09/07/2016  

I can't get this blog to unlock, so if you need to reach me or want to post something regarding the passing of either Kenn Gregg or his friend, Pamela, please use my philosborn2001@yahoo.com email and I'll add it in manually here if feasible.

I recently received an email from Kenn's one-time lover, Pamela Maltzman, regarding her reexamination of this blog and thanking me for my effort. Pamela herself just passed away, which did not surprise me.  Pam's health had been poor and on two occasions when I did manage to connect, she both times said "I don't know you," which is sad.  We were not the closest of friends, but we were friends and that went all the way back to 1976, when I first moved to Long Beach, California.

https://www.gofundme.com/4u5ufc 

http://www.hollywoodinvestigator.com/2005/protectionism.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Libertarian_Life

This brief accounting of Pam's life should not to be taken as more than a clumsy sketch, based on fragmented data and old memories.  

Pam was a student at CSULB in the late '70's, an aspiring sculptor, and hung out with the local libertarians, whose activity centered around Sam Konkin's Anarcho Village at 7th and Cherry.  I met Pam and her buddy, Melinda Hansen, a very talented graphic artist, at a meeting of student libertarians at CSULB, and quickly formed a relationship with Melinda, which sort of worked for a while and finally dissolved due to my own problems. Melinda certainly deserved better than what I had to offer at the time.  Pamela was also a friend of Sheila Wymar who had become with child that year, and who went along with Kenn's enthusiastic idea of forming a family. until Sheila got tired of Kenn and skipped out of the arrangement, leaving an opening for Pam.  

In conversations with Pam over the years, she remarked several times to the effect that her relationship with Kenn was precious and could have led to a permanent attachment, but for all the problems that centered around Sheila in the years that followed. Pam contributed in many ways to Kenn's self-chosen work as the de facto father of Jamie, but I think that the stress and grinding poverty that Kenn chose, while putting all his resources into things like a Montessori education for Jamie, finally became too much for Pam.  So far as I know, Man and Kenn remained throughout on good terms.

I never got the impression that Pam was a great intellectual, but she was intellectually well read and active in various libertarian groups such as the Students for a Libertarian Life.  She helped organize and run several major libertarian conferences in the late '70's and early-to-mid '80's.  She clearly had a sense of the value of Kenn's work, or at least its potential, as Kenn became ever more bogged down in his personal troubles. 

My last concrete dealings with Pam revolved around the custody of Kenn's library, which almost fell into somewhat disreputable hands on his death.  I don't recall details, but I played Paul Revere, connecting various libertarian scholars to ensure that Kenn's enormous and unparalleled  library would survive intact, along with his manuscript on the idea of liberty.  Pam will be remembered.

Kenn Gregg's life could certainly have been worse.  He might have been born into a death camp in the Sudan.  He might have died a miserable, lingering death from AIDS in some state hospice with no friends.

Instead, when he did die this past Saturday, he died knowing, I'm sure, that there were many who would feel the loss deeply - among them myself.  I trust that his last days were not spent in lonely misery.  I last spoke with Kenn perhaps two years ago, and then I left messages occasionally on his phone, without a response. 

I believe he said something about deteriorating health when we last spoke, and I have a vague memory of one of our mutual friends mentioning that he was quite ill, but Kenn had had health problems related to obesity for some time, and I got no indication of illness in his voice or attitude - vibrant and jovial as always, so I was shocked to learn that he had been bedridden with congestive heart failure in a hospice, unable to even read for some time.  He had mentioned the last time that we spoke that he read my blogs at JoeUser.com with enjoyment.  I think it worthwhile, certainly, and appropriate that I make some comments here about the man and what his life amounted to.

I recall a Kenn who was the picture of physical indominability, a huge man, overweight but carrying it well.  I knew Kenn very well in the '70's and '80's and followed his life's course as a friend and a fellow traveler in research into libertarian ideas.  When we met in 1976, we were both young men, just starting down our respective paths. 

I will have more to say about those early years, and how they fit into the picture I drew of Sam Konkin and other libertarian personages of that time and place in Sam's obituary here at my blog "Speaking for the Dead."  Sam lived nearby when Kenn was in Long Beach, and had the same incredibly bad luck to love the same woman - who was a total disaster in both their lives.

Kenn had many accomplishments to be proud of.  Googling on his name will yield quite a number of cogent, worthwhile articles and blogs.  In the 1970's and '80's, when he lived in Long Beach, CA, Kenn was a frequent speaker at various libertarian supper clubs, usually expounding on topics drawn from his specialty and life's work, the history of the idea of "liberty."

Kenn was very much a renaissance man, aware and participating in the arts and sciences, encyclopedic in his knowledge of great literature, a major science fiction fan who could be counted upon attending the local cons or flying in from his later home in Las Vegas to attend nearby WorldCons, a student of medieval Thomistic thought, a fan of technology and a cutting edge early adopter of computers, including the one most ahead of its time, the legendary Amiga, and he followed scientific progress with a passion, involving himself in studies of nanotechnology when it was a word known only to a handful.

Kenn was a student of virtually whomever he thought could teach him to understand the universe a little better.  Early on, he discovered Ayn Rand and was for years a passionate attendee at lectures given by the Nathaniel Brandon institute.  Then he discovered the various strains of the early modern libertarian movement, studying under Andrew Galambos at the Free Enterprise Institute, and with Bob LeFevre at his Ramparts Institute.

Kenn was a devoted father, who worked overtime for many years as a single parent until his marriage, to put his son, Jamie, through Montessori.  Kenn would sit up every night after a grueling day and a long bus commute, reading to James and discussing what they read together.  Kenn had three children, two, I believe adopted via his marriage to Debbie.  I never met them and only very briefly met his wife, Debbie, at their wedding, soon after which they moved to Las Vegas.

Among the great tragedies of Kenn's life were the deaths of two of his children.  I recall talking to him a year or two after the death of James, by then a personable young man, by all accounts - who I only met very briefly as an adult, with a great future, cut short by a drunken driver.   Kenn had invested an enormous portion of his adult life in raising James, and it was clear that he was deeply wounded and disheartened by James' death.  As I had not talked with Kenn for a couple years now, I was unaware of the subsequent death of his daughter, also by a drunken driver apparently.  Had I known, I would have been much more prepared for Kenn's death.

When I moved to Long Beach and to Sam Konkin's "Anarcho Village" in early 1976 - at least for the several months I slept on Sam's living room couch - one of the first local libertarians I met outside of Sam's clique was Kenn.  I had asked around about libertarian parents, intending to try to set up a libertarian Montessori school on the model of the "College of Early Learning" in Columbia, South Carolina, which I had helped establish in the early '70's.  Someone at the Anarcho Village pointed me to some local parents and parents-to-be, and I soon found myself at a meeting of the local "libertarian feminists," along with the MacIntoshes, who were Dungeons and Dragons fanatics who played frequently with Sam, and their kids, as well as Kenn and Sheila, and a few other people who I have completely forgotten.

I don't think that the meeting went all that well.  I was - and am still - basically an objectivist, in agreement with the spirit and most of the letter from Ayn Rand, who was the intellectual mother of the majority of the libertarian movement on the East Coast.  The most prevalent libertarian influences on the West Coast, however, were unabashedly subjectivist, including Robert LeFevre and Andrew Galambos.  Sam's crew were, of course, mostly followers of the noted economist and political radical, Murray Rothbard.

It was common, I discovered, to be heckled at a libertarian gathering if one so much as dared mention the name Ayn Rand.  Of the parents at the libertarian feminst meeting, only Kenn was sympathetic toward the Randian positions.  Sheila, Kenn's lover and roommate at the time, pregnant with James, announced, typically,  that the group was going to devote the next meeting to the "question" of whether feminism was in fact compatible with libertarianism, with the implication of "if not, so much for libertarianism."

A few days sfter the meeting, I think, I was informed that the new Association of Libertarian Feminists was planing on doing their own school, so I, a mere man, needn't bother.  Of course they never did.

I don't know the back story of Kenn and Sheila.  However, I do know from close, personal and longterm observation that it was a match made in hell.  It was not, to the best of my judgement, a matter of Sheila being evil - altho there were elements of perversity in her character, but rather that she was simply oblivious to moral issues.  Kenn had apparently been the victim for many years of terminal shyness, which, together with his general nerdiness and great bulk, did not bring him much romance.  Far from aggressive, Kenn was the ultimate quiet, passive intellectual when it came to asserting his own desires.

Sheila came from the '60's drug and rock and roll culture, which continued and continues to pursue an extended half-life in the Bohemian/art Puppy communities that dominate Long Beach, and there she pretty much remained, mentally and spiritually, for the entire time that I knew her.  Because she was a true free spirit and quite pretty to boot, cheerful, energetic, disarmingly because so transparently manipulative, always interested in the new and different, she seemed a welcome compliment to Kenn's passivity and serious intellectuality.  Or so many of their mutual friends seemed agreed upon.  Finding herself pregnant, she latched on Kenn.

Kenn decided to be the father of Sheila's unborn child, mostly on the basis, I'm sure, of being completely captivated - like so many men before and after him - with Sheila's effervescent and bold personality.  I recall visiting them at the low-rent apartment complex that Kenn could barely afford, carrying a load of groceries.  I had bought the groceries for myself, in fact, and didn't want to leave them in my pickup truck, as it was a bad neighborhood, and I had already had the bicycle I carried from the East Coast stolen shortly before.  Kenn assumed that I was bringing the groceries as a gift, and I was too embarrassed to say otherwise. It was clear that they could really use them, as Kenn had apparently spend his last dime paying for the doctor bills for Sheila. 

I visited them both before and after the birth of James.  Prior to the birth Sheila was totally positive about all the plans that Kenn had envisioned for them.  James was going to have the perfect environment.  In fact, the birth itself was to be natural, supervised by a midwife, after which they would make placenta stew and invite their friends to partake.  Sheila would breast feed for as long as James wanted to. 

After the birth, suddenly Sheila was not so supportive or enthusiastic.  The placenta ended up in the trash.  She complained of excruciating pain in breast feeding, and so James was put on formula.

Among the links between us, Kenn was very interested in ways to increase intelligence, a specialty of my own research as well, so I volunteered to help him set up an environment for James for that purpose.  Working from my understanding of epistemology and the material in Joan Beck's classic "How to Raise a Brighter Child," I found an old TV case, and cleaned it up, installing a small light that would project a sharp shadow on the ceiling if James were placed on the thick glass on the front , thus giving him direct and immediate visual feedback as to his body position, movement and shape. 

The light also put out just enough heat to keep the glass comfortably warm.  I also bought day-glow flourescent paper and made mobiles to dangle in front of James at night, to help develop visual discrimination.  Kenn was quite enthusiastic about the project, but Sheila started expressing suspicions about whether what we were doing or planning was "natural."  As she raised more and more objections to the simplest thing that we discussed, I recall becoming more and more frustrated. 

It finally seemed clear that it was nothing in the simple perceptual enrichment we were planning that lay at the heart of her objections, but rather a cunning born of long practice on how to extract advantage from a position of power.  I think, as well, that Sheila felt at a loss in dealing with Kenn and myself, as her own education was rather limited.  Naturally, when someone is at such a disadvantage, they can easily slide into conflict, extracting points from the relationship as best they can.  At some point, I had an angry exchange with her and stopped coming by for a while.

When I next saw Kenn, perhaps a couple of months after James was born, his entire hand - I forget which one - was bandaged and I believe in a cast.  It turned out that he had put his hand through the wall to stop himself from hitting Sheila after discovering that she had found a new lover in the shape of their next door neighbor.  Apparently, she simply became bored at being mother, nurse and housewife.  It was much more fun to party and do drugs.

The neighbor was not a bad guy, either, and Kenn had never demanded an exclusive relationship, so far as I know.  However, I think that this marked the end of any serious attempt in either reality or pretense for Sheila to really become a part of Kenn's hyperintellectual world.  Things went downhill from there, with Sheila leaving to party for days on end, while Kenn, who was barely making it financially, had to take care of James or pay for a babysitter.

Later, according to various sources, Sheila began threatening to take James, as Kenn had no legal claim upon him, having never been tested as to whether he was the biological father.  Kenn would allegedly pay her cash to keep his son, fearing what might happen at the drug-loaded parties Sheila frequented.  Ultimately Sheila for all practical purposes moved out completely, except when she needed a place to crash, or was short of cash.

When Kenn formed a relationship with Pam Maltzman after Sheila had split for good, he had just had the mixed good and bad fortune to inherit a sizeable estate from his estranged (I believe) parents, who died in a tragic fire at a vacation cabin. 

Kenn's major goal in life had been for some time to write the definitive history of the idea of liberty.  He had managed to collect an amazing array of resources - walls of books, magazines, manuscripts, etc., including many rare documents dating as far back as the middle ages Thomistic scholars - but his hand-to-mouth existence had hamstrung any attempt to move forward on the actual book, although he was often invited to speak on various aspects of libertarian history at the local libertarian supper clubs. 

Typical of Kenn would be his reaction to my presenting some new idea that had occurred to me, or discussing the implications of ideas with which we were both familiar.  Instead of venturing his own extension of the concept or a critique of my analysis, Kenn would quietly start pulling books off the shelves that covered every open wall space.  I have learned - with some effort - to try to reference that which needs referencing.  It's not that I'm against giving credit, but rather that in the heat of presenting an argument I am already using all my mental resources and anything extra may cause me to lose the thread of thought. 

For Kenn, referencing was a passion and a virtual art, and he apparently expected me to actually READ the stack of books he had selected, which was simply NOT in the cards.  My tactic now is to write first and then link, which is so much simpler than trying to remember who said what and when.  Of course, I am not a historian, but rather an analyst and sometime innovator, whereas, for Kenn, the historian par excellance, my approach would have been DOOM, so I'm certainly not faulting him, but rather trying to make the reader understand who Kenn was.  Kenn, the consumate researcher, the tracker of the evolution of ideas. 

Now, in the early '80's, with the inheritance he had the chance to begin serious work on the book.  He either purchased or rented a small but beautiful little house in Long Beach, not far from Sam Konkin's lair, and he and Pam and Jamie moved in with all Kenn's books.  Then disaster struck.

Sheila had moved into Sam Konkin's Anarcho Village, only blocks away, where she reportedly cut notches in her bedpost as she allegedly seduced the various men associated with Sam.  Finally - or in the course of her conquests - she settled more or less upon Sam himself, which lasted up until she drove him as crazy as she had driven Kenn and allegedly he kicked her hard enough in the belly to send her to the hospital. 

Whether the injury was entirely real or not is open to question, based on later information.  I think that it was Kenn who she called to take her to the ER.  In any case, it was at Kenn's previously happy abode that she decided to take up residence - just while she was recovering to be sure... , once again threatening to take James.  Immediately, according to Pam and Kenn, things started disappearing, and then Sheila's low life friends started appearing and partying as though the house belonged to them, and her "recovery" turned into a takeover.

Finally Kenn and Pam ran for it - literally going over the wall behind the house and then hiding out in motels while Kenn's resources were eaten by the legal system, his attorney and the motels, and Sheila moved her friends into Kenn's home and partied among the books and manuscripts.  Finally I think that Kenn managed to sneak back in when they were away and change the locks.  Meanwhile, I had no idea what had gone down and I recall going to visit Kenn, wondering why I couldn't reach him by phone, and finding Sheila sitting on the curb with her friends, disconsolate and puzzled over why Kenn would behave in such a manner toward her, as always, the poor innocent victim with the little girl voice.

Ultimately, Kenn managed to come to a legally binding agreement that gave him primary custody of James, but the struggle had used up the majority of his financial resources.  However, he had also been hit by one of the crew of libertarian con artists who had infiltrated the movement, banking on the general atmosphere of tolerance and gullibility to work their trades or perversions as pedophiles or other scumbags. 

This particular guy had reportedly, as I later discovered, already ripped off other libertarians, putting on a pose of the ultimate objectivist and then luring them into what appeared to be legitimate business deals, then running with the cash, claiming the deal had fallen through.  He had heard through someone of kenn's windfall, and pursuaded Kenn to loan him the money to allegedly work a deal involving equipment leasing.  Of course, it fell through and suddenly the loan became an investment, and, too bad, Kenn.

Together, these two disasters cost Kenn his financial freedom and his relationship with Pam, as I understand it, leaving him to pay the rent on a cheap apartment by himself, while working long hours at Ernst and Whinney as an accountent, which didn't pay enough that he could afford both a car and also pay for a Montessori education for James.  So, he took the bus, such that his travel and work time probably came to well over 60 hours per week.  And then he would spend a couple hours of quality time reading to James and discussing things with him before getting a few hours sleep and doing it again.  This left Kenn little time for his book, and a good portion of his reference library was in storage, as it wouldn't fit in the little second floor apartment. 

Still, he persevered.  I visited him fairly often and had long discussions of libertarian theory and history with Kenn.  I recall Jamie as a pale, frail-looking, scared little blond kid, who constantly demanded attention.  He had not had an easy life, for sure, and Kenn's gentleness toward him was unlimited.  Kenn used his amazing knowledge of literature to find rare classics, such as the complete OZ series, to read and discuss with Jamie.

And, by all accounts, James turned out more than ok.  Kenn finally found a good life partner around the late '80's, I think, married her and moved to Las Vegas, partly, I'm reasonably sure, to ensure that Sheila would be out of his life.  I got back in touch with him years later and discovered that he was still very active intellectually and sponsored or hosted various intellectual groups related to libertarianism in the Vegas area. 

Meanwhile, Sheila set up house with Sam Konkin, at the Anarcho Village, where I still rented a couple of powered garages that I used as workshops and video production facilities, and I used to hear Sam, virtually every morning, around 1991, howling in rage and frustration at Sheila, "I can't LIVE this way."  And he couldn't.  I'm sure that this constant exhausting stress was a major factor in Sam's early death, as well as Kenn's.

Kenn knew personally and corresponded with a huge assortment of the major names in the libertarian movement, including some who I personally would not associate with for various moral reasons.  However, if Kenn did have a fault that could be cited as a primary cause for both his failure to complete his intended life's work and also for his untimely early death, it was the refusal to blame others.  It was very rarely that I heard him speak negatively about anyone, in fact. 

Kenn managed to maintain his equanimity throughout all his travails, and he had a legendary sense of humor.  I recall him introducing me to the weekly Dr. Demento show, which he eagerly anticipated each week.  I recall him and Sheila during their brief period of romance singing along with the ribald ditties. 

When I would protest the rampant subjectivism of such groups as Sam Konkin's Anarcho-Village crew, or the failure of the libertarian movement to get its act together in actually producing any kind of strategy to get us to a free society, if I were alone with Kenn, he would sadly and reluctently agree with me.  If we were in the company of others, however, Kenn would grin devilishly, eyes twinkling, and make some remark such as (referring to Sam's crew), "Yes, but it's because they're FANS!!*"  Kenn, like Sam - as I discuss in "Speaking for the Dead," avoided dealing with uncomfortable facts, apparently never realizing how easily this could be twisted by others into a blindness leading to an unseen precipice, such as the relationship with Sheila, or the loss to the ripoff artist.

*Classic archetypical science fiction fans live in a world of their own, often dominated by contests of wordplay and wit, in which the cleverist (or loudest) fan wins, regardless of the underlying merit of the positions.

In line with this refusal to judge, Kenn was an avowed pacifist, which he cited as justifying his not taking an early stand against Sheila.  Given their respective sizes - Kenn massed at least three Sheilas - there would not have been any doubt over the outcome of any physical contest between Kenn and Sheila and her entire crew of lowlife friends.  Instead of confronting her in Long Beach, however, he chose to run.  Given the risk of losing James in staying, this may have been the best choice available.  Personally, at that juncture I very likely would have been thinking about hiring a hit man or slipping something into her drink to offset Sheila's threat of using the state's power.

But then, that's me.  I can't live Kenn's life, and he can't be faulted for not trying to live richly, heroically and with meaning, as in fact he did try and try again, and sometimes succeeded, until finally he lost the son he most valued, I think, in life, and then his body betrayed him.  Kenn and I used to talk about the Singularity, and how people alive then - in the '80's - might still be alive a million centuries hence, as some kind of demi-gods, reaching the limits of what intelligence our universe can physically support.  I am deeply saddened to note that Kenn, dead in his late '50's, will not be there.  I hope that I will still remember him, but I'm sure he will be remembered, regardless.