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About |
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| Name | Susan Prince-Thompson |
| Date of Birth | March 14th, 1952 |
| Date of Death | June 3rd, 2016 |
| Home Town | Westport, CT, US |
| Favourite Saying | Excerpt from Sooze writing: My new expert name for myself is "Psychospiritual Groundskeeper" That is my area of expertise, and I know it. The place where I have a genuine voice of authority. |
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published a tribute .
Our time on this earth is strung with brief moments of affection, bead-like memories that endure that we carry and which become us
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published a tribute .
It has been so great hearing other people talking about Susan here and other places . I love hearing her voice here as well . She wrote wonderful letters when we were very young but I didnt know how clear her writing voice was till she sent me some of the words shared here.I wanted a book ! <><><<>< Susan was and is my best friend. My longest lifelong friend.. Many people have been saying this same thought over and over again.. It takes a very strong presence to pull such a thing off and that was Susan. We had a great talk , an amazing talk, a few days before she left us and I was again astounded at how much and how crystal clearly she remembered everything .. Why cant I do that ? Our very close friend Don Wimfphiemer left the world a few months before Susan .. We witnessed and were of an amazing moment in time and had each other's life force as an inspiration .. That gift is still giving .... Hugs to everyone here who loves Susan .. We are not alone ...
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Thank you Guy!! You know about her art show June 18? Hope to see you there...
published a comment .
It was many years ago at Antioch I met Susan...and only now learning of her passing...This was a different moment an ‘open time’ I am humbled beyond words to express my Thanks for all the blessings she bestowed and shared from the wealth of Light which was her gift and her kind generosity which was her nature...a glorious presence that touched my body,my heart,and my mind with Joy,!
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published a tribute .
Susan was a child in the family. She was an adult in the world and her life here made a difference. So we celebrate with each of us, this store of her personal history that she has given to me. Roger (Sue's father)
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My High Mowing Journey
It was July of 1968, and I was just fifteen years old. Betsey, my great friend from Nathan Hale Junior High School in Norwalk, CT, invited me to go sailing around Cape Cod and the islands with her family for a few weeks. They had a charming and handmade wooden boat, The Sloop John B., which was so friendly-looking, like an illustration out of a kids’ book, painted white and green, with round portholes, thick hemp ropes, and heavy canvas sails—it was chubby, the opposite of sleek—nearly as wide as it was long. Her father John was captain and her little brother, John Jr., first mate. Her mother, younger sister, and Betsey and I were the helpers-wherever-was-needed. At first, it was a sunny, leisurely trip— and then it became a bit darker—a little adventure that left many indelible memories.
The bunks below decks that were designated for Betsey and me were perfect, tucked right up under the bow, one little bed on each side. Between us, we had one small transistor radio which we hung from a nail in the wooden planks. It picked up a Boston a.m. station, and that’s how we first were exposed to “White Room” and “Sunshine Of Your Love” by Cream, “Hello I Love You” by the Doors, “Jumping Jack Flash” by the Stones, along with “Stoned Soul Picnic” and “Grazing in the Grass (…is a gas, oh baby…)” Most of this music (especially Cream, the Doors, and Jefferson Airplane) was getting way stranger than what we had been used to hearing before this summer and in our short lives—and at night it sometimes felt as though these strange songs were being beamed in from a place far far away in the universe of the future; like maybe from a shady, cool, magnetic planet that could have even been our own forgotten home somehow, slyly beckoning to us.
This music also frightened us a little, and we held it at bay by nervously making fun of it sometimes, but mostly it spoke to a heretofore unacknowledged, yet irresistible longing. The juxtaposition of the big, blue, spark
juxtaposition of the big, blue, sparkling and never-ending Atlantic Ocean with this compelling distant soundtrack felt quite profound and thrilling to us, a signal perhaps that we two little fifteen year old girls were on the cusp of something great. It fueled our impatience! Jeez—scary or not, we wanted something to hurry up and happen in our lives, some kind of freedom, an uncertainty all our own.
After a number of days sailing and spending the nights in little towns along the Cape, we anchored the boat more permanently and and stopped in Truro for a week to stay in a marvelous grey-shingled rose-covered cottage on the beach. We made a couple of occasional trips into Provincetown, which for me was love at first sight. In an incense-heavy, cluttered imports store I bought some sandals and a beautiful densely embroidered shoulder bag from India, which forever after reeked of patchouli oil. Henceforth I kept all of my essential valuables tucked in there—from my journal and sketchbook and paints to my dog-eared collection of the poems of e.e. cummings, tiny vials of perfume, and a small collection of ornate hair clips, along with a few special shells, rocks, and bits of driftwood.
Betsey’s parents mostly left us alone to do as we pleased and it was wonderful to go for an endless walk on the beach in the dark, singing loudly in competition with the waves, without being worried or worrying about being worried about. Of course, both the neologism and concept of “parenting” and cellphones for constant contact were not to exist for another thirty years or so. A couple of times we did meet some boys out there on the beach for brief trysts, but these were so innocent, involving nothing more than a little experimental kissing, if even that.
The final half of the trip was to be a more ambitious sail across Buzzard’s Bay to Martha’s Vineyard, where we would stay for a few days before embarking for Nantucket, then somehow make our way back to Connecticut. By now we had all be
The final half of the trip was to be a more ambitious sail across Buzzard’s Bay to Martha’s Vineyard, where we would stay for a few days before embarking for Nantucket, then somehow make our way back to Connecticut. By now we had all been crowded together in cottage and boat for almost two weeks, and everyone was getting a little antsy. As a matter of fact, Betsey’s parents were barely speaking to each other, and her little brother and sister were squabbling pretty much all the time.
The tensest moments came when the steering broke in the middle of Buzzard’s Bay. Somehow John fixed it by himself as his wife glared coldly at him and finally we made it to a small marina on the Vineyard. I don’t remember which town. What I do vividly remember is that Betsey and I started sneaking off the boat every night looking for mischief. I don’t know what gave us the nerve or even the idea to start hitchhiking—but that became our nightly ticket to adventure. We explored all over the island this way, meeting random people and making up outlandish stories about who we were and where we came from, fantasizing variations on the future life that we hoped was right around the corner, waiting for us. Luckily, all of the people we met were kind and thanks to our angels we were able to stay safe and sneak back onto the boat in the wee hours, unbeknownst to Betsey’s mom and dad.
Actually, we realized much later that all that sneaking probably hadn’t been so necessary, as in a year or so it became clear that during that trip the two of them had been somewhat inebriated for most of the day every day, and they were noticing less and less anything that us kids did as the long days went by. This made her brother and sister act up even more obnoxiously to get attention, and it added the perfect catalytic ingredient to start our own wildness-brew bubbling away.
So one night, inevitably, we met some boys with a car who wanted to take things a step further. They drove us to a different marina and
We arranged to meet up with them the next day, and they surprised us by asking if we wanted to go to the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island with them. “But we don’t have tickets!” “No problem—we can just sit on the hill and watch it for free. Everyone does it and people are cool with that.” We felt skeptical but decided to say yes. They drove us to the marina where the John B. was docked. They stayed in the car while we went in and asked her parents whether we could go. Amazingly, they granted us permission. Now, for the first time, I was really scared. No way had I been expecting to be allowed to go! Those parents of Betsey’s were not playing their correct parts. In fact I think they were actually relieved to get rid of us. I couldn’t believe it, but it seemed like the only option now was to go through with the plan.
Luckily for everyone, these boys were decent gentlemen and nothing untoward happened between us. However, their assurances that not having a ticket would be cool and no problem turned out to be incorrect in a big way. With a ragtag group of others, we tried sneaking in through a bit of twisted chain link fence, got spotted by the police, and were chased away at top speed down a slippery, muddy, stony slope, where I had to abandon my awesome sandals from Provincetown. We spent the night shivering at picnic tables in some oceanside park, and left in the freezing foggy-wet dawn to find some coffee. The whole thing was a “fiasco,” as my mother would say. I called my father in Maine, who was understandably furious, and ordered me home on the next available bus (barefoot!—and humiliated). Betsey had to go to a relative’s house, as her parents were still at sea and no way to contact them.
Honestly, what was anybody thinking in this whole situation? Was anybody thinking at all?
Well, all of that happened during the month before I learned that my life was going to change dramatically and forever– and that my mother, sister, and I would be moving to High Mowing ( my parents were divorced and we kids went back and forth between the different households). The telling of how that gigantic turn of events came about will have to wait until Chapter Two. But the point is, what would have happened to me if fate had not intervened in my life at this point, taking me down the road less traveled? By some miracle, drugs, alcohol, and sex hadn’t figured into any of this daring adventure—but it probably inevitably would have soon enough if I had gone on to Norwalk High School or even the smaller public school where my mother taught art. The next year, when Betsey came to New Hampshire to visit me, she shocked me the minute she got off the bus by confessing that she was “tripping on acid” –and things in her life went on from there. High Mowing gave me a kind of spiritual (and beautiful and aesthetic) home—a feeling that I had finally landed someplace that was truly “mine,” and a way to think about life and all of the big questions that matter most to teenagers. It has been a gift throughout my life to have been able to experience that place in every way. I know that so many fortunate others have felt the same.
Chapter Two
In Which I Digress At The Newport, R.I. Bus Station For A Few Pages
(and realize that I will not be arriving at High Mowing School for at least two more chapters!—sorry, all.)
Standing alone with my misery at the dusty Trailways bus station in the foreign town of Newport, R.I., I could sense the dark, entrapping net of instant karma lowering itself into place all around me, and there and then, bit by bit, I began to receive my comeuppance for all the joyous anarchic freedom that I had been indulging in during the past few weeks. “Freedom isn’t free,” some people are fond of saying these days, usually right in the same breath with, “Support our troops! ,” and indeed it became clear that for the time being my assignment was to soldier on as my own lone freedom-crusader, without the support of dear friend Betsey— or anyone else— on this solitary leg of my journey.
Simply waiting in line to purchase a bus ticket turned into my first fierce punishment, due to this cranky old guy in line ahead of me.
He kept turning around and snarling at me about my bare feet, which were disgusting to him. These days, of course, I would never be allowed onto a bus shoeless, but at that time many of these explicit social rules were just beginning to be reformulated, and at the moment there was no law against it. In fact, I vividly remember when those little “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” signs started popping up all over the country a few years later, in the early 70’s, in response to the escalating culture-wars of the time.
In addition to my bare feet, I was carrying another blatant symbol of my newfound weirdo freedom tribe—my patchouli-scented, lavishly-and-brightly-embroidered shoulder bag from India. Believe it or not, in 1968, wearing anything ethnic and handmade and colorful (even a purse) was considered garish and suspect by regular people, who also did not have long, unstyled hair (like mine), or sandals—which I wished I still had!—as they clearly denoted “beatnik” status.
No normal mainstream American would ever deign to be seen barefoot except in the bedroom, bathroom, or at the beach; otherwise they’d be “looking like some vagabond,” as my Grandma Stetson would say. She used to generously feed meals to hungry hoboes in patched clothing who came to the back door of the farm in Jefferson, Maine during the Depression, but she never dreamed that her own family members (I and my cousins!) would turn into anything resembling one of those people.
In fact, after dinner at her house, when we sat reading side by side on the Davenport (sofa), she loved pointing out to me the magazine shampoo ads featuring the perfectly-coiffed, soft-focus Breck girls… “Now this little girl is what I wish you looked like, dear.” (Google this if you don’t know what a “Breck girl” is)
“Is it true blondes have more fun?” (Google this too if it doesn’t ring a bell)
I was born with blonde hair and blue eyes. When I was as young as three, my mother (who was a dark brunette) used to fix my white-blonde puff of baby hair, clip little colorful barrettes into it, and when she was done, give me the final once-over, smiling brightly. “You look just like Marilyn Monroe!”
It never occurred to me as a toddler to wonder who the heck Marilyn Monroe was— I just knew it was a good thing to be. Same as I knew that when I was getting uppity and she would say, “Who do you think you are, Christopher Columbus?!” – not such a good thing. Although our family is from rural roots, pretty quirky, and not wealthy or especially pedigreed, we are New England white Anglo-Saxon Protestants with a rumored lineage that includes Myles Standish, of all people, and John Clark, who supposedly “grazed his sheep on Boston Common” in the 17th century (somewhere I have a boring genealogy book about it). Despite all of this (or more likely, because of it), I had never once in my short life thought at all about the social free-pass that I automatically possessed due to my whiteness, blondeness, and WASPishness—until the sixties rolled around. Why would I? It was just “normal,”— “like water is to a fish,” as my Colombian American friend and High Mowing colleague Diego Sharon put it a few years ago, when we were brainstorming ideas for the High Mowing “Diversity Committee.”
Anyway, (back to bus station 1968) the next time that nasty guy made a remark at me, I tried to reasonably explain that hey, I had just lost my shoes. He stared back at me penetratingly and scowlingly. I really think he was enjoying this stupid back and forth—and, man, by now I really wanted to move to the end of the long line to escape him, but I was scared that then I’d miss the bus and create even more problems with my father, who’d be waiting for me in Lewiston (only pay phones back then and I barely had enough money for the ticket).
So I tried my last, scariest, tactic on the guy— looking straight into his eyes, I smiled benignly, showering him with what I imagined were great vibes of love, as I had recently read somewhere that Joan Baez had done when a hostile stranger had pelted her with pennies when she started singing on an airplane. Of course this just enraged him even more, forcing hi
–But, please, let’s move along. Personal evolution does happen, thank God. And, pondering this incident at length for the first time in many years, I actually would now like to thank you, oh Mean Man in the Bus Station in Newport, Rhode Island, summer of ’68!! Not because you convinced me of the evils of my barefoot ways—you did not!—I will always reserve the right to go barefoot, dammit!—but because you gave me my first gut-wrenching experience of being despised simply for my appearance.
This revelation, due to the moment in which we were living, and the shreds of political consciousness that I had managed to raise for myself up until then, afforded me my first tiny personal glimpse of what it must be like to be a victim of racism. It had never occurred to me before that I, Susan Stetson Prince, could be so hated by a random stranger at first sight. Usually, any random attention that I received from strangers (men) was of the opposite type (“hello, I love you, won’t you tell me your name…”), which could also make me feel terribly uncomfortable, but did not feel nearly so bad as this. I began to realize that I had crossed over to somewhere new somehow, but instead of making me want to run back to the safety of conformity, this incident just made me more resolved to continue on that path. What path? I did not really know. The uncharted one that felt right and real to me, I guess. Many, many other young people were experiencing these same strange feelings in those years, and simply following their instincts toward what seemed good.
I and everyone I knew had been thinking a lot about “race relations” in those days. The topic was so much in the air then, you couldn’t avoid it if you wanted to. Civil rights protests were still regularly occurring in the south. We were all dancing to the music with a message. Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” had just been released on Valentine’s Day of that year.
My white friends and I had all been passing around heavily-thumbed copies of “Black Boy,” by Richard Wright, “Nigger,” by Dick Gregory, and especially “Manchild In The Promised Land,” by Claude Brown. We couldn’t get enough of this stuff—which seemed so much more deep, true, and soulful than anything that was going on in our own teenaged lives then. Plus it all came from a rich, complex world that had been amazingly hidden right under everyone’s noses, a world that was fast emerging to be one of the most interesting and progressive and creative influences on mainstream culture in a long time.
During the year before, around the start of the SCLC Poor People’s Campaign, we had all been moved, astonished, and instantly transformed when in one of his speeches, Martin Luther King shouted out, “Black is beautiful!”—and it’s sooo beautiful to be black.
Before this contemporary emancipation proclamation, there existed basically two categories of “race”—white and Negro. I remember one awkward discussion at the dinnertable, somewhat embarrassing to recall now, when our white liberal family admitted to one another how hard it was to utter the word “black” when referring to a person. To us, it actually felt like an insult—“Negro” seemed so much more polite.
Ah, the power of the lowly word! MLK himself reclaimed, refashioned, and redeemed that simple, freighted word BLACK in a brilliant early manifestation of what later came to be known as “identity politics” (now much reviled). (See the attached video clip for a taste of that original brilliance.)
Remember—it was the summer of 1968, a long, long time ago. And I was just fifteen—so young! So please forgive my naivete if you find it offensive. And, people! For some context, let’s review just some of the big stuff that had happened during the previous six months or so in the world.
The Vietnam War had escalated, and was raging, as were the many huge protests against it. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in April, which was absolutely the most horrible American event of the year. Riots broke out in Detroit, L.A., and many other major cities all over the country. A few days after the assassination, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into effect—too little, too late. In Oakland, CA there was the famous shootout between the Black Panthers and the police, in which sixteen year old Bobby Hutton was killed, inciting more violent rioting and protests. At the same time, an extreme segregationist, Lester Maddox, had been elected governor of Georgia. And Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court justice, was appointed. Enormous student protests broke out at Columbia University, and that was the beginning of SDS. Then in June, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on the night he won the Democratic Primary (the first and only time I saw my tenth grade boyfriend cry, in front of his locker in the hall at school—he had worked hard on this campaign)–also, “2001:A Space Odyssey” came out, along with the Doors’ first album and the Beatles’ Sgt.Pepper, and “Hair!” opened on Broadway. And, “100 Years of Solitude,” the iconic novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that first acquainted us with the amazing world of Latin American magic realism, was published here.
Wow. Holy Moly, as Guy Wolff liked to say. All of this in the six months before the month of July, 1968, and Betsey’s and my little sailing adventure. Our boat—our world—was being rocked, and rocked hard.
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To See Is To Love/Love Is the Eye
Videre Amare Est/ Amor Oculus Est
To See Is To Love/ Love Is The Eye
This is an ancient aphorism which has been a favorite since I was a classics and art major in college, excerpted from the writings of Richard of Saint Victor, a somewhat mysterious Scottish monk from the twelfth century, who made his way to France to study and live in an Augustinian abbey, and who became a famous and profound theologian, philosopher, and thinker, still well-known and well-quoted today.
“To see is to love; Love is the eye.” I find these words to be so emblematic of a High Mowing education – really the essence of what I carried away from here as a graduate, and the essence of what I feel is the most valuable thing that I and other teachers can impart to our students today.
Jonah Tolchin, from the most recent graduating class of 2011, echoed perfectly my thoughts and feelings in his own words during his graduation address just one week ago. I had been mulling over my theme for this chapel-talk for days, and when Jonah spoke it struck me how similar our student-experiences here had been, albeit separated by forty years, and his background so different from mine—a young composer and highly accomplished blues musician from New Jersey, an ardent disciple of the Naturalist program; a rascal, a trickster, a lover and an amateur in the best sense of the word: curious about everyone and everything…well, maybe we have had a few qualities in common!
Anyhow, in his speech Jonah began by describing this mysterious act of seeing, both inwardly and outwardly. He said, “High Mowing has taught me how to stand up and speak—or better yet, sing—with passionate deliberateness about the things I love—to sing for what I consider justice, for change, for others and for myself. At High Mowing I have learned how to see, to not just look, but how to be aware with all of the senses, and not just hear, but to listen; how to walk on this earth not asleep, but wide awake, with an open heart, open hands, and open mind.”
Yes, I thought! That matches my own remembered experience and rings so true! The sort of essential vision that we are talking about is perceived not only with our physical eyes, but with all of our senses. And this mysterious gaze is simultaneously, paradoxically, and profoundly directed both outwardly and inwardly.
Thus:
To see is to love, love is the eye.
To hear is to love, love is the ear.
To touch is to love, love is the fingertips.
To smell is to love, love is the nose.
To taste is to love, love is the tongue.
–and by extension, we could also include the subtle senses of imagination, intuition… and onwards into infinity.
So—how does High Mowing teach these exquisite skills of extraordinary sensitivity? Some would say by magic. By affording teenagers –- at one of the very most wide-awake, vulnerable, and receptive moments of their lives —the time and the space—and the love—to both focus intently on themselves and identify their truest passions, and to expand their consciousnesses into the beautiful landscape as well as into the beautiful human community, the family of man, and into the many ideas and tasks they are challenged and enticed with.
For sixty-nine years High Mowing has provided a true home for the adolescent soul, a temporary yet enduring refuge from the chaos of the world at large, and a sacred place where things make a sort of holistic sense, in the way that a secluded medieval monastery
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Julia: Susan Prince Thompson ~ A beautiful beam of light. A phenomenal teacher, friend, mentor, and supporter.
My heart goes out to you and your loved ones.
Although you will be greatly missed, you're creative spirit will live on, and you will never be forgotten.
R.I.P. Susan ~ All my love
"Posted by Andrea Badger, Mary Anne Martel, Bev Boyer, Patricia Ryan
To everyone who has been holding our beautiful friend Susan in their hearts during this challenging time, we want to let you know that Susan has taken wing to the creative artist’s haven. Her spirit is now free to create the visions necessary for the next leg of the journey. Wishing her light and love as accompanyment.
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Cedar: I met Susan Prince Thompson when a High Mowing student showed me his favorite place on campus, Susan's textiles studio. To generations of students, her studio represented everything special and right about education on the hill: It was a place where the pretentious procedures that too often pass for “schooling” held no sway. In the warmth of Susan's joyful love of creation, her studio was a safe haven, a home for everything human: for weaving and gossip, for hard work after hours and for goofing around in class, for being seen and heard and respected and appreciated by one another and by her. No person I have ever met understood and taught “education toward freedom” more honestly and steadfastly than Susan. Teaching and living with her for over a decade, I learned, as did every one of her friends, colleagues and students, that life is too precious and brief for bullshit. I learned that full-hearted anger at the large and small injustices of the world is the best friend of lighthearted joyful creativity. I learned that being a serious artist and serious teacher is only possible when you stop taking yourself so goddamn seriously. I learned that art is necessary, the winding back together of fibers this crazy world un-spins from us. Most of all, I learned that young people need the same things we all need, even when we don't deserve them: respect, trust, honesty, freedom, friendship. To Susan, this was not a choice, even when asked at times to teach with a more disciplinary paradigm. Her studio, like her heart, was always a welcoming home where learning was a gift offered, not a forced march. Those of us who love her find ourselves with just as little choice: We know what it feels like to be welcomed by an artist's whole wild whirling soul, what it means to be at home in a truly honest place. As long as we don't take ourselves too seriously, we will never quite believe that mistrust, coercion or pretension are “teaching.” We have breathed the swirling tangled su
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Justin: Writing something on Facebook is a poor substitute to attending a memorial service for you, Susan, or better, having had a chance to say goodbye and thank you for everything you gave me at high mowing. But I will always remember your patient counseling as I struggled to make art, and feel at home at a new and strange school, and our conversations about life, politics, your past (including the Attica Brigade, if my memory is true) and so much else. Rest always in peace and the serenity you gave us all in abundance. Justin Jackson
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Ellen: I loved this woman, she shaped my life and made me a better person. She taught me that anything creative was worth trying. No high or low brow "art" just create and see where your inner spark will take you. I have her to thank for my time at Montserrat College of Art I will miss her beautiful light and joy.
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published a tribute .
So sorry for Susan's departure from this world but what inspiration she was for all of us with her generous loving spirit, amazing creativity and exquisite artwork! You are forever in our hearts Susan! I still hear your sweet voice, laughter and see your gorgeous smile that radiates so much beauty and love.
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published a tribute .
My sister Sue, or Sooze as we called her, was a creative force for as long as I can remember. She worked in many mediums with a style that was immediately recognizable. I invite everyone lucky enough to know her to upload shots, memories, even video, so we can archive some of her extraordinary work, and honor the loving force of nature Sooze was. Sending her much love on the latest creative journey she is now taking...
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published a comment .
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