At that time (and we doubt things have changed) the basic wage for the very ample force required to assist in the banishing of Care is not handsome $5 to $6 an hour. Over the years the Jinks has become the leading entertainment at the encampment, surpassing the mannered and ponderous Grove Play, which is performed the next weekend. "We had jazz concert," Kissinger said. One camp, called Aviary, is composed entirely of members who were, or are, singers. These plays are planned five years in advance, with no expense spared. Indeed, I was able to enjoy most pleasures of the Grove, notably the speeches, songs, elaborate drag shows, endless toasts, pre-breakfast gin fizzes, round-the-clock "Nembutals" and other drinks -- though I didn't sleep in any of the camps or swim naked with likeminded Bohemians in the Russian River at night. Where else could such men hope to chat privately with the head of IBM, a cou-ple of Rockefellers, bankers galore, a Justice of the US Supreme Court and Charlton Heston? (He meant Shankar Bajpai, former ambassador to the U.S.) "Today they had a Russian.". Here, of an evening, Grovers can hear a banker or a Treasury official wend his way through the intricacies of Third World debt rescheduling, or listen to a European leader who will offer himself up for inspection. "He bought some apple juice company for $1 million and he was fearful he would have to dip into his capital"). The peeing is ceaseless and more than a little exhibitionistic. The salt has been washed out of the Club by commercialism, one writer grumbled. Two of the buses bore vanity license plates commemorating the 1989 presidential inauguration -- they had the words Kinder and Gentler stamped on them. In sending his regrets by telegram, Mr. Nixon reportedly told the president of the club to continue to lead the people into the woods, while he, Mr. Nixon, would continue to lead the rest of the people out of the woods. The mystery was over. Any Bohemian is welcome at such events. Wheres the fashionable rendez-vous for the Worlds Secret Government? In 1984 folk singing demonstrators tried to quarantine the Bohemians inside the Grove because they were so dangerous to the outside world. I didn't want to disagree. "I am a warrior and that is how I come to you today," he said. There were laments. Rex Greed, an effeminate gallery owner who sells toilets ("a counterpoint of mass and void"), tries to convince artist Jason Jones Jr. that his future lies in sculptures composed of garbage. Reagan didn't get the question the first time around. The physical aspect of Bohemian male bonding can't be overlooked. Then an old friend came up and snagged his attention. My imposture included misrepresenting myself in conversation with other campers, and my story kept changing as I learned more about how life inside was organized. The most striking prop in The Low Jinks was a sculpture of a female torso whose breasts and buttocks had both been attached to the front, an improvement that looked vaguely hostile. andA Colossal Wreckare available from CounterPunch. The most elite of the camps is Mandalay. A waiter in a red jacket dropped an uneaten chunk of the bright red cod into a waste bin, and the Bohemians at my table talked about presidents. Reagan himself had been a guest at the Bohemian Grove since at least 1967 and an official member since 1975 , coincidentally a place also annually visited by David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger , as well as Nelson Rockefeller since at least the 1940s and descendants of J.P. Morgan and a handful of other East Coast elites. One of them seemed puzzled -- the friend wasn't the sort to get going at 7:45 a.m., he noted. One day a member asked if I was related to a Bohemian named Jack Weiss. The Club took certain measures and things are now under control. Bohemian Grove is an Elite men's Only! The first thing I noticed was that he had finally let his hair go gray. They talk business here all the time. Had a red fist painted on the back of her gown. The camp Tom lived and worked at was thick with real estate tycoons and had a reputation for good food and comfortable appointments. The sudden appearance of men in striped jackets shows what a bouillabaisse of traditions the Grove is. It's like great sex". German chancellor Helmut Schmidt (not to be confused with Club members Chauncey E. Schmidt or Jon Eugene Schmidt) strolled its paths with club member Henry Kissinger, as did French socialist leader Michael Rocard. User ID: 78001158. Just the same, a man on his own often gets invited back to camps by gay Bohemians. A tenet of Grove life is noncompetitive egalitarianism: all men are equal here. Edgar F. Kaiser), 1970s retro (Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger) and foreign bric-a-brac (Andrew Knight of The Economist). "No, but I've heard a lot about him and I'd like to meet him." Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, who spoke on the history of the state water problems and the creation of such programs as the Central Valley Project. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. So what are you responsible for," the KGB asks him. "I need the B-2.". At Sundodgers camp there is a motto on the mantel: The productive drunk is the bane of all moralists. Then the organist struck up "America the Beautiful" and Reagan left in a red truck, waving. In 1953, when he was vice president, Nixon led a ceremony honoring Herbert Hoover's 40th year as a Bohemian. So spare yourself the expense of travelling from Quebec to the next session of the WTO. The mood is reminiscent of high school. Everything in the encampment is sheltered by redwoods, which admit hazy shafts of sunlight, and every camp has a more or less constant campfire sending a soft column of smoke into the trees. ", At lakeside the grass was crowded for the day's talk. A screen door creaked on a little house farther up the hill, and a Bohemian named Richard poked his head out, emerging from his siesta. The club motto, Weaving spiders, come not here! is a warning to leave talk of business and world affairs at home and turn one's mind to matters of art and leisure. He projects an automatic, almost druggy congeniality. Even the prickly Lee Kuan Yew hastened to visit the club, only to have the mortification of being mistaken for a waiter. At dinner I sat across from a young broker who shared his wine with me and complained about his girlfriend. For Republicans the club is an antechamber to the White House. It turned out to be only a deer lick. One Bohemian, a patrician fellow with silver hair, wheeled in rage, saying, "I'll be goddamned." When they reached the water, they extinguished their torches. The Bohemian Grove is unique in American clubdom because it puts 2,000 to 3,000 mostly elite men together in the forest for up to sixteen days every summer, Phillips wrote. Former Defense secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, former attorney general William French Smith and former Transportation secretary Drew Lewis are all members. He received his MA and PhD degrees at Harvard University in 1951 and 1954, respectively. He said, 'What are you talking about?' This morning we went bird-watching. In June there are three long weekends of Springjinks, mostly attended by Californians. She put at my service a mountain guide who demanded only that I keep the methods he devised for me confidential. There's all the redwood talk. This year's event drew in notables such as former President George Bush, Texas Gov. We were a few feet from the Lamp of Fellowship, and after looking me over he said he didn't know, this was pushing it. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Th encampment has become the primary watering hole for Republican administration officials, defense contractors, press barons, old-line Hollywood figures, establishment intellectuals and a handful of German speaking men in lederhosen. At such times -- at many such times, among strong leaders, deep in the forest -- the Grove takes on a certain Germanic bermenschlich feeling. Jeffrey St. Clairis editor of CounterPunch. The Current TikTok Ban Doesnt Go Far Enough. The Rise and Fall of Labor Unions In The U.S. Interlocking Directorates in the Corporate Community, The Power Elite's Foreign Policy in WWII & Vietnam, The Rise and Fall of Diversity at the Top, 2005-2015, Can Corporate Power Be Controlled? At the Bohemian Grove, he joined the Piedmont Camp to be with his close personal friends from Piedmontthe Witters, Dollars, etc.instead of joining a business camp. Well, a man did that at a party, and his hostess said, when he came back, she said, 'You must have the longest nose in the world.' The owner of the lotion sighed. The club has a fa-mous motto, weaving spiders not come here, meaning No shop talk, but Tom laughs. Instead of Deltas and Pi Etas there are camps, some 120 in all, stretching along River Road and Morse Stephens canyon. LOL that is some good fucking eyes wow he was so skinny then. It looked as though Richard Nixon would once again not show. (This joke is funny because Kissinger was famous for saying that "power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."). The non-famous hard-core Bohemians were more in evidence now, men who wore owls in various forms -- owl belt buckles, brass owl bolo ties, denim shirts embroidered with owls. The rule is widely ignored. In this way I managed to drop in on the principal events of the encampment, right up to the final Saturday, July 29, 12:30 p.m., when I attended a Lakeside Talk whose giver was, intriguingly, the only one not identified in the program of events. James A. Baker III, the current secretary of State, is also a member, but he couldn't make it this year. It tells the productive they can drink, it tells the drunks they're productive. The getup stood out because it was so fastidious among men who had let themselves go. We shook hands firmly (his: small, bony) and chatted. At Faraway camp a guy beckoned me into the camp to enjoy "a little orange juice." Meanwhile, the Bohemians' new favorite son had arrived in camp the night before. Along with its most definitely closet contingent, the club also has about 2,000 heterosexuals cooped up for the summer retreat, with no women officially on the premises except for a daily minibus of female cleaners the consequence of a lawsuit brought by feminists a few years ago which can go no farther into the Grove than the Camp Fire circle, 400 yards from the Main Gate. Early club menus offered dolled-up western dishes such as "boiled striped bass au vin blanc" and "cafe noir." Q33. One afternoon, for instance, the Valhalla camp deck was crowded with men drinking Valhalla's home-brewed beer and listening to singers. According to the guest list, this year's attendees include George H. W. Bush, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and several former CIA directors. Former Bank of America chairman Samuel Armacost brought IBM chairman John F. Akers, Bechtel chairman S. D. Bechtel Jr. brought Amoco chairman Richard Morrow. He didn't ask Reagan my question, of course. Owl's Nest is sort of an old Hollywood-corporatist camp. There's a feeling of both great privilege and rusticity. The club's famed annual gathering has been held for more than 100 years at the 2,700-acre Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, about 70 miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. Who are the members, and how do they join the club whose reason for being is the Summer Encampment? He cleaned up the mess left by the Bohos nocturnal revels. No one inside acted suspicious, but paranoia about the Grove seemed justified, and I brought along my own version of cyanide: Interol, a tranquilizer used by actors to counteract stage fright. Those who attended included Art Linkletter, who was master of ceremonies, for one of the shows, Bing Crosby and Phil Harris, among the entertainers; A. Robert Abboud; John Diebold, the consultant; Edgar F. Kaiser Sr. of Kaiser Industries; Richard Cooley, former president of Wells Fargo Bank; Allan Sproul, former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Emmet Solomon, former president of the CrockerCitizens National Bank, and Louis B. Lundborg, retired chairman of the Bank of America. If nine of the 11 men on the membership committee favor a candidate, he may be admitted, upon payment of $2,500 initiation fee and monthly dues of $41. No, Section 8, Article XVIII was too fine a screen for me. Although the talent shows put on by Merv Griffin and Art Linkletter were reckoned at least in past years to be good, the plays are pretty awful, heavily freighted with double-entendres about swollen members and the like. Even one-on-one he has that habit of smiling and cocking his head and raising an eyebrow to encourage you. Big business shows up: Thomas Watson Jr. of IBM, billionaire John Kluge of Metromedia. Dick Cheneys a Grover. It was born in the newsroom of the old San Francisco Examiner in 1872, when James F. Bowman, an editorial writer for the rival Chronicle, proposed it to some friends at the Examiner, including prominent journalist Ambrose Bierce. The Jinks jokes about women were straight out of an old joke book. Also, I'd tried to grab one of the free Bohemian Club walking sticks from the museum, something I could lean against my office wall with the B/C shield turned out to remind myself that this right-wing fantasia had not been just a dream. I said when we got back we'd talk about it. This rule is strictly adhered to. ", "You know, they've got a lot of liberal faculty. It was a transparent plea for help. START or Stop: Do Nuclear Weapons Treaties Matter? Two weeks later he plunged into Sir James Goldsmith's battle to take over B.A.T. "We had jazz concert," Kissinger said. And my attempts to get a job as a waiter or a valet in one of the camps failed. In 1982 reporters followed German chancellor Helmut Schmidt co the Grove gates, and the front page of the Christian Science Monitor termed the Grove "the West's hidden summit." At this point some hamadryads (tree spirits) and another priest or two appeared at the base of the main owl shrine, a 40-foot-tall, moss-covered statue of stone and steel at the south end of the lake, and sang songs about Care. Here William Buckley described how he had sat at his desk and cried upon learning of Whittaker Chambers's death. Walter Cronkite. The final blow to the hacks came soon thereafter. During the day there are enviro-strolls with some biologist from Stanford or Berkeley lecturing his retinue on successional stages in redwood regenera-tion. By such standards, San Francisco businessmen surely looked crude. I wanted to ask Reagan about efforts to desegregate the club. "Bill Simon had room on his plane." At 33, 1 was one of the youngest Bohemians, but I was welcome almost as a policy matter. The big improvement this year was to project a sort of hologram onto the owl's face so that its beak seemed to move. The sense that you are inside an actual club is heightened by all the furnishings that could not survive a wet season outdoors: the stuffed lion on top of Jungle camp; the red lanterns in the trees behind Dragons camp at night, which add to the haunting atmosphere; the paintings of camels, pelicans and naked women that are hung outside; the soft couch in the doorway of Woof camp, and everywhere pianos that, when the encampment is over, go back to the piano warehouse near the front gate. It was at the grove that Gov. This has been especially true in the last ten years as Bohemia's stunning roster has waxed ever more statusy, as Kissinger and Rockefeller and Nick Brady have joined, drawing the attention of left-wing protesters, scholars of elites, and reporters. A friend of mine, big in Reagan time, has been on the doorstep for 15 years. Started for the promotion of good fellowship among journalists and the elevation of journalism to that place in the popular estimation to which it is entitled, the club initially banned membership to publishers. There are less elaborate stagings by the individual camps, which really exist as separate societies with members of each paying for their facilities. On the River Road you heard some small business talk. Dole wasnt even a member and with Bill and Hillary in office, journalists dashed off each year to the Carolina coast to write about the Renaissance Weekend at Hilton Head where the idiom was of the 1990s self-awareness, being in touch with your inner self, networking rather than the 1890s making merrie, getting drunk and us-ing the Old Boy Net. Many an empire has of course been run by drunken men wearing make-up. Of course you must be with us," I heard his summons, too. But by then I'd made my connection, My driver was Mary Moore, an Earth Mother type with long silvery-blond hair who is the most active member of a distinctly Californian left-wing group called the Bohemian Grove Action Network. Many older men die waiting. Kissinger was sharing his turtleneck with Rocard, for nights amid the redwoods grew surprisingly cool. Kevin McCarthy is No Edward Snowden, But He Should Find the Comparison Flattering, Assessing Nicaraguas Long Haul toward Liberation and Economic Democracy, A National Divorce? Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. No pee pee here! Mr. Nixon was scheduled to give a second talk in 1971, which would have made him the first President to have spoken while in office, but he canceled when the White House Press Corps insisted on following him into the strictly guarded campsite. Several of the Hoots jokes were at the expense of the homeless. Like all such institutions the club has its rituals, its ceremonies, its hallowed rules. Ronald Reagan and George Bush are members. The cremation is intended to put the busy men of the club at ease and banish the stress of the outside world, but it arouses critics of the encampment because they interpret it to mean that Bohemians literally don't care about the outside world. In the end I entered by stealth. Since 1980, Moore and as many as 400 other demonstrators . This is not the first time Clinton, Powell or Kissinger have been linked to the Bohemian Grove. Even 100-year-old Grove annals have a homoerotic quality, with references to "slender, young Bohemians, clad in economical bathing suits." On July 21 of this year Henry Kissinger sat at one of them, chuffing loudly to someone -- Sunshine, her called her, and Sweetie -- about the pleasant distractions of his vacation in the forest. The mood was American and bellicose. "My friends don't understand this," a pudgy 35-year-old in front of me confided to his companion. There's no end to the pee-pee and penis jokes, suggesting that these men, advanced in so many other ways, were emotionally arrested sometime during adolescence.
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