Chapter 4- The Berkeley Years - Part 2
Part 2 of 3 - Activism and the Human Potential Movement
The Vietnam War, Peace Activism, and the Age of Aquarius
(Molly) I had first learned about the conflict in Vietnam in a course on group discussion at SF State. One of our assignments was to have an informed discussion about the U.S. role in providing military advisors to the anti-communist president Ngo Dinh Diem. As far as I can remember now, that was the first time I became aware of–much less informed about–the situation there, although by then the US had been providing military support to Diem for ten years. Our discussion took place around the time that Diem was assassinated and things really began to heat up. I was convinced by my study for the class that U.S. involvement was deadly wrong, causing great harm to the people of Vietnam–and to American soldiers deployed there. It wasn’t at all clear which side was “in the right,” much less how our national security was somehow at stake. We saw so many horrifying images of children and other civilians fleeing bombs, their homes and villages in flames, culminating—but not ending—in the March 1968 My Lai massacre of 400 villagers by US troops.
Jim and I began participating in anti-war protests while Greg was a baby, including regular attendance at a Sunday morning silent vigil outside the Berkeley City Hall, organized by Quakers. Greg went with us in his stroller. I was also actively planning and organizing events for Vietnam Summer in 1967 (also known as the “Summer of Love”), a time of transition when the anti-war movement moved from college campuses into the community. I was convinced that the war was immoral and was causing grievous harm to the Vietnamese, U.S. soldiers (coming home wounded in body and soul), and our democracy. I wanted to do everything I could to stop it. I marched, wrote letters to the editor, to Congressional representatives, and to the President, put bumper stickers on our car, and campaigned for pro-peace politicians and against war hawks. I lost all respect for Lyndon Johnson, in spite of his promotion of civil rights (which I now look back upon with appreciation). But the horrors of the war eclipsed his domestic achievements at the time (just as Biden’s unbelievable support for Israel’s brutal war on the Palestinian people is eclipsing his considerable domestic achievements).
(Both) During this time, social unrest was rising, especially in poor and non-white urban communities, protesting systemic poverty, racism, and oppression. The Watts Uprising (called a riot by mainstream publications) took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in August 1965 after Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old African-American man, was pulled over for drunk driving. A year later, from our living room window in the Berkeley Hills, we watched the flames of the three day uprising in Hunter’s Point on the south edge of San Francisco, a response to San Francisco Police Department officer Alvin Johnson fatally shooting Matthew Johnson, a teenager fleeing the scene of a stolen car. We watched in anguish and helplessness, horrified by the inequity of our society that gave rise to such desperation.
With devastating suddenness two more leaders of the movements for peace and justice were assassinated: Martin Luther King Jr in April, 1968, followed in June by Robert Kennedy, who had just won the California primary and would almost certainly have been the Democratic candidate for the Presidency–our last best hope. These killings dealt crushing blows to the world and the nation, and to both of us personally. It was becoming more and more apparent that the hidden power structure of the United States could not tolerate leaders such as these two men. We watched MLK’s funeral on television. Molly remembers especially the procession from Ebenezer Baptist Church to Morehouse College, with King’s casket in a simple wooden farm wagon pulled by two mules, the crowd singing “We Shall Overcome.”
We don’t recall Robert Kennedy’s funeral; perhaps we were too stunned by these huge losses in such rapid succession. Even now, 54 years later, writing about this period brings on deep sadness. Perhaps needless to say, we never fully believed the “single shooter” story for any of these assassinations.
Kennedy’s assassination was followed by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, with Major Daley using police and the National Guard to violently repress protests, of which there were many. We supported Eugene McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey’s primary opponent, who ran on a strong anti-Vietnam war and pro-worker platform. We watched with horror the police brutality against protestors, and cheered on the outrageous Yippies and their pig named Pigasus whom they had nominated as the Democratic candidate. Sadly, the Democratic Party machine proved too strong for McCarthy and Humphrey was nominated, only to lose the election to Richard Nixon.
So Nixon became President in 1969–and the war got much worse, as he initiated bombing and invasions of neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia, and protesting students were shot dead by National Guardsmen at Kent State in May of 1970. But we’re getting ahead of our timeline here; a lot else happened during this period, both for us and in the larger world.
In the 1960’s, the USA was experiencing extreme political and social polarization. On the one hand, we had hawks promoting a horrific war in the Middle East and labeling anyone opposed as “unamerican”, and on the other, a strong anti-war movement was growing along with the blossoming of the New Age of Aquarius (flower children and pot-smoking hippies), the Civil Rights movement, the Free Speech movement at the University of California at Berkeley, the rise of Black Power and the Black Panthers, the beginnings of the Women’s Liberation movement, and an upsurge of folk music protesting the war and promoting alternatives to the constricted and rigid mainstream culture. (Looking back now, we would add the word “racist” to the adjectives about mainstream white culture.)
Many of us saw this as a time of huge change for the better: a social-cultural-political transformation towards peace, love, generosity, cooperation, and mutuality. It was, we believed, only a matter of time; the Vietnam War was the darkest hour before dawn. We two actually believed, for example, that by the time our children came of age, there would be free college education available to everyone (a dream that helped us feel okay that our meager income didn’t allow us to save for that purpose). Molly attended a few meetings of the Peace and Freedom Party because it was anti-war, pro-civil rights, pro-women’s liberation, and much more. She changed her voter registration accordingly, and avidly read books such as Soul on Ice by Eldrich Cleaver, the PFP presidential candidate. [For more background, see the excellent 1990 documentary film, Berkeley in the ‘60’s.]
We also took part in at least one “Human Be-In” in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco with Audie and Carol, Carol’s 9 year old daughter Krisli, and baby Greg. It may have been the first one held in January, 1967, or a later one. Jim remembers a huge “Earth ball” being bounced overhead by the crowd. I remember the Hell’s Angels providing security while the police stayed on the outskirts. An amazing array of musicians performed, a few women danced bare-breasted in the crowd, and people openly passed joints along (although we didn’t partake). Unfortunately, Krisli wandered a short distance from where we sat on a blanket, and got lost in the crowd. She remembers being terrified and crying, even refusing ice cream! She may have been taken to the stage along with other lost children, to be reunited with their frantic parents. Nevertheless, in every other way it was a wonderful, free scene that we enjoyed immensely.
The Summer of Love also saw the release and enormous popularity of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” album, and their all-time hit, “All You Need is Love.” By this time, we had all the Beatles’ albums and never failed to obtain the latest as soon as it was available. Several other songs that we still enjoy today came out that year, including the Doors’ “Light My Fire,” and Aretha Franklin’s, “Respect.”
(Both) March, 1968. Leaving 21 month old Greg in the care of a teaching colleague, we travel with Audie and Carol in their VW bus to Big Sur, to attend the Spring Equinox Celebration at Lime Kiln Creek. The Bus has only front seats, the rest of the vehicle an open space for hanging out and sleeping. (Who has even heard of seat belts?). The campground and beach area are completely full, so we explore further, picking up a hitchhiker along the way. Asked if he knows where we might camp out for the night, he directs us up a steep mountain road on the east side of the highway. When the van gets stuck halfway up the narrow dirt road, he gets out and, without a word, walks on up to the top of the hill, leaving us to our fate. It is late in the evening and we have no choice but to stay there overnight, hoping to find a way back down the next day. In the morning, Audie and Jim hike up the road until they see dwellings at the top of the hill–primitive shacks, really–and pause to reconnoiter. They see no one stirring, and soon agree that the vibes are unfavorable for scouting further (both have heard about the outlaw, pot-growing communities in those coastal hills). They return to the van just as a car drives up behind the van. The driver demands that we get out of the way. We explain that we don’t know how, but he insists on our moving to the very edge of the narrow road, perilously close to a steep dropoff, so he can squeeze by and leave us. Somehow or other, we eventually find a way to turn around and retreat down the hillside to the highway, and return to join the festivities at Lime Kiln Creek campground.
It is another Human Be-in scene: hundreds of hippies and flower children, freely passing joints around, a few naked women dancing in the crowd to loud and wild music from various bands, including Audie’s.
(Molly) Later, we go in search of a public phone so I can call and check on Greg. Driving miles down the coast, we spot a public phone outside the entrance of a cafe/motel with a Closed sign out front. I go up to use the phone, but the owner comes out to tell me they are closed, looking frightened and belligerent, his wife behind him looking even more frightened–of him or me, I can’t tell. I try to explain that I just want to use the phone to check on my child, but the man tells me to leave, saying I might steal some of the petrified wood pieces he has on the porch by hiding them under my poncho. “You can stand here and watch me,” I say, but he demands that I leave, because I am trespassing on his property. “But this is a public phone” I reiterate, not able to believe what is happening. I turn back to the car down by the road and call out, “He won’t let me use the phone!” Jim beckons me to return to the car, shouting something I can’t make out. I go back down the path, the man calling after me not to step on the flowers on either side. So I spit vehemently on them. When I get back to the car, Jim tells me the man has a holstered pistol, which I had not spotted. I have never before encountered such fear and hatred from another person. We have to drive several miles further before finding a phone I can use.
Work and Education
(Both) We struggled financially during this period. Molly was able to teach in the home instruction program part-time while Jim was attending UC Berkeley in the Counseling Psychology doctoral program. During his third academic quarter in that program he served a second unpaid internship (the first had been the previous year at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital while completing his MS at San Francisco State). He put in about 20 hours a week as counselor/intern at Camp Parks Job Corps Center near Danville–a half-hour commute from home.
Nevertheless, we were taken care of in unexpected ways, as has happened so often in our lives.
(Molly) I hear from my father’s cousin Valerie that she sold a painting to an art dealer, painted by my paternal grandfather’s aunt (Valerie’s great aunt?), an early California artist. I have another painting by the same artist, which my parents gave me years ago and which I dearly love; it portrays a young girl with braids sitting on a porch holding a doll. I contact the dealer who comes to our house and examines the painting with a special light in our downstairs bathroom, which can be darkened completely. Satisfied that it is authentic, he offers me the huge sum of $8000. I reckon we need the money more than the sentimental value of the painting, and accept his offer. He signs over two cashier’s checks for $4000 each to me. When I take them to our bank, they are refused, but to my great relief, I am able to cash them at a local branch of the art dealer’s bank.
Another piece of good fortune was Jim’s acceptance of an unexpected offer to continue working part time at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital–this time for pay–as a licensed counselor. That gig lasted through the summer and fall following completion of his MS.
(Jim) The most fortuitous outcome of being in that doctoral program at UC Berkeley was being allowed to attend a series of evening classes offered by a newly-hired member of the Psychology Department faculty, Robert Frager. Dr. Frager (who years later would co-found, with Dr. James Fadiman, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology) had spent considerable time in Japan training in the Japanese martial art aikido with its originator, Morihei Ueshiba. In addition to that training, Dr. Frager had gained knowledge about esoteric subjects little known in the West–knowledge that he shared in those evening classes.
While being exposed to that fascinating material, I was also allowed to join other UCB students in ongoing aikido training sessions conducted by Dr. Frager. Altogether these learning opportunities were pure gold for me–far more rewarding than the dry, conventional subject matter offered in the regular counseling psychology curriculum.
That first (and, as it would turn out, final) year at UC Berkeley, consisted not only of run-of-the-mill coursework, but also the unpaid field work internship mentioned a few paragraphs ago. It was at a residential vocational training program for young men: The Camp Parks Job Corps Center.
The program was located at an abandoned military base near Rodeo in the adjoining county–a considerable driving distance from our Berkeley home and the UC Berkeley campus. Two other doctoral students in the counseling psych doctoral program had also been assigned to that internship, and in addition to the on-site work the three of us were required to have small-group supervisory consultations on the university campus with a member of the faculty. Our assigned shifts at the job corps center sometimes spanned afternoon and evening hours, and part of our duties consisted of maintaining order during the evening meal and occasional training film showings for the young attendees.This required my evening absence from home–and Molly’s company–far too often.
It sounds like a completely uninspiring internship, and, indeed it was–with one exception. I initiated and conducted a program for trainees (predominantly young Black men) interested in learning about judiciary process. About ten or twelve trainees volunteered to take part, and I contacted Alameda County to arrange a couple of field trips for them to observe actual courtroom proceedings. The Job Corps Center provided a van large enough to hold us all, and twice I drove the entire group to the courthouse in Oakland where, in addition to observing the court procedures, the trainees were given the opportunity to meet with the presiding judge to discuss what they had observed. Subsequently I facilitated a process by which this small group created a peer advisory council designed to consult with Job Corps staff at that Center about disciplinary decisions and actions involving their fellow trainees.
The participants in this experimental peer group took their self-created duties seriously. It clearly became an empowering and bonding experience for them. I do not know whether this mini-program continued after my internship there was completed. I'd like to hope so, but even if not, it livened up the whole experience for me.
(Both) The MFCC (Marriage, Family and Child Counseling) License had been mandated by recent California legislation passed (as nearly as we can recall) during the year of Jim’s graduation from SF State, with the only requirements for recent master’s level graduates being an application to summarize qualifications, accompanied by faculty recommendation. Since that beginning, the licensing requirements have become so stringent that many candidates struggle for years after completing their master’s degree to qualify. To be “grandfathered in,” as he had been, constituted an extraordinary bit of luck!
Friendships
(Molly) Our Bay Area friendships continued to grow during these years; we shared many adventures, common interests, and life challenges with Audie and Carol and Krisli, Gary and Fran, Tom and Dorrie, Donna Stegman, Caroline Rackley, Mike Simon—and some whose faces we can picture but whose names we can no longer recall.
One of my friends was Claire, with whom I shared a room in the maternity ward at Kaiser San Francisco; her baby was born about 12 hours after Greg. We enjoyed outings with our babies, including at least one memorable afternoon at Lake Anza in Tilden Regional Park near our house in the Berkeley Hills.
Several months later, Claire’s husband Jerry’s job took the family to Germany, where Claire contracted encephalitis and died within a week. What a shock! This may have been the first death I experienced of someone close to my age in a similar life situation. Besides grieving the loss, I had to confront the fragility of life first hand.
(Both) Shortly after Greg was born, we became enchanted with the original Star Trek series, watching faithfully every week, usually with Fran and Gary at our house (since we had a baby to tend). We were so enthralled by the themes of many of the early episodes, often addressing various social and psychological issues. (Remember “The Trouble with Tribbles”?) Later we began to tire of so many conflicts ending up resolved by fisticuffs. Earlier episodes, however, tended to be more varied, subtle, and interesting. At the time, it was the most exciting programing on television by far.
The Human Potential Movement
(Both) In the late 1960s (and into the early 70s in New Mexico), we participated in several groups, workshops, and classes in what would soon be called the “Human Potential Movement”--at the nascent Esalen Institute in Big Sur and in the San Francisco Bay Area. We both participated in “encounter groups” in which participants explored their emotions, thoughts, and relationships in some depth, sometimes with a facilitator, sometimes without. We studied aikido, sensory awareness, gestalt therapy, and eventually psychosynthesis. We received Rolfing and massage sessions, and learned the rudiments of giving massages ourselves. We even experimented with a self-led 24-hour intensive encounter group (referred to at the time as a “marathon”) with Gary and Fran, Mike Simon and a friend of his, ending up mostly exhausted and not particularly enlightened.
(Molly) We took part in workshops at Esalen Institute, before and after Greg was born. One we remember vividly was with Gestalt therapists Claudio Naranjo and Robert Hall. I was hanging out in one of Esalen’s famous hot tubs with several participants, including Claudio, when he suddenly leaned over and kissed my breast in what I experienced as a courtly gesture, rather than anything offensive. I recall very little about the workshop itself.
Most notably, we were introduced to psychosynthesis during this time. I signed up for a workshop through the Esalen San Francisco program, which proved to be much more than its rather staid title, “The Psychology of Personal Development,” implied. I really enjoyed the weekly class, the exercises we did there and as homework, and the instructor, James Fadiman (who would become a friend in subsequent years). He was a pioneer and leader in the burgeoning field of humanistic and transpersonal psychology. He showed us the book he was drawing from: Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and Techniques by Roberto Assagioli, a psychiatrist based in Florence, Italy. Intrigued, I bought a copy for (my) Jim as a Christmas present. That turned out to be the beginning of a major current in our lives to come.
I took LSD for the first time circa 1967, having waited until Greg was well beyond breast-feeding. We went to Caroline Rackley’s place in the country outside Sebastopol for the occasion, Jim and Caroline on hand both as guides for me and caretakers for Greg. I didn’t get anywhere near the transcendent experience Jim had on his first acid trip, but I thoroughly enjoyed the vivid psychedelic visual effects, especially being out in nature, under trees, barefoot. Unfortunately, I stepped on a piece of glass and suffered a fairly severe cut. I didn’t want to go near an emergency room in my altered state of consciousness, so Jim and Caroline cleaned and bound up my wound as best they could. I thought it ironic that while traipsing through the woods in a highly spiritual state of mind that I would be wounded “by a shard of civilization.”
After we returned home, and I was coming down from the experience, but still in an altered state, I put Greg to bed. He was fussy, probably both tired and a little confused by the day’s events. Rather than feeling frustrated with him, as I might normally have, I was able to tune into his emotional state, see what he needed, and offer him soothing, reassuring energy–which quickly calmed him. I believe I learned something in that moment that served me well in future mother-child interactions
(Molly) In early 1969, I took part in Synanon Games for a short time until another participant accused me of being a “smother mother,” likely because I was visibly pregnant with Cassidy, making me a good target for projection. That was the last session I attended. A few days after that, Jim, Greg, and I joined my parents in Death Valley for a wonderful camping trip, where I felt supported instead of disparaged for my pregnancy. I remember Jim and I making love in the moonlight at the edge of an ancient volcanic crater, having left Greg in camp in the care of my parents.
