Volume 10 - Issue 1

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Volume ten, number one I March I, 1977

Urban¡ Homesteading

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The New Journal 1 March I, 1977

- TheNewJournal Volume ten, number one

conanaent----------~~~~~-were hit by the gas. There was no way up there for us to get out quickly . . . the halls were jammed and God it was a panic."

More freshman fraud

Once out of the theatre I helped keep the glass doors to the garage In the wake of the Andreas Alrea/ open for the mob which-poured out Patrick McDermitt hoax, a Yale from the upper tiers. It was no heroic freshman has revealed to the New Corby S. Kummer feat in comparison to the ushers, who Journal that her application for Editor in Chief left the theatre only after it had been admission to the university was also evacuated. They kept a swift level of fraudulent. Miggie Bonija, who order in emptying the theatre. applied as the dau~h~er ~f a Pue.rtoJennifer Allen Outside, however, an eighty-year-old Rican domestic res1dmg m Spamsh Jacob Epstein woman in mink was vomiting. Others, Executive Editors Harlem, is really Linda Feineman, the asthmatic or frightened, fainted. only child of an affluent Long Island The episode might have been the lawyer.

Nancy Harris final scene of a Hitchcock thriller.

Linda explained her reasons for the Starry Schor Fortunately what could have been a fraud.

"All of my friends were A ssociate Editors disaster was merely a dreadful applying to Yale, and I realized that ..__ _ _ accident. To my knowledge no one the last thing the admissions office Daphne Chu Yale Admissions officials have was hospitalized, and only a small would want to see was another M. G. Lord number of patrons left Lincoln refused to recognize the fraud. application from a Long Island JAP." Designers Director Worth David was Center. Nervous waiting changed to Linda confessed that she also forged unavailable for comment, but a . camaraderie. Gasps soon became her S.A.T. scores. Her real scores staffer who refused to be named sa1d, friendly laughter. The tortuous yet Beatrice H. Mitchell were 740 and 790, but with her Publisher "Haven't we had enough embarrassexhilarating experience united all of application she sent in scores of 400 ment for one year?'' us. . d and 460.

Ambulances, fire engmes, an "I learned that the hard way. The Woolsey Grove Editorial Staff: Lisa Barlow, Aaron Betsky, caravans of police cars soon arrived. people at Harvard knew that my Owen Brown Therese Feng, Will Goetzman, The remarkable ventilation system of application was fraudulent because Webb Keane,' Sarah Kreimer, P~ter the Met house managed to vacuum my scores were too high. They McCormack, Lori Marian, Mank~ Masuoka, out the theatre, leaving only vestiges Peter Pokalsky, John Roy, Oenrus Shasha, reasoned that if I were that smart, I of the dusty yellow tear gas. Out of Alex Stille wouldn't be that poor. After all, this their dedication to their art and their is America." The move paid off, and audience, the extraordinary castGraphics Staff: Armand LeGardeur, Barbara Linda is attending Yale on a full including Verrett and CrespinRose, Karen Sideman, Bill Tarbell, Deborah scholarship. She uses her book Weiss decided to go on with the opera after allowance to purchase contraceptives long hour's aeration. . a at the Yale Health Center.

The Metropolitan Opera is well The conductor and productton were Central to his application was known for its punctuality: the lights Business Staff: Caroline T . Mitch~ll, Steph~~ given an ovation before the perLinda's personal essay. She chos~ to had just begun to dim when I sat D. Warner. Susan E. Amron, Davtd R. Radt formance began. One moment in the be novel: disdaining prose, she tned down there at 8:29 on February 19. first act was of particular meaning for her hand at ethnic poetry. As a result, But as the house darkened, a strange the audience: speaking of the Paris the Yale University Press has asked to odor filled the air. Suddenly a mob in times of strife and fear, the Credits: Cover and page 7, Daphne Chu see more of her work. A book is in middle-aged woman, struggling to heroine's father sings, ..A mob in page 3, Lisa Barlow the future . "I really felt that I knew breathe, clutched my arm for support. panic speaks with a thousa~d ~yes." pages 4 &. 5, Aaron Betsky about the Puerto Rican experience.

Within seconds my eyes seemed to page 6, Pat Lalley Despite the difficulty of smgmg and I've had a lot of contact with them, pages 8 &. 9, M. G. Lord bleed tears of broken glass. My lungs playing instruments because of you know. When I went on my trip pulled taut in severe pain. My face remnants of the gas and constant to Europe, my father took me into burned and my sinuses strained . coughing of the audience, the prothe city to a Spanish neighborhood, Around me, the many gasps for ' duction was a tremendous success. to buy a, set of matched luggage. Its breath became screams.

The New Journal is published by the New The last few minutes of the opera really cheap there, you know. I think A group ran to the lobby exits and Journal at Yale, Inc., partners in publication were so engrossing that I only . might be hot," she confided. . it opened the doors violently. A foulwith the Yale Banner, Inc., and is printed at remembered the miserable opemng Her essay-poem explores the pams Chronicle Printing Co., North Haven, Conn. smelling gust of yellow haze burst when I was on the subway. of inner-city dwelling and its Distributed free to the Yale community. For from the lobby into the theatre: we Eric Peters psychological effects: all others, subscription rate $7.50 per year. were pushed back in. "Out the side exits! The side exits! We've been Miggie Bonija's bombed with tear gas. Get out!!", an Copyright fJ 1977 by The New Journal at Very upset; usher cried. A handkerchief covering Yale Inc., a non-profit organization. Letters She's sick and tired his face muffled his words. and unsolicited manuscripts welcome. livinJt in debt .

The gaseous cloud moved slowly 3432 Yale Statton, New Haven, Conn. 06520 Tired of roaches Phone 432-1328 or 436-8650 through the audience. I could see row Tired of rats! after row jump successively from their A friend told me to come early to Whoa-ho, whoa-hoi seats. They covered their eyes, noses, get a good seat. I came o~ tim~. A and mouths in an attempt to breathe table with six untilled cha1rs, s1x filled without inhaling. Within second_s the glasses of water and six microphones --entire lower audience was standmg. faced an em~y Silliman Common Several people rushing to the aisles Room. fell to the floor, but others soon The biggest sensation of 2 comment: another admissions scandal; tear gas at the opera; "Sensation Galore, .. a helped them. The asbestos _safety "SENSATION GALORE" was the discussion; poems; a word from the editors curtain fell quickly, and cnes were lack of sensation. The formal title (A heard from the orchestra pit. Metal Discussion of Audience Appeal in stands and chairs fell loudly.

Entertainment Today) glossed over • Inaugura1 3 Notes from the Peoples . . Aaron Betsky One girl who had come from the fact that the assembled group had Views from a member of the throng, with a report on the parties from L1sa Barlow Philadelphia to see the opera told me gathered to talk about movi~s. I what it had been like in the third wondered how they were gomg to balcony.

Dennis S hasha 6 Urbar. Homesteading • YAlE discuss audience appeal in film Making a n e •ighborhood from a ravaged street "Up in the Family Circle we had no without discussing sex or violence. I wondered how they were going to idea what was happening. The Sue Denham 8 Visiting Day stench hadn't reached us until much discuss sex and violence. I wanted Cara was enjoying herself at camp. Then her parents came popcorn. later- until it was too late. For a I shouldn' t have wondered: in the while we thought Queen Elizabeth beginning of the discussion someone or some VIP had enteredthat is, II American Master Drawings when everyone stood up and turned pointed out that "sex is dir:tier t~an a new book by Yale professor Theodore E. Stebbins. Jr. around. But when the orchestra ran violence... After that, the diScuss1on focused on violence. out we all knew something was wrong. A few seconds later, we too (continued o n page fifteen) \1\ b

Striking a blow against civilization at the Met

Violence galore?

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¡ ¡The New Jour:tul I March I, 1977

Notes fro01 the People's Inaugural

by Aaron Belsky

It was the early morning of the 20th of January, 1977. A jet passed overhead as Martin Luther King Sr. took his place on a rostrum in front of the massive statue of Abe Lincoln.

Five thousand people, mostly blacks, stood on the steps in front of him.

"Little did I know, fourteen years ago, that I would be standing here again today,'' be said. "But God has His ways of leading us and guiding us."

King spoke to this eager crowd at seven o'clock in the morning on the first, freezing day of "a new era," to preach the gospel of a new administration. He raised the crowd to confused but loud c~ruses of "Praise the Lord" and "I believe, I believe."

After each phrase they shouted his theme, ..Feed my sheep."

"Feed my sheep, the sheep must be fed. This is what it is all about. That's what Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life for ... that the least of these may never be forgotten. That's what the president-elect is all about, that's why he's up there, because he said that he was concerned about the least of these. I was hungry, and you fed me not. I was in prison, and you didn't visit me. 1 was sick, and you didn't wait upon me. So God grant that our president will-rememberalways the least of these." The people, along with Leontyne Price and the Atlanta Boy's Choir, shouted and praised the Lord artd sang Amazing Grace.

Standing in the first row with cameras, microphones and note pads all around me, I noticed Coretta King in the front row. She sat next to Andrew Young. CBS saw them too, nailed them, and interviewed them with the Washington Monument as a backdrop. Cameras clicked away. But all the clicking was overwhelmed by the sound of five thousand people singing and shouting.

It was perhaps the only moment during the whole inaugural that unified faith descended over one of the large gatherings in the city, made you believe that the political process meant something. That dream of fourteen years ago, voiced on the same steps, seemed possible. The crowd didn't care about the media.

They cared about the deliverance they expected from a new president.

The only show of emotion I'd seen before this had been in the office of Senator Hubert Humphrey. Under the countless decorations, portraits, and memorabilia that adorned the Senator's reception office, a Minnesota woman sat crying. She had thought her invitation to the capital meant a nice seat at the inauguration. She had supported Carter, she had even helped out a little at the local headquarters. Now she couldn't even get onto the grounds of the capitol, let alone get a seat. The closest she could get to Carter would be about half a mileor else six feet away from the television screen set up in the office.

One of the secretaries was franticaJly calling around for a prized blue ticket to standing room on the capitol When I left the office, the woman was still sitting there, wiping her eyes and clutching a Humphrey newsletter.

Outside, the capital had reached the political apotheosis of its Bicentennial madness. The exhibits were open again. Mobs of historically-minded citizens filled every nook in the Smithsonian and every bed in every hotel. Jimmy had told them all to come and come they did, lifting their white cowboy hats and greeting you with a cheerful "Hi there, young fella!" under the stately dome of the Russell Office Building. The inhabitants of Plains, who had come up on the specially-chartered "Peanut Special" train, crashed in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel. They drank Blackjack and cursed the bureaucrats.

The tour guides were working overtime. Their fmgers trembled as they directed heads towards the mighty dome of Congress. Two high school girls, whose blonde hair was tucked beneath bright red caps, disregarded their tour leaders' antics and practiced their steps for tomorrow's parade on the steps of Congress.

The taxi drivers took it all calmly, cruising carefully past limousines and official dark-green cars, cutting off the rest of us. At peak hours there was an hour wait for a cab. Only Union Station seemed capable of dealing with the masses.

The Visitor's Center, the former main hall, never seemed to fill up.

The potted palms and landscaped comers waited beneath the rhythm of the brilliantly white Beaux-Arts architecture. Stately Washington could still accept all these Southern hordes and remain unchanged. Still, a cabby said as we left the Visitor's Center, "I'll be happy when this is all over, so we can get back to normal business again."

I did some sightseeing myself, exploring the rococo richness of the Library of Congress. I closed my eyes and imagined a camera, hung from the roof, zooming in closer and closer as I sat at one of those tables sorting out little slips ... wow! This is where they shot "All the President's Men." "I am not a crook," "I do not recollect," "Stonewall it" haunted the place.

The Combined Armed Forces manned every street corner in the center of the city. They forced the rebellious jumble of traffic into neat, if sometimes angry, garrisons of stalled cars and waiting pedestrians.

A Chilean general might have felt at home amidst the machine gun-toting, jeep-driving, walky talky-whispering and saluting troops who were positioned everywhere. Maybe the Chiefs of Staff had forgotten that Carter had claimed that the days of the Imperial Presidency were over and that the rebellious hippies who had tried to spoil Nixon's inauguration had long since joined the Green-and-White Brigade to the cry of "Leaders for a change!"

All of this could not prevent a few Yippies from holding a desperate press conference proclaiming, once again, that they were damned disobedient. They handed out dope at the Washington Monument: some of it could be smelled near the latrines, greeting the new era.

Everybody found something to do in those few January days. The street vendors, discarding their Bicentennial plastics, loaded themselves and their vehicles with green and white plastic Carter buttons and peanuts. Grits and Fritz peeked out from every corner of their carts and boards. ''Hi there, I'm Jimmy Carter and I'm going to be your next President." Buy me for a quarter.

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The New Journal I March I, 1977

I r~turned to my resting place for the night to watch the Inaugural Gala. Jimmy looked happy. The Alvin Ailey Company got the crowd on their feet. Aretha Franklin made them cheer. Even Jimmy was moving his hands back and forth, in the manner of a Chinese statesman.

Waking up on the cold dawn of January 20th, I drank a cup of coffee and rode the metro to the Senate Office Building. The morning passed in an endless, high-tension blur of motion. All Washington moved to the capitol in ever-contracting circles.

The Russell Office Building seemed to be the heart of most of the action, a huge control-post of endless corridors. Throngs of people moved in and out of the suffocating offices.

Plastic cups, holding hot chocolate, and plates of cake filled some offices.

T.V.s blinked in others. Nobody had time to see anybody except the five million nobodys, those invited, united people of America who stared a¡t each other in the halls and offices. They were all waiting for a chance to see a somebody, to have something to talk about when they got back home.

Finally at eleven o'clock we joined the huge crowd of people waiting at the narrow gates of the capitol grounds. We inched toward the two Marine guards taking tickets. Little did I know that reaching this gate was the first stage of a long odyssey to get closer to that great white chunk of card board with the presidential seal way up front. I prowled around the outskirts of the crowd, cased trees, avoided militia, and tried to push myself through the crowd with my WYBC pass. It was practically spat upon.

Seeing a way out of this morass, I climbed over the string and boldly flashed my pass at a Marine. He flinched and retreated. Victory! I was now standing so close I could actually almost distinguish Jimmy's facial expression, cold and nervous.

Then, he spoke. I leaned back on the crowd behind me and waited for the sweet Southern rhetoric to start flowing. But something was wrong.

The words came haltingly; they were badly paced and cliched.

The crowd loved it, though. They loved it even more when, after everyone had raced to find a place on the parade route, they discovered the first family strolling down the middle of the broad Washington Avenues.

Harry Reasoner, seated in the back seat of a white Cadillac, commented on the whole affair. The D.C. police chief, the park chief, the cabinet officials, and even Fritz Mondale himself looked ridiculous in their fat cars as Carter walked easily past the cheers.

The subsequent parade was allAmerican. One float had the huge letters "USA" in reflecting metal, so that as the artist had intended, "the onlookers could see themselves in America." Floats of Arkansas products, Virgin Island girls, exhibits of the free press, and Massachusetts printing followed. Band after high school band passed by, each strutting to a different drummer. The Army, Navy, and other para-military groups marched in perfect unison; the cheerleaders from small Midwestern towns let their overweight legs dance to no apparent rhythm except the joy

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of being in the nation's capital. The parading horses left droppings all over the street; a band of cadets marched right throt.gh them .

All of D.C. that night now centered around the eight Inaugural balls. I never got to the biggest and best of them- the Georgian party in the Armory, where all the big celebs watched Marshall Tucker belt out the Southern rock that had helped make Jimmy Carter great. I did squeeze myself into the Shoreham Hotel, where Minnesota hosted a mixed group of elegant Washington bureaucrats and businessmen, campaign workers and out-of-staters.

The press room near the entrance was desolate.

For the flfSt time, I saw adequate facilities for everyone, but everyone was too tired to use them. There was nothing left to say. Someone interviewed Mondale's cousin from Norway. Everyone looked for Betty Friedan. The music in the two ballrooms, both decorated in sixties kitsch, was lousy, the drinks were expensive and for all of this people had paid $25.

They were enjoying every moment of it. If the crowd wasn't boisterous. it was certainly giddy. "Hey, we won!" I heard a young kiJ wearing a Carter-Mondale button proclaim.

"Oh, it's all so nice!" an elderly woman exclaimed. Even the couples not dancing or huddling in one of the little groups smiled at each other, the surroundings, a passerby.

Then, suddenly, He was there. The crowd went wild, mobbed the small stage...Are you having a good time?"

Jimmy asked.

"Yeah!" the crpwd roared back.

"Has it been a great day?..

"Yeah!"

"Do we live in a great country?!"

"Yeah!"

"Are we going to make it even better in the next four years?"

"Yeah!"

"Are you going to help me do it?"

"Yeah!" I waited for: "And are we going to rock 'n roll tonight?"

We spoke about what a great day it He spoke about what a great day it had been, how be hoped he would not betray our trust and how Rosalyn had worn the same dress at the last inaugural he had attended, his own as Governor of Georgia. "How many of you like Rosalyn's dress?" he asked and the crowd exploded again. They shouted and cried while he waved, until he finally gave in. He danced with his wife, cheek to cheek, arm in arm, smiling and kissing her. Where I was standing, to the side of the stage, I thought I saw Rosalyn drop a tear.

Jody Powell looked at her,bewildered.

Hey Jimmy, hey Rosalyn, you really are tender and loving? I clapped along with the crowd.

Aaron Betsky, a sophomore in Branford, wishes to thank WYBCfor making his trip possible.

The New Journal I March I, 1977

5

Parties: Double-Knits and Instamatics J

Washington was cold, but no one minded. On each street corner volunteers from the Maryland Bible Society handed me my very own 1977 Inaugural Souvenir. "Jimmy Carter will stop adultery and fornication!" their pamphlet claimed. Loudspeakers everywhere blared the proceedings of the Inaugural while the crowds collected along Pennsylvania, three hours early for the parade.

People wrapped in plaid stadium blankets sat in folding beach chairs behind police barricades. They waved tiny American flags, and green and white ..Jimmy" penants. Swaddled children sat placidly in strollers while their parents eased the cold with nips from steaming thermos bottles and discreet flasks. Vendors at every intersection hawked fluorescent green and fuchsia portraits of Carter and Mondale on buttons. Snack stands catered to the patient public; they offered Hari Krishna delicacies beside shiny tacos in saran wrap and "authentic" eggrolls. All I wanted was a hot dog and a coke. Finally, I settled for an orange crush, a vinyl cheeseburger, and positioned myself behind a family from New Jersey to watch the festivities.

Shivering baton twirlers from Georgia high schools warmed themselves with their school flags as they waited for the grand march to begin.

Secret Service sharpshooters lined the building tops, eagle-eyeing the oblivious crowds. During the inaugural address itself, store proprietors- including those from .. Live Peep Show" and ..Girls, Girls, Girls"- stepped out of their establishments to hear the speech.

At 8 p.m. the Inaugural Balls-or rather ..People's Parties"commenced. In my black chiffon evening gown, clogs, down jacket and ski mittens, I took the metro to the

Pension Building where the second "add-on" ball was held.

A female guard frisked me at the entrance. The assorted hardware around my wrist and my under-wire bra triggered a buzzer. Once again, sharpshooters nestled in balcony alcoves. Helicopters with search lights circled the building. There was a new crush of people, this time garbed not in the parkas and peacoats of the afternoon, but in floor-length, nylon party dresses and rented tuxedos.

Hors d'oeuvres were plentiful: yellowed pretzels, pizza squares tasting of plaster-of-paris, anchovy paste, and enough peanuts to make me gag if I see one now. center flower arrangements rapidly disappeared as people plucked them as souvenirs.

The news of the President's imminent arrival flashed across the room. Everyone pressed against the roped aisle toward the stage. I found myself feeling very squashed and short, sandwiched in between two tall couples. Louise's fur stole was made of ferrets whose penetrating glass eyes glared at me. Mabel stood behind me in a margarine-colored Caftan. Her husband Ernest had a glittering gold smile, and a laugh that made my head pound.

Breathing down each other's necks-or up, in my case-, locked in place for 30 minutes as a cross between big band and muzak played, people made friends with each other.

Swaying to the music, they exchanged state names, occupations, and

invitation qualifications. Frank and Louise met two fellow Texans. Ernest discovered that the woman in front of him had the same brand of Instamatic.

Then the Carters entered and the crowd became electric. Jumping up and down, one woman broke the heel of her shoe. Another fainted. On my tipmost toes I managed to catch a glimpse of a tuft of blow-dried hair, illuminated by spot lights. The band played soQiething that sounded like the "Queen for a Day" theme. Every Instamatic and Polaroid was poised with eager hopes of carrying home a snapshot souvenir. The taller people took photos for the shorter ones by raising the cameras at arms length, pointing them and clicking.

The Carters left after I 0 minutes.

The crush dissolved and someone announced the Fifth Dimension. In white jumpsuits and white smiles they rocketed onto the stage singing "Up, up and away ... " Many people had never heard of them; only three people danced.

Listening to the 5 D's "Surrey Down" down," I became caught up. in the kitschiness of the scene. I watched people cluster around the ruined floral arrangements. Two women in identical, rhinestone-studded tube tops giggled over the coincidence of their appearance.

I have to own up to a spasm of Americanism, though. I saved my ticket stub.

Lisa Barlow

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The New Journal I March 1, 1977

by Dennis Shasha Two years ago, New Haven's Ann Street on the Hill was ravaged and vacant. Street crime and crumbling housing had discouraged potential inhabitants. A third of the deteriorated one- and two-family homes were abandoned. Absentee landlords, bankers, private institutions, and government agencies had long since lost interest. They wrote off the street as a hopeless slum.

In early 1975, an informal group of Ann Street residents- a remarkable high school sophomore named Tony Dawson, and two Yale graduates-embarked on a scheme of urban renewal that turned abandoned houses into resources instead of liabilities. The project suggests a strategy for urban renewal that dispenses with the conventional wisdom and that works. toHow. Under the so-called "urban homesteading" legislation (enacted at the federal and state level but never tried in New Haven), potential homeowners could "buy" for one dollar vacant houses owned by HUD and turned over to the city. Sixteen-year-old Dawson took the first step by buying a house- not from HUD, but from Connecticut Housing Insurance, an organization that holds properties on which banks have foreclosed. Dawson then convinced the New Haven Board of Aldermen to ask HUD to turn the seven houses it owned on Ann Street over to the city, so the city could sell them to potential homesteaders.

Over the next few months, seven sets of homesteaders, with jobs ranging from bus driver to research worker and mostly young married coup~. joined the effort. A major building project began.

Ann Smith, one of the seven homesteaders, says "The bouse we moved into was falling apart. Nobody had lived there for years. Vandals had long since ripped out plumbing and electrical equipment. In fact, they didn't leave much of anything."

The priorities of the homesteaders became to: acquire tools; improve the security of the area so that the work of the day would not be plundered at night; and get enough money to accomplish what were, in many cases, total interior restorations.

Yale contributed Sl,OOO to buy tools, but the security problem proved more difficult. As work began, some fulltime residents of the street were wary of the would-be homesteaders.

Vandals poured gasoline from the rooftop of Dawson's bouse and lit it.

The damage still shows, though the house bas not been hit since. The vandalism made the neighborhood more sympathetic to the homesteaders. It went a long way toward encouraging a community security group known as NeighbQrhood Watch.

This group bas managed to alter completely the crime pattern on the

Urban Homesteading

street. For example, a year and a half ago, a house on Ann Street was abandoned. Other residents and the homesteaders failed to convince the family in it to remain. Yet, in a city where vandalism invariably follows abandonment by less than a week, no one has vandalized or plundered the house since its tenant left.

"Because of Neighborhood Watch," says Amus Stevens, a street resident, "there are people you can see and say bello to from noon to midnight."

In a way, Neighborhood Watch was a natural outgrowth of the spirit the project bad fostered. Ann Smith notes, "We have really gotten into sharing. 'Why leave something in the basement if your neighbor can use it?' we all think. People will come around and ring my doorbell if they haven't seen me for a while."

Coaxing money from foundations, and eventually from the New Haven Redevelopment Agency, required a different kind of ability. It was here that the Yale graduates brought their talents to bear. The Haymarket Foundation of Cambridge, Massacbussets and the New Haven Redevelopment Agency have together contributed some $600,000 to the project, half in grants and half in 3% loans.

Of all the problems the homesteaders faoed, the most serious was their relationship to Redevelopment. The major portion of the money they applied for came almost a year after they submitted their application. Red tape, which delayed payments to some contractors, skepticism on the part of Redevelopment officials about the project, and the officials' reluctance to give away power to private citizens very nearly destroyed the project.

"Though they never came out and said it," Ann Smith recalls, "the Redevelopment officials seemed to think, 'Oh, this won't work and we're going to prove it.' " Most of the plumbers, carpenters, and laborers who are working on these houses are neighborhood residents or the homesteaders themselves. They comprise a core of about 11 men, most of whom were untrained in construction skills before the project began. They have acquired most of the necessary skills through experience and from special help programs set up by the carpenters' union. Professionals are hired for very specialized tasks.

People Acting for Change, as the original group came to be caUed, bas established a non-profit general

contractor called the Home Maintenance Center to help rehabilitate.

The Center has cut normal fees by 25%; it also has a tool-lending library for minor repairs.

Of the ten original sets of homesteaders, seven are in various stages of moving in or have already. The project now involves 13 houses. But the success of this project, at a time when most programs that try to benefit low income groups fail, is only one of its remarkable features. Even more remarkable is that Tony Dawson, the project's initiator, is still a high school student.

Though his parents have only recently become politically active, Dawson began watching polls at 9. At 10, he and a local pastor organized New Haven's first block association on nearby Ward Street. There are now about 17. At 16, he helped form People Acting for Change, partly to focus the efforts on Ann Street, partly as an umbrella organization for the block associations.

On the way, be has picked up an award from the New Haven Police Department for fostering good relations between the police and private citizens. His latest project is to establish a student government at Lee High School.

Dawson has definite theories about education. For one thing, he sees no reason why "Urban Studies classes should concentrate on Chicago instead of New Haven." He believes in the practical benefit from gearing courses to New Haven: "Knowledge replaces fear. If you don't know what's going on, you can't help with a project.

Instead, you go and break windows."

In the November, 1976 election, Dawson took charge of organizing his ward. A record 1900 residents voted.

Even before this, Senator Weicker invited Dawson to spend a week in Washington to observe government at the Federal level. Governor Ella Grasso bas invited him to spend a week of his spring vacation looking over the state government. Two of his teachers as well as Dick Conrad, a Journal Courier reporter, have offered to help him write an autobiography.

He plans to have completed his first draft by the end of the year. The usually cynical Conrad bas followed the Ann Street project closely. He says, "All I can say about the kid is that he is incredible. Not only has he gotten the Ann Street project under way, but he has prevented a war between People Acting for Change and the Hill Neighborhood Corporation that would have been disastrous to the area."

Dawson bas recently become estranged from People Acting for Change because he feels Yalies have come to dominate it. He thinks it is absurd to support that white outsiders can organize black community residents better than other community residents. Moreover, he resents the Yalies' attitude towards community problems.

The New Journal I March I, 1977

"I have no complaint against Yale students in general." he says. "What I resent is that they come in from the outside and tell the community residents what the Cvu&munity's problems are. 'It's the school, the mayor, the cops,' they say. They assume they know what our problems are because we live in a poor neighborhood and they've read about the problems of poor neighborhoods in their books."

From the point of view of extending the urban homesteading concept to other neighborhoods in the city, friction between Yale graduates and community residents constitutes only a minor problem. Before projects such as Ann Street spring up elsewhere in the city, either the city or an outside funding source must agree to put up the resources that concentrated rehabilitation projects like the one on Ann Street require. Ann Street organizers consider outside sources a long shot at best.

The city's attitude towards urban homesteading is certainly ambivalent.

While Dawson and others at first credited Mayor Frank Logue with helping launch the Ann Street project, Logue's program of housing rehabilitation, Neighborhood Preservation, announced last September, almost explicitly excludes Ann Street-type projects. It sets grant limits of $5,000 and loan limits of $10,000. The smallest loan on Ann Street was $16,675.

The market value of houses on Ann street is under $15,000, yet homesteaders have taken out loans of $20$25,000 to rehabilitate such homes.

Their investment of time and money has made it evident that they consider Ann Street a permanent home. "rve spent a lot of long hours away from my family on this house,'' says Ann Smith. "My sweat, my family's sweat, and my roots are here. You better believe I plan to stay around."

By contrast, the owners of housc:s slated for Neighborhood Preservat1on money have all chosen to get as much grant money as possible, making little ¡

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or no effort to take out loans. In other words, not only are banks unwilling to invest in Neighborhood Preservation areas, but home-owners themselves are not even inclined to invest in their own houses.

Except for foundations, other sources of funds such as banks have not contributed to the Ann Street project either, but through their labor

way to improve a neighborhood is to work one's way up the spiral. Given this assumption, triage makes sense, because it will clearly be easier to climb the spiral in a mildly deteriorated area than in a slum.

But climbing the spiral may not be the only route up. Not only Ann Street but also Dresden and every victim of a natural disaster suggests

residents won't have nearly the emotional stake in their neighborhoods that homesteaders have.

Finally, long-time residents of these neighborhoods will view newcomers as carpetbaggers who descend to snatch the spoils of work they themselves were uninvolved with.

Incentive is the key. "The lesson of Ann Street," says Tony Dawson, "is that people who want to stay in a neighborhood and have a stake in it can improve it a lot-no matter how poor it is to start with."

The fight in New Haven continues.

During the first week of this January, the Board of Aldermen passed legislation calling for the establishment of a nine-member board.

Independent of the Redevelopment Agency, the new board will be empowered to enact urban homesteading programs. Mayor Logue decides the level of funding and the membership of the board, testing his commitment to the concept.

On Ann Street, progress continues.

As homesteaders move into their houses, become settled and raise families, they may lose some of their outspoken advocacy for urban homesteading. Tony Dawson seems aware of this possibility. He has deliberately kept his own house on Ann Street unrehabilitated. "My house was the symbol that something was starting on Ann Street," he has said ...Now it's the svmbol that what was started has yet to be finished."

High school senior Tony Dawson the Ann Street residents have that citizens with a deeply-held contributed in kind. incentive to rebuild their neighborExplanations for the city's negative hood or city can do so. attitude towards urban homesteading When the Redevelopment Agency fall into two categories. For one proposes to rehabilitate vacant houses thing, spreading rehabilitation money with the purpose of selling them (as it provides important political benefits plans to do next year) it misses the to the mayor's administration. point. Like all government housing, But the problems go deeper. The the Agency's housing will lack variety concept of triage- put the money only of design. No one would have put in in "savable" areas, let the others rotthe work of designing those homes to Dennis Shasha is a senior in Ezra Stiles. provides a justification for diffuse suit the future residents' particular programs such as Neighborhood tastes. More important, the future Preservation.

Urban experts have a model for neighborhood decline. They call it the downward spiral: bank officials become pessimistic about a certain We're just a big friendly bank, ready, able and willing to area, making loans hard to come by; take care of any banking need of individuals and businesses. investors see this reluctance as a sure We have ......... . sign of decay; they cut back on services and so drl\'e away good, 5 long-term tenants; the crime rate kinds of checking accounts increases; buildings become abandoned; a slum is born.

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The New Journal ! March I, 1977

8

VISITING DAY Cara Geisler was .enjoying herself.

Not that the county music and arts camp disfn't have its drawbacks: the camp bbrdered on a vast garbage dump, from. which there arose, during the humid nights, an awful stench, and constant clouds of gnats and mosquitoes. The cabins were draughty, oddly off-balance, insectridden; and Capraro, Cara's art teacher, was an unkempt, offensive middle-aged man, whose wife trotted around the carpp in brassy bleached hair and gold lame peddle-pushers.

Capraro had taken a strong liking to two girls from Cara's cabin, best friends, whom she considered immature. Their work was infantilethey openly, and rather proudly, admitted to having auditioned for the camp using portfolios done by their high school art teacher-but, Cara thought bitterly, that was probably the key to the charm it held for Capraro: it was "primitive." On the other hand, if you had any real talent, and you dared to show it, Capraro would promptly and eagerly rework what you had done until it was barely

recognizable. Not a single sketch or painting of Cara's had been left untouched. She had vowed to hide as much of her future work as possible from the sharp, jealous eyes of Capraro.

No, it was not the camp itself that was at the root of Cara's-more than pleasure-elation. She felt freer somehow than she had ever felt in her life. Although the camp administration's readiness to ignore its own vestigial rules undoubtedly contributed to this feeling, it had a more basic, inadmissible cause: Cara was away from her parents.

It had been two weeks since the first day of camp-two weeks since Cara had last seen her parents-and this third Sunday of the camp season

was visiting day. Cara had arranged her voluminous bedding as neatly as was possible on the thin, concave mattress of her bunk. She had spent a good part of the morning trying to give some order to the mass of clothes in her trunk, which she now opened repeatedly, nervously, as if she expected the clothes to have somehow jumbled together again.

Worse, she was haunted by a disturbing incident that had occurred in the past week: one night, as though they had convened somewhere without her and planned it, the eleven other girls in Cara's room had gotten unanimously hysterical. They sobbed and sobbed-even, Cara noted with detached amazement, those girls who were the most outspoken in denouncing their parents.

Of course it was contagious. But when Cara at last joined in, she cried for a different reason from that of the other girls. She cried because she was not homesick; and surely there was something terribly wrong with a thirteen-year-old girl, away from home for the first time in her life, who. did not miss her parents at all.

Then: in the cabin doorway, Mrs. Geisler stepped back abruptly, as if repulsed by a blast of foul air. She touched her husband's arm and her lips exclaimed silently: "Oh, Irwin!"

"Didn't I tell you?" she said shrilly.

"Didn't I tell you we'd find something like this? I knew it, I'm not surprised." She cast her eyes furiously about the room. "Just look at thiswill you just look at this place? It's a pigsty! Where's Cara?"

Cara, sitting on her bed, directly in her mother's line of vision, was rigid with embarrassment. She wa¡s grinning.

"Here. Hi!" she said in a voice that seemed to issue from the pit of her knotted stomach. Her only comfort, as she faced her mother's eloquent rage, was a spontaneous rush of irrational affection she suddenly felt for the two other girls in the room.

They were still waiting for their parents and lay in their upper bunks reading paperbacks and chewing gum loudly, impassively. Neither was Cara's friend; neither gave any sign now that she acknowledged Cara's presence, or Mrs. Geisler's. But Cara in her desperation endowed them with qualities of understanding and compassion beyond those she would have expected in a good friend.

Then, perhaps sensing that their mute, indifferent presence was somehow shielding Cara, Mrs. Geisler turned on the two.

"You girls live like this?" she asked.

The girls' eyes met. One mouthed the words "You bet!" and her friend giggled hysterically, nearly choking on her gum before she was able to control herself again.

"Don't laugh at me, young lady!"

Mrs. Geisler fumed. "This place is a disgrace- " But the rest of the speech was lost to Cara, as rivers of blood burst the frail walls of arteries and veins and flooded her ears. The next voice she heard clearly was her father's.

"So," it said calmly--or maybe it just seemed that way, contrasted with her mother's. "How are things?"

"Things are just fine," Cara managed to return flippantly.

"Your sisters are outside," her father said.

At this cue, Cara rose from the bed automatically and followed her parents, cautiously keeping her distance. She heard her mother say in a low, confidential voice: "Irwin, I don't want them to see that, inside there.

I'm serious. It's a disgr-ace, the way she's living." When her father hissed, ''Now you're being ridiculous, you're being stupid, Madeleine," Cara hoped wildly that this would be one of the times she could successfully ally herself with her father. She knew that he was often as impatient with and embarrassed by his wife as she washow could he not be? how could anyone in his right mind not be? Still, she had to be careful, had to watch and wait: there were other times, distressingly frequent and unpredictable, when if Cara so much as glanced disapprovingly in her mother's direction-or if her father merely imagined that she had- he would slap her face with the hard back of his hand and force her to beg her mother's forgiveness. Those were his own words: "Now beg your mother's forgiveness I You don't look at your mother like that- hear me?

That's the kind of treatment you deserve, not her, and you're going to get it. From now on, I swear you're going to get it ..."

Cara stood blinking in the noon sunlight outside the cabin, dazed and disappointed. She was disappointed because the clear, perfect weather did not reflect the darkness and the turmoil into which she had been so Sue Denham, a junior in Davenport, wrote this story in 1974.

,

The New Journal

I March 1, 1977

9

J

suddenly thrust by her parents' visit. enjoined, "maybe if you had worn Her sist~rs, aged four and eight, eyed them in the first place you wouldn't her wanly as Cara, unseeing, walked have had this ... problem." She toward them. hesitated as if there were something "Well, hi," Cara said finally. unspeakably wrong with Cara's feet.

"Hi, Cara!" the little one piped "Did you ever think of that?" immediately. She was an attractive Cara shrugged. child with great, long-lashed black "Answer your mother," her father eyes and shining straight dark hair. said sharply: he was not on her side "Hi," the older girl said, stiJJ after all. hesitant. She was tall for her age, thin "No," she was forced to admit, and long-legged. Her thick, sunannoyed and ashamed. streaked brown hair fell loose from a "She has no common sense Irwin " ponytail in a stubborn halo about her said lter mother. "How many 'times ' narrow face. have we said it? Oh, she's great in _Cara too was tall for her age, and school, but when it comes to life- to thm, but large-boned. Her massive . living with people- I don't know, growth of black hair, parted in the there's just nothing there." The middle, was swept back over her ears woman sighed. "When is she going to and fastened at the nape of her neck learn?" with a barrette. Glints of metal "She's not," Mr. Geisler predicted s ho~ed through where her gold loop grimly. "If she hasn't learned by now earnngs were. She wore a too-long it's too late." ' T-shirt and baggy green bell"Irwin, we shouldn't have sent her. bottomed jeans and no shoes. Her I knew this would happen." Mrs. arms and feet were covered with Geisler shook her head slowly, insect bites, some nearly healed and thoughtfully. white with scar tissue, some scratched "What would happen?" Cara raw and oozing. demanded. "Nothing's happened."

"My God!" her mother gasped 'Tm warning you . . . " her mother suddenly, noticing for the first time said menacingly. She turned to her that Cara's feet were bare. "Look at husband. "I tell you, after seeing this, those feet. Just look at them!"

I'm seriously considering taking her Cara obligingly studied her feet. out of this place today. Seriously."

"What have you been doing to "Seeing what?" Cara persisted She went, automatically, and her bravely. "What?" yourselfr' mother studied her face as if she did not recognize her daughter-as if she " I haven't been doing anything.

But her parents seemed to have were searching desperately for a forgotten that she was there. Her In~ects did that: mosquitoes, gnats, sisters, meanwhile, had moved familiar feature, a familiar curve of sptders of many varieties. They seem to have it in for me." brow or cheek bone, a familiar pore. discreetly off to a spot some distance "Go put on some shoes," Mr. away, where the grass was sparse and Then the woman grabbed at her arm.

Geisler ordered. the ground unusually soft because of "I have to do your hairs " she said the burrowing of moles. They in a hot, sharp whisper ag~inst the Cara disappeared into the cabin side of Cara's face. shrieked with delight as the earth and emerged again wearing pink collapsed repeatedly beneath their rubber thong sandals.

Cara winced at the euphemism: sandaled feet. "hairs" meant mustache, the shadow "Real shoes," her father said. "Pua growth above her upper lip. Her on your sneakers."

"We're not taking her out, mother would never use the word "I can't. They hurt."

Madeleine," Mr. Geisler was saying. except when more than usually intent "Well, maybe," Mrs. Geisler "It's good for her. Let her get a little upon impressing Cara with the fact experience living in the real world for t~a.t she would be ugly, an object of a change; let her see for herself that ndtcule, if the "hairs" were not it's not going to be as easy regularly "done"-bleached. everywhere as it is with us. Not "I have to take her somewhere everyone is going to take what we've where we won't be seen." Mrs. Geisler taken from her. If she doesn't wake explained to her husband. Cara was up now, then it's too late. She's old an;tused when he, visibly embarrassed, enough now." sa1d: 'Til take the kids with me." At "I don't know," Mrs. Geisler said home, too, he was always emthoughtfully. "Maybe you're right." barrassed by the bleaching ritual, as if She turned at last to Cara: "Maybe h~ could n~t bear to acknowledge this after living like an animal for six nunor phystcal blemish of his weeks you'll appreciate your home a daughter's. He was more comfortable little more. Maybe you won't think in the face of what he considered the your parents are so rotten." pervasive defects and deficiencies of Cara failed to deny that she her character. Whenever he saw Cara thought her parents were rotten. She with the w~te bleaching cream drying had been through this scenario above her lip, he would avert his eyes before: they would tell her that and say: "Take that stuff disgustedly though they knew she was lying, they off your face!"-before the twenty-orhoped, for her sake, that someday it would be true. Her father said, almost so minutes required to complete the process were up. So she would have cheerfully: "I doubt it."

"You're right," Mrs. Geisler agreed. to stay out of his sight.

"It's too much to expect, that our "You could go to the studio," Cara own daughter should love us." suggested now, helpfully, overcome in Cara felt as though her brain had the face of her father's foible with the turned to molten lead, and would at ftiSt tenderness she had felt all day. any moment come pouring out "Some of my work's there. You'll find through her eyes. She heard her it, it's signed." She and her parents mother continue: had toured the camp the day they had "Come over here, let me look at brought her there. Her father would your face." know how to fmd the studio: a dank,

ill-lit, basement-like room in the back of the main building.

He nodded-gratefully, Cara thought-and summoned her sisters with his hand.

"We'll see you later," he said as he walked off with the two little girls.

"Meet us at the studio, Madeleine."

Cara heard the four-year-old ask: "What studio, Daddy?" Her father•s answer- "The place where all your sister's artwork is kept" -filled her with pleasant, inexplicable pride.

"Where can we go?" Mrs. Geisler nearly screamed, looking frantically around, as if convinced already that there was no spot on the camp grounds secluded enough for her purpose. The sound of her voice had jarred Cara back into her original hostility. The woman continued: "There must be somewhere-" "There is, there is, don't worry," Cara interrupted. She lowered her voice and said in mock romantic tones: ..1 know a place where we can be alone."

Her mother remained stolidly unamused. .. You watch out-you hear me?" she said. "I'm warning you, you•re getting on my nerves today. You think I like to see you living like this?

Like an animal?" She paused for a moment, and when she spoke again her voice had dropped an octave.

"Where is it?"

"Come on."

Cara and her mother walked, unspeaking. up a half-obliterated dirt path that led past the stage: a painted wooden platform surrounded by a moat of gravel and a haphazard arrangement of bleachers. Behind them. on a vast mat of green and straw-colored grass, were spread the girls' cabins, the covered art patio. the

The New Journal

I March I, 1977

10

main building which was largely a It was true- but how did she mess hall, the flagpole. A gravel road know? Cara wondered. She had never led out of sight into the woods, to the used- or needed- Jolen Lip Bleach. other parts of the camp: the boys' and She must have read it in the administrators' sections, the secluded instructions that came with the "kit," dance studio, the rec hall, pool, tennis Cara finally decided. courts. The camp was located on a Mrs. Geisler leaned back, gazing small peninsula; Cara and her mother with obvious satisfaction at Cara's wallced on a narrowing stretch of face, as if it were a portrait she had overgrown land toward its tip. They just put the finishing touches on. could see, directly ahead, the edge of Then, eagerly, she bent forwarct the sheer, sandy drop the campers again. used to get down to the water. On either side the river was shielded from view by dense walls of the tangled, distorted trees that grew out in all directions from steep slopes. Cara led her mother finally to a solitary bench that faced the open end of the peninsula. Before they sat down, the woman patted her handbag and said in an oddly confidential voice, as if she were speaking about an illicit drug: "I have it right here."

Cara noted with revulsion the flaccid, starkly pale spread of her mother's bare thighs on the weathered wood of the bench. Mrs. Geisler was a stocky woman only an inch or two taller than her daughter, wearing a short, navy-and-white cotton dress.

Her mother had horrible legs, Cara thought; she had absolutely no "Now, we'll just put a little here," ankles. She felt too that her own legs she said as she smoothed cream over were an only slightly modified version the little gap between Cara's rather of her mother's, so she always wore heavy black eyebrows. "You need it long pants, even in the hottest here, too." weather. She sat sullenly now while Cara's face tensed and tingled with her mother fished around in her annoyance: that was something her handbag for the drug- the bleachmother said every time. In fact, the silently blaming her both for the sorry bleaching of the shadow between her state of her legs and for making her eyebrows had always been so so painfully conscious of their desultory a gesture on her mother's unattractiveness by bringing up the part that Cara did not even include it subject of yet another defect: the in her own conception of the "hairs." "hairs."

"Stop twitching!" Mrs. Geisler said.

Mrs. Geisler had found what she "That stuff cracks, and I'll have to do was looking for: a discreet, pale it over again." Her voice, if not her turquoise box with ..Jolen" inscribed words, expressed the horror of a on it in airy, feminine script, and "Lip Michaelangelo watching her David Bleach" below that, in small print. threatened with an axe.

The inaccuracy of this description • "Oh, never!' Cara blurted angered Cara: it was not her lip that forgetting even to keep impulsively, had to be bleached; it was the hairsher lips tight. the mustache!- above her lip. Raging The blood rose in Mrs. Geisler's inwardly, Cara watched as her she clenched her band around face; mother, with the skilled air of a her daughter's exposed upper arm, pharmacist, mixed the contents of the thrusting her hot face close to the dainty tube of cream and a delicate girrs. vial of powder she had produced "You listen to me," she warned. from the box. She spread the "You just listen to me now, young concoction with a tiny, spatulalady. I don't like you today- you shaped stick onto a miniature pallet bear me? You think you're so great: of white plastic- both also from the well, you're not. That's what you have box. to learn, in order to live in the real "Look at me," the woman world. People have to live in reality, commanded. not in a fantasy world, like you." The Cara lifted and turned her head. woman paused for a deep, slow Her mother applied the white cream breath.

"Can you understand that?" with the spatula, spreading it expertly she said as if she were talking to an to cover all the hairs. A sharp smell idiot. bit into Cara's nostrils; she Cara nodded, mesmerized more by remembered that the writing on the the rhythm of the words than by their box had also proclaimed Jolen's awful meaning.

"New Rose-Scent."

"Answer me."

The stuff stung. Exaggerating her "Yes." discomfort, as she always did- by Mrs. Geisler shook her head slowly, moving her Hps as little as possible portentously. when she spoke, as if the cream were "I don't think so, Cara," she said. a great weight-Cara said petulantly: "I don't think you really do. I think "It burns!" you're lying." She waited for this to "That's only for the first few sink in- Cara did not deny it- before minutes," her mother said sagely.

VISIT· lNG

DAY

t J'

'

continuing grandly. "It's too much to expect, that you'll ever learn. I know it. Your father is right: if you haven't learned by now, it's too late. He's resigned himself to that-your own father. I don't know how he did it. I can't-I've tried to, God knows, but I can't, and that's that. I'm your mother, I can't let you be the way you are now-the way you've always been. You've always been this way, and it's no good." She appealed to Cara with small, inexpressive eyes, at the same time tightening her grip on the girl'§ arm. "It hurts me- it breaks my bean---an you understand that?- when I see you living like this, in filth. Filth! If it was up to me I would take you out today. But your father thinks it's good, maybe be's right, I don't know. I just don't know anymore."

The hand holding Cara's arm relaxed, but the woman's broad face, drained now of color and oddly luminous, still hung as if disembodied inches from Cara's own. The woman was inhaling deeply and irregularly, dipping her head forward each time, her eyes half-closed. Cara had the sudden, terrible conviction that her mother was somehow drawing strength for another tirade from her own- Cara's- breath. She drew back in horror, gasping slightly and holding the burning air down inside her chest. When it burst forth seconds later, with a scalding rush, Cara heard herself whisper hoarselv: "No!" Mrs. Geisler roused herself at the sound, as if awakened by the snap of a hypnotist's fingers, and began to speak again as though she had never stopped.

••1 only want the best for you, everything I do is for your own good, whether you know it or not," she said to the side of Cara's ashen face. "I didn't have to bring this"- she waved the little turquoise box-"but I thought maybe you'd appreciate it, realize I only wanted to help you. I didn't do it for my own sake, did I? But I see now that was too much to expect." The angry flush had returned to her cheeks. "Look at me!" she said, and peered intently at her daughter's face.

Cara hated her mother now- hated the little eyes, hated the warmth which seemed to creep, sly and tentacled, toward her from her mother's body. She wanted to scream; she would have screamed, had the woman not said at that moment: "It's almost time to take if off," and reminded her of the precious cream drying stiff and caked above her lip.

"I'll take it off now," Mrs. Geisler continued, taking a wet washcloth from the plastic bag she had, in tum, taken out of her handbag. "We have to meet your father," she added irrelevantly, daubing the bleached areas of Cara's face ungently.

"Finished," she announced, with a sort of pride.

Cara's skin felt raw where the cream had been, more exposed somehow than the rest of her face.

She twitched her upper lip experimentally, as if she doubted that it was still flexible. Her hatred had subsided

now, replaced by a bubble of hysteria that nearly burst when her mother said: "You have no idea how much better you look. I know you can't see yourself objectively-which you'll have to learn to do one of these days- but you were actually ugly before. A girl with a mustache is something people make fun of. Do you want them to make fun of you?

Or would you rather I did this for you?"

"Yes." "Yes what?"

"I'd rather you did this for me."

"Well, then show it. Show a little appreciation for a change, that's all I ask. Is that too much for a mother to expect?"

They were leaving, finally. But first they were going to take her picture.

All right: she could stand that much more.

Cara stood in front of the cabin, waiting for her father to return from the car with his camera, idly and absurdly trying to calculate the length of her family's visit from the position of the afternoon sun. Her sisters were playing on the molehills again; her mother stood nearby, scowling and shaking her head at nothing in particular- at the entire camp, perhaps, with its flurry of postvisiting, pre-dinner life.

Cara herself had lost all track of time soon after her parents' arrival; before that, the minutes had weighted the air with a palpable, languid presence. The events of the afternoon, following the bleaching ritual, had slipped past her memory unnoticedall except one, and it was this one alone that Cara desperately wanted to forget. The others, she was sure, had been innocuous enough.

She had Hed, the tendency her parents always held up as ultimate proof of her inherent, ineluctable badness. The lie had not been premeditated; nor would it be discovered. But it lent a prophetic aura to her parents' dismal assessment of the chance that Cara would "learn before it was too late."

She and her mother had joined her father and sisters in the makeshift studio. The poor lighting and gray concrete walls of the small room made the paintings that were hung randomly or planted on easels in the corners stand out with a brightness that was almost malevolent. Looking around at the collected work of the campers, Cara noticed for the first time the remarkable consistency of many of the artists: the girl who painted nothing but seated, faceless women in eighteenth-century dress; the boy who worked endless variations on a mushroom-andspider's-web theme, in shades of orange and red. Then there was the work of Capraro's two favorites, amazingly similar: Modigliani-Iike, but artless, portraits of women--or girls, you couldn't tell which-with heart-shaped faces, pointed chins; ~taring, lashless eyes outlined heavily in black; narrow, sloping shoulders.

Jt

The New Journal I March 1, 1977

11

American Master Drawings

American Master Drawings and Watercolors, by Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. (with the assistance of John Caldwell and Carol Troyen) was commissioned by the Drawing Society to present a survey of American draftsmanship from 1564 to the present. A major exhibition of American drawings, based on the book and sponsored by The American Federation of Arts, has travelled to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and is currently on view in San Francisco at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.

A selection of illustrations from the book iodi~s its scope. Drawings have been made throughout American history, from early notations such as John White's A Warrior of Florida to expressive works such as Untitled Number II by the contemporary sculptor, David Smith. Folk and country artists are represented by such works as the Shaker drawing The Tree of light, an interesting contrast to sophisticated drawings such as John La Farge's Dawn Comes on the Edge of Night. Mr. Stebbins explores in careful detail the varying techniques and differing purposes of the artists. This can readily be seen in a comparison of two masterly landscape drawings: the quick study of Niagara Falls from the Canadian Side by Frederic Edwin Church and the painstakingly finished image, Twilight, Plum Island River, by his contemporary Martin Johnson Head e.

American Master Drawings and Watercolors is a pleasure. Handsomely designed and printed, it explores, for the first time, the rich and continuous tradition of American draftsmanship.

Patricio P. Fischer

12

The New Journal I March 1, 1977

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The New Journal I March 1, 1977

Visiting Day (continued from page ten) The observation unsettled her; apparently there were patterns people could not break.

"I see this is one of yours," Mr. Geisler had said. He was thQughtfully eyeing a three-quarter-view portrait of an attractive, strong-shouldered woman with prominent cheek bones, full lips, a long, muscular neck, in a muted yellow shawl-collared dress or shirt. The painting had been executed on a rectangular wooden board and then brushed over with a sepia wash, so that it looked as if the wood had never been completely covered. "Not bad," he said, grinning expectantly at Cara, as if awaiting profuse thanks for a shining compliment.

"You like it?" Cara said simply.

"On the whole," her father mused, "it's not bad. The lips are too thick; the nose is good- very good."

Suddenly he seemed suspicious. "You did that nose?"

"Yes," Cara said, and that was the lie. The woman's nose- well-shaped, perfectly highlighted, with wide, winged nostrils- was the one part of this particular painting that Capraro had chosen to improve upon. He had done so thorough and impressive a job that Cara herself could not remember the original. Instead, she had, up until the second before she said "Yes," succeeded in more than half-convincing herself that it was her own work.

But she had lied- she had always lied. Her parents were right: she would never learn. It was a pattern she could not break.

Her father had returned now with the camera and a brown supermarket bag which he had given to Cara's youngest sister to hold. The little girl kept unrolling its top and peeking inside as if she thought its contents might' have disappeared. Mr. Geisler took the camera out of its leather case and waved Cara to the spot- in front of the cabin steps- where he wanted her. She stood ready, hands on hips, smiling broadly for practi~.

Her lip still felt stiff; she was sure tt was red and sore-looking.

FLY ELI!

13

Just then, as Cara's luck would The bag contained a box of pretzels have it, Amy Ray walked up to the and a round cellophane package of cabin. Amy Ray was one of Capraro's dubious-looking candy- irridescent, two favorites-the worst one. She was pastel-colored sticks about the size a lanky girl with stringy brown hair and shape of small test tubes- which in pigtails, freckles, and a pink, Cara knew at a glance she would hate. She had guessed when she first inordinately fleshy nose. saw the bag that her parents had brought food-that was traditional"Hi, Cara!" she said brightly. but she was disappointed.

"Where have you been? I haven't seen you all day." She frowned, as if this "Oh, great!" she said, keeping her fact had weighed heavily upon her voice miraculously free of irony. mind for hours. Then she brightened "Sustenance!" Inspiration seized her again and waved cheerfully to Cara's and she said to her mother: "You parents. wouldn•t believe how much I miss "Cara, why don't you ask your your cooking!" Now that her parents' friend to be in the picture?" Mrs. departure was imminent, Cara felt, Geisler said loudly. When Cara did she could afford to be nice. Besides, it not respond, she herself addressed was true.

Amy, gesticulating elaborately, so Mrs. Geisler nodded, unaffected, that even if the girl were deaf she still eyeing her daughter strangely. would understand: "Come here, "They don't feed you here?'' she sweetie, come be in Mr. Geisler's said as if she really thought this might picture!" be true.

The girl turned toward her and "Oh, they feed us- it's what they smiled with false, unbecoming feed us!" Cara tried to make her shyness. cheerful tones contagious. "You "Are you sure?" Then to Cara: "Is wouldn't believe what they have the it all right?" nerve to call food." She grimaced "But of course, Amy," Cara said humorously. coldly, with a French accent.

"Yes, I would," her mother said Amy took her place next to Cara, ponderously. imitating--consciously, Cara was "Okay, kids, say good-bye to your convinced- her pose. Mr. Geisler said sister," Mr. Geisler was saying. The "Smile, girls!" and snapped their two girls did so in unison. To Cara, picture uneventfully. depressed by her mother's sullen "That's all: no explosion, no fireperversity, it sounded as if they had works," Cara said, mostly to herself. rehearsed.

Her mother frowned deeply. Amy "Well, good-bye, Cara," Mr. Ray punched her arm affectionately Geisler said. "We'll see you in two and said "See you toni-yight," before weeks, I guess. Don't forget to write. going inside.

Madeleine?" he urged, and started to "Madeleine, it's time we got going," walk with the two girls across the Mr. Geisler said, hanging the camera grounds to the parking lot. He and around his neck and motioning for the little one, half-way there, turned his two younger daughters. once to wave and to summon Mrs. "I'm ready," Mrs. Geisler said in an Geisler, whose lips, Cara saw from exhausted voice, as if she had just the corner of her eye as she waved completed some grim and elaborate back, had begun to tremble preparation for the trip home. Cara perceptibly. noticed with a jolt that her mother "That Amy seems like a nice girl," was scrutinizing her closely. the woman said suddenly.

"But first we have to give Cara her ··she's not," Cara insisted. It present." Mr. Geisler took the brown figured that the dreadful Amy Ray bag from the four-year-old, who had something to do with her hurried a last look inside before mother's agitation. surrendering it reluctantly. "This is "Well," the woman sighed, "I just for you," Mr. Geisler said magnanithought-1 just hoped-that maybe, mously, handing it to Cara. finally, you were finding yourself a

few friends-maybe you were finally learning to live with people. That's what I thought, that's what I hoped and prayed for." She shook her head.

••But I see now I was wrong. I see now it was too much to expect from you."

"I hove a few friends. Amy Ray just isn't one of them."

"Too much to expect. Too much to ask." The woman's head shook continuously now, as if with palsy.

••oon't say good-bye to me. I know you don't want to." Her voice cracked. "I know it."

Mrs. Geisler walked away swiftly, but her heavy legs, which Cara watched with terrible fascination, conveyed the impression that each step she took was weighted with a profound, maternal sorrow.

Cara's cabin was the largest in the camp: two separate wings for campers and a smaller room between them for counselors. And it was considered the best, thanks to a built-in latrine. Cara was examining her face closely in the mirror above one of its three sinks.

She pressed the skin above her lip tentatively. It felt unnaturally smooth, though in the mirror she could see enlarged pores which made it look uneven and cratered. It might have been red, too, but Cara couldn't tell: her whole face was red from crying.

"Beautiful!" the girl said suddenly, the word condensing in a small circle of steam on the mirror. "Beautiful, beautiful. And I was ugly before-to think I was ugly before!" She laid the tips of four fmgers gently on the sensitive skin. "Where would I be if my mother hadn't done this? Where would I be?" She pressed and took the hand away quickly, as if her fingers had been burned. Four small crescent-shaped indentations were strung above her lip. "I'd be ugly," she said in a high, strained voice. She replaced the fingers with great care, fitting each fingernail into its crescent.

Then she scratched down hard over her lip. Scarlet threads appeared below two of the marks. "But nownow I'm absolutely gorgeous!" She started to laugh, but her mouth cracked into a grimace. ··oh, where would I be without my mother to do this for me?" she sobbed. "Where would I be without my mother?"

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The New Journal I March I, 1977

Violence Galore? (continued from page two) Director George Roy Hill told us that "television takes the place of public violence. It's like slapstick comedy," he said. "The pain happens to someone else, so we think it's funny." Psychology Professor Jerome Singer pointed out that "Children can't tell the difference between television violence and real violence."

We fidgeted, wondering if the Saturday morning cartoons counted.

Screenwriter Nancy Dowd observed that violence arrests the development of children and people. George Roy Hill defended his latest film "Slapshot," which had a world premiere in New Haven last Thursday night. "I haven't made violent movies in the past," he said.

--

....

--··----·· . . ... ·-- .

15

The panelists asked few questions and offered fewer answers. It was clear that they felt comfortable discussing audience appeal, without going beyond the mere fact of the appeal of violence.

I wondered whether the panel went to see "King Kong." Would they base their decisions on the appea! of Kong versus the appeal of Jessica Lange? I wondered if they would think about the possible after-effects of viewing Kong vicariously, from a distance.

I found out why my friend had decided to come early and sit in the second row. My friend found the actor on the panel very appealing.

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!Jocko Sullluan's 1166 The panelists encouraged us to think about violence as a symbol, what it portrays vs. what it represents. I tried to think what Captain Marvel represents. I tried not to think what Captain Marvel represents.

"Violence is a pattern of entertainment in step with American culture. The only things that are entertaining are things that come close to death," Philosophy Professor John E. Smith said. "A lot of people go away mad if they don't see a fight in a film," the screenwriter added.

"People go to the movies for violence," said Singer, "but the evidence suggests that watching violence makes people more violent."

Hill suggested that violence in film is a vicarious safety valve. Smith looked worried. "Are we transformed by viewing material like this from a distance?" he queried anxiously.

Der Wanderstab Now it is the monsoon season.

We sit through movies twice, three times waiting for the rains to stop.

I must seem unloving to you,

flaking and cracking.

After this I should be wet and fertile,

St.

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At the movies, the man with the bowtie smoking Camels tells the story of the wanderstab: Years ago, it was early in Germany. Legs came out walking as suns froze and fell on the snow.

The organ-grinder in the park gazebo called his silver stick

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