Panel text reads:
Sunday: Too dizzy to get breakfast and so missed lunch. Printshop standing without food and on top coughing almost whooshed until I got some proper ventilation. That horrible steam and then the cold draft only for air! Worked all day.. Trotting around the back yard [sic] in my apron to get Larry's approval. Understand what Emil felt. That Day I came running down from the mountain when he had been in the shop all sunday. Tired and dull. Yet it must be slow careful work, impossible to force. Roy's that night with a Sarton bunch, and printing after I came home to one. Thin spaces keep falling out so I couldn’t even get first run so it would be dry. Finally washed up with a big splash and went to bed. Responsibility is so funny. No matter how much I wanted to there was the discipline of not failing. But it would be horrible if everything were like that. I wanted not to wash off or clean up. It seemed too much. Just turn out the light and go until tomorrow. And I couldn’t be whatt [sic] the he the hell, [sic] with the thin spaces or all the type might have fallen.
Monday: Printing till about four. Finished. Mr Cole and Will’s help. Wonderful letter from Neal in the morning. Washed my hair and plucked eyebrows in contrast to horrible ink under nails and bedraggleding of so many days. Sarton homage poem that evening. Folding programs with Frankie and good talking of her years at Texas U, life, parent[] etc. [], I’m getting goddamn catty. Must stop. Charles Lindsley’s beer with Susie and Frankie, Susies [sic] birthday reme brances [sic].
November 6 1940
36 End of interlude: and what, besides a good sleep this afternoon. and possibly four hours of physics. The week is surprisingly clear in memory. It was a week of Sarton (May, poet), a week of printing, of evening occupations and late bedtimes. Far too little studying. I must shake off these school duties.
Thursday: Citizen times Sarton story all day. Read some of “the Single Round” and talked with her for several hours in the evening of writing and many things.
Friday: Finished the story. Newsletter meeting. Starting printing. All afternoo[sic] Evening Finished local politics meeting.
Saturday: felt lousy in the morning, messing around with physics knowing I should get the hell into the program. Walking thru [sic] the lobby where the piano tuner was making arrangements to go to Ashville[sic]. Did finally with Derek and Slates, Hella, beautiful Barbara. I look interesting in black suit, white color, head tied up. Ashville[sic] was very sunny, enclosed by its mountain circle and reminding one of LookwHomeward[sic], Angel. I felt as if I should meet Tom Wolfe walking down the street. It is small, and yet a city. People standing in the park square singing washed in the blood of the lamb etc. New Harley Davidsons at the police station. Airplane writing in the sky. I bought paper, and a blue backed brush. Very tired. All afternoon.
Then foolishly in the evening to Democratic rally at Marion with Babockc, Stix, Russ Gothe. Thinking it would be jolly because jolly so and so was along and I would automatically be jolly. This great state, wild west movie, and beer.
1941 6
Wdnesday[sic] Oct 8
Today Jack Lipsey’s car turned on its side by the dam and Mark Dreier who had been riding on the running board was crushed and died soon. Penley’s boy was on the other side. They had been holding to the windows and leaning out. Someone shriedk[sic] the news right before the close of work. People left the ditches and the windows and the tractor and ran across[sic] over the fields to the place, came back walking. Cars in succession drove very fast down the road, Morton, Babcock, fred[sic] and Anne. A big car with Bobbie in it. Ted came running after, long legs green work clothes. We had the worst rumors first, then qualifications that he was still licing[sic], the long waiting, then the cars came home from the village and he was dead. I heardTed[sic] in the library sending telegrams.
Danny came back looking grim and took a big chain out of the rumbel[sic] seat and put it away in the tool shed. I couldn’t helf[sic] feeling that he was dramatizing himself and the situation and being insincere without recognizing it. But who am I to judge his sensibilities.
Two deaths from that damn flood, said John Evarts. It was a big stone in the road that Jack swerved on.
Mrs Rice’s reaction is that tomorrow the girls should wear skirts and dark colors.
I stayed consistently away from the place and from the people most involved. Crowding infringes on something terribly personal. Most of us running over did not expect to be able to help. A little later I felt regret and curiosity.
Homer was in the village and somebody told him.
Stone looked up from reading and saw a group of people standing about by the dining hall and got up disturbed.
Between supper and work many people stood or sat about, on the porch here, not saying anything. I took a bath. Some routine must be carried ahead.
After supper each could have worked but noone [sic] felt like it. We say[sic] about smoking saying little/ First Leslie, Tommh[sic], Mendez I. we listened to LEslie’s Nendlesohhn concerto. Then Mendez asked timiedly[sic] if we’d like a drink. Yes. He had four roses. Then soon Susie, Eva, Cynthia, Marden, Stix, were heare[sic.] Janie, stone[sic]...we drank the small portins[sic] very quietly and listened then to Brahm’s first. Judging by myself people were simply full of a running and returning thought current. This group silence lasted for about two hors[sic], a nd[sic] returned off and on.
Liquor here facilitated men coming together in a sort of ceremony, or society mechanicms[sic]. Event is not the same at every moment.
We also went to Rooy’s later but with a much different attitude.
Myself I cannot help but be aware of certain things. First you experience shock, then imaginative sympathy. But the sorrow because it is not personal very soon wears off.
An added difficulty will be a possible mansluaghter [sic] charge, here in the south []
With all this on the part of most of us comes many fragmentary considerations about death. “It’s just that someone’s dead (who was alive this morning) said Tommy in answer to my insistenc[sic] that the whole school must not wear an stereotyped [sic] mourning sombreness. It is so damn final and unbelonging to any kind of a system we can make. You must write if off the books. That’s all.”
Report is that Ted will meet his classes tomorrow after all, but not in the house, on the porch.
Fernando was the first back from the road. Sam said he was white and shaky.
**
From the Black Mountain College journal of Elizabeth Brett Hamlin
Poem from Elizabeth Hamlin, 1920-1958
POEMS. Privately published, 1969.
Love is like any seldom thing:
the comet’s tongue, the painted bird;
the sail prizes a dark catch of wind.
Holy you the touch, the quick song heard,
hills, sheep, dream-fixed country scenes,
until the common frequent intervenes.
1940
Sunday: Too dizzy to get breakfast and so missed lunch. Printshop standing without food and on top coughing almost whooshed until I got some proper ventilation. That horrible steam and then the cold draft only for air! Worked all day.. Trotting around the back yard [sic] in my apron to get Larry's approval. Understand what Emil felt. That Day I came running down from the mountain when he had been in the shop all sunday. Tired and dull. Yet it must be slow careful work, impossible to force. Roy's that night with a Sarton bunch, and printing after I came home to one. Thin spaces keep falling out so I couldn’t even get first run so it would be dry. Finally washed up with a big splash and went to bed. Responsibility is so funny. No matter how much I wanted to there was the discipline of not failing. But it would be horrible if everything were like that. I wanted not to wash off or clean up. It seemed too much. Just turn out the light and go until tomorrow. And I couldn’t be whatt [sic] the he the hell, [sic] with the thin spaces or all the type might have fallen.
Monday: Printing till about four. Finished. Mr Cole and Will’s help. Wonderful letter from Neal in the morning. Washed my hair and plucked eyebrows in contrast to horrible ink under nails and bedraggleding of so many days. Sarton homage poem that evening. Folding programs with Frankie and good talking of her years at Texas U, life, parent[] etc. [], I’m getting goddamn catty. Must stop. Charles Lindsley’s beer with Susie and Frankie, Susies [sic] birthday reme brances [sic].
November 6 1940
36 End of interlude: and what, besides a good sleep this afternoon. and possibly four hours of physics. The week is surprisingly clear in memory. It was a week of Sarton (May, poet), a week of printing, of evening occupations and late bedtimes. Far too little studying. I must shake off these school duties.
Thursday: Citizen times Sarton story all day. Read some of “the Single Round” and talked with her for several hours in the evening of writing and many things.
Friday: Finished the story. Newsletter meeting. Starting printing. All afternoo[sic] Evening Finished local politics meeting.
Saturday: felt lousy in the morning, messing around with physics knowing I should get the hell into the program. Walking thru [sic] the lobby where the piano tuner was making arrangements to go to Ashville[sic]. Did finally with Derek and Slates, Hella, beautiful Barbara. I look interesting in black suit, white color, head tied up. Ashville[sic] was very sunny, enclosed by its mountain circle and reminding one of LookwHomeward[sic], Angel. I felt as if I should meet Tom Wolfe walking down the street. It is small, and yet a city. People standing in the park square singing washed in the blood of the lamb etc. New Harley Davidsons at the police station. Airplane writing in the sky. I bought paper, and a blue backed brush. Very tired. All afternoon.
Then foolishly in the evening to Democratic rally at Marion with Babockc, Stix, Russ Gothe. Thinking it would be jolly because jolly so and so was along and I would automatically be jolly. This great state, wild west movie, and beer.
1941 6
Wdnesday[sic] Oct 8
Today Jack Lipsey’s car turned on its side by the dam and Mark Dreier who had been riding on the running board was crushed and died soon. Penley’s boy was on the other side. They had been holding to the windows and leaning out. Someone shriedk[sic] the news right before the close of work. People left the ditches and the windows and the tractor and ran across[sic] over the fields to the place, came back walking. Cars in succession drove very fast down the road, Morton, Babcock, fred[sic] and Anne. A big car with Bobbie in it. Ted came running after, long legs green work clothes. We had the worst rumors first, then qualifications that he was still licing[sic], the long waiting, then the cars came home from the village and he was dead. I heardTed[sic] in the library sending telegrams.
Danny came back looking grim and took a big chain out of the rumbel[sic] seat and put it away in the tool shed. I couldn’t helf[sic] feeling that he was dramatizing himself and the situation and being insincere without recognizing it. But who am I to judge his sensibilities.
Two deaths from that damn flood, said John Evarts. It was a big stone in the road that Jack swerved on.
Mrs Rice’s reaction is that tomorrow the girls should wear skirts and dark colors.
I stayed consistently away from the place and from the people most involved. Crowding infringes on something terribly personal. Most of us running over did not expect to be able to help. A little later I felt regret and curiosity.
Homer was in the village and somebody told him.
Stone looked up from reading and saw a group of people standing about by the dining hall and got up disturbed.
Between supper and work many people stood or sat about, on the porch here, not saying anything. I took a bath. Some routine must be carried ahead.
After supper each could have worked but noone [sic] felt like it. We say[sic] about smoking saying little/ First Leslie, Tommh[sic], Mendez I. we listened to LEslie’s Nendlesohhn concerto. Then Mendez asked timiedly[sic] if we’d like a drink. Yes. He had four roses. Then soon Susie, Eva, Cynthia, Marden, Stix, were heare[sic.] Janie, stone[sic]...we drank the small portins[sic] very quietly and listened then to Brahm’s first. Judging by myself people were simply full of a running and returning thought current. This group silence lasted for about two hors[sic], a nd[sic] returned off and on.
Liquor here facilitated men coming together in a sort of ceremony, or society mechanicms[sic]. Event is not the same at every moment.
We also went to Rooy’s later but with a much different attitude.
Myself I cannot help but be aware of certain things. First you experience shock, then imaginative sympathy. But the sorrow because it is not personal very soon wears off.
An added difficulty will be a possible mansluaghter [sic] charge, here in the south []
With all this on the part of most of us comes many fragmentary considerations about death. “It’s just that someone’s dead (who was alive this morning) said Tommy in answer to my insistenc[sic] that the whole school must not wear an stereotyped [sic] mourning sombreness. It is so damn final and unbelonging to any kind of a system we can make. You must write if off the books. That’s all.”
Report is that Ted will meet his classes tomorrow after all, but not in the house, on the porch.
Fernando was the first back from the road. Sam said he was white and shaky.
**
From the Black Mountain College journal of Elizabeth Brett Hamlin
Poem from Elizabeth Hamlin, 1920-1958
POEMS. Privately published, 1969.
Love is like any seldom thing:
the comet’s tongue, the painted bird;
the sail prizes a dark catch of wind.
Holy you the touch, the quick song heard,
hills, sheep, dream-fixed country scenes,
until the common frequent intervenes.
1940
Artwork: 1995.4.1
From the Black Mountain College Journal of Elizabeth B. Hamlin
This work was created for the 1995 exhibition Remembering Black Mountain College curated by Mary Emma Harris in conjunction with Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and the BMC alumni reunion organized by Mary Holden Thompson, founding director of BMCM+AC.
18 x 24 inches
Gift of Wilfrid G. Hamlin
Wilfrid G. Hamlin, From the Black Mountain College Journal of Elizabeth B. Hamlin, 1995. Collage of photocopies. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the Artist.
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