Archbishop Mitty High School - Excalibur Yearbook (San Jose, CA)

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OR BY CYCLE therapy. It is where I go to get away from words, from people, from artificial things. It is affection and friendship, too, the re- currence, the return in the cycle of the year of certain flowers, beasts, birds and insects I am fond of. It is sounds. It is cur- lew on a winter's evening, as I lie in bed. It is the sparrows that chirp on my roof each morning. Above all it is the familiar nat- ural life that lives and breeds round my house--the kind of life any rarity-hunting naturalist would not even notice, it is so ordinary. But I have trained myself, partly through reading about Zen, partly through thinking on the texts ofsuch men as Thoreau, not to take anything in my thousand-times- walked-around garden as familiar. l'm not in the least a religious person, butl suppose the process is something like prayer. You have to work at it. I once told a Bene- dictine monk that prayer was incomprehen- sible to me. Yes, he said, it was to me once. It becomes comprehensible only through endless repetition. This, I am convinced, is what practical conservation needs behind it, or beneath it, if it is to work: a constantly repeated awareness of the mysterious other universe of nature in every civilized community. A love, or at least a toleration, of this other universe must reenter the urban ex- perience, must be accepted as the key gauge of a society's humanity, and we must be sure that the re-entry and the acceptance is a matter of personal, not public, respon- sibility. So much of our communal guilty conscience is taken up by the cruelty of man to man that the crime we are inflict- ing on nature is forgotten. Fortunately there seem to be many signs in the United States that this lesser crime against natural life at last is being recognized for what it is-- not the lesser crime at all, but the real source of many things we cite as the major mistakes of recent history. You may think there is very little connection between spraying insecticide over your flower-beds because everyone else in your street does over a Viet- the same and spraying napalm namese village because that's the way war is. But many more things than we know start in our own backyards. Social aggression starts there, and so does social tolerance. ! 'A 'V V .W ' B 14 rw. y 1' Bob Mike Eric Vince john Di.Marco DiPietro Dippel Doherty Doirou D r:.:k i f K y ., .. K it 9 K , 4 .Qs K . Q A. ,Ng g V, gjfpfx f Qui pl, if Mike Dougherty 1 M v 5222 ...-fl ,ff Mark Drohman

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Jon Costella :ik is .-ag J .sa ' . 75 ....--.-.. .. , t . , a r 'Q ' gsgvgr ,Q rising: ? 4 - , i-ar. K., Q lp.: L' ft .Lf d A ,. , .Q t ,,,- Ka . .. , . 5 K iv l . ' f f:'rt'f3gsff W .,., N S'-St. l7'I-- A - 5 . X X m f - Hog, :ASQ A .,. ...L . t X.-L ., s, K ' ' '. A -Qi, 2:1 X . 1 Q A .,.,....5., yt Y -- . a x 5 ,... gi . X . hs Q.. fbi V A T',f' xt: 3 R ' rift? F W 'Q i' fi. ' .. fr -'-' is M -M ' 'X' fmt A - 'T Q i S :.'2'f,,? s ' 'U ' 4' V i' ,-J' ' 39. t ' ' ..- X ' . .. .. .. ,k,. I K 'x ' - w . -' f .I.:.a,'uu rvf '-'1 ' . '1 ..f s'- V Bill Cotton N' J' . 1-yn-vs I should be all for science. But there is no more need to see nature either sentimen- tally or scientifically than there is to see paintings, or listen to music, or enjoy a game or a sport in one of those two fixed manners. And here, perhaps, there is a stumbling block particular to the American mind, with its inbom pragmatism , its demand for some immediate utility in both the object and its pursuit, and its corollary as- sumption that the more facts you know about a thing the more there is likely to be in it for you. Europeans enjoy appearances. Americans enjoy things better if they know how they work --and of course knowing that involves knowing names. This obses- sion with labeling and functioning, and the corresponding impatience with the quieter pleasure of mere experiencing, is an aspect of what an American friend of mine once described to me as the single deepest fault of the national culture. He called it a lack of poetry, and then amplified the phrase by saying. We try and turn everything into machinery. Over the years I have come to see this criticism as a clue to a great deal of what is unhappy in American socie- ty. This is not the place to discuss whether my friend is right in general. But I would choose unpoet:ic as probably the best word to des- cribe the prevailing attitude to natural life in the United States just as poetic best describes the great exceptions to that gen- eralization, the Audubons and the Thoreaus. Poetry, alas, is something you can't sell. All you can do is suggest thatit'is out there, if people will only ind the time and the right frame of mind and discover for them- selves that enjoyment does not require sci- entific knowledge. Myself, I regard nature very largely as Mark jeff Dave Tony Doug Coupens Cronin Crooks Crusco Denham t 1 x at ff-

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D ave Nature is an inalienable part of human na- ture. We can never blaspheme against it alone. Exterminate, and you shall be ex- terminated. Don't care, and one day, per- haps too late, you or your children will be made to care bitterly. Evolution holds no special brief, no elect place for man. It's only favorite is the species that keeps the options open. The nightmare of our cen- tury is that so many of man's options are closing on him. A main reason for this is that the individual increasingly lets society and its label-words usurp his own role and responsibility. We all know that we have to get things right between ourselves and the other forms of life on this crowded planet. What we don't or won't, know is that the getting right cannot be left to govemment, to the people who are paid to care. I make no apology for saying it again. Conserva- tion can never be someone else caring. It is you caring. Now. ,wx - .- - s- , :N , 5qw1g,, pn, n M Q U I f-X 'Tr .V-. N is aff. a... l. .9 'aiufx-Q .xsgfifr Q 2.1, , of ...J 75- nip :ti . fy, ,f l -f e r l -s is iq. Z., V' . . ' , !, ,,T'l: , nf' if fi ref' 4. ifiz'-gif-n Sh f 7 . -Eg jfzagwfx- ,X , 3. Q ,gig f pg r if 156 p X Ci'4 s. 51.1. 1- , , X - X s 7 .lx Q x v' XX sh A 5 .f,f.f,i'v'f '- W' ggi,-,v.a Q, ,nykt N 'T . kr .-me fw ng -' . .ff 1.51 2 ' f-'1'.i'2?'f.. . 1' fs' '-:W'f'i P 'fri-'- ' l if f 1 - ' . ig I g 0 ,. ,J A K .. E ,.1:..'.,. -at M Q-yy t xg 1 p X , sa r .A :yu its,-J',..,Ti 'YR i - Q Q. AFIA-.'k'd:,41:1j X 7 Q75 Q' '5g?vi-.Ll5 -f..,,f,.,.- W 3 'Mt ,' fa if was , s rssasas A nuff! . QQVL L t A tax ,' h h 2 ,bqwixxgl if' Av . xi: t Q, 'Wk N , 1 p R- I X N. If'-5' st 'W W 'WSIS-I-' vifg flfrfw as we , 't N X x f ' 3 g ' .. f - it -1f 'm',' f- sg ,Q N , g a .a 2 Q, 5. J. , -A .,. 4, N Y 1. sk K , k 5 3 E K mc' Y , -,. l L-, J N3 by bi www- ., Q 2 xx V if f H 'vas ' :'ff'A i' : W , ti X 3. J,-4 92. a l . ff t, if -A . 'i' fl.i5 .'?1 ' s . n 'X ' ' Y ' vw V K' tff lff lf' J Q-1 933' rr wr 1 I ,,m:Qf i g f-f -ws ' . 'Yan D r straw Kata -:ff my s..-35 ff Rick Bd Dru ley Dutra Eag le W .Q- ix . K- . 1' - E11 its 'f r r Bob Terry Bri an Phi lip Edmounds Egan Elgin Emerson - .1-s x wr' X ,, t' d s s a . fx ' 1