10 Available Jobs You Never Knew Existed and How To Train For Them

Are you embarrassed when people ask you what you do for a living? Are you bored with your present line of work? Are you still in school, unsure about what you want to do with the rest of your life?

If you've answered yes to any of the above questions, read on. Below you'll find brief profiles of ten jobs and professions you've probably never considered.

1 Parliamentarian

Is parliamentarian just another fancy word for a legislator? Not quite. The present squad of 800 American parliamentarians is our white-collar umpires. These intelligent, good-humored fellows are hired by societies, organizations, clubs, schools, political parties, and labor unions for $70-$80 per day to superintend their meetings, convocations, and conventions. Parliamentarians inform and advise conventioneers of their rights under parliamentary law. They also serve as the final judge in any dispute over a point of order. Requirements for this obscure, but highly interesting job include a thorough knowledge of parliamentary procedures, self-control (in other words, you can't fall asleep), an open mind, and a good sense of humor. For more information write The American Institute of Parliamentarians, 4453 Beacon Street, Chicago, I1, 60640

2 Auctioneer

In ancient Greece, auctioneers sold women of marriageable age to the highest bidder among a particular town's eligible young men. Today's auctioneers no longer traffic in human cargo; however, they handle just about everything else: art, antique cars, jewelry, cattle, fruits, and vegetables, you name it. Veteran auctioneers say that their job requires an interest in merchandising and, in the words of one, "the lung power of a long-distance runner, clear diction, fast reflexes-and a pair of eyes that swivel directly from left to right while watching the bidders.” People seriously interested in auctioneering should enroll in one of the country's 10 auction schools or hire on as an auctioneer's assistant. The outlook for the profession is good.

3 Diamond Cutter

The greatest challenge for the master diamond setter is when he is given an irregularly shaped diamond

'cleave." First he scratches a painstakingly calibrated little groove into the diamond. Then he places a “knife," or square-edged blade, into it, and hits it carefully and forcefully with a mallet, smashing the diamond into so many beautiful little pieces. Neophytes generally enter the diamond cutting business, or gemology, by references, apprenticing themselves to а master cutter before trying to make it on their own. Pay for the better cutters runs to $10/hr. and more. The best cities to look for work are Antwerp, Aviv, and New York.

4 Piano Tuner

If you love pianos, but can't quite cut it as a pianist, then you may do well to try piano tuning. It's probably more interesting and more difficult--than you think. There are about 3,000 full-time piano tuners scattered around the country, earning $7-$20,000/yr. Piano tuners and servicemen generally learn their job through dealers and repair shops that hire beginners to do general clean-up work, help servicemen, move and install instruments, and perform other routine tasks. One local piano tuner who takes on students is Detrich Kalman, 1656 Castle Hill Ave., Bronx (892-3966).

5 Medical Illustrator

Medical illustrators do more than illustrate textbooks. They also make films, television programs, 3-dimensional models and exhibits, and, on occasion, artificial noses and ears. They are employed by medical centers, biological laboratories, medical colleges, authors, publishers, and pharmaceutical companies. These highly-skilled, highly- respected professionals earn anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 a year, sometimes more. For more information about this little-known, but highly rewarding profession write The Corresponding Secretary, Association of Medical Illustrators, Medical Col-. lege of Georgia, Augusta, GA, 30902.

6 Archivist

The holdings of the National Archives in Washington, D.C. where millions of visitors come each year to see original copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence on display, amount to some 900,000 cubic feet of records, including 1.5 million maps, nearly 200,000 rolls of microfilm, and 34,000 sound recordings.

Overseeing the collection, maintenance, and use of all this stuff is the National Archivist and his or her fellow archivists: in a sense, they are responsible for 'editing the nation's history. Work is available for archivists at dozens of state museums and individual family libraries (e.g. Kennedy Library) which also maintain their own sets of archives. To enter this growing profession you generally need a degree (s) in history and/or library. science.

7 Landscape Architect

Landscape architects plan, design and supervise the arrangement of outdoor areas. Their projects include beaches, botanical gardens, campuses, cemeteries, country clubs, highways, hospitals, parks, parkways, recreational areas, resorts, and shopping centers. They are employed by architectural and engineering firms, landscape contractors, city planning and urban renewal offices, and universities. Prerequisites: a B.A. in landscape architecture, an interest in art and nature, imagination, a good sense of design, an understanding of plants, and an ability to get along with people--especially finicky people, training in the field. Classy job. Well-paying, too.

8 Smokejumper

The US Forest Service has a crack squad of 450 airborne firemen, known as smoke-jumpers. Like his urban counterpart, the smokejumper, stationed at one of the country's regional fire control camps, is ready at a moment's notice. Once a fire is spotted, the smokejumper pulls on his jumpsuit, fastens his wire-masked helmet, clips on his parachute, dashes to a waiting airplane, takes off, and, when he is over the conflagration jumps. Then he goes to work, containing the advancing flames as best he can. For this, he is paid $3.50/hr. One can learn the necessary skills for smokejumping-parachute. jumping, first aid, fire control equipment use, et al. -at the Forest, Service's 4-week course in fire control. Write: The Director, Division of Fire Control, Forest Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. 20250. And don't tell your mother.

Bergen

From Financial Times, “How to spend it”

The fjords of Norway’s west coast shelter this treasure of a city. Gordon Sander takes flight with the seagulls as he discovers a wealth of art amid its royal past and vibrant present.

The Danish writer Herman Bang captured the essence of Norway's historic port city in 1885. "We had been to a party in the country outside Bergen, and we were rowing home," he wrote. "The boat was full of men, women, and children and they were singing. The great mountains rose silently around us, in all the colours of the summer night that no painter can capture.

The heavy boat crept towards its anchorage - the old wharves, the white summer cottages between the green of the birches; out on the water lay the great quiet hulls of the steamships and the sailing ships with their upright masts.

"And suddenly one of the youths jumped up onto the thwart, and waving his hat above his head, cried out, 'Oh! what a wonderful town!'"

A century and a quarter - and several maritime eras later - Bang's beguiling word portrait of Bergen can still be experienced.

Indeed, it is difficult to think of another great European city that has changed so little in atmosphere or aspect.

The colourful old wharf, known as Bryggen, which faces the main harbour of Vagen, dates from the days when Bergen was a major outpost of the Hanseatic League, the trading alliance that dominated the Baltic from the 13th century onwards.

Though somewhat reduced in number by the great fires of 1916 and 1955, the wooden frontage remains striking.

The gleaming white shingle-clad cottages still climb the surrounding seven mountains. Only the steamers and sailing ships of Bang's day have given way to vessels of more modern draft, including the large cruise ships that make Norway's second city one of their most popular ports of call. Yet as you idle along Bryggen on a late spring or early summer's eve taking in the sounds and smells of this beautiful city, nothing has really changed at all. And in this day and age, that is something indeed. With a population of nearly a quarter of a million, Bergen may be less populous than Oslo, Norway's capital, but Bergensers will hasten to tell you, in all other respects - including royal pedigree - their city is superior to its eastern sister city. Bergen, it will be pointed out to you, was a royal capital until 1299. And Bergensers can certainly be proud of the accommodation on offer to long luxurious weekend visitors. The Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, where the Rolling Stones stayed during their one Norwegian stop on their most recent world tour (take that, Oslo), is a modern take on the venerable gable-topped wharves that surround it. The Radisson also comes with an excellent restaurant, the Almenningen, which serves both Scandinavian and international dishes, along with its Engelen nightclub, which is popular among locals and visiting granddad rockers.

Directly across from the Radisson and adjacent to Bryggen is the classy and capacious Clarion Collection Hotel Havnekontoret. Formerly the site of the Bergen Harbour Office, Bergen's newest four-star hotel opened last May after a £15m renovation. Among its features are a number of striking avant-garde sculptures by Tove Veidung, a sculptor who happens to be the owner's sister, and the champagne laughter of Hilde Berentsen, the vivacious general manager. The view from the roof of the former harbour office on a clear night is magical. If you prefer smaller and cozier accommodation, you might like the equally new Hanseatiske Hotel just down the quay.

This snug hostelry has 16 individually designed rooms crowned by a wood-paneled honeymoon suite over two floors.

The best way to begin a visit to Bergen is by taking the popular Floibanen (funicular) up Mount Floyen, one of the seven peaks surrounding the city. At the summit look out across the city with its central peninsula jutting out into Bergen ford and the mountains beyond. Walk back down, revel-ling in the panoramic view, as new vistas and details appear with each change of perspective. Don't forget your umbrella, though. It rains in Bergen - a lot.

But the rain shouldn't dampen your enthusiasm. If you need to take shelter, restore yourself with a frothing cappuccino at the aptly named Little Coffee Company, which may well be the smallest café in Europe, as well as the friendliest.

As one might expect in a port city, Bergensers love their seafood. One of the best places to try local lunchtime dishes is at Aroma, not far from Floibanen terminal. The creamy fish soup is delicious.

If you want to know where the ingredients originate, saunter down to the Fisketorget, Bergen's historic fish market, and watch the fishmongers in their bright orange overalls as they hover over the catches of the day with proprietary glee. Early afternoon, after the locals have filled their hampers, is a good time to visit. The market also houses fruit, vegetable, and flower stalls and, if you are without an umbrella, make for the market's most unusual attraction: the world's oldest umbrella vending machine.

Just up the quay, on Bryggen, Ting - one of Scandinavia's hippest design stores - is chock-a-block with ultramodern plates, cool candleholders, and the like. Duck into one of the charming walkways that separate the reconstructed 14th-century wooden buildings that comprise Bryggen and take a walk back in time. Carry on to the 900-year-old Mariakirken, flanked by its twin square towers. Among the rich baroque decorations donated by well-heeled Hanseatic merchants is a high altar crowned with a gilded triptych.

As you continue walking you'll likely pick up a covey of curious seagulls circling overhead. Soon you will come to the most visible legacy from Bergen's medieval heyday. The Haakonshallen is the royal ceremonial hall that dates back to the mid-13th century and which could seat 2,000 loyal subjects. Next to it stands the Rosenkrantztarnet, a fine fortified tower. Both structures have been meticulously restored after the fortress area in which they are located was badly damaged in the second world war.

After a day exploring Bergen by foot, reward yourself with dinner at the intimate, belle-époque-like Kafé Krystall, where one can wax expansively with the local movers and shakers. The duck breast with Gorgonzola polenta and foie gras is something to be experienced.

A visual feast awaits along Bergen's "art street', Rasmus Meyers Alle, which runs along the shores of a small elegant lake, Lille Lungegaardsvann. Begin your Bergen art walk at The Rasmus Meyer Collection, a mansion that houses a stellar array of mostly late-19th-century and early-20th-century works bequeathed to the city by this far-sighted businessman and connoisseur.

This is the best place outside Oslo to see the haunting works of Edvard Munch, whom Meyer personally championed. There is nothing quite like being alone in a room full of Munchs but don't overlook other gems by such forgotten Norwegian masters as Elif Petersen and IC Dahl.

Amble is next door to the Lysverket, an imposing, neoclassical building that used to house the local power company and which the culture-conscious city council purchased and transformed into a museum in 2003. It contains a dazzling array of medieval, Dutch renaissance, and contemporary art, including the unforgettable Ladies on the Bridge (1902).

If, by now, you are in need of a break, head downstairs, beneath the gallery, to the divine Bolgen & Moi restaurant. Tuck into the justifiably famous Bolgens Elleville Burger, a modern masterpiece of cheese, bacon, and crispy potatoes on a homemade bun.

After lunch, the adjoining Stenesen, the last museum on Bergen's street of art, beckons. Acquaint yourself with its formidable collection of works by Picasso and Klee and assorted modern masters. Conclude your exhilarating art fest at the Museum of Cultural History.

This sprawling gallery houses an enticing collection of archaeological artifacts and folk art, including an early-12th-century crucifixion group that is the equal of any in Europe, and a spellbinding marble head of that sturdy Bergenser, King Oystein, dating from the first half of the 12th century.

Upon emerging from your museum hopping, collect your impressions by taking a bench by the pristine lake fronting the street and gazing at the fountain in the center. Try supper at Enjoringen, one of Norway's most famous seafood eateries. Its cozy, antique feeling is enhanced by daguerreotypes of old Bergen on the walls, whereas the signature dish of herb-fried angler fish with morel mushroom sauce is much more of the moment.

If you still have some energy left for lively nightlife, you can dance shoulder-to-shoulder with Bergen's well-coiffed trendies at Feliz. This Nordic Copacabana-style club is lined with white leather couches and fluorescent-lit coffee tables and is served by the hippest DJs in town. 

With its friendly service and lack of crowds, Bergen is a great place to do some unhurried shopping. Stock up on Norwegian wool sweaters and knitwear at Oleana, on Strandkaien, while The Black and White Studio, just down the road on Kongs Oscars street has a sublime selection of Scandinavian and international furniture and lamps. The ethereal glassware of artist Stine Hoff is on offer at her miniature museum-like shop at Nedre Korskirkealmenning. 

If art photography is your thing, check out the hole-in-the-wall Galleri F, one of Norway's top specialist galleries. Book lovers, meanwhile, will find literary treasures in various languages at the snug Bergensantikvariatet on Lille Ovregate.

Wrap up your weekend with lunch on the balcony of Bocca, a fashionable eatery on the beautiful Ovre Ole Bulls Plass. From your vantage point, you can gaze down on the happy crowds strolling by. By the time you're ready to take your reluctant leave, chances are you too will be singing the praises of Norway's "wonderful town".

Style

From Avenue Magazine February 1979/Vol 2. No.5

It is nine a.m. on a cold and blustery morning on East Seventy-first Street. Stephen H. Spahn,  the youthful headmaster of the   Timothy Dwight School, is sitting at his desk at the new Lower-School "campus," conferring with his secretary about the wording of a letter he is about to dispatch to some four hundred and fifty sets of "Dwightonian" parents. Through an opaque glass wall one can see a troop of first-graders - or are they second-graders? - merrily assembling at the foot of the stairs, quietly teasing and punching each other before being herded up to class.

Spahn looks up from his correspondence and smiles proudly as the little Hottentots disappear. He is obviously pleased. With over one hundred and twenty-five students, the Lower School that Spahn created only last September is now almost fully enrolled. Including its Upper School, on Sixty-second Street, Dwight now boasts a total enrollment of four hundred pupils. "Fantastic!" the headmaster exults.

"Terrific!”

The secretary smiles indulgently and hands him a copy of the letter. "Dear Parents." it reads. "The fall days have been filled with the characteristic vitality of all Dwight Days... The Primary School has seen several special programs launched in gymnastics, judo, after-school teams, and assemblies...The Middle and Upper Schools are off to a fall filled with activity. Judo has twelve determined students. The varsity soccer team has won its first league match and the boys assured me they will win another championship."

The letter continues in the same cheery, confident, and slightly corny tone that characterizes all of Spahn's public pronouncements. The headmaster is the school's most ardent cheerleader, which is understandable, considering the fact that he more or less owns the place.

Spahn, thirty-seven, is only the sixth headmaster of the Dwight School, a small "humanistic-traditional' school founded in 1880 by Timothy Dwight, then president of Yale University. Over the years, Dwight has produced a number of eminent New Yorkers, including Fiorello LaGuardia and Robert Moses, but until fairly recently the school remained one of the city's more obscure private academies.

Spahn was appointed headmaster in the fall of 1967, at the unusually tender age of twenty-five, and his rapid - and, for him, totally unexpected - accession to such a position continued a pedagogical legacy of sorts. After Dartmouth and a stint at Oxford.

Spahn was teaching mathematics and economics part-time at the Franklin School, which was then headed by his father, Dr. M. C. Spahn, who has since retired. Winton Miller Ir., who had been headmaster at Dwight for thirty years and was thus an acquaintance of the elder Spahn, was casting around for a new assistant headmaster to help out with his increasingly time-consuming duties, as well as to be a possible successor. According to Spahn The Younger, one thing just led to another and within a year he had become headmaster. Then there were two Spahns dispensing diplomas and sound advice for the future.

Spahn is completely caught up, both emotionally and financially, with Dwight, his "baby," but then the school is truly a family affair. For instance, Spahn's wife, Constance and daughter of former New York Central Railroad president Al Perlman, is dean of admissions. While he doesn't actually "own" the school in the strictest sense, the non-profit Timothy Dwight Foundation that acts as the school's board of trustees is composed of Spahn's close friends and members of his family. His other interests, which are presumably far more financially remunerative than his post at Dwight, include Down East, a folksy monthly magazine about Maine; the Twin Cities Printery in Lewiston, Maine, which is that state's largest printing plant; and a string of trade magazines, most notably Any (Advertising News of New York) and its sister publications in Chicago and Los Angeles. Now Spahn is considering acquiring a company that publishes books -educational textbooks, of course.

The success of Spahn's various business enterprises is not unrelated to the welfare of the Dwight School.

Much of the Spahn clan's outside income is siphoned into the Timothy Dwight Foundation; without it, the addition of the lower school, long a dream of the Spahns and the rest of the school staff, might not have been possible.

After eleven years as headmaster, Spahn believes Dwight is beginning to acquire the reputation it deserves. Perhaps one of the best indications of his success is the school's college placement list for 1978 which lists Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, M.I.T., Pennsylvania, Rensselaer, Tufts, Vassar, and Yale. Few small private schools in the city can boast such a record. According to academic dean Doris Post, Stephen Spahn has "resurrected" the Dwight School, transforming what had previously been good, if somewhat anemic and overspecialized private school, into "one of the finest.

One of Spahn's first moves as headmaster was to make the school coeducational, perhaps his most significant innovation. He later broadened the curriculum, which had been weighted somewhat in favor of the sciences and mathematics, adding courses in art, music, and writing.

"The essence of this school is good writing and good reading," Spahn says. "Now that the liberal arts and the humanities are being undermined at the college level and course requirements aren't as tough as they used to be, it is up to us at the secondary school level to carry the pedagogical torch, so to speak."

At the same time, Dwight's self-proclaimed "spiritual leader" has not been deaf to his students' vocational concerns, establishing various new courses that afford Upper-School students an early glimpse of the professions. Spahn-sponsored programs range from "Medical Biology Studies" (offered in cooperation with professors at nearby New York Cornell Medical School), which surveys bioelectronics, cytology, pathology, immunology, and eugenics, to

"Constitutional Law," in which students study landmark legal cases in American jurisprudence and learn to prepare briefs and argue their cases logically.

A confirmed internationalist, having travelled widely and worked for a time as an executive intern at the United Nations, Spahn established another

"campus in England in 1971. Each year, fifteen to twenty Dwight students spend their junior or senior years in London. In fact, Spahn has integrated so much of the British high school curriculum into the Dwight program that there may be no better "colonial" preparation for American students planning to enter an English university.

In many respects, Spahn is an educational traditionalist, but he is also an enthusiastic exemplar of Dwight's "open door" policy. Every day, during lunchtime, Spahn tries to be standing near the front door to personally intercept and cajole each of the escapees. "How did that test go?" he cries out to a pretty tenth-grade girl. "Did you get that paper in on time?" he asks another student.

"Are you going to be at practice?" he demands of another. "Fantastic! Terrific!"

Maps

From Financial Times, “How to spend it”

Stamped with ornate cartouches, embellished with ships and monsters, old maps are things of rare beauty and great fascination, as well as being increasingly valuable. Gordon F Sander charts the rise of cartographic art.

For Catherine Slowther, the much-in-demand specialist in old I maps and atlases at Sotheby's London, her work is her passion.

"To look at an old map is to see the world or one of its parts as it would have been seen by the early explorers, by kings and governments, by merchants and pilgrims," she says. "Of all the categories of antique collectibles, old maps have perhaps the most immediate impact."

Slowther's enthusiasm for cartography began in the 1980s when the map trade was relatively quiescent, and she took a job at a London map shop after leaving university. "After two other jobs, and then 14 years at Sotheby's, the people I used to make tea for now buy and sell through me," she happily reports. And judging by her packed auctions - where a desirable and significant map by a 16th-century Italian cartographer can command upwards of £100,000 - her services are much in demand.

For north London map dealer Yasha Beresiner, the allure of old maps and atlases is about "traveling with your fingers and letting your imagination run wild". Beresiner is a founding member of the International Map Collectors' Society (Imcos) and proprietor of InterCol, a winsomely cluttered antiques store in Islington's Camden Passage. This engaging shop, replete with all manner of cartographic treasures and curiosities, is where my own interest in maps was first stoked after tumbling in on a rainy Saturday afternoon. It contains everything from elaborately crafted English county maps dating from the 17th century, and worth hundreds of pounds, to pound-a-piece map postcards. Elsewhere in London, dealers such as The Map House and Jonathan Potter, as well as the twice-yearly Christie's International Travel and Natural History sales, offer similarly enticing selections.

As limited production items that combine art, science, mathematics, geography, history, and often mythology and fantasy, maps readily fascinate. Stamped with unusual cartouches, embellished with ships, monsters, costumed figures, and the like, and often wildly, even comically, inaccurate (who says California isn't an island?), old decorative maps, especially those from the so-called golden age of cartography spanning the 16th to the 18th centuries, are downright fun, as well as being beautiful art objects.

Not surprisingly in a city with a strong historical consciousness, among the most popular types of maps at Intercol and other London map shops are maps of London itself.

"The kick for me is seeing the growth of London over 500 years,” says John

Lehman, an avid collector of maps of London and other English cities, and habitué of Intercol. "And the maps are lovely in themselves." Lehman's pride and joy is a 1673 map of London by the great English cartographer John Ogilby, who started life as a dancing master and finished as the King's Cosmographer and Geographic Printer.

Besides their historical and decorative appeal, maps also make excellent investments, with prices for the finest maps showing dramatic increases at auctions on both sides of the Atlantic. Two years ago, an extremely rare and beautiful world map by the Piedmontese cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi stunned the map world when it went under the hammer for £135,000, the highest price paid at auction for a printed world map.

At Sotheby's, Slowther has great hopes for two unusually fine, and very different items which are going up for auction at her next major sale on December 14: she expects a marvelously detailed and ornate map of the world by English cartographer John Speed, published in 1676, which includes his famed "Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World", to fetch between £50,000 and £70,000, and a wondrously incorrect map of the Americas by Venetian cartographer Paolo Forlani to achieve upwards of £100,000. "The big surprises,” adds Slowther, “are the quirky, rare things."

As an example, she cites a beautiful and somewhat hallucinogenic yellow and green vellum manuscript map of North America, cartographer unknown, from about 1670, which had been estimated at £7,000-£10,000 before it went up for auction at Sotheby's last June, and sold for £25,000. In short, it's not an entirely predictable market, which only adds to the excitement of major map auctions.

"There is new money on the market and potential customers see atlases and rare maps as cheap alternatives to Impressionist paintings and old masters," suggests Slowther.

"There has been a tremendous increase in the price of maps across the board," agrees Gary Garland, map specialist at Swann Galleries in New York, which has been holding map auctions for 20 years. Maps of the US are, not surprisingly, his strongest item.

Even Garland was somewhat taken aback when an 1850 fold-up map of Texas by Robert Creuzbaur, a not especially noted 19th-century US cartographer, sold for $79,000, making it the most expensive map ever sold at Swann.

"The story of the map market over the past 20 years has been a happy one of increase in value and decrease in availability," says Beresiner.

Nevertheless, he and his top clients advise against plunging into maps for investment purposes only. In any case, they say, you'll probably end up loving your maps so much that you won't want to part with them.

How much do you need to start your own collection? Not much, say the experts. "Maps are still undervalued as antiques and although it is becoming more difficult to find rare material, anyone can start a collection for a few pounds,” says Slowther.

She recommends collecting 19th-century atlases and old state maps from the US. Another widely tipped area is maps of France, ignored, for some reason, by the French themselves, making it easy to find bargains. "It's such a pity," says Intercol assistant Claire Laurol, who is French. "They" - meaning her fellow countrymen - "are missing something from their history. Lauruol says there are basically two ways of collecting maps: "By place, and by the cartographer. There is a young doctor who comes in here and collects nothing but maps of Cornwall. Then there are other people who won't look at anything else but a Speed or a Blaeu [Willem Janszoon, the noted 17th-century Dutch cartographer]." Before you collect by cartographer, of course, you need to know something about the history of cartography. Slowther recommends Antique Maps by Carl Moreland and David Bannister (Phaidon, 1993) as a good introduction and reference work. "Collect what you like and try to become knowledgeable about your special interest," is John Lehman's parting advice, "and sit back and enjoy yourself.”

Apathy (continued)

From the Cornell Daily Sun, November 29, 1973.

Four and a half years ago America was electrified, and scandalized, by newspaper photographs of black militants emerging from Willard Straight Hall brandishing rifles, bandoleers, and clenched fists.

Today's Cornell student shrugs his shoulders in indifference, but for one who was there at the time, the recollection of that dramatic scene evokes a mixture of awe and even of nostalgia.

It is hard to believe how much Cornell has changed since the violent upheavals of 1968 and 1969: in barely half a decade the campus has been transfigured Gone, for better or worse, are the Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Liberation Front. Gone are the activists Burak, Marshall, Dowd, and Jones - the provocateurs.

Gone is Daniel Berrigan.

Gone, too, is the heady, disingenuous, talk of “alternatives”. Gone are the weekly demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, the daily blitz of leaflets and position papers, and the sheer physical and emotional tension and (let's admit it) excitement of living in a community of controversy, of being involved -  revolutionaries, moderates, reactionaries all in what was sincerely felt to be great cultural, political and generational Confrontation. Remember the dictum: “Don't trust anyone over 30?”

Gone is the drama: it seems strange today, but when, on that tense, tingling evening in April 1969, Tom Jones warned the thousands nervously huddled together on the floor of Barton Hall that if the BLF's nonnegotiable demands were not immediately met Cornell would not “live past midnight" - we (I was a freshman) were inclined to believe him.

In contrast to the ferment and unrest of the late Sixties college life today strikes the veteran observer as astonishingly quiet. Almost vacuous. Activism has given way to careerism and professionalism: hence the intense sometimes bitter. competition for grades and the significant, if not astounding, increase in the number and proportion of students applying for admission to law and medical school. Hence the increasing, widespread skepticism regarding the real value of a liberal arts education and the "relevance” of the humanities.

For those who, with whatever degree of enthusiasm, can rally to the new banner of vocation, success and security and perhaps even intellectual fulfillment seem at least tentatively assured.

For those who cannot - surely a large fraction of the undergraduate student body there looms ahead the haunting spectre of Probation, or Suspension, Expulsion or Withdrawal, or, as is most frequently the case, the indefinite Leave of Absence. These are the brooding nowhere men one notices at night in the dimly lit corners of sleazy Collegetown bars, slumped in chairs, nursing stale beers, smoking cigarettes: a new Lost Generation, of sorts.

Communalism is dead Students, suspicious of groups, have atomized themselves, restricting their personal contacts to small, secretive, invisible cliques. A recent survey taken by the Office of the Dean of Students indicates a striking decline in virtually all forms of student organizational activity; a significant decrease in the number of campus political, social, honorary, and recreational organizations and clubs; а thinner schedule of lectures, panels, conferences and debates, and even fewer dances and concerts. “Leave me alone,” the new student mumbles, “I have a prelim tomorrow.” 

Armed with a million-dollar budget and remarkably vast powers to alter the quality of campus life, the Cornell University Senate may very well be the most powerful and effective legislative body of its kind in the country. Yet few, outside the media, seem interested in its workings.

There are plenty of grievances and complaints, but no issues. The community of controversy has lapsed into an awkward silence. 

Interestingly enough, the change in climate seems even to have affected the Safety Division. No longer required to deal with the threat of demonstration, riot and-or sabotage, but, rather, with the threat of bicycle theft and nude marathon races, the men of the campus police find themselves wondering about the value of their role.

There remains nothing for the Cornell student to be identified with or by, except, perhaps, his fraternity (which, incidentally, may account for why the fraternity system, after an extended period of moribundity, has recently regained a fair portion of its earlier appeal).

The counterculture has been turned inside out. The cooptational process has been absurdly successful: a local snowmobile dealer adopts “Power to the People" as his new advertising jingle. A large pen company exhorts students to “Write On!”

It is all at once both funny, and sad.

The campus may not look too different from the way it was four or five years ago, but it feels different, very different. In place of the old sense of community, the old fire, one feels cynicism and disillusionment; in place of the extinct student spirit, anomie.

The thrill is gone.