Chapter 7 - Part 2: Los Alamos 1973-77
Professional Pursuits, Personal Growth, Friends and Family
We returned home from our time with Roberto Assagioli to our beloved children in our still-new house in White Rock. Our professional and family lives continued to expand and grow for the next few years.
Employment and Professional Pursuits
(Molly) Soon after our return from Italy, I applied for a job at Los Alamos National Laboratory– stipulating that I would not accept a job connected to weapons research. At first I worked as a casual clerk, filling in for people on parental or sick leave. This is when I first encountered very early versions of word processors. Eventually, I landed a job in the Electronics Division training group, coordinating classes in topics such as semiconductors and, later, career development.
I was classified as a clerk, although I was soon functioning as more of a mid-level manager. Although the Lab had some notable women scientists, and even a few female group leaders, women in support positions were generally employed as clerks and secretaries, rather than managers. Toward the end of my time there, a woman appointed as an Assistant Director began looking into the sexism in the Lab structure and used my situation as a case study. I was never reclassified nor granted any big raises, although that might have happened had I stayed on. However, by then I realized I needed to make a career choice–whether to stay on as a training coordinator at the Lab or move into professional counseling and teaching myself–which is what I ended up doing. I can’t imagine now what my life would be like had I stayed on at the Lab.
I remember having a strange experience when I went to work each day. It was like a ceiling came down on my consciousness as I entered the building where I worked. Outside of the Lab, I was exploring the expansive field of psychosynthesis and other growth modalities, but could find almost no space for that within the confines of the Lab culture. I tried organizing some lunch time seminars to bring some of what I had learned to a few interested people, but that didn’t go very far. Looking back now, I am amazed at what I did under the circumstances–and who knows, it may have had some beneficial effects on the culture.
On one occasion, I go with my supervisor to the warehouse that provides the Lab with equipment and office supplies. While there, I notice a flyer about my lunchtime seminars posted in the group leader’s office. Someone has written sexually suggestive words on the flyer that target me. I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach, yet I do nothing about it! My internalized oppression tells me that this is a man’s office in a male-dominant warehouse, and I have no right to tear down the flyer or even object. Or perhaps I am afraid of what might happen if I do.
In another step forward, our small training office in the Electronics division began to expand its offerings to include career development. I traveled in early March 1977 to Livermore Lab in the San Francisco Bay Area to learn about their career development program, based on something called SIMA – System for Identifying Motivated Abilities. I was excited by this process; I had gone through it myself–along with Jim and other friends–when the founder of the system came to Los Alamos. At the time, I even considered that I might make SIMA a central offering in a future career in counseling.
Jim’s job at LACOA
(Jim) The employment drought for both of us ended after we returned from our journey to Italy to study with Roberto Assagioli. It seemed as though that experience had drastically altered the professional climate of our lives for the better. I was invited to apply for the position of Program Coordinator for the Los Alamos Council on Alcoholism. I was not the only candidate to be interviewed by the advisory board of the Council; I suspect my previous experience with the Alameda County Health Department’s Alcoholism Clinic gave me an edge in the selection process.
During my three years in that job–which consisted of community education as well as working directly with alcohol-affected individuals and their families–I initiated some interesting public events such as inviting nationally-known public figures who were themselves in recovery to give public presentations about their recovery process. Also I persuaded the editor-in-chief of the community newspaper (Los Alamos Monitor) to publish a series of transcribed interviews that I conducted and recorded with various people (including a representative of the local AA chapter) who were involved in alcoholism treatment, prevention and recovery. Frances Menlove, a local psychologist who had been my predecessor in that position, and who had essentially recruited me to succeed her, complimented me highly for conceiving and carrying out that project. She felt it had not only served a public education function, but also significantly brought our program into public awareness.
With the support of the LACOA advisory board and the Los Alamos County Chief Administrator, I also found funding to recruit more personnel to further our work. First among these was Frances Robertson, hired as a part-time consultant to the program. Frances had been Administrative Assistant to Marty Mann, an influential promoter of the national Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) organization and founder of the National Council on Alcoholism.
Frances then consulted with me on hiring an administrative assistant–Janis Siemon, a former teacher and dear friend. In addition to helping me with record-keeping and reporting required by our funding sources, Janis conceived, recruited, organized and coordinated a group of local citizens to assist the staff in a volunteer capacity.
Another vital addition to our staff that Frances helped me select was Charles King, a half-Choctaw and half-Irish giant of a man who served as full-time counselor for the program. Charles had married Lucille Calabaza, a woman of Tewa lineage, and they were both full-fledged members of the San Ildefonso Pueblo–the nearest to Los Alamos of the six Tewa-speaking pueblos in our vicinity. He and I became close friends, and remain so all these decades later.
Pursuing Interest in Biofeedback
(Jim) One of my hopes in taking this job was to introduce biofeedback training as a modality for both prevention of and recovery from addictive behavior. I soon realized that this hope was premature for this particular setting; neither the organization nor the population it served was ready to make that jump beyond the conventional approaches. So I restrained my fervor for innovation and settled into doing the best job I could do under the circumstances.
But I continued to pursue knowledge and experience regarding biofeedback and its potential to enhance human consciousness, attending annual gatherings of AAPB (The Association for
Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback), acquiring equipment and refining my ability to use it, and continuing to cultivate contacts with pioneers in that field. These conferences were all over the map, from San Francisco to Louisville, but mostly in Colorado Springs. Molly and I once visited the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas as guests of the biofeedback research program directors there, Patricia Norris and her husband Steve Fahrion. While there I met Pat Norris’s father Elmer Green, one of the most notable pioneers in biofeedback research. All three of them served at one time or another as presidents of AAPB.
Other past presidents with whom I became acquainted were Thomas Budzynski, Johann Stoyva and Joe Kamiya. I was instrumental in recruiting Professor Stoyva (a member of the University of Colorado Medical School faculty and editor of the just-launched journal Biofeeback and Self Regulation) to be a guest speaker at a colloquium for the entire staff at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) in December, 1975.
I had begun meeting informally for study and discussion of biofeedback with a group of scientists at LASL who were quite interested in biofeedback training, and the idea for that colloquium emerged from our meetings. It resulted in a substantial article in the LASL publication The Atom. In addition to describing Stoyva’s presentation, the well-researched article discussed biofeedback in general and its potential for relieving disorders related to stress. The article then discussed our little study group, and quoted me extensively on the topic of biofeedback training.
Another prominent member of the biofeedback movement that I was fortunate enough to meet at the annual AAPB events was Lester Fehmi, a psychologist with quite a unique background. In addition to his extensive experience as a clinical practitioner, teacher, researcher and program director, Les had early training and experience in electronic engineering. He was also a student of a Zen meditation method known as Zazen. These currents all converged in his development of a training methodology consisting of a scripted practice he termed “open focus training”, augmented by neurofeedback. The neurofeedback was applied with electronic equipment that he had designed, which enabled the user to increase synchronous brainwave patterns within a frequency range called “alpha” within selected parts of the brain’s outermost layer, the cerebral cortex.
(These technical details may be meaningless for many readers, but I needed to mention them in order to lay a foundation for a crucial aspect of my part in this narrative–an aspect that will be described later.)
Norm Shealy’s work with chronic pain
(Jim) Yet another important figure In the holistic health community with whom I became acquainted during this period of my development was Dr. Norman Shealy. Trained as a neurosurgeon, he had specialized in the treatment of chronic pain and was invited to be a presenter at one of the annual AAPB gatherings that I attended in Colorado Springs. As a participant in a panel discussion about the interface between mind/body technologies and conventional western medicine, Dr. Shealy described a residential program he had established in Wisconsin that featured an innovative set of methods, including not only biofeedback but also appropriate physical exercise, intuitive readings by two members of his staff (one of whom was Caroline Myss, just then beginning her career, now a prolific writer in the field of extraordinary healing), and guided meditative techniques that Shealy himself had developed. It became immediately apparent to me that this approach could be the very thing that could salvage my mother's health, so I sought out Dr. Shealy (Norm, as I would come to know him) for a couple of one-on-one conversations. The outcome was his inviting me to join a small group of practitioners for an extended visit to his center near La Crosse, Wisconsin to observe his program in person.
I jumped at the opportunity, visited the program, went back home, and convinced my parents to sign up for it as soon as possible. Norm had made it clear that patients were to be accompanied–if at all possible–by a spouse or other close family member to ensure that the life-changing effects of this treatment approach would be supported and reinforced over the long haul.
It was truly a life-changing experience for Mom. For one thing, on reviewing her medical history and discovering that she had undergone numerous myelogram procedures, he explained that these had almost certainly resulted in spinal nerve damage that would account for her chronic and worsening back and stomach pain. This assurance relieved her of the ever-worsening burden of being considered a hypochondriac. Furthermore, she never had another back surgery; she didn't need it. The physical exercise combined with the guided meditations enabled her to regain her morale, her sense of well-being, and her functionality. For years afterwards she fell asleep at night listening to the audio tapes she had acquired at the Shealy Center. She also came home with a technological device that Shealy had a hand in pioneering, now widely used and known as TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation). With Dad’s assistance, she continued to use it regularly with beneficial effect.
Teaching psychosynthesis
(Both) During this period, we began offering classes or groups in psychosynthesis to the public, usually as a series of weekly evening classes culminating in a weekend workshop. We met in “the Room” we had built–which was how we had hoped to use it. People seemed to get a lot out of these classes, gaining self-awareness and exercising more choice in their daily lives. We thoroughly enjoyed working and teaching together.
(Molly) During one of our group sessions, I lead a guided meditation. When I open my eyes at the end, I see a mouse sitting up on its hind legs on the floor between me and another participant, eyes closed and swaying a little. After a moment or two, the mouse opens its eyes and begins calmly washing its face. I move around it slowly and go into the shop, pick up an empty coffee can from the workbench, and bring it back to catch the mouse– it is still sitting there–and escort it outside. Apparently my meditation was effective for the mouse, at least!
(Molly) I also taught a class through the extension department of the local branch of University of New Mexico (or maybe it was through the Adult Night School). The class was based on Marilyn Ferguson’s book, The Aquarian Conspiracy, and was titled “Human Evolution–Our Next Steps.” That turned out to be an unfortunate title, because it attracted a fundamentalist Christian proselytizer who came to interfere as much as he could with my heretical teaching. Whenever there was an opening for questions or discussion (which was often), he would leap in with his contrary fundamentalist beliefs; often his long and convoluted explanations would make so little sense that I couldn’t figure out how to respond. We certainly were unable to engage in any kind of dialogue or discussion that might have found common ground or a level of mutual understanding.
After a couple of meetings of the class, I asked the director of the program if I could dismiss this guy from the class with a refund of his tuition, and the director agreed. However, the man begged to stay in the class, promising me he wouldn’t say anything more nor interrupt the class again, so I let him stay. He was true to his word until the last meeting, when he could no longer contain himself, but other people there protested when he spoke up. In the process, he revealed that he had been beaten as a child (saying that he deserved it) and that he left home at age 15–which gave us some insight into the roots of his fanaticism.
Some months later, Juddi Krishnamurti was invited to speak at a public symposium sponsored by the Los Alamos National Lab. The community auditorium was packed for this event. After a short philosophical talk, which concluded with his saying that we are all the same in essence, Krishnamurti invited the audience to ask questions or engage in dialogue, and several people spoke. Then the fundamentalist who had disrupted my class came up to the microphone and berated Krishnamurti, yelling “I am not like you and I’m glad of it!” He then stormed out of the auditorium, leaving the rest of us in a stunned and embarrassed silence. Krishnamurti simply smiled slightly and nodded in apparent understanding. Jim and I were impressed with his composure.
Personal and spiritual growth pursuits
(Molly) My journal for this period reveals lots of turmoil about what I should do with my life. I was worried about our relatively low income, my unfulfilling job at the Lab, my need for some sort of credentialing if I wanted to have my own counseling practice, and Jim’s growing frustration concerning his career path. I began counseling with a wonderful therapist in Santa Fe, Jacqueline West, in 1976. Jim and I also took a couple of “sensory awareness” workshops at Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center led by Charlotte Selver and Charles Brooks. We sought out experiences with any personal growth modality that came our way.
In April 1977, I had a strong dream that I remember vividly to this day; here’s a poem about it from my journal:
Dream poem:
Following her
through a narrow passage
She moves with ease
through the tightest placeFollowing
I cannot find the way
Panic arises
and fear of the panic fights it downI am trapped in the tunnel of becoming
Hands groping for the way through
Panic will bring flailing–
Dust rising to smother me–
I will die!Yes, perhaps this is when I die
Suddenly
Peace emerges within
The earth around embraces me
I am nourished in the simplicity of Now.
Friendships
(Both) During all these relatively settled years in and around Los Alamos (1972 to 1986) we made many dear friends, some early on, some later. As we write this decades later, it’s hard to recall how and when we met many of them. Janis and Dick Siemon and their four children lived nearby in White Rock; Dick was a physicist researching nuclear fusion as an energy source; Janis was taking courses in education. Shortly after we met, Molly and Janis took a course together in Women’s Studies at the local branch of University of New Mexico; it was a great bonding experience for them.
The Siemons introduced us to Tim Burns, at the time a teacher at the local high school. Within a year or so, Tim married Zana (then named Betty), also a teacher at the high school who became our friend as well. Together they parented two delightful and creative daughters, Ashley and Megan. We spent many happy hours with this family in Los Alamos and later in their beautiful adobe home in El Dorado, near Santa Fe.
Tim later developed an international career training teachers and administrators in neuroscience as applied to education. Decades later, their friendship resulted in Jim and Tim co-authoring Anatomy of Embodied Education: Creating Pathways to Brain-Mind Evolution. And after years of teaching and counseling adolescents, Zana became an accomplished weaver, initially training with our friend Caroline Rackley. (Sadly, Tim and Zana separated in 1990.)
Fairley Barnes, her then-husband Chris, and their two daughters also became an important part of our milieu quite synchronistically. They had been neighbors and friends in Menlo Park with Jim and Dorothy Fadiman (our former landlords/teachers/friends). When Dorothy learned that Fairley and Chris (a physicist newly hired by LANL) were moving to Los Alamos, she gave Fairley our phone number and Fairley called us soon after they arrived. We immediately found many interests and values in common and began a deep and abiding friendship. Among many other fond memories we recall watching the final episode of MASH together at their house in 1979.
We also befriended two other mental health professionals, Michael Fiddes and Deanne Newman, with whom we set up an informal professional support group. Our friendship with Michael expanded to include Deva Kelly, when she and he became a couple.
Our friendship with Charles and Lucille (Hummingbird) King deepened as well. We visited them several times at San Ildefonso Pueblo, where they lived near Lucille’s mother, Blue Corn, a world-famous potter. Her home was the venue for many Feast Day gatherings. We would sit in the living room before or after feasting at the big table and admire her collection of Native art: pottery, rugs, and more. Charles and Lucille’s son Alex was born in 1977 and their second son Victor in 1982, so we have had the privilege of watching those two brothers, Alex and Victor, grow into adulthood along with all the other relatives and friends of that generation mentioned in this memoir.
When we learned of a Rolfing practitioner in Santa Fe, we both wanted to continue that work. Don Johnson was skillful and compassionate, and moved us to new levels of physical flexibility and balance. He and his then wife Elissa became good friends of ours as well. We visited them often in their home on the outskirts of Santa Fe. Elissa offered a bodywork approach that enhanced the Rolfing work. Molly remembers Elissa teaching techniques for breathing more evenly and fully, techniques that Molly has continued to use through the years.
(Molly) Caroline Rackley moved from California back to New Mexico around the same time, and lived in various places in Santa Fe and Taos. We sometimes lost track of her during these years. I have a vivid memory of sitting on the front porch of a restaurant overlooking Canyon Road in Santa Fe, and suddenly spotting Caroline riding past in a car. Caroline was looking out the passenger window directly at the restaurant and saw me as well. I jumped up and waved while Caroline asked the driver to stop, so we were able to reunite after several months of separation.
(Both) Caroline introduced us to Robert Waterman, who ran Quimby Library, a psycho-spiritual center in Alamogordo, New Mexico, offering classes and “aura balancing.” We traveled to that center once and both received aura balancings, which we found to be profoundly healing, both physically and spiritually. Frankly, we can’t now recall what the sessions were like–only that we thought them transformative. A few years later, Waterman moved his base of operations to Santa Fe and established Southwestern College, where Molly was invited to teach a couple of short courses.
Family
(Both) Among our friendships of this time, we must include our parents, our two siblings, and their families, all of whom lived nearby. They all contributed significantly to our support system during these years, caring for our children while we worked, visited far-away friends, and/or traveled to conferences. We enjoyed full confidence when we left the boys in the care of their grandparents or their aunts and uncles that the kids would be treated with respect and love, in ways that complemented our own parenting values and styles.
We shared every Thanksgiving and Christmas and other holidays with one or the other extended family, usually both, sometimes all together. We developed a tradition of having Christmas Eve dinner (usually with New Mexican food) and gift exchange with Jim’s parents Gaston and Ruby along with his sister Donna, her husband Tex, and their kids Christina and Rusty, and then spending Christmas morning and brunch with Molly’s parents John and Emma Lou, along with Judy, Smitty, and their kids Jenene and Lisa. We always enjoyed ourselves thoroughly–and often raucously–on these occasions.
Jim’s sister Donna and her family lived (in their early years) quite a distance from their original home in Los Alamos, and for a long while were not within easy reach for these holiday get-togethers. Unlike Jim, Donna’s husband Tex (born Walter) had followed the path of an itinerant electrician laid down by Donna’s and Jim’s father Brownie (born Gaston). For a few years this path kept their budding family moving around in southern Arizona after a stint in Silver City, New Mexico–all a considerable distance south of where their extended families lived.
This situation changed for the better in 1972 when Donna and Tex joined with Brownie in acquiring a plot of land in Flora Vista, between Farmington and Aztec in northwestern New Mexico–a mere 3-hour drive from Los Alamos–installing a mobile home on the property, and moving back within range of the extended family. Within a few years they built a permanent house and a small farm there where they raised sheep, horses and chickens, with plenty of space devoted to vegetable gardens and a sizable hay field.
During those years of establishing their first permanent home, Donna and Tex welcomed our visits–not only on holidays, but as often as we could spare the time to stay a couple of days. Our visits often involved partying with them and their close-knit community there, and also pitching in to help them build their new house and doing whatever farm chores we were capable of handling. These were formative years for our kids, who got to experience being part of a large, loving family both in town and in a rural environment. Even now, in midlife, Greg and Cass have close relationships with their first cousins on both the maternal and paternal sides of the family.
There were mishaps, of course. Molly’s sister Judy often took care of our sons, along with her daughters Jenene and Lisa at their home in Los Alamos, while we worked. One day Molly got a call from Judy reporting that Greg and Lisa had had a bicycle accident and were at the emergency room at the local hospital. Molly notified me and we both rushed there from our respective work sites, finding Greg with a gash under his eye and Lisa relatively uninjured but shaken up. The attending physician stitched up Greg’s wound, and he was released. The story emerged that Greg and Lisa had been riding double on her bike, while Jenene carried Cassidy on hers. Greg and Lisa had hit a bump that overturned the bike, Greg hitting his cheek on the handlebars. They were spotted by nearby golfers (the Smiths’ house being situated adjacent to the local golf course) who came to their rescue. Someone called 911 from the golf clubhouse, and an ambulance was summoned to take the two kids to the hospital. Jenene returned home in tears, followed by an officer, to tell her mother what had happened. A big scare with minimal damage done, leaving us with huge gratitude that we lived in such a caring and supportive community!
(Molly) Our sons had unfortunately inherited malocclusion from both parents, and it came time to seek orthodontia for Greg. The local orthodontist recommended a headgear for Greg to wear at night. He placed spacers between Greg’s molars to make room for the bands that would attach to the headgear. The day Greg was to go in for the installation, we had lunch at Jim’s parents house. I don’t remember Gaston and Ruby being there, so I guess we were just using their house for lunch. I was as surprised as anyone when I freaked out at the thought of what Greg would be going through. I had worn a headgear as a child and didn’t realize how traumatic that had been until that moment; I just couldn’t put my child through what I remembered as torture. So we went to the orthodontist’s office and asked him to remove the spacers and cancel the headgear. He was quite upset, but of course had to comply.
In the following years, we sought other methods for expanding Greg’s narrow palate, including Rolfing and Aston Patterning, and eventually used a Crozat appliance when he was a teenager–all with little success for his teeth. Greg used “Invisiline” braces in his early fifties to finally straighten his teeth.
Political Turmoil during this time
When we returned to New Mexico in 1972, Richard Nixon (“Tricky Dick”) was President, embroiling the country ever deeper into the Vietnam War, widening it to include Cambodia and Laos. We were very troubled by this war-mongering President and his oppressive response to ongoing anti-war protests. Then Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the news media, and all hell broke loose domestically (it was already hell in Indochina). The Watergate scandal began when burglars broke into the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate Office Building in DC, followed by gradual revelations that Nixon himself was behind this and other political skullduggery. Along with a good portion of the U.S. voting public, we watched the Senate Watergate Committee hearings, broadcast nationwide on PBS and most major networks. Molly was particularly impressed by Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan during the House Judiciary Committee’s televised debate about Nixon’s potential impeachment. We were hugely relieved when Nixon resigned in August, 1974, and disgusted when he was pardoned by his successor Gerald Ford. We endured three years of Ford’s milk-toast presidency and welcomed the election of Jimmy Carter, who became President in 1977.