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Sign of the Times It was the spring of 1970, the U.S. was bombing Cambodia, and students at Berkeley were on strike. John Cash ’73 and some of his suite-mates in Bowles Hall wondered how best to express their opinion about the widening war in Southeast Asia. They came up with quite a plan. In the middle of the night, they hauled some yellow plastic sheets up to the Big C on Charter Hill, where they transformed the “C” into a peace sign. “We hid out the next day,” says Cash. “We were fugitives.” On that next day, the plastic sheets were removed—either by the Rally Committee or by members of the football team, Cash speculates—but not before a photograph of the peaceful C made the newspapers. Cash and his co-conspirators were never found out. “It was truly a symbol of Cal spirit at the time,” he says today, not without pride. In a rather wonderful twist, Cash is now associate vice chancellor for University relations and director of the campus’s capital campaign—meaning that the former (at least for a day) radical student now asks folks for money. (Cash was named this year’s outstanding fund-raising executive by the National Society of Fund Raising Executives, Golden Gate Chapter.) More on that C: In the spring of 1998, says current Rally Committee chair Chris Corcoran ’01, the committee decided to strip all layers of paint from the Big C, a cleansing act that doesn’t happen that often. When they got down to the concrete level, the Rally folks were surprised to find built into the base something not often seen by the average Cal fan (or peace activist or fund raiser): a bronze plaque. It was set into the original “C” as an RIP to the rivalry (and violence) between classes that had preceded the building of the C, as all our readers of course know by now. Fire sale University Press Books, on Bancroft below Telegraph, celebrated 25 years of selling scholarly books this summer by coming up with an alarming new motto: “10,000 minds on fire.” It was part of an attempt to mark the anniversary and spruce up the place, says store manager Christina Creveling ’81, who adds that there are far more than 10,000 books inside. The motto was adapted from a book by Robert D. Richardson Jr., Emerson: The Mind on Fire, published by UC Press and (therefore) available at the store. Burning issue Led by a fire-breathing man, several hundred activists protested against globalization in downtown Berkeley in late September. “If there is anything my education at Cal has taught me,” senior Zachary Nelson told the Daily Cal, “it is to oppose those who would impose on my freedoms—namely global financial institutions." Palm reading If your daughter comes home over Thanksgiving with what looks like an intricate and very permanent tattoo, don't panic. It's probably only henna. This is the Eastern practice of decorating the skin with a paint made from the henna plant. The fad, also called a "temporary tattoo," is not as fashionable as it once was, but there's still enough interest to keep a couple of vendors busy on Telegraph Avenue, where they collect from $5 for a simple design, to hundreds of dollars for more intricate drawings. Henna usually wears off in two weeks. |
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