Study Abroad

“Do not follow where the path my led.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m so happy that granddaughter Alissa is a world traveler and that younger sisters Miranda and Tori are following in her footsteps, pushing their limits and venturing beyond their comfort zone.  I didn’t really get the travel bug until my mid-40s, when I began attending international oral history conferences, including several with Toni, one to Rio with Phil, and others such as Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, by myself; the memories remain vivid. Working in GVSU’s study abroad program, Alissa, in addition to trips to Europe, has journeyed to such interesting locales as Istanbul, Turkey, the Dominican Republic, and Tanzania.

GVSU students in Haiti

I learned from Alissa’s Grand Valley State (GVSU) Master’s project, entitled “Lakers Abroad Program: Increasing Diversity in Study Abroad Programs,” that at present, approximately 73 percent of study abroad students are Caucasian and over 65 percent are female.  Barriers to attracting underrepresented groups include what experts in the field have labeled the “Five F’s,” family, faculty, finances, fear, and friends.  Also, there is a misconception among some first-generation college students that overseas experience is frivolous even though statistics demonstrate that participants tend to have higher GPAs, graduate sooner, and become more employable, with higher starting salaries than their peers. Alissa mentioned insights gained from examining successful grant-funded programs at Purdue, Jackson State, and the University of Texas at Austin that depended for their success on what Alissa labeled “campus stakeholders,” including both faculty and administrators.  She recommended that participants keep blogs or journals to inform loved ones of their experiences.  Such a requirement, Alissa added: “also served as an excellent recruiting tool for the next cohort of students.”  In the appendix was a Lakers Abroad poster representing a proposal to offer $5,000 scholarships for a four-week program worth 6 credits to study in Mexico, China, Brazil, Ghana or Spain. Visiting Ghana is at the top of Alissa’s to-do list.

 Jack Weinberg at 2000 opening of FSM Cafe in Berkeley

Ron Cohen’s Journal of American History review of Holly V. Scott’s “Younger Than That Now: The Politics of Age in the 1960s” begins with this famous quote by our mutual friend and Cohen’s Miller neighbor Jack Weinberg: “We have a saying in the movement that you can’t trust anybody over 30.”  In November of 1964, at which time he was a leader of the University of California, Berkeley Free Speech Movement (FSM), Weinberg was responding to a San Francisco Chronicle journalist’s question about whether the FSM was influenced by the Communist Party.  Ron quotes Holly Scott as explaining: “The fact that most people did not know the context and yet it still caught on, both on the New Left and the mainstream press, indicates feeing of intergenerational tensions.”  Holly’s title is from a refrain - Ah, but I was so much older then/I'm younger than that now” - in Bob Dylan’s 1964 song “My Back Pages.” Some took it to mean that Dylan had become disillusioned with earlier folk protest anthems and was signaling an intention to go in a new direction, as, in fact, youth protest would soon accelerate with the rise of the antiwar movement.  Dylan didn’t perform “My Back Pages” live until 1968, a year after it was a hit for the Byrds.

A grad student from Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, Stephenson Strobel, visited the Archives researching the Gary Experiment (GX) in Income Maintenance Project, supported by a huge, $15 million federal grant awarded to the university in the early 1970s.  In fact, according to Herman Feldman, the GX budget exceeded that for the entire campus. The goal was to discover whether direct money grants to the poor might be more effective than traditional welfare services. I told Stephenson that my friend Dick Hagelberg, coincidentally a Cornell grad, had worked on Income Maintenance in the early 1970s, as did sociologist Bob Lovely, whom I interviewed for “Educating the Calumet Region: A History of Indiana University Northwest” (Steel Shavings, volume 35, 2004).  Lovely recalled::

  There were projects in several other places, with different racial samples.  One thing being studied was childcare expenses.  Various families got different amounts of money; then we studied how much they spent on childcare.

  I started in quarters dubbed the portables.  Talk about a horrible building.  The floors creaked, and it was stifling in summer.  I was in charge of looking over the survey instruments and seeing if there was any missing data from the interviews.  Social services coordinator Priscilla Crawford wore very long skirts, lots of make-up, and was flirtatious in an innocent way.  One time she told two of us to come to the conference room immediately.  We ran over, and she played a Leon Russell song for us.  Then she said, “Isn’t that the most beautiful song you ever heard?”

  Dean for Administration Herman Feldman was wise and steady as a rock.  He always gave me good advice.  He was a friend of project director John Maiolo, another consummate wheeler-dealer, and very influential on campus. John worked all the angles.  He expected to be in control and didn’t want upstarts to intrude on his turf.  He was a snappy dresser who favored golf-type outfits.  Perhaps because Maiolo and Feldman were close, there was talk of moving Sociology near Psychology and consolidating the two departments, but nothing came of it.

Weekend sports highlights included IU’s overtime win in the annual Crosstown Classic over number 9 ranked Notre Dame, thanks to 34 points from Juwan Morgan.  The Hoosiers trailed the entire game until the final 8 seconds.  The Fighting Irish star Bonzie Colson almost made a bucket from half court at the buzzer; the ball appeared to be halfway in before circling the rim and falling out. On Sunday, the Patriots-Steelers game was over on time for me to see former Bear Robbie Gould kick a sixth field goal to enable the 49ers to upset Tennessee.  Because of that outcome, Phil and I finished first and second in the weekly CBS pool.

“Certain Woman” (2016) is set in desolate Livingston, Montana, in winter, and the theme is loneliness and needs not met – by lover, husband, friend, and teacher. The film stars Laura Dern as an attorney, Lily Gladstone as a ranch hand, Kristen Stewart (who played Joan Jett in The Runaways and Bela Swan in the Twilight Saga) as a young lawyer, and Michelle Williams as a strong-willed woman with an asshole husband and spoiled brat daughter. As AP critic Lindsey Bahr wrote, “It plays out like a slow-burning folk song you could sit with for hours.”  I was sorry when it ended and watched it a second time. Gladstone as Jamie, the tender of horses, has an almost angelic aura. She reminded me of free-spirited IUN grad Amanda Marie, a visitor use assistant at Joshua Tree National Park.

above, Lily Gladstone in "Certain Women"; below, Amanda Marie

At one point while reading movie subtitles, my eyes got blurry and remained so after I went upstairs and doused them with cold water.  Toni called Dave, who looked up the symptoms on the Internet.  They asked if I felt dizzy or had balance issues, signs of an impending stoke. Fortunately, the answer to both was no.  At that point, the blurriness ceased.  Whew!  Two close friends, Chuck Logan and Marla Gee, are struggling with serious health issues, and I was not ready to join them.  I met Chuck Logan, married to classmate Gaard Murphy, at my 1980 high school reunion.  We bonded immediately and I sat with them the rest of the evening.  Learning he loved the Grateful Dead, I sent him a concert poster and got a present in return.  We kept in touch, and nine years ago I visited him during a trip west. He showed me the Dead poster on his garage wall, and I admired his sports car and motorcycle.  Ever since, we’ve talked on the phone every couple weeks. He loved auto racing, golf, and house-sitting for a month each year on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.  I’d been aware of his health problems but sometimes am in denial about them.