What is now known as Lorch Hall was simply the Architecture and Design school before relocating to North Campus in the mid 70’s. While walking through the building this past Homecoming week-end I was reminded of the freshman/sophomore design studio on the third floor. Then it was a two story high space with large, and tall, windows facing east. One thing that students tried to do was stack and interlock the drafting stools to see if you could reach the ceiling of the studio. At the end of my freshman year, this became a more important task because during the summer break, a new 4th floor would be inserted into the studio. But even though several students tried, they were never able to reach that ceiling.

In 2007 I was a featured author at the Ann Arbor Book Festival. The night before I was to teach nonfiction writing at a day long seminar preceding the festival, my husband and I went to check out the location of the Mason Hall room where I was to lecture (Time machine Oct., 2008). As I opened the door of that room, I was thunderstruck to realize that it was the same room where, 45 years earlier, I sat as a journalism student. It was the same Diag view, though the more leafy trees obscured, same chimes from the League. How transcendent, after a 45 year career of law and journalism to return serendipitously to the Mason Hall room where my career began. It was eerie, this wheel of life coming full circle: from Mason Hall to Mason Hall: the Alpha and the Omega. I walked to the fishbowl where students in the 1960s solicited signatures on petitions for every social cause then fashionable. Cold winters: taking my hands out of gloves quickly to work the frozen lock on my bike outside Mason where my yellow brick road began. Hoping for spring.

The photo essay of the “Fishbowl” (Time machine Oct., 2008) brought back many memories of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Even as one of the sliderule-carrying engineering students, I found myself frequenting the “Fishbowl” and the connecting “Gaza Strip.” As my wiser fraternity brothers advised, that was the place that even engineers could meet girls!

While working for Sasaki Walker in Sausalito, CA, Bill visited his old schoolmate, Pete Walker. He gave a slide show and judged our work and he really impressed this young, aspiring to be landscape architect, with his professional demeanor and creative skills. Pete encouraged me to attend graduate school, and after considering several throughout the country, I selected Michigan primarily because Bill Johnson would be teaching in the graduate program.
That was a good decision, for Bill is a terrific Landscape Architect and inspiring professional. I was offered a summer job at JJ&R, Bill’s offices in Ann Arbor, which I eagerly accepted. This opportunity gave me the chance to work on challenging, urban projects and collage campuses throughout Michigan and the Great Lakes Region.
The MLA program was held in the old Chiever House, next to the Law Quad. I tried to find this building on Michigan’s web site, but alas…the house must have been removed and forgotten. Apparently, the Chiever House wasn’t worthy enough for a place in Michigan’s history. I admit to being a bit disappointed, in that this old building had distinctive character and served L.A. students well for many years.
My time at Michigan was a major Benchmark in my career, but I was ready to get going. As soon as I was notified in December 1971, that I could graduate, my wife and I caught the next plane to London. We spent several weeks on ferries, riding buses and hitchhiking through Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey, visiting gardens and magical ruins of antiquity.
On returning to the West Coast, I accepted a position in Honolulu with Donald Wolbrink, a Michigan Alumni from the past (I can’t find him on the U-M Web Site). Don was considered the Father of Planning in the Pacific Rim. I may have been over my head, but I loved the pressure, flying about the Pacific and delving into new and challenging subjects. My Project List is too long to talk about here, but can be viewed on www.barroneldridge.net
After some 50 years as a practicing Landscape Architect, I can say that this has been a wonderful ride. I attribute my success to the wonderful training I had at the University of Michigan’s, Rackham School of Graduate Studies and the inspirations given by William J. Johnson, Landscape Architect.

I remember Angell Hall (Time machine Oct., 2008) for the only course I took in LSA, Astronomy. It was taught by Prof. Hazel Losh. We had about 75 students in the class the first day. By the second day, Prof. Losh called on each student by their first and last name. A prodigious feat. Four years later, after I had been away from Ann Arbor for at least three years, she met me on the Diag and said, “Hello Mr. Botzner.”

Most of my memories of Michigan are good ones, but seeing the photos of the fishbowl (Time machine Oct., 2008) brought back the feeling of fear I had walking into the fishbowl and having to walk the gauntlet down that long windowed hallway where frat boys sat and made comments on the passing girls…often animal noises. Would they snort when I passed? Would they moo? Their mean laughter would echo after their victims. Are they gone now? I sincerely hope so.

This is an homage to the humble Fishbowl heaters (Time machine Oct., 2008). Long, low, ductwork under the great plate windows like a postmodern stainless steel banquette, those vents sent warmth up through countless thousands of blue-jeaned backsides every year. Back in the days when winters got cold, the corners farthest from the door proved the best place on campus to read through the stack of Great Books every fledgling English Major had to master.

Freshman year, I commuted twenty miles to attend my Honors College classes, then I worked nights down the hill from South and West Quads in a little deli on Main Street. Like many commuter students, I found it problematic meeting students socially. As soon as the cold set in Fall Term, that long, low bank of heaters that ran under the Fishbowl windows started to feel like my new best friend.

The winter turned bitter weeks before finals and it was on that steel sofa that I read Kafka in German and Oedipus Rex in English translation. Alongside dozens of other chilly students, I baked my backsides, watched tabling clubs selling donuts every morning, gazed at the swarms and flows of students on their way to great things. I drew pictures and cartoons for The Michigan Daily. I might have gone on that way all four years of my undergraduate studies, if a trio of Computer Science students had not come into my deli one night for cheese and crackers.

Dangerously exotic, none of them had showered in days—I found out later that the water heater had broken at their apartment, but at the time, I didn’t ask. I was struck dumb in awe of their joie de vivre. They swaggered merrily through life perfectly certain, despite a lengthy and demoralizing international recession, that they would win (or create!) lucrative careers after college. As it happened, they did just that. O, how I envied and admired the Three Musketeers of software! For a moment, I felt like D’Artagnon. Then they chose cheese, doffed their down-insulated hoods, bundled up and bade me au revoir.

When Winter Term dawned hideously cold, I was back on the heaters between classes in Angell and Mason Halls. It looked like another term of books and drawings, solo on the steel bench. Just then, I looked up from my drawing and there stood one of those amazing Computer Science students. And he had showered! He sat down next to me and said, “Don’t you sell cheese?” and, “Hey, it’s nice and warm here!” and “I don’t have a class for an hour. How about you?” It was not long before the weather improved all over town, but that warming trend began for me on the steel heaters in the Fishbowl.

There are barely words for the days and nights I spent “writing papers” in the fishbowl (Time machine, Oct., 2008). My best friend and I would spend hours (sometimes bordering days) in the Fishbowl, half the time savoring our youth rather than writing those papers. My 4 years at Michigan were the best years I’ve ever had. It is not surprising to me that some of my favorite memories are in that computer lab–such is the life of a Michigan undergrad.

I must say in all honesty that my four years at University of Michigan were and will continue to be four of the greatest years of my life. However, one class in particular changed my entire view of the university and of myself.

Second semester senior year is supposed to be a lighter load for most students, so naturally my friends and I looked for classes that would be fun and relatively unchallenging. We signed up for a class taught by a woman who had been a shaman in Ecuador. The class consisted of meditation, relaxing dance moves, drawing and expressing out creativity. At first we all thought this class was more or less an easy ride, yet as it went on, we began to learn that relaxing your mind and body and harnessing your inner creativity is actually one of the most powerful tools, and, yes, it has to be taught. By the end of the class I not only knew how to approach my school work better, but my life in general.

I do not remember the exact name of the class, which in the long run isn’t too important, yet for this posting a bit, but not one day passes where I do not utilize the techniques and thought processes I learned.

I truly believe that this area of study should grow, offering more classes and variations of this type of teaching. While it is not exactly a “text-book” type of class, it carries its weight based upon what each and every student gains from the experience of being taught how to relax, to organize your mind, how to tackle internal issues (such as college itself) and come out better off.