Just about everything good that’s happened in my adult life is a direct result of my experience at WYBC.
When I got to Yale, I had no clue as to what I wanted to do post-Yale. My plans or lack of them didn’t include going into radio. In fact, I had no idea that college radio even existed.
[… Then] I heard what sounded like a couple of people my age broadcasting play-by-play of a Yale football game. I was astounded. College kids on radio?
Like most of us of that time I think, commercial radio (rock and roll) was an important part of my life. I came from NYC (albeit its weird outlying borough, Staten Island) where we had WABC and WMCA and some other big-time AM “top 40″ radio stations to listen to. Transistor radios were ubiquitous. My mother had taught me to love classical music. Folk music was the tune my generation was marching to, and rock and roll was what made the blood pulse in your veins.
I was, among other things, a techie at WYBC. I also remained in New Haven during 1968 and did a little technical work at the station when it was required. In order to have money for school I needed a “real job”. So, I worked at WNHC-TV that summer as a broadcast engineer at the TV transmitter.
In 1968, being a techie at WYBC had its amusing moments. One morning at about 2 AM …
While so much of what was exciting and revolutionary about WYBC had to do with its focus on progressive rock and roll, there was also, for most of our time at Yale, a classical music side to WYBC FM. That is how I got interested and involved in heeling the station.
I remember having an afternoon classical show, “Front Row Center,” …
Using the listserv, Wayne Willis has directed us to this page, which I had not really visited before. Since the listserve reaches only 120 whereas this post will reach 730 of my classmates, I thought I would try posting something that may be of interest to a few of you.
In July of this year, I …
When Yale decided to rename one of its residential colleges, my college, from Calhoun to Grace Hopper, I was annoyed. Then I remembered that I had met Captain Grace Hopper, had heard her deliver a speech, and had written an article about her back in 1983, when I worked for DEC, the minicomputer company. Here’s what I learned and what I’ve come to think about her, the computer and internet revolutions and what it may mean to education at Yale.
Classmates, do any of you remember or have information about a small anti-draft demonstration on Beinecke Plaza one wintry morning in early 1968, our junior year? Three seniors handed their draft cards to Bill Coffin in an act of civil-disobedience, stating that they would refuse conscription into the Vietnam War. I came across the gathering on my way to a class, and I’ve described what I remember in a few paragraphs, beginning in the fourth…
This time, character matters as much as ideology. I’m very sorry to have to open up a controversy on our class website, but some classmates’ obviously well-intentioned support for Jamie Kirchick’s write-in candidacy to become a trustee of Yale deserves a substantive response. Exercising my freedom of speech (Remember the Woodward Report?!), I’ll unload a bit here, because I happen to know how dramatically unsuited Kirchick is for membership on Yale Corporation. I was a…
Like many alums, I was mortified by the 2015 screamfest involving Nicholas Christakis, a respected professor at Yale, as memorialized on YouTube. Professor Christakis was forced to defend the public expression of an opinion by his spouse, herself a respected Yale professor, to the effect that the Yale administration had perhaps been too paternalistic in circulating a pre-Halloween memo warning against culturally-insensitive costumes. That and similar recent events on campus have offended both conservatives (many of whom believe conservative views are largely not welcome at Yale) and liberals (who support freedom of speech broadly).
For most of us 1947 is a very important year. After all we were born during those 12 months. (For those of you born a year or two before or after, this is still relevant.) The approximately 70 years of life we are currently reflecting on started in that year. So maybe we wonder what else was born in that year, what else started in 1947. The Swedish historian Elizabeth Asbrink has an answer to that question in her recent book 1947: Where Now Begins. Asbrink doesn’t know us and didn’t write this about us, but she does suggest in this book that major events shaping our world today began in 1947.
As luck would have it, on a recent visit to the Yale Art Gallery, I happened upon Adam Van Doren, an accomplished artist / teacher / Fellow in Yale College and learned about his new book, The Stones of Yale. Thirty buildings, thirty short chapters, with paintings and watercolors created by the artist to accompany the descriptions, history, functions and feelings of living and working in these spaces. It’s a wonderful work, and I review the book for your possible additional interest.
Note From ClassBook Editor Carney Mimms: My good friend, Nick Levitin, wrote this lovely tribute about Reverend Coffin. It doesn’t really fit in the ClassBook, but it’s so heartfelt that I wanted to share it. A Memory of William Sloan Coffin By Nick Levitin I arrived in New Haven for my first job during a particularly volatile time – 1968. The Vietnam War, the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and shortly thereafter…
In going through my photo archive for the ClassBook entry, I came across these two pictures, which I took while an undergrad. In each case I was trying out a new camera as a reportage tool: a used Canon rangefinder at the Brewster event, and a Nikon FTn, my first single-lens reflex, for Coffin. Both subjects were indispensable Yale leaders, and …
Having no exposure to affluence of any kind, let alone the kind associated with the families with “blue arms” who year after year produced the waves of prep school kids who flooded Yale’s campus, I received a crash course in the meaning of ascriptive wealth during my college years. My first lesson occurred during my very first year at Yale, when I met my freshman roommate, Burr Nash.
Editor’s Note: Michael Folz has written a small book on these three years, capturing the “cinematic detail” and anachronism-free dialogue that will bring you right into Cutler’s Records, roommate challenges, John Hersey’s den, Olivia’s late at night, Bingham hijinks, bursary jobs, bull sessions, mixers, Coffin’s advice, and ultimately a profound disillusionment with (and alienation from) Yale, dropping out in Sophomore year, having tuned in and turned on much earlier than others in our class. Mike returned to Yale and graduated in ’73, but this memoir covers the end of HS through the end of 1967. It’s a long read, but worth it.
Editor’s Note: This is the first “Memories and Observations” post. The NCAA Lacrosse story was the second one. Hey, all you folks out there with memories and observations … share them here!
Author’s Note: The recent death of Tom Wolfe (Yale ’57 PhD, American Studies) brought up a bunch of memories, some of which are in an article I wrote for LEAR’S magazine in 1990, and republished recently on Salon.
