senior writes in the Sun that some Phuds have moved into his dorm; that there are six guards for them; that they are afraid all the time; that the Res Club fire was, perhaps, murder.

The investigation runs on for years. There are lawsuits, settlements—but it’s not clear what really happened.  Some people think that one of the Phuds, who was mentally ill, set the fire.  Some believe it was arson. But many years later, Michael Shinagel, a Dean at Harvard, tells me that, in 1967, when he was a junior faculty member at Cornell, John Finch was his office mate—and that the fire was caused, they found, by someone leaving a cigarette on a Naugahyde sofa. “The fumes get in your lungs and you die,” he says.[iv]

I ask the library for information about a final determination; they suggest that I go through President Perkin’s papers, which are in hundreds of boxes somewhere in the archives.

 

[i]  Nb, “Justice Charges 11 with Drug Violations,” Sun, April 4, 1967, 1; Edward Zuckerman, UJB Postpones Cases of 19, Sun, April 5, 1967, 1 Nb “One Drug Charge Dropped, Sun, Monday, 1; Edward Zuckerman, “Hippies Bring Sudden Banana Sales Rise,” Sun, April 3, 1967, 1.

[ii] Nb, “Univ. Mourns Tragic Debacle,”, Extra edition, Ibid.,  Wednesday, April 5, 1967, 1, 2; Joseph K. Kies, “The Titanic: Res. Club Called Safest Building in the County,”  Ibid., Thursday, April 6, 1967, 3;  “Committee to Probe College Fire Safety,”  Ibid.,  1.

[iii] Anita M. Harris, “Circus: After the Res Club Fire,” unpublished story, Spring 1967.

[iv] Krisha Ramanuja, “Remembering a 40-year-old tragedy when eight students and a professor died in off-campus fire,” Cornell Chronicle, April 4, 2007. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2007/04/remembering-campus-fire-killed-nine-1967 ; Conversation with Michael Shinagel, April 2007.

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Cornell’s Steve Ludsin: “The Graduate” and the end of youthful optimism

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Last week,  the New York Times ran an opinion piece entitled “Why the Graduate is a Vietnam Movie. ”

In the piece, author Beverly Gray explains that  “in June 1967, while the film was still in production, President Lyndon Johnson signed a revamped Military Selective Service Act, signaling that within the year deferments for most graduate students would come to an end,” making them  “draft fodder. ”

“On its surface, ”  Gray writes,  “The Graduate  seemed to be an escapist film about love, sex and the potential for happily-ever-after.
“Its story, of how a new college graduate is seduced by the wife of his father’s partner and then runs off with …her pretty daughter, makes no claim to profundity. Still, it spoke loudly to a demographic that found itself embroiled in a war mandated by a previous generation.”

Many found the film a  ” perfect illustration of a young man struggling to cope with a social landscape over which he had no control…”  Clergymen, politicians,  pundits and military brass found it “subversive.”  Soldiers “embraced it as a comic howl against a status quo they were risking their lives to preserve.”

For my  classmate Steve  Ludsin (ILR 1970) of East Hampton,  New York, who saw the film as a Cornell undergrad, the film  provided  a new perspective on the era–opening his  eyes to the complacency of his upbringing and to the contrast of values once he entered college.

As he writes:

I was traveling on a winter break in Florida with upperclassmen and fraternity brothers from Cornell when I saw the film.

There were rumblings on campus about Vietnam along with our fears about the war and when we might be drafted. Nevertheless I did not perceive the movie to be about Vietnam. It was about being something other than the generation that raised us.

We didn’t know what that other was but we knew we were searching. Just hearing the soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel still brings deep nostalgic feelings.

Perhaps the movie was the end of youthful optimism that was part of the baby boomer outlook.

We managed to get front row seats at the Supremes’ nightclub act during that trip.The picture of our smiles and clean cut Ivy League look is a time piece. Vietnam was on our minds but there was something bigger than that: an admission that our lives were not going to conform to the previous script. We didn’t know what the plot was but we knew we were going to Scarborough Fair. 

I also saw the film when it first came out and understood  it as a  commentary on a shallow,  materialistic society….but would never have imagined that people would still be talking about it 50 years later!

–Anita M. Harris
Review

Ithaca Diaries Review: A very fine, humorous account of Cornell U in the 1960s

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PHoto, cornell University
Cornell University

This just in from Bill Fogle,Jr,  Cornell College of Engineering, 1970!

Ms. Harris has written a very fine and humorous account of Cornell University in the late nineteen-sixties, when the militant radicals, led by the Students for a Democratic Society, were fighting a two-front campaign: subverting the Kennedy-Johnson war in Southeast Asia and supporting black demands for an autonomous College of Afro-American Studies. These were the days when the inmates were most assuredly running the asylum.

I confess that I was an outsider looking in at this mayhem. It is true that both Ms. Harris and I arrived at Cornell in September 1966 as freshmen: she in the humanities wing of the College of Arts and Sciences (home of the impassioned culture-bomb throwers), and I in the College of Engineering (home of the stolid technologists). The headline events of those days ―lethal dormitory fires, frequent anti-war rallies and black takeovers of campus buildings― meant little to me then, as I was struggling with thermodynamics, fraternity pledging and NROTC duties that would lead to wartime service in the U.S. Marine Corps. But Ms. Harris was in the middle of this campus uproar and in a good position to report the emotional confusion of a surging political movement that did much to wreck interracial civility, academic freedom for the faculty, and the pre-war social order. So she was the touchy-feely liberal and I was the stone-hearted conservative. During our four years above Cayuga’s Waters we never met, and I wager it would have been a cat and dog moment if we had.

The turmoil on campus was driven by two distinct forces. The first was military conscription that could lead male students to unpleasantness and death in a war that was recognized as strategically unprofitable and politically unnecessary. The second cause was left-wing enthusiasm for University mission creep and social engineering; Cornell’s infamous Committee on Special Educational Projects (COSEP) was a naïve program designed to bring disadvantaged minorities to Ithaca for an educational boost into the American middle class. Alas, instead of recruiting appreciative young strivers with a serious appetite for learning, the Cornell admissions process opened the door to many radicalized, militant blacks with bad manners, a yen for tearing down the University, vague plans for a Uganda-like replacement, and demands that the Cornell trustees foot the bill. SDS embraced this agenda as the perfect complement to its anti-war campaign. But this I write with a half-century of hindsight.

Ms. Harris, referring to her diaries, provides an excellent description of how confusing it was for one situated at the epicenter of these swirling conflicts. Those outside the microcosm of Cornell were less confused and more alarmed. The New York Times reported extensively on the commotion in Ithaca; the image-conscious University administrators tried and failed to remove Times reporter Homer Bigart when his stories revealed the extent of the racial, ideological and philosophical conflict underway. Nationally syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported in May 1969 that something was seriously amiss.

” Even more bizarre was an incident two months later when the Afro-American Society (AAS) demanded $2,000 from the administration to buy bongo drums to celebrate Malcolm X Day. Within two days, the administration scraped together $1,700 and dispatched two black student leaders down to New York City in the university plane to purchase the drums.

“But pressed by a few faculty members, the administration did reluctantly bring charges against six of the more flagrant December demonstrators. Consequently once the blacks won their demand for an autonomous black studies program early this year, radicals stepped up direct action around a general theme of amnesty for the six demonstrators.

To the accompaniment of the University-purchased bongo drums, [University president] Perkins on Feb. 28 was physically pulled down from a speaker’s platform at a conference on South Africa. A few days later, job recruiters from the Chase Manhattan Bank were physically assaulted. In mid-March, three white students were beaten at night on campus — one to the point of death; two of the victims identified their assailants as Negroes while the third was in no condition to identify anybody. ”

By then the University administration was thoroughly intimidated and desperate to avoid confrontation. The faculty split on questions of disciplining the miscreants. The blacks saw their chance: they cleverly set fire to a cross outside a black women’s dormitory, occupied the Willard Straight Hall student union in response to this staged provocation, then armed themselves with an assortment of firearms and issued their demands. The University caved. A photograph of well-armed blacks marching out of the occupied building ran in media worldwide. Several professors quit in disgust with a cowardly administration, and one died, a suicide.

The delight of this book is the picture of undergraduate life that Ms. Harris provides. The problems of finding congenial roommates, tolerable housing, a decent diet and exercise will always be with us. The associations that we make with students and faculty last a lifetime, and for many of us expand. Cornell is an outstanding university because, despite the rain, the winter and the relative isolation, it is simply a great place. We learn a little while there, and a lot after ―turning over old memories for another look, again and again.
William Fogle, Jr. ‘70

Mesa,  AZ

Events, News, Review, Video

Ithaca Diaries Fall update: reviews, event, video

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Pleased to report that Ithaca Diaries is alive and well!

Book Cover 6x9 9-13-14 - CopyOver the summer,  it got some great reviews!

  • Historian Carol Kammen  wrote in the Ithaca Journal, “honest, funny, naïve and wise, and very much of the era. Her diary is about boys, and it is an account of her coming awake politically, socially and sexually….” 
  • Kammen revu
  • Editor Jim Chaisson  wrote in the Ithaca Times  “When you get a first-person account that chronicles the quotidian details of a woman’s daily life, and she juxtaposes them abruptly within the narrative against the headlines of the day—both on and off campus—you experience how innocent these young people were compared to the social changes that were being wrought by drugs, social movements like feminism and black liberation and global politics .”    For the record, I did work summers. My parents did not send me to the shrink until sophomore year.
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  • The Glen Haven Historical Society held a discussion of Ithaca Diaries in Skaneateles, NY,  not far from Ithaca; Organizers Marilyn Reiner Levine and Lauren R. Jastermski turned out to have gone to my high school, tho we had not met. Friends Joyce Carey and Scott Drahos reported a lively discussion.
  • The long-awaited video of my April reading for the Cornell Club of Boston is now..posted in segments on You Tube . Let me know if you can spot my wardrobe malfunction. Or, better yet, don’t.
  • Several people I don’t even know called me to talk to me about Ithaca Diaries and how much it meant to them–which I much appreciated.
  • Great if you’d buy a copy on Amazon or Kindle–if you haven’talready– or ask your library to do so. Positive reviews welcome.

And–please follow me on Twitter. Evidently, the only way to get followers is to HAVE followers! @anharris.

Again, thanks to my kickstarter supporters,  interns, and the many others who  helped bring Ithaca Diaries to life.

Comments welcome!
Anita

Anita M. Harris is the author of Ithaca Diaries, a coming-of-age memoir about college in the 1960s. It’s available on Amazon or Kindle as is a new edition of her first book, Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity.

Events

Glen Haven, NY, Historical Society Hosts Ithaca Diaries Discussion

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Glenhaven16The Glen Haven Historical Society (GHHS) held a discussion of Anita HARRIS’ new book, Ithaca Diaries, in Homer, NY, on August 19. Organizers Marilyn REINER Levine, ’68, and Lauren REINER Jastremski, ’64, are Milne School graduates and sisters who realized that Anita, ’66, and her sister, Laura HARRIS Hirsch, ’68, also went to Milne when they (the Reiner sisters) started reading the book.

The Milne School, in Albany, New York, founded in 1845, was a campus laboratory school of what is now State University of New York at Albany until Milne closed in 1977). 

Lauren is secretary of the Glen Haven Historical Society. Diane BAKKE Tennant, ’64, vice president and trustees’ chair of the GHHS, also helped organize the event.

Joyce CAREY Methelis, ’66, attended; she reports a lively conversation that brought back vivid memories of college in the late 1960s–which is what Ithaca Diaries is about. More information and links to interviews, reviews, and video relating to the book are available at https://ithacadiaries.com.

–Anita M. Harris

News, Video

Cornell video of Straight Takeover, 1969, now online

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wstakeover_35 (1)After working on Ithaca Diaries for eight years, I was honored to be interviewed on NPR’s Here and Now  earlier this month. I was totally impressed that their diligent researchers  discovered that the Cornell University Rare Books Library recently compiled video of  the  takeover of Willard Straight Hall by more than 100 black students,  on parents’ weekend,  in April, 1969.

As Ithaca Diaries readers know, the Straight takeover was a central event in my life and in the university’s  transition from ivory tower to the diverse and forwarding-looking institution it is today.

For me, having been front and center when the  students emerged with those rifles, seeing the silent footage felt eerie.Here’s a link to the video–which, , does need some editing as the various cuts seem to repeat.  I’d love to know your thoughts. 

—Anita
Anita M. Harris is the author of Ithaca Diaries, a nonfiction coming-of-age memoir/social history of college in the late 1960s. The book is available from Amazon, Kindle, and the Cornell Store. 

Events, News

Cornell Reunion 2015 Highlights & Photos

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Had a fine time at Cornell Reunion in early June…Highlights (for me) included:

Book signing with James McConkey, my freshman writing teacher,  who required us to keep diaries  and has been a  friend and mentor ever since.

Jim McConkey & Anita Harris, Cornell Booksigning, 6/6/2015
Jim McConkey & Anita Harris, Cornell Booksigning, 6/6/2015

H earing  Bob Langer, world renowned MIT bioengineer/multi-companyfounder (below)

Photo, Bob Langer, Cornell Reunion 2015
Bob Langer, Cornell Reunion 2015 c. Mark Hoffman

and Ed Zuckerman, show runner for “Law and Order Special Victims Unit”  speak about their careers.

Ed Zuckerman, Cornell Reunion 2015
Ed Zuckerman, Cornell Reunion 2015

Both  friends of mine at Cornell, they   are IN Ithaca Diaries–and, remarkably, still speaking to me….tho I don’t think Bob has read it, yet).

Here’s a photo of outgoing president David Skorton (front) , who joined our class for dinner (he graduated in1970 from Northwestern; worked his way through as a jazz flutist before going to medical school and becoming a cardiologist; he’s departing Cornell for the Smithsonian.

Photo of Cornell President David Skorton
Cornell Prez David Skorton, Class of 1970 Dinner, Reunion 2015

Also enjoyed visiting the beer..er…music tents with Ed Z and Mark Hoffman

Beer tent, Cornell reunion 2015
Cornell Reunion tent 2015 c. Mark Hoffman

and love this photo of Mark and the Cornell Bear.

Mark Hoffman w Cornell Bear, Cornell 1970 Reunion 2015
Mark Hoffman w Cornell Bear, Cornell 1970 Reunion 2015

Many thanks to reunion organizers Bill and Gail Wallace

Class reunion organizers Bill and Gail Wallace Cornell 2015
Class reunion organizers Bill and Gail Wallace
Cornell 2015

(with hopes someone has fixed the elevators by now).

Carl Becker House Cornell Reunion 2015
Carl Becker House Cornell Reunion 2015

Also thanks to Mark Hoffman for sharing his photos, which are copyrighted.

BTW–I hope you’ll  follow me on twitter..Evidently, you need followers to get followers!

–Anita Harris
Anita M. Harris is the author of Ithaca DIaries, a memoir/social history of Cornell University, 1966-1970.  It’s available from Amazon, Kindle and the Cornell Store.