Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2717

Carbon of letter from Spencer MacCallum, Men’s Residence Hall, 1101 University Parkway, Seattle 5, Washington, to Mrs. Anita Stead (who was assisting Heath in MacCallum’s absence), The Science of Society Foundation, 1502 Montgomery Road, Elkridge 27, MD

October 6, 1957

 

 

Dear Mrs. Stead:

Well I’m all settled in school and think I’m going to like it very much. The anthropology department seems to be really alive, people doing and thinking new things.

 There are a whole lot of things to say in this letter about SSF — miscellaneous things I thought of in New York and/or forgot to do before leaving Elkridge. I hope everything is working out smoothly for you, finding things and so on and that there has been some exciting mail. Well here goes:

     About 250 letters are being typed in New York to all the people who received complimentary copies of CMA, bringing them up to date with how the book is being received. If Popdaddy hasn’t run into any snags, you should be receiving these before very long. We had them made up in your name, to be signed by you, like the sample copy enclosed. With each letter should go four pages of quotations, the first of which you already have and three more of which you should be getting from Enquire Printing Company very soon if Popdaddy hasn’t brought them down with him. One of the letters was to Dr. Detlev Bronk; but I left him out of the list at the last minute, thinking you might like to say something more personal to him than the form letter does, since you know him and your name will be at the bottom of the letter. So when you send out the letters, remember that he was left out and needs one too.

     I’m putting together something to pass for minutes of meetings for SSF, from notes I made up just before leaving. This I’ll send on as soon as possible. It would help if you should think, whenever you’re about to mail me anything, to look in the minute book and see what dates Aunt Beatrice made up her Treasurer’s Reports. She has kept these up to date, and the dates should coincide with meetings.

     My address here is:      Men’s Residence Hall

1101 University Parkway

Seattle 5, Washington.

     I’m enclosing a personal check for $40.00, which represents the amount I had left in PETTY CASH when I left to come out here. It will give you a start. I usually tried to keep the level at about 40 to 50 dollars, but you’ll find out what seems best to you. I’m glad you can keep records of your expenditures. This is more business­like and better for the Foundation, and something I couldn’t seem to manage to do. It must be a wonderful skill!

     Also enclosed is my ignition key to Popdaddy’s car, which I said I’d send on. It will do more good in Elkridge than out here in Seattle. The trunk key is not with it because the old trunk lock gave up the ghost and had to be replaced with a new one, making my key obsolete.

     I’ve been worrying about the white pines at Elkridge. Popdaddy’s trees have caught a fungus-like infection that looks a little like white cottage cheese on the trunks and under sides of the limbs. Mr. Smeltzer, the tree man on Route 40, came out once to look at them, but we weren’t home. He left his card. If he looked at them while he was there, after he found we weren’t home, maybe he could tell you what he thinks about them over

the phone — whether he thinks the situation serious enough

to call for spraying the trees. If Mr. Smeltzer does think it serious, you might bring it up to P.D. I’ve talked with him about it, so he knows what the problem is. I’d hate anything to happen to those trees; they’re one of the important assets of the Foundation.

     It should make it much happier working upstairs if the windows were cleaned. I found out about it once, and then went to Virginia or somewhere and didn’t have it done. There are several window cleaners listed in the yellow pages of the Baltimore directory.  They are glad to come out, and washing the second-floor windows only (excluding the sun porch, which is unfinished and in which the windows could be reached from the inside anyway), should cost about eight dollars. If you like clean win­dows as I do so you can look out at the trees, you might call a cleaners and ask them to come out. It’s a proper expense of Petty Cash.

     Add these new people to the SSF mailing list:

(l) Mr. Henning Prentice, Armstrong Cork Co., Lancaster (?),

(2) Dr. Robert Weidehhammer, University of Pittsburgh,

(3) David Lawrence and (4) Fulton Lewis, Jr.

Dr. Weidenhammer is a new acquaintance of Popdaddy’s from Leesburg, where he lives in the summer, and seems much interested in his thesis. He may teach political science, though I’m not sure.

     You might be thinking about sending out about 1300 (unsigned) multigraphed, straight form letters to all the reviewing media that received CMA for review, bringing them up to date on how the book is being received elsewhere and jogging their interest by the sheets of quotations (I’d only use three pages — omitting  the page of libertarians). I don’t know: probably this couldn’t hurt, and it might help some. It’s just an idea I had. I had enough of the quotations extra printed in New York so that you could do this if it seemed like a good idea. This list would include all the magazine file and all the entries initialed CMA in LITERARY MARKET PLACE (various lists).

     I’ve sent Popdaddy in a separate letter a list of people in Baltimore and Washington who need some personal attention about now — as they occurred to me flying out her — as well as a list for New York.  This isn’t a com­plete list, but it’s something I gave him to work on.

     I’d sure like to have a copy of the sheets of quota­tions when you get them from New York, especially the page with the quotation by Ruth Underhill, the anthropo­logist. I just might be able to use that to advantage out here.

     I hope the book cartons arrived okay and that the work in Laurel is progressing apace.

     A letter I hoped to get off (or two of them) before leaving was left on the table in pencil notes, and I don’t know if I said anything about it to you or not. It was a letter to the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, sending them a copy of the Suez proposal with printed comments and also a couple of pages of additional comments type­written, and a second letter similar to the first with the same contents to be sent directly to Nasser. It’s ironical that we didn’t do this before when we were actively proposing this solution, but we put it off be­cause of the lack of governmental recognition we were receiving generally, the considerable academic support that was coming in and that by giving it prestige in that quarter increased the chances of an eventual hearing, and the hope that it might reach the Egyptians indirectly. Anyhow, for symmetry and to properly wind it up, we should send the results on to the Egyptians now. As for the letter to Nasser, instead of using a similar letter to the one to the Egyptian Ambassador in Washington, if you have time and the interest, it might be interesting to add something of an argument in the letter itself, pointing out in a diplomatic way that besides the immediate financial advantage, Nasser (or Egypt) could well represent his part in the negotiations as a benefactor and peace-maker before the world. This could be extremely important to him prestige-wise. (To Egypt, he could represent it as a net gain.) For these couple of letters, you will also have to type new copies of the two additional pages of quotations, which I think I left with the pencil notes in the form of carbon copies.

     Popdaddy sometimes writes personal checks to cover Foundation expenses when we want to save the time of writing to Aunt Beatrice (Mrs. Irvan T. O’Connell, Rutherford House, Winchester, Va.). We keep track of these, and Aunt Beatrice reimburses him with a Foundation check.

     Popdaddy should get a list of the officers of The U.S. Trust Co. of New York. He had an idea that he might want to give some of them complimentary copies of CMA.

     Just an extraneous thought that may or may not appeal to you: the way I devised of setting up letters on the Foundation stationery was to use two margin settings, accord­ing to the length of the letter. For short letters, I’d set the margins to coincide with the margins of the letterhead (20 on the left side), and for longer letters, 15 on the left and 70 on the right. I found the shorter form looks best on plain sheets without P.D.’s name at the left, and the longer form on the more formal sheets, where the left margin of 15 centers under P.D.’s name.

      I hope you’ll get Popdaddy to do a lot of dictating of
ideas — off the cuff and informally. Provoke him to produce — anything that interests you. I made it serve a double purpose by making it a way of getting to understand things I was curious about or didn’t understand about his ideas. Whenever he said something that really clicked, I’d get him to dictate an outline of it.

     Now if this letter hasn’t got everything out of my system, I don’t know what will! This is all you’ll hear from me about this kind of thing from now on, except as any miscellaneous questions come up in your work. Remember that I’m only a couple of days away by airmail — not like 2,400 miles — and I promise to get some kind of an answer to any kind of question at all in the return mail every time!

     Tell P.D. that a new man in the Department here that I’m going to be working closely with as my Research Advisor is especially interested in early voluntary social organiza­tion and is working right now on a study of the Cherokee village communities and how under pressure of encroachments by English and Indians they were slowly forced into political federation for more adequate defense. The process fits perfectly into the scheme of development of political states outlined in CMA. All in all, I’m starting out finding anthropology very stimulating,

     Incidentally, will you please send me a copy of CMA? I didn’t bring one, and parts of it fit right into this study of early community.

     Best wishes to you,

So long,

 

 

/Penned note/ Enclosures being sent under separate cover — I can’t find a large envelope right now.  SM