Chip Clawson and Donnie Keeton

00:03 Hello. I'm chip Clawson. I'm 74 today is June 24th, 2020. I'm in Helena Montana, and I'm going to have a conversation with my friend. Donnie Keeton.

00:17 Donnie

00:19 And Donnie Keeton, I'm 62. Today's date is June 24th, 2020. I too am in Helena Montana and I am having a conversation with my brother from another mother.

00:35 My name is Donnie Keeton. I'm here having a conversation with chip Clawson chip. Will you tell us a little bit about yourself?

00:44 Sure.

00:47 I'm a sculptor that works in architectural scale fabric form concrete. I build large sculptures. My most recent one is very colorful. I live here in Helena Montana. I came here in 1977 to our work at the Archie Bray Foundation Aztec clay business manager, and I've been involved since then and 36 of the years that I've been here. I've been an employee 25 + full-time and the others part-time on several different positions. I've been an activist in peace and social justice and

01:32 I like living in Montana. I enjoy the outdoors and I enjoyed it. There aren't so many people here.

01:42 I can relate to that. So what would you like to talk about today chip?

01:48 Well, I'd like to talk about the experience that I had in the Marine Corps that changed my life.

01:58 It was 1969 and I was a lieutenant in the Marine Corps and I was in What's called the basic school? I'd already been commissioned and had gone to flight school in Pensacola Florida with the Navy and had the opportunity to do some flying but I didn't learn fast enough and then I had another experience where I was going to fly in the backseat of a force is a radar intercept officer and I washed out of that school shortly before completion and I never understood that why I couldn't make those last few intercepts. So I I was sent back to the basic school because all Marines are

02:47 Are infantryman first, but I skipped at school because we needed helicopter pilots in 1967. When I first went when I first was commissioned in the Marine Corps. So I'm I'm learning how to use all the weapons in the Arsenal that a platoon leader might be working with or have attached to them from a 38 caliber pistol, which is about 3/8 of an inch in diameter up until I 155 done which is approximately 8 to 10 inches in diameter that also included machine guns artillery armor close air support a hand grenades and there was one particular weapon called a flechette round.

03:54 That will happen.

03:57 How has little darts there are about an inch long and they have three fins on them.

04:07 And they come in their ammunition from everything from a hand-held grenade launcher.

04:18 Which is about an inch and a half in diameter to the 155 gotten which is 829 in in diameter. And in the case of the all these weapons are about killing people but this particular one for their artillery is when your position is getting overrun.

04:43 You crank the guns down to Crown level.

04:49 And right now people to trees.

04:54 Armed

04:58 Training ice off of Shepherd house in the trees. No people.

05:07 It was the moment that I realized that.

05:13 What I was doing in the Marine Corps was wrong. Actually. What I realized was that killing is wrong and of valence does not resolve conflict.

05:27 And

05:29 That is indeed. What I was doing in a room for was long. And so at that point I had a choice. How do I deal with this? Do I speak up and say what I feel which is very new to me.

05:48 Are do I shut up and put up and get out and I'm having no support I decided that I did not want to get a discharge less than honorable. I also decided I did not want to kill anybody.

06:02 So I did that and I ended up as an air traffic controller and

06:10 I was just charged a year-and-a-half later.

06:15 And you just wanted to be a marine for quite a while had you

06:19 Yeah, it started way back when I was around 6 or 7 years old my mother in enrolled my brother and I at

06:32 In a book club and one of the books that she

06:38 That came to us and she read to us was the Sands of Iwo Jima.

06:46 And I locked on the hero because it was a story about this bloody battle in the Pacific during the second world war. And so that's what I wanted to do and and it's sort of fit into what was developing in my personality is being physically small. So therefore I needed to make up for it by being tough and there's some parts of that. They're still present in me today.

07:24 Yeah, so then when I was graduating from high school, I wanted to go into the Marine Corps. It's just 1963 and Vietnam is just starting to heat up. My parents wanted me to go to college. They one I went to college. I had a really good time there in my freshman year and I decided to stay.

07:49 In my junior year the Marine Corps recruiter came along and said

07:56 Boy, not only can you be a marine you can be an officer and you can fly airplanes to let me.

08:04 Except that hook and so I'm I signed up for between leaders class and went to

08:14 Quantico Virginia between my Junior and Senior year, I was commissioned after after I graduated as a second lieutenant and then was sent directly to Pensacola Florida basically to become a helicopter pilot in work that way so as the results of your paradigm shift

08:38 How did that affect your sense of being?

08:49 Well, there's a couple.

08:53 Things there I've how it affected me, you know.

08:59 So after the paradigm shift

09:03 It really opened me up to thinking a different way. When I went into the Marine Corps. I was gun ho now I came back from my summer Quantico and with my fraternity Brothers drinking beer if I took a broomstick and show them how to use a fugal stick or a band at and

09:24 Continue with my Macho

09:28 Tough little guy

09:31 And after after this, I started to see myself differently and I saw the world differently and I was affected by what was going on in the street.

09:45 I got out of the Marine Corps early and in 1971 and

09:53 The anti-war movement was in full swing an actually prior to that in May of 77. I was in Alfred New York visiting my friend at Everly who was in graduate school there in Ceramics when Kent State happen.

10:14 That was a strong reinforcer for me that things were going the wrong way. I was at home with his wife and two children. He was on campus.

10:27 Exactly where he should be.

10:31 At doing what he should do, but if it if he happened to be it can stay he would have been In Harm's Way my demonstration on back Kannapolis.

10:43 When I was a marine officer.

10:47 So

10:49 I've grown since then but that was the beginning of it.

10:58 Well, I was going to ask how your piece activism relating to the Paradigm Shift evolved over your life.

11:13 Would you say that I'm having a little trouble to hearing me with your voice?

11:26 I was going to ask how your peace activism.

11:31 Evolved over your the span of your life as a result of the Paradigm Shift experience as a Young Man.

11:39 Well, I just told you about the first step in adding in the next step in that was after I got out of out of the Marine Corps in 71 there. I was part of student group on the campus of a then Edinboro State College now the University of Pennsylvania at Edinboro student action. Now, it was a pretty typical organization of the time and I spoke as a former Marine and in opposition to the war in Vietnam.

12:17 Then that that group really dissolved after a fairly short. Of time, but it introduced need of political activity and it's not only been in peace and social justice but also environmental issues. So I went to Ann Arbor as a tech their relative to my professional career. I was just checking the ceramic department and there was a bottle bill that I got mine early involved with and then when I came to Montana, I was involved with that as well. I also got involved with some other environmental stuff and then

13:05 In the 80s there was a strong anti-nuclear movement going on and I went up to Malmstrom Air Force Base to protest the nuclear weapons that we have here in Montana. We have 200 new.

13:27 Nuclear missile silo 17 of them in our County Lewis and Clark some of those have been deactivated, but I don't know what percentage.

13:38 So I was arrested up there a couple times and I met a guy by the name of Scott Crichton, and he was in in the process of organizing the last chance peacemakers and I got involved with that and did some other work there draft counseling work Lobby in the legislature. I had a republican legislator and the the the ring companies.

14:17 We're giving the high school ring companies were giving the names of the students of bought rings at the draft board and we work to get.

14:31 Two in opposition to that and to have a law that that the ring companies could not give those names to the to the draft board and

14:43 This was a very early 80s in Montana was a very different place than it is now. It was very a progressive and my Republican representative voted.

15:01 The way that I logged into in opposition to allowing this to happen and then we Scott and I also went into high schools and ended draft counseling because at that point we we did have a draft even though the war was over and it wasn't the Vietnam Vietnam War was over we've been in worse constantly as long as I've been alive.

15:32 But anyway, we did that work and now we don't have the regular draft. We have an economic draft and it's an issue that has not been addressed in the current black lives matter.

15:50 But I think it should be because it's not only black people but it's people have less income that end up in the military because they give signing bonuses. So in terms of history of of my involvement the next major involvement, what's in 2001?

16:17 911

16:21 Happened on a Tuesday and Thursday

16:27 I heard George Bush beating the drums of War as I was driving home from work. So I got together with several of my friends that and we did different aspects and we put a demonstration together that Saturday for a peaceful.

16:52 Peaceful response to 9/11 obviously, that's not what we got, but we were able to get it together and turn the two to three hundred people in two days. So I think that was successful and what came out of that of which I was instigated.

17:14 A new organization that was a follow-up to the last chance peacemakers being the last instead of using peacemakers because that's actually the name of a handgun.

17:26 We went with Last Chance piece speakers, and I was very active instrumental in that group for a number of years. So

17:42 So

17:45 Would you join the Marine Corps again? And as a follow-up question, would you advise others to join?

17:55 I don't think I would join the Marine Corps again knowing what I know now, but but that's the unusual position. However, you know, what I learned in the Marine Corps is terribly terribly valuable to my life now besides the fact that it changed my life. I also learned about what I can physically do and where I can.

18:22 Physically go if I need to in terms of stamina and the physical death in that we have in ourselves that many people are unaware of but the Marine Corps made me aware that and that's been a very valuable school. So I did have positive things that came out of the Marine Corps. Would I advise you young person to go into the Marine Corps today? No, I would not because the wrist that you take versus the chances of something happening like happened to me are pretty slim you put yourself In Harm's Way. I put myself In Harm's Way, and I'm very fortunate that in 1971. I came out of the Marine Corps physically and emotionally

19:16 It sounds like you're a little conflicted though about.

19:19 Your time of the core.

19:22 Well, yeah, I do have some conflict conflicts about it because I still sort I think that the Marine Corps in terms of if you're going to fight which I don't think it's right but the Marine Corps so if that static and also about military aircraft, I'm still have a hard time not engaging with them because of such powerful machines and when I was in and I had the opportunity to fly and they flying experience I had there I would get no place else. Nobody else flies upside down on a to the extent that the military does there are aerobatic aircraft out there, but it's not like the military aircraft.

20:13 I'm sorry. Yeah, I I still have some of those are conflicts.

20:19 General Lee I'm pretty at peace with it. And when they when those things crop up, I'm aware of them and I

20:29 What's the meaning of?

20:30 Right box

20:44 How do you feel that? It's actually change the trajectory of your life. Would you would you become an artist had you not had your paradigm shift for instance?

20:59 Well, I don't think that the Paradigm Shift drove me that way because I had already the early steps of my involved with clay and started when I was an undergraduate school in the summer time frame and about my junior year in college before I had any connection to the Marine Corps it all and you know, one of the one of the ways it might relate is that when I as an undergraduate, I was educated to be a teacher secondary education Earth and space science and I student taught and pretty much.

21:43 Decided I didn't want to do that. And when I was in the Marine Corps, I was in air traffic controller and part of the reason that I chose. That was that I did enjoy Aviation, and I thought maybe I wanted to be involved in that when I got out and when I got out I realized I didn't because instead of wearing a brown shirt and a brown tie to work. I'd wear a white shirt and a blue tie and I would be working with all ex-military controllers. And that was not the environment. I wanted to be in and so physical things I have to work at them pretty hard.

22:29 Barclay came to me fairly easily on so I had a little money when I came out of the Marine Corps, and I was going to go to

22:41 New York and outside in New York City and and rent a studio and try to make pasta to living the before I when I stopped at Edinboro where my brother was going to school ran into an old paternity brother of mine who's running the head shop which led me to a studio situation and Edinboro and

23:06 And so I set up a studio in Edinboro became a special student there and that's Edinboro Pennsylvania. And and so that's what that's how I got.

23:22 Got endart witch.

23:25 The only part that

23:28 That it might have played was it a I didn't want to be a controller and be with the people that were in the Marine Corps and any Air Force or whatever branch of service.

23:44 How do you feel about Vietnam and then is a follow-up Warren General?

23:51 Well

23:53 Back to the Paradigm Shift violence does not resolve conflict. So I am in a position that any War for a while. I thought I was a pacifist but I I don't know that I can live to that standard, but I am check to any war and I have protested.

24:20 As they've happened

24:24 As for the Vietnam war that is an area of conflict for me because I feel a national guilt because of that war and to the extent that I went in the military during that war while I didn't kill anybody our country was at War and

24:54 It has been a very difficult topic for me.

25:05 And this usually gets emotional.

25:11 The movie Platoon

25:14 Was

25:18 Really helpful to me because

25:22 Without going through the whole the whole movie line at the end the Maine.

25:32 The main character

25:36 As matter fact

25:39 And he does a soliloquy that

25:45 Where he says that we have paid.

25:51 A high price

25:55 But I'm a better person because of my War.

26:07 My peripheral involvement with that war

26:11 Made me.

26:14 Better person because of the paradigm shift that we've been talking about.

26:27 Yes, I am. I'm just something pretty moved right now that when I stopped to the tune I was greatly affected and I've sworn off war movie since I just I just don't go.

26:46 Well, you could share your Reflections on that movie and Donnie and out the same here on time.

26:55 During that during the time of platoon. I read a book called dispatches and it was written by a guy that went over as a correspondent for one of the men's magazines, but just hold his whole Focus was to write a book about it and dispatches came out and it was just the most up-close-and-personal depiction what war is actually like and they saw the movie and I think Full Metal Jacket was in there somewhere and I just was so so it back today.

27:33 I'm already against the next door. That's all I can say. I'm already against the next one.

27:43 Yeah, I think not having not been in Vietnam but having been pretty involved in the military at that time. I think that it was a

27:54 Pretty accurate portrayal what was going on? I only found one technical problem with the whole movie and it had to do with radios in something that wasn't possible that they did in the movie and that's so small and what I was hearing at that time, was it other veterans?

28:20 We're finding it very helpful in dealing.

28:25 With the war and their life after that war is your extensive involvement without doors in the outdoors experience. I mean you've done a lot a lot and I was wondering if the paradigm shift in actions with other. I was wondering if the Paradigm Shift Drew you to the mountains to the camping to the explorations.

29:05 I don't I don't think so. I mean a paradigm shift changed me. But what really happened with the Marine Corps was issued Marine Corps, but with the out of doors with when I came to Montana.

29:24 I quickly found opportunities here a woman that was taking classes at the at the brave told me that her son was going to Nepal to K2 Skis and another guy stood up at the outdoor club meeting which one of the neighbors had suggested I go to and so I'm going to walk up the backside of the Matterhorn if you have seen me after the meeting and I became aware that there were there were lots of opportunities here that I had even fathoms were possible. I was aware of people climbing mountains, but I didn't realize it regular people could do that. I'm so that prompted me to

30:11 Did you find out in all I know and so I found out about Knowles and national outdoor leadership school and I went there because I'd taken a climbing class at the base camp and it

30:28 It really wasn't enough. I knew that and a nols instructor came through the bray on his way to the Lander.

30:37 And

30:40 And so anyway from that talking to him. I went there. I got a lot of skills. I was in recommended for

30:50 A instructors course, which I took I got thick and fever in the middle of it. The result was I decided that I really wanted to go out and do not be a nols instructor but go out and and leave my friends not so much lead them in a front way, but be able to organize and do things in the outer door safely. Lots of backpacking some technical climbing and then my two real loves were big volume whitewater kayaking and Backcountry Telemark skiing, so

31:33 Let's see.

31:37 So how do you view me Donnie, you know, you've heard these stories and others that haven't been in this in this interview. How do you see the Paradigm Shift affected my life? You've asked me a couple times about that and some of them have been it's been more influential and others. Well, I didn't know it for sure that's where until you describe them. And that that is just a horrific thing. And I think your Paradigm Shift has kind of influence me just a little bit more in that I you know, I have my own reasons to be against foreign stuff but to stand up and do something.

32:28 To go to the March you went to the march of the day in Bozeman. That was something that you that I would have been interested in but the way you just jumped on it and like said, let's go let's do this and then and the follow-up one that we went to.

32:44 You know, but I see you as a mentor you've mentioned me in a lot of different ways in the Arts and just seeing what you've done and helping with the projects and stuff. I just definitely see you as a mentor somebody fun to drink a beer with.

33:04 This is truly one of the finest examples of that which Humanity can aspire to be.

33:14 That's how I see you.

33:18 Well, it's true. It's not just idle idle.

33:23 No words.

33:26 Julia management swim chip Clawson

33:31 I'm happy to have you as my friend. Donnie Keeton. You're a good man, but you are what am I?

33:40 Yeah.

33:46 So so you said that the movie Platoon?

33:53 Affected you towards War and the ground what other things have have affected you in terms of peace or social justice.

34:10 I 2 I was raised in a meeting for family and some of that that

34:17 Marine Corps Pride as well in me when you said that like they're the best like really yeah.

34:24 But the

34:28 The thing that that gets me now is that it seems like the true power in the world is money. And the money made from war is Big Business. And I think that's what we learned from Vietnam how much of the corporate involvement there was and that's and plus right at right at the beginning of that was the end of Eisenhower and the coin the term the military industrial complex and then Frank Zappa.

35:02 Said something along the lines of the military or politics is the military industrial complex has entertainment Division and so that kind of keeps people that keeps people.

35:18 Keep their attention away from what's really going on. For instance. Our current president will be blathering about the wall. And then everybody's looking and listening to that bit while he's removing protections from endangered animals national monuments in environments and then he'll say something stupid and then then he's taken away voters rights while everybody is up in arms about the stupid thing just said,

35:53 And he's funding military more.

36:03 It's it's hard.

36:09 Yeah, well, you know it was as we talked about this politics, we we take ourselves to a descending spiral. So unfortunate right now that I'm looking out the window at wonderful Montana and as you know Donny, I have a pretty good view here my window which is right behind the computer screen. And so as we near the end of this, I guess that's one of the things that I'd like to remind myself of is how important

36:48 The outdoor environment is to recharging my batteries and two.

36:58 Me dealing with the world as the world is and you know, my friend our friend Mitch Carroll. We I came up on on the Helena Ridge Trail and we saw we identified 49 species of flowers and we had

37:23 A dozen to 15 more so that's sort of the antidote.

37:29 A lot of what we've been talking about and why were fortune

37:39 Yeah.

37:41 Well, there's on Debbie just can't hardly drive down the road without seeing a deer, you know, the urban deer and some people call and pestilential but it just said it's just a thing and there was a moose in Spring Meadow yesterday.

37:56 I didn't go see that but just one of those a moose.

38:03 Oh, yeah, great our state park that's right on the edge of town.

38:15 So well, I think we could be done.

38:19 Yeah.

38:22 Okay.