About Bellingham: There were two Huxley Colleges

July 14, 2025

(You may have read this first section, an extract from Still Standing After All These Years, the only surviving outpouring from the height of my mania. I'm including it here as a reminder of how really wired I was at first, and because it shows something of where I was going, and because beneath it all there's enough truthiness to provide some useful context for the month ahead.)

I imagine very few of you knew have heard of the first Huxley College, much less the newer one. If you have though, you're most likely to be aware of this old Marxist institution:

The first Huxley College shows up over a hundred years ago. You can still see it today if you know where to look.

Far fewer of you are likely to be aware of the other one, which came later:

Here's the other one, which came along about fifty years later. You can still see it today too.

Although you may not have been aware of either of these institutions of higher education, I can't believe any of you haven't heard of at least one and maybe both of their namesakes. The first was named for this old British white guy, whose ideas and writings seem especially relevant today. Very smart guy, Oxford grad, philosopher, writer of some note, but ultimately a failure: nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature nine times, but never got there. Loser.

Still, clearly a very smart guy. If a guy like this were alive today he probably wouldn't have that weed in his hand, he'd be a mega-billionaire with an enormous yacht parked at the some private island off the coast of Albania or wherever. and surprisingly enough, for such a loser he seems to be an especially relevant figure today. Go figure.

The first one was named for this old guy, nine-time loser. Aldous Huxley. You might have heard of him, maybe even read an Ai summary of one of his books.

In relocating this I came across Huxley's biography on Wikipedia, and was startled to find this excerpt:

He contracted the eye disease keratitis punctata in 1911; this "left [him] practically blind for two to three years"and "ended his early dreams of becoming a doctor". In October 1913, Huxley entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied English literature. He volunteered for the British Army in January 1916 amidst the First World War; however, he was rejected on health grounds, being half-blind in one eye. His eyesight later partly recovered. He edited Oxford Poetry in 1916, and in June of that year graduated BA with first class honours. His brother Julian wrote:

I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career ... His uniqueness lay in his universalism. He was able to take all knowledge for his province.

__________

The second was named for his biological brother, and thus also obviously just another old British white guy.

Aldous' brother Julius, another old loser from the past. Still, you might have heard of him too.

And finally, there's the oddity that I misnamed Julian. I'm sure it's because I had Romans on my mind - specifically Caligula and his horse, thinking ahead to where I planned to turn next if the iPad hadn't been about to die.

And then there's Aldous's other brother Darryl (hey, is that a Welsh name)? Also relevant today to Team Anderson particularly, because we've had Wales on our mind lately. Whales too, as far as that goes.

Oops. My bad. It's Karl, not Darryl. Brain fart, blame it on the prednisone. Karl doesn't look Welsh, but you never know - neither did Jones, the first time I learned better (thanks, Ms. Jones!). Also, not Aldous and Julian's brother either. Just another old white loser from the past. But whip smart too, smart enough to be a prof at Huxley college. At either of the two, really.

I was a student at Huxley (not the Huxley College, for those knowledgeable film buffs out there) in 1971, the year after I got out of the army inspired to become an environmental scientist and save the world. The first Earth Day event had occurred the first spring, and I was a member of the first class when it was spun off from from as a cluster college think it's

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OK. Enough of all that. Why am I getting discharged a month or two early from the army, getting an early out just before Christmas so that I can be one of the very few students in the Environmental Sciences division of Huxley College, arriving a quarter late but still a member of its founding class?

To step back in time a bit, I fell in love with the natural world from my childhood in West Virginia, heavily influenced by my surroundings that I wandered freely in on my own, but especially influenced by my new dad who married his Arthur Murray Dance teacher as soon as he got out of the navy and moved us all back to Charleston and life began for me. My earliest memory that I'm certain of is of arriving in Charleston in the middle of the night on the train.

As I've aged it has become clearer all the time what an enormous influence dad had on me and who I've become. It's from dad I became interested in birds, and I still have his hard-back copy of Audibon's Birds of America that he passed on to me. On the wall of my bedroom were two wooden-framed prints from that book, one of a blue jay and the other a cardinal.

It's from him that I became interested in trees, from taking walks through the hardwood forests and being amazed to see that he seemed to know every tree and shrub in the woods.

It's from him that I gained an interest in photography because dad was a photographer and developed his own prints in his darkroom.

And it's from mom and dad together that I gained my appreciation for music and song, because I see now that music was an integral part of our upbringing. Dad grew up in Bluefield on the border with Virginia, played Appalachian string instruments and knew countless folk songs. Mom's musical tastes were much different but just as central to her life as his were. She favored jazz and the classics, both of which are also at the heart of my own musical interests. And how many kids grow up with a pet Siamese cat like Piti-Sing, named for a character from the Mikado?

And to step back just a bit further to how mom and dad first met. The story is different than I'd always understood until Elizabeth filled in a detail I'd never heard before at our coffee date about the time I wrote that mad post. It's true that dad fell in love with his Arthur Murray teacher, but it wasn't mom. It was some other dance teacher he became smitten with. Mom showed up as a substitute teacher one night and after the lesson he walked her home, the two of them holding hands walking down the street and singing songs together. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that they practiced a few of their dance steps as they walked. It's unbelievable to me to hear this now, a real life Singin' in the Rain fairy tale.

Which all sounds pretty far removed from how I came to be a student at Huxley College. Trust me, we'll get there - but this is probably a good spot to stop for now.

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Bob KoreisGene Kelly was an amazing entertainer. Remember his search for Miss Turnstiles?

Trivia time. He was the last guest on The Muppet Show, although the storyline was that he was invited to watch, not to perform. He declines to do Singing In The Rain, but then . . . https://youtu.be/QTlY_HZp914?si=eX-3JXiDam5dpdNj
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