Ken Bower:  

As in other American cities, the exodus to the burbs and religious schools by the well-to-do in the 50-70¿s left us urban working folks scratching our heads. These were the last years of the Vietnam War, Tricky Dick was pres., we had not recovered from the murders of King and the Kennedys, the Beatles sang about Revolution and the girls of the USSR, Joni Mitchell, a Canadian, reinvented California, and both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died from drug overdose. The 70¿s began with a poor economy and high inflation made worse by war and oil supply problems. Some St. Paul kids attended Cretin or OLP. We trudged down Marshall and Lexington, up the stairs to beat the first bell. Central did not seem to be such a good place to become stronger, smarter, or richer. There was a group I was sympathetic with led by Jill Krueger, Giny Moore, Karen Steffen, and Jean Young that called Central a prison. Student Council debated the distribution of SDS newspapers. We organized a student exchange with several suburban schools where we could see what we were missing. Once Potozak turned a paper back warning me that without learning how to write clearly I could not succeed. She actually thought that written expression of thought could be learned. Central never made me richer either. But Potozak, Johnson, Gray, Waschbush, Muetzel, Sonsalla, Hueller, Gifford, Gallatin, Tantanella, Giles, Johnston, Kirkwood, Eagan, Vik, and Stumph did try. These wonderful people cared for students and shared their pearls despite our trampling. So time marches on. Our physics teacher told us that time was not separate from space, just another part of it. Space-time was real but nothing is as it first seems. Light was both a particle and a wave....Expand for more