LECTURES
Those of you who didn't make it to hear Bob the Bagman--the twenty year veteran of Boston-area bumming--on the view from the gutter really missed something. Although, as one spectator put it, Bob's twenty years on the streets have given him a "detached mental process," his opinions were original and stimulating. After graduating from Purdue, Bob kept his mind agile by "sleeping close to the ground, where the air is richer." (Beware, apartment dwellers.) Like Socrates, he wandered across the land expounding his simple rules of living. He listens to the birds, and "smartest animals on earth, except for the cats," who tell him of warm places to sleep, and warn him against unfriendly building superintendants, landlords, etc. Through the years, Bob developed a symbiosis with nature. It has now reached the point where he has no trouble getting money for food or wine. "Once somebody insulted me when I asked him for change. Next day, the pope died," he pointed out.
If you missed Bob, the upcoming week promises lectures with equally unique ideas, and, for the mundane listeners, slightly greater qualifications, Speakers this week seem to have one characteristic in common: they all have unusual frames of reference. They are all respected people who simply decided not to knuckle under to social pressure, and instead took linely, sometimes outrageous, stands.
Henry David Thoreau will not speak this week. Nor will Mahatma Ghandi. Timothy Leary may speak, but not in Boston, and only Bob the Bagman could understand him anyway.
However, noted philosopher, designer, inventor, father of the geodesic dome, and author of Spaceship Earth and other books, Buckminster Fuller, will lecture on Friday, Feb. 11 which, believe it or not, is Bucky Fuller Day in Boston, at 7:30, at B.U.'s Morse Auditorium, 602 Commonwealth Avenue, in Boston. Mayors Kevin White and A1 Velucci will present the Milton, Mass. native with a grand proclamation on the occasion of his 50th anniversary. 50th anniversary of what, you ask? Back in 1927 at age 18, Fuller declared his intellectual independence from the rest of organized society and proclaimed himself a freethinker. He hasn't had a boring thought yet.
The mayoral presentation will be who will detail his "personal religion"--a self-styled scheme of world-religion" ga self-styled scheme of world-analysis, with a government-free, tolerant society, liberated from nature by an advanced technology, as its ideal. A 90-minute film of Fuller's life and work will complete the show, which costs $2 if you're a student. Festivities begin at 7:30 p.m. in B.U.'s Morse Auditorium, 602 Commonwealth Ave., in Boston. But if Bucky's whole holy holism really excites you, you can spend $25.00 to attend one of the seminars the luminary will produce at the Science Center at Harvard over the weekend, or $60.00 to attend the whole three-night shebang. Call 9654491 for further details about the weekend seminar series, entitled "Being with Bucky".
Edward M. Korry is one iconoclast whose political criticism of the U.S. government was so damaging that he felt the need to leave the country and settle in Britian. Korry was Nixon's ambassador to Chile during Allende's presidency, and has been one of the few upper echelon figures to tell all he knows of U.S. intervention efforts there. In a television interview last month Korry said he was told by Nixon that the United States would not tolerate a Marxist regime like Allende's in the Western Hemisphere, and that he (Nixon) had ordered the CIA to interfere with Allende's inauguration.
Korry's talk, which will be given on Wednesday Feb. 16 at 8 p.m. in South Middle, Langdell Hall at Harvard Law School, will focus on "The Covert Corruption of the United States Senate." The lecture will include Korry's further charges that the Senate investigation into the U.S. role in Chile was curtailed, so that details of subversion by past administrations would not be revealed to the public. Korry has said in the past that Senator Hubert Humphrey played a role in restricting the Senate investigation. Admission to the lecture, sponsored by the Harvard Law Forum, will be $1.50.
The next civil disobedient to taunt the local establishment this week is Dr. Benjamin Spock, revolutionary anti-war activist and author of the equally revolutionary all-time bestselling "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care." Spock, who spent his Thoreauvian night in jail for counseling youths on how to avoid the draft, will also speak at Morse Auditorium, on Sunday Feb. 13 at 11 a.m. His topic, which sticks out like a sore thumb in these staid '70's, will be "The Need for Radical Political Action."
The list of leftouts continues. Professor James Q. Wilson's recent book Thinking About Crime, slashed through the blizzard of liberal sentiments about reform and re-education to outline a daring, new position in favor of jail cells and bread rations. Captain Lock-em-Up, who admittedly does not stand alone among Harvard government professors, will speak in a panel discussion at the Harvard Law Forum, to be held on Thursday, Feb. 10, at 8 p.m. at Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School. Wilson's co-panelists will be Joseph Jordan, your average Boston Police Commissioner, and George V. Higgins, former District Attorney and now your average Real Paper Columnist. Admission is $1.50.
Fresh ideas, like a lot of things, are relative. Often an idea seems rather commonplace until you take a look at who it comes from, and where he or she said it. Like the idea to enlist women deacons for the Roman Catholic Church, which came from the Pope, not Daniel Berrigan. Or statehood for Puerto Rico, which could surpass Washington D.C. as a Democratic Party stronghold, which came, most recently, from then-President Ford.
In the same unexpected tradition comes retired Israeli Major General Mati Peled, who will speak on Thursday, Feb. 10 about his advocacy of a two state solution to the Middle East debacle. Peled, who will lecture at Science Center B at 9 p.m., was the military governor of the Gaza Strip and the Jerusalem area and a memeber of the Israeli General Staff. But he has in recent months met with PLO members in Europe, and favors including the PLO in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
Friday, Feb. 11--Dr. Raymond Moody, author of the bestselling "Life after Life," will speak on "The Investigation of a Phenomenon--the Survival of Bodily Death" at the Church of the New Jerusalem. 140 Bosdoin St., Boston at 7:30 pm. Free.
Tuesday, Feb. 15--As part of MIT's Black History month, Robert Hayden, an MIT Community Fellow will root out some "Black Americans In Science, Invention, and Medicine" and speak about their lives at 12 noon in MIT's room 10-105. Free.
Wednesday, Feb. 16--A diverse panel will debate solar energy at the Cambridge Forum at the First Parish Church of Cambridge, on Harvard Square at 8:00 pm. Among the panelists will be Robert Willis, President of the Exxon subsidiary, Solar Power Corp., Peter Glazer, a vice-president of Arthur D. Little, who favors a solar energy satellite power station, and Professor Bruce Chalmers, who favors photovoltaic cells to produce energy from the sun.