Some of the pairings are what we might expect. On this occasion Eisenhower, then president of Columbia University, was the honored guest. Other business sectors were represented somewhat less. There I found old histories of the club, along with histories of specific camps and a text of the Cremation of Care ceremony. After all, it is a night for rejoicing. Out of the shadows on one of the hillsides near the dining circle there emerges the low, sad sounds of a funeral dirge. These men are primarily professors and administrators at Stanford University and the various branches of the University of California. The pace is picking up. They couldn't be happier if they were back in college and their fraternity had won an intramural football championship. We seek peace as an end in itself. The history, complete with pictures and membership lists, tells how the founders of the camp broke away from another camp because they felt "lost," only to find themselves half-seriously hassled by the Grove authorities for a campfire that was smoking out fellow Bohemians. According to Nixon, Reagan said "that he would not be a candidate in the primaries." The Lost Angels, a camp with a strong Los Angeles contingent, permitted themselves this little indulgence on their fiftieth anniversary in 1958. The scenario unfolds something like this: The boys begin to arrive at the Bohemian Grove on the Saturday closest to the middle of July for what will be a two-week encampment. Mandalay, Owl's Nest, Hill Billies, and the Isles of Aves, a camp not mentioned before, were at the heart of Republican administrations in the 1980s. USA. A guest's first glimpse of the Grove typically is during the "Spring Jinks" in June, preceding the main July encampment. Nine of the eleven members of the Membership Committee have to favor the candidate before he can become a member. An indication of this fact is that one in every five resident members and one in every three nonresident members is found in Poor's Register of Corporations, Executives, and Directors, a huge volume which lists the leadership of tens of thousands of companies from every major business field except investment banking, real estate, and advertising. The entire parade (mostly white, mostly elderly) makes its way along a road leading to a picturesque little lake that is yet another of the sylvan sights the Bohemian Grove has to offer. Around the turn of the century one early member anonymously decried this change in spirit in a little booklet on "Early Bohemia." Even better, people in exclusive groups are more likely to listen to each other and come to a compromise if they have the task of figuring out what to do about some policy issue. Also in this category were Glenn T. Seaborg, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission; and Bayless Manning, a former dean of the Stanford Law School, and at the time the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. They are accompanied by a cast of 250 elders, torchbearers, shore patrols, fire tenders, production managers, and woodland voices. At the same time, the usual pluralist claim that the upper class was not "cohesive" slowly faded away in favor of more emphasis on standard arguments that are dealt with elsewhere on this web site. The High Jinks is the pride of the Grove, but a little highbrow stuff goes a long way among clubmen, even clubmen who like to think of themselves as cultured. (In these libraries, I also found most of the pictures that accompany this essay.). The entertainment at the camps is mostly informal and impromptu. A pleasant afternoon can be spent at the Ice House, the beautiful redwood building that houses an annual art exhibit made up of paintings, photographs, and sculpture created by Bohemian Club members. So they decided to buy it, at the time a mere 160 acres. A cast for a typical Grove play easily runs to seventy-five or one hundred people. Yes, as I show later, some wanna-be and has-been Republican politicians sometimes visit the Bohemian Grove, including future and former presidents of the United States, but they are there to demonstrate what wonderful human beings they are, to cultivate potential financial backers, or to brag about their past exploits. It's an Elks Club for the rich; a fraternity party in the woods; a boy scout camp for old guys, complete with an initiation ceremony and a totem animal, the owl. Why Study the Bohemian Grove? It is truly a place of many delights. Once the ferry is loaded, the torches are extinguished and the music ends. For example, Edgar F. Kaiser of Kaiser Industries brought Edgar F. Kaiser, Jr.; Henry S. Morgan of the preeminent investment banking house of Morgan Stanley & Co., invited Charles F. Morgan; William A. Patterson of United Air Lines, hosted William A. Patterson, Jr.; and Frederic H. Brandi of the investment banking firm of Dillon, Read brought James H. Brandi. In other words, they came to a deal at the Grove, with Reagan saying he would only enter the primaries if Nixon faltered. By the mid-1980s, half of the 26 members were graduates of Yale. There were also some slightly less conservative Republicans in the group, such as Lowell Thomas, the newscaster; Lowell Thomas, Jr., a director of the Alaska State Bank; and J. E. Wallace Sterling, the chancellor of Stanford University. I took to saying that from a social-psychological point of view, the upper class is made up of constantly shifting face-to-face small groups a board of directors meeting at the corporation in the morning, a meeting of a policy discussion group in the afternoon, a drink with some buddies at an exclusive club in the evening. Additionally, there is a parking lot which must be continually enlarged, wells that have to be deepened, and a dispensary that has to have medical supplies (for example, 370 people checked into the dispensary for one small thing or another in 1970, but two people died, one at the Grove, one in an ambulance on the way to San Francisco). The rituals and plays put on at Bohemian Grove are inspired by all sorts of mythology, folklore, and religion, but there may be a connection there to the Vatican. The top two floors of the clubhouse contain small meeting rooms, rehearsal rooms, and several small apartments and rooms, which usually are rented to older resident members or out-of-town members temporarily located in San Francisco. But the highlight of the evening is the Cremation of Care, an initiation into the spirit of the encampment. They include a listing in certain social registers and blue books, attendance at one of a few dozen expensive private schools, and membership in one of several dozen exclusive social clubs. Fools! They were young and spirited in a still-young, still-small city that was infused with a can-do spirit based on the Gold Rush and the possibilities of trade with the Orient, among many new possibilities that had opened up since California was incorporated into the United States in 1850. The Grove Room is used for more intimate luncheons and parties. Thanks to this decision, he continued, "the problem of our permanent success was solved.". I urged that we encourage trade with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and that 'diplomatically we should have discussions with the Soviet leaders at all levels to reduce the possibility of miscalculation and to explore the areas where bilateral agreements would reduce tensions.' Members can find a number of other ways to amuse themselves. Why worry about social cohesion as a factor in policy cohesion when the structural imperatives of capitalism make capitalists well aware of their interests and all too ready to agree on government policies that will further those interests? The prospect himself must fill out a membership application form obtained for him by his sponsors. Whether peace and freedom survive in the world depends on American leadership. A White House press secretary then announced that the President had decided not to appear at the Grove rather than risk the tradition that speeches there are strictly off the public record. Fools! Year after year ye burn me in this Grove, lifting your puny shouts of triumph to the stars. ", "Turning to the Soviet Union, I noted that even as the Soviet leaders talked peace they continued to stir up trouble, to encourage aggression. Social Cohesion And Policy Cohesion, The History of the Bohemian Club and Its Grove Encampment, The Sociology of Bohemia: The Corporate and Social Connections of Members and Guests, U.S. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas visited the Grove, A Relative Advantage: Sociology of the San Francisco Bohemian Club, http://whorulesamerica.net/power/bohemian_grove.html, 21. As the Republican nominee in an uphill Senate battle, I was about two places from the bottom. The outlandish Lost Angels camp was a huge success in outraging members of other camps. This is the body of Care, symbolizing the concerns and woes that important men supposedly must bear in their daily lives. Meanwhile, the banter between artists and business leaders continued, based on the usual human tendency to romanticize "the good old days." The greatest number were from New York City (79) and Washington, D.C. (25). "Our luncheon business has dropped off for many reasons, and great effort will be put forth in the future by the new committee, we trust, to induce the membership to come to lunch at the club more often. It sings of the "temple-aisles of the wood" that are made for "your delight," and implores the Bohemians to "burn away the sorrow of yesterday" and to "cast your grief to the fires and be strong with the holy trees and the spirit of the Grove."'. [As if we haven't heard that before, including the current generation. Considering that only 0.5% of the people in San Francisco are listed in the Social Register, and that some resident members do not live in San Francisco or its closest suburbs, this is an impressive figure. I can't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco." Several months after the poet Stoddard introduced Saint John to his fellow Bohemians, a small statue of Saint John arrived at the clubhouse in San Francisco from faraway Czechoslovakia. Located in remote Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, Bohemian Grove's exclusivity and secrecy has inspired both protests and conspiracy theories. However, Nixon was not left without a final word to his fellow Bohemians. National Association of Manufacturers, Source: G. William Domhoff, "Social clubs, policy-planning grups, and corporations: A network study of ruling-class cohesiveness,". (page 80-81 of the Nixon memoirs). Care may win out after all. He tells the high priest in no uncertain terms that priestly fires are not going to do him in. The priest smacks himself on the side of the head, as if to say he wonders why he didn't think of that profound point. The committee also has to have the Grove ready for such activities as the Spring Jinks (a weekend of entertainment), the June Picnic (when members bring their wives to the Grove for a Saturday afternoon), and private parties by members. Many of their guests were people in public life: Joseph Alioto, Mayor of San Francisco; Melvin Laird, Secretary of Defense; Alfred Nelder, Chief of Police in San Francisco; Peter J. Pitcbess, Sheriff of Los Angeles County; Samuel Yorty, Mayor of Los Angeles; and Ronald Reagan, Governor of California. (For a very interesting and colorful account of The Links Club of New York, the most central club and third-most central organization overall, check out this portrait by an avid middle-class golfer who convinced a "certified WASP" member to let him visit. They are former president George H. W. Bush, actor Clint Eastwood, and fabled news anchor Walter Cronkite. The Club motto is "Weaving Spiders Come Not Here," which implies that outside concerns and business deals are to be left outside. Those two membership lists gave me the starting point for a study that would allow me to trace the social backgrounds and corporate connections of men who slept together in cabins and tents in the California redwoods, so I figured you couldn't get more "socially cohesive" than that. Redwood branches from the Grove were flown to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City where they were used to decorate a banquet room for the celebration.
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