I am a...VERB

I MOVE TO THE HIGHLANDS My position at the Clinic had given me minimal free time and minimum income; my apartment rent was eating up what spare change I had.  I thought about looking elsewhere for another position and in the meanwhile, I looked for less expensive lodgings. From a notice I saw posted on the Clinic bulletin board, I rented a room in a pleasant and spacious home located above the La Jolla flatlands in the Highlands.  It was a beautiful location with considerably less rent to pay...the home of a Clinic doctor's widow. She was intelligent and cultured; we listened to music together on her excellent hi-fi stereo player.  She had a television and we regularly watched Kenneth Clark's epic 'Civilization' series which was just being broadcast for the first time.  We wouldn't miss an episode.   We got along very well; she treated me as a family member. ACQUAINTANCES BECOME MY FRIENDS: Alain and Jon    Before moving to La ...

NO TELEVISION...so what? As in Happy Valley, and as in all my previous abodes during my university years, I again had no television...which was fine with me.  When I wasn't at work, I was either out walking, or inside the apartment reading a book or listening to music.  I had everything I needed...a bed to lay on, a few wonderful books, and a great KLH portable stereo record player I had got while I lived in the schoolhouse. The KLH had small but powerful detachable speakers; everything fit and clasped together compactly (cords, speakers, player and all)...folding up into a suitcase-like unit.  With its rich sound, it easily and conveniently could accompany me on all my moves.  It was perfect. THE MUSIC My students at Happy Valley introduced me to the music of Joni Mitchell and they loved to play her album, 'Song to a Seagull.'  I was hooked. There was a record store nearby in Mission Bay where I picked up two albums: Joni Mitchell's just-r...

MY DIGS I found a nice upstairs studio apartment on the edge of La Jolla, adjacent to Pacific Beach.  It was in a 2-story U-arranged building that formed an inner courtyard, and each apartment faced the one across the way.   The apartments opened to a balcony corridor.  The location was pleasant: a quiet residential area close to a row of beachfront homes on Calumet Avenue with a grassy bluff park where I would take evening walks. This was a huge change from my unique one-room schoolhouse abode, 'in the middle of nowhere,' high up in Ojai's beautiful Upper Valley.  I missed the space, the beauty, and the silence.  But there were compensations... JEANNE Shortly after I moved in, I would see a young woman about my age coming in and out of her apartment.  She had rich red hair and a bright smile, often dressed in a medical lab coat.  She was finishing her medical tech degree in residency at Scripps Hospital, another o...

A ONE-IN-A-MILLION CHANCE My draft issues that had been brewing for several years were now coming to a head.  My appeals to be recognized as a conscientious objector (CO) to war had been unanimously denied at the local and state levels and had now gotten as far as the Selective Service Presidential Appeal Board in Washington, D.C.  I had little hope that the prior unanimous decisions would be reversed. In the spring of 1970...my second semester at Happy Valley...I received the remarkable news that the Presidential Appeal Board had reversed the prior unanimous decisions and that my claim as a conscientious objector was approved.  My lawyer told me that this was a one-in-a-million chance and he was as surprised as I was. THANKFUL FOR A GRACEFUL WAY OUT Just weeks after I had received official notice of my status, I was drafted to serve my two years.  My time at Happy Valley came to an abrupt end.  In certain respects, this came as a relief. Whi...

DINNER WITH THE NEUTRAS I often visited Beatrice Wood and up the road from her lived Rosalind Rajagopal in Arya Vihara ('abode of the saints' in Sanskrit), Krishnamurti's former home.  I would occasionally visit Rosalind for conversation and particularly to talk with her about her interesting past.  One afternoon she invited me to stay for lunch and we had a delicious meal of papaya stuffed with cottage cheese and served with tasty sesame cookies. Rosalind could be distant, formal, and aloof.  Her eyes had a striking milky, cold blue quality.  She was high strung and it seemed hard for her to relax.  Her full-size poodle was her loving companion. She had suffered a critical episode of blood poisoning years before in Europe and was treated at the famous Bircher-Benner Clinic in Switzerland.  There she was introduced to having muesli and raw apples which she thereafter maintained in her strictly vegetarian diet.  She was always strict about ...

THE HAPPY VALLEY SCHOOL EXPERIENCE As for the classes I taught, it's now all a blur.  I think I was in shock much of the time, being way in over my head and not really having been prepared to be a junior high and high school teacher...in such diverse areas from my background education. For example, my big ideas for biology were to drive my students down to Santa Paula to visit the little zoo and watch the animals, or drive to Santa Barbara for a whale-watching cruise out in the channel.  I loved it and, I think, my students loved it, but whether it did their biology education justice is questionable.  I was definitely in danger of becoming The Music Man's Professor Harold Hill.  I wasn't pleased with that prospect. And I began to remind myself of my high school history teacher who repeatedly told underwhelming and uneventful anecdotes of his 'wartime' experiences to fill up hours of class time with empty air. But what I remember most clearly of my Happy Va...

MY NEW 'LOOKS-LIKE' FRIENDS ...and the math teacher on a peace pilgrimage Two young teachers were hired at the time I was and we three became good friends.  We were all about the same age---in our mid-twenties.   Bob was from some very good liberal arts college, I don't remember which.  He had a passion and obsession for Steve Allen, a musician, comedian, and intellectual television talk/variety-show host in the 1950s and 60s.   He looked and played the part...he wore the same type of thick-framed glasses and checkered sportcoats.  With sharp, crystal clear enunciation, Bob articulated his voice as if he were that television icon, and perfected an ironic, quick wit.  He taught history and was a PE teacher at the school.  Both of us alternated driving the school bus. David was a very gaunt, very tall, gangly Englishman who had gone to Cambridge University.  David reminded me of Walt Disney's version of Ichabod Crane of Sleep...