[Oe List ...] Another Shinn Story

[Gordon Harper via OE]

Ah, Ed --

So many memories, pretty much all crammed into a very special two-year
period in our lives.  I think I have to tell one story.

The ICA contingent from Chicago that was assigned to help launch the
replication phase of our human development projects (fourteen of us, as I
recall) arrived in the rural village of Maliwada, India the first week of
September, 1976.  Among this entourage were the Shinn and Harper families.
We had a scant four weeks before we would open the first ever Human
Development Training School, and despite all the plans and models we
brought with us, no one had any real idea what we were getting into or what
we were going to do.  We just knew that we’d work it out.

Within a few months, medical evacuations had taken a toll on our group, and
some of our team had been called back to Chicago for new assignments.  I’m
not sure anyone ever really assigned us to the role, but Ed and I soon
found ourselves operating as co-deans for the international faculty of the
training school.  With my academic background, I worked primarily on
developing the school’s curriculum and training the faculty.  With his
passion for ensuring that things actually worked, Ed designed and led hands
on projects and work days for the school and took every opportunity to
rigorously field test all our replication assumptions and approaches.  It
was a great partnership and one that would last until the foreigners were
all invited to leave India in June of 1978.

But that’s another story, for another time.  The one I have to tell is
about Ed and one of the pleasurable experiences we shared in that village.

Ed and I were both dedicated pipe smokers--and in Maliwada, that was a
problem.  Cigarettes could be procured for a price, pan and beatties were
abundant, but pipe tobacco of any sort seemed not to exist anywhere in the
vicinity.  Ed and I would scour the shops in Aurangabad, our closest city,
on weekends, trying out anything in glass jars on shelves that  looked as
if it might conceivably serve in our briars--only to be cruelly
disappointed, time after time.  I did manage on one occasion to get Betty
Pesek to procure some decent shag from one of my Chicago tobacconists and
slip it, unbeknownst to him, into Joe’s luggage as he prepared for one of
his visits to the village.  (Lee Early best tells that story.)

I somewhat grudgingly shared with Ed pinches of what I was able to smuggle
past customs or have, heavily taxed, sent to me legitimately by slow
freighter.  Still, always we both seemed to be running out of this precious
commodity and lamenting our plight to any who would listen.  Then, one day,
Pandit Rao, one of our Maliwada community leaders, told us that he knew of
tobacco that was grown on the Hindu temple grounds.  He invited us to come
to his home that afternoon to try it.

We took the stairs to the roof of Pandit’s modest home and sat down
crosslegged on the roof.  We watched in high anticipation as he produced a
bag of something that indeed looked far more smokeable than anything we’d
ever seen in the area.  Ed and I dipped in, loaded our pipes, lighted up,
tamped them down and lighted once again.  Pandit joined us with his own
flat clay pipe.

As the aroma from our three pipes filled the air and registered on my
consciousness, I was transported a decade or so back in time, to the
university campuses on which I had studied and taught.  Vivid memories from
the 60s were reactivated, and I looked over at Ed to see if he was
experiencing a similar deja vu.

Not exactly.  What Ed was experiencing, however, was sheer delight.  He
turned to me with a look of wonder and amazement, and said, with that great
passion which he could muster, “Gordon, this is good stuff!  This is better
than anything I've ever smoked!  It’s incredible!” as he took another deep
drag on his pipe.  I may have failed to mention that Ed inhaled his pipe, a
habit carried over, by some unfortunate pipe smokers, from their prior or
concurrent practice of cigarette smoking.  I, of course, as a pipe purist
(aka, snob) did not.

Pandit was smiling and nodding, obviously pleased to have produced such a
response in his guests.  I bowed my head in gratitude and smiled, wondering
if it would be of any benefit to share my conclusions as to what it was we
were so enjoying.  I decided not.  We continued our beatific afternoon
smoke in the sun, with an increasingly enthusiastic and voluble Ed regaling
our host with gratitude for coming upon such a treasure in so unexpected a
place.

The euphoria shared on that rooftop, however, was to be only a temporary
interlude in our ongoing quest.  Ed soon learned that the Indian name for
this delightful product--ganja--was better known to us by another name, and
we both chose not to continue or make a habit of visiting Pandit’s roof.

Memories of that afternoon in a rural Indian village came back to me this
Thanksgiving.  After a fine dinner with friends here in Seattle and before
dessert was served, our host invited those who would like to step out on
his deck for a few moments, “to share a pipe and allow the meal to settle.”
 Washington state is one of those places in the U.S. where what followed is
perfectly legal.  It was dark and chilly and our friend’s deck not at all
like Pandit’s home on the semi-arid desert of Maharashtra, but it was as if
Ed and I were together once again.


Gordon
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