Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2940

Typed letter to Heath, Waterford, Virginia from Spencer MacCallum at Apt 11-C, 11 Waverly Place, New York City 3

July 17, 1962

Dear Popdaddy:

When are you going to be well and up and around again, anyway?? People are asking about you and wondering when they’ll be seeing you up here in New York again. Greta Bergquist phoned the other day and hoped to see you if you were here. Bob Smith and Ed Facey are involved in some kind of an ideological free-for-all up at Irvington and would like you to be here for them to stop in and talk to about it when they come in to N.Y.U. several nights a week. They were preaching a purer form of libertarianism in some summer sessions at F.E.E. where there were a number of students visiting from other countries — and apparently with some success. But as a result, they were asked to leave F.E.E. and not come back on the property — charged with corrupting the youth. F.E.E. is waving the red-hot brand of “Anarchy” about, and I’m just drafting another letter to Opitz, following up on our earlier exchange, trying to prevent you and me from being branded with that iron. I think it’s unfortunate that so many people are finding that position attractive, and would certainly like to convert some of these younger kids from “Anarchism” to “Alternativism.” Robert Hamoway, one of the editors of the “New Individualist Review” that you liked so much, is here in New York this summer and has said to Bob Smith that he wants to meet me while he’s here and get to know more about the positive approach. Hamoway’s just finishing his Doctorate, though I think he’s a couple of years younger than I.

     Popdaddy, I’ve scheduled a couple of hours every morning to work on editing your Chapman College talks for Dr. Davis. Then I go to the Library with a sack lunch and work on my own Proprietary Community project until the Library closes at 9:45 at night. Then I walk down from the Library to the apartment here, which gives me enough exercise for the day. This has been a fine, workable schedule — and I’ve got a lot done — except for one thing! I get absorbed in your Chapman College talks and don’t get away to the Library until afternoon some days. And on Sunday, I worked the whole day on the Chapman material and didn’t get up to the Library finally until after supper! Working with all this recorded material, I’m getting to know more about the tricks and habits of your speech and grammar than I’ll bet you ever guessed at! And it’s coming out fine, though about as slow as molasses, since I’m trying to keep your style and content absolutely intact. I very seldom supply words of transition. The creativeness comes almost entirely in selecting and arranging. Here’s the progress report: The typescript, or clear copy of the six tapes is finished, and the first of the six talks is finished the preliminary editing. It comes to 30 pages alone with the discussion from the floor, so you see there’s plenty of material for a new little book! I’m half way through the first editing of the second talk now. I never realized it would be so much work. But I’m tremendously enthused about it. No wonder Dr. Davis kept after me these two years to do this job. You’ll be surprised when you see it how smooth your talks become with just some judicious trimming out of surplussage. As with most pruning, the trouble usually lies with cutting too little. But that can always be remedied later if it should need to be. In my first editing through the talks, I’m mostly just cutting out all the dead wood so we can see where we are. Well I’m sure I’ve talked enough about this; you^’ll start getting qualms about what’s hap­pening to your baby! Well I can guarantee you’ll be impressed, as I am, when you see it.

     Do you remember that a man, Erwin Phillips, wrote you a note from New York about your Christmas card, “The Gospel in Our Time,” and you sent it on to me to answer or do whatever seemed best about it? I had a long visit with him one evening a week ago and got quite an education in anthroposophy. I think I had absorbed enough of the principles of it from you at various times that I must have seemed an apt pupil. Mr. Phillips lives in a very fine old people’s home (Jewish I think) uptown and carries on a lot of writing for anthroposophical papers and correspondence from there. He carries on from there the way you used to from the apartment here.

     I must quit this now and get up to the Library for today. I^’ve been reading in a lot of different areas, all touching in one way or another on the question of land, and am getting a much wider world picture of the whole subject of land tenure than I’ve ever had before.