ALLEN GINSBERG TOLD ME
THE WORLD WAS ENDING
When Allen Ginsberg visited my college poetry class in 1969, he said we only had five years left. He said, “I’m afraid to read the papers.” And he said Burroughs claimed we had less than five years.
Mark Schilling (L) and Bert Stratton. 1970, hitchhiking from Cleveland to A2. Sign reads “Ann Arbor.”
How was I supposed to get through pre-med if the world was ending? The Ann Arbor Bank sign read 15 degrees. The sign at the First United Methodist Church was “Are you going through life with a kindergartner’s conception of God?” Probably. Ginsberg had a beard.
The first Earth Day was in April 1970. People suddenly were talking about duck-down and goose-down sleeping bags instead of the Vietnam war. I bought a bag for $35. The feathers kept coming out the seams. It was sewn-through, so where the thread was, there was no down. The seams were supposed to keep the down from rolling down to one end. It didn’t work too well. I couldn’t even turn in it. It was called a mummy bag. I felt dead. But the world didn’t end.
4 comments
Still have that Boy Scout knapsack. I also met Ginsberg when he came to Tokyo. He was campaigning to save coral reefs around Okinawa. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help, PR-wise.
Every city needs a skyscraper. Your hair was it for Ann Arbor.
We used to have an army navy store and sold mummy bags.
They make down bags today like down jackets that are not stitched all the way through. No cold spots.
Neither Ginsberg or Burroughs outlasted the world but their work in my opinion lives on.
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