Stephanie McLintock: A Life

CHRONOLOGY

June 2, 1964: Stephanie Lee McLintock is born at Manchester Hospital in Connecticut.

1970 - 1982: Attends public school in South Windsor, Connecticut.

1977 - 1981: Numerous awards for writing.

1977: "The Blind Owl" and other poems - Scholastic first prize in Connecticut.
1978: "A Testing of Wings" entered in Scholastic contest.
1978: "The Outsider" and other poems - national honorable mention, state Gold Key award in Scholastic contest. Subject of "The Outsider" is her brother.
1980: "George and Rum" entered in Scholastic fiction contest.
1980: "Train-Time" and other poems - Scholastic Gold Key award.
1980: "The Magic Flute Player" (fiction) - Scholastic honorable mention.
1981: "Raising Demons" (fiction) - Scholastic Gold Key; also entered in Interlochen contest.
1981: "To Hold the World" (short-short fiction) - Scholastic honorable mention in state.
1981: "The Sacrifice" (short-short) - Scholastic Gold Key.
1981: "A Cheer for Mankind" (essay) - entered in Scholastic contest. Subject of "A Cheer for Mankind" is the Voyager space probe. Essay was originally written for astronomy class.
1981: "Arrival" and other poems entered in Scholastic contest.

October 1981: Attends the last Danbury Fair, Danbury, Connecticut.

December 1981: Graduates high shcool early.

January - February 1982: Road trip to California with Larry D.

June 1982: Graduation ceremony, South Windsor High School. The Vaseline incident.

January - July 1982: Lives on Flower Street, Manchester, Connecticut.

July 1982: Attends 1982 World's Fair, Knoxville, Tennessee (May 1982 - October 1982).

July 23 - August 1, 1982: Attends Jack Kerouac conference in Boulder, Colorado.

1983: Moves back to Connecticut. Attends concerts in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Virginia.

1983: "The Voice of Conscience" (fiction).

July 15, 1983: Attends David Bowie concert at Hartford Civic Center, Connecticut.

August 1983: Moves to Boulder, Colorado. Works as an assistant to pastry chefs.

August 26, 1983: Attends Talking Heads concert at Red Rocks, Denver, Colorado.

Fall 1983: Moves in with Georgianne F. in Scotts Valley, California. Georgianne moves out to attend school at SFSU in 1983, and new roommates Tauria and Donna M. move in. Writes Iridescence. Experiences a renewal of spirit and creativity.

Summer 1984: Travels to Connecticut with Donna M. to visit her parents.

August 15 - September 3, 1984: Travels with Donna from Connecticut to San Francisco, California by train.

September 1984 - December 1984: Lives at The Anarchist House, 719 Ashbury Street, across from the Grateful Dead House (710 Ashbury). Shares household with Georgianne, Brian B., Jim C., Mark L., Felicia T., Anne Rosencrantz, and others.

January 1985: Moves with Georgianne to apartment at Fell Street on the Park Panhandle at the corner of Ashbury. This will be her home for the rest of her life.

January 1987: Enrolls at San Francisco State University.

1987: Attends numerous concerts in the Bay Area.

May 24, 1987: Participates in 50th anniversary celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Summer 1988: Georgianne moves out and Ken S. moves in.

Fall 1988: Her brother stays with Stephanie and her roommate for a couple of months.

June 15, 1989: State of Connecticut issues a wallet-size copy of birth certificate.

June 22 - 23, 1992: "Poetry in Motion" (dir. Ron Mann, 1983) screens in San Francisco. It is unclear whether Stephanie attended the event. This is the last clipping in her scrapbook.

June 27, 1992: Dies in San Francisco.

Stephanie continued to produce high-quality work until near the end of her life, when her drug and alcohol problems took an increasingly heavy toll. Despite a heroic recovery from narcotic addiction, she succumbed to the effects of heavy alcohol abuse. She was found by her roommate in her Haight-Ashbury apartment.

Stephanie's poetry can be read at the the website Wilderness Vision. Her fiction and other writing is collected at Iridescence.

Ken McLintock On Teaching

From a letter applying for a teaching position, 1961.

As a teacher I believe that at least as important as developing an individual's potentialities is the passing on of certain constant and residual values of our society. A child must learn what he can make of himself, but he must also learn something of the world of adult values in which he will in time find himself. A child-centered school may be all right, providing it does not turn out a child-centered child. ...

As an English teacher I am aware that, traditionally, "English" is a catch-all which includes anything and everything to do with the spoken or written word. An English teacher is expected to "teach" such diverse subjects as poetry, punctuation, and paragraph writing; to "train" students in such diverse skills as reading, penmanship, and debating; to "guide attitudes" in reading, listening, and observing. I attempted all these in my early years of teaching, either at the behest of the school administration or at the prompting of my teachers-college-trained conscience. I now believe an English teacher should not try to cover everything, especially if he is involved in other school activities. ...

The concept basic to all others in the English classroom, it seems to me, is the effective communication of meaningful thought. If a student can not read with adequate understanding, he has not effected communication between the printed page and his mind. If he can not write or speak coherently, he has not effected communication between his mind and the eye or ear of someone else. All this is obvious. The prevalence of mediocrity in expression among high school students and graduates, however, convinces me that training in communication has not been intensive enough.

Ken McLintock: Chronology

His life and career to about 1960; from résumés and curricula vitae.

EDUCATION
Greenwich High School, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1939.
Columbia University (School of General Studies), New York, N.Y.
New Haven State Teachers College, New Haven, Connecticut.
Central Connecticut State College, New Britain, Connecticut: B.S., 1952.
University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire.
Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut: M.A.L.S., 1960.

MILITARY SERVICE
January 19, 1942 - October 10, 1945: Battery A, 136 F.A. Battalion, 37th Infantry Division.
Solomon Islands; Luzon, Philippine Islands.
Instrument operator (gun surveying); forward observer; fire control computer; machine gunner; battery recorder.
(Memoir of World War II service can be read at Pacific Memories.)
His discharge certificate records the service number 31-040-621 and date of discharge 15 October 1945. Place of discharge is Fort Devons, Massachusetts.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Sanborn Seminary, Kingston, New Hampshire, 1951-1953.
Litchfield High School, Litchfield, Connecticut, 1953-1956.
Horace C. Wilcox Technical School, Meriden, Connecticut, 1956-1962.
Bulkeley High School, Hartford, Connecticut, 1962-?

EDITORIAL CAREER
Choice Magazine, Middletown, Connecticut, 1966-1998 (retired).

OTHER EMPLOYMENT
Northam Warren Corporation, Stamford, Connecticut, 1946-1947. Lab assistant and color matcher. Also wrote a column for the company newsletter.

REFERENCES
Wilcox Technical School: George Weaver, Director.
State Technical School: Carmelo Greco, Director.
Litchfield High School: Robert McNeil, Principal; Lilyan Nelson, English Department.
Wesleyan University: Professor Paul Reynolds.
Teachers College of Connecticut: Dr. Etzel Willhoit; Dr. Mary E. Fowler
Sanborn Seminary: Arnold W. Bartlett, Headmaster.

The Clock

Right now, on top of the bookshelf in front of me, there sits a clock. It has an elegantly curved wooden case, about eight inches high and eighteen inches long. The brand name "Sessions" appears in the lower part of the stained, burnished face. The hours are marked on the face in classic, Arabic numerals and the crystal is on a hinged door that allows you to open it to wind the clock. You wind the clock with a key (the key sits atop the bookshelf next to the clock) which fits into two separate holes, one to wind the clock itself and another to wind the striker mechanism. The clock chimes on the hour with the appropriate number of strokes, and once on the half-hour as well.

The clock is ticking. It says the correct time and it keeps time reliably, as it has done as long as I can remember. This is the clock my parents kept in the living room of our house the whole time I was growing up. I'm told that my father bought it when my parents bought the house.

Once when I was a kid - I was twelve years old - I hid something in the clock. It was a secret. It was a piece of notebook paper with some magic writing on it. My parents were out of the house, perhaps shopping, and I was home alone. I must have stood on a chair to reach the clock (it sat on top of a bookcase then, too). I tucked the paper back in the corner of the clock case, where no one would be likely to find it. I don't believe anyone ever did. As far as I know, it has been my secret alone until this moment.

Last night I was chatting with a friend who's a Jung geek. Our conversation brought to mind my mother's old psychology books. (Mom was a brilliant, deeply troubled, self-educated intellectual.) Among her books was Carl Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", which is now on the bookcase below the clock. Re-reading an early chapter ("First Years") last night, I came across young Carl's fascination with a mannikin that he carved from a ruler at about ten years of age and then hid in a pencil box.

Secretly I took the case to the forbidden attic at the top of the house (forbidden because the floorboards were worm-eaten and rotten) and hid it with great satisfaction on one of the beams under the roof - for no one must ever see it! I knew that not a soul would find it there. No one could discover my secret and destroy it.

The figure is linked in the boy's mind with the memory of a rock on which he would sit and meditate, losing his sense of self. The passage is worth reading in its entirety. For me, there was a flash of recognition with the magic talisman in the clock.

I retrieved the paper from the clock after my mother passed away. (In fact, it was one of the first things I remembered to do.) Why do I save all this stuff? Does it give my life meaning that it otherwise might not have? Does it help me to convince myself that all of us, even my parents, perhaps even I myself, are worthy of such minute attention? Do I hope to understand myself better, perhaps the better to unravel the troubling riddles of my own life, by delving deep into the relics of my origins?

I don't know what I was hoping to accomplish by putting the magic paper in the family clock. Maybe it was a promise made to my future self: come back, remember, do not forget me.

The clock is still ticking, and I am still alive. I have not forgotten.