Bradd Shore:  

Catching Up Like me I'm sure you sometimes wonder how we got from the early '60s to our chronological 60s so fast. How did all that time get by us? As I think about the tricks that time plays on us, I admit to feeling pretty lucky to still be here, and very fortunate to have so far lived a relatively interesting and satisfying life with people I love. The Shores moved from Fair Lawn to Tenafly in 1961, in the middle of my sophomore year. So I pretty much divided my high school years between Fair Lawn High and Tenafly High School. The two towns were very different kinds of places but I have fond memories of friends from both. I remember myself in high school as a bit reclusive, far from the most socially engaged person, something I now regret. In 1963 I went for a year to Union College in Schenectady, NY. It wasn't exactly my cup of tea. Union was an ancient college (1795) with high class aspirations, a major fraternity school and full of aspiring engineers (It's very different today I understand). I was an English major who wasn't especially attracted to the frat scene. My first try at college was major mismatch. Whatever I was looking for wasn't to be found in Schenectady, though I had some great teachers and friends at Union. I remember having to wear freshmen beanies and being forced to memorize school songs to sing on demand for upperclassmen. I can still sing those songs. It was, I suppose, the last gasp of that sort of 1920s college life. I felt more at home in the 1960s. So. . . never having even visited California, I transferred on a whim to Berkeley in my sophomore year, and drove cross-country to see what the West Coast was all about. Arriving in Berkeley, I was greeted by a whole new world. No more beanies and forced crooning of school songs! I think the school song was "We Shall Overcome." What an experience Berkeley was! I arrived just as Mario Savio was climbing onto the roof of a car on Sproul Plaza to lead a protest against the Calif. Board of Regents. I was, it turned out, in the right place at the right time to witness the birth of the famous Berkeley Free Speech Movement (FSM). The world seemed to be rumbling under our feet. You had to decide on a daily basis whether to attend class or march on the administration building. To go to lecture or to jail. A high-stakes time and place, big things seemed to be at issue every day. High ideals and youthful follies got all mixed up and it was hard to know what was a serious issue and what was nonsense. But we had a sense that what we were doing really mattered, and I guess it did matter, though exactly what it meant would be for history to judge. I was always a little confused about making these choices. I remember sitting in at Sproul Hall along with thousands of fellow protesters, and watching Joan Baez, guitar in lap, sitting across from me as we took over the main hallway of the building. Every hour on the hour Joan would brush her gleaming white teeth. As I said, important things were at stake. Whether it was all silly or high-minded, I have warm memories of my years at Berkeley-- a place that was both beautiful and intellectually and politically exciting. In addition to school I started ushering at the San Francisco Opera House where they let me hear the concerts for free, It was, I would later learn, the "Golden Age of Opera," and my weekly exposure to Verdi, Mozart, Bellini, and Puccini helped me to like opera a lot. In High School it would never have occurred to me to listen to opera. I had originally thought of opera as a kind of controlled screaming. What I only came to realize later was that I was hearing some of the most famous singers of the 20th century (Joan Sutherland, Birgit Niilson, Geraint Evans) in legendary performances. Who knew? When I did go to classes, I majored in English with a serious interest in Shakespeare studies, an interest that I've managed to keep up with even though I eventually became an Anthropologist. Shakespeare is something else! And he was a closet anthropologist hundreds of years before the field even had a name. Upon graduating from Berkeley I headed off for two years of Peace Corps service as a teacher in Western Samoa. I had originally intended to return and go to grad school in English Literature, little realizing that the Peace Corps experience would forever change my career aspirations. We were Samoa 2, among the first Peace Corps contingents ever to enter Oceania. Neither the Peace Corps nor the local islanders knew what we were getting into. Your basic calendar image of a South Sea paradise, Samoa was remarkably picturesque (see my photos). But Samoan culture turned out to be so alien to American tastes that 40% of our group left in frustration during the first year. No privacy or even sense of why one would want privacy. I struggled at first, eventually learning to love the place (a hard-won affection). For the first 8 months I lived in a thatched hut with no walls with a large family in a very remote village. Family seemed to have no clear boundaries as people kept appearing and disappearing. With most folks I spoke only Samoan and soon reached the point when I could get along pretty well amid all those Polynesian vowels. All these years later I can still manage a conversation in the language. I taught this and that to 15 years old kids who probably understood very little of my English. The school was a backwater junior high on the big island of Savai'i set on a beach with the world's most beautiful sunsets. Back then Samoan villages had no electricity, or phone service and could be reached only by dirt roads pocked with endless potholes circling the 100 mil...Expand for more