ustxtxb_obs_1984_12_14_50_00056-00000_000.pdf

The , Peoples Community Clinic A Non-Profit Clinic Low Cost, Quality Health Care General Medicine Gynecology Prenatal Pediatrics Birth Control for Appointments call 478-8924 for information call 478-1746 408 W. 23rd St. Austin, Texas 78705 In New York it’s Elaine’s In Austin it’s 1600 East 6th Street Austin, Texas 78702 e Earth ProvisionCo. Whol 1111111..: Complete selector, aC backpacking,climbing,canoeing, kayaking, 4. expedition sear. Durable men’s and WOrneriS clothing ,clovvri garments, shoes and boots. Books, maps, nature ,t tra1/4,e1,and river gu i des Trail Experienced Personnel Open ’til 9pm Thursdays 2410 SanAnton .lo 418-1577 8668 Research 4586333 the Fifth Amendment. Nobody knows if these people are communists or not. Nobody ever will know. “But the record pins these four artists principally Ben Shahn as communist fronters. An artist who uses his talent to advance the cause of subversive or communist organizations which have been denounced by the Committee on Un-American Activities of Congress or the Attorney General is dangerous to the life of America. “Our guns are leveled against the Reds when they use our Dallas Museum to further the cause of communism and the destruction of our country.” .. . Ronnie Dugger February 15, 1956 A Deferential Interview . . . Reporter: It is generally supposed that education and journalism are branches of knowledge. Dobie: They are the chief practitioners in the unctuous elaboration of the obvious. Some high schools now allow pupils to choose between English and journalism. They choose journalism in order to avoid the mental work that all genuine education entails. Imagine being a writer in the English language without knowing basic English. What a journalist needs is intelligence, an educated mind, and mastery of the craft of writing. He can’t get any of these from courses in journalism. What a teacher needs, aside from having sense and character, is basic knowledge in history, science, languages, literature, the fundamentals! All a would-be teacher gets out of Education is palaver not basic knowledge. It is no wonder that a pupil can’t get a book in a high school library, though he can ride to a circus in a big school bus that costs more than all the books put together in the school library. A lot of the books adopted by the state for school readers can’t be read by people with civilized tastes. They are adopted because their publishers know how to get around among the official adopters of texts. Most of these official adopters are no more concerned with cultivated minds, stimulated imagina tions and civilized tastes than the average governor’s appointee to some board dealing with education is. Reporter: Mr. Dobie, if you were dictator of Texas for a two-year term, what would you do? Dobie: I’d start in appointing men and women with disciplined and cultivated minds to positions of responsibility so far as education is concerned. I’d do what I could to restore democracy especially through an enlightened press. Reporter: Of course you know you’ll never be dictator. Dobie: Nor have influence otherwise. Anyhow, we can drink to free minds and the only minds that are free are those that know. Here’s to life! J. Frank Dobie January 10, 1958 Shattuck on New Avante-Garde “. . . The total engagement in life which existentialism taught immediately after the last war has evolved mysteriously into the total disengagemennt of the cool cat who doesn’t lift a finger for anyone and lives skin deep. How it happened has yet to be explained coherently and sympathetically. After nine months of running controversy on the generation kick, the Greenwich Village weekly printed a letter which answered all challengers. “Dear Sir: This hip routine is really getting infantile. Oh so young and oh so cool kiddies sneering at one another: ‘Me Dad, cooler than you, Dad.’ And what beat these beat babies? Why, being alive. It hurts to live and the more alive you are the more it can hurt. Besides, here are problems. So keep it cool, make it deadpan all the way through, lie down and play dead doggie. It’s easier and safer. As for Diane Di Prima, your correspondent of last week, I submit: Like Diane, why the palaver? The coolest cat is a cadaver. Michael O’Connell . . . Without a sense of direction and complaining of a cultural desert, it only too often flails the air. Nevertheless this generation which is my own is bound to produce some major figures, though they may not be the ones the ‘trade’ has handpicked for glory in the last twelve months. One of them may one day 56 DECEMBER 14, 1984