memories are made of this

Since I have a degree from Harvard (M.T.S. 1971) I receive the University's magazine every two months.

The March/April magazine had a cover story about 1969 (my first semester there) and the student strikes over the Vietnam war.

In my two years in Cambridge, we completed only one of four semesters because of strikes that shut down the university. Those were, in my memory, a boy from the mountains of West Virginia, amazing!

Police in riot gear. Students in tee shirts with a red hand on the back, curled into a fist, and the black letters "STRIKE".

Harvard Square was like a variety show. Hippies, Hari Kristna  folks,  people in red and black robes acting out roles of the GOOD and the EVIL, teens looking for pot, homeless folks, students from the college, sight-seers and tourists, and the little dog belonging to the newspaper guy with paralyzed back legs tied on a skateboard.

Weird times, indeed.

I was at the Divinity School as my way of getting out of the draft. I won a Rockefeller "Trial year in Seminary" scholarship which, since I was in Divinity School and the Bishop of West Virginia made me a 'candidate for holy orders', gave me the last remaining draft deferment in 1969. They were drafting Law students, medical students and PH.D. students.

I've been reading the stuff undergrads at the time have written.

It was weird. Very weird.

Fond memories.

I like weird.