Stories

Seder

I don’t know if we had a Seder every year, but we did have at least one during my tenure at Jordan J.  We used a very contemporary Hagaddah that included references to Rabbi Martin Luther King, Jr. and others not found in the most traditional Hagaddot.  We set a place for Elijah.  It was a very lovely spring evening in Cambridge, and it was, I believe, a weekend evening.  When the moment came to open the door for Elijah, some of the people at the table not only opened the door but walked out to the street and invited someone who was passing by to join us.  As I remember this, our guest (the invitee said yes) was quite stoned, and never necessarily understood exactly what he had joined, but was grateful for both the dinner and the warm camaraderie that we continue to share now 50 years later.  

Susie Stout

The Landline

We shared the costs of the landline (I think there was just one) that served Jordan J.  Somehow, I was “elected” to be the keeper of the account, which usually meant going around and collecting the long-distance charges for each bill.  I must have also written the monthly checks.  Congress had passed a new tax on phone usage explicitly to fund the Vietnam War, and like thousands of others around the country, we held back that tax every month.  We did, however, keep careful track, and, over the following summer, I began to receive mail from the FBI (at least as I remember it) demanding payment of the tax.  When I explained the situation to my parents, they suggested that I should get the correct amount in cash and keep it under the doily on the little table in our entryway, which I did.  The FBI showed up on a weekday when I was at whatever my summer job was, and my beloved, wonderful mother, with a gentle Southern accent, invited the gentlemen in, served them tea, and told them why we and she opposed the war.  She then paid our taxes from the little envelope hidden in the entryway, and the FBI agents went on their way.  

Susie Stout

We had girls.  My first year on the squad was the first year that happened.  The girls were better than the guys; they actually knew cheers with movements.  The guys traditionally just stood around pumping fists and chanting.  One new cheer with moves that the girls brought (Go, Fight, Win) had them jump up into our arms, then swing around behind us, then swing around to the front again, before we set them back on the ground.  I loved it.  The first time we tried it at a game, the student section rose up and cheered loudly.  I was taken aback.  Nothing much was happening on the field, yet the crowd cheered like we had made a touchdown.  I later learned that the girls' thighs and some regions of their buttocks were very visible during Go, Fight, Win, and the student body reacted as an all-male set of high-schoolers, half of them boarding students, might be expected to.  

Charlie Marlin 

Mr. Natural

Andy

Enter Andy Hedin, the aspect of 'Susandy' complementary to Susie. Andy was effervescent, infectiously cheerful, smart, and pretty. If I was in awe of Susie, I had a crush on Andy. So the homeless word "squinky," adrift without reference, alighted on her, for me at least. Just as individual plants, once plucked, squeezed, dried, and stored in herbaria can become the type specimens that define new species, Andy became for me the type specimen of the term "squinky" -- to be "squinky" was to be whatever it was to be Andy: happy, electric, and attractive.

It was only this year, talking with Uncle Ho (AKA Bob Houghteling), that I discovered that I was pretty much alone in this belief about who defined squinkitude and that the others who used the term (Bob, Stretch (AKA Frank Longstreth, and George C. Scott) thought that I was the prototypically "squinky" human. Who knew?

James Boster

Eliot was the clear tone of a bassoon although now he might be more like the buzz of a didgeridoo. Eliot started as a seedling in the sky, a life spark from the heavens, who has been growing down to earth. I see him as The Fool from the Tarot -- innocent, fortunate, stepping into the unknown. So now, after a lifetime, I imagine that his feet almost touch the ground.

In contrast, Sandy was a complex jazz progression. Sandy emerged from the earth and has been growing, like world tree, heavenward. I see him as a Mr. Natural who sheds his cynicism and stretches toward the light. So now, after a lifetime, I imagine that his head almost touches the sky.

Thus, after 50 years, I expect that both span almost all the distance between heaven and earth, just from different directions. 

[Note: I recently learned from Sandy that he did not think of himself as having stretched toward the sky but instead grown into the earth and has extended his roots ever deeper, the process he calls "waking down." ]

James Boster

Bonobos

Of all of the other great apes, the social organization in Jordan J was most like that of bonobos, female-centered, with several pairs of women forming tight bonds with each other: Susie and Andy, Audrey and Rhoda, Cathy and Rika, ... doublets who were usually roommates. The men tended to interact in more fluid playgroups with fluctuating compositions. Like bonobos, the males' strongest dyadic bonds tended to be with the females they coupled with rather than with other males. Bob and I remember that the women were firmly in control; it was their turf, after all, men were interlopers. 

Despite an incest taboo honored in the breach, there were many cross-sex pairings, some incongruous, others disastrous, many ephemeral, some public, others clandestine. Out of all of them, only three couples that I know of have lasted a lifetime together: Gay & Wick, Rachel & SteveB, and Connie & Floyd. (Other pairings were forged at that time and remain to this day like Bob & Elizabeth and Alaka & Rick, but they were exogamous.)

James Boster

Sheep and Shepherds

Again, the mark of a good herding dog is when the sheep don't realize they have been herded.

In the course of preparing the recipes page, I discovered a case in which I, qua sheep, had no recollection of having been herded by Susie, qua border collie. The realization came when I encountered a recipe for "Coffee James Boster" in the pages of the Jordan J Cookbook. It was very suspicious. I did not remember it as a recipe I had submitted, I don't recall ever drinking let alone preparing coffee in the way described, and the handwriting wasn't mine. Comparison with the handwriting on other recipes suggested Susie's hand.              But what was my name doing on a recipe Susie had written? 

Susie explained the mystery. As curator of the cookbook, Susie wanted everyone to contribute; the flock should stay together. But nearing completion, I was still missing from the herd of recipe authors. This lapse evidently bothered Susie more than me. Susie reports that she coaxed this recipe out of me and into the cookbook. It is probably the lamest recipe in it.

The border collie retained a far clearer memory of herding the sheep than the sheep herded. 

James Boster

Fieldwork in Maya Land.

Back then, the National Science Foundation had a summer program to send undergraduates to do anthropological fieldwork, nominally but not really under the supervision of NSF grant recipients. Peter Guarnaccia and I both signed up, he made the smarter choice and headed to Zinacantan, Chiapas, Mexico, heart of the Anthropological-Industrial Complex. In those days, both Harvard and Stanford had large well-funded research programs in Chiapas. Stanford's accidentally appropriately named "Chiapas Drinking Project," which produced many cubic yards of computer printout but very few publications, focused on Tzeltal speakers in nearby Tenejapa. (Years later, I visited the burial vault of the project in the basement of the Language Behavior Research Laboratory at UCB, but that is another story.) Harvard's research centered on Tzotzil speakers in Zinacantan and neighboring communities. The project was led by Evan Vogt, but the best research was done by his graduate students, notably John Haviland and Patricia Greenfield. Zinacantan was the smart choice because there was much more institutional support for undergraduates doing their first anthropological fieldwork, the "informants" were experienced, and the graduate students could offer real guidance on how to conduct research. They even had square dances.

But I aspired to become an apprentice to a Mayan healer and that did not seem possible for me in Chiapas.  So I headed instead to Belize and after various mishaps and missteps found myself in San Benito Poite in the Toledo District, close to the Guatemalan border but two days' walk through tropical forest to the nearest road. The satellite images above compare the environs today of Zinacantan on the left and San Benito Poite on the right; the white scale in both images measures three miles. Both places have changed in 50 years; for example, San Benito Poite now has a road and buildings with tin roofs that it didn't before.

There I became an apprentice to Santiago K'al, a Qʼeqchiʼ Maya hilonel, 'seer' of sickness or healer. I learned how to treat common maladies like diarrhea with herbal medicines but also learned how to treat soul loss and demon possession - severe illnesses caused by having one too few or one too many souls. Finishing my apprenticeship and earning Santiago's certification as an hilonel was the first degree I ever received. Many years later, when I lived in Southern California, I almost hung out my shingle as an hilonel because both soul loss and demon possession were rampant, but that is also another story.

When I got back to Cambridge, I was a little unhinged; I had just gone through one of the most intense experiences in my life - learning Qʼeqchiʼ through the immersion method while trying to understand things that I could not see. Peter was justifiably wary of me because throughout Maya land it is understood that you cannot learn to heal disease without learning to inflict it. All Mayan healers are thought to be able to practice witchcraft; that you can't become an hilonel without becoming a tuulanel.

Hilonels and Tuulanels

Shortly after we returned,  Steve Lewis slyly let me know that Peter was afraid that I was practicing witchcraft.  Thus incited, I slowly ramped up my craziness, directing ominous vibes toward Peter. It began quietly enough - while he was getting his haircut in the bathroom, I floated in to collect his hair clippings off the floor and floated out again. Things gradually escalated.

And then they got really weird. One evening, I climbed up the outside of Jordan J to the second floor and tracked Peter around the building following him from room to room, scampering like spider-man, eyes-wide, intensely looking in.  I had painted my face; Steve Lewis remembers I was dressed all in black. I don't think there is or ever was a photo of what I looked like that night, the image above is the closest I could find. 

I don't know how long I stalked him - it probably seemed longer for Peter than for me. But eventually, David Schuldberg said "Enough!," and I stopped, not just for that night but from then on. Of course, I had never learned witchcraft - Santiago insisted that he practiced ka'aj wi' li us, 'only the good' -  the pretense of being a Mayan witch or tuulanel was always only an act.

I don't have an excuse for what I did; Peter certainly didn't deserve to be harassed in that way. But while it lasted, the urge to continue was over-powering.  

Apparently, after 50 years, this episode is not as salient to Peter as it is to me. He writes

So what I remember to add to the story is that I put on my Zinacanteco outfit and tied the scarf on my head like a shaman. I then looked up some prayers in the back of Vogtie’s magnum opus, Zinacantan. I found some healing prayers and hoped they would repel you. I think David’s intervention worked better!

 James Boster

Charlie continues to retell that story. I feel confident that, like a sturdy oak, it has grown and flourished over time.  I asked Charlie to write his version of the story but he declined, saying "It is a performance work, part of the oral tradition, and does not, I think, lend itself to the written word." 

Thus, acting alone, I have passed that oral tradition into writing only as a scribe, as others have done for the Upanishads, the Odyssey, and the Gospels. When there is no longer a living community to sustain an oral tradition, it can only be preserved in scripture. So, this is not Charlie's story anymore but instead my story of Charlie telling a story at a kitchen table in Jordan J fifty years ago. No doubt it has been transformed by the vagaries of my memory and may bear little resemblance to the original.   

James Boster

But Jordan J, with 12 men, seemed to develop a new and freewheeling culture and camaraderie that was a very different phenomenon.  It seemed like everyone did everything together – events around the building and outings far beyond.  While the individual lives of each of us in Jordan K were quite separate outside of meals and a few small gatherings, Jordan J seemed like a perpetual party, from group talking sessions to group parties to group events.  While I knew some of the guys in J from the previous two years, I felt like an outsider, watching a fabulous commune develop and thrive.  While there were several what I’ll call traditionalists (at least compared with other cultural changes and experimentation going on at the time) in Jordan K, I didn’t see anyone like that in J; everyone was part of the same single group, sharing time, space, and who knows what else, all vibrant, creative, excited about discovery.  

Does it sound like I was jealous?  Absolutely.  The accuracy of my perception is certainly suspect; lots of time has passed since then and memories are subject to substantial revision and re-creation over 50 years.  But the basic sense of community and collectivity in J, especially in the early months, was a deep impression of mine and it seemed like a wonderful, happy experience for a cohesive group of fabulous, exciting people.

Steve Beckman

Dinner Guests

One of my strongest memories is Jonathan Kozol's visit to Jordan J.  We would often invite guests to our dinners.  Kozol had already made a name for himself as a teacher and writer, highlighting the “Savage Inequalities” of the educational system.  He challenged us to shake up things at Harvard. He said, "why don’t we start a movement to rename the buildings—the names are all of wealthy white men who created the inequalities so manifest today."  After he left, Chris Richardson was inspired. He brought some paint and in the dead of night, he painted in large letters on the outside of the coop:  Che Guevara Hall! I was proud to live in Che Guevara Hall till I graduated.

Another guest was Julia Child!  I think Julia Frank invited her! I don’t remember who was cooking but we were all nervous. Ms. Child though was extremely friendly and generous in her praise.  So much joy around the table. 

More than anything I treasure are the kitchen conversations.  Hours watching bread rise, vegetables chopped, world affairs discussed, protests planned.  Then there were the cozy times in Gay and Wick’s room, with lots of hugs.  And I felt in the awe of Sandy's and Eliot's deep spirituality.  

We had some wild dance parties too! 

Alaka Wali

Granola

I hadn’t done much complete dinner preparation before I moved to Jordan J.  Julia Frank took me under her wing for my first cook – it was fish, I think.  She taught me some valuable life lessons, such as, when you’re washing pots, remember that one pot will be stored inside another one, so washing the outside of the pot is just as important as the inside.

Somehow Ellen Messing and I ended up as granola proctors one semester.  Our job was to keep the kitchen supplied with granola, for breakfast and snacks, and every few weeks we would mix up a huge batch.  We probably started with the recipe from Diet for a Small Planet, but branched out.  Looks like you can put any kind of grain or seed in granola, so how about … sesame seeds?  cracked wheat?  Finely chopped walnuts?  We were always on the lookout for novel ingredients.  Our zenith (or nadir?) was the time we ground up a box of Milk-Bones and mixed that in.  It’s just vegetable protein and fiber, right?  The granola tasted fine, and I don’t think we ever divulged this particular secret ingredient.   

Ev Tate

Across the Great Divide

In 1971, I took the train from Boston to Montreal and then, across Canada. It was a fabulous trip on the Canadian National Railroad, across the plains and through the Rockies. My transition point was Vancouver where Gay and Wick welcomed me to stay with them -- I think about a week. I remember pouring tea from a teapot with Gay and talking through the morning. Gay was working for a very famous architect and she took me to a party at his atelier. Only in retrospect do I realize that the architect was a guy named,  Arthur Erickson who designed many gorgeous buildings including the University of British Columbia Art Museum. Back then, Vancouver was a rambling town surrounded by mountains and ocean and until it developed skyscrapers, it was my favorite North American city. 

Jill Einstein

Music and Dance

Perhaps my absolute favorite times in Jordan J were the square dances. There was one in Currier House that Peter called. I can't remember whether the music was live but there were so many people. The space was huge and there was an upstairs kind-of balcony that I stood on and watched all the dancing forms take shape as people do-si-do'd, swang their partners, sashayed, allemande left, and promenaded.

I remember Barney practicing his saxophone in the shower in the second-floor bathroom and full of life after returning from visiting his grandfather on his farm in (Harvard?) Massachusetts. 

Jill Einstein

Chesspie

I have tried over the last few weeks to remember a story about Jordan-J that was suitable for all audiences.  The most vividly memorable are not.  Then the following episode came to mind. 

I’m not sure if it was my first evening at Jordan-J or the next, but I made a statement that sounded to me like Cool Hand Luke when he announced that he could eat fifty eggs.  A conversation had developed around what sort of cooking experience the guys had, and I said, “I can make a chess pie.”  I do not remember what any of the guys might have said at that point, but the female response was two-fold.  On one hand: What on earth is a chess pie?  Chess is a board game.  Do you mean “chest like chestnut”?  On the other hand, and simultaneously as I recall it, a slightly more polite form of “OK, prove it.  Make one now.”

I asked Meryl about ingredients.  All were staples, except the frozen pie crust.  Meryl belittled me for asking about a frozen pie crust.  Any self-respecting person would make their own.  I asked how and she tossed me a cookbook.  “I’m sure there’s a recipe in there.”  One of the more helpful women brought me a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and showed me where the pie crust was described.  It had pictures and everything.  I gathered up a mixing bowl, flour, a measuring cup, and something I’d never seen: a pastry cutter.  The book called for one and I had to ask what it was and whether we had one.  One of the more defiant women handed it to me with an expression of utter disdain on her face.  

Then there arose a cacophonous babble of instructions and advice, some conflicting with others.  I listened, but taken as a whole, I found it difficult to follow a coherent thread.  I recall vividly at this point that Sue Stout announced in a quiet but commanding voice that Charlie might do better if we left him alone.  They all walked away, to my great relief.

I had seen my mother using a rolling pin to roll out the dough for a pie crust, but I had never seen how the dough itself was made.  I followed the book blindly.  The pictures were less helpful than I thought they would be.  Nothing looked like this terribly unpromising mess of water and flour in the bowl.  But I kept adding water a bit at a time and moving the pastry cutter through the mess.  It was almost sudden.  In a remarkably short time period, the mess became recognizable as dough.  In one big lump.  I rolled it out and made the crust.

The rest was easy: 1, 2, 3.  One stick of butter, two cups of sugar, and three eggs.  With a light touch of corn meal, vinegar, and vanilla flavoring.  350 degrees, twenty minutes or so, and voila!  

As I recall, it was not a runaway hit.  Most of the women and some of the guys filtered back to the kitchen.  I cut really small pieces.  I may well have been guilty of attempting to exact some minor vengeance by saying, “Well, well.  Hmmm.  It looks like there may not be enough.”  The general verdict, reached after tentative bites, was that it was edible.  But too sweet.  Far too sweet.  But surprisingly similar to food.  As the semester wore on, people slowly developed a taste for chess pie and its remarkable sweetness.

Charlie Marlin

The Cookie Bomb

Some parts of this are very vivid to me, while other details – like the timing – are completely forgotten. Was it during mid-terms in 1972 that we first noticed the stress that exam period was placing on our fellow students and that we took special note of the haggard faces of those studying in Lamont Library?  We came up with the idea that cookies could put a smile on many of those faces, at least for a moment. I speculate that it was during mid-terms that we hatched this plan, because we baked hundreds and hundreds of cookies, and stored them in the freezer, as we worked out the other details of the plan.  I don’t know which of us (and it’s better not to remember who, I suspect) had the idea of a “cookie bomb,” but we latched on to that idea with enthusiasm.

Jordan J folk in on the plot were assigned to portions of the various floors of Lamont, and we walked down to Harvard Square together, each with boxes of cookies.  The idea was that at a certain time, we would all begin walking through our assigned region of the library, offering cookies to everyone who was studying, and someone would call the main desk shortly thereafter and explain that there was a cookie bomb going off in the library.  I think that those handing out cookies were genuinely surprised when there began to be announcements about closing the library, and it took all of us quite a while to catch on to the connection between the closing and our plan, which we had not intended to be threatening at all. 

I think that we were able to distribute enough cookies to have a variety of experiences – some people had just the reaction we had imagined – a grateful smile, a lifting of the shoulders, a contemplative chewing as they turned back to their books.  But there were also those who were annoyed to be interrupted at all and were quite clear about their annoyance.

I think there were already campus police at Jordan J by the time I got back from the library.  Fortunately, those were much simpler times, and they kindly explained why our well-intended prank had caused so much disruption.  Of course, the library could not afford to ignore a bomb threat, even though library staff could see that cookies were, indeed being distributed. They chastised us for lack of foresight and sent us back to our books.  I believe that we offered them cookies, but I don’t remember whether or not they accepted.

Susie Stout

Critters

George was a friend to small critters. First, there was the kangaroo rat that lived in their couch in Adams House. And then there was the black-footed ferret he kept in his room with Stretch in Jordan J. (Ferrets are relatives of skunks, as their scent confirms. Kangaroo rats are more closely related to humans.) 

The black-footed ferret was an endangered species. It still is.

The Wonder Bread truck

George would take us for adventures in his Wonder Bread truck. Once, a bunch of us went to a Grateful Dead concert at MIT. Afterward, George was inspired to drive us all up to Plum Island. On the way, the highway patrol pulled us over. When the officer opened the door to the back to reveal a heap of stoned college kids, he just shut the door again and let us go on our way.

Chico's

George landed a part-time job pumping gas at Chico's Texaco near Fresh Pond which later became Chico's Sunoco. He got us jobs there too. Chico towed illegally parked cars from all over Cambridge to his impound lot; we would watch the lot to make sure that unhappy owners did not try to steal their cars back.

Laconic

George was usually a man of few words, somewhere between mono-syllabic and silent, like a cross between 'The Man with No Name' and Harpo Marx. George was tough and independent like the first without being aggressive and often silent with a mad glint in his eye like the second without being silly.

During freshman year, he cried out "Whee doggies!" and dived under the glass-topped coffee table. He escaped uninjured. That was George-in-a-grain-of-sand. 

George was a very fine human being. He was thoughtful, helpful, and playful all through the time I knew him. He probably still is.

James Boster

Grass-fed.

Bates Creek Grass Fed Beef is produced by the Scott family near Casper, Wyoming.  We raise Angus and Angus-Hereford cross calves on our high elevation ranges in the summer in Shirley Basin and at ranch headquarters on Bates Creek in the winter.  The steers destined for grass-fed beef are never put in a feedlot, but pastured on range or our hay meadows in the winter where they are fed alfalfa-grass hay.

Bates Creek Grass-Fed Beef

Bates Creek Ranch

Grass-Fed Beef Health Benefits

The Jordan J Cookbook

Only a few artifacts remain of our time together; one of them is the cookbook.  The recipes are interspersed with illustrations like those above.

James Boster

I Remember ...

Conch shell resounding in the stairwell calling us to dinner.

Making dandelion wine from the flowers on the Jordan J grass. Need to pick early and in full sunlight for the best tasting wine.

Derek Bok Meatloaf (Julia’s guest?)

Basement quiet study area where I wrote my thesis over a month and learned not to inhale Newports.

Dropping in to get reassuring advice from Gay.

Pauline’s special Chinese dinners that she had to go to Boston to get the ingredients.

Bringing profs to dinner.

Teresa, our sweet housekeeper.

I can still clearly hear the voices of you all when I think of those years.

 Claire Ducharme Wilson