My Personal Blog

More Catamounts

Me — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:55:07 GMT

Thanks to Mark Hancock, I've gotten a few additional Catamounts up on the website. Both of these were from 1967, and both were numbered "Volume 11 No. 15"! One was a "special election edition" dated May 1, 1967, and the second was a regular edition dated "May 15, 1967".

Mark's quite a scholar on the events of our high school and kept lots of notes and files. I just had a little pile of Catamounts, mostly ones with photos I took, which have lived in various piles and boxes since I graduated almost 40 years ago.

It's funny, there was apparently a gap with No. 11, and then two No. 15s. Maybe the two "15s" was to correct for the missing "11"... not sure. We probably will never know (or care).

Mark's also sent me one other from a later school year. I'll try to get to it soon. Thanks, Mark!

First Time I Heard Stereo At Dr. Monroe's House

Me — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:02:36 GMT

I told my wife this story the other day, and it's kind of fun.

When I was about 8 or 9 (late 50s), I heard "stereo" for the first time.

We were visiting Dr. Jerry (Gerry? / Gerald?) Monroe in Dallas. He was a bigwig in R&D at Chance Vought, I think my dad worked with or for him. Anyway, my Dad had told me that he had this great hifi that had two speakers and two channels ("one for each ear, sort of") that I really should hear.

I remember he had two speaker enclosures with arrays of small speakers, all the same size... I believe they were about 5-inch round speakers, and that they had blue cones - and I think gold middles. I think they were in 5x4 arrays on each side or something like that. I'd never seen anything like that, and they looked pretty formidable. I believe he had built the enclosures himself.

He had his turntable, amps, and controls near the back of the room on the left hand side as you came in. The speakers were at the far end of the room. I was told to go sit in the exact middle between the speakers, and they put on some classical piece. My first impression was that the sound was not coming from the speakers at all, but in front of me... but I walked around the room to convince myself the speakers were actually delivering the sound. Someone told me that I could hear where the instruments in the orchestra were if I listened carefully, and gradually I started to pick them out a little bit.

The sound was wonderful, but the funny part of the story was the next part.

First I have to back up to when I was a lot younger and had my own little tabletop phonograph with my "kiddie" 78RPM records ("Winnie the Pooh", and the like). I had discovered that I could hear the records (not very well) if I used my fingernail while the turntable was spinning. So there's a physical groove, and the sound is "etched" in the groove. I think by this time in my life, I had seen sound represented on an oscilloscope, so I had some idea about frequencies and such.

Also, a few years prior, my grandmother had bought us a non-stereo "hifi" that sounded *so* much better than my tabletop phonograph, that I understood a little about sound quality. I remember hearing "stuff" in the nutcracker when we first got the "hifi" that I had never heard before, and listening to it over-and-over. (These were 33 1/3 RPM records, of course).

Well, anyway, at Dr. Monroe's, there were obviously two sets of speakers, and obviously "different stuff" was coming out of each side... so I figured the turntable would be somehow significantly different - there should be either two records, or two needles, or two somethings. (going back to my fingernail analogy). When I looked at the turntable, I saw only one record, one needle... so I was feeling a bit confused.

So I asked Dr. Monroe the question (more or less)... how can you have only one needle putting out different parts of the music into each speaker?" I may have asked something like "Don't you need two needles?". I remember the answer... first of all, he got kind of a startled look on his face (I was only 8 or 9)... and he took a while to answer. I think he may have asked my dad "How am I going to explain this?" But he gave it a go... He said something along the lines of "Well... this isn't exactly how it works, but it's close." (I thought it was cool that he set it up like this.) "Imagine that the groove has bumps at the bottom for one side of the music, and bumps along the side for the other part of the music. So when the needle moves up and down, that causes the pickup to send the signal for one channel, and when it moves from side-to-side, that is the signal for the other channel." I think he drew a picture of the cross section of the groove as he was explaining all this. I guess it's lucky they weren't doing time division multiplexing or anything like that! Analog was so intuitive.

I think the actual encoding of the two channels are offset by 90 degrees, but is on a 45 degree slant or something of the sort, with two magnetic pickups, but I've never been curious enough to dig out that level of details... at age over 50 now, I'm still pretty satisfied with Dr. Monroe's "general idea". As long as I can hook up the 4 wires and have it sound OK, I'm happy.

I built my first stereo (sort of) with a turntable I got a Zacks in Palo Alto. I installed it into a monster Zenith console radio I had (which had previously had a 78RPM-only turntable - in retrospect, that was probably a bad idea - the old turntable would probably have antique value today). I put a coax wire with an RCA plug on it on one side and ran it to an old blond (B&W of course!) Silvertone TV set I had. On this TV you could plug in a phonograph signal and turn a slide switch on the back of the TV chassis and - instant amplifier for the left channel. (When you turned the switch, I think it turned the picture off. I don't know how many consumers ever actually used this feature - today it strikes me as kind of odd that it was there at all, but perhaps it helped repair people isolate problems with the audio...) The right channel just ran through the old Zenith console radio. None of this was that "hifi", (the Zenith had better sound) but it was "Stereo", so at least I could play stereo records.

Photos from 23 May 2008 Showing of Die Welle

Me — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:21:13 GMT

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

July 4, 2008

Me — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:42:19 GMT

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?).

1968/1969 is finished!

Me — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:39:20 GMT

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.

1968/1969

Me — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:10:08 GMT

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.

1967/68

Me — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:33:18 GMT

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?

Finally Started on 1967/1968 Catamounts

Me — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:57:34 GMT

I was disappointed to not have Volume 12 number 1, the first Catamount I have from 67/68 is number two - dated October 6, 1967.

It's been a long time since I've touched the site - mostly because I've started consulting again, so trying to do a Catamount in an afternoon is no longer possible most of the time.

This has been kind of fun in terms of contact with interesting people - Gayne Barlow (daughter of my 7th grade science teacher at Wilbur Junior High, and in my graduating class) and I have exchanged some emails. My wife found a "biography" of Mr. Barlow that I wrote back in 8th grade (English assignment) that is a hoot to read, and Gayne and her family apparently enjoyed it as well. Since other of Claude Barlow's former students might find this fun, I put it up on the site as well. That particular paper was written when I was in Mrs. Wolfrom's class in 8th grade, also at Wilbur Junior High. (If Wendy Lesser should happen to read this, I believe Mrs. Wolfrom was the teacher whose name you couldn't remember that you wrote about in " target="_blank" >"The Amateur"./

8th grade English at Wilbur was (for me) an interesting class - Mrs. Wolfrom wanted to teach us using "linguistics" rather than traditional grammer, which I really enjoyed. The teacher the next year (Mrs. Forbush) was of the old school "grammer", but after those two classes, I found I could pretty much analyze and parse anything thrown at me. The exposure to linguistics made it easier later to learn more about computer languages as well. These two teachers were opposites in many ways, but I learned a lot from both of them. Mrs. Wolfrom's class *did* have a - shall we say - "hiccup", which I think was what precipitated events leading to Wendy's comments in " target="_blank" >"The Amateur" and that was because we had a reading specialist come in periodically that many of the students didn't care for. He was armed with things like SRA reading labs and tachistoscopes (darn - no Wikipedia article on that - it's a device that flashes things like words up for very short periods of time - it was supposed to help us read faster). Anyway, there was a revolt of sorts by the students in our class, and as I recall Wendy was one of the ringleaders... and he went away and didn't ever come back, which probably put Mrs. Wolfrom in an awkward position. I thought the tachistiscope was kind of fun actually.

I also exchanged emails with former Catamount columnist Doug Monica who graduated a year ahead of me. (Doug's mom and my mom were good friends - I think they both worked on the Pete McCloskey campaigns - back in the 70s. I got to drive him (Congressman McCloskey) to the airport once on a messy rainy night back in my college days. His son and I were at UCSB at the same time).

I slso got email from a teacher in Palo Alto who is doing a wonderful site on Palo Alto history. Check it out at http://www.paloaltohistory.com/.

Much of what is covered in this issue of the Catamount that I just put up is covered in former Cubberley English/Journalism teacher Sylvia Williams' book Hassling (hardcover) , or Hassling (paperback) which she wrote in the early 70s. It is out of print, but if you follow the links you might find a used copy.

I've been doing sort of "topic pages" on each edition of the Catamount because hopefully that will help searchers to find things easier - especially since the optical PDFs sometimes garble things up. (Yikes, I'm repeating myself!)

Visit to Palo Alto

Me — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 00:33:27 GMT

I was in Palo Alto last weekend, and stopped by Cubberley to have a look at the place... it's amazing how much of it looks the same.

Especially since I've been trying to catalog the ads in the old Catamounts, I also went over to Charleston Center to look around (and pick up an Ice Cream) at the still-well-attended ice cream store (photo from 1967 or so).

I also popped my head in the barber shop to see if Tony was still in there - he is! I remember Tony from one of the Midtown barber shope (I think it was the one by Round Table), and then he moved down and took over the business at Charleston Center. My dad used to ask for him specifically, and Tony always took good care of his hair.

I promised Tony I would upload this photo he helped me set up back in probably 1968 or 1969.

The three teachers had all grown beards over the summer, and I think the story was that Mr. Dale (left) and Mr. Warford (right) were going to keep their beards, and the apprehensive-looking Mr. Putnum (in chair) was going to shave his off. We didn't "have it off" right there in the barbershop, but this was sure fun to set up.

Both the ice cream store and the barber shop were faithful advertisers in the Catamount when I was in high school. The ice cream store looks quite a bit the same - they manufacture their own ice cream, and it's great! I don't know if they make it there onsite, or if they do it elsewhere, but we sure enjoyed ours.

Catamount from April 21, 1967

Me — Sun, 27 May 2007 03:36:00 GMT

I just noticed this was almost exactly 40 years ago, and probably one of the most eventful times at Cubberley.

Two notorious experiments are outlined
- Ron Jones and the Third Wave (now popularly known as "The Wave", or "Die Welt" due to popularized (and rather revised and enhanced) written and film accounts of what actually happened.
- Idea Forum. An idea for an alternative school within a school.

I wasn't part of the Third Wave - I took the same course "Contemporary World", but it was taught by a different teacher (I had Al Chanteloupe). It was no secret, though, as has been suggested a few places. I, along with a couple of other folks, took a few photos of the classroom in a little-known noctournal break-in to the room (actually we got a janitor to let us in)... But lots of other folks know a lot more about the "Third Wave" than I do, though, so I'll present the document such as it is, and leave most of the comments to others who were there.

"Idea Forum" was a lot of fun. Anybody could run a class, and you could attend any you were interested in. This Catamount edition listed the offerings of the pilot program. Duriing IF, I remember going to a class on Swahili, one on matrices (mathematics), and one on how to get rich in the stock market (Thanks, Mr. Farmer... which I didn't(get rich, that is)). The great photo of Sallie Neall (she was a really nice girl - in lots of my classes and a good friend) in a sandwich board shows the enthusiasm with which this idea was embraced by many of us.

This one also mentions the famous Cubberley "Buffalo Springfield / Sopwith Camel" concert. Apparently at Deena Bonn Sports Night, there was a performance by "The California Girls", which I'm not sure has anything to do with the band by that name today. I did notice in an earlier version of the Catamount that Addie Clement (who used to live on Carlson Circle) was one of the members back then.

There's a photo of Bill Perry (taken by Yours Truly) who did the artwork for the Springfield/Camel concert, and there's a miniature version of the original psychedelic poster on the bottom of page 2.

Doug Monica's account of the San Francisco Mobilization to protest the Viet Nam conflict is gripping first-hand history.