Where's Armand?

Raising It Higher

In July of 1943, Armand and Mary drove to Estes Park, Colorado and after some scouting around, we've found a garage converted into a passable 2 room and toilet apartment.This was their base for the next two weeks as they made some strenuous hikes and long car trips. On August 11, they took a leisurely stroll to Dream Lake, one of their favorite locations that also became the spot of an Armand siting some sixty-three years later.

While the young professors shared a love of the outdoors and the adventures of travelling (without reservations) their conversations often returned to matters academe:

...musing over fact that so many college undergraduates acquire a haphazard and incomplete education, we conceived of a course of studies, based on a 5 course a year, 4 year plan, with spectator sports out, some personal athletics substituted, formal and non formal (i.e., games or hiking, etc.), outside activities of fraternity type either de-emphasized or ennobled.

Our idea is this. Require 4 of following sciences: geology, chemistry, physics, botany-biology, astronomy; 4 courses of language, all one or 2-2 split; 4 courses in a combined history-economics-political science; 1 course in art or music appreciation; 1 course in general philosophy; of the 2 remaining, they would have to be elected in one of above fields, and whatever they were elected in, added to what one already had to take, would = major and minor.

Difference between major and minor would consist in an original paper and research, which would be necessary for granting a degree - i.e., whichever of 2 fields one wrote his paper in would = major. Since everyone isn't equally proficient in all fields, he would be allowed to put more time in his favorites - a certain number of term papers would be required - one or 2 a year and these could be done in the courses most interesting to student, carrying with them extra credits - so many of which (4 or 8) would be needed to graduate.

The idea in all these courses would be to give student integrated picture of world he lives in, eliminate petty details, etc. Idea not to turn out professional historians, chemists, etc. but educated men with broad outlook in life. Each department would realize this, help teach their courses with this general plan in mind.

To prevent possible cry of a tendency in this plan to make for lack of originality and breed uniformity of minds, there would be 2 or 3 times a week round table discussions led by professors where students would discuss and debate ideas, help integrate their knowledge as they went along. Also, since extracurricular activities would be de-emphasized students would be encouraged to spend their leisure time following ideas that interested them, and all teachers would be expected to help students on those problems and researches.

A good library would be essential, teachers interested in teaching more than merely research (although research to some extent would be wanted among the faculty), good outside lectures, opportunities to hear good artists, exhibitions of paintings, etc.

Variations in this curriculum plan easily possible - if man saw he liked languages, say French, in addition to his 4 years, he could take one extra course, and substitute, say his 4th year of English (of the 4 years, one would be composition rest poetry and other forms of lit. and some world lit.) for extra course in French. Independent work with professional help would be encouraged.

Such a curriculum would lead to a Ph.B. It could be done in a small college, or as part of a big college, taking in the more promising students, especially the "C" group - those with some ability but who under normal conditions leave college with a smattering of much, a grasp of little. D & F students would be out.

This plan, or with modifications, affords a more or less balanced education, something today quite lacking in college education.
-Written by Armand Singer on August 10, 1943.

Photo: zesmeralda

Offering Perspective

This is a wide-eyed view of Armand's diary. You may not be able to read it but what I wanted you to experience is the glow from two pages written in August and September of 1942 when Armand was twenty-eight. The pages in this book are more brittle than his earlier diaries, maybe this one sat on a desk near a window because all of the edges feel dry and fragile. The words and sentiments however, are rich and alive.

At the top of the left page Armand writes:

Mary says a good pun = "Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder", which we decided would make a swell "pun-ad" for a beer co.

Two paragraphs down he lists the totals from a recent trip from Fairmont to Estes Park, Colorado (1, 497 miles) and back to Morgantown (1,509 miles):

(thus excluding original 20 m. to Fairmont from here) = 3300 m. exactly. Total gas, oil, repair (about $2.50), grease, etc. = 38.00 - approx. other costs (room, amusements, food costs beyond 1$ a day, food) = 45.00. Total trip = 83.50. We had about $110.00 to spend, so buy a bond (war) with difference, get car greased, etc. + $3 for some Viewmaster views.

The three circles at the bottom are sketches of the lunar eclipse that he saw on August 26:

Someone said there wouldn't be a solar eclipse (in these latitudes, I suppose) until 1980 or so - ho hum!

Sunday aft and Monday eve., rehearsed for a small part in radio drama "Free Labor Will Win" - one of weekly set which Monongalia County Civilian Defense puts on- locally written, directed, acted - which being considered, it wasn't bad. Gave it over WASR this eve 8:30-9. I was Hirohito with 6 or 8 lines to say in my best oriental colored English. A man - Williams at Law School, who knows Japanese, said imitation very good. Ho!

I wish there was a recording of it, Armand impersonating Emperor Hirohito! A few lines down he injects:

Then there's my joke about the doctor's patients who all went from bed to hearse. And, I just thought, if someone wrote an ode to a downtrodden Mexican serf, it might be entitled "Paean to a Peon who got Pee-ed on".

The drawing of a living room at the very bottom of the right page is quite detailed, the books on the shelf are are of differing sizes and some are leaning on others and some stacked up. Armand saw a similar display in a furniture store and he liked the idea of a mural with mountain scenery, set in the recess of a wall.

Armand documented his life in perspective. He counted his pennies and tallied up the miles; observed the idiosyncratic arrangement of non- moving objects as well as he tracked planetary rhythms; he was a scholar and a comedian. Those two pages speak volumes.

Pondering the Arts

This diary entry was written by Armand Singer when he was twenty-two years old. It is a previsionary description of his interests and contributions for the next seventy years.

 

Wednesday, January 22, 1936:

Today I went against my better judgment and bought another book: "An Almanac for Moderns" by Donald Culross Peattie - seems to be very fine. It is a day by day account of one year in the life of a poet biologist (the author) who loves and writes about the outdoors. My total for books this month is 25$.

Why is it that we have to be educated to great works of art - to be shown where the author portrays this or that - human nature, human form, mountains or the sea - to perfection? Why don't we naturally enjoy Bach as much as Strauss or even Irving Berlin?

Why aren't we struck with a sort of awe in the presence of a great painting - a sort of intuition which immediately tells us, "This is immortality"? Is art so recondite, such an esoteric matter that we must be initiated into mystic rites, as it were, before we can appreciate and worship? It certainly seems so, or else the so-called great masterpieces are not great, but merely exalted because we have been trained to see what that art portrays as beauty.

Few of us believe or would admit that once we are admitted to the inner circle of revelation we seem to know we are right - whether deluded or no - and point with pride to our appreciation. Pray to God we are right. If not, it would be a fine shock to discover we spent our lives worshiping false gods, false standards, or to put it succinctly - trash!

Mr. Peattie likes spring as exemplified in biology and all living things. Others like winter. Some history, some French, some the classics, some the ultra-new. I enjoy them all: the forested hills, the jagged, foreboding summits, the plains, deserts, the gorges of Arizona, blizzards and cold, rain and heat, the cities, towns; languages, sciences, histories, the theoretical and the practical. If you are a DaVinci or an Aristotle, you are called a genius, a man of universal knowledge; if not, a dilettante. I sincerely pray I avoid the latter as much as I fail in the former.

One gains a lot in having such a wide scope of interest just as one suffers. In some ways it must be hell to be so wrapped up in French literature that you must consider the biologist a fool. Yet it does help when you want to decide your life's work. I don't want to to be a dabbler. Naturally I have preferences.

 

A man's a stupid dolt who can't choose some things he prefers to others - just a feather blown around by learning. Yet must he be so deaf to every cry but to his own that he despises and ridicules other man's vocations?  Hard as my tastes may make it for me, I hope I keep them.

 

I think how, for instance Professor Loomis would look on Vigny, or Rebert on echinoderms or Humphrey across the hall on anything he couldn't rationalize into cold hard truth - as he sees it! It's a sort of sensitivity that makes me open to so many things. God knows it brings lots of woe with its blessings. But it wouldn't exchange it, still. Anyway, who gets a chance to change any of his characteristics? "Sour grapes", said the fox.

 

 

The Fox and the Grapes, a tale by Aesop.

Photo:Derek Farr

Watching The Three Sisters

May 1943. Thursday heard that K. Cornell was in Pittsburgh in Three Sisters - Geefer had touted it so highly. We wanted to go, but hated to use more ration tickets. Couldn't find anyone else going however, so went Saturday, taking 4 college girls at buck a piece. Very enjoyable day. Luncheon (for M & I) at Wm Penn - $3.50 in toto and worth it.

Then across the street to Nixon Theatre for box seats ($2.25 per) for matinee of A. Chekov's The Three Sisters. A dream cast: the 3 sisters, Olga, Judith Anderson; Masha, Katherine Cornell; Irina, Gertrude Musgrove. The brother Andrey, Joseph Wiseman. His shrewish wife Ruth Gordon who seemed all innocence. ...Fine sets by Motley; staged by Guthrie McClintic.

Theme of play is dry rot that sets in, in a small city not far from Moscow. The sisters and brother long to go there and live, never succeed in doing it. Play laid in 1900 or so, over 3 year period.

Chekov portrays the longing of these people as tragic, and yet, deep down in, pokes fun ironically at their slight shallowness. They are justified in their laments and still, their laments are somewhat ridiculous. The philosophizing colonel, whose philosophy is repeated over and over and rather ordinary, represents to them something fine.

Noone was outstanding in cast and all were excellent - some fine scenes: the doctor drunk trying to forget his criminal medical inability; the brother lamenting his lot; the dinner scene in act one, where all talk and yet you hear, so naturally, here a remark, there a remark - just what you're supposed to hear; the affected innocence of R. Gordon when in act I, scene two, she talks to her husband about the baby.

In all, the best play I've ever seen.

Just in case you think that we are about to lose the playful Armand to a staid professorship and highbrow culture, on the next page of his diary he wrote:

New saying by Singer: It's an ill body that blows no wind.

Photo of Time Magazine cover: Wikipedia

Time Out

On August 24, 1941, Armand and Mary reached the city of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, Mexico and after dinner (true to form) took in a movie:

...went to a first-run movie house, saw Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Brennan, James Gleason, Edward Arnold in Frank Capra's Meet John Doe - a well-done version, with unique twists, of Capra's theme of how ruthless big interests try to crush little man (Mr. Deed's Goes to Town; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) - unsuccessfully; only, as usual, you get feeling the big interests really would win if Capra wasn't on little man's side. We enjoyed it.

...When we went to start out this A.M., saw buzzards perched, one on each fence post, one on edge of garbage can - he'd jump down in the can, out of sight, from time to time, grab a bite, hop back up on rim. They're very sleepy, silly looking birds. Twice this A.M. we saw at least 20 of them all perching on a carcass (one was a dead burro). One Mary said was just a skeleton by that time.

We like burros - they're so cute, especially the young "colts" a sort of pleasant "beauty"; some are quite graceful, remind one slightly of a deer, for some reason or other. Yesterday we saw a grown male freak burro, with a thing a good foot long or more!

Armand continued calculating:

Including 4 1/2 months in Europe as a boy = 19 weeks.
Almost 3 months in Europe, second trip = 13 weeks.
Approx a month in Canada during high school = 4 weeks.
In Canada after my trip to California after high school = 6 weeks.
Summers in Canada, 1st 3 years of college = 36 weeks.
About 1 month, end of summer, end of college = 4 weeks.
Most summers except one month of summer of my teaching year at Amherst = 9 weeks.
5 Xmas vacations + 3 spring vacations, my 5 Amherst years = 13 weeks.
3 Xmas, my 4 Duke years = 5 weeks (+).
3 six week summers my 4 Duke years = 18 weeks (+)
+ 2 weeks, odd visits this last year, etc. = 2 weeks.

Armand's meticulous list ended with the last 6 weeks in Mexico to arrive at a grand total of 135 weeks, his time out of the country.

I have thus spent almost 3 full years out of the U.S. in 26, or over 1 in each 10.

And those are the stats, my friends. Would anyone care to guess the grand total of years Armand spent out of the country by the time he was 92?

Photo: Denver Post
Click the photo for an Armand-like accounting: "Rockies Outlast Padres in 22 Innings".

Jesting!

Armand the Academician wrote page after page chronicling the sights and sounds of his young life. He was somewhat obsessive about films and managed to find a theater seat every few days or so no matter what state or country he was in! He was relentlessly observant of life around him and eager to engage in everything while he cautiously pinched the change in his pocket:

Then a gala $2.25 a cover dinner at the Greenbrier Hotel - not quite worth it, but I'd rather get $1.50 worth of meal for $2.25 than 50 cents worth for 50 cents.

My favorites are the lines he picked up or made up:

As the irate mother said to her elder son as she caught him smashing into the younger's piggy bank, "So you're robbing Peter to play pool?"

If a bustle is a deceitful seatful, and a girdle is a hinder binder, what is a brassier? A flopper stopper!

Some of my latest jokes(?): How to tell a monkey from a merchant. Monkey stoops to walk, merchant stoops to anything.

"Drink to me only with thine eyes", or "I love eyeballs with my highballs."

This reminds me of my famous nonsense remark: "Introversion is but the subconscious realization of the libido inherent in extroversion" - a young psychology graduate student at Duke once told me it almost made sense - which if true, is a remarkable coincidence.

Then the dentist said to the young woman, "I'm sorry to hurt your fillings."

It's eight after two - but they'll never catch them!

Now it's time for relief from the comic.

Artwork: "Jester with a Lute" by Frans Hals

The Artist as a Young Man

I'm finding it very difficult to sequentially read through Armand's 1940-46 diary because his maps, lists and drawings keep enticing me back and forth. I hope I don't weaken the book's spine with all of my page-flipping enthusiasm.

In this volume, Armand's entries aren't made on a daily basis but they are longer and descriptive. Whenever he wanted to remember specific details, he sketched them as he did one day during their road trip to Mexico:

Friday, August 1, 1941. This morning we went to the famous basilica of Guadalupe. Ordinary exterior. Inside is lofty, not as over decorated as most Mexican churches. The shrine, or altar of the Virgin ornate but well done. However, the air of "miracles", stench from incense and candles was there and outside!

We saw what is probably as "picturesque" (in an interesting unsanitary sense) a sight as they come: a man carrying a whole skinned (unwashed) animal across his shoulders - probably a calf or pig - and allowing it to rest on his uncovered head. The part that clung to his head seemed to be just gut or flesh - probably the lungs with lights removed - taughtly stretched over his whole head of hair. The thought of the bloody skin, touching him; and he is so unconcerned - enough to turn one's stomach.

This is where Armand stopped to include his rendition of the "picturesque" scene as shown above. Although the sights and scents overwhelmed him at times, he was intrigued by the people and culture of Mexico in the 1940's and made this observation:

After careful consideration and weighing of all facts at hand, M. and I have come to the conclusion that what ails Mexico today is not the agrarian question, foreign capital, disease, illiteracy - no, but the survival and flourishing state of Aztec nomenclature: unendable, unspellable, unpronounceable, unrememberable, undistinguishable one from the other, Aztec place names! Think of the burden on school children alone!

There we have it, a bit of Armand nomenclature, recorded for posterity and interesting conclusions from two young language professors. In present day Mexico, education experts rate Mexico's system among the world's worst and political analysts point the finger at the teachers' union, said to be the biggest and most powerful in the Americas. Donde esta Armand?

Illustration: Armand E. Singer, 1941.

Looking Beyond the Sermon

In the summer of 1941, Armand and Mary took a road trip to Mexico and saw many of the sites that only a few months earlier, Armand feared he might never see again. The young couple drove hundreds of miles, hiked up and down mountains and canyons, in and out of assorted weather patterns. They stopped in awe of a herd of buffalo and respectfully, for a moose and her calf along the side of a deserted stretch of road. They slept in cabins and "under the stars and evergreens (and some sprinkles) near Jenny Lake in our sleeping bags."

By June 28, 1941, they were in Wyoming and came upon "the lovely rustic, simple chapel of the Transfiguration on way to Jackson. Back of the altar is large picture window, looking directly at Tetons. Lovely view and unusual (if somewhat pagan) idea for a church. At least, if sermon is boring, you can look at good mountain view!"

What captivates me even more than the details of this long and scenic journey, is the evolving relationship between Armand and Mary, his wife of less than a year. The man who once languished with desire for her love and hand in marriage, now amused her with his quips ("carrying a pack makes me hunch-packed"), rebutted her quotes (if only in his diary) and fed her a concoction of hoaxes:

June 29, 1941. This A.M. we passed by side of road a big wooden box, suspended on chain attached to moveable wooden arm. The box was off ground- probably to keep animals out of milk, etc., placed in it. Mary, though, feels it is a mail box and kept off ground to keep children from stealing mail!!! They sure must have naughty children in Wyoming and, to parody Finney, "as if you had to go to all that trouble to fool children". However, the whole suggestion on the part of my wife is very revealing as to the current state of her mental processes.

Monday, June 30. 185 miles to Grand Lake. Pauvre Mary- she believed the following: that the reason why little prairie gophers are always running across the road (often to their sorrow) is because they live on east side of road and eat food that is on west side - since east side of western roads has softer ground (caused by sun's rays) and thus easier to dig holes in, and hard west side is better suited for their food. But, the question remains: why do they cross the road?

Further along in Volume IV of his diaries, Armand writes: I was just thinking about all the famous hoaxes and and phoney stories I've pulled on poor Polly these last few years...beginning with the quote about Narcissus...then there was the explanation of why the little prairie gophers out west always run from the left side of the road to the right (a fact that I established by power of suggestion!)... from May 6 to May 21, 1944, I made a list of 7 more hoaxes (jotted down as they were swallowed)...

Polly, was one of the names Armand called his wife of enduring patience. I wonder if he also made a list of all the names he created for her:

I call my precious "Well Enough" 'cause I won't let her alone.

Photo: Gary Wilson

At the Wishing Well

In 1940, Armand was 26 years old, newly married but alone. His wife Mary found a teaching position at Greensboro College in North Carolina and Armand was hired a few months later by West Virginia University in Morgantown.

In that first year of marriage, he grew fond of his nieces Jane and Carol, and also wrote of wishes for children (with reservations):

October 20, 1940. Would like for us (as M. would say) to have children of our own - but the thought of how it would pain and disfigure poor M., and the fear the children might turn out crazy or difformed sort of scares me.

Nearly ten years later, Mary gave birth to their only child and in 1999 Armand wrote:

The Old Folks Canonized. What follows is almost embarrassing in an incredible way. Praises are being heaped upon us on all sides. And it wasn't our doing. Our daughter announced to us one day last summer, totally out of the blue, that she and Tomas wanted to create an Armand E. and Mary W. Singer Professorship in the Humanities...Ann wrote out a very respectable check...We're not even out of pocket and get all the credit. I'm trying to think what we did for her as a child so much better than other parents did for theirs to deserve such a marvelous gift. But we are blessed.

In 1940, the drive to visit Mary sometimes took ten hours one way. At times, she would board a train and Armand would meet her after a two or three hour drive. Young Armand worried about being drafted, wondered if he would ever re-visit the mountains out west and held wishes for the future:

March 8, 1941. Tonight I have wanderlust bad. I want to tramp and snowshoe in the evergreen woods with Mary - in the pine scented, snow covered woods - the little pads of snow on the branches, the deathly silence, broken only by a crash as a cloud of snow falls - hours and hours of rythmical crunch and swish.

I want to see the west again, with Mary - I want to relive my past experiences, only this time through her eyes, to show her the wonderful world that is the western outdoors. Will world affairs prevent our trip, or will something else? Funny how at 26 I long for the things I did 4 & 5 years ago and have the most eerie, frightened feeling lest I may never be able to do them again as I did before - lest they won't be the same, or I'll never have the chance.

I want to see Ranier, the Grand Canyon, Rainbow Bridge, the Tetons, the Rockies, Utah, the White Mts., the Alps and I want to see many new places too. I'm greedy at heart. I want everything, every material thing, every experience. Maybe that is why one of my common nightmares is the finding of countless pieces of money, or stamps, etc., while all the time I know it's only a dream, and I cannot "keep" what I find.

Armand wished well back then. His fears were never met. At the age of 91, he attempted his 16th hike into the Grand Canyon and had travelled the world many, many times. A few years ago, during his last trip to Kona we were talking about his daughter and he said, "Doctors told me, 'Singer, with what you've got, you couldn't impregnate a rat!' Hah! I guess I showed them!" And when he passed away last year, Armand Singer had a rare stamp collection that was sold for a surprising sum! True to his dream however, he did not "keep" it. Monies went to West Virginia University and to charities dear to Armand's heart, just as he wished.

The magic here is that his wishes didn't fall to the bottom of the well. Cast before him, they were sprinkled upon the path of a long and well-trod journey.

Photo: Dharmainfrisco

Listening

When it's time for me to write my weekly Armand piece, I take the diaries in my care and say, "Okay Armand, what shall we tell them this week?" Sometimes passages will jump out at me and I immediately get to it. At other times, it's a search and I begin to long for the phone conversations we had.

If there were transcriptions of our discussions, my lines would be a fraction (1/16 to be exact) of Armand's. I often wondered how he was able to speak in paragraphs with no commas or periods. This diary entry gave me a clue:

January 28, 1936. Last night I heard Dr. Goldschmidt of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, an old school pal of Professor Loomis, lecture on "Materials of Evolution". Not very interesting, neither deep enough and technical enough for scientist nor popular enough for layman.

It was to be expected. It's almost an insult to ask a man to condense a subject in 1 1/2 hours that he has spent 30 or so years on. That is why I don't like most lectures: they attempt to telescope too great a subject into an hour or so.

How could I then, have expected a simple sentence or two to answer a question about a life that spanned over ninety years? Armand could answer me from multiple time zones and global positions, as well as offer three or four variations on the theme! I miss the man. Yet it is in the moments of yearning to hear his voice that I feel him so near, as in those few seconds before the ringing stops and the person on the other end says, "Hello."

Photo: Sparks68