Need To Know

Watched a TV program Sunday afternoon.  Need to know from PBS (www.needtoknow.com) on a ‘mass murder’ at Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The murders occurred in December, 1992, so the documentary report was a 20 year-after topic.

The report showed video of the college campus today. Idyllic and rural. Rolling landscape with hills in the background. Farm buildings converted to academic facilities among bucolic acres. Woods and paths, people walking peacefully in conversation. One wonders if their labors are of inquiry or the patois of daily living. Certainly in this setting it is of inquiry! Academia and all. And setting. The setting – so beautiful and quiet and conducive to ponderment.

I lived in New England for six years. Fresh from California we moved to the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. A stark culture shift for us. My age was 11 and I made it to my 17^th birthday before moving to central New York state. The teenage years are a powerful era in anyone’s life. Formative, personal from non-hormonal to raging beastie! Wonderment at life unfolding. History of place coupled with history of current time. Exploding civil rights movement (this was the 50’s) merging with the troublesome Viet Nam War era (the 60’s). Elementary school leading through junior high school and finally high school. One year short of graduation; acquired that in New York. Then on to college in Illinois.

Formative years indeed. Thinking even then. Feeling, too. Pulling together as best I could a world view of self and ‘other’. Never an easy task. But done just the same. Formative. Yes.

A sense of place became real to me then. The tumbling landscape of Massachusetts, especially the Berkshire Hills. We were 120 miles west of Boston, and 150 miles north of New York City. Fifty miles east of Albany, New York, the state’s capital. Brother in the midst of early adult formation (high school drop out, army reserve duty, moving out of home, tumultuous emotions and scary times). A room of my own. Hills around the house. Woods to explore. Friends and relationships reaching for depths previously unexplored.

What was I to do with my life? What education would I pursue? Civil rights were huge in the news (daily newspaper and two news summaries on TV each day). One TV station with a fuzzy UHF station periodically available. This was before cable networks and news channels. This was well before personal computers.

But the region was rife with educational institutions. Great Barrington was nearby. So too Williamstown and Williams College. Great Barrington holds the American Institute of Economic Research (formerly a foundling of MIT), Bard’s College at Simon’s Rock, and Westfield State University. Not far away is Smith College in North Hampton.

Small towns with public squares, rich public institutions, churches, libraries and colleges. One might even say an environment of inquiry. A place where history dwells large in public consciousness. Respect for history, passage of time, meaning of events, the story of humankind maneuvering through time and life’s experiences. It was so for me. I remember it well.

And so the TV documentary on Simon’s Rock College plucked a mental chord. Feelings returned for place. Feelings sprang up of mind. Of breath and freshness of discovery.

I don’t know if it was a unique moment for me or if it was due to PBS’ special gift of genius. But I was alive from another time many decades past.

Although their report was riveting – a lone gunmen student bought a high powered rifle and ammo clip and rampaged without warning, killing one student and one professor while wounding several others. The story followed the story of the deceased student’s family and father. The inquiry they have followed for more than 20 years wondering why this happened, what could have been done differently to avoid such happenings in the future. None really. The public is in love with guns and freedom to own same. Without awareness of consequences. No that was not the point of the story for me.

I might agree with that point. Or not. No, the point of the story was the feeling it engendered of place and temperament. Of bygone days. Of mind over matter and wonderment.

Thank God for Google! I spent some time digging into  websites of western Massachusetts. I trod over old neighborhoods and landscapes. Of favorite spots and haunts. Where I discovered something about life. About me. And the dreams I formed of where I might go in the future.

Heady times then. Emphasis on the ‘head’.

May 14, 2013