reporter's notebook
crazy ladies i have known
By MIKE LEE
Of the Emerald
I remember interviewing my first Crazy
Lady.
Her name was Eloisa Whipple, a
55-year-old overweight grandmother
who believed she once was Queen Ne
phertite of Egypt.
That was three years ago. I was
reminded of Eloisa the other day when
my mother questioned my recent story
on Robert Artison, a practicing witch.
“This can't be true," she told me.
When my mother, a faceless bureaucrat
at the University, questions her own
son’s credibility, I know I'm in trouble.
Yes, Mom, these people exist. They
come to campus in search of people to
follow them to a new way of living.
Eloisa, being my first, was my best. I
had never heard of auras, or the astral, or
regressive hypnosis, and it was all I could
do to keep from laughing in her face.
Especially when she described her
tangled family tree. Because of the ram
pant reincarnation of her relatives, her
28-year-old son was her father in two
previous lives.
"He still tries to father me a lot in a
loving sort of way,” she said
And though her husband of 32 years
had died in 1973, Eloisa felt better since
he had just been reborn as her grandson,
she told me.
"What a crazy lady," I thought as I
drove back to the Emerald. I still call her
that, now capitalized, but it's a term of
endearment rather than disdain.
Crazy Ladies, male or female, have
found unique ways to handle our crazy
society, that’s all. What they offer to
themselves, and to their followers, is
tranquility: they sincerely believe they
have found the answer to life, and that
sincerity is a bulwark against our ques
tioning world.
But enough of the streetcorner philo
sophizing. Back to the fun stuff.
Almost a year passed before I met my
next Crazy Lady. And while she wasn’t
Queen Nephertite, Liz Bedford said that
in a previous life she had performed the
rites of a South American temple virgin.
Temple virgins aren’t as glamorous as
the movies portray them. "It was a rip
off," Liz recalled. "They tore my heart
out."
The next March — we're in 1980 now —
I met Saniel Bonder, an emissary from Da
Free John, formerly Bubba Free John,
born Franklin Jones. John ran the Free
Primitive Church of Divine Communion,
which taught the Way of Divine Ignor
ance: a way to "realign our bodies and
minds to the All-Pervading Conscious
Life of the universe that radiates from
every heart,” according to a church
pamphlet.
While I sat down to digest all of that,
Saniel told the story of how he met John.
Finding the "God-realized being” in the
just-opened Vision Mound Sanctuary in
Northern California, Saniel kneeled
before him. John held out his hand, and
Bonder offered him a bouquet of flowers.
John took the flowers, set them to the
side and held out his hand again. Saniel
gave him some fruit. John set the fruit by
the flowers and held out his hand again.
“I had nothing left to give him but
myself,” Saniel remembered, “so I
jumped in his lap.”
And now Robert Artison, who says he
was once "official witch” to the Los
Angeles Dodgers.
Bob is the funniest of the people I've
met. During our interview, he gave me an
apple and told me to share it with
someone I know to test his claims. I didn’t
realize until now the witty symbolism of
his offering the fruit.
Thanks, Bob. One of these days I’m
going to call you, and Saniel, and Liz,
and dear Eloisa, and we’re all going to
get together for a beer somewhere.
Why? Because I’m graduating soon,
and I’ll have to go out into the Real World
and interview scores of politicians —
after that, I’ll need a drink with the only
sane people I know.
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J
House votes
on salaries
SALEM (AP) — Arguing that
they are worth their pay, state
representatives refused by
three votes Monday to slice their
own salaries by 15 percent.
Six Republicans joined most
of the Democrats in voting
against cutting their own salar
ies. The losing side was heavily
Republican, joined by Rep. Jeff
Gilmour, D-Jefferson and
several other conservative
Democrats.
Gilmour, who proposed the
pay cut, said he might ask for a
new vote Tuesday.
“The days of wine and roses
are over,” Gilmour said. “The
gravy train stops here.”
Gilmour said that as co
chairer of the Joint Ways and
Means Committee he is painfully
aware that there can be no
sacred cows when budgets are
cut.
He called on his colleagues to
“be the ones to walk the plank
first.”
Legislators are paid $700 a
month during their terms of of
fice plus $44 in expenses each
calendar day the Legislature is
in session. Gilmour wanted to
amend a bill (HB3170) about
legislative operations by reduc
ing the monthly pay to $595.
“I think I’m worth the money
the state pays me,” said Rep
Max Rijken, D-Newport. He said
he considers working for his
constituents “a matter of
privilege and honor, but I can
not eat that."
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