From the Editor

For what it's worth, here come all of the apologies one can muster, but only after the cat has died, and the animal shelter has closed til Tuesday. A stone gets crushed, and there is no uncrushing it. Molecules reform without our noticing, and all explanations become a matter of physics rendered into visible shape within the scope of time no human can witness firsthand. So here we are again, like we were before, a little changed like the rock in the stream. A little changed, the hayfield is not like we remembered, the rainfall was different, a little less sun, the runs not so straight this time. Of course, it did not come out quite the way we wanted; of course, the measure was a little more or less. Too much sweetener for some is just too little for others.

So for what it's worth, we are here now for the moment to stop the assay of value, the essay of distinguishing what might very well be or could have been, and to be open to surprise -- to notice, in an off-hand way, the dappled light of surprise on the face of someone you thought would never graduate, and then to remember yourself and your own "loserhood" and hear yourself say with all the heartiness of Mr. Fezziwig, "Congratulations!" or "Good Luck!" and hear these grateful words in return, "Why, thank you. It was great. Now, who are you?" Graduation is the measure of what is, a measure of more, not less. Remember that all of the mistakes and might-have-beens and parking tickets are forgotten once the tassel flips from right to left.

Be that as it may, outcomes and beginnings and graduations must be more than serendipitous -- more than chance according to the stars. To think otherwise is heresy in the rational castle of academe, and, besides, chance and luck smacks of too much "iffiness," troubling incongruity, plebianism, Oprah Winfrey, and too much like Biker philosophy down at Big Al's -- "ain't nothing but a thing." We would much rather adopt a "secret to success," a rational method of endeavor.

Marcus Aurelius once wrote, " ... people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us -- like sun, wind, animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt, the mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action becomes action. What stands in the way becomes the way." I guess the key words in this passage are "put up with them," but why am I quoting a famous stoic rationalist to you when I really want to write about the seemingly carefree days of the 60s and Buffalo Springfield, a famous group of talented rock n' roll hedonists. Epicurus anyone?

All I really wanted to do was mention their serendipitous encounter with a sign for "Buffalo Springfield Steamrollers," thereby placing before us an indecipherable clue to their origins for which there appears to be no rational explanation.

In the modernist way, I could venture, they chose the name to invent their own mythology, to break free of tradition, like naming your child "Free Bird" instead of "Alice," the name of your dear Great Aunt, the name everyone in the family now laments you did not choose -- because they are now dealing with -- "Did you wash your hands, Free, before you came to the table?" Free of what? the dinner guest thinks with a furrowed and worried brow. It would have been much simpler and kosher to say, "Did you wash your hands, Alice, before you passed the rolls to our guest, especially after you have been playing in the kitty litter all day?"

Imagine Sunset Boulevard, L.A., in early April 1966, Richie Furay and Stephen Stills, two refugees from the early 60s East Coast folk scene, pull their car behind a black 1953 Pontiac Hearse with Canadian license plates driven by Neil Young and Bruce Palmer. (I really don't know, nor do I care to know, who held the wheel at that fateful moment. Nor do I care what they were doing while they were stalled in traffic or why someone would get out of their car to pass illegal contraband through an open window to perfect strangers from out of town in the middle of a crowded boulevard. I guess times have changed, but I still do not care to know.) Anyway, there and then, the tassels got flipped, and the rest is rock n' roll history, or worse yet, it got written like this: "Within weeks these four scruffy folk lads, following a manic cross country journey in search of their musical dreams, had the Sunset Strip singing their tune."

For what it's worth, Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" was written some few weeks later in response to the local anti-war scene. You know, this one, no, not this war, that one: "There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear, young people speaking their minds, getting so much resistance from behind." You know, that one, which for some inexplicable reason now holds some misty-eyed longing for a time that will never come again. Moreover, it's a tune that gets played a lot on the Oldies station.

You could say "serendipitous" or "happy accident" or "luck" or "star-crossed lovers" or "two dogs all the way, no onions," but the thing that we must remember is that steam rollers and rock n' roll shouldn't have anything in common, yet they do. Our minds adapt to the incongruity, impose rational meaning onto happenstance and luck. Consider Aurelius encore, or in freedom-speak -- "Consider Aurelius again." He said, "there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions." -- Ain't that the truth. Have you ever tried to talk anyone out of having a café mocha and been successful? -- And this: "Because we can accommodate and adapt, the mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting." -- Did you ever stop to consider why there were so many Cubs fans? -- And finally this: "The impediment to action becomes action. What stands in the way becomes the way." -- And that's why we have graduate school!