(Page Six
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Saturday, September 16, 1972
1
Page Six THE MICHIGAN DAILY
There's a right way.. .
CANYON: THE STORY OF
THE LAST RUSTIC COMMUN-
ITY IN METROPOLITAN
AMERICA, John van der Zee.
Ballantine Books, $1.25.
By ED SUROVELL
Daily Books Editor
Geography and quirks of hu-
man behavior produce strange
towns on occasion-boom towns
in inaccessible places and the
like-but near Berkeley they
combined to create a tiny rural
enclave on the edge of the great
California sprawl. Canyon, and
many similar villages, were set-
tled in the 1850s, as an offspring
of lumbering operations which
depleted the great coastal red-
wood forests. The forests gone,
the towns either died or as in
Canyon's case limped along,
changing character with the
times, now a small resort, now
something else.
By the early 1950s Canyon had
been reduced to a cluster of
'perhaps a hundred ,summer
homes converted mostly to year-
around use,'with poor sanitation,
limited water, and no public
transportation in or out. The
surrounding lands were owned
by the East Bay Utilities Dis-
trict (MUD), upon whose reser-
voir watershed Canyon unhap-
pily sat. MUD had decided that
the village posed a threat to
the purity of the reservoir and
started buying all property that
went up for sale in the town.
Consequently, the little village
which had existed obstinately
for a century began to die quiet-
ly but quickly as MUD spent
half a million dollars to buy
and demolish half of Canyon's
house,.
During the 1950s and '60s how-
ever Canyon became the refuge
for many of Berkeley's less con-
ventional types, not all of whom
were freaks by the usual stand-
ards - there were academics,
some professionals and a scat-
tering of dropouts, political ac-
tivists and others. The new-
comers began experimenting
with architecture, partly out of
inclination, partly because build-
ing permits could not be had
from the county because of the
lack of sewerage, partly because
conventional loans were not
available from the banks who
wanted the insurance that was
unavailable because of the lack
of water. As the community
grew with salvaged materials,
uncertain land titles, no building
permits, and the freer living ar-
rangements so unpopular with
county officials and the water
company, open war was declar-
ed on Canyon, and most of the
new houses were condemned.
John van der Zee has done a
thorough and fascinating job of
telling the story of the fight of
the town to preserve its exist-
ence, and of the growth of the
sense of community within Can-
yon. Canyon is a successful
strike against some of the most
restrictive aspects of American
life - the official requirements
that the environment be de-
stroyed to build and the iron-
clad association of big business
and government - and its tale
is well worth reading.
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Subversive architecture from Canyon.
... and a wrong way
FIREPLACE
AND
Nicholas Johnson, TEST PAT-
TERN FOR LIVING. Bantam,
$1.25.
A bitter voice from the dead
BLOOD IN MY EYE, George
Jackson, Bantam, $1.50.
By MERYL GORDON
"Born to a premature death,
a menial, subsistence - wage
worker, odd-job man, the clean-
er, the caught, the man under
hatches, without bail - that's
me, the colonial victim. Anyone
who can pass the civil service
examination today can kill me
tomorrow. Anyone who passed
the civil service examination
yesterday can kill me today with
complete immunity. I've lived
with repression every moment of
my life, a repression so for-
midable, that any movement on
my part can only bring relief,
the respite of a small victory, or
the release of death."
George Jackson's Blood in My
.Eye is a frightening book. De-
livered to a publisher a few days
before he was shot and killed,
during an alleged escape at-
tempt from San Quentin Prison,
the book reveals Jackson's per-
ception and expectation of death.
"In the early service of the
people there must be totally
committed, professional revolu-
tionaries who understand that all
human life is meaniingless if it
is not accompanied by the con-
trols that determine its quality.
I am one of these. My life has
absolutely no value."
Jackson's book details his vi-
sion as a revolutionary. He has
taken his rage at society, at the
world that imprisoned him for
11 years, and turned it into a
cool controlled weapon. His an-
ger now becomes his plan to
change society, his revolutionary
dream.
Regretably, some passages in
the book are pure rhetoric. But
Today's writer . .
Meryl Gordon, a Daily regu-
lar, is a regular reviewer on
this page and a friend in need.
ANN ARBOR CIVIC
THEATRE needs Set De-
signers for the 1972-73
Season. If you are inter-
ested in designing one of
t h e following, Anthing
Goes, The Lion In Winter,
Thieves' Ca rn i valI or
Prime Of Miss Jean Bro-
die, call Alice Crawford
- afternoons, 769-0005,
eves. 663-8864.
Nicholas Johnson, the Federal
Communications Commissioner
who is one of the few tolerable
bureaucrats around, has written
a kind of middle class guide to
alternative life styles that is
neither original nor is it par-
ticularly challenging to many
people of good intentions, but
that might, I suppose, make
them feel better about doing their
part to fight the corporate state.
"Ask yourself," he asks, "how
many people you know whom you
think of as fully functioning per-
sonalities. How many are there
in whose daily lives there is a
measure of beauty, contact with
nature, artistic creativity, philo-
sophical contemplation or reli-
gion, love, self-fulfilling produc-
tivity," and so on? He is right
in a way, of course, but he
doesn't offer very much in the
way of an answer.
Bicycles are better than cars,
he observes. And baking soda
does a better job than tooth
paste, and cheaper. And potato
chips, soda pop, and foods with
processed sugar are bad for you.
Do you really need that electric
toothbrush or electric carving
knife? The trouble is that we al-
ready know this, and his advice
is spread so thin that it becomes
dull reading.
The old ways show through in
places, in spite of his good in-
tentions. Looking at housework,
for example:
Once a husband and wife be-
gin to share a common apprecia-
tion of the physical, psychologi-
cal, and spiritual values of par-
ticipating in their own life-sup-
port activities, they have entered
into a new dimension of their
lives. . . . A husband who keeps
the garage in a semblance of
order can recognize a tidy kitch-
en when he sees one. . . . If a
man has tended the garden, he
can appreciate the jars of fruits
and vegetables canned by his
wife.
Man's work for the man, wo-
man's for the woman. We need
more.
Johnson has done a great deal
of good-inasmuch as this is pos-
sible given the state of the
medium-for America's TV life,
and he has some interesting
things to say about the tube here.
But the book just doesn't make
it: "A Twentieth-Century Guide
to Coping with Life, Liberty and
the Pursuit of Happiness-With-
out, Dropping Out" the publish-
ers have spread across the front
cover. "How to talk back to your
corporate state." Well, maybe.
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others reveal Jackson's emotion-
al responses to his world. He
speaks lovingly of his brother
Jonathan, killed in an attempt to
free George. Jackson talks with
calm fury of the indignities he's
undergone throughout his life.
"I've been arrested, interro-
gated, or investigated more
times than I care to count. I've
learned ten times more about
the process than the most ex-
pert single groups of inquisitors.
From the first moment I'm
brought into this scenario, I at-
tempt to establish control over
the exchanges that will take
place between myself and my
captors. Depending on the situ-
ation, one learns to feign either
indignation, surprise, idiocy, or
fear . . . I don't think I am an
exception at all, as most blacks
learn by 'age fifteen how to han-
dle the cretins who hire out as
guns for the privileged."
The impact of Jackson's words
is strong. Jackson disciplined
himself throughout his many
years in prison, and developed a
powerful voice to describe his
view of America to come.
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MASS MEETING
for
Homecoming 1972
IRose Were The Days
OCTOBER 25-29
WORK ON ONE OF THESE COMMITTEES
PUBLICITY ALUMNI RELATIONS
SPECIAL EVENTS THEME
GRAPHICS
COME TO THE MEETING-TUES., SEPT. 19
7:-30 p.m.
UAC Offices--2nd Floor---Union
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