(upbeat music) (projector clicking) - Have you ever wondered where the television signal you're watching is coming from?

♪ I love to go a wanderin' (projector clicking) ♪ along the mountain track - Welcome to True North.

(upbeat music) (mysterious music) - Good evening and welcome to Mainewatch (upbeat music) (projector clicking) Welcome to From The Vault, a celebration of 60 years of Maine Public Television.

On this episode, we will revisit two shows that featured people making a difference for society.

In the second half of this show we will go back to 1973 for A Conversation with Scott and Helen Nearing, and I will talk more about that later.

But first, we will watch a 2001 episode of “A Good Read with Sandy Phippen ” with a guest who can easily be called a national treasure.

Ashley Bryan passed away on Feb. 4, 2022 at the age of 98.

Ashley was an award winning author and illustrator of childrens books, an artist, teacher and World War II veteran who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day.

In the 1980s he moved to Little Cranberry Island off of Mount Desert Island and often hosted visiting students or went to the mainland to schools or do presentations.

His passion for life, poetry and encouraging people to embrace their own story was evident in all of his work.

“A Good Read with Sandy Phippen ” ran from 2000-2004.

Sandy, a noted author in his own right, would have candid conversations with authors from Richard Russo to Stephen King.

Now, lets celebrate the legacy of Ashley Bryan as we go back to 2001 for “A Good Read with Sandy Phippen ” (u pbeat ambient music) - Production of A Good Read on Maine PBS is made possible in part by the Verizon Foundation, supporting literacy programs and partnerships, reaching adults and children across America on the web at verizonreads.net.

- I just walk briskly down to the dock, look out across the ocean, look up at the sky, look to the sunrise, then I walk back and then I will get to work.

And usually I've done a good part of my work before anyone arrives in the day.

(upbeat ambient music) There is a hell.

I'm quite as sure.

For pray.

If there were not, where would my neighbors go?

- Hi, I'm Sandy Phippen, your host for A Good Read.

Ashley Bryan's fascination with books, started at a very young age.

In kindergarten, he was self-publishing books that he wrote, illustrated, bound and distributed himself.

It's little wonder that in later years he became a Fulbright scholar and taught at Dartmouth College.

Now he's a children's author, illustrator and painter with a flair for making poetry entertaining.

Ashley may have grown up in New York City, but an island off the main coast is home.

- Often on weekends, we'd come to the coast to Acadia National Park.

And it was from looking out from those mountains to these islands, when I saw those islands, I said to the main students, that's home!

Find a place for me on one of those islands.

- Is that because of your ancestry being from Antigua, the West Indies?

- Is it may very well be.

And it's also my love of being surrounded by the water and having those essential elements always in view, reminding one of what is life really.

You know, the earth, the sea, the sky.

- And here on the islands, I've been on some of the islands and at night, you can see the stars so clearly.

- Yes, well, that's something that you're aware of because in New York City, you can forget that there is a sky.

You can go through days without remembering to look up.

Here I hardly ever go to bed without seeing how the sky's doing, whether it's foggy or the stars are there, (chuckles) but you do just wanna check all of those elements out.

It is wonderful.

- But you didn't live here year round until rather recently, till you get rid of Dartmouth, when you finished with Dartmouth College.

- Yes.

- Teaching there.

- Yes, well, what I did, I spent summers and sometimes late into the fall and I also took sabbaticals on this island so that when I was making the decision about living here, I knew year what a year round living was, I didn't have any of those summer romantic, what a wonderful thing it is, lobster fishing, you know, a wonderful thing to be in this island.

(chuckles) So I knew what it was like, and because I'm open to weather, I will go out and walk whatever the weather, as long as I can be comfortable indoors, I flourish.

I just love that.

(chuckles) I'll go out and walk in the rain, the snow, the heat.

- So you've really been a main person for 50 years.

- Yes.

Yes, it's over 50 years, from '46 on that I've summered or sabbatical now, since 1988, I've lived here around on the island.

- I wanna go back now though, to the beginning.

So I mentioned Antigua, your parents were born in Antigua.

- Yes.

- And they moved the family to New York.

- Yes, my parents were born in Antigua in the West Indies and after the First World War, when immigration was still open for the black peoples of the world, there was a tremendous immigration to the United States.

And my parents were in that immigration and they came to New York City and that's where they settled.

And the six children were all born and raised in New York City.

- In the Bronx?

- In the Bronx, born in Manhattan, raised in the Bronx and lived in the Bronx.

- Can you describe that, growing up in the Bronx and?

- Well, it was a wonderful time because I grew up during the depression years.

And that was when the government created the WPA, the Works Progress Administration.

And they gave jobs to writers and to musicians, to artists, to teach people in the community.

It was such a wonderful thing.

And my parents said learned to entertain yourself.

So they sent us out whatever was free because although they could clothe feet and houses, they couldn't do the extras.

- I've read where you loved your mother's apartment, the way she made it cozy and creative.

- Yes.

That was one thing that meant a lot to me.

My mother loved plants.

So wherever there was light, there were plants.

And if there was no light, she made crepe paper flowers.

And we as children, we would wind the green things around the stem, the green ribbons.

And so it was a colorful home, and my friends loved to come in there.

And that's why when the children ask me, were my parents artists?

I always say yes, because it takes a feeling for your environment to create something like that.

It's that aesthetic that's in everyone.

- You called your mother the songbird, 'cause she was always singing.

(chuckles) - Yeah, my mother sang from one end of the day to the other.

My dad used to say, your mom must think she's a bird 'cause she was always singing.

But my dad loved birds and he had cages in the living room with, at one point I counted up to a 100 birds, canaries and finches and parskeets and all of these birds, he was always bringing home a bird, depression years, but he loved birds.

My ma used to say, 'cause on Sundays he was occupied with this, he'd say I'd have to get into a cage if I wanna get any attention around here.

- And your father too was a musician, wasn't he?

- Yes.

He had a natural feel for instruments, so he played piano, the guitar, the saxophone or whatever he could pick up and on Sundays quite often, his cronies from Antigua who all call aunt and uncle, all my parents friends were aunts and uncles to us as kids growing.

And they would just play music and sing and drink their beer and all the hymns and songs (chuckles) and everything.

It was always going on.

- This wonderful house of yours filled with everything that you were a collector like your father.

- Yes, well, in that way, I love to bring around me things that I responded to.

I like to celebrate the craftsmanship of others.

I was always involved in emulating that, making my own things with my sisters and brothers, making my puppets, doing things with patches of cloth because we lived near the commercial streets where they'd put out all of these interior decorating materials and my sister and I would make patterns and she'd sew them together and make vests and skirts and patchwork quilts from them.

So we were always creating.

And so I love that spirit in others.

When I see something that someone has created that's beautiful and I can afford it, I buy it.

(chuckles) - It sure shows.

(laughing) Incredible environment here.

Walking in here is like a pat museum, pat gift shop, I guess.

Yeah, whatever but fascinating.

- Well, I like you to feel something of cheer and spirit when you walk into it, you see, because we come through so much that we have to contend with in the world with the news and with other things and our jobs and things out there.

I like to open the door and walk into a room where I can smile and this environment has made that possible for me.

Little children also are another way so.

- But yet you compared toys to children, you said they always make you smile.

- Yes, yes.

I've loved working with children.

You know, at times I would leave the college level and work with kindergarten first graders in drawing and painting because I love their absorption in what they do because on adult level, that's what I would like to achieve.

I would like to be working in such an absorbed way that there is no time.

what do you mean an hour is up and you have to go to another place.

No, that's that spirit of absorption and work that I watch in children and would love to see.

"The Dancing granny", an African folk tale collected on the island of Antigua in the West Indies.

Sure enough, spider Nancy soon came round again to plunder granny's vegetable patch.

Hmm, yum, he thought as he looked out over the pretty field.

If the corn tasted so good, I wonder how granny's peas and beans might be.

Spider and Nancy climbs up into the tree and he began to sing.

(muffled singing) ♪ Again, I'm in the canteen ♪ 'cause nanna's corn tastes good to me.

♪ ♪ I see those beans, I see those greens, ♪ ♪ I see those beats fit for kings and queens!

♪ - You graduated from high school in New York.

- Yes, from the Theater Roosevelt High School in New York and Fordham Road in the Bronx.

- And then you got into Cooper Union first.

- Cooper Union.

I was accepted at Cooper Union because when I graduated high school in January, I did not make it right in because my portfolio, although it was considered the best, it would've been a waste to give it to a colored person I was told.

My teachers at high school who were all white teachers that encouraged me all along, and they were surprised to hear this and said, Ashley, you come back and do a post grade graduate course, you can work on the senior yearbook, in the summer, take the exam of the Cooper Union, they don't see you there.

- Mm-hmm.

And so I was, the exam was first a college entrance exam and an elimination exam.

If you got past that, you brought a bar, a plasticine clay, and you did an exercise in sculpture and architecture and drawing, and on the merit of that, they selected the 50 for the day school, 50 for the night school at that time.

- And race didn't count?

- But they couldn't see you.

- Oh yes, right.

- You just handed in your work.

- Yeah.

- They didn't know.

I was the only black in my class, but you see, I could not have gone on without a scholarship because with six children and there were also three cousins my parents raised when my aunt died and they were raised as brother and sister with us.

So there was no way we could go on without scholarship.

- Was the course at Cooper Union two years or four years?

- It was at that time a three year program ending with a diploma later made the equivalent of a degree.

But at the time I was taking it, I was interrupted in the third year, by the Second World War and drafted into a segregated army in the Second World War.

- What was it like Ashley with, among the black guys, American black guys to be segregated from the rest of the army?

- Well, you immediately knew that it was very hard to maintain that spirit of what you were fighting for because you were always being used badly.

You were not giving the privileges of other soldiers, the white soldiers, although we were in the invasion group and were to be retired after a month to a rest area, that never happened with the black soldiers, we continued to work in that area until the beach closed down, you see?

And so, you always had that.

And generally you had white officers who were not sympathetic to black people, you know?

And so you always had that to contend with while you maintained your yourself, you know?

And so I was always drawing and that was a way I kept myself together and they were always telling me to stop drawing, but I said, I'll never stop drawing.

I had my drawing materials all in my backpack, in the gas mask.

And whenever there were is not a time to work, I would have out my sketch pad and I would be drawing.

The fellows who had been drafted into the army or in the army said after they saw this, they said, Ashley, where'd you get the time to do drawing and painting in the army?

And I looked at him quite innocently and said, wasn't I supposed to keep growing as an artist?

They said, Ashley, you were a GI.

That meant government issue, you had no rights, but I was only fighting for what I thought were my rights.

I didn't know I had none.

(laughing) - So when you came back to New York, you went to Columbia and majored in philosophy.

- Yes.

- Because of the war?

- I had been so spun around, I had so many things in mind, I said it was such a devastating experience to see the deaths and destruction, to see cities almost wiped out, (indistinct) just rubble, people so hungry and starving coming around the camps to get the food we tossed in garbage pans.

Following us to the dumps and our trucks running after our trunk, before we could throw out the garbage, jumping on the trucks to get the, it was such a terrible impression in terms of what you had to live with that I said, why is it that with what we know of war that man continually chooses war?

And even though it doesn't resolve ultimately what life is about.

And so I thought, oh, I'll study philosophy and I'll get answers.

Well, once I started, all my friends who were the artists said, you're crazy.

You're an artist, you'll lose all this time because you have to be reading and writing through the whole school year, which I did.

I was intrigued by the way man thinks, I was intrigued by the systems of philosophy of how they construct systems of ethics, of politics, of morality and of aesthetics and whether it's applicable or not.

But just the excitement of how the brain works to try and make things cohesive, there are always so many flaws, but they're not seeing it, they're just doing it, you see?

And so that kept me and I stayed year after year.

And when I finished, I got on a boat and I left for using my GI bill so I could spend the whole day painting.

And I said, that was it, I will be painting from now on.

And I have been.

- What about the Fulbright scholarship?

You received that at Columbia, was at Columbia.

- It was after Columbia.

- After Columbia, the Fulbright came, I'd come home after using up my GI bill abroad and I was home and I did my two eight hour days for a while and then I applied so that I could spend the whole day drawing and painting, still trying to get a grip on what it meant to me.

And so then I spent the time, I had the Fulbright for two years in.

- Germany.

- (indistinct) In the Southern Germany.

And I was able to spend the day just drawing, painting.

And then when I came home, I entered a two eight hour day from then on teaching to put the bread on the table and then pushing into my work and drawing and painting, and then doing my little books for family and friends.

- Oh, tell about that, the two eight hour days, one of your teachers told you that, right?

- Yes, that was explained to us at the Cooper Union by a professor that I had, and it was not to scare us, it was simply to explain in the fine arts that that was what was involved.

There were areas of the art was explained where you make a good living, if you're in film, work in theater, in fashion, there in graphic advertising work, you can earn a good living, but in the fine arts, if you're drawing, painting, doing choreography, you're composing music, you're writing poetry, says prepare yourself for two eight hour days, one to earn your bread, the other to keep growing as an artist.

And he said, there are a handful of artists that can earn their living from the fine arts alone.

If you feel you're one of them, fine.

But if it doesn't work out, no frustration, no anger, that is the score, that's the way it is.

- Now, we've gotta go back and tell everybody how you started.

You were making little libraries of your own.

You were making little books.

- Yes.

- That you illustrated.

- Yes.

- And were they written into, did you write in them?

- Yes.

Well, you see it started in kindergarten when the children asked me in the first, second grade, when I published my first book, I always look at and say, when did you publish your first book?

(chuckles) Because in kindergarten, in New York City, in the Bronx, in PS two that I attended, as we learned the alphabet, we drew a picture for each letter.

And when we each Z, the teacher gave us construction paper, colored paper, and we sewed the pages together.

And the teacher said, you have just published an alphabet book.

You're the author, the illustrator, the binder, the distributor, so now take it home.

So that was how it began.

And I got so much praise for that, that as we learned numbers, we did, and the numbers, pictures, number book, we did words with a word book.

And so it kept growing like that.

And because they were so enthusiastically received by family and friends who saw them, that I started making little books as gifts.

And that followed through the years, I was always making books for family and friends.

And that kept up until the time that Jean called at Atheneum Publishers, heard about me in the Bronx.

I had not been able to get into the field for over 15 years, when Jean call, heard about this man in the Bronx, always doing his books, family and friends, she came to my studio, and when she saw all the work I had been doing, she simply sent me a contract to begin work with Atheneum.

And that's how my work has reached a wide audience, but I would still be quite happy and content doing them for family and friends.

- You've written like 34 books.

I mean, you've worked on 34 books.

- Yes.

- Something like that at this point.

- Written and illustrated.

- And one of them was the ABC, what is it called?

The ABC book of.

- African American Poetry.

- Yes, that's what it is.

- That is, yes.

- Yes.

- That was important for me to do.

Black artists are writing in the English language.

They've written beautiful work, but they're not a part of our studies.

And wherever I go, in reading from them, people will include them in their coursework, whether it's in elementary school, junior high, high school or at university.

And so in doing that ABC, I wanted to present 25 poets with one spiritual 'cause everything I feel is based on the spirituals, you know, (chuckles) so I introduced 25 poets.

I just take a few lines of the poem so I can have the pick, do the illustration, and then in the back of the book is a bibliography.

A number of those few lines are the complete poems, but some of them are excerpts and the bibliography will send you to a source.

And then of course, if any of the lines appeal to you in a way that you would like to know more of that artist, then you could look it up through that source.

So when I started to do this, you know, I had without leaving my room over 70 poets that I wanted to present, I didn't have to go and do more research and find the more recent ones, and or people, 'cause there were 100s.

But I said, well, I can only do 25.

And I began doing little sketches, there were a few that I knew I wanted to have in the book, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Countee Cullen.

I knew I wanted to have a certain group of them, but then there were others who came into the book through the illustrations I was doing to keep a varied ensemble of pictures throughout the book.

But I could go right on another one and another one in that format.

From Ashley Bryan's "ABC of African American Poetry", a poem for the letter T by Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

"There is a heaven forever day by day.

The upward longing of my soul doth tell me so.

There is a hell I'm quite as sure, for praying, if there were not, or where would my neighbors go?

I wanted to give a feeling of the air so that when you read, you could hear a storyteller.

So I was using the devices of poetry, the rhythm, the rhyme, onomatopoeia, the alliteration, all of those.

I just make them dense in the writing, the way pros writers would have a different feeling of the rhythms of their lines.

They would not want that to happen, but I want it to happen, to slow the reader down, to feel that the storyteller is right with him or her and that they can hear the story.

- They should be read aloud, all your stories and poems.

- There for the voice.

- That's right.

- It's for the voice.

Even though I hold a book so that the children I meet with in elementary school will know whatever my voice does, it comes from the printed word.

- Right.

- Because so often the elementary school kids have disassociated.

- Right.

- The sound of the voice with the printed word.

And they will often just read words, and when you ask them, what have you read?

- They don't know.

- They look up, they can't tell you, they pronounce the words, but they haven't listened.

They haven't heard, or they haven't gotten the meaning.

These words here, it says, gather out of star dust, earth, dust, cloud dust, storm dust, and splints of hail one handful of dream dust, not for sale.

Those are words.

It does not become a poem until I become a partner with that poet.

With the star dust, earth dust, all the storm dust stand up, splinters of hail one hand full of dream dust, not for sale.

- How long does it take you, Ashley?

- I generally work a year on whatever I'm doing for the pictures and the text, if it's someone else's text, I sometimes have been able to do two things in the year.

And, but generally I give, I take a lot of time because I paint during the day and I work on my book projects in the evenings and, or if it's a rainy day or so, then I can give more time to that project or the book that I'm working on.

But it's in that kind of balance that I'm working with.

I'm always up early, on the island I'm very rested and I don't need the basic requirement of eight hours sleep.

When I'm here, five hours is good.

I can work till midnight and be up by five.

And I generally will read a while.

And then I go for a walk where I am not just stopping and looking at every branch and twig and blade of grass and of thinking making little notes and stuff.

I just walk briskly down to the dock, look out across the ocean, look up at the sky, look to the sunrise, then I walk back and then I will get to work.

And usually I've done a good part of my work before anyone arrives in the day.

- So the rest of the day.

- And the rest of the day, if there are no visitors, I will continue painting outdoors from the landscape and then evenings on the books.

And that goes on in that way, and I accomplish everything that I'm to do when I'm here.

And so I regard everything as a part of what I do.

There are people who will let you know that they cannot be interrupted.

Well, I don't work like that.

And they know it.

So people are always free and welcome.

- Mm-hmm.

- But I can't ask that of others who can't do that, you have to respect their hours of work.

But my work is, it's seamless.

Everything is my work.

- And it's continuously interrupted.

- But I don't call them interruptions.

You see, it's important how your mind thinks about things, how it affects you.

If I don't think of them as interruptions, then I know that I'm using it and when I get to my work, it feeds into it.

But if there were interruptions, I might be pulled back when I finally get to my work thinking I was interrupted.

So I've trained my mind as a way of thinking.

It's really a matter of how you think, it was the way I say, when you choose to do something, it makes all the difference.

I mean, you can want to be a good swimmer, but you'll have to get up in college at six o'clock to swim before school begins at 08:30 or nine, other people are sleeping till eight o'clock, but you have to get up at six, your coach knocks on the door, time to get for you at swim.

And every day, the coach knocks on the door.

Well, one day you get up.

The coach comes in, you're up and you're ready.

You've taken it on, so it's no longer a burden, you're not groaning because you've chosen to do this.

When you've made the choice, it's not a burden, it's not a sacrifice, it's an even exchange.

And it was important to me because I was involved in raising my younger sister's children.

If I saw that as sacrifice, I could not have done it.

I saw it as an exchange of what I could do, from what they could do.

- And a way to learn.

- And that made it possible.

- Right.

- That made it possible because I was drawing, painting for them through all the years.

- Well, thank you for letting us knock at your door Ashley.

This has been wonderful.

- Well, come again, you're always welcome.

It was great being with you Sandy.

And thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- I've told one tale, here's another, call your sister, call your brother.

The frog and hen once met, they walked along together.

Hen flapped her wings and spun around.

Frog slapped his legs and tapped the ground.

'Oh, and together now', clucked hen.

'Oh, you like the weather now?'

Croaked frog.

'Oh, click-cluck.'

Clocked hen.

'See that dark cloud, it's a sign.

I know it, a storm's coming.'

Strut, two steps, a peck at a bug.

'It's still a far way off.'

'Good.'

said hen, 'then there's time, frog, help me make a hot before the storm hits.'

'A what?

Not me.'

said frog.

'(indistinct) I'm gonna get into that.

Huh-uh, I won't help you make a hut.'

'Suit yourself.'

said hen.

'If you won't help me, then I'll make the hut myself.'

- [Narrator] Production of A Good Read on Main PBS is made possible in part by the Verizon Foundation, supporting literacy programs and partnerships, reaching adults and children across America on the web at verizonreads.net.

(upbeat ambient music) - Over the 50 years of walking these shores, I have cartons of glass.

There's an abundance of the white, the green, the browns.

There are touches of red, some I found, but the friends of the island would save their bowls and vases and glasses, things that broke of those colors so that I could add them in.

But the panels are carried by the sea glass.

And I love that, bringing back to life things that are rejected.

Next up, we go back to 1973 for “A Conversation with Helen and Scott Nearing ”.

The Nearings are credited with popularizing the notion of simple living and self sustainability through their 1954 book “Living The Good Life ”.

Their philosophy is part of life for many today and their legacy is carried on by The Good Life Center in Harborside, Maine.

You can check out their work at goodlife.org.

As with many shows on "From The Vault", weve had to cut them down a bit for time but you can see the full versions on our youtube channel at youtube dot com slash Maine Public.

Now, lets go back to 1973 for “A Conversation with Helen and Scott Nearing ”.

(indistinct) - [Narrator] For the last 40 years, Scott and Helen Nearing have been living in the country, first in Vermont, now in Maine.

Farming, and gardening, cutting wood, and living off the produce of the land.

Their book, "Living the Good Life," describes their self-sufficient lifestyle.

Scott Nearing, economist and sociologist, considers himself primarily a teacher.

He has said, "As a teacher, I like to pass on what I know."

Recently, Scott and Helen Nearing returned from a trip to China, their first in 20 years.

Lee Loring has asked them to pass on their observations about present day China, and its place in the world.

- This was your third visit to China, wasn't it?

- [Scott] My third, and Helen's second.

- What made you want to go back at this particular time?

- Because I think that since the cultural revolution which began in 1966, a number of profound changes have taken place in China.

- What were your priorities when you decided to go this time?

Did you restrict your travel to any particular areas?

- We went to the Peking and Shanghai, and the surrounding countryside.

We did that because in China, we didn't want to travel, we wanted to see people and things.

- They asked us what we wanted to see most on the first evening when we arrived there, and we said we wanted to see education, agriculture, and industry.

Well, in the short two weeks we had, if we traveled around a lot, we wouldn't have seen so much of that.

- Well, let's talk about your interest in agriculture first.

What did you notice most had changed since the last time you were there in '57 in that field?

- The Hills of China.

China is about 60% above 6,000 feet.

It's a mountainous country.

The Hills of China used to be brown.

Now they're green.

And when we drove from the Peking Airport into Peking, 25 miles, we drove through an avenue of trees, and vines, and shrubs that was eight rows wide or thereabouts the entire way was driving through a bower from the airport to Peking.

And since Peking is on the edge of the Gobi desert, in the old days, this didn't happen.

And today they have to water these trees regularly, otherwise they couldn't survive.

- And even Shanghai, which is a very ugly commercial city, has beautiful trees along most of their highways, which helps turn it into a pleasant city.

- Did you visit any communes and watched how they farm?

- Oh yes.

- Has that changed since last you were there?

- No.

Well, the commune movement got underway in 1957 and 1958.

It was just getting underway when we were there.

And now the Khmer have had a real testing out.

There are about 70,000 of them in China, they vary much in size and in the character of their products, but broadly speaking, they're organized on a representative basis.

They have an elected manager, they usually have an elected commune committee, they're organized is in work teams and regional groups.

- Does everybody do farming work, or is it a specialization?

- Specialization, of course.

In every commune there'll be a building team.

In every commune, there'll be educational people, medical people, and so on.

The idea being that a commune, like a city, comes as close as possible to being self-sufficient.

- As far as production goes in farming, has it benefited much from technology as we know it in the last 15 to 20 years, or is it a matter of organization and priorities?

- Well, they have been farming the same land for about 4,000 years.

And if they had farmed it badly, there wouldn't be any land left now.

They farmed it well.

And the result is that the land is probably better now than when they started 40 centuries ago.

- That's in sharp contrast to this country, isn't it?

- We've lost about a third of our top soil in 250 years.

- Is their conservation of soil a matter of putting back into the soil what you take from it, or is it a matter of-- - Everything - Everything?

- Everything you take from it, including human waste, all goes back into the soil.

- We saw a little, we saw a few tractors.

We saw few machines, there was a lot of hand labor.

- Is that, do you think, something that will be temporary, or do you think that that balance will continue, of largely manual labor?

- I wouldn't say largely manual labor, but a great deal of manual labor, because they're farming very intensively.

So that the weeds are pulled out of wheat fields and that kind of thing.

We just let the weeds grow in wheat fields.

They weed their grain fields.

- Do the Chinese express interest in your own experiences with farming and organic farming?

- Did anybody ask us about our own experience?

- No, and we were very glad because we didn't go over there to talk about our way of living, we wanted to find out about theirs and our time was so limited that, I think that the Chinese are insular to that extent, that they are not particularly interested in what's going on outside China.

They're intensively working at building up their own country now, and we heard a few remarks about Watergate, for instance, but on the whole, they're China-minded.

And quite rightly so at this period.

- Did you pick up anything while visiting farming areas, which you intend to put to your own use as far as methodology?

- Yes, Scott's found a new way to grow his tomatoes, and I brought home four or five real large Chinese hats, which the girls on the farm now are wearing.

- You also expressed interest when you first went there, that you wanted to, one of the areas you wanted to look at was industry, and technology, and that sort of thing.

How did you work that out?

What did you visit, and where did you go?

- We visited a textile factory, we lived visited the factory producing diesel engines, and went pretty thoroughly through both factories.

- We went to an industrial exhibit and saw a lot of their big machines, and huge trucks, and such like.

we went to a hospital, we saw an acupuncture operation also.

- Did you notice, what did you notice was most different from the 1957 visit as far as the technology goes?

Is China moving toward a much greater use of the internal combustion engine and the other industrialized society contraptions?

They're going to hydroelectric power.

They're harnessing the rivers to control floods and to provide electric power, hydroelectric power, rather than turning to the gas engine.

Gas engines, of course internal combustion engines are used, but the big development there in that aspect is the harnessing of the rivers and the rampant development of electric power from water.

- Do you see any signs that they're going to nuclear power generation?

- They have nuclear generators, they are producing nuclear material and preparing to join the nuclear club, I suppose.

- What did you find most interesting about the lifestyle, the standard of living, the quality of living?

What impressed you most about that, as compared to what you might have thought it was before you got there?

- I should say the general cheer and security which you felt in the people.

They seemed very balanced, very healthy, very purposeful, seemed so are different than walking through the streets of New York, where people sort of droop around or walk hectically.

There's a determination and a zest in the air, which was really quite impressive.

And the young people, particularly, and particularly the little children are the most extrovert, the most outgoing, most competent, balanced, little creatures, and attractive, charming little creatures I've seen anywhere.

We used to think the Japanese children beat the lot, but I think these little Chinese children were way ahead of any others we saw.

We went to many schools, we went to kindergartens, we went to parks, and we saw them everywhere.

They're well dressed, they're zippy, they're chirpy, they're friendly, they come up with outstretched hands to strangers in a way that I think children in the US would not.

- All this of course is, so much has happened since the last time you were there before, before the cultural revolution while the Cold War between the United States and China was in full force.

How was it when you were both there 15 years ago?

For this friendliness?

- Well, yes, and once you could observe of people.

The friendliness obviously was not there, was it then?

- Oh, it was.

It was.

But then they would come up to us and say, are you our Russian friends?

And now of course, the Russians are not their closest friends.

I should say that that same friendliness was there then.

It had nothing to do with Nixon's turning up on the spot, I think.

Do you, Scott?

- No, I wouldn't say so.

- Well, basically.

Although, did you find them more friendly this time than you did last time?

Were you regarded with the suspicion the first time around that you didn't find this time?

- No.

- No, we were greeted hospitably without any hostility at all, and with general friendliness, especially from the youngsters.

- You tried to stay away from officials as much as possible, didn't you?

- As much as possible.

- Did you visit any education places?

Schools, universities?

- From the kindergarten to the universities.

- What did you find most interesting about that side of life?

- The most important thing that has happened to Chinese education is the introduction between high school and college, of a period of work, a period of practical experience.

In the army, in the factories, on the land, in some kind of practical experience, running from two to three years.

This is, I think now universal, right?

- [Hellen] Mm hmm.

- And if you're going from high school to college, this is an obligatory period.

And during this period, you are looked over by your fellow workers, and by the managers of whatever enterprise you're in, and at the end of the period if they feel that you deserve or could benefit by, or that the country would benefit by a college education, then you're recommend for a higher educational institution.

If they feel that your would not be, that the higher education is not for you, then you don't get a recommendation and you go on in one pre-college career or another.

- What was the system prior to this institution of the two to three year period?

- Mostly for the gentry and the higher ups, their children and their dependents.

And as far as the masses were concerned, higher education was practically a closed book.

- Was there much discussion, or would anybody talk particularly about the effects of the cultural revolution as such on their life?

- Boy, a great deal.

- [Lee] What would they say about it?

- Well, in the first place, it has modified the difference between city and country.

We were in a big hospital in Shanghai.

It had 100 doctors, and 100 nurses, and the staff, personnel staff.

One third of their personnel are always in the country.

Doctors, nurses, hospital staff, a third of them spend, always a third of them is in the country, and two thirds in the city.

So that if you are a countryman, and you are in their beat, you have the same advantages that a city person would have if there's anything ailing that a medical team can do for you.

A medical team from every medical institution is functioning in the city, and at the same time in the country, and the doctors and nurses rotate between the city team and the country team.

So that instead of having to go to the city for an operation, you stay in your village, and every village has facilities so that these medical teams from the city can go and work in villages and communes, and the like.

- The place of women in the Chinese society is that of equals, isn't that correct?

- It's that of equals.

Equal pay, and equal work.

- Do you find anything surprising by seeing women in unusual occupations as far as this country is concerned?

- Not to me, of course, because we work equally in our farm.

I do almost as much hard work as Scott does, and he helps in the house with me.

So our work is equal.

We felt quite at home there in that respect.

As to the US?

Yes, it would be quite different.

- You went to see an acupuncture operation, were the women physicians-- - It was a woman who was being operated, a 35-year-old woman factory worker.

There were three doctors, both men, and two women nurses.

And there was an acupuncturist, who had a needle in her right hand.

And he kept moving that for the whole hour the operation was going on.

And they were working at her neck.

It was a rather gruesome operation to watch.

We were up above looking down.

And apparently it was thoroughly successful because 20 minutes after the operation, we were sitting in the consulting room with the doctors and nurses talking about the general state of health in China, and this woman walked in with two nurses, one on each side of her, and she sat down, and spoke with us, and said she felt no pain.

I saw her being fed slices of oranges while she was lying there.

She was to be a week in the hospital, and then she was to have two weeks at home also with full pay, and then she would go back to work again.

- Is that-- - This cost her nothing.

- This acupuncture as it, is it old, an old way of treatment as far as China goes?

- It's an old way of treatment, but apparently they're using it in a new way now, for anesthesia.

They had not used it that way before.

They used it to cure certain diseases, but apparently the anesthesia is something new, even for the Chinese.

- [Lee] I notice-- - They have about 400,000 cases where anesthesia has been tried, where acupuncture anesthesia has been tried.

- Has this grown out of medical research in China?

- Experimentation, yeah.

- I was just wondering whether accidentally they might have learned that insertion of needles at certain points might have incidentally produced a numbing sensation in another area, and therefore followed it up on that.

- Yeah, I didn't go into that.

I was in a small clinic in a neighborhood committee in Peking, and a woman nurse who was in charge of the small clinic was fingering one of these needles, and she said, "This is where you put it, "in your leg down here for good digestion."

I said, "Oh, I have good digestion."

But I said, "Would you put it in my leg there?"

So she put it in my leg there, I felt nothing at all.

I mention this to tell you that the needle is so fine, that I didn't even feel it go into my leg, and it went in about an inch or more.

And then she took it, she twilled around a little and she put it in the other leg.

Before and after I had good digestion, but it was interesting to at least have the needle done.

Scott asked if she'd put it in for tuberculosis, if I would've taken it for that too, but it just happened to be harmless.

- You didn't have any sickness at all while you were there, did you?

That required any sort of attention?

- No, no.

I was in my usual good health.

- Everyone else in the party had some little thing wrong with them, but Scott, who was the oldest of the lot, went through the whole experience with no troubles at all.

- Are more people going to higher education today than was the case when you went there?

- No, less.

At the University of Peking, which used to have about 10,000 students, when we were there, they still had 3,400.

During the cultural revolution, the University of Peking was closed completely for a period, and is gradually being reopened under new management, a new technique of management with more or less the same staff, about 2,200 members of the same staff, but with an entirely different reorientation.

What they call the unity of theory and practice.

- [Lee] What does that mean in practice?

- It means that if you're in a particular field, part of the time you work in your field, and part of the time, part of the time you're practicing in your field, and part of the time at the university, you're doing theoretical work.

- I know there's been some, I've seen some critical articles about this, cutting back on university scholarships saying it's going to disrupt the entire body of knowledge in China, and interrupt it, and there's going to be a certain lag because of that problem.

Do you agree with that criticism?

- They're certainly changing the educational pattern.

What the ultimate results will be, nobody knows at this stage.

But the Chinese believe that they're going to be changed for the better.

- They think time is on their side in this respect?

- Yes.

- Do you see the education establishment, or whatever you want to call it, in China as growing, despite the limited numbers in there?

In other words, comparing it to the ethic in this country, that the more education is the better education, and everybody should be going to an institution as much as possible, that conventional wisdom, - Whether they benefit from it or not?

- [Lee] Whether they benefit from it or not.

- There is no such conception in China.

Those who wish to go from the ordinary schools into the higher schools must show by their own activities, - [Hellen] They earn their right.

- They earn their rights to it, and the community must need the particular thing that they wanna do before they can be trained for it.

For example, if they're adequately supplied with doctors then they don't train any more doctors, or any increasing number of doctors.

- What are the peculiar factors in the Chinese experience, to your knowledge, that have led to the kind of situation, and the kind of life which is existing there today?

Are there unique Chinese geopolitical, geographic factors, historical factors which have led to this that would perhaps preclude a similar experience in another country?

- Well, in the last 50 years, they say about 50 million Chinese families have been displaced by civil war, by invasion, by one of the other upsetting forces that have taken place in China.

- [Hellen] Going to include floods and famine.

- And that includes floods, and famines, and so on.

So that a lot of China, a lot of old China was uprooted by these forces.

And instead of re-rooting them in the old ground, they provided new seed beds and new planting areas, new agricultural opportunities.

- Everybody makes, in this country, tends to make a great deal of the size of the Chinese population.

- There's 800 millions.

- Is that going to hold them back in the future?

- They believe not, because they have done a very important job.

I think as important as the Japanese in limiting population.

They told us that in the present generation of young people who are getting married, the family is likely to consist of one child, or at most two.

In the previous generation, it consisted of two children, or at most three.

So that in the last 25 or 30 years, they've definitely moved to a negative population increase.

It takes about 2 3/4 children per fertile marriage to maintain a static population.

And if they're going to have one or two children, that means that in the future, the population will diminish, not increase.

- And they're tending to marry later, after 25, instead of before 20, which will also limit.

- Well, that particularly seems to parallel what's been going on in this country, that people are marrying later.

Are they doing so for the same reasons?

- What are the reasons they're doing it here?

- I think in this country, both a desire not to have children right away, but to postpone that, and not perhaps have as many children, and also the idea that early on in life, you should spend as much time getting to know what you're going to do in life, and perhaps a family, having a family right off inhibits that.

Do you think the same thing holds true there?

- It should.

- They have a general philosophy that population should be controlled, like every other factor in human society.

- Comparing the moral tone of Chinese life and the strong emphasis placed on the family there, compare that, will you, with what's been going on in this country in the last 10 or 15, 20 years.

- With the permissiveness in this country?

- That's right.

- They are miles apart.

The type of permissiveness in family life, which we recognize and accept here, - [Hellen] Extol.

- Is unbelievable there.

- How does this make itself felt?

Is this something that has passed from generation to generation?

Is it something the government reinforces?

- No, this is something that people do.

- And have been doing.

- Are doing.

- So this is really no, it's no different.

Do you see likelihood, or any chance, that the situation in this country, or the Western experience might be duplicated there?

- See, they went through a period of permissiveness.

They have had their period of permissiveness.

- [Lee] When was that?

- Until 1949, when the new regime, the Chinese People's Republic was set up.

China, when I was there in '27, was a very permissive society.

It was full of crooks, and thieves, and hang up people, and that kind of thing.

This has disappeared, as Helen says.

You can walk anywhere in the Chinese city, day or night without any danger at all.

This doesn't exist in Western Europe and in the United States, you know what the situation is.

- We had a woman on our trip who lives in Brooklyn, she's afraid to walk around the corner at night.

And she took a two-hour walk all alone in Peking at about 10 o'clock at night, and felt no trouble at all.

- Recently in this country, there's been, at the government level, and before that it's been at a lower level, there's been an increasing awareness that the gross national product is not a very good indicator of the quality of life in the United States.

Before they used to try to gauge quality of life simply by how much everybody was making as an aggregate.

And I'm wondering what you think as far as this country's future goes, when, and if it becomes known and accepted by the American people, that their standard of living, and/or bad or good as it may be, is going to have to change radically.

There's just no way it can continue because there just are not the resources, the means to continue it.

What sort of a traumatic national experience this might be?

- Well, we've already had that experience.

Last year, 2,300 people came to visit us at our main farm.

Most of these people were young people, most of them were from moderately well to do or well to do families.

Most of these young people have discovered, from their experience, that happiness does not come with a multiplicity and a variety of possessions.

They've already learned this, this minority that we saw, they've already learned this lesson.

And they're now setting up homesteads of their own, setting up communes, with a complete reorientation with regard to happiness through multiplicity.

The more you have, the happier you'll be.

They know it isn't true because they've seen it, tried out in their own homes.

- Well, thinking about the entire United States population, do you think that this new consciousness can become widespread enough to save the rest of the country, which is not conscious of this, the need for this simplification of life?

Can they get to them in time, or is it going to have to be something rather dramatic happen?

- Something rather dramatic has got to happen to the mass media, which have a great share in controlling public opinion in the United States.

- How do you see this coming about?

- Well, I say, if changes are to be made without revolution, changes in the mass media must be made.

Because it's the mass media that builds up.

If kids spend their time watching TV, or listening to radio or whatnot, reading handouts, then their life is determined by these mass means of communication.

And if these means of communication are going to be consistently counter-revolution and reactionary, then the mass media will also have to be smashed in the revolutionary process.

- Are you optimistic that this sort of change can take place without violence?

- Might take place without violence?

The chances are slim.

- Increasingly.

- We're a violent people.

The easiest way to change a man's opinion is to shoot his head off.

And this is the spirit of the West, so called, and it's still in a very large sense, the spirit of the people.

What are we trying to do in Cambodia?

- Excuse me, we've been talking to Scott and Helen Nearing.

Keep going, sorry.

(relaxing flute music) - [Narrator] Production funds for this program are provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

(flute music) (muffled singing) ♪ Again, I'm in the canteen ♪ 'cause nanna's corn tastes good to me.

♪ ♪ I see those beans, I see those greens, ♪ ♪ I see those beats fit for kings and queens!

♪