The teachers at The Ruskin didn’t work too hard. They came in one or two days a week from London, glanced at our work, and said something like, “That looks very nice.” Then they engaged you in some conversation that they thought was clever and you smiled, and they thought they were intelligent and that […]

I drove through a classic English pea soup fog to get to a gallery opening that John Mason had in London. There were so many roads and canals on the road from Oxford to London that it was as moist as a wet sponge. I was leaning out of the window of an old Mercedes […]

The front room was very large and square, and it opened out to the street. It had a bay window with a table and chairs. I also had an armoire and a double bed. There was a meter-driven gas fireplace that required shillings, and a couple of over-stuffed lounge chairs. I had everything I needed, […]

I went to The Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, England. It wasn’t part of Oxford University; it had some affiliations but it was really a finishing school for English debutantes who wanted to meet and marry young undergraduates who had Lords for fathers. They all had thick ankles with peaches and cream complexions. They […]

In Okinawa, I made many enemies because I went into maintenance control with my own ideas. A major warned me that the men would punish me and he couldn’t protect me. He suggested I stay in the prop shop and I wouldn’t have any problems. So I opted for the trouble. I just never slept […]

I went to the public baths in Japan in gardens in separate houses. There were female attendants. I was often in Tokyo in the wintertime, and would walk to the bathhouse through the snow with little straw sandals in a light cotton kimono and nothing else. You took off your kimono and squatted down and […]