I’ve been home in bed all day with what I hope is just a bad cold. Miserable, yes, but it did allow me time enough to listen to something that absolutely blew my mind. A few days ago my colleague Norie Guthrie showed me something that turned up in the old ktru tapes that she’s been digitizing. (If you haven’t been checking out her posts on woodsononline, you should do so. The blog highlights all sorts of things in our collection and her “ktru Tuesday” entries are fantastic.)
The first thing we digitized when we got the equipment was a tape of the student meeting in the gym during the Masterson Crisis, which I talked about here. But this is what she showed me the other day:
I haven’t managed to get through it all yet but the first thing I heard was Dr. Masterson’s remarks and the questions that followed on this Saturday afternoon in February 1969:
There were a couple of moments when I found myself shaking. Here’s the thing: I no longer have to rely completely on what other people said happened that day. I can hear it myself. You can even hear him fiddling around with the bullhorn.
I’m so grateful to the people who recorded this, to the people who have kept it safe all this time, and to Norie.