If he has nightmares they probably involve: 
1) Being locked in the Granfalloon with Sgt. Frank Miller and the East Side Mothers while the Velvet Whip plays in interminable quadraphonic and mobs of creditors attack the bullet-pocked door. 
2) Coming back from selling jockstraps in the Pacific Northwest, and wondering idly why Milwaukee doesn't have an underground paper. Then, when someone says, "Why don't you do it?" agreeing to do it. 

I suppose my nightmare would be that some people would get together to start a local publication -- any publication -- and they wouldn't ask me. And then it would be a towering success. 

A vision of that sort got me involved with Kaleidoscope in the first place. No one did ask me, but I certainly didn't want to be excluded. For a while, it was the only game in town, if you had a feeling for the possibilities of personal involvement in a decentralized, anarchic press. 

If K'scope wasn't ultimately successful, it made a mark significant enough in several worlds -- journalism, hip subculture and the East Side -- and made Kois more noteworthy than merely as the popularizer of the double cheeseburger, his preferred plate at Marc's Big Boy. 

I would put 1966 as the year acid hit the East Side in quantity. Hippies and LSD and love power were linked in Time magazine and such. At the Journal Library where I worked nights there was scuttlebutt about an underground paper about to appear. 

But I saw nothing in print except the occasional San Francisco Oracle, Berkeley Barb, East Village Other and the by-then venerable Village Voice, as the first Lake Park be-in on Sunday, April 30, 1967, faded as a memory. 

The day after the be-in [when I smoked my last cigarette ever and heard Country Joe McDonald's Fish Cheer first chanted by a crowd], I started at the Welfare Department as a caseworker, thinking to finance some journalism courses and get into copy editing. I could chart the progress of acid on the East Side by noting, for example, that one night on walking into O'Reilly's on Franklin Place and Ogden Ave. that it was no longer necessary to check your drink for stray chunks of flying glass. 

The bar fights had abated, and confirmed juicers were coming in, smiling at everyone, and ordering fruit- and soft drinks. Hostility was gone from the air. The Shags [later the Shag on their Capitol Records releases] were staying south of the same intersection on Franklin Place, across from my apartment building [the Coachlight]. An enormous hookah was kept going there, [with opium sometimes added to the pot] and black Cadillacs and white crosses could be had. It can be said that at least some of the comings and goings resembled the media's portrayals of hippie life. (Though I generally preferred to sit on my porch and sip large bourbons and admire the tree growing at the curb while traffic careened by, curving south past the statue of Bobby Burns.) 

But no local underground press emerged for months, though George Johnson opened the Indianhead, with his wife Livija, and Mary Jo Hucek and Klara Meyer did the same with Bizarre Boutique on Lafayette Place. Psychedelia was in profusion. 

Finally, in October 1967, the historical joining of  [Velvet Whip's] Dan Ball's head to the negative image of the nude body of photographer George Lottermoser's wife Joyce -- in a multi-armed Shiva pose -- graced the first issue of Kaleidoscope. 

Eventually, Morgan Gibson told me the editor needed someone to distribute the growing paper, now three issues old, for a small amount per copy sold [as well as the Chicago Seed].

Trucking around with the bundles in the Gibsons' VW Microbus naturally gave me something to write about, what with the abuse from all quarters. So I tried my hand at writing, though I hadn't ever attempted newspaper reporting before [eventually writing as myself and the ubiquitous "Kaleidoscope Staff"]. 

With the first three issues the paper had already achieved notoriety, and good sales, with its berserk departure from journalism as it was known. Many enduring names and trends were established early, while symptoms of the early burnout malady were already in evidence -- whether in writers, trends or topics. 

But the striking feature -- perhaps the most important for adaptability and longevity -- is the sheer eclectic unpredictability. 

As one might expect, the first issue, with all its shortcomings as a fledgling venture, received more response in the straight media, and came in for more scrutiny, than any of those that were to follow until the paper was well established. 

This meant, just as predictably, that the most bizarre elements were hooted at in the Journal while any solid achievements, then or subsequently, were ignored. 

Most of the local news, hard and soft, was straightforward enough, from the review, by the Velvet Whip's Dick Bussian, of the Shags' new Capitol recording, Melissa, to Barbara Gibson's personal, emotive account of an open housing march with Father James Groppi and the NAACP Youth Council Commandos to the South Side (reprinted below). 

[Editor's Note:  Recent commentary on K'Scope 40 years after each issue's appearance is found on Z-Blog.  For more on the new Time Thump feature & the 1st issue click here.]

I'm Watt. I chase bugs all day and women at night for the glory of the giant cockroach industry, RID-0-PEST. I'm the Midwest's No. 1 Zen Master because nobody else wants the title or the reality. 

My main goal will be to help you become yourself as you read this column. Where do you live? What do you do? Let me know right away. I will get you out of this world alive ready to evolve to a better existence if you will read an hour a week.

I must explain something. If you're not yourself, you have to live this life over before you can evolve to the next existence. You won't have to pull your nose from the grindstone. The grindstone will be pulled off your nose. Everybody is saying pray for strength. I say pray for weakness.

We need more good weak ideas and measures to pull us out of the hole strong ideas and measures have got us into. For every strong conviction we have, we will try to develop a weak idea to keep ourself in balance. I insist on this as a minimum. . . . 

You can get along without Milwaukee provincial fear. Allen Ginsberg said he was held back for years by Paterson provincial fear. I say Milwaukee provincial fear is just as heavy as Paterson fear. . . .

I am willing to kiss your feet if you will leave your older ideas go. What more can you ask of me, a Zen Master?
I wait for your answer. I wait in your wings bereft of thousands of great pagan dangerousnesses; fires, beasts, horses, goats, animals, drums.

I will report next issue on the possibility of getting something for Milwaukee after 2000 years and many souls down on the rocks of time, time thump, time thump, time thump. 

It's fitting that the same issue saw Rich Mangelsdorff's debut for this audience as a music critic. He and Watt continue as probably the two most recognized figures on the local underground scene. In Pop! A Background, he sets the local precedent for the type of analysis that forced the media to take pop and rock music seriously, when deserved, as an art form. 

"Pop" music wants some renaming, within the range of music it now covers. The term is valid enough if only record sales are considered. But, since both the Beatles and Monkees sell well, it is obvious that if one is speaking of music rather than money or promotion, there is little point in yoking two such disparate groups. . . .

Serious rock is a constant pushing forward of the shores of awareness, expanding the frontiers of sound and, as the liner notes to Jimi Hendrix' album state: "put(ting) the heads of . . . listeners into some novel positions," i.e. consciousness expansion. . . .

Bob Dylan's decision to merge Woody Guthrie/Cisco Houston materials and sentiments with a rock sound (aided by blues-group musicians such as Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper) gave rise to the multi-level lyric style which is universally employed in serious rock. More tunes are direct referents to the psychedelic experience than anyone but an initiate could realize. Most can be interpreted two or three ways, easily. The best are like multi-faceted jewels allowing the mind limitless play with associations and meanings. The poetic significance of psychedelic lyrics will be discussed in a succeeding essay. . . . this feature has contributed as much as instrumental factors in making high rock a serious art. Bob Dylan's lyrics have already been discussed at Berkeley. Donovan's ought to be discussed at Cambridge.... 

An example of the saner type of contributor -- generally those who were quickly frightened or turned off -- was Rikki Houston, a functionary for the UWM Union, who wrote about the Free University at UWM, starting its second year as "an alternative to programmed knowledge and the apathy of socially compulsive education." Local draft resistor Irv Kurki, for example (who went to Sandstone prison) taught on Conscientious Objection and the Draft, while Hiram Shaw covered Strategies for Urban Change.

Responsibility for the issue was given in the masthead to Kois, John Sahli as his assistant, Art Editor Gene Caldwell (later an editor of Wisconsin's Impact, under S. L. Poulter), News Editor George Johnson, Reitman, Madison Editor Pam Richard, [Photographer] Jim Bowers, and Friend George Richard (father of Pam). 

But deliberately last in this examination is what might customarily be first: the statement of editorial aims. This is because the paper defined itself as it went along; there was no party line except within the broadest of sensibilities. The paper operated on a kind of consensus with respect for various opinions on a spectrum from anarchist to liberal. 

Kois' manifesto typically says nothing about ideology, though perhaps revealing the profound ambiguity one could sense in his own heart: 

this one is for Lucy

Or Max, it's all the same. The circle twists and bends, but always returns to the beginning. From a school paper to Kaleidoscope, but what happened to all the changes between? There's no price that'll get us out of going through all these things twice. Except dying, and not even that's certain anymore.

So now Milwaukee has an underground paper of its own. Take good care of it. No scene is complete without one. Something to wave in the face of a dying establishment. An easy way to play the plastic part.

Hip, you see, is a new and fun-time game, bigger even than Monopoly. Right this way; see the freaks. . . . 

Kois predicted the paper "will sell well, even in Milwaukee, but it'll be bought and read by more straights than freaks. The freaks are saving their bread for the Perfect Pill, which will dissolve the body and send a neon soul into the vacuum," and promised a calendar of events for the future. 

Anybody could speak for the entity Kaleidoscope, as Peterson and Reitman did, without prior approval, though it required some sense of what Kois might edit out. Anything of more variance could be run, but was considered to be the opinion of the writer, perhaps to be contradicted in the same issue. 

A more businesslike assessment than Kois' musings surrounding the birth of the paper wasn't to be found until more than a year later, in the first anniversary issue. It's called A Concise and Somewhat Accurate History of Kaleidoscope. 

Unsigned, but it could only be by Kois. It begins with an account of the city's recent past, the 1967 riots, the candidacy of David Walther, a young and liberal lawyer, for mayor [who lost to Henry Maier], the start of the PAC, the beginnings of Summerfest, and K'scope itself, on a borrowed $250: 

The need for a Milwaukee-based underground newspaper was apparent early in 1967. It was talked about, tentative plans made and loose alliances formed, throughout the spring and summer, but nothing definite was done until July, when George Richard, a happy man of business, offered to underwrite the first issue. The first "staff" meeting was held in the Knickerbocker Coffee Shop. It was quite a crew: Bob Reitman, cemetery managing rock freak poet; John Sahli, industrial designing former gentle Shag; and John Kois, drifter free lance writer recently escaped from the coast. . . .

The activities of the next three months, the time it took to put out the first . . . issue . . . quickly blurred into a pattern of confusion, the confusion of inexperience. There were meetings at the Avant Garde [below], open to the public, to enlist the support and assistance of anyone who cared; offers of help from those who couldn't and empty promises from those who wouldn't; phone calls, house calls, handshakes, smiles, please, please, please; late night lonely typing sessions in a borrowed Wisconsin Avenue office; overplanning and underplanning: incredible hours looking for a name, and then Kaleidoscope, a compromise, not really pleasing anyone; a lot of laughs; frustrations; the strange good luck in finding a sympathetic printer; rough edges smoothed with dreams, beer, wine, jokes, plans, maybe even a joint; details and details and details and details and details and: sixty hours straight ahead flat out no stopping to hit the deadline.

And a last hassle, how many to print? Someone suggested 2,000, a conservative number for a conservative city; others, with the faith of saints, said 5,000. Several hours of discussion and a typically democratic compromise of 3,500 is decided upon. The 3,500 were sold out in two days, and the saints still smile. . . .

A poem in the first issue upset some local high school principal who declared that any of their students possessing the "killer paper, Kaleidoscope" were subject to suspension. It was cool, the kids took their papers and their poems underground. Two more issues, nothing spectacular. Some heavy artwork by Gene Caldwell.

FUCK, DON'T FIGHT! Three little words that almost destroyed Kaleidoscope. The words appeared in the classified section of Issue No. 4. The response of the East Side Mothers and like groups was "See, you can tell they're Communists -- look at those words!" The calls and letters condemning the slogan poured in, along with the letters no longer signed "love and peace," but bearing the slogan. It became a matter of principle. FUCK, DON'T FIGHT! appeared in every issue, departing in grand style in Issue No. 9 for the sake of advertising. [In other words, the staff caved, though perhaps understandably so.] 

But writers left, too, as the inevitable conflicts over policy seemed to materialize -- Bonnie Berglund (later involved in Midwest Art), Dorleski Manske (then involved with [the East Side's favorite cab driver] Pooch), others. Some from lack of interest and other commitments, and over conflicts -- "apparent" in the sense that there was room for differing points of view if you stayed and wore down or sneaked around the opposition, but not if you blew up and quit in a huff or in sorrow. (A lesson I was to ignore years later in a hassle over my allegedly sexist review of a female folk singer after seeing her perform in the back of the Loser's Club, now the Y-Not II.) 

The most deep-seated division was the split between the political Radicals and the alternative-culture Heads. While revolution on the one hand and dope, sex and boogying on the other are not necessarily mutually exclusive, the paper always got tagged as promoting violence if it let political interest groups legitimately analyze events from their perspective. 

But the general feeling of those who did most of the editing was that these writers -- unless the name of the paper was actually invoked -- were speaking for themselves and could be judged accordingly. (Some of these long political analyses also got labeled another way: boring.) 

My explanation to anybody who cared to ask about either of these views was that the paper was open to just about anybody who cared to do the work, and that it was a newspaper of individual voices, not a party organ. If it was sometimes scholarly (Manuel Gottlieb [a UWM professor], Art Heitzer), that just showed it was more than a smut sheet, after all; some readers appreciated it. 

Jumping ahead, it is this aspect that always baffled me; some essentially peaceful people or at least only theoretical socialists did most of the day to day work on the paper. But frequently someone would take exception to some rhetoric that spoke favorably of smashing the state or offing the pigs, and leave. This would only make it harder for the rest of us to contend with the militants who thought we should be a showcase for their ideas (in print and in the office) alone. 

Thus, at the height of the Water Tower riots and Kent State and Cambodia eruptions, we were trying to emphasize cooperatives, day care centers, non-violent resistance as practiced by Dave McReynolds and Dave Dellinger [of the Chicago 7]. But few noticed more than the Black Panther and Yippie columns. 

This not to say that we were trying to discredit the revolutionaries, so called. But it was easy to sense the lack of popular support more than a few blocks from the East Side, even in the mass of summer soldiers who once trashed their own turf on Brady Street when tricked into it by police deployment in the Water Tower Park demonstrations.

At any rate, these schisms were always present, though in the beginning drugs, and sex -- and the extremes of weird humor of the new cartoonists, and the still-pervasive aura of psychedelia -- set the tone. The ultimate arbiter of what got published remained John Kois. 

This power came simply from the fact that Kois -- until Linda Akin came along --was the only one who could use with any proficiency the IBM executive typewriter to justify the right-hand margins of the copy. Ordinarily, this involves typing every line twice, but Kois could eventually make the margin even by sight and mental calculation (an admirable feat). By any method, it involved a prodigious amount of typing for each issue. 

The second issue saw -- while Watt was getting into "bull rush and cow withdrawal" and its variations -- Morgan Gibson's first Provincial Anarchy column, its opposite for rationality and relevance.  His first topic was the news from the coast that HIPPIE IS DEAD (reprinted elsewhere in this issue) [that is, the Bugle American counterculture issue of 1976, now restored below]:

The news of the time, though, reflected little of the withering away of taboos except as practiced in the hip community -- poetry readings, be-ins, musical events. The hard news, though anti-war and anti-draft actions hadn't nearly the intensity they had in such places as Oberlin and Madison, involved the realities of repression.  [Rt: Anti-War Coverage]

If Morgan dealt in theory, outstripping our poor realities, the intellectual demands (perhaps as opposed to Barbara's human warmth) he placed on others and his own creativity as a poet, publisher, poetry editor (Arts In Society) earned him much respect.  As a teacher, he was recognized with an award at UWM; as activists, the Gibsons were free with their time, their house, and their money for almost any progressive cause or simply in the name of friendship. Many friends were on the fringes of poverty, but sustenance was always to be found in the big house on Maryland Ave. and Park Place. They came here in 1961, with daughters Julia [later a Yippie herself] and Lucy. As an aftermath of the UWM strike of 1970 in which they participated, [George] Morgan was stripped of his tenure and Barbara fired. He was said to have disrupted a class, and she set off a fire alarm in the library. He left to teach at Godard College in Vermont [then to Japan], she to teach women's studies in Michigan [later moving to Olympia, WA to work as a counselor until retiring]. They divorced; she took her mother's first name to write as Barbara O'Mary, with a feminist/lesbian orientation. 

If I cannot run a head shop in Milwaukee does it mean my lifestyle must retreat to a farm? a book? a beer? -- or another country . . . it all happened so quickly -- four squads in four minutes, we are a well patrolled neighborhood. The kids are searched for grass, etc.; hanging around a head shop makes for guilt by association; I hope they learn fast.

The next day a cop comes in, just investigating the store. What's that funny smell. Incense. Oh. Someone saw some kids pass a cigarette back and forth and . . . do you think we're stupid no none of that happens here. (It wouldn't happen here but is it beginning?) We learn the neighbors are complaining. How large are the Negro gangs that hang around here? Answer, a few of our customers but there's no law against that . . . Oh don't get me wrong you know some of the neighbors said . . . no we don't get you wrong.
 

Retired man who lives across the street from the Store and buys "Cooking with Pot" to add to his collection of cook books. He says, "does it cost much to buy a cup and a half of pot?" And he is serious and wants to really try it . . .

A very old lady walks in . . . and offers a rack for hanging rags over or putting magazines in . . . not all the neighbors can be complaining.

But Thursday morning comes the building inspector, the fire inspector. He is all right but there are pressures, reports of 300 people singing and carrying on. No more assemblage (what does that mean?).  No more readings on Sunday, they were too beautiful, too good too fast for the city, I do not know but I have been feeling apprehensive all day.

The Outlaws come in fast, we did not hear them arrive. No one feels any bad vibrations. They have been here before in smaller numbers. Everyone is quiet . . . Everyone looks with fear and delight at a jacket, a helmet . . . Somewhere from the midst comes "So these are the people against the war."

Everything moves at once. Beads! and he throws over a pole of them as he says the word, then rushes to rip down the lamp. It is all leather and the room is silent stunned except for the sound of bodies moving fast and hard -- against other people. I stand frozen. Suddenly there is the sound of glass and they are gone. We call the police. Someone says they were across the street in the alley and have chased the gang. They drive very slowly after them. No one comes to help. It is not like Tuesday . . . 

So it went, in any spot where people could gather, from the Garde to the Water Tower. Though a newsman and accomplished poet, Johnson had to spend an increasing amount of time on the shop and left the post of K'scope news editor in January 1968. 

Ultimately, the shop lost its lease due to organized pressure by the East Side Mothers on landlord Perry London, clearing out its stock by February 29, including hundreds of moccasins that Johnson was never able to peddle. (He was finally reduced to pulling off the soles to convert them to his own lifetime supply of bedroom slippers.) 

The reasoning behind the "vicious telephone campaign by some area cranks," as I wrote then, was never clear, since the owners stated "nothing has ever been sold under the counter there, and everything on display is available at various stores on Wisconsin Avenue. This includes such things as beads, posters, bells, pipes and incense." And cigarette papers. 

But the extent to which the authorities would go was shown in Johnson's obscenity bust (a felony charge) for selling the now-famous Yab-Yum (sexual lotus) poster (reprinted in this issue). All who have seen the poster would term it innocuous, with no sexual organs and indeed no sure indication of any sexual contact taking place between the parties. Ample expert testimony -- Professors John Colt and Irwin Rinder of UWM, and others -- was ultimately available to establish its artistic seriousness of intent, if not merit, and lack of pornographic qualities. 

Johnson was eventually vindicated, but harassment exacts many costs. For one thing, the closing of the store meant the loss of a primary distribution point for street vendors. As the distributor (and news editor when Johnson left) this affected me as my cut of the 25¢ price depended on volume. Even then, when I ran my share up to $25 or $35 (over two or three weeks), money to pay me was often not there, so I took my salary in more papers to sell in bars like the Tuxedo and Hooligans. 

When my creditors got vicious I took a job at American Can Co., and then the Waukesha Freeman, until I could afford to come back 

By that time (February 1970) Gary Ballsieper [obit] had taken over distribution, and then big Fred Krause donated his efforts as longshoring would permit. Dennis Gall had made his impression on the eardrums of Milwaukee as circulation manager and champion hawker and then gadabout reporter. Gall also left and came back; the second time we both got salaries of $35 to $50 in good weeks [though I had to let Bert Stitt use my old Beetle, acquired for my previous stint as a reporter in Waukesha, as part of the deal.]

Ad Manager Bert Stitt (instrumental in starting the Bradystreet Merchants Association and the Brady Street Festivals) was expected to earn his $100 a week salary through increased advertising, a gamble on Kois' part as revenues dropped way below expenses, on a $50,000 a year or more gross income. 

There was much overlapping, naturally, in poetry with the small press, regional and academic efforts appearing then in such quantities. Some names have been mentioned here and elsewhere in this issue, such as Reitman, Sorcic, the Gibsons, Rich Mangelsdorff, Jim Hazard. 

Even a partial list of those of some merit should include Harland Ristau (a high school teacher long active in poetry), Jeff Hinich (now a longshoreman and north woods pioneer), Peter Brunner, Jau Billera, Margaret Moos, Suzanne Woods, Edith Meinecke, Anonymous, Don Mercer, Cheri Burnett, Susan Spaulding, [UWM sociologist] Irwin Rinder, Myldrethe Miesel, Cynthia (Coffin) Dahlke, Chuck Bonamer, Rik Ollman, Leon Mainwright, Frances May, Charles Bukowski, Peter Wild and Doug Blazek. 

And Cleveland's d.a. levy -- of course -- and Kathleen Wiegner, Jim Hart, Dianne Jarreau, Mary Wells, Joan Miller, Marcus Grapes, Pam Richard, Julie Gibson, Margaret Bowers, James Bertolino, Robert Leverant, James Wright, Douglas Flaherty, Mary Dryburgh, Jeff Winters, John Sahli, Bill Olsen (one of the Pretty Mama poets), Carl Woestendiek, Phil Perry -- and that's representative of only the first 20 issues, or from October to the first monster State Fair Issue, featuring Sex In Wisconsin. 

All this poetry occasioned internal hassles, with many staffers convinced that nobody but other poets read it. Others (who, not so oddly, usually considered themselves poets) fought for it on the grounds it was a cultural obligation and that it tended to bring the community together. 

It certainly didn't hurt circulation to have a dedicated group, even though small, who would do anything to get the paper every time it came out just to see if they got in. But Bev Eschenburg [who had worked with me at the Journal Library] -- for one -- hated it, and the conflict was never resolved, though poetry was played down with the passing of time [especially once she became Kois' girlfriend]. 

Another striking feature of those days was an editorial cartoonist who could contribute a panel on almost any topic we hit on -- from censorship to venality to religious hypocrisy -- even though he had been dead for a great many years. Sahli could pull an appropriate drawing by Heinrich Kley out of an old book at will. 

By the third issue, several improvements could be noted. The paper went to two sections. Local and hard news were in one part and features, national cultural news, material by "names," Liberation News Service (LNS) and Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) reprints from sources we exchanged with, not tied to local events, were in the other. This division worked successfully, and was utilized especially when K'scope set up in Madison, Omaha, Fox River Valley and even Chicago as branches. The local news was used with Part II for features; Part II was also sold outright as a supplement for other underground operations. All of which -- like Interabang Bookstore and the Granfalloon [coffeehouse] -- showed Kois' talent for building pyramids on quicksand. 

The cover, generally an important part of the visual package, to the extent that it was often completely irrelevant to the contents but enjoyable in itself, for the first time had an index of sorts, a clue to what to expect. Teasers cut the artistic impact, though, and were often sacrificed for that reason, perhaps to the detriment of sales. 

(Some covers, like Rick Wetzel's series, were slickly professional in that they seemed commissioned -- as indeed they were, in meetings at the Five & Ten Tap, though no money was involved -- for the occasion, reflecting a theme. Wetzel's portraits of Martin Luther King -- appearing right after his assassination -- Mayor Maier in Confederate garb, and Lyndon B. Johnson subtly transformed into Hitler's visage, show his ability to capture what was needed.

(Other covers, like [recent County Board Candidate] Mark Goff's montage of Randy Anderson's face rising like an apparition over the firebombed A&P were fortuitous creations, the kind a photographer could sometimes come up with almost as a special blessing, though this was exceptional in effect. And then there were the desperate, last-minute searches for anything usable that produced some abominations best forgotten.)

It was the first "theme" issue, in this case a special marijuana issue, containing the first realistic appraisals of grass and its effects and the legal and social implications of its use and unwisely prohibited status.

It was simply straightforward, the kind of information that one likes to think is at least beginning to pay off in enlightened legislation after all these years. Certainly it marked a beginning of a long, slow turnaround. [Well, maybe not.] 

A nice, anti-hysterical note that spoke to the uninitiated, and older, crowd in a way that no attitudinizing hipster could was the Confessions of a Middle-Aged Pot Smoker. It was unsigned, not from a lack of courage but so as not to prejudice the reader, who may have had an opinion of the woman from her other visible activities.

But though Margot Longgreen (of the East Side's well-known Longgreen sisters) dismissed it at Barney's with: "Who wants to read about Barbara Gibson's sex life?" it was the first and one of the most reprinted UPS pieces, picked up by such as the Berkeley Barb. [Right]

The first time I ever got high on pot was at a party about a month ago. At my house.

I'd smoked grass before, five or six times . . . But when I smoked I never felt much . . . I'd keep asking people "Am I high?" "What am I supposed to feel?" "Are YOU high now?" They told me to look for a glow around lamps . . .

As a party was breaking up someone offered me a joint and I took several deep drags. The smoke was very hot and burned my throat, but I didn't feel any other effect and assumed that as usual nothing would happen.

When I got to bed where I was quiet and at rest and paying attention to myself I began to feel strange. I told my husband, "Wow I feel weird!" My body felt high strung, tingling and light. It wasn't entirely pleasant. Suddenly a huge wave of anxiety began building. I thought something bad was going to happen, I didn't know what . . .

I closed my eyes and knew for sure. There were all these crazy pictures in my head. The first one I remember was like a huge watery ocean with millions of tiny nipple-like waves, all different silvery colors. That one went away and I saw a row of hundreds of Greek columns, fading into the distance. Then one picture changed into another so fast I didn't have time to describe them . . .

Now my hands and feet were burning too, but pleasantly. And between my legs. I began to feel very turned on erotically.

When we made love I began to relax. The shivering stopped. When I'd close my eyes the pictures were still there but now they were great, and helpful sexually. Geometric designs in gorgeous colors, all sexually symbolic. I remember two: A wide road disappearing over the horizon with two mountains on either side -- that was me --the picture and my body were one, somehow. Another was of a huge pile-driver kind of thing, all purple and pink and white, in motion -- that was him in me.

I could feel him inside me and me around him, more than usual. My whole body felt good -- and sensitive. Time was slowed down; when I closed my eyes it seemed that long times had passed, but when I opened them I realized otherwise. I felt that I was going to come very quickly, but I think it was about as usual, I'm rather slow. But it was very fine sex . . .

The second time . . .was about a week later, again at an East Side house, down in the basement. All middle-aged people this time, all new smokers. Seven people there, on cushions on the floor, but only three of us smoking. Rock music on the phonograph. Three candles in glass bowls on the floor.

We passed one joint around and I felt my heartbeat get faster, my palms got cold. I recognized my old friend anxiety again . . . We drank some orange tonic to soothe our throats.

We lit another stick . . .Alone in the upstairs part of the house, everything was very intense and a little bit scary, but OK, under control.

Back downstairs I seemed to notice the candles for the first time. How come I hadn't seen how beautiful the colors were before? Pink, green and purple, and they seemed so right together. I looked at them awhile, alternately trying to figure out how it was that they struck me differently now, and then just digging them.

One of the other smokers was talking but paused in the middle of a sentence and said, "Gee, I forgot what I was going to say," and he laughed. "Yeah" I said "because it doesn't really matter." He was amazed that I knew exactly what he was thinking. We laughed some more, and he looked beautiful and happy.

The other smoker was stretched out now, drifting, dreaming. He looked asleep but would sometimes lay a few words on us. Not as witty as he usually was -- in fact he was making the kind of stupid jokes he'd ordinarily be embarrassed to tell. I could tell he knew it, but didn't care. It didn't matter.

My anxiety was gone and I felt contented and happy. I was listening to Joan Baez and humming along with her. My voice sounded great.

The Animals were the next record and I was waiting to hear them -- thought I might get up and dance. On the other hand, that might be too much trouble, I was pretty comfortable now, lying across the cushions, my head on my husband's lap. (He never smokes.)

The hostess went to the record player and took off the Animals, which was just ready to play, and put on Hillel and Aviva singing Arab folk songs. I could almost get annoyed at something like that. But what the hell, it doesn't matter, Hillel and Aviva are kind of nice anyway. Yeah, I really DIG Hillel and Aviva, come to think of it.

The dreamy smoker was stretched out on his stomach, on the floor beside the couch. I walked over and lay down on the couch and stared at his back. His shirt was pulled up and I stared at his bare skin. I wanted to touch him, just touch the skin of his back. Partly because I got the idea he was sad and needed comforting, but mostly just for the touch. But I didn't. Too many possible hassles with husbands and wives. I thought about it for what seemed like a long time (time was messed up again) but didn't. It really didn't matter.

I had the burning between my legs again too -- I wanted sex almost just for physiological relief of the burning -- not because I felt particularly sexy.

A hall light was slanting over the tile floor. As I lay on the couch I could see the fake pebbles in the tile and the shadows were great. I looked at the floor, not getting bored but not thinking it was particularly interesting or anything. I just kept looking at it, for a long time.

Our highs began to wear off, we all woke up and ate some pepperoni; it tasted great, spicier than usual. Pretty soon we said goodbye and drove home. The next day things looked clearer than usual and I kept thinking about the sweet nutty smell of burning grass. I'll smoke again, I'm sure. 

The next several issues saw an expansion of coverage of movement- related events as a simultaneous intensification in hip cultural phenomenon occurred. Who could doubt that sympathetic exposure to an interested community spread the word and conferred a needed recognition of existence in the minds of the participants?

There were such things as the anti-Dow demonstration, the first major draft board picketing (powered by Madisonian know-how); the Indianhead and Yellow Brick Road hassles; visits to bookstores and even skin-mag outlets [which carried the paper] by the vice squad with not-so-veiled hints; harassments of students for merely having or sometimes selling K'scope.

In retrospect, I realize I had what could be called an exclusive here, and in fact these remarks by one of the handful of truly monumental men of letters this nation has produced were reprinted in UPS papers. But I took the following very casually at the time, though it conveys his major quality of speaking directly to whatever was asked of him without pretension, and always in a graspable context: 

In a sense, the psychedelic generation is 60 years out of date, he feels. The art, after all, is based on the same drug-induced states the bohemian and artist of the Victorian age found so romantically attractive. Opium, hashish, absinthe -- these were all known and used for their consciousness-expanding effects, with, Goodman feels, rather unexpansive results.

He made a similar criticism of much of the writing found in underground papers. He called it a disjointed, spineless style, an impressionism comparable to the Amy Lowell school of imagism that was dubbed "Amygism" by Ezra Pound. This again is something he and his contemporaries rebelled against as they established their own styles. However, in what I hoped was not a patronizing tone, he remarked as he glanced through the latest issue of Kaleidoscope that perhaps it was better than most. . . .

He agreed with me his novel Making Do illustrated the functioning of what was, in effect, a hippie community, although it preceded the fad for beads and bells. He pointed out that The Empire City (his greatest and least-known novel) went even beyond this point, to an underground that invented its own rituals and mythology as it reshaped American life through communes that sprang up on the West Coast. This, of course, was written long before Haight-Ashbury and the Diggers.

On the subject of LSD, he commented that anything middle-class American kids take up in large numbers has to be essentially harmless.

After about an hour at the Gibsons', he finished his second small glass of wine and left for the hotel where he was staying. As he left, he seemed a rather lonely and dispirited figure -- qualities that appeared in some of the poetry he read earlier -- and I thought of a remark he had made to me, that his reputation seemed to be based largely on his efforts as a social critic, rather than on his fiction and poetry, though, for example, he considered himself the best American short story writer since Hawthorne. . . . 

That Kaleidoscope was reaching a wide audience was shown in the same issue (No. 5, with Jim Barker as Santa Claus on Jim Middleton's cover), which recounted the confessions of a chemist-turned-snoop and his electronic bugging (or buggery). The man dropped into the office after being sickened by his eavesdropping to warn how easily available the technology was, to be used by divorce lawyers (bed-bugging), car salesmen, industrial competitors, voyeurs (audeurs?) and the authorities.

But even if detractors didn't notice contributors' capabilities that went unrewarded as each issue was labored over, some solid achievements were made in the nature of information much neglected by the straight press until the bandwagon of fashionability began rolling by.

Perhaps the first was information on VD, in all its forms. As with many of these public service topics, we attracted persons skilled in research, though the ability to report news was a skill not found as often.

So we offered a survey/essay on what was sadly unmentioned in the daily press. In this case, local film-maker Earl Bodien first broached the subject of cause, treatment and perpetuation of venereal diseases.

Similar in genesis was the first comprehensive birth control feature, by Linda Akin [who later reported for the Bugle-American in Madison] writing under the name of Kristel Higrass. Old hat, or old diaphragm, you may say now.

But consider: Then 28 and divorcing from my wife, Susan Shippee [see G. Johnson photo, below], we had been married a year after living together two years or so as students, beginning when she was 18. Yet our knowledge of contraception had been based on Ladies Home Journal ads for Norforms and teen-age lore (on my part) concerning rubbers. Then a chance remark by Brenda Ford [who at one time had dated Milwaukeean singer Al Jarreau], manager of 1833 N. Prospect, [a famous party building] where we lived, led us to Emko foam. Only word of mouth about a liberal doctor who would prescribe the new Pill to the unmarried saved us from ignorance and apprehension.   
                                                                                   Susan Shippee
                                                                           
Contraceptive products and ads were labeled "indecent" under Wisconsin law, and could not be displayed or sold to the unmarried. Akin, however, wrote factually, readably and simply enough for those who most needed the information: high school age and younger. Important was the dispelling of myths, such as the Coke douche and safe periods [Art Director Harry Titus has
written that his then-wife supplied some of the research, but did
not provide more info when I asked for details about her]. 

If all this is unexceptional today, when the UWM Post carries vibrator ads, it wasn't then.

Long before the birth control feature, Akin had grown in importance on the staff, from general office-helper and cake-baker to be titled such things as coordinator and dragonlady -- but never assistant editor, which was what she was. A competent writer, though not a journalistically trained one, she could learn to do almost anything, from taking over justifying duties to handling billings and supervising subscriptions.

As in any operation depending on volunteers -- who were often maladjusted to the straight world, which was still no sign that one could get along with other misfits -- there were always personalities in conflict. Coupled with financial problems -- most sources of support that individuals could get by on dried up eventually -- this forced people to move on.

Akin was one of those, but she stayed a long time. Only Gall (at least in my quick analysis) was more important to the fortunes of the paper, excepting Kois himself, after John Sahli had to quit. Akin was instrumental in my favorite early issue, one that demonstrated-- the kind of expose a good underground could get into, given the resources and some luck.

It was No. 9 that pictured (thanks to George Lottermoser's ingenuity) DA Hugh O'Connell on the cover, his features replacing those of a jack (knave) of diamonds. He is holding a bottle of bourbon in one hand and a mortgage in the other.

All were references to the web of O'Connell's affairs and his connections with a Judge Steffes and shady financier Harry Kaminsky in a tangle of corruption, favoritism and dereliction of duty. This was compounded by O'Connell's personal drinking habits -- very inappropriate for one campaigning for circuit court on an anti-drug stance in anti-K'scope public appearances. The details might as well be left forgotten, since the Journal saw fit to investigate them, with the benefit of our documentation, and do nothing. O'Connell, of course, won handily against Dominic Frinzi [now president of the Italian Community Center], the kind of opposition against whom it is easy to win.

The research that made the story possible was in large part Akin's, representing long hours at the register of deeds and with public library Journal files (these clippings subsequently disappeared). I remembered earlier cases in which O'Connell's office had "lost" files and declined prosecution in connection with forged mortgages, and had filed away related stories while working in the Journal library. So we had a solid story and began going to O'Connell's public campaign talks to confront him. He soon stopped attending these talks, sending flunky Asst. DA Cannon instead.

At any rate, I suppose that issue was the high point of the first year for me, showing what could be done with some digging (and inside information from anti-O'Connell sources in the Courthouse).

Certainly the period saw Gall's development as a reporter, though he had started by building circulation while his wife Donna (now Pogliano) [since divorced again] was the more involved, helping with layout and covering some demonstrations and [East Siders'] Town Hall meetings at the First Baptist Church, guided by the gently electric Don King, pastor.

A UWM graduate with a degree in history [and now a public defender], Gall improved steadily as a writer through sheer output, at times covering virtually every significant event and turning out the immensely popular Funny Judge column on Christ T. Seraphim at the same time. Many of Christ's transgressions, if suitably outrageous, and properly witnessed, were reported in the straight press, such as the time he had a bailiff cut off a crippled, longhaired vet's insignia in a courtroom.

Gall had the advantage of writing about the hundreds of little insults and injustices that could be witnessed in the courtroom by observing for hours. Then there were the personal insights that straight reporters traditionally ignore since a gentlemen's agreement operates to keep press-judiciary relationships mutually accommodating.

One of the personal items: 

It may be appropriate to mention a personal contact this reporter had with his honor last year. I met him at the Harp Bar one night about 11 o'clock. I came in with my wife and two friends, who happen to be 'gay.' Is the gay scene one of Christ's pet peeves or interests? He kept pulling on my beard and telling me "Why don't you get a shave and be a man." While his honor was doing this he was also grabbing my wife's ass rather affectionately. Needless to say, my wife found it no great thrill to have such a famous judge grabbing her rear end. He told me, "I'm the most powerful man in Milwaukee." He said he asked people to cut their hair because he was interested in "rehabilitating them." He called homosexuals "scum"' and told me how he was cleaning up Milwaukee.

After about an hour the judge staggered out of the bar. I wish to thank his honor for that impromptu interview. As an aside he told me, "I can have you run in any time." Try it, Christ. Milwaukee is damn fed up with you. Seraphim is not really funny any more. He's warped and tragic. 

[And of course he was finally removed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and then defeated when running for re-election.]

But the major controversy took more than four years and an appeal to the US Supreme Court to resolve. This, unfortunately, was longer than the life of the paper.

The issue, as we saw it, was whether K'scope was a legitimate newspaper entitled to the protection of the First Amendment, by which standard any alleged obscenity or nudity would have to be judged according to the Roth decision, by considering the paper as a whole. Wisconsin saw it differently, as the condensed history presented in the unanimous June 26, 1972 decision 
written by Justice Potter Stewart tells it: 

Petitioner (Kois) was convicted in the state trial court of violating a Wisconsin statute prohibiting the dissemination of "lewd, obscene or indecent written matter, picture, sound recording or film." He was sentenced to consecutive one-year terms in the Green Bay reformatory and fined $1,000 on each of two counts. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin upheld his conviction against the contention that he had been deprived of freedom of the press in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Petitioner was the publisher of an underground newspaper called "Kaleidoscope." In an issue published in May, 1968, that newspaper carried a story entitled "The One Hundred Thousand Dollar Photos" on an interior page. The story itself was an account of the arrest of one of Kaleidoscope's photographers [Jim Bowers] on a charge of possession of obscene material. Two relatively small pictures, showing a nude man and nude woman embracing in a sitting position, accompanied the article and were described in the article as "similar" to those seized from the photographer. The article said that the photographer, while waiting in the district attorney's office, had heard that bail might be set at $100,000. The article went on to say that bail had in fact been set at $100, then raised to $250, and that later the photographer had been released on his own recognizance. The article purported to detail police tactics that were described as an effort to "harass" Kaleidoscope and its staff. 

The article detailing the malicious scene at Bowers' detention and charges, with similar reprints of his photos, are in the K'scope Digital Archive at the UWM Golda Meier Library
        https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/collection/kal/id/1285/rec/4

The Court then rejected the contention that the article was merely an excuse to print the pictures, noting that "A quotation from Voltaire in the flyleaf of a book will not constitutionally redeem an otherwise obscene publication." The photos, however, "in the context in which they appeared in the newspaper (shows) they were rationally related to the article which itself was clearly entitled to the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . The conviction on count one must therefore be reversed." As for the second count: 

In its August, 1968 issue Kaleidoscope published a two-page spread consisting of 11 poems, one of which was entitled "Sex Poem."

In this case, considering the poem's content and its placement amid a selection of poems in the interior of a newspaper, we believe that it bears some of the earmarks of an attempt at serious art. While such earmarks are not inevitably a guarantee against a finding of obscenity, and while in this case many would conclude that the author's reach exceeded his grasp, this element must be considered in assessing whether or not the "dominant" theme of the material is to prurient interest. While "contemporary community standards". . . must leave room for some latitude of judgment . . . we do not believe that it can be said that the dominant theme of this poem appeals to prurient interest. The judgment on the second count, therefore, must also be reversed. 

In a separate concurring opinion, Justice William O. Douglas added:

IN THIS CASE, THE VAGUE UMBRELLA OF OBSCENITY LAWS WAS USED IN AN ATTEMPT TO RUN A RADICAL NEWSPAPER OUT OF BUSINESS AND TO IMPOSE A TWO YEAR SENTENCE AND A $2,000 FINE UPON ITS PUBLISHER. IF OBSCENITY LAWS CONTINUE IN THIS UNEVEN AND UNCERTAIN ENFORCEMENT, THEN THE VEHICLE HAS BEEN FOUND FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF ANY UNPOPULAR TRACT. THE GUARANTEE OF FREE EXPRESSION WILL THUS BE DILUTED AND IN ITS STEAD PUBLIC DISCOURSE WILL ONLY EMBRACE THAT WHICH HAS THE APPROVAL OF FIVE MEMBERS OF THIS COURT.

The case was important in that it specifically focused on the inclination of the highest court to protect even "underground" newspapers, and though the decision came late, the appeal process set a basis for a restraining order prohibiting further prosecutions on similar grounds -- actions that were known to be coming, otherwise.  [Zak Mazur's scholarly study of this legal process 
can be found here].

Though the later issues of K'scope contained some very explicit material, notably photographs and drawings of penises and sexual activity (largely homosexual) that would surely have been prosecuted without Judge Reynold's restraining order, and which could now be considered protected, the fight is far from over.

It is precisely the Roth standards that a self-respecting press will have to fight; that is, that there is a form of speech and expression that is not protected because it is obscene. This is a notion that should be as repulsive to adults as it was when the Milwaukee Motion Picture Commission under Valentine Wells dictated what could be seen in theaters and Assistant Milwaukee DA Richard Surges tried to suppress The Tropic of Cancer in 1961.

It was there that the man usually described as "wealthy Grafton industrialist" Benjamin Grob instituted a boycott among advertisers in the three weekly newspapers published by Port Publications, Inc., in June 1969.  Grob said he was "smut peddling," according to The Milwaukee Journal.

This despite the fact, widely publicized by owner William F. Schanen Jr. and area media, that Port Publications was merely the paper's printer, with no control over the content. Schanen noted that he "could not censor the interchange of ideas just because they might contain four letter words."

He pointed out in an interview in the Journal that to stop printing K'scope "would have been a denial of my right to print what I want to print. That would be taking away my right as a printer."

The boycott of Schanen's newspapers was crushing, with a revenue loss of up to 90%, forcing a cutback to one paper, the Ozaukee Press. He sadly remarked during the course of the boycott that only 2% of the weekly papers in Wisconsin supported him. And at the same time, some industrial leaders were pressuring others to block job printing orders as well as advertising in his weeklies.

It is to Schanen's everlasting credit that right until his untimely death at 57 from a heart attack [attributed to the boycott and its attendant stress by his daughter Micca] he continued to print K'scope, an act continued by his son, William Schanen III [though I came to suspect,  after working as the only news reporter at his paper after leaving Kaleidoscope myself,  that he would gladly have been rid of the honor of crusading for his rights, concentrating instead on carefree yachting on Lake Michigan as the publisher, also, of Sailing magazine, while enjoying the respect of the community, if only his father hadn't saddled him with a burden that left him little choice.]

After the first year of the boycott, the elder Schanen had to recognize that he had switched from "newsman to printing executive," as Alex Dobish reported in the Journal. With publicity for his stance, Schanen was taking up much of the slack through job printing orders from many sources. Ironically, though once the printer of the American Legion's magazine, Schanen began receiving contracts for a wide variety of underground and movement publications that lacked a sympathetic printer closer to home, and subscriptions from all over the world with the aid of publicity from [Waukesha resident] Marty Christianson's Committee for a Free Press in Wisconsin. [She was later hired herself, before my tenure there, as a reporter by Schanen, who described her her as "fearless," if not much of a journalist].

Before and after his death Schanen was recognized for his dedication to a free press -- and he was doubly harassed for being a liberal voice in a conservative community since founding Wisconsin's [& the country's] first photo-offset paper in 1940 -- through a variety of awards and tributes.

Among these are the 1970 Elijah Lovejoy Award for courage in journalism and Wisconsin Newsman of the Year in 1971. This no doubt encouraged Schanen's son to continue in the tradition of his father after taking over, though the hard line he took on not extending credit to Gall for printing bills was the immediate cause of the paper's death.

Indications in August 1971, seven months after Schanen's death, were that the perseverance of the family in defying Grob (including suits and counter-suits for libel totaling $5 million) was paying off, with local merchants and banks again advertising and circulation slowly rising.

But even the worst period (gross revenues declining from $4,000 to $700 a week) brought a wide response of moral support in national media and financial help in contributions and subscriptions for the printer.

The paper floated unpublicized around the East Side, locating for a time at a lower flat on Franklin Place. One night I was visiting, while Reitman, then at WTOS, played Kois' favorite song at the time, in which the Beatles asked, '"Why don't we do it in the road?"

Almost immediately we walked out in time to see Kois' red Simca in the road go up in flames while another car sped away. [And bullet holes had earlier appeared in his front door, when we still published from his house.  But then, even the relatively uncontroversial Bugle-American editor's house was later burned out -- killing one dog -- presumably by arson].

Eventually the Oakland House, as it was known, became office and living quarters for a small staff, in one of the coldest and least encouraging winters imaginable [in contrast to 1967, which had been very mild, making it easy to deliver my bundles of papers and vendors to operate on street corners]. Jim Sorcic -- some times known as Jim the House -- conducted for a time a column called Second Floor, that captured the flavor of existence in that period. As one column put it: 

It is now 6 o'clock Sunday morning. It is also printing weekend. For the 44th time, John Kois, a handful of madmen, and an occasional loose woman have joined forces, and said what they felt HAD to be said. There's no time for games or playing with words; it's Printing Weekend, and the time's all run out.

I want to try to explain what it means to the people in this house when you say "Printing Weekend." You see, it's become more than just a 3-day stretch of coffee, paste and last minute stories. And to six misfits, Kaleidoscope has become more than a bi-weekly tabloid. If I told you that -- to us -- Kaleidoscope spelled backwards means: "life-style," I'd be right, but you still wouldn't understand what that means. Each time we have to put a paper together, the questions grow a little bigger & the answers a little more confused. 

The greatest threat of Printing Weekend is pressure.
Now I know it appears as if I'm building us up into a tribe of martyrs. But there isn't any other way to express what has held us all together . . . from being the most arrogant, jive-assed misfits we had ever seen . . . Christ, we've had arguments around here that make PLO and SDS look like Crumb cartoons. And sometimes you don't forget the things that are said . . . But within that same pressure is
strength . . .

There are six people involved: John Kois, Dennis Gall, Gary Ballsieper, Janis Wisniewski, Beverly Eschenburg, and myself. 

With that, Sorcic promised to interview each staff member in a following column, though this was actually only done with Religion Editor and cavy freak, Sister Janis. Previously with Bruce Publishing Co., she stayed with the paper for a long time, starting as a typist but eventually writing news. A high point of her career was being named "Miss Fairy Marijuana" by the staff at the State Fair, joining without invitation (but very picturesquely) in a fairground parade. There, the vendors were helping circulation hit a record total of 25,000.

The news of the period, with the first rumblings at Water Tower Park beginning with warm weather, was moving away from the early petty harassments and self-help research pieces to some larger concerns: the preparations for and then the ugly realities of the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968 and the YIP [Youth International Party] counter-program, which was by no means blindly endorsed by us, inasmuch as Kois rightly predicted a bloodbath. And the extensive coverage of the Milwaukee14's draft-record bonfire and trial, the founding and tactics of the local White Panther [a radical white group modeled after the Black Panthers, though sometimes mistaken for their racist adversaries] and YIP factions, and the cover that featured the Tac Squad's infamous Sgt. Frank Miller on a wanted poster. Sgt. Miller was ultimately removed from that post, though not before the K'scope benefit at the Bastille on S. Howell Ave. was raided by his men, with disorderly conduct charges for Kois and others resulting [such as Akin for carrying pepper spray in her purse].

Other special sections on women were forthcoming, with the women on the paper forming a powerful faction.

While this period was financially lean, and I heard the tale of Eschenburg doing layout wearing mittens until Gall expropriated the last $40 from Kois for fuel oil, sales and ad revenue picked up. The paper finally surfaced in quarters on Brady Street, above the A & P store [now Ace Hardware].

There was also whimsy then in the special trucking-hat issue [which could be folded and worn], as there had been in UWM Professor Justin Replogle's spoofing letter to the editor about the Oral Freedom League in the wake of the paper's own hoax that had reported on a non-existent Sexual Freedom League and its naked dawn meetings in Lake Park.

But in 1970, a time of serious conflict, of solidarity and turmoil, began.

With the second anniversary issue (that is, No. 52, actually 28 months into its life), K'scope again broke new ground with a gay liberation supplement on Feb. 13. A highlight of the issue was Journal cartoonist Bill [Doc] Sanders' specially-commissioned caricatures [at $1 each] of Judge Seraphim, Ben Grob, Chief Breier and DA Cannon, for which Sanders received two weeks suspension without pay from the Journal.

The issue marked the emergence of gay consciousness (mostly male) as a factor to be treated seriously in the underground press, a stand that was not retreated from, though it probably alienated more readers than it appealed to.

Not long after this I was able to move in above the office on Brady Street and take up news editing (a job nobody else wanted) and reporting again, along with Gall, who had left over personal conflicts, then was taken back by staff vote.

At this time the staff was mostly preoccupied with a tedious, top secret project. This turned out to be typing the name and address of every member of the Milwaukee Police Department, a list that became part of the special police issue of March 20. Phone numbers taken from the book were included.

It was an act for which the L. A. Free Press (in their case, using the state narcotics bureau roster) was hit with criminal charges of receiving stolen property (the actual paper on which the list itself was printed) and a multi-million dollar invasion of privacy suit. Publisher Art Kunkin wound up facing a judgment of some $15,000, and the death of his newspaper, at least in spirit.

But though there were demands for investigations into how we got the list and wild claims that police and their families were being harassed at home with phone calls, no action was taken. We did not, in fact, urge any harassment, though since duty assignments were given, it would not be surprising if vice squad officers were hampered in their entrapping activities in drug and sex activities, which we of course did not regret.

The paper quickly sold out the first printing of 10,000 and went to a second printing. Ironically, the best customers were city officials -- the city attorney's office, for example, used it for preparing court 
cases -- and police themselves, who found it invaluable for their Christmas card lists.

A well-known local dealer turned informer also provided me with an extensive interview for the issue, exposing "the sick, corrupting and plainly ineffective methods used by cops to give the appearance of dealing with the so-called drug problems."

In appearance, the paper was more formal in style, a bold black and white throwback to days of tabloid headline wars, and an effective eye-catcher. This was not always the case, since there were remarkably few persons with journalistic training available -- Kois literally hadn't known the difference between a masthead and a logo -- and so reinvented journalism terminology and practices to fit the homemade photo-offset process. Headlines were often obscure or meaningless, seldom functional.

By this time Geoff Wietor had begun the "three dot journalism" column, Weeds, looking . . . like . . . this, to capsulize some of the enormous amounts of information we were getting through the UPS exchange papers. It was a mountain of tidbits that he hated to do -- preferring to write poetry, which was sometimes printed -- but a unique service. He also took over the calendar.

Despite repeated inquiries, "legitimate" distributors like Milwaukee News wouldn't touch the paper. The largest factor, I feel, in achieving a circulation of 50,000 or so would have been to put it in every supermarket and drugstore like the National Enquirer. Relatively few people would make the trip downtown to buy K'scope at Schroeder's or Schwartz's bookstore, but it could have captured readership with wide exposure. This always proved impossible, while street sellers -- when they turned out at all -- consistently ripped off the paper for $8,000 or more a year.

Excellent photographic work, always a strong point, was coming at this point from Mark Goff [now a PR guy and political consultant] and Marc Ponto. Goff [who defected to the Bugle] could also be counted on for good copy, as with his firsthand accounts of the alternate media conference in Vermont, and the Woodstock festival.

of 1970 brought the media conference, specifically press, to a farm [owned by the late Ogre] in Mequon. It was patrolled by freaks with radios and shotguns at the perimeters, while everybody from Art Kunkin to UPS founder Tom Forcade to collectives from LNS, Great Speckled Bird in Atlanta and others to representatives of Kudzu, San Diego Door and a miscellany from everywhere mingled and conferred and partied. The results were inconclusive [though it's lucky we weren't raided and killed by the local law].

In May, the Warren Street block party was a success, setting a precedent for the Brady Street Festivals to follow, but at UWM and Nicolet High School and around the country schools and colleges were erupting in the strikes that followed [the] Cambodia [bombing] and Kent State [shooting of four student protestors]. The kind of movement news that the alternate press could cover in detail was cramming the paper and a sense of activism caused the staff to swell and sometimes get into the excitement as participants.

The rages of the day were kept going through the hot nights as the Water Tower Park conflict ignited [over the right to gather at the fountain, especially by the under-21 crowd, after 10 p.m. to socialize and play acoustic music], the shooting of Randy Anderson marking a temporary plateau at a peak of hostility.

The final phase of underground journalism was well under way. 
K'scope started with a small group interested in similar cultural pursuits, alienated from the traditional adult roles around them. Consciously -- though certainly not single-handedly -- we imported the flower power and dope revolution, giving it a voice. With forethought the East Side and Brady Street were conjured up as the places to look for action.

In this we followed the strategy outlined in the East Village Other, before calling for the ghettoization of the East Side as Tom Hayden suggested in Ramparts. YIP and the White Panthers sprang up after they got publicity without even existing. But we knew they would exist.

By the summer of 1970 it all had a life of its own, which couldn't be just ignored by mainstream journalism or merely patronized by more interpretations of the hip lifestyle.

But as I mentioned, many of us on the staff tried to tone down the rhetoric, and much that was public service and in the nature of peaceful cooperation was printed. East Side Community Center and East Side Projects, the Food Co-op [once of Kane Pl., now Outpost Natural Foods on Capitol Drive],  switchboards and clinics, useful phone numbers and a community bulletin board: all were given exposure.

The multiple facets of the paper allowed movie reviews by Art Oster [a Sentinel copy boy] and Bob Adams to survive along with articles with the wildest rhetoric. Art spreads by Dennis Brulc -- harking back to the days of Art Editor Harry Titus -- and tasty layout by Duane Unkefer co-existed with the trashiest jumbles.

One could speculate that the balance was tipped when Gall decided, as he told me, that he believed the revolution was really coming. Though not a captive, certainly, of Jim Albers and Pat Small of YIP, his writing at its worst resembled that which they put in the new Street Sheet. Eventually Street Sheet segments were a feature of the paper, but who could tell the difference?

But reorganization and radicals who thought we should parrot a party line -- not sometimes but continuously throughout an issue -- made coping difficult. My approach would have been to quote YIP and other leaders generously, and let support for their policies catch up with their platform. But all the sloganeering was deadly.

The reorganization was a move by Kois -- perhaps out of weariness, perhaps out of sincere conviction that a new society was building in this direction -- to open up the paper to all elements.

The staff was collectivized, titles replaced with groups: shit-workers, writers, graphics, photos, women, advertising and business. Bylines were moved to the end of the story to de-emphasize ego as well.

With this structure, women -- including by this time Anne Henderson, Maureen Turim, Linda Knutsen and [my girlfriend and housemate of several years, now dead of brain cancer] Priscilla Vettel -- had a double voice, by virtue of having a role in graphics or writing or whatever and by being in the women's group [men, of course, did not have a group].
                                                                                                                                                      Priscilla Vettel & Mike  Zetteler

This consciousness led to the final fights about sexism: a huge meeting debating whether we should distribute the erotic Avant Garde magazine, [and accept their ads] at a showdown vote on the flat roof of the apartment building overlooking Brady Street, and sex solicitation ads in general. No one claimed to favor sexist ads, of course; the dispute was whether eroticism was inherently sexist, as it was usually practiced, and whether denying the personal ads (some admittedly sick) amounted to suppression of free speech.

The vote did not split along gender lines, but the Avant Garde sex ads were banished. Copy and all advertising were expected to meet the new standards. [Tobacco ads were unacceptable, though the move to ban alcohol ads was squelched; I personally praised beer as a gift to be treasured.]

Of course, this brought a loss in revenue, though how much is only a guess, at a time when staff and office expenses were huge. More important, local and national advertisers were pulling out with the escalation in destructo thinking. National record ads, sometimes a lucrative source of cash, found the FM market a less controversial outlet:
          At different times, Kaleidoscope also issued editions in Madison, Omaha, Chicago and the Fox River Valley, in which local and hard news in one part were combined with a second section edited in Milwaukee, containing less parochial material derived or reprinted from national and syndicated sources. This latter "Part II" was also sold to other underground newspapers to be used as a supplement to their local content. Advertising revenue from this source was diminished when the FBI successfully pressured advertisers such as Columbia Records to quit running advertisements in "Part II" since advertising in underground newspapers was "giving aid and comfort to enemies of the United States" (language clearly drawn from the constitutional definition of treason).
     from Kaleidoscope (newspaper) in Wikipedia

But K'scope remained vital, achieving weekly status by September 1970. And though the old-timers were running low on energy, the new street people like Julie Gibson and Dave Friedman, Albers and Small and Paul Yippie (finally revealed as Dana Beal, revolutionary from New York when captured on a grass charge in Madison) were willing workers.

And a sort of second wave in papers was underway, with Lalo Valdez getting La Guardia going for the Spanish-speaking community, using our facilities, and the Catholic Radical people and YAWF [Youth Against War & Fascism] doing the same. In Madison about this time the Bugle American [which lasted until 1978] was conceived by [the late] Dave Schreiner, Ed Goodman, former UWM Post Editor Mike Jacobi and cartoonist Denis Kitchen,  who eventually had a terrifying encounter with the feminists of K'scope over his fondness for drawing huge breasts when it later moved to Milwaukee].

My favorite memory of the late middle period was playing Mr. Inside to Gall's Mr. Outside at the violent Spiro Agnew welcome demonstration Downtown at the Auditorium [which I infiltrated wearing a sport coat and ID badge obtained from WOKY's Bob Sherwood], that closely followed Gall's exhaustive coverage (more detailed than anything the Journal could do) of the Milwaukee Two (down from Three) trial.

And though the Three were hampered as a journalistic cause by virtue of their unfortunately guilty state -- it seems they did shoot a cop from their moving car -- Randy Anderson was a different matter.

This time the straight press showed its willingness to participate in a whitewash of a murder, while K'scope eclipsed them journalistically and humanistically in its efforts to keep the facts from being glossed over. Anyone reading Gall's analysis would surely have realized the police informant was one of the participants himself, Gary Schmidt [and that the cops, having been tipped off, waited and ambushed Anderson instead of stopping the fire-bombing of the A & P Store, then the target of criticism by Black activists for jacked-up prices in the inner city and discriminatory hiring and promoting practices].

Summerfest was confronted in an effort to bring action on the creation of the Alternate Site -- or Czolgoscz Park, as some anti-imperialist activists proposed, for President McKinley's assassin [at the Lakefront, for music] -- while local bombings were first revealed on our pages, as were many women's actions -- from trashings of sexist billboards to an invasion of the Journal offices.

My own involvement, except for a freelance article near the end, ended with a review of the id & eggo folk-haven at the Loser's Club. I wrote favorably of the physical appearance of a Kathy Leibsch, this was attacked as sexist by Janis Wisniewski (who said she wouldn't type it), and the battle was on.

Though some of the women approved what I contended was an educational approach to de-emphasizing looks as superficial while recognizing that performers traded on this appeal and therefore could be reviewed this way, the men wouldn't add their support.

It was seriously argued that in the new society, all makeup, deodorants and such would be gone, along with hair curling and such practices, and that we had to set the example. Gall and Kois remained mute.

So I quit -- being broke again, anyway -- and went to work for Schanen in Port Washington [he eventually fired me for my erratic work habits; I would write all night, sometimes sleeping on an office table, before driving home to West Milwaukee the day we would go to press]. But I at least had access to every issue, a privilege ironically denied by Schanen to his printing shop workers, and stayed in touch.

By the time Kois, then 30 years old [and estranged from his wife, Mary,] had left, the paper was very thin, and Gall was forced to restructure things for a final thrust. He bought the assets of the paper for $1 in May of 1971, leaving Kois to try to salvage the Interabang bookstore [on Warren Ave. south of Brady St.] and the Granfalloon while carrying some $8,000 of debt. Gall assumed about $7,000 in obligations.

The staff was merely listed as an aggregate, and included Robin Lakes, Dave Novick who wrote, as always, professional copy, as well as the Leads & Changes column on the music scene begun by Kois, Karen Anderson (UWM deejay), Rick King and Rosalind Cich.

The ultimate downfall was money. When the printer [Schanen] cut off further credit, Gall was out of ideas. All the liberal sources had been tapped and the paper was $15,000 in debt.

The paper had 42 creditors, including six lawyers, when Gall filed for bankruptcy. Lawyers, primarily [the late] William Coffey, Robert Friebert and James Shellow, had been instrumental in keeping the paper alive through courtroom battles, as had the ACLU, and they had gone further as guarantors for most of a $3,588 bank loan.

Ed McManus of the ACLU and Bob Sherwood, then a WTMJ newsman, were also co-signers for the notes. The attorneys were Harry Peck, Curry First, Timothy Casgar, Jack Porter, Robert Goldstein and Sander Karp.

But as Gall said at the time, "I'm tired of begging." It was too late to redefine the paper, freeing it of the factionalism as he had wanted, and as John Kois had wanted before him.

It was four years on the calendar from the date of the first issue when the final Kaleidoscope of Oct. 7, 1971 came out. It was an impressive length of time in the history of the alternative culture, a history that left its imprint. Not finding in the conventional journalism of the community an institution to be trusted or to be responsive to its needs, a culture found its own voice and created its own record in every underground newspaper -- colorful, bold, radical, contradictory, erotic, liberal, confused, idealistic -- but above all, committed.

That commitment, that dedication, was to a struggle rarely felt in this century by the established press: to exercise truly the freedom of unpopular speech and expression, the right of a free press, the right to exist.