When I was a sophomore in high school I met a guy who was teaching there for a semester under a grant from some artist in residence program. He died in 1999 and I still find out little tidbits about him to this day. Something that everyone has a different account of is his having gotten fired from a university teaching position in the seventies.
People who liked Bill tend to believe it was because of his peace activism and having organized protests against the ROTC presence at the university. People who didn't care for Bill much tend to think it was because he was using drugs and exposing students to drugs.
Bill told me that he wasn't using drugs during that period. I believe him. Another complicating factor was that Bill fell down an elevator shaft at the university, broke many bones and the university had to pay a settlement.
The number of people with memories of what was going on with Bill and the university in the seventies are dwindling. I think the biggest factor in Bill's having gotten fired wasn't the purported drug use, the falling down the elevator shaft, or the organizing protests. I wasn't around at the time but I'm relatively certain that the overwhelmingly biggest factor was Bill's bipolar which was pretty severe and didn't receive any substantively effective treatment til a later period. Bipolar tends to make people monomaniacal about things and socially retarded. You can not navigate academic politics in such a state. I'm sure all those other factors played into the whole situation.
Bill's having fallen down the elevator shaft is always attributed to his having been messed up at the time by university partisans. My opinion is that if you push an elevator button and the door opens to a shaft, the malfunction and elevator owner is at fault regardless of the persons state chemical or otherwise.
When Bill was in the hospital they had him on morphine and then demerol. The whole time he was on opiates he was visited by bird-like man size creatures with big eyes that looked like glass balls. He called them neepons. I assume they told him their name or he 'just knew'. He made many sculptures and paintings of neepons after he recovered. Bill had other visions during other periods, but they tended to be garden variety Catholic mysticism with Mary and Jesus type stuff.
A friend of mine with a used bookstore had a gallery dedicated to Bill's work on an unused floor of his store. For many years I had assumed that the owner started the gallery because he was such a big fan of Bill's work. He was a fan but only recently did I find out that the gallery was founded as a conspiracy to get Bill's works out of Bill's hands. Sometime in the mid-seventies Bill would start burning his works whenever he was depressed which was pretty often.
Bill got me interested in politics and social causes.
Freshman year I was on the wrestling team. At some point my former wrestling coach and English teacher confronted Bill about having me all worked up about "Nicaragua-Sandinistas and Contras, South Africa and apartheid --- when I should have been focused on Homecoming, Prom and dating girls." I've had no remorse about not doing things like homecoming and prom.
Bill volunteered in soup kitchens and started taking me along. I went with him to various protests and rallies. He really widened my world a lot. He never told me I was a disappointment when I later joined the Navy, but I know it disappointed him. He was Army Air Corps during WWII. He might have understood the desire to get out of ones home town and adventure, but his world view tended to be that everything the US was doing militarily in 1985 was unjust and barbaric and to be avoided.
Anyways someone gave another tale of his having been fucked up when he fell down the elevator shaft the other day. (No one else was in the building at the time, he lay there screaming for help from like midnight til 5 AM.) I reminisced about all the different accounts I've heard about the man over the years.
Well
Bill if the deceased have any influence on our mundane lives I know your pushing still for Peace & Justice.
People who liked Bill tend to believe it was because of his peace activism and having organized protests against the ROTC presence at the university. People who didn't care for Bill much tend to think it was because he was using drugs and exposing students to drugs.
Bill told me that he wasn't using drugs during that period. I believe him. Another complicating factor was that Bill fell down an elevator shaft at the university, broke many bones and the university had to pay a settlement.
The number of people with memories of what was going on with Bill and the university in the seventies are dwindling. I think the biggest factor in Bill's having gotten fired wasn't the purported drug use, the falling down the elevator shaft, or the organizing protests. I wasn't around at the time but I'm relatively certain that the overwhelmingly biggest factor was Bill's bipolar which was pretty severe and didn't receive any substantively effective treatment til a later period. Bipolar tends to make people monomaniacal about things and socially retarded. You can not navigate academic politics in such a state. I'm sure all those other factors played into the whole situation.
Bill's having fallen down the elevator shaft is always attributed to his having been messed up at the time by university partisans. My opinion is that if you push an elevator button and the door opens to a shaft, the malfunction and elevator owner is at fault regardless of the persons state chemical or otherwise.
When Bill was in the hospital they had him on morphine and then demerol. The whole time he was on opiates he was visited by bird-like man size creatures with big eyes that looked like glass balls. He called them neepons. I assume they told him their name or he 'just knew'. He made many sculptures and paintings of neepons after he recovered. Bill had other visions during other periods, but they tended to be garden variety Catholic mysticism with Mary and Jesus type stuff.
A friend of mine with a used bookstore had a gallery dedicated to Bill's work on an unused floor of his store. For many years I had assumed that the owner started the gallery because he was such a big fan of Bill's work. He was a fan but only recently did I find out that the gallery was founded as a conspiracy to get Bill's works out of Bill's hands. Sometime in the mid-seventies Bill would start burning his works whenever he was depressed which was pretty often.
Bill got me interested in politics and social causes.
Freshman year I was on the wrestling team. At some point my former wrestling coach and English teacher confronted Bill about having me all worked up about "Nicaragua-Sandinistas and Contras, South Africa and apartheid --- when I should have been focused on Homecoming, Prom and dating girls." I've had no remorse about not doing things like homecoming and prom.
Bill volunteered in soup kitchens and started taking me along. I went with him to various protests and rallies. He really widened my world a lot. He never told me I was a disappointment when I later joined the Navy, but I know it disappointed him. He was Army Air Corps during WWII. He might have understood the desire to get out of ones home town and adventure, but his world view tended to be that everything the US was doing militarily in 1985 was unjust and barbaric and to be avoided.
Anyways someone gave another tale of his having been fucked up when he fell down the elevator shaft the other day. (No one else was in the building at the time, he lay there screaming for help from like midnight til 5 AM.) I reminisced about all the different accounts I've heard about the man over the years.
Well
Bill if the deceased have any influence on our mundane lives I know your pushing still for Peace & Justice.
