Photos from 23 May 2008 Showing of Die Welle 

I had put most (maybe all) of these on the ning site for people signing up for our reunion, but some who are not "eligible" for that site might like to see these as well.

Also If you are from the Cubberley Class of 1969, we are planning a reunion - please register at http://cubberley69.ning.com. It will be fun to reconnect even if you can't attend.

These were from the showing of "Die Welle" that (I think) Ron Jones set up to benefit a drama program. Hal Sampson and I went to San Francisco to the Jewish Community Center to see the film, and reacquainted with our classmate Phil Neel, and we had a chance to visit a bit with Ron Jones as well. Phil also showed a demo reel from his upcoming documentary on "The Third Wave" as well.

Hal and I both took photos for "The Catamount" in the late 60s. It was kind of surreal running around with cameras with Hal again - we haven't done that since 1969, although we've kept in touch over the years.

Hal and I were also trying to scout out some possible sites for our 40th reunion next year, and we visited the Cubberley campus as well. We visited Mitchell Park and Cubberley.

In many ways Cubberley still looks the same, even though it has not been a high school for many years. Our old darkroom (E2) and the photo classroom (E3) adjacent is now a studio for a photographer - too bad he wasn't around.

Since we were going up to see "Die Welle", we went and found Mr. Jones old classroom and "Room H1" where the famous Rally occurred (although this story has grown in the telling thanks to Norman Lear and others). Fortunately there was a custodian cleaning in H1, so we got to go in and take a few shots.

Enjoy the photos...

Room H1 - site of Third Wave Rally

When we were in Cubberley, instead of the purple seats on the tiers, they had those dorky little lecture desks with a little wraparound writing panel on them. Everyone had to take Drivers Ed in H1, and Mr. Hurley was the teacher.


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Hal at the door of Room H1




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View of the Courtyard and Cafetorium (multipurpose room)


This was where we ate lunch - had pep rallys, etc. Note that the "C" on the bricks was freshly painted - it was pretty faded at our 2004 (35th) reunion.
There was a snackbar under the overhang to the right, and a cafeteria with long tables inside the building. The tables were put away and seats set up for drama, etc. In 1969, the Cubberley Theatre had not yet been built (and Dave Buck, the drama teacher was still alive). The theatre was Dave's dream, and it finally came to pass.


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The old "Totem" in the Courtyard where everyone ate lunch, had rallys, etc.




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Fall 1967 - Pep Rally (totem in background) at Cubberley




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Ron Jones and friend with guide dog at Jewish Community Center in San Francisco prior to showing of "Die Welle"




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Phil Neel setting up one of 3 HD video cameras used to film Q&A session




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Q&A session following showing of "Die Welle"


...from the video camera position.
Left to right - Ron Jones, Phil Neel, Moderator (the person doing moderation got changed at the last moment, and I didn't catch her name unfortunately


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July 4, 2008 

A few things Cubberley-related have come to my attention, so I thought I would at least make a few comments and provide some links.

The Cubberley class of 68 is about to have their 40th reunion in August (http://www.cubberley68.com/).

My class (69) also has a site to start planning the reunion (and a pretty good online reunion is starting to happen as well) at http://cubberley69.ning.com .

Yet another film based on Ron Jones and "The Third Wave" released in Germany - it's called "Die Welle". You can find the trailer on youtube (or at http://www.welle.info/).

It's not showing in general release in the US< but is very big in Europe. When a special showing came about in May, Hal Sampson and I went to SF to see it. It was held at the Jewish Community Center as a special benefit for a drama program. I believe that Ron Jones had been instrumental in setting up the benefit.

Phil Neel (Cubberley 69) and his TV crew were there to record the question-and-answer session following the film. Phil also showed a demo reel for his upcoming documentary on "The Third Wave". It was fun to reacquaint with Phil and to see Ron again. Phil even had an extra camcorder he let me run for the Q&A. Running around with Hal and a camera was some sort of Deja Vu.

It was fun to see Alyssa Hess (Reit) in the demo reel. I remember Alyssa from many of my classes, and that she played the harp. I used to look forward to assemblies when she played the harp - I've always loved that sound since I first heard it in Swan Lake in kindergarten. Alyssa has at least one album out where she is featured, plus several MP3s available on Amazon.

Earlier the same day Hal and I ran around Palo Alto to Mitchell Park and Cubberley to visit old haunts, and we took a few snaps of the original locations where the Third Wave took place - room C3 (Ron Jones' classroom in 1967) and H1 (the lecture hall where the rally was held - remember Drivers Ed' with Mr. Hurley?).





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1968/1969 is finished! 

I finished scanning all of the Catamounts I have for 1968 and 1969. Rereading them was an interesting saga that I hope some of you enjoy as well. I'm afraid I got into a hurry and didn't catalog every detail as well as I should have. If there were photos, I tried to put a note on the catalog page with the person's name - also if there was a story *about* someone. I couldn't list all the members of large groups, though. I hope the search engines can pick those up in the PDFs.


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1968/1969 

I've almost got 1968/1969 (my Senior year) completed. My brother sent me his old Catamounts as well, which go through 70/71, although not complete.

Unfortunately somewhere in updating my hardware and software, for a while, I lost the ability to create searchable PDFS with the original fonts from the Catamount. The newer OCR software installed with a newer scanner would try to match the fonts to ones on my computer and the Catamount scans were coming out with jumbled fonts intertwined looking something like ransom notes(!) and nothing like the original, except for general spacing, graphics, etc. The headlines were either interpreted as graphics or substituted into some crazy font.

Anyway, I took several days, (had to un-install IE 7 for obscure reasons involving certain older HP-provided software which (after reading others experiences on various forums) I found would only install properly with IE6! ) and finally got the old software back to where it's working. As soon as I get done checking the content, I'll release the school year 68/69.

I've been experimenting with doing a Catamount-page-per-pdf on some of the 1968/1969 stuff instead of a Catamount-edition-at-a-time. I think for usability (once the file is loaded) the edition-at-a-time is nicer, but it's very difficult to scan that way, and also very slow to download the whole edition of you only want to see a single page.

I've heard through my blog from Gary Berdon this week, and we've had a chance to reminisce a bit about things and people we remember. It also seems like I'm getting a couple of hits per week on my profile at classmates.

I also had a "google trap" go off this week to find out that someone has made yet *another* movie about the Third Wave - this time in German. A new film called "Die Welle" premiered at Sundance film festival this month, and apparently Ron Jones himself went to the premier. There's video (not very good) of Ron speaking at Sundance on aol video. The film's trailer/teaser (in German - and worth watching) are at www.welle.info .

Anyway, the 1968/69 Catamounts have a lot of space regarding Ron Jones and his failure to achieve tenure, his call for a hearing, and his subsequent resignation.

There's also an interview with Ron Jones in a later Catamount (after I graduated, but it's in my brother's material - Vol 14, NO. 10, front page by Dave Suliteanu) where one of the reporters went to Jones' new workplace (in March 1970) where he further discusses his retrospective. In that interview, he gives the (fortunately incorrect, yet ominouos) expectation that conditions in society would be such that "My wife and I don't expect to be alive five or ten years from now." - and "Violence is one means of communication, a very justifiable means, but I can't operate in that way yet; maybe tomorrow I will."

Actually, since there's likely to be interest in this with this film coming out, so I think I'll go ahead and scan that one edition for now and will try to pick up the rest of the 69/70 stuff as I get time to do them. So for the near future, there will be one edition of 69/70. I've scanned everything I have (plus one of my brothers) for 68/69, which was my senior year.

Hopefully the classes of 67 and 68 have enjoyed reviewing these old papers prior to their 40th reunions. Mine will be next year, so hopefully my class will enjoy these as well.





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1967/68 

I've heard from both Rick Schloss [67] and Warren Van Camp [68] that both of these classes are having their 40th reunions next year, and would like me to try to get the rest of the Catamounts from 67 and 68 years at least up on the website, so I got a good start at least, putting two up yesterday... the Thanksgiving edition Volume 12, No.5, and the pre-christmas-dance Volume 12 No. 6. If any former Cougars have old Catamounts that fall "in the cracks" between the issues I have, and would like to scan them and send them to me, I'll post them. I'm thinking on the 67/68, that I may go ahead and update the page for that school year showing the ones I have and the ones missing, so people can look through old boxes and hopefully find some of the additional ones. [The above was corrected on 11;22;007 - Thanks to Warren for a few corrections about who was which year and that both reunions are next year!]

Co-incidental this morning I got an email from Tobias Deml, a fellow in Austria [thought I fixed this earlier!] researching the "Third Wave", and I was able to point him to the article about Ron Jones in Volume 12 No. 6. Of course there's a lot of interesting stuff about the "firing" or "resignation" of Jones in the 68/69 school year which also had principal Dave Stanard as a casualty, but which also allowed Wim Roberson to come in as a very humble and dedicated interim principal to get us through our last weeks at Cubberley. [Tobias wanted the principals' names, which brought all this to mind].

This Thanksgiving edition, I remember quite well. As photographers, we were "supposed" to come up with *something* special and big for the cover of the Catamount, but none of us "upcoming" photographers came up with anything that pleased the Catamount Editors, hence they reprinted a great Scott LeGear photo of a turkey on the front cover with the headline "Cubberley's Grand Old Gobbler". I remember us getting chewed out for not coming up with anything new. Actually, I'm kind of glad we didn't - because Scott was (and is) a very talented photographer, and now I've still got a copy of the turkey picture.

Bob Warford's column (Bob's also emailed me - hi Bob!) mentions something that reminded me of a photo in my files - Bob wrote in this column "Bug the bug... As you've probably heard, a small wreck of a car with the minimum of work put into it won the "Decorated Car" bit for the Paly Game. Cub never ceases to amaze me. How eleven responsible people could pick this car over all the others because it had a sign that read "Bug Paly" is appalling. A lot of hard work went into a lot of cars and it was all wasted because somebody was "Cute". (Besides I lost)".

So now I'll have to go try to find that photo of the bug with the "Bug Paly" sign on it.

The December 8 edition announces the "Fritz Rabyne Memorial Christmas Dance" (that's the one where Stevie Nicks performed as part of that band in pre Fleetwood Mac days - I've gone back and listened to some old Fleetwood Mac stuff - those people were/are very talented! Also seen some of Stevie on Soundstage. Great stuff!

The December 8 edition also describes Ron Jones doing more experiments where he says he's a "regional head of the Student's Democratic Society," [I think there's supposed to be a "for" in there]... and also in the National Guard, which he said had been "infiltrated" by people including himself, in order to have a huge Christmas Day demonstration in Washington. Jones was quoted as saying "In 1964, some people got together and formed the SDS. We got short hair cuts, joined the National Guard, and got jobs as teachers. At Cubberley, there are three other 'undercover' teachers besides myself." I remember our Journalism teacher at the time telling us she wasn't sure if Jones was serious or not, but that we should keep an eye on things in case there was s story or a photo to be taken. There's a rather odd photo of Jones, arms folded, pulled back from his desk looking (I think) perplexed and perhaps defiant.

Now I've got to go find that car picture... Aha! found it! . Hmm... did that evolve into a PT cruiser?
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