In January of 1971 the newsletter of the Williamsport Free University, which met in a parish house on Vine Avenue, morphed into something of an alternative newspaper, and for reasons that I have forgotten, or repressed, Ellen Tinsman and I agreed to be co-editors. These were exciting anti-establishment times and while not exactly radical by today’s standards, Ellen and I seemed reasonably close on many contemporary issues including the war in Vietnam, the environment, civil rights and to some extent, politics in general. Our views were not mainstream, especially not for Williamsport, seldom finding expression in the Sun Gazette. Ellen however, did wander a little further left than I did—an outlook that I attributed to her New York City experience and it occurred to me that these more strident positions might need tempering in order to find a readership.

It’s amusing, thinking back, to imagine that temperance was something that I was going to add to Ellen’s writing—as if it were actually needed. I had recently graduated from Lycoming College where I had been editor of the Lycoming Review; credentials I thought, that would serve me well as “lead editor”—and, of course, that’s not the way it worked.

Ellen’s writing style was smooth, with an inviting colloquial flow of language that drew the reader in. She avoided bombast (a word she sometimes used to describe my enthusiastic rhetoric), preferring an indirect approach likely to have readers reaching the intended conclusions “on their own”.

For example, in the second issue she reviewed the movie Catch 22, a Mike Nichols film from the book by Joseph Heller. Ellen takes her reader on a tour of the movie, juxtaposing the hideous insanity of war and the people orchestrating it with the conditions and people we often face in more prosaic life scenarios: “The entire film, in one sense, is structured on Yossarian’s searing realization of his condition and of the insanity surrounding him. Probably what gives the film a great deal of its force is the viewer’s gradual realization that, in everyday life, he is being victimized in much the same way as Yossarian. We see ourselves very easily in his situation , dealing with a system of “catches “ rather than something we can control”. She concludes with: “And so readers, Hollywood progresses—don’t you wish they didn’t have to make movies like this one”.

Ellen and I worked as co-editors for about two years and with support from a lot of people, published the Williamsport Free Press—which turned into the Williamsport Mountain Journal—every two weeks. It was a challenging but inspiring time; Ellen was an inspiring person. I can’t help but wish that her intellect and energy and creativity were available for another project like this. Alas, we will have to make due with memories.