CSUN University News Clippings

Commentary: Alum Henry Miller recalls his efforts to get a college education

(October 30, 2008)

Miller for president? Here’s why I’m unfit to lead

Henry Miller

If the mud gets much thicker during this last week of the campaign, I may have to lock hubs just to get to work.

So I thought I’d write my one quadrennial political column.

When I see Red …

I feel for Sarah Palin, fellow outdoorsperson and serial moose-gutter VP candidate, in a been there, done that sort of way.

Palin has been pilloried for taking six years at three colleges (one of them twice on different occasions) including — ewwwwww, how common — a two-year school, before getting her degree.

It took me five years and three colleges, including — heaven forbid — a two-year school, for me to earn my BA in Environmental Biology.

First there was Santa Barbara City College. Then Fresno State for one semester before a personal economic collapse derailed my academic ambitions.

Or in political campaign speak: “My opponent, Miller, is a college dropout …”

But after working two full-time jobs for eight months to build up savings, it was on to Cal State Northridge outside of Los Angeles to finish up.

It actually is four colleges if you count that night-school class at Texas A&I in Kingsville during my last six months in the Navy.

For which I had to take an incomplete, ironically, because of an early out from the military to go to school full time.

Which in political terms makes me a two-time college dropout.

When I’m Blue …

OK, so veep is out.

And I had an epiphany the other day that I’ll never be president, either.

Because I didn’t just sit in on a couple of meetings with a washed up domestic terrorist a couple of years ago.

I dated one, sort of.

Pat Soltysik was a classmate and known associate from the time we rode the same bus to Isla Vista Elementary all the way through senior year at Dos Pueblos High.

After DP, I went into the service.

Pat chose a more colorful post-high school path while at UC Berkeley.

The short version is that she joined the Symbionese Liberation Army, changed her nom de guerre to Mizmoon, kidnapped Patty Hearst, robbed a bank, and ended up getting killed in a 1974 shootout with a Los Angeles SWAT team when the house in which the SLA members were barricaded caught fire and burned to the ground.

So, yes, I was palling around with a terrorist, big-time, for years.

Pat was ruthless at dodgeball, I might add.

And in the interests of full disclosure, I lusted after her with that kind of all-consuming, testosterone-stew teen angst born of the unrealized aspirations of a Chess Club goober in the presence of the stone hottie senior class treasurer.

Our “date” consisted of me sweating profusely and gazing furtively at Pat while sitting on the shag carpet in the den at a Ricky Reigert’s house up the cul de sac.

A group of us had gathered to sip Cokes, eat pretzels and chips and listen to folk music (aha!) on the stereo phonograph (ask your grandfather).

In other words, “Miller, my opponent, was seen doing Coke during a meeting of a leftist cell with a known terrorist.”

We were, as I recall, in junior high.

So there you have it.

My blighted, checkered past effectively bars me from running for any political office.

If there’s a lesson in all of this, red and blue, I guess it’s that context counts.

At least it should.

Or we’re all doomed.

Publication: Statesman Journal - OR