July 6, 1965 5:30 AM Kill Devil Hills, N. Ca.
A long Fourth of July weekend with Jill, John, Carlo and Christopher. The surf slightly perturbed for two days and then calm for three. The sun rises at 5 and I am on the beach to stare it in the eye. I must fly to Washington at 9:53 from Elizabeth City, to meet several colleagues working on Project Politist.
There is little to do here save sit around with the family that is present, swim, and eat, and the last cannot be a grand pastime since Jill, too, is on vacation and the stores are not sumptuous.
The sea is the centerpiece. The back bays are dimly picturesque. Last evening, there were storms and the great bowl of heaven was an even-tempered grey before dusk while the sea replied with an immensity of mottled green glass. I wished we might be on a raft so that the whole world would sweep around in these two great arcs.
July 6, 1965 Washington en route by air to NYC
Mad dash at 8:50 to Elizabeth City for the plane. I took over the wheel from Jill. When it comes to making up time, I am it. One hour and less from Kill Devil Hills to the Airport at E. City, stopping 4 times, once to change with Jill at the bridge across the Sound, 3 times for finding the airport. But the plane was late and then stopped for 20 minutes extra at Norfolk, where the motor dripped oil profusely. We changed planes and on to Washington.
There I joined Dickert, Davidson, and Olson for lunch and an afternoon of discussion regarding reforms of Congress and the format of our papers. I am trying to hold them to the line of my book while doing everything to oblige their academic scruples.
I drank two martinis with Tom Johnson, handed us by the sexy waitress of the Gramercy Inn, and Tom drove me to the airport.
Quasar lights gleam from opened shells of space.
Astral flight far
Blue midnight all
Burn, burn
Utmost heat
Cold, cold
Vast Between
By measured illimit
By density fast
No meaning to grasp
No heart to catch
Wherefore art thou squmjum
Yum yum, no never-mind, now, now.
Ambiance
Dust and stone
gas and concrete
Dusty bone
nothing complete
Hard seed sown
Tall grass sheet
Razor hone
Laser beam
Toll and tone
Electric scream
All is to whom
All is a stream.
Up at 7 with headache that lasted till noon. Too much smoking and liquor yesterday, not much sleep. "I am not young" I must tell myself every day.
A few errands preparatory to leaving for Washington and North Carolina. Louise Shelton can't come along, must take care of her ingrate children Cathy and Allen (But Allen seems to be improving).
Vicky can now drive a car.
Paul and his friends now play tennis hard and swim long hours at night, occupying Broadmead Pool illegally, after the pool is closed down in the evening.
Met Bob Guttman at the bank, and exchanged news. Rutgers has the worst cutback in its fiscal history. A ridiculous anachronism, when every college is rolling in money. We exchanged anecdotes on Norton Long of Brandeis; Long must be one of the most obnoxious characters in academia. When Bro Vic was Industrial Development Director of Illinois and known to be very close to Arnold Maremount, Long begged and pestered Vic for an introduction. Vic finally obliged and the 3 met. Afterwards Arnold offered Long a ride home and Vic went the other way. Long immediately attacked Vic personally saying he was the stupid exception to the de Grazia brothers, among other things. This to Maremount, of all people, to whom Vic was practically a son! Naturally, Arnold told this to Vic immediately, in considerable amazement.
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Bob G. would like to arrange a special issue on Architecture and Social Science for
ABS. I invited him to go ahead if he could.
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I am working on the Grazian classification system. It may be impossible to reconcile an Index with a Portrayal of the thing studied. The dimensions of the latter do not let themselves be picked apart and alphabetized. The Index in turn has to depend on all the unusable, illogical, conventional linguistic terms that carpet the storehouse of knowledge.
Abolish pure science in favor of applied science, at least in re language of science. Pure science is a mode of formulating reality in which statements are phrased as laws, e. g. x = f (y). The disadvantages are several:
a) No indication exists on the face of the statement about its purpose. Why was the statement made? What will it be used for?
b) A pure statement suggests that alternative formulations are "wrong" or "incorrect". They may have different purposes and uses, in fact.
c) They are confused with laws of "nature", "God" and other moral forces.* * It is quite possible that the pure science formulations are descended from divine and authoritative law formulations and unconsciously represent them.
d) They tend to multiply aimlessly and lead thought astray, because they need no practical harness.
e) They imply that pure knowledge exists as such, divorced from actions and operations.
We note in the language of careful modern scientists attempts to compensate for decades of pure state by certain linguistic conventions, e. g.
"From x point of view ..."
"Those who wish to do x ..."
The operational theory of science is partially a solution of the problems of "pure" statements by demanding that they correspond only to and are limited by denoted behaviors.
The language of applied science needs to be improved, greatly, however.
Temporary estrangement from C. Her house is crowded with a decorating crew. She is trying to come by child, with physical examinations (which say she should not have trouble) and attention to thermometers telling her on which days she should have intercourse, etc. so she is gone in the heat wave that envelops NYC this afternoon. I am irritable and inconsiderate -- and unrepentant. I think I should find new friends. I feel a bad taste for everything in general.
Party at Ed Greenfield's house at 22nd Street near 8th Avenue. Anti-poverty "warriors" are there. Met Wilcox and liked him instantly. Met a shapely instructor from Swarthmore, a Mrs. (Shuttle?). Professor S. holds her Ph.D. from MIT, her AB from Radcliffe. She seems intelligent, her face is a little askew, but is not unattractive. Naomi Spaatz, Ed's mistress, was there (the Madame is at the Beach). So were 3 Gambians. One, just named UN Ambassador, ruptured a small throat artery coughing from a 2- weeks cold and belched blood copiously. Naomi and I arranged his admission to St. Vincent's. We waited in the emergency ward for 2 hours, viewing the disasters of Friday night in Manhattan as they limped or were carried in. We left Sala there. N. is a brave handsome young woman. Ed is lucky.
July 25, 1965 Sunday Princeton
From the Outer Banks, Jill wrote Vicki one of her typically engaging letters. She must be one of the best letter writers in history -- at least among women. She has all the verve and despatch of Phyllis McGinley and Emily Dickinson. Her hundreds of letters, which I have carefully saved, even when they might have been thrown away or lost, will one day compose a beautiful volume worthy of the highest level of modern womanhood.
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Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag", perhaps 70 years old, is as sophisticated melodiously and technically as any jazz of today.
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I haven't been to a mass in two years, nor scarcely to churches (I slip into strange churches for a few moments from time to time wherever in the world I may be). It is ironic that I submit to the patient sweltering Jehovah's Witness who has discovered me, and will not refuse him a word and now he disturbs a few minutes of some Sundays, reading me passages of the Bible that I usually know and stuffing my hands with pamphlets on the end of the world. Such sweet people speak of such dreadful happenings! I pity them their search for God and submit to boredom as a small penance.
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A matriarchy seems an unlikely kind of society, given the strength of the male and the greater impersonal detachment that facilitates his decision-making. But if we examine matriarchal revolutions and matriarchies, we may find that they are Oedipal in origin, proceeding through the mother's brother as well as the mother's son. The brother-sister combination is too often thought of as a youthful conspiracy and the Oedipal mother-son combination is thought to be primary in importance.
