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LAND USE MANAGEMENT
TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET
Interviewee:
Jim Kennedy
Place of Interview:
Date of Interview:
Quinney Library, College of Natural Resources, USU
May 4, 2009 & May 5, 2009
Interviewer:
Recordist:
Barbara Middleton
Barbara Middleton
Recording Equipment:
Transcription Equipment used:
Transcribed by:
Transcript Proofed by:
Radio Shack, CTR-122
Power Player Transcription Software: Executive
Communication Systems
Susan Gross
Barbara Middleton 25August 2009; Randy Williams, 12 July 2011;
Becky Skeen, Fall 2012
Brief Description of Contents: Kennedy discusses his childhood experiences in nature and
feelings toward nature. He talks about his professional career and relationships (with the Forest
Service and as a professor), and how those have helped him form his current perspective and
worldview.
Reference:
BM = Barbara Middleton (Interviewer; Interpretive Specialist, Environment &
Society Dept., USU College of Natural Resources)
JK = Jim Kennedy
NOTE: Interjections during pauses or transitions in dialogue such as “uh” and starts and stops in
conversations are not included in transcribed. All additions to transcript are noted with brackets.
Tape four was never turned into the USU Special Collections for deposit or transcription. At the
end of the transcript is Professor Kennedy’s 2005 CV.
TAPE TRANSCRIPTION
[Tape 1 of 3: A]
BM:
This is Barbara Middleton, and we are here on the USU campus with Jim Kennedy on
Monday, April 4th. It’s about 2:00 in the afternoon, and we’re in the Quinney Natural
Resources Library, recording for the Logan Canyon Land Use Management Project.
So, welcome Jim.
JK:
Thank you.
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�BM:
Why don’t you go ahead and start off with your –
JK:
Do you just want me to follow the script? Pretty much, until I get down to my – yeah, let’s
just do that.
BM:
Why don’t you start with your full name and then a biographical sketch?
JK:
I’m James Joseph Kennedy, III. I was born in Philadelphia in 1940; it was about four weeks
after Hitler invaded the Benelux Countries. My first memories are of the city. I was a first
child with my grandparents. And the only person that wasn’t involved in the war effort was
my grandmother, who pretty much raised me. My grandfather worked in the steel mills and
was a Labor Union organizer (which is deep in my DNA, in my social values and the way I
look at the world). My father was in charge of building altimeters, eventually for B29s and
RCA. My mother was the executive secretary for a firm that suddenly became hugely
important in developing fire extinguishing foam systems for aircraft carriers.
I remember when the war ended. I remember the black shades on the windows. I remember
the sense of, you know, everyone working hard to do something to defeat evil. The first
Christmas present I can remember asking for at age three – excuse me, age four – was a
wagon, so I could go collect tin and paper and recycle stuff to help defeat evil.
But after the war was over we moved up to central Pennsylvania. My favorite place in
Philadelphia were always the parks, even when they put gun emplacements up on Fernhill
Park, next to Midvale Steel in Philadelphia (you know, in case of supposed bombing or
attack or anything on that important industry that proved a large portion of the metal for the
Philadelphia naval yards). I always spent time in the park, even when they tried to keep
people out of that. I bartered with the guards to let me go in at certain times in that restricted
territory, just to be out where it was green, and trees and birds, and even garter snakes in
that part of Philadelphia. My favorite place to go was to go to the zoo. I always loved the
wild lands.
And so after the war when my father had to change jobs and move up to central
Pennsylvania, we moved on to a farm. We rented the farm and the family (a huge family,
with probably an average of maybe 7th grade education, with about their nine children)
rented the land, 300 acres of the farm that we were living on, renting the house on. They had
a smaller, less prosperous adjacent farm, and that wild land and those fields, and also the
open-heartedness of these (and in no disrespect say “simple”) people.
Probably one of the persons that had one of the greatest impacts on my life is still alive at
probably 95; one of the young men there, never married. He took to us kids and we followed
him, he started paying us a pittance to work for him. I learned never to whine, you know,
never to complain; never to blame anyone. It just didn’t benefit you. I learned a work ethic. I
learned that’s how you got respect from adults, by doing what you’re told without whining
and doing it well. But also being able to have a sense of humor and irony and fun at what
you were doing. And a person that probably didn’t graduate from junior high taught me that
as much as anybody. And also, just how to live off the land – which they did legally and
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�illegally with great skill; had been doing so for generations. I don’t think any of those
people, other than maybe a brother that was strapped into the war had ever been more than
50 miles from where they were born. It was a very rural, rural area.
Someone once described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia to the east, Pittsburgh to the west,
and Appalachia in between; and I was raised in Appalachia.
BM:
What was the town?
JK:
It was called Montgomery, Pennsylvania. Then we moved a few miles to less of a middle
town (though all those towns were middle towns, and would now be called “rust bucket”
areas). Then we moved into town, bought a house. That was the first house my parents
owned, and that would have been 15 years of marriage (I just turned 12), and we moved to
that little town. We had been going over there to the Catholic Church, so I knew some
Catholic kids there. Our graduation class was only 49, of which three of us got PhDs, and
about a third of us went to college (which is really astounding when I think of it).
But when I moved, it was very much a small town. Everybody knew you almost to a fault,
and especially even a smaller subset of our community of 2500 people within a church and a
school. But it was a good place to grow up. I was, again, much closer to the floodplain and
the tributaries of the Susquehanna River – which was just like, you know, Huckleberry Finn,
Tom Sawyer’s playground and growing up an adventure place for me.
I spent a lot of time in the forest and woods. I always liked getting up early in the morning,
even if there weren’t cows to milk, or traps to check. But I was always involved in trapping,
hunting, fishing and getting up early in the morning. I was an ADHD kid, so I was
hyperactive, easily bored, short attention span, hated being cooped up inside of buildings
(whether it was for church, for family reunions or for school). And by getting out early in
the morning and releasing some energy and feeding my spirit and having some control over
my life independently of the adult world, I was ready to face the adult world at 8:45 when
the school bell rang. And I found it was wonderful therapy for me. So I always went to the
woods, and went to the fields and the streams.
BM:
You mentioned trapping. Would you tell us a little bit about that?
JK:
Well it’s as brutal of a relationship as you can have with nature, maybe with the exception
of bull fighting. And at the time I knew that. One of the earliest things I had to wrestle with
as a child was my sensitivity to animals and lots of stuff that wasn’t okay for boys in the
‘40s and ‘50s to have. If you brought up as a topic it was usually shunned and ridiculed or
laughed at, so you rarely did that. The only people you might be able to talk to with were
girls, and that wasn’t cool at that age in that era either. And so I remember that I never, ever
missed going out to check my trap line. I remember one time my mother trying to lock me
in when I had a 103 fever. The chances of finding a muskrat in the traps that I set, the way
we set them alive after five minutes when the trap would bite them and they would dive in
the water for protection, they would drown; maybe one out of 20 of the muskrats we took
out of our traps were alive, which was increased torture. I always considered that really
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�important, and mortal sin to me would’ve been, you know – some people do not check a
trap line for two, three, or four days. That, to me, was just unpardonable. So in a perverse
way it did develop a certain ethic. And you know, my feelings that 4:45 or 5:10 in the
morning when it was raining outside wasn’t the issue, damn it. You had a job to do and if
you want to engage in such a brutal activity, you had to have at least some standards
involved in the process. A lot of the animals we were trapping had bounties on them, such
as fox and weasel.
When I first started trapping, at probably age 10, the state said they were bad and gave you
money to prove it – there was a certain sense of – you know everything was, you know,
most beliefs were accepted with zero tolerance. This was it, period; whether it was your
being educated in your religion, your politics or in school. And if you had feelings against
that, especially as a man, you were supposed to get a hold of them. And the fact that
shooting animals, or trapping them especially, would bother me and continued to do so was
troublesome to me. And I thought somehow that I was wrong. Most the other adult males
and boys didn’t seem to have that problem at all.
But I loved the mornings. I must say that I probably enjoyed trapping more than anything; I
was usually out by myself. And later as I became a teenager and we got automobiles with
my trapping buddy (we’re still very close) – he went right into the steel mills after high
school, and we still talk and respect and love each other very much. So for about three years
I did it with a person who I became very, very close to. Plus it was earning money, which
was really important. And earning money was a badge of manhood, and adulthood, and
responsibility and accomplishment. And we earned money from it; we were very, very good
at it. And we worked hard at it, and fast, and checked our traps (you know, we were out
there twice a day). The number of animals we caught per trap, per year was astounding;
maybe the average would be three and for us it was 30!
BM:
Wow.
JK:
Because we moved them everyday, you know if they didn’t catch anything. And moved fast
through a stream, and then came back over it a month later, for example, just to get a high
probably sets with your traps. And I hunted and fished; all of that stuff as well.
BM:
Just in terms of setting your traps, you’re saying they’re in wet areas?
JK:
Well, obviously fox and weasel weren’t; but for mink, raccoon and primarily muskrat.
Muskrat were the most abundant, the easiest to catch and they were, you know you could
average $1.50 per pelt – which today would probably be $10.
BM:
Um-hmm.
JK:
And if you caught, you know, 500 of them – well, we’d catch about 350 a season. So you
know, multiply that times $10 – for some kids to do something. Well we’d get 350 when we
had a car, with about 45-50 traps. And of course you had to skin them; you know, skin them,
scrape them, cure them. And it was a lot of work, and a lot of effort, and a lot of skill. There
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�was a blood and blister intimacy with everything that you did in that rural environment in
the ‘40s and ‘50s; whether it was recreation, whether it was work, whether it was
hunting/fishing, and whether it was you getting paddled by the teachers or something, you
know. It was much more intimate and direct than today.
BM:
The money that you earned, was that to help support your family?
JK:
Well, saving money for college, so indirectly yes. But also, you know anything you wanted
you had to – anything extra other than Christmas presents and birthday presents – you had to
get for yourself. And if you broke a birthday present, you know, that was tough. You had to
replace it. And so it was you know, the money was important. When we lived on the farm
we weren’t that wealthy. I was the first Kennedy in my family to go to college. I bet you I
killed and we ate cottontails and squirrels, probably 200 year, for the family. That’s quite a
lot of protein. In fact a columnist used to call squirrels “meat that grew on trees.” On the
other side of the Mississippi, here’s a rodent that didn’t hibernate, and didn’t burrow under
the snow like mice – it was always up in trees, it was always visible, and it kept a huge
number of families from starving over the winters. They were always abundant.
BM:
How did you prepare it?
JK:
Oh you know, you usually par-boil them, and then roast them, bake them. You can make
squirrel stew; they’re very tough meat, but they’re very good, very succulent. It’s unlike
rabbit, you know. Rabbits are easier to vanish; squirrels are very muscular, but very good
protein and very good food. And woodchucks, you know. All sorts of stuff we’d eat, and
lots of it. And of course we’d always kill a couple of deer. So we had huge pit freezers, old
ice cream freezers that would hold three times the amount that a normal freezer would
today, that we would keep in a special room because they took up so much space.
BM:
And by a pit freezer, you mean a deep freeze?
JK:
Yeah, that’s right, yeah. And so I grew up – my brothers didn’t – but I grew up as the oldest,
you know, doing a lot of that providing for the family. Then we moved more to a town
where they cut grass and worked in grocery stores (all of which I did too) in the summer.
But I worked just about every day, and with a trap on you worked – it was weekends and
everything.
BM:
Sounds like having a dairy cow.
JK:
Yeah. And I milked cows by hand when we lived on the farm, until I was 12. And then I
worked on farms in the summer, but by then the farms that employed us were milking with
automatic equipment, and milking 100 cows a day; big, big operations. And I liked that too.
I like the smell of fresh hay, I like using my muscles, I like being out in the sun, I like being
on the farm. By then, using heavy equipment before you could drive at 16 you could be
driving powerful machinery, and very dangerous equipment on the farm; and I liked that. In
fact, if my father had owned a decent farm, I might have never gone to college or certainly
wouldn’t have left afterwards.
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�I liked the rhythm of farm work, and I like the smells and the connections and the meaning,
the depth, and the – I don’t want to call it spirituality, but the meditativeness of it all. It was
very meditative work; I never had more time to think than when I was plowing. You don’t
have that much time to think around a university. Much more time to think when you’re
doing something – all you had to do is every five minutes just lift the plow, spin it around
and drop it. I loved plowing at night, in the spring with the odors and the smells and the pull
of the plow. Before I left the farm in Montgomery at age 12, they wouldn’t let me around
heavy equipment. But the farmers, they were so poor, they didn’t have much equipment. I
used the last two draft horses they had in a couple of generations, they could remember the
names of all the draft horses: Tony and Burt because they were safe. And I would harrow
corn with Tony and Burt and do things like that, that were slow and boring – while they
would be on the expensive equipment, and the high status equipment, the tractor (and the
more dangerous equipment).
BM:
Um-hmm.
JK:
And the smell of horses, and being around horses that weighed then, probably ten times as
much as I did as a skinny ten year old. And that gentleness and that power and that
predictability and that loyalty: both literally and figuratively. Draft horses are, you know,
deep in my memories – symbolically as well as just fond memories. When people talk about
ice skating and horses for fun – I just associate that with work, you know. Once the ice
would freeze on the Susquehanna River, I’d go out and I’d skate five miles before school,
just checking the muskrat traps through the ice. So ice skating and horses, that was work
(not un-fond memories), and of course trucks too. And now trucks are these, you know,
“boy toys.” You know, I can remember pickup trucks in the ’40s that were rough, nasty,
uncomfortable, and there were dozens of parts on those trucks that have developed a taste
for human blood; they would bite your fingers around the tailgates, and they were sharp, and
nasty and mean! Nothing cozy about a bloody truck.
Well and there’s nothing cozy about Holsteins either, and a measure or a mark of becoming
an urban world is how people romanticize Holsteins. You know, after the first 10% of their
life Holsteins aren’t very playful, you know, it’s hard to have much of a relationship with
them. They just line up and you pull the milk out of them, and then shovel away all their
crap and put it in the manure spreader in the spring (which was really back-breaking work),
shovel the food into them. And most of it became manure; about 5% of all the silage and
hay you’ve worked so hard to store up for them and feed them, ended up in milk. Most of it
ended up in back-breaking feces to haul out and put on the field. But you know you learned
the rhythm of working a fork and using your back and spinning your body. And I must say
when we’d come back from Sunday Mass often, as a kid in the winter when the cows were
in underneath the barn in a (mostly) covered barnyard –
BM:
Bank barns?
JK:
Yeah. It was a big – you know Pennsylvania barns – this was a serious barn. There were a
couple of cows, probably 30, they milked by hand. And I’d put some fresh straw down and
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�bring them over on the south side where there would be a window; and you know, they
would plop down and I’d lie against the cows and read – they generate so much heat.
There’s never nothing going on inside a cow’s belly. I mean it is like New York traffic at
noon! I mean there is bubbling, and gurgling, and gas, and belching; they are always
chewing, and farting, and gurgling. And it’s really kind of content to just lay on Sunday,
when you didn’t have to work (until you had to milk them by the time the sun went down).
When it would be sleeting and nasty outside, to lie against a cow and read; and I would do
that.
BM:
Your comments and your stories are so sensuous in a way that is not just milking the cow,
but everything associated with it. You know, it’s no wonder you have such connections with
natural resources, with the kinds of feelings and emotions that you have in just explaining
life on the farm.
JK:
Um-hmm.
BM:
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it described quite that way.
JK:
Well, even milking cows by hand – I mean I still have the forearms of a hand cow-milker or
a piano player. That’s about the two ways you really get gripping forearms that way.
There’s almost nothing physical that I ever would shut down on than milking. You can only
milk a certain point, and then your hands would cramp up. You’d go in for breakfast and
you couldn’t hold a spoon. Your hands would just be knotted. And that would be on the first
cow and a half or two cows; it takes incredible grip and strength to hold and strip those
teats. And if you’ve ever looked closely to the back of a cow – the hind, where the hams
meet the stomach cavity, there’s a piece of skin, and you can pull that down and put your
head up underneath there when it’s really cold. And you can put your head up right next to a
cow, and of course your ear is right next to its stomach –
BM:
Right.
JK:
And you really, it’s like listening to the earth’s core. I mean, seriously. There’s just a lot –
with all the fermentation that occurs in the digestive process, and all the double, triple
chewing, you know, and all the gases (methane gases) are created by that process. Cows
really – a cow is never quiet. Gurgling and it’s kind of interesting. And it was kind of
meditative; you could hear the milk hitting the can: bing, bam, bam. And then the milk
would fill up and it would change tune. And your head would be warm; you’d be against
this animal that (some of them you had to put kickers on to milk by hand).
BM:
What was that?
JK:
They were chain kickers – you would put them around the back two legs, you’d just wrap
them around. It was kind of a clamp that was on their hamstring, their Achilles tendon, if
you will. You put it on a clamp and you just wrap the chain around. And it was loose, but if
they kicked, it thwarted that; it stopped that.
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�And I worked on farms during my teenage years, even though I could’ve worked in grocery
stores for half the time and as much money. And I worked with some real jerks too, on some
farms. Men had damaged little boys inside them that were just jerks; weren’t happy, weren’t
content, weren’t peaceful. And even though they had the potential – they weren’t inherently
evil or vicious if you gave them the benefit of the doubt – by their behavior they often
looked that way. I still liked working out with my body, rather than working in a grocery
store. And I liked the smells and feels out there, compared to being in the grocery store, or
in a garage, or in the mills (which money drove me into when I started going to college).
And I worked in the mills – you know cabinet mills, with all the smell of lacquer and
sawdust, all the noise and toxic you know, steel mills with all the danger and noise and
banging. And that I never, never liked. But I could make money; I could make serious
money there.
I didn’t start out in Forestry, you know. Being the first Kennedy to go to college, I wanted to
be an artist, but my parents wouldn’t hear of it; especially my mother who was very
emotional, and very insecure, and very status-driven, and upwardly mobile (what the
neighbors think). They want me to be a doctor or lawyer; when I first said I liked to be an
artist, you know, “Glory be to God! Jesus, Mary and Joseph you’re never going to make any
money, you’re going to be living with some Protestant girl in Greenwich Village you’re not
married with!” You know – I wouldn’t do that. “You’re going to be broke! We’re not going
to work our fingers to the bone to send you to be some artist.” And I said, “Mom, I can be
an art teacher until I make it.” “No, no, no!”
So I had a really close friend to the family, unlike some of the men that I worked for that I
told you about – but he was a dentist in Scranton, Pennsylvania (we called him “Uncle” but
he wasn’t, he was just a good friend of the family). He was sweet; he was one of the first
men that was really sweet and seemed to be okay with it and everyone else was – he was
just a nice guy. And his son didn’t want to be a dentist and he said, “Be a dentist Jimmy, and
you know, you’ll come on by the time I can start you in my practice; you’ll give me some
time off and I’ll just give you the practice after you work there for five or six years.” You
know, it was job security and a good income and a house in suburbia, but I was having
nightmares about putting my hand in people’s warm, red mouth. Now I’m an adolescent and
I’m sure Freud would have a field day with that!
BM:
[Laughing]
JK:
But I would wake up full of sweat, just terrified, thinking, “Oh my god! I’m going to be
reaching in mouths all day!” Inside a dentist’s office always smelled terrible, and you cause
pain to people. And so I went up to Penn State to interview, and they gave me (this would
have been the summer of ’58), they gave me the test of what I would be good at. It was this
pimple-faced (probably Master’s) grad student psychologist, you know, that has to do the
grunt work after the meeting with the parents. But my parents were such ‘40s product, you
know, early 19th century product, and [he] looked official; they gave them the benefit of the
doubt, to a fault.
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�So he’s looking through my results and said, “You don’t score very high here, being a
dentist. Why do you want to be a dentist?” And I said, “Well, I really don’t.” And he said
(he was very official at first), and then he sent my parents out and then he asked me that
question. He said, “Why are you doing it?” And I said, “Well, my parents want me to and
I’d be working, blah, blah, blah.” And he said, “But are you going to be happy doing that?”
I said, “No, I don’t think so, but I’ll just spend the weekends hunting and fishing and doing
stuff to compensate for that.” And he said, “Well what job would you really like to do?”
And I said, “Well, I’d like to be a forester.” And he said, “Well, look right here, you score
very high on the success chart for that.” And he said, “We have a very good forestry
program here.” I said, “Yeah, I know.” And he said, “Well, I tell you what. Why don’t we
talk to your parents?” And so my parents came in and he brought that up, my mother, “Oh,
glory be to god! He’s going to work out in a fire tower and be living with bears, and we’ll
never see him, he’ll never make any money, he’ll just be a hermit and I’ll never be a
grandmother!”
BM:
[Laughing]
JK:
But my father said, “Well, why do you want to do that Jim?” And I said, “I think I’ll be
happy.” “Happy? Happy, what’s happy have to do with it, for god’s sakes?” [Laughing] So,
the guy said, “Listen, I have to take a break.” So I remember we went out at the HUB, you
know – I think it was the Hetzel Student Union –
BM:
Hetzel Student Union Building.
JK:
And we leaned on the railing, looking down, across campus towards the town, you know, in
that direction (I remember the direction we were looking at, down towards DU, which was
the fraternity I was in when I went to school there). And dad said, “Why do you want to do
it?” I said, “I think it will make me happy, Dad.” And he said, “Well, happy hmm?” He said,
“Well, I haven’t been very happy in what I’ve done most of my life, so if you want to do it,
I’ll support you. I’ll manage Mom.”
And that was the most intimate – my father was very spoiled, very self-centered; the only
child of an Irish immigrant (she didn’t get married until she was in her 30s, and been a
domestic until that point); spoiled him rotten. But he was a nice guy, but you had to – one of
the reasons that I learned to hunt and fish is that was the only way I could spend time with
him. You had to do what he wanted to do. And long before I could carry a gun, I was his
beagle. I skinned all the animals, cleaned the fish, you know, take care of his fly lines, dry
them. I mean I was his page, you know if you will. And he, you know, for a gentleman that
was quite appropriate. But we did spend time together and we got to like and know each
other. But that’s one of the only times where I really thought he understood me and came to
my rescue. So I switched into Forestry and never regretted it.
Although I was getting into Forestry because I thought I could escape a complex world by
working in the trees and not having to deal with people and feelings, and check on my trap
line on the way to mark timber, or something out west. Seldom would be heard a
discouraging word. I never knew I would have to work with people; I was terrified of
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�speaking. I was pretty insecure too. I was running away from things getting into forestry, as
much as I was drawn to, you know, thinking it would be a good thing to do; it would be a
noble area that I would be involved in public service.
BM:
So tell me what it was like studying forestry at that time, in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s?
JK:
It was very much like getting ready for your confirmation. You know, you were taught
Forestry like the Baltimore catechism as a Catholic. This is truth, get it dummy, and don’t
forget it. Fire is bad; you put it out by 10 o’clock, end of story. No debate; there was no
room for ambiguity, much less a sense of humor with my professors or imagination. And the
image of what they were training you for was a driver’s license, rather than a learner’s
permit. I mean, there was none of this continuous learning imagery and what we talk about
now, today, in any stage of education: imagination, taking risks, confrontation, all that stuff
– it’s more talked about than practiced. And it still isn’t as embraced among colleagues as
much as you would think it would with all the lather about it. And I resisted that, you know.
I wasn’t a very good student. I was a C+ student until my junior year, when I said, “To hell
with it! I’m killing myself; I’m working 60 hours a week, you know. I’m smoking a couple
of packs of cigarettes a day; I’m not having any fun.” By the end of my sophomore year we
went to summer camp in central Pennsylvania, I still had yet to go work for my first forestry
job. I’d got back and work –
[End Tape 1 side A, begin Tape 1 side B]
BM:
Side 2, with Jim Kennedy. Sophomore year.
JK:
Yeah, I said, “The heck with it. I’m going to join a fraternity; I’m going to start having fun.”
I went out for lacrosse. I cut back my studying to 40 hours a week, you know, and my grade
point average – I started dating girls. My grade point average jumped. Probably jumped
from a 2.3, was my grade point average at the end of my sophomore year – which was 60%
of the total credits in those days, the way that they would cram so much in the first two
preparatory years – and my grade point average jumped to 3. And I started feeling better
about myself. I think my colleagues, my fraternity brothers voted me into leadership
positions: as Rush Chairman, Social Chairman, Vice President (that I didn’t think I could
do, didn’t want, and was stunned why they were so stupid to entrust me to do that!).
[Laughing]
BM:
[Laughing] What fraternity is this?
JK:
Delta Upsilon.
BM:
Okay.
JK:
And I did well. And that probably saved me more than anything. And ironically, rather than
my grade point average going down for feeling better about myself, it went up. I lettered as
Lacrosse Manager at Penn State my senior year, for a wonderful coach – Pensick. Pensick
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�was the Lacrosse coach; lovely young guy. Probably he was only about 28; I really loved
and respected him. And I didn’t feel that way about most of my university professors; they
were pretty rigid, humorless. I don’t know. Pennsylvania then, forest products were not the
values of Pennsylvania forests in the ‘50s, and they behaved like it was. They were still
treating them like a tree farm, and I knew better than that. And it was no spirituality about it,
far from it. That was considered touchy-feely crap. And so again, even at that stage I
couldn’t think openly and discuss openly my relationship with forests.
BM:
So how did – with Delta Upsilon –
JK:
Yeah.
BM:
How did that start to change? I mean, were there mentors there? Were there people that you
looked up to, or?
JK:
I had some good brothers (as well as some real jerks). You know, we went through a brutal
pledge process a humiliating pledge process. But you know I knew how to do that stuff. And
as a result, afterwards when we went into the Forest Service and all the male rituals that
would, you know, intimidate and anger some of our male students (and especially the
females), I knew that stuff. I knew it didn’t last forever; I knew it was, you know, kind of
cheap rituals that males tended to do in initial bonding activities. So I went through that.
But no, it gave me a community in a huge, impersonal place like Penn State. And you know
how important that is. And I think it did that, and it gave me a sense of confidence that I
could be as good as these guys in almost anything, and they all came from (seemed) better
backgrounds than me. I came from as lower-class as probably, a lower class than 80% of my
fraternity brothers and pledges. And yet, they thought I was more than okay. And you know,
so for leadership and confidence, that was a real boost to me. As again, I wasn’t a very good
undergraduate student.
There was one professor at Penn State who saved me, by the name of Bob McDermott, who
appreciated a sense of humor. Most of my professors did not like being questioned, where
Bob just loved questions and kept, you know – like my educational method is just begging
students, encouraging students, teasing them, confronting them to open up and get involved
in some kind of a dance, rather than sitting around like a bunch of toads, taking notes. And
he became one of my champions and he got me back into a master’s program at Penn State.
My grades, even my success in the last two years hardly pulled me up. And a lot of the
professors still identified me as a trouble-maker and an annoyance, where Bob respected
me. And he had clout – he was Assistant Department Head by then – and he got me back
into, after three years working for the Forest Service in Oregon, got me back in.
Now the first summer I had was my junior year. It was at Rogue River National Forest, on
the ranger district where I became permanent. And when we came back, driving back (two
of us in a – it would have been a 1953 Oldsmobile) we plotted a course that brought us
through Cache Valley. We were driving six hours on, and I ran into two Utah State
graduates: one was a summer job person; the other one had graduated three or four years,
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�five years ahead of me and was a permanent employee on the district I was in in Oregon.
And so I heard about Utah State University and about Ted Daniels stories and everything.
And so my buddy was asleep, and I had such low expectations of Utah – when we came
over from Tremonton we didn’t take the cutoff, so we went to Brigham City.
When I came up Sardine Canyon, I was trying to wake my buddy up. It was in September
and there was a little bit of snow up in the high country and the aspen had changed. And I
had expected sage brush and salt flats, and I was stunned! You know, we had just come
across the Snake River Valley in southern Idaho (which is not nearly as impressive as this
mountain range). And then I saw the university and I drove around and I couldn’t wake my
buddy up, he was out of it. We, by that time, probably been driving 20 hours from Crater
Lake. And then I went up the canyon, it was a beautiful day. I was just astounded at how
gorgeous it was. And there was water running in the streets, water running down the canyon.
And then when we finally got to Bear Lake, it was in all it’s blue glory, I finally pulled over
at a view point and got Bob up – put a cigarette in his mouth to wake him up!
BM:
[Laughing]
JK:
And I said, “Look at this!” And so I just thought, “If I ever have a chance to come back to
this place, man I am going to take it!” So I think of that, oh, 10-20 times a year. And here I
am retiring from Utah State University. But it really had a profound impact on me.
I remember when I was back about three or four years later, after I got a permanent job on
the Rogue River and then I was back at Penn State. We were sitting around in an Ag-Econ
class, after an Ag-Econ class a bunch of went to get a cup of coffee at the lounge in the
building and we were talking about great places. And I said, “Bear Lake, Utah.” And there
was a student there whose parents were raspberry farmers, who was from Utah State (he was
getting his Master’s degree). And I remember how he perked up, because we hadn’t talked
about much of anything – he was a pretty quiet guy. “I live there!” You know, yeah. So I
fell in love with this part of the country.
But I got a Forestry degree also so I could come out west, you know. My class of people
never came out west unless you were getting paid; never went to Europe unless you were
wearing a military uniform, you know. So I wanted – as much as my imagination could take
me, in terms of seeing a part of the world – it was coming to the west. I mean I dreamed
about the west from all the hunting magazines.
In sixth grade I was fortunate to have a teacher – she never married – in the summer she
would come out west (by herself or with a friend) and tour the parks. And she subscribed to
Arizona Highways, which in 1954 is colorful and is imaginative and as beautiful a magazine
as you could hold in your hands. It was gorgeous! And I would just dream; and if I did my
work quick, and early, and as prudently and fast (which I could do when I concentrated), it
was a little nook that had cushions on the floor. You could get up and go back there and read
what you wanted to read. And she’d always have her magazines there. So that had an
influence on me wanting to come out west. And I decided that by, well before I was 12.
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�BM:
Hmm. And that would be probably original art on those Arizona Highways because color –
JK:
Well it was color photography, it was incredible.
BM:
Oh was it? Okay.
JK:
Oh, for the ‘40s you couldn’t see the color photography. I mean National Geographic was
still all black and white.
BM:
Yeah.
JK:
You know Saturday Evening Post didn’t have nearly the – Life magazine didn’t have as
many. It was great color photography.
BM:
Hmm.
JK:
Called Arizona Highways.
BM:
Absolutely amazing.
JK:
It was really great. And so that just haunted me, those pictures haunted me. And of course
all the sunlight and red rock; such a different country. So I wanted to come out west. And I
never considered a job any place else; I was offered a job for Pennsylvania State Forests and
that was nice, but that was backup.
BM:
And you mentioned Rogue River National Forest and you said Crater Lake. Is that the
Crater Lake District then?
JK:
Well it was up next to Crater Lake. The Rogue River goes down stream and then it jumps
over to Ashland and places like, yeah Ashland and it jumps around, like a lot of those
forests do. The supervisors’ office was Medford; our first son was born in that hospital in
Medford. I just loved that forest out there. There were times I felt guilty. I was a bachelor
for the first year out there and it was just wonderful.
I was the youngest Scout Master in Oregon and we had about 12 loggers’ kids (maybe one
or two might have been Forest Service boys). And you know I’d take them out at least three
times a month in the summer. We roamed all through those hills and it was just wonderful to
work, wonderful to be there. A bit lonely because Kathy and I had been pinned before I
went out there. And then she came out for a year. And I took a year’s leave without pay
(educational leave). Happily they kept us on medical insurance because we had our second
child. We didn’t realize we were pregnant with our second child or we might not have left.
But I went back to get a Master’s degree in Outdoor Recreation because I could see that was
important.
BM:
And that was at Penn State?
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�JK:
Um-hmm. I could see that very few people knew what they were doing, and even less of
them seemed to care about the value of recreation. I realized, working on the Rogue River,
that I knew lots about silviculture and ecology but very little about people. And that was
beginning to fascinate me. Plus my girlfriend and wife was a psychologist and brought out
all of her Freud books and everything about psychology – which I never would have read as
a forester. But there was not much to read in that little logging town of Prospect, Oregon
(there was about 800 people): one bar, one grocery store, and one gas station, and a high
school. And I just got interested in that.
Then in the ‘50s and ‘60s as far into the social sciences you were allowed to go in natural
resources was economics and micro-economics, at that – which is even less involved in
people than macro or developmental economics. So I didn’t really want to be an economist,
but I was so naïve, I didn’t know that. You know, so I just dutifully followed – and
economics is so demanding with all the mathematics and conceptual thinking that you didn’t
have much time to wonder whether this was it when you working so hard just to understand
it. But by the time I got my PhD I was ready to branch out more. Even though I got my PhD
in Economics, I wouldn’t have gone to Virginia Tech (it was called VPI then) unless I
trusted my major professor; and we had a verbal agreement that he’d let me take Planning
and Sociology and other courses, which he did.
BM:
Um-hmm. And who was that professor?
JK:
That was Larry Davis, who I ended up talking him into coming out to an interview at Utah
State in my last year and a half of my PhD program. When the dean was hounding him to
apply and come out for an interview, he said, “Who in the hell wants to go to Utah?” I said,
“Larry! Logan!” I was just passionate in these descriptions in what a great place it was. And
then he gets up – we’re in a Rough Rider bar in Washington National Airport – and he
walks out into the hall and calls Thad Box at Utah State. And I’m sitting there looking at our
two beer mugs going, “You dolt! Here you are talking your major professor into going out
to interview. He’s going to leave you! What the hell’s going to happen? This is really poor
career planning.”
But we loved and respected each other, even when I was a grad student. And our families
were very, very close. I’m coming back through here in July to go up to his and his wife’s
50th wedding anniversary at Flathead Lake. Ironically, they live in Spokane, not far from
where our son lives. Because our kids were raised together; our kids are as close to their
kids as, you know, as either family’s cousins. We spent a lot of time together. Even when a
lot of his colleagues and my fellow grad students said, “How do you pull this off?” You
know, and it was the old ROTC dichotomous, mechanistic thinking: you don’t shoot and
fraternize with the troops, especially if you’re going to send them out to battle – whether it’s
with a machine gun or standing up in front of your dissertation committee, you know!
[Laughing] You couldn’t mix rationality with feelings. Which is just dumb, and we never
bought into that. We’ve always been close and he was a very tough – he had four PhD
students and only two of us made it through.
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�BM:
Whoa.
JK:
Yeah. That was pretty standard in those days; the survival rate was not that great.
BM:
So what year are we talking about when you finally finished your PhD?
JK:
That would’ve been ’69. I was on the faculty there for two years then came out here.
BM:
You came directly to Utah State from there?
JK:
Yeah. And I’ve never gone any place else. Now eight of the 38-39 years I’ve been at Utah
State, I’ve been out of here; and usually on foreign assignments. So it’s given us an
opportunity to go see other parts of the world and come back to your country and your
university different than when you left. And seeing the place you’re returning to differently,
for better or worse.
BM:
What are some of those places you visited?
JK:
Well, the first sabbatical was a year with the New Zealand Forest Service, on a national
New Zealand fellowship. Then I got a Fulbright at Trinity College, Dublin; and that was the
last year that we were together as a family. Both of our sons were students and Kathy was a
research assistant. The university started in 1605 – oh excuse me, 1590. So that’s about 15
years before Jamestown Colony. And it feels that way. It feels like going to school in the
Vatican: ancient university, wonderful place. And a wonderful city – in ’83 Ireland was still
very much a peasant society. They called it “Dublin town” then, and it felt like a town. (As
did Washington D.C. when we first started going there in the ‘60s, before it became so big,
fast, impersonal.) But, no it was a wonderful place to be.
And after that I went to the Wageningen University in the Netherlands in ’85. Then I did a
sabbatical – I was a special assistant to Mike Dombeck with the BLM. Then they asked me
to stay another year, so they just bought out my contract. Then we went back to Wageningen
for my last sabbatical, for a year. In I think it was something like ’03 or ’05 – something like
that.
BM:
How do you spell that university?
JK:
W-A-G-E-N-I-N-G-E-N. It’s Wageningen. The “g” is a [makes guttural sound].
Wageningen.
BM:
And in all these places, as far as a sabbatical, was it primarily economics that you were
working on?
JK:
No, no. I’ve never been a very disciplined economist. I taught it and did it because I had to.
But I’ve always been interested in organizational behavior and the ability and inability of
traditional cultures, like foresters in the Forest Service, to adapt to changing realities of an
urban, post-industrial society. That valued non-market goods, which really made my
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�economics less and less potent. And I never was a good economist. So many economists are
so anal and so judgmental, they’re kind of intellectual Jehovah’s, you know. They really talk
and think like they know what the hell they’re talking about, which makes me suspect of
any group like that.
BM:
[Laughing]
JK:
And I didn’t find them very good company, you know. They were so anal, and so sure of
themselves, and so narrow and so irrelevant that I just moved in another direction. I used to
call myself an economist of sorts, and often introduce myself as a forest economist that’s
been in recovery for 12 years or something! [Laughing] I didn’t want to be an economist,
but I didn’t know that. And I trusted my elders too damn much. But they gave me their best
advice, they were even more ignorant than I was and didn’t realize it. So, no economics just
got me started and allowed me to get in a university and earn my keep for the first five
years.
BM:
So go back to that, you mentioned coming to Utah State. Tell us what that was like. And the
year again --
JK:
Well I came here because this was a multiple-use oriented school. Timber wasn’t king here
– look out the window. I mean Utah State could never justify itself on board feet; maybe red
meat. And as a result, I think the first outdoor recreation course in the world was taught
here; certainly I think the first in the country. They were very multiple-use oriented.
I also came to Utah State because they weren’t under the thumb and the influence of an
agriculture college, which was so conservative and so reactionary, and so inflexible in their
inability to adapt. Plus, they were always the ones out, you know, throwing the stones at the
people protesting the war and other things that I believed in. And so when we came here, the
College of Natural Resources was the most liberal college on campus, including HASS
(Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences) – with such wonderful people like Aldo Leopold’s
last grad student, Stokes, which was really ironic for a northern Utah cow college. Of course
“liberal” is always relative here. But that was a big attraction. And there were a lot of
refugees here from large universities that came to Utah State as professors for the right
reasons: they were tired of the universities of Wisconsin’s or Penn States, regardless of their
supposed qualities and rankings.
You know, this last weekend we graduated one forestry student – we had to limit for every
two people that applied to summer camp, we could accept one. We could only hold 30
students and 60 would want to go to summer camp – this was just Forestry. And we were an
academy for the agencies; we trained range guys, wildlife biologists and foresters for the
federal agencies. And we wouldn’t have thought that, but we behaved very much like a
WestPoint. It was a much more liberal WestPoint than most. And they were good people,
and it was a good community, good departments, a good college.
BM:
What departments were there at that time?
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�JK:
Well, there were three: there was Range, there was Fisheries and Wildlife, and there was
Forestry (that soon became Forestry and Outdoor Recreation).
BM:
And were you responsible for teaching some of those Outdoor Rec courses at that time?
JK:
Ironically, no. They had a huge Recreation contingent here, which really attracted me. I was
an economist and I was a bridge between economics and outdoor recreation for them. I
taught Policy and Economics, primarily, and Principles of Forestry because I always taught
Principles of Forestry as a social science. And nobody wanted to teach that, plus I could get
to the students early in their career, when their minds were open and when they were was
still romantic idealists; and give them confidence and context to stay that way throughout
their rational education.
BM:
And Principles of Forestry is like a freshman level course?
JK:
Freshman or sophomore.
BM:
Okay.
JK:
We had five Principles courses: Principles of Wildlife, Forestry, Range, Outdoor
Recreation, and Watershed.
BM:
Okay.
JK:
And I taught Forestry, which was the biggest. It was a general education course also,
because there was enough social scientists on the general education committee to recognize
what a broad course it was. I used to fill the business auditorium – which was the biggest
auditorium (well maybe there was a bigger one in Old Main). But it was almost 300
students. I’d have a whole flock of TAs.
BM:
And the breakdown was university-wide?
JK:
Yeah, but you know, all the forestry students had to take it and a lot of the other natural
resource majors took it. And about half were natural resource majors, half were across
campus.
BM:
Wow! That is different. You know, when I think of Principles of Forestry from other places
I’ve been at, and in talking with other instructors, it was very much –
JK:
I always taught it as changing relationships between people and forest ecosystems, and how
important culture was in shaping your relationships – as my rural culture in the 1950s was
shaping my relationships with traps and hunting. And I was teaching in the ‘70s and some of
my students said, “Well you don’t look like a hunter! How could you hunt? Blah, blah, blah.
Didn’t it bother you?” “Well yeah, sure!” And also you know, I said, “I was learning life
skills. I didn’t know if I’d ever live through between 18 and 24 – my draftable age. I fully
expected being able to shoot squirrels might save my life and the life of my buddies, plus
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�keeping the world free from evil.” I couldn’t remember years when there wasn’t a war: we
were either finishing one up or talking about the next one. I remember when the Korean
War broke out, I counted on my fingers, you know. I was eleven when it broke out, how
long would it have to last before I could be drafted into that place. And they just didn’t get
that, you know. I mean they thought that they could avoid killing other people in the name
of their country – which has its bright side and its blessings of course. But I thought I was
going to end up shooting people; and do it efficiently, without letting my emotions get in the
way. So if I couldn’t pop a deer, what was I going to do when people were shooting back at
me and my friend was screaming because he had his shoulder blown off? So, you know,
they didn’t get that. They get it less today.
BM:
So this Principles course that you taught – that’s a fascinating approach as far as the
relationship and not just the products –
JK:
Well, I got into forestry because of relationships. Even the very pragmatic, technician types
in forestry – most of them got into forestry out of romantic relationships. And yet they had
that beaten out of us, we couldn’t respect and nourish it, and even elevate it, throughout our
education and our professional development. And I tried to get ahead of that. And every
principles class I’ve taught has always had a strong element of professionalism woven
throughout the whole course; a major tapestry, you know, cross strain and pattern. And I’d
say that professionalism is three components: a trilogy of caring, knowing and doing.
For the first day of all those Principles classes, including the last two I just graded here a
couple of days ago, the first day I’d ask them to define professionalism. I’d ask them, “How
many of you in this class plan to be professionals in four, five or six years?” All the hands
go up. This is the way I seduce them and co-op them. So I’d say, “Well, you want to be a
professional? How many want to be a good professional?” And all the hands go up, you
know. And I say, “Well, what’s a good professional? Most of you have met good ones and
bad ones, so tell me the characteristics of professionalism.” And they’ll throw about 20 of
them at you. 80-85% of them will be characteristics of good people in our culture:
trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly – you know the Boy Scout characteristics of a good
person. But the difference between a good person and a professional is confidence, and
that’s in their mind of things they keep mentioning. And I’ll talk to them about, “Well,
would you rather have a dentist you like or one that can put fillings in your teeth that don’t
hurt and stay there?” Well, alright, you know. “How many of you have had teachers?”
(Because that’s a big role model, positive and negative role models that you’ve experienced
as professionals.) “How many of you have had teachers that were good guys and gals, but
weren’t competent? How many of you have had jerks, but really did teach you something?”
Alright, so we’re back and forth on that. And so I say, “Alright, how do you want me to
treat you people? As post-high school students or as emerging, young professionals? How
many of you want me to treat you as post-high school kids?” [Pause] “How many of you
want me to treat you like emerging, young professionals?” You know, some of the hands go
right up like this. And I say, “Okay. I’ll do that, I want to do that.” Quite honestly I’d do that
even if you told me you didn’t want it. But I said, “You know, this requires more of me and
more of you, if you want me to treat you with that respect and with that kind of information.
And it has higher expectations than you might otherwise get.”
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�So within the first week then, we’re defining professionalism as these three characteristics.
And I said, you know, “Most of you here want to care more. You’re here to really increase
your competency in caring, or knowing, or doing.” You know, and it’s the “knowing” part,
the cognitive part, the rational part. And I said, “The ‘doing’ we don’t actually teach you
much anymore, with field trips and stuff that I had ad nausea as a kid, as a forestry student.
You’re going to get that by summer jobs. And we’re really going to encourage you to do
that; it might be uncomfortable, you might not make as much, blah, blah, blah. But you’ve
got to do that.” And whether it’s teaching summer schools or camp if you want to be a
teacher; if you’re an engineer, getting out and doing various things in engineering or natural
resources. Because again, at least half or more of the students aren’t natural resource
students.
And I said, “Then there’s ‘caring’. We don’t teach you how to care here.” Usually it’s the
opposite. But I said, “That’s important. How many of you know what profession you want
to be, you know? How many of really care?” We talk about caring and I confirm how
important that is. And how, if you’re not careful in all this pursuit for knowing, especially if
they’re taught the traditional male rationale of dominating everything – that you could
squeeze the caring out of you; don’t let that happen, that’s precious. And I’m telling you and
I’m honoring your already moving quite forward. I ask them, “How many of you feel
competent as an emerging, young professional?” Most of the hands go up. I said, “Well
look, here’s the caring part. You told me you were caring and that’s huge! You’re not
recognizing and respecting that. You have to do that, because we will not do that in
academia. So this is your personal responsibility, you cherish that. Not only that, that’s
going to drive what direction you go and more important than that, it’s going to keep you
from burning out, you know. It’s not going to be the ‘knowing’ that’s going to cause you to
burn out and give up; it’s going to be the caring and how you manage your feeling
relationships and your passion, and your forgiveness and your tolerance. And that’s huge for
adaptability as well.”
And I wanted to get to them early on that, because by that time I’d realized how important
that is. And you get into nursing, police work, teaching, engineering usually for caring. And
most of you, if you get into it just for the money – that’s not very romantic in a way – but I
don’t find that the case in most people; even accountants can be romantic about it!
[Laughing] God knows how, but they seem to.
And so I want to recognize that, endorse that and enforce that. And I want them to think
broadly and liberally too. So it was a very conscientious attempt for me to teach the courses
that nobody wanted to teach: the introductory course. I wanted to subvert – I couldn’t
change my college way of thinking, but I could help put students into their class that would
make my colleagues think and teach differently. But it’s a long-term process. But I’ve
always been in long-term processes, certainly as a forester every tree you plant is a huge act
of faith.
BM:
Right.
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�JK:
So it’s kind of, you know, that’s why I took those big, general education courses. You got
no professional rewards or respect from your colleagues, or university rewards; you did that
in spite of the reward system – which romantics tend to do. And I’ve always accepted my
romanticism as cherished, personal property.
[Stop and start recording.]
[Tape 2 of 3: A]
BM:
Okay, we’re continuing on Tape 2, with side 1, with Jim Kennedy. And he’s just finishing
up his discussion on why the general ed courses that he taught at Utah State were so
important and influential in terms of his vision and his idea of where he wanted to go with
education, and with students, and with colleagues.
So go ahead, finish what you were –
JK:
It was subversive, but first impressions last. I hadn’t been to the graduations for the last
couple of years (because I’m usually out of here, down at the ranch by the time graduation).
BM:
And the ranch is in?
JK:
Tropic, Utah.
BM:
Alright.
JK:
And the dean, you know, put out a memo, “Please come.” Plus this might be the last time
I’m on campus in May, so I went. And the valedictorian said that she graduated from high
school in California (this is our college valedictorian), and she was so sick and so
disillusioned with academia/school was going; she went to Mexico and was going to just be
a bartender in Margaritaville for a couple of years. She ran into a friend of hers that was
coming up to Utah State, and talked to her into coming up. And she took my introductory
course and she said her life changed. And I turned her on to thinking, and feeling, and
excitement. And seeing that finding a profession that feeds your soul, as well as your wallet,
can be – in our society, the way it’s constructed for better or worse – is an opportunity for
joy, and fulfillment and growth; or an opportunity for despair, or in between: just boredom.
You’ve got to choose, what do you want to do with your life? And that’s a big decision.
She’s gone on to graduate school, so that was kind of cool.
BM:
And what area of CNR did she graduate in?
JK:
Shupe escorted her down the isle, so I think it was – you know, I don’t remember. But I
mean she was one of just the general ed students that came in and then switched to our
college.
BM:
That’s amazing.
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�JK:
And that happens, and that’s as close to miracles as you can get. There are lots of theories of
education, but that result that I experienced on Saturday, supports my inoculation theory,
you know. Where you sneeze on them, like with Swine Flu, or with Jesus of Nazareth
breathing on them, “Who’s sins you shall be forgiven,” and they don’t think they’re getting
a cold. I remember one time a student walked into my office – this was in the ‘70s – and
said, “You son of a bitch. I came out here to ski and I ski every Tuesday and Thursday, and
I’ve taken your class on Tuesday and Thursday and I thought I’d cut it.” He said, “You’ve
turned me onto school! The damn snow is melting and I haven’t been skiing!”
BM:
[Laughing] That’s hilarious!
JK:
He said, “You have really screwed up my life!” He said, “Damn! I am really turned onto
this stuff and I’m becoming responsible. And my parents and I don’t know really what
happened!
[Laughing]
JK:
That was the plot. I’ve developed a very humble image as myself as an educator. I used to
see myself as a lightning rod, but you’re really a seed crystal. You know, the solution has to
be charged for you to make major changes in people’s lives. Now, for better or worse, they
usually give you too much damn credit because they feel their lives – the valedictorian put it
(Sivvy was her last name – I forget), but she said, “Her world pivoted” on that course. So
pivotal points is a nice image, you know. For physics or for a ballerina, a pivot point and
angles over pose – that’s nice imagery to me. And you know, part of what you teach you are
a role model and a life force and all the intellectual crap, especially is so important in
economics. You become a positive or negative role model. I used the verb “educate” and
“role model” almost like in one breath. Because you ask people – I’ve interviewed a lot of
people – five, ten, 15 years out of the contact with teacher. And they never remember the
theory, they always remember the person. And as a role model: positive and/or negative, or
both. So you know I figured that out pretty early.
I’m much more humble. And usually when students write me about what an influence I’ve
had in their life – I’ll always say, because I think it’s the truth, not just cause -- I can accept
compliments in my old age now (I couldn’t when I was younger). But I said, you know,
“You came into my life with all of that and more. And I just happened to enforce it, nurture
it, confirm it. And you’re giving me more credit than I deserve, which I’ll take, but I know
and I want you to know that I think you’re giving me more credit. And I’d like you to take
more credit for yourself.” And I was glad there to be the catalyst. A catalyst I think is
accurate and good image. I was glad I was there and I was glad I was the catalyst. But you
had to be ready for a catalyst. And when you look at it, a catalyst is usually not much of the
weight in a solution; it’s a small amount. But the other mass there ready to receive it.
So you know being an educator really requires receptive people. And it might be asking too
much of 19 year olds that have so little life experience. They just don’t have anything to
make it relevant, the things I’m talking about. But many of them do, and they’ll never be
able to come back to me and say I didn’t tell them so.
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�BM:
There is a tremendous passion when you talk about what you do. And it’s not just because
you like the woods, you know, like you hear a lot of foresters talk. You obviously have
talked about liking to be outside and how that, you know, with your ADHD and all of that,
those kinds of behaviors. But I think that’s something else that is just like a thread through
all of what you talked about. There’s that passion for what you do in caring about people
and how that comes out in your teaching – over and over again I hear from students how
stimulating that is. And that is something that not a lot of us have been exposed to. You
know, some of us have had that lucky series of teachers –
JK:
Yeah.
BM:
But that’s, I think a very important quality that you put into all the teaching that you’ve
done.
JK:
Well, if you teach natural resources not as sacred stuff, but as human-ecosystem
relationships, based on what you know – knowing and caring about parts of ecosystems. If
you study natural resources you’ve got to learn about yourself, because it’s relationships.
And you’re pivotal in that relationship and so are the people. And you’ve got to be
empathetic with other people, because without relationship there are no natural resources,
you know. And occasionally when I really want to berate my colleagues here, I tell them
you know, “It’s like you’re saying, ‘We’re the college of traditional marriages.’ And for
95% of the course we teach the husband side of marriages. But in the end we give them a
course in the wife side of natural resources – the wife side of marriage.’” That’s like saying
you teach natural resources here and you give them a human dimension course at the end?
And in wildlife, often that human dimension course is law enforcement? Better give them
zero, than to give them the relationship of the enforcer, you know.
The Conan the Barbarian for right and truth. I said, “No wonder you turn out such
dysfunctional, damaged professionals.” You’ve got to focus on relationship and you’ve got
to learn about yourself if you see yourself in a relationship. And you’ve got to take
ownership for that. If you fear rattlesnakes, you’ve got to take ownership for that, it’s not
the rattlesnake’s fault, you know. If you want change, you better change because the
rattlesnake isn’t. It’s your perception and response and behavior around them – and that’s
true with just about everything. Living in a bureaucracy, living with a crappy provost or
whatever, you know. You’ve got to take responsibility for your feelings about that, and
manage that. You probably can’t change him or the war, you know. That’s not to say you
don’t do something about it; stoicism is only one response, or denial is another that is even
less justifiable than stoicism.
So I really focus on the relationship part and that you’ve got to take responsibility for that.
And I do that in class too. I said, “I expect you to come prepared. You expect me to come
prepared, and damn it, you should. I’m a professional, I’m proud of it and I’m going to
prove to you I’m a good one. But I expect you to come doing the reading. If you don’t come
having done the reading, I’m not going to sound that organized; I’m not going to sound that
profound. And you’re going to have to take responsibility for that; I’m not! I’ve given you
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�the readings, spoon fed them to you. It takes a half hour – most of you spend that much time
getting your hair ready to go out in the world. If you can’t do that, you’re really not an
emerging, young professional that has much of a future ahead of him.” So I beg them, I kid
them, and I’ll confront them. But I can do that fully justifiably and I get away with that.
I grade every one of their exams. They come to see me, not a TA; there is never a true/false
or multiple choice questions in it. That really gets their attention because they know that
weekend before I give them back their exams, I’ve spent 20-30 hours doing their exams;
comments in the margins. That gives credibility normally you don’t get when you don’t
deserve it. You really invest yourself and that counts. They hear so much talk: “I love you; I
respect you, blah, blah, blah.” Show me the beef, you know. Your involvement with them
and your willingness to read – some of them wish you wouldn’t read their questions and
make as many comments as you would and just give them an ‘A’. It doesn’t work that way.
BM:
Well, and you have a vested interest in them. They’re not just [inaudible] sitting in your
classroom: they are living, breathing organisms that are going to go out and change the
world.
JK:
Yeah. And it goes back to the non-intellectuals, the farm guys I knew that taught me that, in
terms of I want to see it raw. I want to see it and wanting to spend time with me or work me,
or do something with me, you know. And get up early in the morning and do it and not
whine about the weather or whatever other things you’re using to limit yourself or protect
yourself. So that’s a form of vulnerability in a way.
BM:
Um-hmm.
JK:
But it’s also a form of accountability that seems to be diminishing, especially in the way we
grade them too.
BM:
What do you mean?
JK:
The greening of the grading system: everybody gets a three-point anymore.
BM:
Hmm. So influence wise – you’ve mentioned a few names along the way – who would you
recognize as your mentors?
JK:
Well, Bob McDermott who saved me as an undergraduate student really did. And he loved
questioning, he loved debate; he had a sense of humor, he was open-minded, he laughed. He
was involved with life in the classroom and in his mind as well as when (I suspect) being
out with friends – which maybe some of my other stick-in-the-mud professors were, but I
never could sense it.
A lot of people that I’ve read, you know. And you know, sometimes it’s a personality defect
for a person that’s talked as much about mentoring and being a mentor, and studied
mentoring as I have – there have been no real saviors other than Bob McDermott in my
undergraduate. And I only had two classes from him: Outdoor Recreation and Range; really
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�the only multiple-use classes I had at Penn State. I was fortunate to be his TA when I back
for my Master’s degree too.
Larry Davis, my major professor and department head here was a wonderful guy; really
bright, intellectual guy. And I think he also saw me as a different personality and thinking
type, and he embraced me for that. Because I think I made him better, and he made me
better. I think we taught each other values and relationships and all the “knowing” part of
the three parts of a professional.
BM:
Um-hmm. Which two are the essence of a mentorship and relationship.
JK:
Yeah, sure it is.
BM:
You’re both giving and sacrificing and pushing each other.
JK:
Yeah, yup. Yeah, and I had some people in some individual classes like Speech class I
stumbled into at Penn State, where the person really forced me to confront my insecurities
and help me – I used to have bladder control problems standing up in front of a group. I
came across some good, positive role models as an educator, but for every positive role
model as an educator I had ten negative ones; but they taught me something. I mean, that
didn’t teach me what to be, but it taught me what I didn’t want to be. And they taught it to
me solidly; and I was sure I didn’t want to be like that. So that really helps you decide what
you want to be.
And there was just a whole bunch of people. I’ve been exposed to a lot of people. My father,
in some ways, was a negative role model; but he taught me stuff even by that – in terms of
relationships with spouses and children – as well as the positive ones. So I’ve always been
blessed by the negative ones. Some of the greatest shocks in my life and disappointments in
my life. Well Thad Box, when he was dean, turned me down for a full professor the first
time I went up. I mean my full support of my committee and my department head.
As a result of that, I turned to the agencies that really needed me in the mid-1980s to put
their diverse, professional and gender recruits, in their post-NEPA [National Environmental
Policy Act]
culture. And we developed short courses where I was – with all the teaching I
did on campus, even when I was teach large classes, I often had more contact hours with 30
and 40 year olds in the Forest Service and BLM, in these one week short courses with
people like Jack Thomas. And these people are ready to learn. Whoa! You talk about a
charge – and that really made firm in my concept and confidence in this catalyst model of
being an educator really was convincing there. Plus, going out on a limb and taking the risks
to deal with feelings that were involved and the emotional, spiritual elements of their
frustrations and successes allowed me to come back and risk doing that with more
confidence back on the class here, when students would laugh or say, “Oh crap, what’s that
all about?” Because these 19 year olds don’t have that much context. Sometimes it’s like me
giving a terrific lecture on retirement planning to 3rd graders over at Edith Bowen
[elementary school on USU campus], you know. No matter how good you do it, I mean they
just don’t care! They’re not ready for that.
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�But these 25, 32, 40 year old combat biologists who weren’t being very successful, and
getting beat up in the agency and often weren’t taking responsibility – talk about a miracle
worker in a week. I mean, we had people come unglued, I mean that just had to really reevaluate their whole context of who they were and what they were doing. Because they were
behaving as these kind of Robin Hoods out there, and they weren’t very affective; and they
were alienating the community and the resources that they gave a damn about weren’t being
adequately protected (as they could and should be). Plus, they were working themselves out
of stomach linings, and marriages, and everything. I mean they really needed to reconsider
their life as a person and a professional, and as a change agent within the Forest Service.
Most of them, of course, didn’t see themselves as change agents, didn’t want to be change
agents, didn’t study to be change agents; they wanted to do it, didn’t know how to do it.
But you know, NEPA put them there to be change agents, I mean geez! And NEPA put
them in there to change the power relationship within the Forest Service. And most of them
didn’t think they were into power – which they all were, they were just in the closet, even to
themselves. Of course power is your ability to change the world, change things; that’s what
power is. And most biologists and these specialists think that power is something that
capitalists and generals and people that they don’t admire and care about are in to, like the
Forest Supervisor.
But just intellectually, and emotionally, and relationship wise to confront them, that was
hugely important to me because it made me work hard. And these 30 and 45 year old,
frustrated, very powerful, intellectual, caring, romantic, idealistic, hard-working people –
they did not tolerate bullshit for long, you know. They would come right at you. And so you
had to be relevant and you had to be true. I mean you had to be true and honest with them,
even though initially they would rebel against it and didn’t like it. And I was; and the team I
put together was.
You know I just threw away the plaque that the Forest Service gave me for doing that – put
it in the trash can. You know, it’s just a piece of wood and brass. But you know [inaudible],
I’ve got the memories.
BM:
Right.
JK:
But kids aren’t going to experience it. It was signed by – Max Peterson signed it. Anyhow,
I’ve always seen myself as a change agent and a revolutionary, but I’ve done it indirectly,
like planting trees and things. I plant seeds and stand back and watch them grow. But that
was really powerful. You could see impact and people would, you know, tell you how you
changed their life. But the only requirement was we wouldn’t take anybody into that short
course unless they had worked for a year (or preferably three). We wanted them to really be
frustrated and be experienced and have context, and be ready to take ownership for their
successes and their failure and frustrations. And it did. It worked, it worked and it was great.
And it allowed me to come back and teach in a different way on campus. And even 19 year
olds, that I wouldn’t have had the courage to do, given the criticism and lack of respect for
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�that from my colleagues. And it annoyed a lot of the undergraduates. If I show you my bio,
you know, my true bio – I describe myself as “Coyote the Trickster.” And my students
know that. Three or four times in a lecture I’ll say, “Okay, I’m going to be playing Coyote
with you.” Which means it’s not on the exam and I’m going to be confrontive and I’m going
to be playful, and I’m going to be flipping things on them. I’m going to flip them; I’ll lead
them down a path and wham! I’ll t-bone them with this idea, without airbags and they know
it. So I often tell them, “Hold on to your seat now, I’m going to play Coyote with you.”
BM:
[Laughing]
JK:
And so I think that’s really important. I think one of the most important things you can give
people in an era of complexity and change (like our world is), is haunting metaphors. Never
let them be comfortable with what they know – which was the absolute opposite the way I
was educated, you know. This is it, this is truth, and it’s going to stay that way forever, and
it’s on the exam. But to give them haunting, relevant metaphors I think is great. And one of
the reasons when I think back I don’t see any critical mentors, most of the things that broke
me free to think were often novels and experiences in my past that haunted me.
BM:
Name some novels.
JK:
Oh, god! Everything from The Heart of Darkness to plays like Ibsen’s play An Enemy of
the People. I mean things that were really haunting. Well actually, Miller’s re-writing (or
getting ready for the stage) of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People is a lot easier: it’s like
Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov without the second coming part; or Bernard Shaw’s
Superman without when they go to Hades. All of those things haunted me and I think about
them over and over again. And all of a sudden the relevance to me and my profession just
leap out at me. So I’ve got a lot of kindred spirits that are dead and some that are alive as
well. And I think that’s critical for a professional. And to feel that you can speak to the dead
and the dead can speak to you, I think is a powerful, spiritual connection; and humbling.
So I always was a reader and still am. But good novels – I’m looking forward to reading
everything Joseph Conrad wrote. Lord Jim is a perfect example of a romantic, written
beautifully by a person who English wasn’t his first language: he was Polish. And he did
Heart of Darkness, which is – ah! You never recover from reading that little book. Have
you ever read The Heart of Darkness?
BM:
I haven’t.
JK:
Joseph Conrad.
BM:
Hm-mm.
JK:
You’ll never get over it. Apocalypse Now [film] was based on that and actually the making
of Apocalypse Now,
if you’re a movie person, rent it. It’s called “The Heart of Darkness”
[Hearts of Darkness: a Filmmaker's Apocalypse].
Coppola’s wife put it together while they
were making it. The making of the film – they were all drugged and in that tropical
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�rainforest. It’s no wonder that creepy, haunting, operatic movie came out. And it is operatic:
full of tragedy, and ambiguity, and uncertainty, and blurry edges. It’s an impressionist piece
rather than, you know, an etching. So those things really affected the way I think and feel.
BM:
How are you thinking on the eve of your retirement?
JK:
Well, you know, it’s just something that’s always been in my job description. I knew it was
coming, I’m glad I lived long enough to do it and I still have some health and opportunity
ahead of me. And I’m focusing mostly on being. When we go down to the ranch, we just get
absorbed by that place. It owns us as much as we own it. And Kathy and I like each other’s
company and we’ve been nomads with all of our sabbaticals. And so we trust our ability to
get along together and manage and live in a place and live well. We’ve always done that. So
we’re much less uncertain than some of our colleagues are. And people keep asking us what
I’m going to do. And that’s just the wrong question, you know. I’m focusing on being. I’ve
been doing a lot, and I’ve accomplished a lot. But just being is different than that. And so
often the tragedy of retirement is so many people have their whole self-identity and life built
around “doing” that they don’t know how to “be.” And once you do that, take away the
doing that they’re comfortable with, their lives fall apart. So we’ve got a beautiful place to
go be. And after almost 50 years of marriage we still like waking up together, so that’s
important too.
BM:
Um-hmm, it is.
JK:
And that’s the most annoying question I get asked in my life is, “What do you do down
there?” Well, they’re already off on the wrong footstep if that’s the way they frame the verb,
frame the question!
BM:
[Laughing] Right, right.
JK:
A lot of times I’ll make up stuff just to give them an answer they’re comfortable with.
Because when you start talking about being together, after three minutes their eyes glass
over; they just don’t get it or they’re not interested. “What? You sit in bed for two hours and
drink coffee and tea and talk?” “Yeah.”
BM:
Well having lost the art of relaxation and just that chance to just –
JK:
Yeah. Well the land will absorb you, that’s part of the relationship: you’ve got to let the land
talk to you as much as you talk to it. And I don’t carry a weapon around anymore when I go
out in the woods. And when I see deer – I remember the first time I saw a big buck when I
watched it. And after watching it disappear, realize for the first time ever I didn’t have a
cross-hair on my pupil. You know, I was always watching the deer where I would shoot it.
BM:
Sure.
JK:
I was focusing exactly on that spot. Even when I had no intention of shooting it and had no
means to, or never mind the desire. So that was kind of liberating.
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�BM:
So one of the questions on this long list of questions that is here –
JK:
We can’t go too much longer.
BM:
Oh my goodness! Yeah.
JK:
Because it’s 3:20 already.
BM:
Yeah, okay. Let’s finish this side of the tape and then we’ll stop for now, or stop for this
afternoon.
You know, in looking at – this is just so rich with relationships with people, with students,
with colleagues, with mentors or people who you admire that aren’t even alive or maybe
you’ve never met. You know, part of this project is looking at that relationship with the
place called Logan Canyon (right out here).
JK:
Um-hmm.
BM:
And I wonder if you would just share a few of those memories before we sign off for today.
JK:
With Logan Canyon?
BM:
Um-hmm.
JK:
The first relationship I have with Logan Canyon was that surprising afternoon I drove
through here. Tired and boy, it just woke me right up. I never forgot it, and I was just
astounded. Again, any kind of satisfaction or response to any kind of event is heavily
influenced by our expectations. And as I qualify that, my expectations were so low, the
shock was magnified.
BM:
You mentioned sage brush, and –
JK:
Yeah. I mean I was really impressed with Crater Lake, but I kind of knew it was going to be
spectacular.
BM:
Right.
JK:
Still took my breath away when I first looked at it. But reading the diary of Pinchot’s front
man who went up here in 1895 – what was his name? Copies of his diaries are in the Special
Collections. Have you read them?
BM:
Uh, no.
JK:
Shame on you! You have got to read that! In fact, there’s one great section he says, he’s up
there and he says, “There’s no trees of value up on the mountain, it’s just all aspen.”
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�BM:
Oh!
JK:
Now we’re trying to get it back and worried about aspen coming back. Oh man! I used to
have that as part of my Principles of Forestry course. And he’s got articles written about it,
and people have written – and the Special Collections librarian is a really neat guy.
BM:
Is that Brad?
JK:
Brad, yeah.
BM:
Um-hmm.
JK:
He’ll know who I’m talking about.
BM:
Okay.
JK:
He was working for the Forest Service, he was looking at this public land before it became
National Forest; you read his description of Logan too on a weekend, it’s kind of cool. He
wasn’t from the local culture. But people like that – I never liked history in high school, but
it was never about people and relationships: it was about dates, and deaths, and wars and
stuff like that. So you know, that’s a wonderful opportunity to walk in his footprints up
through this canyon that looked a bit like “All Quiet on the Western Front.” It had all been
lawned off and grazed. It literally looked more beat up than it does now. And I bet you Thad
Box said that when he first saw Logan Canyon about 20 years before I did. You said you
were interviewing Thad. You know, you look up there now and it’s probably in better much
ecological condition than it was 100 years ago.
BM:
Um-hmm.
JK:
I first started just fishing it. But we’d take the kids up there; we’d go cross-country skiing.
We’d use Green Canyon and we’d go up here and ski after school, on real quick day trips
after work was done. We’d tube down it – the canal comes right out at the back of our
property. We’d tube down it in the summer 50 times – day and night. Sometimes 11 o’clock
at night you’d come back, or 10 o’clock at night you’d come back from a party and the kids
would be watching television; it would be a full moon and it would be July and they’d say,
“Let’s go tubing!” “Oh man! Just came back from a party, it’s been a tough. . .” “Come on
Dad!” “Oh, what the hell!” And up we’d go. Kathy would drop us off.
BM:
[Laughing] And you’d come down in the dark?
JK:
Oh yeah. But you know the dark here is so light. From back east, I never could understand
how nocturnal animals made it. Out west, you could see – I could be a nocturnal predator,
damn near, most of the days of the month! But mostly it was fishing, and cross-country
skiing it. We would go up to Bear Lake and come over and we’d come back down Mink
Creek, come back down, you know, down through the next –
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�BM:
Emigration Canyon?
JK:
Emigration Canyon, yup.
BM:
Yup.
JK:
That’s a wonderful loop. We’d do that every season. And my most intimate relationship
with the canyon in a way, was when I was the first person to run summer camp after the
originals: Ted Daniels and Ray Moore ran it all through World War, you know, through the
‘30s and World War II. And I took it over from them in, probably about 1970 maybe,
something like that. And I was the first, you know, guy to do that. I mean the first person to
do that; just when women were starting to come in up there. And I’d ride my motorcycle –
[Stop and start recording.]
[Tape 2 of 3: B]
BM:
Tape 2, side 2 and we’re continuing with Logan Canyon.
You’re on your motorcycle.
JK:
Well, you know, just driving up through there on a motorcycle at 6 o’clock in the morning.
So you’d get up, you’d eat and finish eating breakfast by 7:30 so I could get some leftover
eggs and a cup of coffee by the time I got up there. Early in the morning, quiet, nothing
there – ah! It was gorgeous with a motorcycle.
But you know, most of my memories of course with summer camp are running that old
facility and dealing with young people and all the things that went with it.
BM:
Like what?
JK:
Oh, you know, just feeding them and manage them, and dealing with the issues. You know
the first year I was in charge of it – they always allowed dogs up there. We stopped that
about the second year I was in charge of that because the kids were less responsible with
everything, including their pets. And one of the first Forestry students had became pregnant
and had a baby without a husband here, and she came to me and said, “I’d like to come to
summer camp.” And I said, “Well sure, you have to.” And she said, “But I don’t have a
babysitter and I’m breastfeeding my child. Could I bring my baby to camp?” And in those
things you should go check with the department head and go check with the dean I guess.
But it was just a sense of justice that just hit me, from mostly reading and other things. And
of course being raised as a shanny Irishman too, we always focused on justice and we were
treated unfairly, you know. But anyhow, it occurred to me – I was going to go check with
the leadership – and I thought, “Wait a minute. If we allow people to bring dogs there, how
could we ever say ‘No?’ I mean I don’t have to go listen to these people. And the fact that
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�they told me to qualify it or say ‘No.’ I resented and resisted. And they might tell me that
and I’d have to enforce that stupid decision.” So I said, “Certainly you can do that.”
Well, when the word got out, everyone was you know, upset. And even some of the
students, well. That baby was passed around and in the first week it didn’t know who it’s
parent was, you know. It was part of the group. When she had to do stuff there was always a
willing hand to put that little baby in their backpack or underneath their jacket. We’d take it
out in the snow and everything. And it really had an influence on the culture, as did women.
BM:
How so?
JK:
Well, I mean it made us more human. When male cultures dominated, there was always a
goat. I mean males I think were so insecure they had to put a benchmark, like a brass bench
marker to know what the elevation was, so they could feel taller. And with the women up
there – I remember, this was the first year – I could see the goat that they picked out within
a day or two. And I mentioned it – there were three very powerful women there – and I
mentioned it and I was going to have to intervene. And one of them, God bless her (and I
can’t remember her name) – when one of the alpha males was putting this kid down, she
said, “What needs are being fulfilled when you put another human being down like that?
When you hurt another person, how does that make you feel good?” “Well, I’m not hurting
him” [Inaudible] You little punk, you know, you little shit. “Yeah, yeah I am.” “Ah, I’m not
really. Well I don’t really mean to hurt him.” She just – and then he got red and flustered.
And he made such a fool of himself that [snap], the sport was off!
BM:
Yeah.
JK:
I mean that really, that really hit me. And I just looked at her and she looked at me, and I
had such respect for that woman. And by having a baby there and I remember all the
concern when we were going to bring women up to camp. You know, there was, “Oh! How
are we going to pee in the woods together?” Crap, you know that stuff!
BM:
[Laughing]
JK:
You know it was so absurd to have a bunch of PhDs sitting around the damn table, talking
about such irrelevant, peripheral rubbish! “Well we won’t get to tell jokes together. What if
we’ve got to fart around girls?” You know that kind of a thing. [Laughing]
This was really cute, you’ll appreciate this. And I don’t even mind if it’s on tape. We got
there and we had a huge snow storm. In fact, you can still see mature aspen trees that bent
over from getting about 16 inches of wet snow. And this was in the quarter system, so this
would have been about the 10th of June. It was huge! And most of the young people didn’t
bring adequate footwear. So it was a serious storm and all the trees were bent over. And we
couldn’t even drive out – you know we’re not that far off the highway. The highway crews
weren’t ready for it, everything was shut down. We’re eating breakfast and they’re wading
through snow (this is the first week of class), “Well, we’re not going to go out are we Prof?”
“Certainly we are! We’ve got everyday scheduled, you’re going out. What do you think is
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�going to happen when you’re working in the field? Certainly you’re going to do that.”
“Well, we don’t have shoes.” You know, I had more wool socks, I think, then anybody. So
we started sharing socks. We took all the bread out and used bread bags. I said, “You put
that underneath your sneakers. You mean you came up here without boots? You know, I’m
sorry. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for you. We’re not going to put you where your life’s
at risk, and we’re not going to let your feet freeze off, but they’re going to be bloody cold.
And you’re going to have to take responsibility for that.” “Well, you were such a nice guy in
Principles class.” “Well, this is a different learning experience.”
So all of that. And about two or three days later when we had a chance to go down and get
boots, there was still snow as we’re going up to do our first day of cruising. And the guys
were trying to tell jokes and were on the edge and with caution. And it was awkward, it was
kind of cute. And walking up through the snow – we drove in open trucks then. So we drive
up and someone was telling jokes (I don’t remember that part). But I remember it was
within the first week or ten days and they were trying to learn how to deal with women
colleagues (as we were) with women students. And we’re walking up deep in snow, and one
of the women tripped up in the front and said, “How is getting screwed by a Forester like
spring snow?” And everyone freezes, and then no comment. She said, “Well you can always
count on it being sloppy, but you never know how many inches you get, or how long it’s
going to last!”
BM:
[Laughing]
JK:
Well, I went crazy. I just started laughing, my knees buckled. The guys thought they had to
laugh – I mean that really hit them where it hurt. [Laughing] The guys thought they had to
laugh, but it sounded like rusty plumbing. You can hear them all going [imitates forced
laughter]. They weren’t having fun at all. And I just laughed. And then I felt badly because,
you know I was embarrassing the guys too much. But after that – I mean all the ice got
broken, you know. And it just made better people out of everybody. And a lot of the
stereotypical bullshit got knocked, you know, which was a huge learning experience for
everybody.
But it was exactly the learning experience they needed to go work in a post-NEPA culture in
the agencies. And most of all professors weren’t getting that education; they were stuck in
the old, traditional molds. And they didn’t expose themselves to the agencies. By me being
turned down as a full professor, my reference group shifted. Where what the chief of the
Forest Service and a half a dozen Forest Supervisors I respected, or a colleague that I was
teaching short courses with (like Jack Ward Thomas) – what they thought of Jim Kennedy
as a person, professional meant so much more than Thad Box (or even my department head)
thought. And so that really liberated me from this place, where I could do what I wanted to
do for better reasons.
BM:
Um-hmm.
JK:
And it was about that time when I started to recognize the validity and empowerment of the
puppet model, you know. I never liked people calling me “puppets” for reading the Bible, or
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�calling me a “sheep” you know. I was anything but a “sheep,” damn it. And a “puppet?” No,
by god, I was in charge! Nobody was a puppet master to me. But when Thad really messed
up my life for a couple of weeks after he rejected me as a full professor, I was obviously a
puppet and he had strings. And my only way of dealing with that was to let go of the damn
things. You know, the only way a puppet master has any control over you is you hold on to
the other end of the string. You let go of the string, whew! You know, he’s just flipping a
piece of string in space, which isn’t very satisfying to puppet masters.
And so I decided I was a puppet and a lot of strings were up there, and too many of them I
was holding on to and I didn’t have to do that. But I still recognized I needed respect, and I
still recognized I needed self-respect. But I just went other places to gain that, more than I
did in the past. So I became much more annoyingly independent of this group, than I had
my first 20 years here. But it allowed me to go into the agencies and really do some
powerful work and pivotal work. You know, you have an impact on a student you’ve got to
wait a long time. When you have an impact on a frustrated professional, six years in the
Forest Service (and half of them were women), you know you can see an immediate
response.
And a lot of the reasons the women were having trouble was they were blaming too much of
their frustration and their failure on their gender. Which, you know, wasn’t necessarily it at
all. I didn’t fit into the Forest Service as an early professional. And if I was a woman I’d
have used that to blame too. I’m sure I would have. But having them consider that maybe
the reasons they’re not fitting in and not being effective as a role model, and being
perceived as an ugly American in a foreign culture like the Forest Service – as they would
be if they were in Zambia – behaving like a goddess that knew what was good for wildlife
and was going to bulldoze over anyone that she could to do god’s work, and do it right and
get all the credit herself. And that just may be why you’re failing. It’s just the way you’re
trying to execute; and the image you need to make yourself feel comfortable as a rebel, as
someone that confronts people. And when people don’t respond to you, it’s obviously
because they don’t care or know enough to be as good as you, you know. Which is a great
escape clause – then you don’t have to deal with your consequences (which isn’t very
mature and very effective in the long term).
All sorts of issues like that we had to deal with. Which were hard to say, and really hard to
receive. But boy, I’ll tell you, unlike teaching undergraduates – you always got contact. And
I used to fear as a young educator, negative contact with me: anger, rejection, fury. I did not
seek that out, but that’s contact. That’s intimacy. And unlike the students sleeping in class,
or not showing up, or looking up at the ceiling, or not getting it – just taking notes just to get
a grade. And so I no longer felt fear of that. Because in order to do your job in a week with
these frustrated, inter-disciplinary professionals, you had to make contact quickly. And they
were so primed you could hardly avoid it even if you wanted to. And some of the people
that we first brought in tried to avoid it because they didn’t know how they could handle
that, they didn’t want to disturb people. But by Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, even the
tougher ones just often came around to take personal responsibility for what they were
doing; much more so than they were. And to be more forgiving of themselves, as well as the
system, and not be blaming – exploiting blame rather than keeping it where it belongs. And
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�even if it doesn’t belong with you, even if you’re treated shabbily – like you could probably
consider you were with what you’ve put into environmental education with your job. The
only way you can empower yourself is your response to that.
BM:
Um-hmm.
JK:
The decision has been made, regardless of the jerk or the situation. The only way you can
come out of that whole and more whole, is to decide on your best responses to that. To keep
you going and to be the person and professional you want to be.
BM:
Um-hmm. And it makes you reach further. It makes you reach further than what you think
you have. I’m sure the students felt the same way with forestry camp too. That you know,
we’re being embarrassed here but it makes you look inside and say, “What do I have and
how do I respond to this? And how do I be the better person?”
That metaphor of the puppet strings – that’s perfect. We just hang on to those and –
JK:
Yeah, it’s amazing, especially when you look at the data. For example, we were getting – in
those days inflation was 5%. If you did well, everybody got a 2% raise. Then you had 1% to
divide up for performance, which usually came out to maybe another 2-3% more salary a
year. God! Even if you’re in the money, that’s such chicken feed. When I was being a
consultant, I was making three times as much as a raise in a week; which was really helpful
financially because both of our kids didn’t stay in Utah. One was at Whitman College
(which was really expensive) and one was at Georgetown. So it helped us put both kids
through really expensive schools.
And that really was a test for me, as a human being as well as a professional, to deal with
those very human problems and not pander to them; to just be tough love. But they always
knew that we cared about them and we cared about the Forest Service. You know, Jack was
part of the Forest Service and I, in my heart, never left the Forest Service and never left the
National Forest (which I cherish more than the agency that’s the steward in this point in
time).
So that failure was really one of the best blessings I ever had. Now, as it worked out Thad
took a retirement buyout, Joe Chapman became our dean and he was on my committee who
recommended that I be a full professor. So the first months of his reign, he came and said, “I
want you to go up for full professor.” And this was a year after I was turned down.” I said,
“I’m too busy. Besides, you know what Joe? I don’t give a damn about it that much.”
[Laughing] “I don’t care if I ever have a full professor.” You know, in those days you never
got a raise for it. There was no money. And the year that I became a full professor, there
were no raises at the university – so I got zero! In fact, I said, “I’m going to turn it down and
go for it again next year.” “You can’t do that. Once they give it to you that’s it!”
But anyhow, I mean all that stuff was really important at the time, but it’s like being stood
up for the Junior Prom: at the time it’s really a serious issue! [Laughing] But you know,
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�BM:
within a few months or a few years it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. And now it’s just
kind of funny.
Yeah. Well they say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
JK:
Yeah, that’s Nietzsche. That can be taken too much.
BM:
Right, right.
JK:
Yeah, and everything that Nietzsche says I take with a grain of – I always take with
qualifications. He was twisted in a way; real bright, brilliant.
Anyhow, that’s some of my summer camp stories and these young professionals. Plus the
other thing (issues) is just dealing with if they were going to be drinking and managing
damage control. You know? “I don’t want anybody driving! I am serious! I’ll be all over
you if I find out a bunch of you went out, you know, got half drunk here and then went up
without a designated driver. I’ll be the damn designated driver, but I do not – do you
understand that? I mean I’m going to be in your face, I’m going to beat you over the head
with a stick when you’re hung over! I am never going to trust you again, do you got that?” I
mean I was just really clear.
[Laughing]
So that the kind of stuff that you just did not want tragedy. And it could easily happen with
that much youth, testosterone and death machines around. But once they got that, and it was
legitimate, they knew that was also an expression of caring.
Okay, I’ll do a little bit more of this some time this week, but my voice is running out on
me.
BM:
We’ll stop for today.
JK:
It’s the allergies too.
BM:
Thank you so much.
JK:
Do you often have to break in these interviews?
BM:
No, not too often.
Okay, so we’re going to finish your interview today with the first part of Jim Kennedy.
We’ll come back later on this week.
Thank you, Jim, for meeting with us.
[End tape 2: B; Begin Tape 3: A]
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�BM:
Okay, we’re here with Jim Kennedy. We’re doing our second day of our interview on Logan
Canyon Land Use Management Project. I’m Barbara Middleton and it is Tuesday, May 5th.
We’re here again on the campus of Utah State University. Continuing onto tape 3, side 1.
Jim.
JK:
Okay. I guess we’re starting with religion and spirituality, although I never separated
religion and spirituality early in life. I was raised in a very, very religious family. And I’m
still God haunted. And probably if I had to classify myself as anything I’m a “Jack
Catholic.” And that’s out of some good experiences I had. I consider all religions human
creations, with people with feet of clay: both those who create it and those who continue it.
And so I never ask for perfection in a religion of anyone I knew – my neighbors or myself.
My grandmother and my mother in my parochial school years had an influence on me. In
terms of my relationship to the land, a lot of the religion training I got in the classroom, and
being required to go to confession once a week when you were seven years old (and you
almost had to make up sins just to have an interesting conversation with the priest). Those
were kind of rituals and a lot of times I couldn’t find spirituality there. Yet, I could come out
of Mass in the spring and hear honeybees up in a fresh, blooming apple tree and just take off
my good clothes and scamper up there and lay in the branches covered with white and pink
and odors and bees and sunlight – and you know you just melt all the barriers on your heart
and in your mind. And you could become part of something much bigger and much more
wonderful than yourself.
So in some ways, searching for spirituality and religion, and often being disappointed
(although not always, but when I was younger, pretty much most of the time), it had me
look elsewhere for spirituality. And I usually almost always found it in nature and solitude
usually – not activity. And out in nature was one of the few places I could slow down and
was captured and interested enough with my ADHD qualities, to find spirituality there. My
first considerations as professions, as a young boy in Philadelphia, were three Ps. They were
to be: a policeman, a politician or priest. And I had good role models in all of them; good,
honest, caring people who had a sense of social service and a sense of self bigger than who
they were, and sense of purpose. So I never had any bad run-ins with any negative role
models in those areas. More with teachers and neighbors and people like that.
And I also stay in my current religion, mainly out of a sense of loyalty. I’m still a Democrat,
I’m still a Catholic, but I’m not a baby boomer. My two brothers and my sisters are baby
boomers; they’ve all become Episcopalians and Republicans and have become embarrassing
wealthy – seriously wealthy. I’m talking tens of millions of dollars. We were all upwardly
mobile I guess, and climbing. I just never wanted the traditional – all the professions I really
(other than my initial kind of pressure to consider being a dentist), I never was attracted to
status or money or fancy cars or fancy clothes or power – in a sense of power in an
organization. I wanted power to change the world when it came to the way we used and
abused the land. And I wanted some power and influence over my own life too. I wanted to
be, what you call today, empowered.
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�But it saddens me that my siblings have betrayed their history. And I don’t know what
they’re going to, but I’m certainly not going to turn my back on a religion that my ancestors
have fought and died for for hundreds of years. To do a makeover on myself, or be more
presentable to my peer group I’m trying to impress. And you know, I wouldn’t change my
political party either. My grandfather had scars all over his body from being beaten with
bicycle chains with fish hooks in them when he was a labor union organizer. And so that
also ties with my orientation with policy.
Although I worked at the policy level, being a special assistant to the director of the BLM,
and being very close friends and respected by a couple of the Forest Service chiefs – I never
was comfortable or impressed or felt in place on top of Mount Olympus in Washington, or
at the regional level in Portland, or down in Ogden with the Forest Service. I always liked
being with the working class, you know. The foresters, the wildlife biologists, the
technicians; they’ve always been my identification group, my peer group. That’s where life
and interest in action occurred. So if anything, I switched from being an economist to
someone interested in organizational dynamics, organizational behavior, organizational
change. Although, you can’t put that on your letter head; no one gets it. You know, if you
say, “administration,” that immediately puts you down with the secretaries. I don’t mind
being there with status, but it’s just plum inaccurate. So I always would put “policy” there
because I didn’t – it would just keep them from asking me embarrassing, annoying
questions. And “policy and economics” – people would salute that and just let you be
yourself.
BM:
So at the time you’re talking about, with the BLM, again – give us the date.
JK:
That was in the first Clinton administration.
BM:
Okay.
JK:
I think it was – I’ll have to check for sure. But I know it was the year before the Republican
takeover of Congress. When that happened, the BLM was so rattled. And ironically, the
Congressman Hansen was the new head of the Natural Resources Committee in the House.
And he and I got along okay; I mean I liked him as a person. I would have even been happy
to have him as a grandfather. As a policy person values – his views on our values, how we
should think about the value and manage of public lands was very much opposed to mine.
But Mike Dombeck, the director of the BLM then, asked me to please stay on a year. So like
a baseball player or something, USU let them buy out my contract and kept me there to
pitch hit for them. Mainly because I was trustworthy and Jack Ward Thomas and Mike
Dombeck liked and respected me, and I could run back and forth between Interior and the
Ag building and we could cut a lot of deals, and they could do it with confidence. They
could come up with an agreement, and they’d just turn to me and whoever was representing
the Forest Service and said, “Well we’ll let Kennedy and Barb, you know, work out the
details.” And you and I, for example, would get together and work out a memo. I never tried
to get a penny for them for research or anything special, and they knew that. So they knew I
wasn’t trying to get into their pocket or exploit the influence and friendship we had together.
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�But even doing that with the BLM, a lot of times I was out in the field doing stuff, if I could
do it. I mean I would look for reasons to get out and work with universities that were
historic, black colleges they were working in partnerships with to try to diversify their
culture, issues.
BM:
In the natural resources area?
JK:
Yeah.
BM:
Okay.
JK:
Well, yeah. But they were geology, but even engineers (any skills the Forest Service could
use) public affairs, for example. It’s much easier to find an African-American interested in
public affairs in eastern shore Maryland, than one of the traditional black colleges there.
Queen Ann: Queen Ann of Maryland or Queen Ann of Virginia? But they were interested in
recruiting people and I was an academic and had respect. And so I would go do a lot of
work for them in that way, just to keep in touch with what was going on out there.
BM:
And did you see that change in the time from then until now?
JK:
Well it was changing then. My immediate supervisor was the assistant director for the BLM
– it was a black, woman, wildlife biologist. Really tough as nails, Brooklyn gal, that I loved
and respected. And she would cringe at using those words. She was a street fighter; although
she had a good heart, but she didn’t like herself very much. She tried to define herself by
what she was doing, and that’s pretty hollow. She loved film and didn’t like going out to
film by herself as much, or going out to eat afterwards alone – and she was a loner. And my
wife was taking care of her father and going up to New Jersey a lot. It was kind of spooky
and some people got the wrong idea, but Denise never came across that we’d be involved!
[Laughing] And anyway, it would insult the promises we made to people that mattered, but
we spent quite a bit of evenings out together having fun and talking about life (as much as
she would do that).
So yeah, I would live a long time at Utah State University before I work for a black wildlife
biologist woman.
BM:
Right. So in looking in your role; I’m trying to understand that a little bit more so that
people that are listening to this get a feel for when you go back to Washington and you are
doing some of these special assignments. That sounds fascinating to me to be able to go out
and look at the kinds of young people that are coming through the program and encourage
people from other diverse cultures, religions, races, whatever; to be able to come to the
field. What do you say to them? How do you attract them to something like natural
resources?
JK:
Well, you try to find out number one, if they have a passion about being a professional, or if
they’re just in the rank and privileged and other things like that – then they want to be a
lawyer, or business person. And usually you can’t capture them because their needs are
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�different and they probably wouldn’t be very good if I did capture them. But people that
want to make a difference, that have some pioneering spirit, that have some attachment to
the land. But an awful lot of African-Americans see the land as the enemy; that kept them in
chains as much as any political, social or cultural stuff. You know, working in the swamps,
logging under miserable, dangerous conditions, working in the mills, working in the mines,
working in the fields.
BM:
Yep.
JK:
I have fond memories about my attachment to the land, but we kind of own some of the
land, or a few people that I knew and cared about did own the land; but it was a big
difference. And it was always a round-trip ticket: if I didn’t like being abused, or come
football season or school, I’d be out of there. And they didn’t have that option. So that was a
hard sell. That was really a hard sell with blacks, especially in the southeast. And some of
them wanted to get out of urban areas, and you could sell them on that. But I looked for a
spark of professionalism and wanting to make a difference. And those who want to entertain
a surprising option that they hadn’t really thought about. And a lot of the people I talked to
were single moms in those traditional, black colleges. And you could talk about the security
that we get and the support that they wouldn’t find in industry. And so I was actively
recruiting them, as well as talking to the people who – when I’d leave would hopefully
continue or increase that activity.
BM:
Were there programs actually growing at that time in D.C. with these agencies?
JK:
Oh yeah. Like Haskell Indian School [Haskell Indian Nations University] in Kansas. And
they had some formal, signed partnerships, and some Hispanic schools in New Mexico –
heavily populated Hispanic schools.
BM:
And you were also seeing then, the nature of the culture in Washington changing with the
personnel that were hired. You mentioned Denise, the black wildlife biologist. What other
kinds of entities within the Forest Service were seeing more diversity?
JK:
Well, I mean initially it was at the entry level and that was part of the problem. The cultural
diversity was gender, ethnic and professional. That’s how I got involved with the wildlife
fisheries biologists in the Forest Service because in the ‘70s when they were starting to hire
women (well NEPA forced them into hiring professional diversity). Presidential
proclamations motivated them to hire gender diversity and ethnic diversity. And often the
only jobs that were available then were not more foresters it was all of a sudden they needed
to hire a lot of wildlife/fisheries biologists. And so without intention and without
recognizing the consequences, they got double whammies: they would hire a black woman
or Hispanic woman biologist, and they’d score triple points, like in Scrabble. However, that
was three often stress points with a person with triple uniqueness trying to fit into the
agency, especially moving the line by being successful on the ground. They were change
agents in three ways; and most had the attitudes and skills, or the expectations of that, and
they were just thrown into the whirlwind and didn’t know it.
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�And many of the line officers and their peers wouldn’t have hired a woman, an ethnic or
professional diversity, if they weren’t forced to. And NEPA and all those legislations were
change agent legislations; they were social experiments. And these poor people didn’t know
that they were being dropped into an organization. They thought they were going to go out
and count beaver or birds or something and wear hip boots for the ten years and shocking
trout. And then when they found threatened and endangered species, their peers would
congratulate them for completely changing their professional lives by making it much more
complex, and slowing down projects.
And they didn’t know how – they didn’t want to do it. They didn’t want to be political; they
didn’t want to be change agents. They didn’t have the right table manners to do it; they had
lousy expectations. So before I went to Washington, mostly as a carry on for my passion as
an educator, I started to look around and the Forest Service (especially line officers at the
Forest Supervisors and Regional Forester level) by the mid-late ‘70s were seeing this dropout rate. And these young people were having such conflict fitting in and being effective in
the Forest Service; they were like very unsuccessful Peace Corps workers.
BM:
Stop for one second. I’m concerned about this tape. [Stop and start recording] We’re fine.
JK:
So I was with a Regional Forester. We used to have a lot of connection. Of course many of
the people down in the Ogden Region 4 office were USU grads. So once a year we would
have a banquet down in Ogden. (Now this is a quick, 15-20 years ago.) I was down there
with a Regional Forester and he was talking about all the new people they were getting:
hiring more people with Master’s degrees, having more science in the Forest Service. And
he also had been talking about the difficulty it was for them to hire and keep good women
and biologists really (many of which came from Utah State University).
And I said, “Well you know, you have science, your science has improved. Let’s take
recreation for example, when I left you guys you were not applying science to recreation;
now you’ve got some of the best recreation researchers on the planet in the Forest Service.
You are doing all sorts of things. But you know much more about the hikers in the high
Uintas than you know about how and why young people come work for the Forest Service
in these new ‘-ologist’, non-traditional positions, how and why they are not effective, how
and why they stay or leave.”
BM:
Um-hmm.
JK:
I said, “You’re not doing any research on that, it’s a folk art. And so you don’t have a
chance until you start finding out how and why that system’s failing. And so don’t tell me
you’re scientific there.” And I said, “And really, does it mean you care more about high
Uinta hikers than you do your own people?”
BM:
So what was their response?
JK:
Well you know, we were having beer and having a lot of fun. And he said, “You know,
you’ve got a point there.” And something else came up and I brought it up again, and he
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�turned – one of those serendipitous things – and he turned to his administrative officer and
said, “Can you give a couple thousand bucks to Kennedy so he can do some research and we
can shut him up?” And he said, “Yeah, I think we could do that.” So I immediately got back
and called Region 6 in Oregon (I had a contact there), and said, “How about if we compare
foresters with your entry-level, one to three years in permanent positions, your entry-level
foresters, range cons, and wildlife biologists, and men and women? Let’s see how and why
they’re fitting into the culture.”
And it really was that often women wildlife biologists had more trouble because they were
biologists than because of their gender; although it’s hard to separate out the two. Wildlife
biologists were seen as obstructionists; they were always telling the foresters and the
engineers and the range cons what they couldn’t do; why they had to spend more money and
more time doing something different, or doing what they normally did a little bit differently,
or make 180 degree turn. A lot of the biologists and a group and individual self-image –
they call themselves “combat biologists.” The Nez Perce said, “Screw negotiations, go for
the throat.” And they had this wolverine with a rabbit by the throat, combat biologist on the
Nez Perce. Well that just set up conflict. And so they were having conflict and they were
taking no ownership for that.
And so I was a forest economist, and not a Forest Service person and not that well known in
the agency, so I recruited Jack Ward Thomas. Because he was a highly respected Forest
Service professional, very good politically and loved and respected throughout. And we hit
it off. And so we developed a one week training session. Well we did the research – I could
give you the reprints – which was the only research done in that area that I know of, in
natural resources; then or since. And of course it just broke my heart to see some of my best
and brightest students come back one, two, or three years after being in the agencies, failing
as a person and a professional, and as an employee. Being miserable, being unsuccessful,
not really helping the land or their people or future generations, and not taking any
ownership for their failure: blaming it all on evil, external forces, men, politics, the damn
foresters and engineers. And that just broke my heart. I mean that was worse than watching
the land erode. And you can’t have healthy land without healthy people managing it.
BM:
Right, right.
JK:
So that’s what really changed my career. And I got involved in studying cultures and the
interaction of culture, cultural change and changing power. And so we developed this
training course that really ran about 80% of the current entry level; within five years the
entry level wildlife/fisheries biologists through that program. And it was known, in some
regions, as Peace Corps training for biologists.
BM:
Did you have a title for that training program?
JK:
Yeah. It was a formal training program; part of the formal wildlife/fisheries biologist
training program, called “Entry Level Training.”
BM:
Okay.
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�JK:
We usually went out and held it on the sites or among the forests, rather than bringing them
to the universities.
BM:
And most of them were in the Pacific Northwest region?
JK:
No, all over – eastern regions –
BM:
Oh, okay.
JK:
And it went to New Mexico; a couple in Region 4 did come up to Utah State; one in
Montana, a couple in Alaska.
BM:
You know, it’s interesting that you make that comment because I remember in Oregon,
when I was there the group that was really being crucified were the archaeologists.
JK:
Them too. And landscape architects and the soft scientists – those “ologists” that didn’t have
any kind of entry level training like that suddenly started showing up at these short courses.
As did an awful lot of mid-career biologists that really hadn’t gotten over the pain from the
way they were treated in their involvement with the Forest Service. And in some cases some
of the people who should have quit and left were those who didn’t. Usually you lose your
best and your brightest in the first three years. Those that stay in often stay in and cope in a
stoic, bitter way. And sadly they become toxic mentors when we send our summer students
out, or young, permanent people or co-op students.
You know, because some of these isolated, ineffectual biologists can be interesting
characters. They’re like Robin Hood stuck up in the Nez Perce – no one likes them but
that’s because no one can handle their vision and truth and devotion to the land. And they’re
all dog loyal to the agency, where I care about the land and the birds and birds and the
cougars. And you can come with that encased, glorious, victimization image of yourself.
And there are always plenty of whining support groups you can get around with alcohol,
especially, to help convince you that you really are the pure of heart and the agency and the
politics and the stupid locals just don’t appreciate you. And that’s how Peace Corps
volunteers become ugly Americans and dysfunctional, and really betray the faith of that
position that they’re in Zambia or Uganda. And we use those examples all the time.
BM:
Hmm. Now was this during a time when the group in the Forest Service (and I don’t know
the exact name), but the environmental –
JK:
Exactly.
BM:
Employee ethics?
JK:
The Forest Service for Employee Ethics. Yeah.
BM:
Yes.
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�JK:
And the current president and CEO of that is one of our PhD students who never finished,
Dave Iverson, from the regional office. Who took all of his coursework at Utah State
University – in Ecology at Utah State University.
Yeah, that was a splinter group that broke off because of the frustration and anger they had,
and sense of betrayal with the Forest Service. A lot of it though was their personal,
professional betrayal. Because we never talked about career development; we talk about
managing all these precious resources out there and the ecosystem – your career is pretty
precious too, and it’s a non-renewable resource if you’re not careful. For example, an awful
lot of these people had this image of promotion of the “Cinderella” model: they were going
to go out and keep their hands pure of politics, they were never going to kiss anyone’s ass or
snuggle up to any line officer; they were just going to work hard, work Sundays, work their
ass off, do good work and their Prince Charming was going to come down in a clean truck
and pluck them up out of the stream and say, “What can I give you? Come to the
mountaintop and pick your career.”
And when you put it that way they’d all just kind of look at you. And some people would
even start crying. And they say, “That’s stupid!” And not only that, it’s arrogant. Because
when you put yourself in that position you set yourself up for a lose/lose position. Because
if you’re not picked up by your Prince Charming, it’s not your fault, you’re being pure –
you’re being a pure Cinderella or Cinderello (if you’re a male). And the whole fault is in the
ignorant, insensitive, bureaucratic, political system. And so not only do you feel betrayed
and unappreciated, but there’s no way you can fix it because you won’t get involved. And
it’s just this death spiral for people and professionals – it’s a tragedy that Shakespeare would
recognize and would make much more poetic than me. But I saw it and it bothered me, and
a few other people did too.
And so ironically when people like Mike Dombeck and Jack Thomas end up in high power
positions, so did a lot of other wildlife biologists. They were so ready (talk about the seed
crystal), they were so ready for us – whether they realized it or not, most of them didn’t
realize it. And initially they thought we were a setup to bring all these wildlife biologists
together for a week at a nice ski resort that wasn’t being used in May; play nice so they
would lay down and let the rock trucks roll over them. And they came in with cohesive and
ready to – “You just try to teach me something, you just try!” You know, you’d see the body
language at the opening night. And normally, when I was younger that would’ve terrified
me, I’d had wet my pants. But I learned that was engagement, and what I always seek in a
group is engagement. And I get less engagement with undergraduates than I do with anyone.
You can’t avoid engagements with serious, involved professionals; they just challenge you.
And if you can rise to that challenge, that’s really cool. And again, it really allowed me to
come back as a much more confident peer among my other peers (who still have Cinderella
models), and often directly and indirectly project that and teach that to their students: don’t
get involved in politics, don’t compromise—all of that stuff that’s just dysfunctional.
BM:
Well and that also follow with then, don’t even come to the table and negotiate; don’t even
bring your ideas and don’t feel like you’re part of a team.
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�JK:
That’s right.
BM:
So how does that eventually affect the perception of yourself, and your whole role within
that agency?
JK:
Yeah. Well, you become disempowered.
BM:
Yeah.
JK:
Bitter. And it’s tragic; it’s a tragedy. We were pretty effective on that, plus we had a lot of
fun. We really did. I am more confident that I changed more lives per capita that way than
with undergraduates.
BM:
Um-hmm. Can you recall one of the good arguments that somebody brought to that
workshop? I mean it sounds like an incredibly engaging week – like an energy drain too.
Whew!
JK:
Yeah. You could think it through and when you represent it in the Cinderella model and you
have Jack Thomas and I doing that, you know, and you get them laughing; and sometimes
we’d act it out. You’d get them; you’d play “gotcha” the whole time. But they knew Jack
and I really, really cared about them and the future of National Forests, and wanted them to
be an effective part of it. We wanted to empower them. And they all considered themselves
scientists – and you would show them the numbers – there were a lot of numbers on this to
look at the failures. And we’d look at the interviews and the survey research results that I
got my studies with the Forest Service. And many of them were part of those studies, and I
made sure the results got back to the participants.
We were playing coyote, you know. That’s when I first started developing this image of
myself in a bio as “Coyote the Trickster,” who I love. That is such a wonderful image and a
god. Christianity is so bereft of the power of having an image like that. I mean, actually
Peter was always one of my favorite apostles because he was so ADHD and wacko! He
wanted to walk on water . . . and what Jesus of Nazareth was just smoking when he saw
that guy as a rock!
[Looking for files] I’m looking for – I had to change all my files around because they’re
kicking me out of this space. And I don’t know where my bios are. Hmm. You keep me
going; I want to find those even if I didn’t want to immediately give them to you because I
know where in the heck they were. That’s normally where I kept them. Huh.
BM:
I’m going to stop the tape.
[Stop and start recording.]
BM:
We’re back on.
JK:
He’s always being caught for his hubris (as the ancient Greeks would call it).
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�BM:
This is the Trickster you’re talking about?
JK:
Yeah, Coyote the Trickster. And we would say to them, “We’re Coyote the Trickster. We’re
here to cause you to wonder, to question things. We’re here to annoy you. We’re not here to
play nice. We’re going to be confrontative; we’re going to be honest. We get away with this
in the short courses because “it will be abundantly clear to you that we really care about you
and we want you to succeed and we want you to figure out ways to finesse and to use Judo.
To know how the organization works, and rather than Sumo wrestling.”
I mean most of these people were the Sumo wrestler model: they were going to squat down
and run up against the bureaucracy. All the engineers and foresters; all the damn men were
reactionaries and they became road kill. And they’d get up valiantly and wham!
[End Tape 3:A; begin Tape 3: B]
BM:
We are on tape 3 and we are on side 2, continuing with Jim Kennedy. Just talking about
Judo versus Sumo wrestlers in how we approach things.
JK:
Well, you know, all things are a relationship. And your relationship with an organization is
huge. And I know this from experience. I don’t know this from self-help books; I mean I’ve
been road kill. I’ve acted out against authority. Back in my bedroom bureau I probably have
40 Purple Hearts from serious injuries in combat with bureaucracies. And they always win,
you know, especially if you confront them with impatience and arrogance. But that’s how
heroes were trained: from the comic books, with our professors, with movies. You know,
this is my alternate – I have my bio here – but on the back I said:
I have an alternate, more honest and descriptive Jim Kennedy bio sketch. I
am Coyote the Trickster. I’m here to annoy and stimulate you to doubt,
wonder, search, so you and I might be more aware and wondering learners
together. I’m not here to teach you to know more or better. I’m here to
annoy and stimulate you to be a learner and not a knower, and as such I
honor your inherent wisdom. As an insecure grad student I didn’t want to
be Coyote at this stage in my career. I dreamed of being White Eagle:
mature, wise, proud, mighty and unassailable, sailing safely above you and
the messiness, complexity and wonder of life, raining truths down to teach
you, with neither of us being learners, not much. Happily I failed at that, it
never worked for the things I considered worth learning, including myself.
I am Coyote the Trickster down here with you and immersed in our own
messy, complex, and mysterious world. And as such I honor you, myself
and together what we search to learn more about.
And you know, I’d give it to them and I’d tell them, like I do my students (I give this to my
undergraduate students) and I say, “I’m going to play Coyote with you now.” And they’d
relax, they wouldn’t feel the confrontation. And I’d use myself and Jack Thomas, we’d use
ourselves [as] examples. We would laugh about it; they’d laugh at me and with me. And all
of the sudden you’d feel them, they’d get had. They’d go, “Oh my god! That’s what I’m
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�doing! Oh, that is really dumb; I have to consider changing!” And that’s huge, to get people
to do that five or six times in a week. But it was going on with people all around them. I
mean people really had “falling off the horse” experiences on the way to Damascus. But
they couldn’t do that unless they had gone through the pain and frustration and be ready to
change. And they weren’t ready to change fresh out of college. They just didn’t have the life
experiences.
BM:
Right.
JK:
And so that was the most powerful educator experience I ever had.
BM:
But you know that comes when you talk about being at the right time to change and having
that experience, but also of being of the mentality to be open to change. Like being open to
learning and realizing that each one of those is a learning experience, and you know, “What
did I learn? Or I’m going to go and repeat this again and again until I finally learn.”
JK:
Yeah.
BM:
You know, so it’s recognizing it and also having found that those years on your feet that you
recognize the experience contributing.
JK:
Yeah and we’d use all sorts of metaphors and examples. For example, we said, “Look, in
America today you all expected to learn about being an effective bureaucrat with soul and
spirit, and a long term resilience on the job. You’re as poorly trained in that as you were in
sex. We don’t formally train you in sex in our country it’s on the job experience. And often
it’s pretty tragic and high risk, but especially if you don’t have the right attitudes to be an
effective on-the-job learner; whether it’s sex or in the bureaucracy.” Most of them don’t
realize that that’s their job. When you go to a foreign country – Kathy and I have spent a lot
of time in foreign countries or as a Peace Corps worker – you’re going to have to do most of
your learning there. But it’s absolutely essential that when you go there that you have
functional attitudes and strategies to be an effective on-the-job trainer. We give them neither
of that here, other than the ENBS programs, some of them. We just give them science and
throw them out in the bureaucracy, usually with the attitude that politics is bad.
Many of our students have the same attitudes toward politics my grandmother had about
sex, you know, it was very Victorian: you only did it as means to an end, you weren’t
supposed to enjoy the process, take a shower afterward, you never talked about it, you didn’t
study about it. And so they would only engage in politics if they felt dragged into it; many
of them would feel dirty afterwards. I mean the attitudes we have about politics and
politicians are the attitudes we had about “dumb blondes” and “niggers” when I was young.
It is biased and bigoted and it’s poisonous to our culture. And we can joke about lawyers
and politicians now, with the same impunity that you used to be able to joke about “dumb
Pollack’s” or “Irishmen” or “dumb blondes” or “black men from the south” or something.
You can’t joke about those things anymore, praise god. And so we have a terrible,
dysfunctional, black hole in the way we disempower our young people in the education we
give them.
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�And not only that, our professors (but our professors don’t know it), they’re like, in many
cases, a bunch of celibate Catholic bishops who are talking to people about sex, you know.
They just don’t get it; I mean they have never had the on-job experience. That’s why they
are often in universities. And look how bitter and how easily some of our professional
colleagues burn out because the bureaucracy doesn’t work in their Cinderella, Robin Hood
mythology that’s totally unrealistic and unfounded. They hold to that because they don’t
have anything else rational. And they don’t consider that a rational part of their thinking in
life. They respond to that emotionally and glandularly: where they use their intellect in a lot
of parts of their personal and professional roles (say with professional colleagues here), but
they haven’t been aware that there is science out there in this and they shouldn’t figure it
out. I mean we were treated the same way when we were trained to be educators as
professors. We had no formal training in that, that’s on-the-job the same way we had our sex
training. We had some good role models and some bad role models, and we bumble around
and try. We don’t monitor it and measure it; we don’t try different learning practices that
much. And it’s not an area where we apply our science. I mean the studies that I did on how
and why entry-level professionals were succeeding and failing in the Forest Service, you
know part of their failure was the poor, dysfunctional way they were educated and role
modeled. So we have to take credit for that.
BM:
So today, if you were working with the Forest Service and you had that job back again, what
kinds of training would you recommend?
JK:
Well to continue what we’re doing. The problem is in all this wanting to get together there
was real suspicion about different professional groups going off by themselves, they thought
they were becoming clannish and not part of the mainstream and identifying too much with
a particular specialty.
BM:
So what are the different professions? Biology [inaudible]
JK:
Engineers, foresters, yeah, and watershed, soils people. And so they pretty much – plus
that’s expensive: it’s a full week. It’s hands-on; it’s expensive. And many of the training
programs have been gutted and reduced and thrown into big groups where they have a lot of
motivational people come in, at one extreme, and a lot of agency line officers come in at the
other end of the extreme, and talk to them about policy and stuff which is pretty boring. And
in terms of life skills and survival skills and really getting in touch with their humanity as
well. I mean that was part of it too. We focused a lot on that. And really you have to love
yourself to be able to love and care about others. You have to take care of yourself if you are
going to have anything left over to care for the land and care for some of your colleagues.
And be a person in the agency that is a healer, rather than a slasher or a “salt on the
wounds,” or someone who just ignores people and walks on the other side of the road to
Damascus when you see someone in a ditch. Because you’ve got your head up in the air, in
theory, or you’re doing important things. So someone is having marital problems or is
obviously having alcohol addiction problems in the way they’re showing up or not showing
up. And just deal with that because that’s good work for groups of people and human
beings. So you can’t separate that from being a good biologist or an engineer. You can, but I
don’t think it’s functional or healthy or sustainable.
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�BM:
So when you talk about the difference in training here at Utah State with the College of
Natural Resources, we’re separated into Wildland Resources and Watershed, and then we
have Environment and Society.
JK:
Yeah. And the whole core educational program that I worked so hard to pull off, where we
were in the vanguard of the world (not just North America), by having core courses and
bringing all of our young people together in initial courses and talk to them about the dark
side of their professional: myopia and pride and arrogance. And we’ve balkanized, you
know. We were Yugoslavia, like Yugoslavia was from the ‘70s through the mid-90s, and
now we’ve balkanized just like Yugoslavia. And we have the Serbs and the Croats and the
Bosnians, you know. We have the same thing with the hard sciences and the soft sciences.
When I really want to confront my colleagues (and I can get away with it as an economist
and as male), I talk to them about the erect sciences and the flaccid sciences.
BM:
[Laughing]
JK:
Some of them just squirm. But I’m playing Coyote with them; because it’s often at that level
and that level of intellectual foundation. It’s at the glandular level: hard science, soft
science, social science, true science. Calculus versus college algebra; how you’re not worthy
unless you go through that. It’s more sinister than substance in that. But it’s very powerful
and it’s a deep undercurrent.
BM:
Let’s bring it a little bit closer to home then, to Logan Canyon in terms of as someone who
is living here and working here, some of the policies that you saw impacting the canyon and
some of the activities that were going on here. You also mentioned that you recreated with
your family up there. So could we talk a little bit also about some of those special places,
and maybe how policy sort of changed those?
JK:
Sure. Well the biggest policy battles I’ve been involved with Logan Canyon from the early
‘70s has been always the highway; UDOT eventually wanting to put four lanes of concrete
up through that place. I think. Maybe, maybe we’ve slowed them down enough – you know
that’s one of the last canyons that doesn’t have major highways slashed through it.
Most of the other stuff is that with all the times I’ve been on sabbaticals, with all the
traveling we’ve done in the summer, I haven’t staked a claim on a watershed or an area
where I’ve become a defender of it. I love skiing on Green Canyon and I really respected
them closing that off. There used to be four wheel drives and snowmobiles up there all the
time. And making it an urban, short day use recreational area for families and everything.
To be able to work a fulfilling day and be in cross-country skis twelve minutes after you
close the door in your office, and ski to the darkness of the evening and turn around and still
see the red glow as you come down; gravity brings you down that canyon. We used to go up
there and ski at night a lot; just a wonderful gift for me.
Most of the areas that I really used are just that beautiful basin below Third Dam, off to the
south. We’d go up towards that glacial circ up there, that beautiful area. I mean that is such
a beautiful area! And it’s just so quick and easy to get to. You know, we’d go up to Tony
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�Grove and we’d hike up there and things like that. When I was director of summer camp and
staying there at nights, I would run at night up through those old logging roads and dirt
roads up behind camp. It was just gorgeous country. Again, I think the land up there is
healed up more and it looks better (and probably functioning better) than it did years ago –
ten, 20, 30, 50 years ago.
BM:
And what would you attribute that to?
JK:
Just less timber harvesting, more controlled wood scrounging, and especially grazing: better
grazing management. And really the market system has really cut down on the motivation to
graze sheep up there, you just couldn’t make money. Plus the labor costs and scarcity of
labor for the shepherds, took care of a lot of battles with the sheep, in a very quiet way that
is much more acceptable than political battles in our culture (for better or worse).
Listen, why don’t you shut this down a bit.
[Stop and start recording.]
Well and the context – so much of my responses to your questions on policy and
involvement in the Forest Service is ironic, but I’ve had probably the least impact on Region
4 (this region) that I’ve spent almost 40 years in, than the rest of the agency. I’ve spent
much more time and have been much more accepted and welcomed into the Region 6
[Pacific Northwest Region] culture; I think they’re more liberal and they’re more mobile.
Region 4 is pretty homestead, you know. Folks usually stay within the region and don’t
leave. I don’t know. You only have so many places to punch your dance card. My phone
would be ringing and I’d be saying, “Yes” to go to Milwaukee and to go to Portland and go
to Juneau, and be driving in the snow past Ogden – coming or going – to catch a plane. I’d
be thinking, “What are you doing? Are you nuts Kennedy?” As a result, that filled a lot of
my needs to do that. And on the weekends often we would go some place, especially after
the kids grew up. I didn’t spend that much time involved in Logan Canyon.
And with some people, like the high Uintas we used to hike in when the kids were young, to
manage my guilt I would just support the high Uintas preservation group with Carter and
some of those folks – to be a spokesperson for me.
BM:
So that was one of the groups you were involved with?
JK:
Well, yeah initially, when he left the Wilderness Society and started that group.
BM:
And who is this person?
JK:
Dick Carter. [See Folk Collection 37: Box 3 & 4]
BM:
Dick Carter, okay.
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�JK:
Yeah. And he was one of my early students so I had a lot of respect for him. He was always
an activist, it was in his blood. Some students you just see in the audience and you know
that they’re going to be involved up to their elbows in that stuff.
I’ve been involved in surveys and I was involved in public meetings and things on their
planning, at the request of the district rangers (who I tended to know, but I haven’t known
the last two or three). So that’s kind of sad in a way, in my own backyard I’m the least
involved and probably the least known.
BM:
But it’s interesting in the perspective of the fact that it’s not that they’re behind the times
here, it’s that the culture is different and they are – how would you say it? They look at it
through a different lens?
JK:
They’re more entrenched, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. But I mean, really they
haven’t had the pressures that Oregon and Washington had in so many ways. And the values
were less environmentally oriented, so the populace hasn’t had a ground swell as they had in
those areas. Now that’s changing, happily. Of course Oregon has so many more people and
so much more money, and they needed so many more biologists because they had so much
mitigation work to do with all the activity they were doing up in the hills, for better or worse
(and often for worse). I spent an awful lot of time in Region 6, was well known in Region 6.
And loved going there because it was a different environment, and a different place; and you
go to a different city, like Portland. And sometimes Kathy would go with me. I spent a lot of
time there.
BM:
So what was it like to come back here then and watch what was going on here, knowing
what you saw in other places, as well as the kind of work that you were doing?
JK:
Well, I didn’t have the time and energy to mope about it too much. I tend to have faith that
things change, and I’m patient. [Laughing] I’ve learned patience. And yet I knew some
people and I respected them, and they respected me, but they wouldn’t ask me to be
involved as much because I usually would stir up action and excitement. That’s bothersome
to some people. Again, I don’t want to sound arrogant about them. Just by fate there were a
couple of regional foresters that we had a great personal and professional relationship with.
None of them have ever been in this region. Regional foresters trust you as an outsider;
they’re always calling you to do things. And it’s the same way with the chiefs, you know.
All the really sensitive national studies where we looked at the soul of the Forest Service, I
was in charge of. And they never edited me. I mean they just gave me a scalpel and rib
separators and said, “Here, we’ll support you. We want you to sample 15-20% of our people
and you just crank open their rib cage man, and you poke around in their heart.” They
trusted me to do that, and they never were betrayed.
BM:
And you did that through interview and surveys?
JK:
Yeah. I was the one that challenged them to look at their values and reward system. The
biggest heartburn and conflict at all state, especially the entry-levels of career, is when
people’s values are not consistent with the values that Forest Service rewards. And it’s the
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�same with the university. I’m not saying it’s not consistent with the values they mouth, the
values and their vision statement. What they say at the university or the Forest Service is
rewarded, is often much more consistent with what the values young people entering into
the profession hold dear and want to be rewarded. The real hypocrisy and the corrosive
effect on the agency culture, spirit and respect is when the agency says they reward values
that professionals endorse, and then they don’t. They reward other things. And the
university is the same hypocrisy, you see.
BM:
Oh, and I bet it’s true in other industries.
JK:
Oh yeah, but I think that’s true with most organizations. And it’s true with many families
too. “Oh we really care about our children. I really care about my spouse.” But put a
pedometer on their ankles or on their brain and their heart and see where their heart and
mind and ass spends most of their time. You’ll see that what you see and what you do is
often very, very different and hypocritical and dysfunctional in the long term; especially
when you don’t recognize or admit it.
And so the last study I did for the last kind of Vatican gathering of the council of the Forest
Service is – here I’ll show you. I just have to go over here and pull one off. I may even have
an extra.
Part of my not spending that much time in Logan Canyon, [was] of course [because], for the
last 15 years we’ve had a ranch in southern Utah, and every time I want to get in touch with
land I run there. I’m not the best person for the last 20-30 years about having an intimacy
with Logan Canyon. Most of the joy and thrill and contact I have with that National Forest
is just basking in its beauty visually and spiritually in the morning and the evening. And
waking up to it or looking out my window or facing a class and walking over to BNR314
and looking at the sun coming up over the mountain after the students thunder out, or the
sun setting on it and the snow turning pink. Thinking how blessed I am to live in this valley.
So it’s the ambiance, the indirect relationship I have with that. And I’ve hiked up on Mount
Logan – I just look up at it and remember that I’ve been there and know what it looks like
up there – and can still feel a joy walking over to my 3:30 class Wednesday, my Econ class
that’s two hours over in the Business Building. When I go have coffee I always sit at the bar
and face out the window. Even if I’m reading the paper, I’m looking over the top of the
paper all the time at that mountain. So you know I do cherish it. That’s one of the reasons
I’m here and came here. I haven’t had a hands-on relationship with it for quite a while.
BM:
But there’s also that being able to enjoy it from a distance, and those memories that are a
part of it. As well as you know, you think of how does that help regenerate you and just recharge you for the kinds of things that you need to go and do.
JK:
Oh, it’s a very spiritual relationship. Just as some people walk past a stain-glass window or
something, it has all those qualities.
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�BM:
You wonder if, you know, when you talk about just that simple act of being able to enjoy
the canyon from here, and you wonder how many people actually do that. Especially the
students – when you think of this incredible setting we’re in and it hits you in the face all the
time.
JK:
Yeah, yeah.
BM:
And in the changing light of day, you know, highlights the different parts of that
mountainside to the east. You know, how many people really think about that?
JK:
Yeah. Oh in the last two weeks it’s been some of the greenest I’ve ever seen it since 1970. It
looks like Ireland; it’s gorgeous! Maybe 10% of the last 30 years the soil has been that
saturated with moisture; it is amazing. Plus with the cool spring, we’ve put off the growth
spurt until the day length really is long. And man, those plants are like race horses: been
delayed in the starting gate for 15 minutes – they can’t wait to get out. And you can just see
them grow; you can just hear it almost.
BM:
The green up is amazing; it just really catches your eye. Ah! Let’s stop for a second.
[Stop and start recording.]
Okay, we’re back.
JK:
Now all the research that I did was never funded by the research money – not a dime. It was
always out of operating. It was line officers that had problems, had questions; had issues.
And they really wanted me to come in. That’s why I could never have many graduate
students – they wanted me to come in and be a consultant. And they wanted the answers
next week. I mean I’d say, “Over the summer I can find a good grad student, and we’ll study
it for two years, we’ll have a publication.” “No way.” That was not their time dimension.
They were in a hurry and they had real issues. Now it was sad that I’d hire people that were
on campus for six months, or six weeks, to do something and that was grand. But I never
developed a cadre of PhD students and things like that because I could never get long-term
funding. And these folks kept me so busy doing things I thought were important and were
immensely rewarding.
The nice thing about that though is you never lamented them not using your results. In fact
they over-used them sometimes. They would, you know. I would say, “Wait a minute! This
is only two regions, this isn’t a national study.” “No, no, no; let’s put it in place, we’ll start a
program!” You know, and you’re around these people that are actionary people – they were
so much different than researchers. And their time dimensions, their sense of urgency and
often their personal bonding – I mean they didn’t want to lose another woman wildlife
biologist. It was too hard to recruit them, and the last one that left broke their heart because
she had a lot of potential. And they saw it as a real failure and an accident that they would
like to avoid. So that was pretty heady and rewarding.
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�I did respect the Forest Service social scientists. Hendee, Stankey
and Lucas were some of
the best social scientists on the planet in the area of natural resources.
BM:
Could you – you’ve got the first name?
JK:
Hendee, Stankey and Lucas – they were the last names. You’d all know them? [John
Hendee, George Stankey & Robert Lucas. ]
BM:
George Stankey?
JK:
Yeah. They all came up with the first studies of wilderness areas and boundary waters canoe
areas; and the landscape architects in the Forest Service coming up with all the visual
management stuff. People in Europe, that’s what they wanted to get from us. I mean they
thought they knew all they needed to know about silviculture (and chances are they did), or
game management in Germany or New Zealand. In the early 1900s if there were floppy
disks, Germany and France could’ve given us floppy disks on how to manage our forests,
how to create a National Forest Service, and how to educate our forestry students. We
essentially just took that and put it right into our (metaphorically) computers in 1900, and
just followed them like a blueprint. But what we gave back to that area of the world and the
rest of the world when we started being innovative was NEPA, really.
From the ‘60s and ‘70s on, we were ahead of all the rest of the natural resource agencies in
the western world and planet. Because the previous ones – this whole machine model of
conservation: sustaining the flow of (primarily) commodities – was designed for an
industrial state with a large part of the population still being rural. They were able to have
that kind of blood and blister relationship with producing commodities. But in a restrained
way (and that’s what sustained was – it was a bridle on us race horses or plow horses out
there) to manage the land in a way that wouldn’t destroy the long-term productivity. That’s
the way the laws and the philosophy always was; but as we became an urban, post-industrial
society (and I’ve written extensively on that) there was a different relationship with the land.
It was urban and it was much more romantic and idealistic; much less blood and blister. And
I have nothing against romanticism – I’m a romantic and I’m going to die one. I’m even
romantic about death.
The Danish Forest Service, they were still stuck in a rural, industrial model of society’s
relationship with their natural resources. And society just was not there. And we thought it
was society’s problem. Look at all the effort Weyerhaeuser invested to try to get the public
to love clear cuts, you know. No way. And maybe we can get people to love root canals. I
mean they just don’t like it, you know. And it looks bloody ugly; and don’t tell me it’s going
to look good in 50 years! I’m already 50 and I’m not going to be here! And that’s not
renewable as far as I’m concerned, buster.
And in many ways it’s always been the case that the public are libertarians and foresters and
wildlife/fisheries biologists, we’ve always been communists. We look at the stand, and the
population, and the long-term. And that’s a very impersonal, abstract relationship where
people don’t cut that tree or those trees along that stream in a very libertarian way. And we
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�respond like communists, “You’ve got to think in the long term, lady. Don’t get emotional.
You know this has a purpose; we’re going to plant it back. It’s all going to be back and
you’ve got to focus on the masses, not the individual. And don’t be bleeding heart about it;
you’ve got to be a bit abstract.”
That’s the argument I used to have with my classmates at Penn State in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
And so there’s a built in conflict between the public and natural resource managers. We are,
by our nature and by what society really expects of us, dealing with the long-term
productivity and sustainability of systems to look at it in a larger, more abstract way. Some
people think it’s impersonal, where we love the system. You know, Stalin would probably
say he loved the masses of Russians, as he was killing about 5% of the population every
decade. It just didn’t fit into his image. It had to be done to cull the stand, to get rid of the
weed trees. You know, to manage it for long-term, abstract goals – which sustained yield is,
or sustainability is a pretty abstraction too. And it’s a much more organic model.
[Stop recording.]
[Tape 4 of 4: A]
Susan needs to pick up from here and finish the transcript with the last tape I have sent over.
Thanks, Barbara
Randy Williams: I do not have the fourth tape. Sent email to Barb on 1/7/2011 and again on
7/12/2011 about it.
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�
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<a href="http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/LoganCanyon/id/325">http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/LoganCanyon/id/325</a>
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Hosted by: Utah State University, Merrill-Cazier Library
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2013-01-17
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Title
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Jim Kennedy interview, 4-5 May 2009, and transcription
Description
An account of the resource
Kennedy discusses his childhood experiences in nature and feelings toward nature. He talks about his professional career and relationships (with the Forest Service and as a professor at Utah State University), and how those have helped him form his current perspective and worldview. The transcript for tape 4 is not included as of 10/10/12
Creator
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Kennedy, James Joseph, 1940-
Contributor
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Middleton, Barbara
Subject
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Kennedy, James Joseph, 1940---Interviews
Kennedy, James Joseph, 1940---Childhood and youth
Kennedy, James Joseph, 1940---Family
Kennedy, James Joseph, 1940---Career in Forestry Education
Trapping--Pennsylvania--Montgomery--Anecdotes
Farm life--Pennsylvania--Montgomery
Dairy farming--Pennsylvania--Anecdotes
Delta Upsilon Fraternity
Utah State University. College of Natural Resources--Faculty--Interviews
Forestry teachers--Biography
College teaching--Utah--Logan--Anecdotes
Mentoring in education
Recreation--Utah--Logan Canyon
Utah State University. Forestry Field Station Camp--Anecdotes
Box, Thadis W.
Ecology--Study and teaching
United States. Forest Service
United States. Forest Service--Officials and employees--Training of
Career education
Occupational training
Kennedy, James Joseph, 1940---Religion
Natural resources--Law and legislation--Utah
Multiculturalism
Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (Association)
Recreation--Utah--Green Canyon (North Logan)
Medium
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Oral history
Interviews
Spatial Coverage
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Cache Valley (Utah)
Logan Canyon (Utah)
Bear Lake (Utah and Idaho)
Bear Lake County (Idaho)
Rich County (Utah)
Philadelphia (Pensylvania)
Pennsylvania
Mink Creek (Idaho)
Emigration Canyon (Idaho)
Mount Logan (Utah)
Green Canyon (North Logan, Utah)
Idaho
Logan (Utah)
Cache County (Utah)
Utah
United States
Temporal Coverage
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1940-1949
1950-1959
1960-1969
1970-1979
1980-1989
1990-1999
20th century
2000-2009
21st century
Language
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eng
Source
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Utah State University, Merrill-Cazier Library, Special Collections & Archives, Logan Canyon Land Use Management Oral History Collection, FOLK COLL 42 Box 3 Fd. 6
Is Referenced By
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Inventory for the Logan Canyon Land Use Management Oral History Collection can be found at: <a href="http://library.usu.edu/folklo/folkarchive/FolkColl42.php">http://library.usu.edu/folklo/folkarchive/FolkColl42.php</a>
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Reproduction for publication, exhibition, web display or commercial use is only permissible with the consent of the USU Fife Folklore Archives Curator, phone (435) 797-3493
Is Part Of
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Logan Canyon Land Use Management Oral History Collection
Type
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Sound
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audio/mp3
Identifier
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FolkColl42bx3fd6JimKennedy
Date Created
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4-5 May 2009
Date Modified
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2009-05-04
2009-05-05
Is Version Of
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Logan Canyon Reflections