Interview with Patti Cassidy

Cassidy, Patti ; McKiernan, Stephen

Patti Cassidy is a playwright and producer. She wrote her first play on a dare in a Mexican border town in southern Arizona. From then on her work has been produced from LA to Paris. Cassidy currently is co-producing a series of readings of plays in the greater Boston area. She has a Bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature from SUNY Albany.

2010-02-22

In Copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

165:33

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Patti Cassidy
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 22 February 2010
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:04):
You are going here.

PC (00:00:04):
Okay.

SM (00:00:06):
I have got lots of questions to ask you, but some of them will be a little different than David, and some will be the same that David got.

PC (00:00:11):
Okay. David, whether they are all the same or-

SM (00:00:14):
Well, the first question. When I looked at your website, I am pretty fascinated by the fact that your experiences are pretty diverse. And before we even get into specifics about the boomers, it is about boomer lives, when you say that you grew up in New York State and then you lived in the Arizona Desert and the New England Island-

PC (00:00:33):
Right.

SM (00:00:34):
... that is given you a diffuse and eclectic experience of the United States, was that when you were young? Was that during your early years?

PC (00:00:42):
No, I grew up in upstate New York, and I was up there until I was 20 something, 25. And then, the man that I ended up marrying, he and I did that great American go and find out if there was a better place to live kind of thing. And we ended up in Arizona, and that was in the 1970s. So, when I was 25. And we lived there down there, first, in Tucson, and then moved up into the mountains and did the homesteading thing, and that was total 27 years. And then, I moved back here to Boston because it was time to come home. And by that time I was divorced. And then, I met David, and he, of course, was on an island in Narragansett Bay. So, that is now. Excuse me.

SM (00:01:48):
Was there anything about your upbringing as a child that you wanted to explore America, you wanted to see more than just growing up in New York?

PC (00:01:58):
No. Just to put it bluntly, travel. Our vacations were either in Western Pennsylvania where my family's family came from, or it was in Maine, Kennebunkport, actually. And that was fine. And I did not have the wanderlust. I did not particularly have any reason to want to travel. Although when my aunt went to Greece, she was a classic professor. When she went to Greece and showed me pictures of, well, this is the crossroads where Oedipus met his father, that started to spark something. That was when I was about 12 or 13, but it was not very strong until college basically. And the year I dropped out of college to buy a motorcycle and travel across the country-

SM (00:02:55):
Wow.

PC (00:02:56):
... by myself, I went to drop out, and my guidance counselor said, "Do you know that 25 percent of your class has dropped out here?"

SM (00:03:06):
Now, what school was this?

PC (00:03:07):
That was State University of New York at Albany.

SM (00:03:09):
Oh, okay.

PC (00:03:10):
And that was the years, and that is the way things were happening.

SM (00:03:16):
And what year was that?

PC (00:03:19):
That was 1968.

SM (00:03:22):
Oh, that was a big year.

PC (00:03:23):
That was a huge year.

SM (00:03:26):
Yeah. Yeah. So, you traveled around the country. What was that like? Share a little bit about that year.

PC (00:03:32):
Well, that trip, I was a young girl, and I have always been young looking for my age. So, I looked like I was 12 or something, riding around. Basically, I got as far as Nebraska before I turned around and went back. But I was alone. I was on a motorcycle. I had a Honda 350, and it looked like a mini Harley. And it was just interesting for me to feel the sense of freedom. The people I met. I remember in Illinois somewhere, I had run a stop light or a stop sign, which I had not seen. But this cop pulled me over, and I took my helmet off and my hair fell down because it was long hair. And he was flabbergasted that there was this girl going by herself. And he said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "Well, I am taking a spike across the country and seeing what I can see." And he said, "Well, that is amazing because I had always wanted to do something like that." And he poured his heart out about how he had always wanted to go on trips like that, but he never had the nerve. And so, that was pretty neat. And then, there were a lot of people who told me, "You be careful. You were driving by yourself. You were going alone by yourself." And I really did not feel afraid. That is the thing, I was not a particularly brave kind of a girl or a tomboy even. It was just something that I wanted to do. And of course, I'd seen your basic easy rider, and I had been reading a little bit of Kerouac. Not a lot.

SM (00:05:32):
On the road.

PC (00:05:33):
On the road. So, basically I was becoming more and more interested in seeing, "Well, what is this? There is got to be something outside of Albany." And so, that is when I started to take trips.

SM (00:05:52):
Well, 1968, obviously, your brother-in-law has written a great book about it, but it is a historic year in so many ways. And the way your brother-in-law talked about it is there were things leading up to it. There were historic events and happenings that played a very important part in that year, even before that year. But when you looked at America in 1968, obviously, if you were on the road on a motorcycle, you may not have been watching television as much as others. We had the assassinations that year of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, Johnson resigned and was not going to run again as president. We had the Tet situation in Vietnam, and then obviously the conventions and the confrontation in Chicago.

PC (00:06:36):
Oh, I paid a lot of attention.

SM (00:06:38):
Yeah. When you were going across the country, were you talking to people? Were people talking about it in restaurants or wherever you were stopping?

PC (00:06:49):
No, I did not really hear much about it. I was only on the road for, I think, three weeks because, as I say, by the time I got out to Nebraska, I said I am going home. And I tended to be a fairly shy person. But what I saw, basically, all the way across country, as I say I never felt fear. I really did not feel afraid at any time. And I saw, I guess, what I expected to see. I saw people who dressed like I did, even in the Midwest. I did not find it a foreign land, which I was thinking that I would have. But as far as discussing the situation with people I did not know, no, I cannot really say that I heard a lot of discussions going on in diners or anything like that. Right.

SM (00:07:50):
Right. Do you look at your growing up years as a female boomer, which is obviously different than a male boomer. Do you feel that a female boomers' experiences were really totally different?

PC (00:08:06):
I do not know that they were totally different. I think they were different in the way you related to what you learned. I do not think that we had the feeling of we can go out, or I can only speak to myself. I did not have a feeling that, oh, I could go out and ride a motorcycle. Oh, I could go out and overturn the government. Oh, I can go out and do all of these things. And yet, as the years went on, I did start to feel that power during that period. I did really feel like, oh, I can do all these things. It was a very empowering time for me as a woman. And one of the big things, and I wondered if you were going to be talking about it, was birth control.

SM (00:08:53):
Yes.

PC (00:08:54):
That was just phenomenal. And it was the biggest change. Now, I grew up a staunch Catholic gal, and of course the idea of, A, birth control and, B, needing it, we were out of the question. But once the hippie years started, and I started getting involved with people, and then all of a sudden you have got birth control on top of it, which meant you did not have the biggest consequence that you had to worry about, it made me feel totally free. And at that point, I think I really wanted to try to experiment more. I really wanted to take advantage of the freedoms that guys had traditionally had that you had to be more careful when you were a girl. Suddenly, there was this thing that made it be, oh, you do not have to be as careful because you're not going to have to get pregnant. And so, that made a really huge difference. But as far as growing up, I did feel limited. I did feel very much like there was a role to play. You go to school, you get married, you have kids, and you do that thing. I was not happy with that role. That really did not seem to fit me. But because of the way things were. Now, I thought I would be a nun, actually, rather than a mother, because, if you were a Catholic kid, that was your other option. But I did not feel like there were very many options until the (19)60s came along, when all of a sudden things cracked open and you suddenly realize, yeah, I do have a lot of different options. I could ride a motorcycle, or I could be a writer, or I could be all of these things. It was almost overwhelming.

SM (00:10:52):
Yeah. You mentioned the pill. One of the questions someplace and on my list here is a question that I was going to ask regarding what were the major happenings or events that really affected you as a female boomer during the time that you were young? And when I say young, I am also talking about your elementary school years, your high school, your college, in the twenties, thirties, into the (19)40s, because I consider that young. So, we are talking about the (19)50s, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, and the (19)80s. I am really looking at those periods.

PC (00:11:28):
Okay.

SM (00:11:29):
So, obviously the pill was very important. Was the sexual revolution a myth? Or was there truth to it?

PC (00:11:37):
I do not know. No, I do not think the sexual revolution was a myth at all. You suddenly had people who, well, as I just mentioned, the pill was so huge because you had one group of the population saying it is possible to do this and not have to deal with, oh, I am going to have a baby. I am going to have to take care of it. Or I cannot do anything that I really want to with my boyfriend because, et cetera. So, you had that freedom. At that point, there was not a whole lot of venereal disease problems that could not be fixed by a shot of penicillin. And so, that was another issue. Everybody I knew was involved. And remember, I was basically in a pretty middle-class situation. Standard, good Catholic, strong background situation. But I would say by 1972, it was just an arbitrary date, came around, almost everybody I knew was having full relationships with guys. I mean, our parents were tearing their hair out. But basically, none of my generation had a problem with, yes, she was living with so-and-so, or they are getting together every weekend, or whatever. You just did not even think about it. It just flew over the top of your head.

SM (00:13:10):
How important was Roe v. Wade with women, too?

PC (00:13:15):
Roe v. Wade was very important. And at the time that that decision was made, I was very happy that the freedom came along. But I ended up rethinking in the 1980s, the late (19)80s, I started rethinking my position about it. And that was actually due to a remark that was made a man that I really respected by the name of Nat Hentoff. I do not know if you know him.

SM (00:13:51):
Nat Hentoff. That name rings a bell.

PC (00:13:55):
He was actually a jazz critic for the Village Voice and a very smart guy. And he started doing some investigation, basically, to decide how he felt about the abortion issue. And he came up with some conclusions that, when I read them, I said I do not want to be pro-life. I do not want to be pro-life. I want to continue to be pro-choice because it goes along with my anti-war stance and everything else. But the more I thought about it, the more I got back to first causes, the more I felt I had to change my decision on that. And basically, I tried not even to say very much about what I believed, because I knew everybody would look at me like I have got a third head.

SM (00:14:48):
Betty Friedan, of course, was one of the big writers of that period, and she wrote many books dealing with women. And she used to always say that the mothers, which our parents, the mothers of the boomers, were basically very unfulfilled in the late forties and the (19)50s, and when they raised the kids. Do you feel this is true? I interviewed Phyllis Schlafly this past week in Washington.

PC (00:15:15):
Oh, wow.

SM (00:15:16):
And she said that that was nothing but propaganda, that women love being homemakers, and that women were fulfilled in raising their kids. So, there is a lot of different points of view here. But do you feel that your mother, the mothers of the (19)50s, were unfulfilled because they were home being homemakers as opposed to working?

PC (00:15:41):
My mother personally did not have a real problem with it. She was very ill. She had heart condition, and so she was not a real go-getter to go out and have a career or anything. But I cannot really agree with Phyllis Schlafly. There were a lot of hamstrung women. There were a lot of women who wanted more than what they could have that I saw that when the was made available to them to go out and work or to do more things than be a mom and be consistently tied to your kids. There were a lot of divorces that happened around then, I remember. And sometimes, they actually bought the wrong product. Freedom meant getting a job, but getting a job might be a file clerk, and that was, certainly, not even as fulfilling as being a mom. So, sometimes they did not think it through. But I cannot really say that I agree with her just based on my own personal observation. A lot of women that I talked to that I knew were frustrated, that they were very glad to add to their roles, they were glad for the opportunity to try to do different things.

SM (00:17:12):
Yeah. That was an interesting time because a lot of women had worked during World War II when the men went off to war. There were a lot of women in the war, but that is where women really worked. And I can remember my mom was a tremendous secretary. And then, when my dad came home from the war, she gave all that up to raise the kids. And I had never even thought of asking her once we started moving off into the world whether she felt fulfilled after all those years. She raised kids.

PC (00:17:40):
Is she still around now?

SM (00:17:42):
No, she passed away in 1998.

PC (00:17:45):
Oh, okay.

SM (00:17:46):
And I never even asked my dad who passed away in 2002 some of these issues. I wish I could have asked them. But that was a big issue because the Equal Rights Amendment, of course, was defeated in the early (19)70s and the mid-(19)70s, and Phyllis Schlafly was a very important reason why it was defeated.

PC (00:18:09):
Right. As a matter of fact, I just finished reading a book called, it was not The Way We Were. It is, The Way Things Were, I think. And basically, it tells about the way things were for women in the early (19)60s all the way up to now. And it does not try to be a polemic. It does not try to say, "Oh, this was terrible." It just said, "This is what happened." And one thing that she mentioned that I had forgotten all about is that, financially, I had to have a male's signature to start my bank account, to start my checking account, I had to have my dad's signature. And credit cards. I looked into getting a credit card. I did not get it. But basically, you have to have a man sign for you. And I had forgotten all about that because, basically, it really did hamstring you. Again, it was that whole feeling of you really did not have the power because, in fact, you had to get the permission, even in the 1970s when I wanted to have a tubal ligation, I had to have my husband.

SM (00:19:25):
Wow.

PC (00:19:26):
I could not just do that on my own say so. They said, "Well, your husband has to sign the papers." He was not happy about that. He said, "Well, it's her body. She should do what she wants."

SM (00:19:36):
Right.

PC (00:19:37):
And they said, "No, you are her husband, so you have to sign.”

SM (00:19:41):
Well, one of the things that the women's movement talked about, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug, I was looking up some of the quotes, and that is that they felt that women were unfulfilled. And to this day, Mrs. Schlafly believes that this propaganda continues, and they need to move on. So, anyways, that is just a little side note. Now, you're a very artistic person, obviously, because I looked at your background, and were doing films and writing and so forth and sculpture.

PC (00:20:21):
Right.

SM (00:20:22):
Do you feel that this area of interest had anything to do with reinventing yourself, which is a quality so many boomers felt. I know, even in Charles's book, he talks about this business of a concept, and a lot of people wanted to reinvent themselves. They did not want to be like their parents. Their parents were part of a generation that ended a war. Of course, beat two really bad, at that time, very bad countries that were doing terrible things. But when the war ended, they came home. And a lot of people in the boomer generation were upset that this was a generation that also created the atomic bomb, and that they wanted to be different, and they wanted to reinvent themselves. Do you feel that anything you have done in your life was not that you did not disrespect your parents, but you did not want to be like them? You wanted to reinvent yourself and be your own person?

PC (00:21:29):
It is an interesting question because I am constantly reinventing myself. I think that, basically, the way I chose to run my life, I knew I had to kick against the belief because you had not only, basically, GI parents. Well, my father was even farther back. He was born in 1904. He was old when I was born. But it was not so much that I wanted to be something different than they were, but I wanted to be something different than what the world expected of me because it did not fit. Like I said, the housewife with the kids, that never did fit me. I wanted the freedom to do that. Let me think for just a second. I think that it was all about experimenting. It was all about experiments. And one thing we were lucky enough, as a generation, to have cheap education. We could all go to college or almost everybody could go to school. And so, we had a lot of opportunities to explore ideas and possibilities. And with me, I read tons of poetry. I met a lot of people who were involved mostly in the writing game. And so, basically, I wanted to try that out. I wanted to try those [inaudible 00:23:12]. So, as far as reinvention, reinventing the traditional roles, yeah, but not necessarily in opposition to my parents, but just to try it out.

SM (00:23:26):
Yeah, you are a boomer. What is your overall feelings about your generation? It is interesting. Even if you look at the books, they cannot even come up with the exact number of boomers, anywhere from 70 to 78 million. That is quite a discrepancy. But I have seen many different quotes. 70, 74, 78 million. What are your thoughts on your generation, not only when you were young, but have you changed your opinions of them as you have grown older and as they have grown older? And in terms of some of the qualities they possess, a lot of them had this idealism that was a very important part of the generation. There was a feeling of community where, whether it be a cause, people could come together and believe and fight for justice. Or have strong feelings toward a particular issue, and they knew that other people felt that way. So, a sense of community, and there was also a sense of movements, many movements, that you felt a sense of empowerment, that an individual could make a difference, that the individual was important. But you had not only community, but you had the importance of individual freedom of speech. And that, finally, my views, and I can make a difference in this world. So, what are your overall feelings of your generation when you were young, and as you have grown older?

PC (00:24:59):
Basically, starting, when you are saying, when I was young as a kid, I do not think I had that much of a feeling as a child. But as I got older, and this is a point where my husband and I diverge. I am proud of the boomers. I am proud of what we did. At that point, I was, although every once in a while my contemporaries would irritate me because they were self-righteous. But they were questioning. I mean, there was this whole thing about our generation questioned everything. And sometimes it got silly, and sometimes it led into weird places. But in fact, at least they were questioning, at least they were saying, "Well, what is this?" And they were trying to make an alternative to basically the gray corporate world, which is what we grew up in, and the world where everybody had a standard that they had to tow the line or else the left out or called weird or whatever. At last, people were saying, "Okay, we do not have to do this. We can do some other things. We can try other situations." And I was proud of that. I was very happy to be a part of that. And I still think that boomers get a bad rap. Everybody goes, "Oh, my God. Look how it turned out, and look how terrible they are. And look at how greedy and grasping they are. And look at all the things that went wrong." Well, you know what? It may have gone wrong with a lot of them, but also with a lot of people, it did not, I mean, just in the church, and I will go back to that because that was most familiar. I mean, there were things that were done that made it more understandable and accessible to more people. The whole divorce thing, the whole, they call them, street priests. I mean, priests actually going out into the street and helping kids, like juvenile delinquents and stuff. I think we did a good job of what we did, which was questioning all the basic assumptions and saying, "Do they work or do not they? What can we tear apart?" Sometimes, we got to be tearing apart for the hell of it. In fact, I always felt when I saw somebody my age, I knew pretty much, or I felt that I knew pretty much, what I could expect. And that did do a bonding thing for me. As I said, I did not approve of a lot of stuff they did, because sometimes I felt that they were too self-righteous. And sometimes I felt they were silly. But in fact, the situation was that somebody had to go questioning this stuff or else was going to go on forever as far as we could see.

SM (00:27:56):
You mentioned some of the things that you felt were weaknesses. What do you consider some of the strengths and weaknesses? I have had people that will not answer this question because they said, "I cannot answer a question for 74 million different individuals."

PC (00:28:09):
Well, that is true.

SM (00:28:11):
And so, based on your experiences, though, and the boomers that you knew, what do you consider their strengths and their weaknesses?

PC (00:28:24):
Well, I will start out with the weaknesses. The weaknesses were that they did tend, when they grabbed on to something, to be a little self-righteous. And as far as today goes, I do not think that we are as self-righteous anymore. I really do not. And I think that that may be why we fall apart, why we went from being a group to being a bunch of individuals. So, I think that the self-righteousness was probably a weakness. Another thing was that because we were so curious about everything. We wanted to bring in, say, Caribbean poetry of the 18th century as a course to be taught in colleges as opposed to just the straight cannon. It got a little bit silly, some of the stuff. So, those I think are the weaknesses. I think as far as the strengths go, I see it as a strength to question everything. To basically say, "This is not working. What can we do? Let us go down to first causes. Let us really get behind it." Think of all the teach-ins. These were not just demonstrations where people say, "Oh, let us go out and club a few heads." Or, "Let us go out and dance in the streets." They said, "Let us have teach-ins. Let us find out what the truth is behind things." And I think that was a real strength of my generation. I am happy that they did that. And I am also happy with the hippie movement. Although again, it got to be something other. It got to be probably too much in the world of drugs. We lost too many people that way. The fact that, again, they were trying to experiment and trying to put it into action, put your theories into action. Go out and reject, I do not know if you remember this. There was that big thing about the culture of death. The ruling culture is the culture of death. Let us be the culture of life. They really did give it a whack. They really did. It was not this violent thing that you see going on now. Oh, how do you rebel against the establishment now is get a zip gun. Back then, it was just tell them to do their own thing and drop out.

SM (00:31:00):
A critic of that view maybe, I am from the era, too. So, I know.

PC (00:31:10):
Oh, good.

SM (00:31:10):
But my opinions do not mean anything in this book. The key thing here is there were people that used drugs to get away from the reality of the world they were seeing. And if they wanted to be the change agents for the betterment of society, did not they want to be sober or off drugs to be able to deal with this? Experimentation is one thing, but to be thought upon as legitimate people who care deeply about changing the world, why get on drugs? So, I am just being a critic here.

PC (00:31:47):
No, I understand. And I have a complicated relationship with that, too, because I must admit, I experimented just like people did. I always held a job and everything like that. I mean, it never got in the way of that. But you may be talking about two different people. Basically, you have got some people who say, okay, let us try to change the world with tutoring, classes after school, tutoring of classes, working in the slums, doing that sort of thing. You have got other people who are experimenting with themselves and they are saying, "What will it take? What if I try this drug?" Particularly the hallucination. "What if I take this drug? What will happen to me?" So, they're exploring themselves. You do not necessarily have the same person doing two different things. Some people would try to change society, some people would try to change themselves, and some people were just not interested in changing anything.

SM (00:32:56):
Well, we know that we lost some great musicians to drugs, and that is just well known and documented. Do you have any personal experiences of friends or peers or fellow college students or people that lost their life or were totally destroyed by being involved in drugs? Do you have any anecdotes or stories?

PC (00:33:19):
Let me think about that. Basically, everybody I knew took drugs to one degree or another, anywhere from pot to heavier stuff. I did not have any personal experience with anybody I know dying from drugs. One girl, her parents sent her to an asylum because she was very whacked out. And I certainly saw a lot of meltdowns, but at that point, we were all taking care of our own.

SM (00:33:58):
Well, I think, one day, someone, if they could write a book. There has never been a book written about it. One day someone, if they could write a... there has never been a book written about it. Of course how do you document it? But you have to find boomer parents who lost kids and most boomer parents are passing away now.

PC (00:34:10):
Who, the people who died from drugs?

SM (00:34:14):
Yeah, because it is a story... we know about these personalities who died from drugs, but the question is, we read that so many lives were destroyed. And who are these people whose lives were destroyed? Who are they?

PC (00:34:30):
Exactly.

SM (00:34:31):
And no one was ever really done a book on it, like an interviewing. I wish I was 25 years younger now talking to boomer parents about losing their son or daughter because it would be a great story in terms of students not getting involved in drugs today. A couple things. When Newt Gingrich came into power in 1994, and obviously when George Will does a lot of his writing in his books and comms, they love to take shots at the (19)60s generation or the boomers that grew up after World War II. And they look at the (19)60s and early (19)70s when boomers were young and say, a lot of the problems we have in our society today go right back to that era, which includes the skyrocketing divorce rate, the no commitment with between... in relationships, the ism culture, which is everybody's a victim and nobody takes it by their bootstraps to help themselves. The drug culture, the sexual revolution, sexual morays, whether it be through movies or the way people lived and all the other things. They love to take shots at the generation for all the problems that are in America today. I know it's very generalized, but it has been documented and they're not the only ones. There has been a lot of books written about even the issue that what is going on in universities today. The troublemakers of the (19)60s are the professors of today, and that is why the universities are destroyed with political correctness and women's studies programs and gay studies and Native American studies, everything studies and only caring about their own particular culture. Your thoughts on these criticisms that people do have about things that they felt began when boomers were young and then they have carried it on in their adult lives.

PC (00:36:34):
And that is part of this whole blame the boomers for everything culture that is arisen. We had a conversation at home just the other night about this whole attitude toward people. Yeah, well, something is wrong, it must be the boomers. Boomers are really horrible people. They did all this. You know what, it is every generation does the same thing. As far as the diversity of people who were women's studies, Native American studies, that kind of studies, I will say that that came during that period. That you started looking out and saying, is history in fact only name states and of the ruling powers and war studies and peace studies and diplomacy studies, or do other [inaudible] of the population have a story in itself too. And to what degree should that be recognized. Political correctness used as... this is only my opinion, but has been used as a piece of propaganda against the left when in fact you will see the same kind of thing going on in the right. And I am not going to go any farther with that because I do not have any name states and facts that I can do that. But I think that, I do not think that all the political correctness battles have been entirely a problem of the left. And them too, I do not see them blaming the right-wing boomers because there were right wing boomers. You had the young Republicans, you had-

SM (00:38:17):
Young Americans for Freedom.

PC (00:38:19):
Exactly. You had that whole rule. But you see absolutely no criticism of those guys. You only see criticisms of the left. Why is that? Because who is doing the criticism? Well, you have got your Newt Gingrich not known as a left-wing pundit. I would tend to look carefully at whether they are saying it is the boomers or it is the left that is making all of these problems. And who's doing the criticism? Is it the left that is doing the criticism or is it the right? If it is all across the board, then you have got something to look at.

SM (00:38:57):
See, I think the critics... it has been explained to me by some of the people I have interviewed that it is really the 15 percent of the activists who were really involved in any of the movements at that time that they are really critical of. And sometimes they are not critical of the whole generation because, again, one of the things of the criticisms is that, well, only 15 percent of the boomers were really involved in any kind of an activism. We are really talking about the new left and the anti-war and all the people who are involved in all those different movements. That is what they... they try to redefine it that way. Not the whole generation of 85 percent that never involved in anything. But then I come back to them, and I ask you this, even though it may be critical of those who were activists, including the Phyllis Schlafly's of the world who was a conservative in that period, and they were Young Americans for Freedom, do not you feel that somehow in some way, all of the boomers were subconsciously affected by the times they lived in, even though they were not active in any of the movements? And as time's gone on, they are affected by it.

PC (00:40:12):
I am not quite sure that I can clearly... I am not quite sure that I understand. You are saying that all boomers, that their mindsets were affected by what was going on?

SM (00:40:25):
I am trying to say that subconsciously the 85 percent who were not involved in any kind of activism still were affected somewhat by the times they lived in.

PC (00:40:35):
Well, we are all affected by [inaudible]. I think that is fair.

SM (00:40:39):
And that is somewhat lessened when people say only 15 percent were involved.

PC (00:40:44):
Because you have even got, well Silent. David told me the figures one time for divorce during the 19 early (19)70s when divorce really got cranked up. It was the Silent who were getting divorces. I think it affects everybody all the way across the board, not just the boomers, but anybody who lives during a period of time is going to be affected by what's going on.

SM (00:41:09):
How do you feel that many boomers felt they were the most unique generation in American history because they were going to change the world like it'd never been seen before? That they were going to end racism, sexism, homophobia, war, and they were going to make a better world.

PC (00:41:26):
Well, you know what, that was part of the thing that I was telling you that used to drive me a little nuts, is that people did tend to get self-righteous. But did we believe that we were different, that we were essentially the salvation of the United States? I do not know. I think we thought that we could really make a change. And we did. When the Vietnam War was over, we really had a feeling that we had a significant role in making that happen. So that gives you a feeling of power to say, God, if I can do that I could do anything. And so you start building on that. And then you have the social programs that started up and had started. And the Peace Corps. People were actually going out and doing things and seeing some differences. And the more... excuse me, the more they built on that, the more they did feel in power. Now, what continues to flummox me is what happened to the ones that got a degree in corporate? Did they just burn out and went too far in the other direction? That is possible.

SM (00:42:47):
Let me change the tape here. Change to the other side. The next question I have is one of the two basic questions that I have been trying to get responses from all of my interviewees. And I am going to read this one because this is something our students put together when we went to Washington DC about 15 years ago, and we met with former Senator Edmond Muskie. And because he wanted to talk about 1968 because he was the vice presidential running mate with Humphrey. And this is the question. Do you feel that the boomers as a generation are still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore this nation apart in their youth? Divisions between Black and white, divisions between those who supported authority and those who criticized it, divisions between those who supported the troops and those who did not? What role has the Vietnam War played in healing the divisions or was this primarily a healing for veterans? And finally, do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the statement, "Time heals all wounds," a truth? And I think when I was trying to clarify this more, I think it's more between those who were against the war and protested against the war, who were boomers, and those who were veterans because the divisions are still there.

PC (00:44:20):
Between the veterans and the [inaudible]?

SM (00:44:22):
Well, veterans still had very strong feelings toward those people, most of them, toward those people who protested the war. And I do not know... And I think most of the people that protested the war, a lot of them never had problems with the veterans, they had problems with the authorities who sent them there. But there were a few that did have problems with anybody fighting. So, your thoughts about the generation as a whole, do you think this generation has a problem with healing?

PC (00:44:55):
That is a really good question. The divisions back then between say activists and-

SM (00:45:06):
I am going to turn my tape right now. Make sure... okay, go right ahead.

PC (00:45:20):
I think that as far as healing goes... see, this is very hard for me to speak for anybody other than myself. Although I was an anti-war protestor, again, as you said, it was not against the guys that went, although sometimes it was based on the person and how he presented himself. Because a lot of those guys did not want to go. They were not there because they wanted to be there, they were there because they were drafted. I do not have a problem with the guys who fought in Vietnam. I had a problem with self-righteousness on either side. Either the activists, again, that same old thing that I keep coming back to, or the soldiers who basically were ready to say, oh, well, we were just doing our duty and you are a bunch of pansies cause would not do it. But as far as now, it is to me personally, it is a dead issue. I do not feel that division happening now in myself. I am trying to think of the other boomers that I know, and I cannot think of people that carry it on. And I know... Some of my friends are people who fought in the war, fought in Vietnam, and they're not carrying it. Some of them actually even became anti-war activists later on for different wars. I guess my final answer would be, no, I am not feeling that that division is any really significant one unless you had a personal confrontation with somebody who was really aggressively from the other point of view. And then you might have it against that person. But I really do not see that as being an issue now. I might be blind, but I have not seen it.

SM (00:47:27):
I know when Senator Muskie was... we waited for him to respond and he did not. Then he finally said, "We have not healed since the Civil War.:" And then he went on to talk about, he had just seen the Ken Burns series because he had been in the hospital and he said, 400,000 men had lost their lives. We almost lost a whole generation. Particularly in the south. The number of men, it is unbelievable. It is amazing that they could even have families because so many had died from the south. But that is what he was responding to. And because he knows that anybody who knows what happens in Gettysburg, when the north and south came together, that the healing really was not there. And so many people did go to their graves, was still the bitterness of that period.

PC (00:48:16):
Well, the south is still fighting the war. We have all met people from the south or been in situations where they make it clear that they're still fighting that war.

SM (00:48:30):
I think I was originally getting... because I had been at the wall many times, this is like an anti-war protestor taking their family to the wall for the first time and having their little son or daughter look up to their father and say, "Dad, what did you do in the war?" I think that was kind of where this all came from I think in terms of the healing. The generation gap of something was very obvious between the World War II generation and the boomers. Of course, the Silent was that small group in between. But did you have an issue with generation gap between your parents and you?

PC (00:49:06):
There were things we did not agree on. My father was an interesting character because he was not a GI, he was before GI's. He was what was called the Lost. And although it turned out that he was a conservative, we just basically did not talk politics, which is really interesting. I had not even realized it until we were... David and I were talking about it recently. We did not do it. Basically, the rule in the house was, if you have got something to say and you can back it up with facts, then I will respect your opinion but if you are just mouthing out [inaudible], I will not.

SM (00:49:50):
That is very good.

PC (00:49:50):
And that is the way we ran it. We did not have political arguments for their sake, but it was, what do you believe here? Because I was a Goldwater girl when I was in high school, before I could vote. Talk about ultraconservative. I worked at the Goldwater headquarters. I read, None Dare Call It Treason, I knew the whole John Birch line. And went to a fraternity party one night, and we were talking about Vietnam and our involvement in Vietnam. And I was saying, "Well, no, we have to do it because of the domino theory, blah, blah, blah." And some of the guys who were against the war started asking me questions. And I went home that night and I could not sleep. I kept thinking, something is not working here, let us go back to first causes. Why are we fighting a war? What is the worst thing that could happen if we left Vietnam? By the end of that night, I said, I cannot be a Goldwater girl anymore. I cannot basically support the war anymore because, again, it was this life-changing thing. To go back to first causes, first question, what is behind this? What would happen if? And once you started doing that, wherever it goes, that is where you end up. And I ended up radical left, and I basically have not been out of that camp since. But I also do not align with any parties. I have even voted for Republicans when I thought they were honest human beings who were trying their best to do what they could.

SM (00:51:41):
I think Hillary Clinton was a Goldwater girl too at the very beginning.

PC (00:51:47):
Is that right? I did not know that.

SM (00:51:47):
Yes. She was a Goldwater girl. There is a whole story in her biography by... I forget her name... God, one of the first ones when Bill Clinton became president. And she said she had a great teacher because she was a Goldwater girl, and the other person was a LBG person so they were forced to take the other person's point of view in a class assignment. She ended up doing a debate in support of Johnson and the person who liked Johnson had to support Goldwater. And that was a great way of teaching. And that is when she started making her change toward being to the left as opposed to being to the right.

PC (00:52:28):
When you start questioning, I do not care whether you are on the left and you start questioning and you slide to the right or the other way around, if you can have a good reason for what you're doing, then it is legitimate, then there is no fight.

SM (00:52:44):
Well, I think that her name was [inaudible]. I think it is a great little book she wrote on Hillary Clinton when she was the first lady. In your eyes, what were the watershed moments? When did the (19)60s begin in your eyes and when did it end?

PC (00:53:01):
Clearly, when Kennedy was shot, I think that was such a devastating situation for me and probably for everybody. That I knew suddenly, oh God, everything you believed in could be wiped out in an instance. And I was not a Kennedy fan, particularly, remember those were my Goldwater era days. But to have the president shot, that this could... I am sorry, it still makes me cry. That this could happen in your country was horrible. And so that is when that part of it started. When he got shot, it was total devastation of everything you believed in. And then the other half of it, the cultural revolution started when the Beatles arrived. My mother said that that was when I was ruined, when the Beatles came to the United States. She said, "You were ruined then, you were ruined." Everything fell apart. And so, I think that is clearly when they started. When they ended was when everybody seemed to get so self-absorbed, say the mid-(19)70s ish. It is like all of a sudden everybody was doing all these... and that is part of the victimization groups and all that stuff. Everybody was so involved in themselves, how they were [inaudible] better for themselves. But I feel that the idealism that marked our generation really started to get wiped out.

SM (00:54:51):
I know this is another question that some people did not want to answer, because they said, that is ridiculous to ask it because we're dealing with 74 to 78 million. But I said, if I had a room full of 500 people from all over the country, from all ethnic groups, from male, female, gay, lesbian, you name it, and I were to ask them, what do you feel was the most important event that affected your life, one specific happening, what would that be?

PC (00:55:22):
As a personal event?

SM (00:55:26):
Yeah, as an event that happened in your life when you were a boomer? And I was referring mainly to probably up to the age of 40 or whatever, what would it be?

PC (00:55:39):
That is a hard one if you are going to include the personal stuff. As far as national stuff-

SM (00:55:45):
National, international, is there any one specific happening that shaped you more than any other?

PC (00:55:53):
The Kennedy assassination on a political level. On a personal level, it had to do with a relationship with a guy. And that is all I really want to say.

SM (00:56:10):
And again, this is very difficult because we are talking about a lot of people. Do you think boomers have been good parents and good grandparents? I cannot believe we're saying that because a lot of boomers do not like to admit they are getting old. But boomers do not complain either, because I think they look like they are going to live longer.

PC (00:56:34):
What, because they do not complain about getting old?

SM (00:56:38):
I do not see a whole lot... they are just getting 62 now so I just do not see it-

PC (00:56:43):
I will tell you something about the boomers, the boomers have said tradition... all across the board, the boomers have said to themselves, okay, this is what happens at this age level, this is what I do not like, so what do I do to fix this? Therefore, you get things like... it's true, they did not invent it, but they certainly popularized it. Then you got birth control. As we were coming into a childbearing years, what is the thing that has to be fixed about getting pregnant when you do not want to? Well, give us something that will make it so we do not have babies. Then as older guys... and I am sorry because you are a boomer too, but as boomers started aging and getting that problem, what happens, Viagra.

SM (00:57:29):
Is not that amazing?

PC (00:57:31):
Whatever problems we have got or whatever problems hit the... when the boomers hit an age that has a problem, they fix it. And I think that is another good thing I like because they are not willing to say, okay, I am going to be 65 and I am going to be in a rocking chair. I do not know anybody my age who is sitting around in a rocking chair. I do not know anybody that age. What they have got now, if they're sitting in a rocking chair it is because they broke their knees skiing.

SM (00:58:01):
Well, they cannot walk. And of course, a lot of them retire because they want to go on do something else.

PC (00:58:08):
Exactly, nobody has... I started in the banking field when I was 20 and I am 70 and I am ready to retire and I am still in the banking field. There are some people that do that, but I think it is a much, much smaller percentage than our parents' generation. And it goes back to that thing that you were talking about, about reinventing ourselves.

SM (00:58:30):
But can you share... some people have told me their story, the exact moment that you heard that John Kennedy was shot and killed? Do you remember where you were? Tell me where you were and how you first heard about it?

PC (00:58:47):
I was in high school. Let us see, that was (19)63, and I graduated already, so it was my senior year. We were having career day. The Friday afternoon?

SM (00:59:02):
Yeah.

PC (00:59:03):
We were having career day at my high school, and it was between sessions. I was in the hallway and I heard a voice on the... sorry... a voice on the loudspeaker. And I thought to myself, God, that sounds like a black edged voice. You know black [inaudible]. It sounds like a black edged voice. And I got to the room, the next room where I was supposed to be, and somebody said, "The president has been shot." And after a little while, they said the president was dead and that we were all going to be released. And so my high school was on the other side of town from where I lived so we had to take a bus and it was tears all the way. People in the street were crying, the bus were crying, everybody was crying. And all we could do is sit there in front of the TV and cry all weekend.

SM (01:00:16):
That is what most people were doing. I was a sophomore. And the thing is, everybody was crying. And then we went home and then we saw the whole weekend. Oswald killed on Sunday on live TV, and then the funeral on Monday. And I remember not even sleeping, I stayed up because they were covering it nonstop on black and white TV. I cannot even think in terms of, was I thinking anything deeper than the loss of a president, what this all meant. I have been reading lately about other people that could have... they thought it might have been a conspiracy. Oh, there was so many things happening and of course-

PC (01:00:58):
Oh, I thought it was right after it. When I was on the bus... I knew it happened in Dallas, but I kept saying that those damn southerners, those damn southerners to kill our president, they're not part of the country.

SM (01:01:15):
Have you been to Dallas?

PC (01:01:17):
Never.

SM (01:01:19):
I would like to go once, but they say it is exactly the way it was. They made sure that they changed nothing.

PC (01:01:27):
Oh, right there?

SM (01:01:27):
Right there at the book depository and the road and everything is just the way it was then. Hopefully one day I will go there. One of the other issues is the issue of trust. It does not seem like the boomers... well, I did not finish the question. In terms of have they been good parents or grandparents in terms of... and by that, this is based on the experiences of people that you know, that they really shared the experiences of what it was like when they were young and the times they went through? Because today's young people do not seem to know a whole lot of history. That is partially because of the schooling system, but what are the parents doing in terms of educating their kids? And today, 85 percent of the college students are now sons and daughters of generation X'ers and they're not the daughters of boomers. But still 15 percent are Boomer children. And they're the ones that had children later. And I often wonder, what have they done to raise kids to be sensitive to the issues that they're facing in the world today? Just your thoughts on-

PC (01:02:39):
I wish I could tell you. I never had any kids myself. That was a conscious choice because I knew I would be a crappy parent. And that is why I was thrilled about birth control because I did not have to make that decision. But boomer parents always seemed fine to me, but I was not even thinking about it because that was not... they were friends of mine and they got very involved in their kids' lives but as far as what they were telling them about how they grew up, I suspect that they did it a little bit too much. Because I was somewhere recently, at a movie recently, and this dad was telling his kids, "Oh yeah, I went to Woodstock and I was part of Woodstock and blah, blah, blah." And I could see the kid's eyes glaze over as, oh God, not another boomer thing. And I suspect that that probably is not that uncommon. But as far as actually knowing how other boomers raised their kids specifically, I really do not feel qualified to answer.

SM (01:03:48):
At the university I worked at, before I left back in the mid (19)90s, we had a program where we brought boomers together with Generation X students.

PC (01:03:57):
Oh, that must have been interesting.

SM (01:03:58):
And we had two of them. We brought a TV personality in, and there was friction.

PC (01:04:02):
Was there really?

SM (01:04:02):
Yeah, there was friction. The faculty members that were on stage were boomers. And of course, they were very frustrated with today's college generation X'ers because first off, they were not activist enough and they did not work hard enough and all the other things. But the results of these sessions, two sessions were very obvious that the generation X'ers really did not care very much about boomers. And I do not think they do today either. And I think they would like them to get lost, basically. Because I do not find millennials, today's college students that way because I think they are fairly close to their parents. And I think they are close in many ways to boomers, but not generation X'ers. And I have even had issues with them personally. They had two responses to the boomers. And that is, "I am sick of hearing about how great it was when you were young. And all the nostalgia, I do not give a damn, I do not care. I am sick of hearing about it. And that is all you live on is the way it was. And I want to live now and I do not want to live back then." And the second group would say, well, "Geez, I wish I lived then because I wish we had the causes that you had." And there was nothing in between.

PC (01:05:23):
Nothing in between?

SM (01:05:24):
Nothing in between. It is either I dislike you or I wish I was there when you were there.

PC (01:05:30):
Remember when we were growing up and the GI', were all talking about the war and what it was like in the war and how you should be grateful to them because they fought the war and the war was everything. You got to the point, I do not know about you, I got to the point where enough. So, you fought the war and thank you very much, but it's over now so you can go do whatever it is that you are doing. I felt about the GI's, the way you're saying the Generation X feels about the boomers. And I do think boomers tend to overdo it sometimes. Come on guys. There were bad things about us too. We were not the salvation of the world. We did make some mistakes. But I think that is just generation to generation. I have been reading women's history in terms of how the suffragettes... I teach courses in film. That is another one of those things that I do. And one course that I was teaching was the jazz age, jazz age film. And suffragettes felt about flappers the way the women's liberation people of the 1970s feel about young women, particularly young women, Gen X. It was like, oh, look, we were fighting and dying for the right... this is the suffragettes. Fighting and dying and starving ourselves and doing all these things so that you can have the right to vote. And now it is 1920 and you have got the right to vote and a lot of you are not even bothering. And what the flappers were saying to them was, thanks a lot, we will use it if we need it, thanks very much, but that is all we owe you. And you will find a lot of the gen X'ers and I am not sure about millennials, who will say the same thing. Yeah, you worked really hard to get us these rights, but you have done it, so let it go. It is just the way of the world, I think.

SM (01:07:39):
Well, good point. Very good point. Because the Generation X'ers, they are the ones that were born between (19)65 and (19)80.

PC (01:07:52):
I was not sure what their date was.

SM (01:07:53):
(19)65 to (19)80 and then (19)81 begins the millennials, which really have a lot in common with the boomer generation. Not as well-educated though I- Not as well-educated though, I think. One of the issues too is the issue of trust. Do you feel that the Boomers having a problem as a generation with lack of trust? I mention this because I consider personally that not trusting your government is healthy because it shows descent and freedom of speech, and political science professors will actually teach that in the classroom, that it is healthy. But the Boomers even go way too far. They did not trust anybody when they were young in position of responsibility, whether it be university president or the President of the United States or governor, senator, religious leader, or a leader in a corporation. They did not trust any leaders, and that is because they felt they were lied to so many ways and you could not trust them. So, do you think they have passed this on to their kids and we are just not a trusting...

PC (01:08:59):
I think we should [inaudible]. I think what you say is true. I think Boomers did have a huge, huge trust situation. But I think that really that is a result of having grown up in a situation where it... Like in the 1950s and all leaders were exemplary, all leaders of business were exemplary. You just assumed that these guys were made of good stuff, that they rose to the top of the ranks because they were worthy of it. Then all of a sudden, so that is where you grow up. You start out with being a very trusting person. Oh, if you are an authority, I cannot speak for [inaudible], because I was not a [inaudible] person, but those people in position of authority are trustworthy, honorable people. Then when you get to the time of your life when you are starting to question anyway, big time, whammo, all these cracks appear and so you're not only going through the standard adolescent questioning, but you also have much heightened expectation, much more heightened expectation than you would, excuse me. I just ran up and down the stairs.

SM (01:10:27):
Oh, how did you do that?

PC (01:10:30):
Oh, I have got a cell, or not a cell phone. I have got a...

SM (01:10:32):
Oh, okay.

PC (01:10:33):
...mobile phone.

SM (01:10:34):
Okay.

PC (01:10:35):
But basically, so you have got people who are brought up to really believe in the system, to really believe in the people who run the system, and then it is hard to take small cracks. But by the time Kennedy is killed, you are starting to see some huge fissures there, and then how are you ever going to trust after that? If you grew up in a fairly cynical background and cracks appear, then you say, "Well, that is life." But when you grow up in this sanctified atmosphere, the 1950s and the cracks appear, you cannot handle it. That is my theory.

SM (01:11:15):
Yeah. I go back to the 1950s again. I want your thoughts on the beat generation, which was that part of that silent generation that wrote those books, whether Ginsburg, Kerouac, and looked at the beats, how influential were the beats on the Boomers when they were young, and then this one as well. This was the first TV generation, and they saw the news on TV, sitcoms in black and white in the (19)50s. How important was TV in shaping the lives of Boomers, particularly when they were in elementary school? Because yeah, they might not have been able to think politically yet, but they saw shows like Howdy Doody, Hopalong Cassidy, TV westerns in which the Native American was always the bad guy, and the variety shows, the game shows, life coverage of historic events. The McCarthy hearings, if you are young enough to remember them, this man shouting that everybody is a communist, the Mickey Mouse Club, Captain Kangaroo. The media seemed to play an important part consciously and subconsciously in shaping this generation. Just your thoughts on TV and radio and the influence it had on the Boomers.

PC (01:12:30):
Okay. I will start with your first question first. That is about the beat generation. As I mentioned, I was reading a little bit of Kerouac, but I just want to give you an anecdote from my own personal experience. I started college in 1964, and we were on the old campus then, and it had buildings spread out all over town. On my very first day of college, I went down to get something in the cafeteria and saw a small room off the side of the cafeteria, and I was looking for someplace to eat my sandwich. I walked in there and it is where the beatniks hung out. My hair stood on end. All of a sudden, it was like, "Oh my God, there are such people. These people, there's..." So, I started hanging out there, although I could not... I was still living at home and stuff, so I was considerably restrained, but I got to hang out with beatniks, listen to them talk, listen to their music, listen to their basic assumption. One guy was a guy called Lester Greenberg, and he was actually one of Arand's [inaudible] part-time. She had a lot, but I was so excited, and I have always been fascinated by the beat in general as far as how much influence they had on the Boomer generation, I would say as themselves, not a huge amount, but as far as the CARNA culture, when it started happening, people were reading beatnik literature. So I would say not a huge amount. Me personally, huge.

SM (01:14:22):
It is amazing. Ginsburg seemed to be everywhere.

PC (01:14:27):
[inaudible] was. I took a class with Ginsburg. It was a poetry class.

SM (01:14:30):
You did?

PC (01:14:31):
Yeah.

SM (01:14:32):
What was that like?

PC (01:14:35):
He was so pompous and he was so full of himself that I was really irritated with him. Basically, this was out in Tucson years later, but it was all about, "I am the great God, Allen Ginsburg, and so you are going to listen to every word I have to say, and now you are going to do a few exercises and read your pathetic little poems." So, I was not too impressed. I was impressed by the fact that I had taken a class of Ginsburg. I was not impressed by Ginsburg himself. So, I would say there was not a lot there. But that is, again, these are all just my points of view. But as far as the TV thing, I think that that was huge. I think it was huge because it gave us one identity you had in a way that they certainly do not have anymore. You had your three channels at most, and not even very much PBS then, as I recall. So, everybody saw the same programs, everybody was on the same page, and you kind of felt, if... We got one of the first TVs on our block, we were very popular people during that time. Then when as other people got their TVs, not so much. But I think it was huge, just in terms of the fact that it gave us a single point of reference. I think maybe, and I had not thought about this before until you just asked it now, I think basically that is what coalesced the Boomers, because you all did come from the same spot. With Ed Sullivan, once he brought Elvis Presley in, and then the Beatles, you started going that way culturally too. "Oh, this is what is happening. Is not this exciting?" Again, the media is saying, "This is exciting. This is what is happening."

SM (01:16:39):
Well, TV westerns dominated television in the (19)50s, and of course, cowboys and Indians and guns and shooting, and did not think anything about the links between war. You just had a good time with your Hopalong Cassidy outfit and everything.

PC (01:16:55):
Exactly.

SM (01:16:56):
But I, as a kid, but as later on, I got to think Howdy Doody, I never saw a Black face in the audience for Howdy Doody or Rudy Kazootie or any of those shows.

PC (01:17:06):
I do not think they did have any.

SM (01:17:07):
Mickey Mouse Club was all white people.

PC (01:17:11):
Remember American Bandstand? They started bringing some Blacks in.

SM (01:17:13):
Yes. Dick Clark. Yep. But I did not, and of course, Amos and Andy was a very big show in the very beginning of the (19)50s, and that was a with African Americans. But there was nothing from that show until about the (19)60s except for Nat King Cole. It was amazing. Of course, the way they portrayed African Americans the way they talked, and it was kind of negative. I think about these later on.

PC (01:17:40):
Oh, okay.

SM (01:17:42):
Okay. I got a couple of things here. What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you?

PC (01:17:46):
It means a lot to me because, for one thing, I was fascinated by Maya Lynn in her story and the fact that she was the one that designed it. A young architecture student, Asian descent. I thought that whole story was fascinating, right from the giddy-up. But I did a documentary a few years ago on the History of War Memorial.

SM (01:18:11):
Yeah, I noticed that.

PC (01:18:11):
So naturally, I was very interested in the Vietnam Memorial, and I had not been there ever until I started working on that documentary. I went down there and I thought, "Well, it is a splash in the ground. It is very conceptual. It is very strong as being a concept, but I am not sure how it will play out 100 years from now when all the people are dead who were in that war or directly affected by that war." So we went there, and by the time I reached the middle, I completely collapsed in tears. There is something so powerful about that memorial, and I wish I could tell you what it was. I do not know what it is. I guess just being overwhelmed by all the names.

SM (01:18:58):
It has gotten so many responses. Most people think it is... Well, it had a lot of criticism at the beginning, as you well know, when the wall was, designs were coming in, and that was finally picked, that brought up all the divisions again in America that had been in the (19)60s, because a lot of people thought it did not do justice for one reason or the other. But that is kind of waned somewhat. But there are still some veterans that do not like it, and they do not, but most do, but...

PC (01:19:24):
Well, that is an age-old thing too. Do you want something representational or do you want something abstract. They have their Korean memorial right across the way, which is extremely represents.

SM (01:19:38):
Of course, the new World War II Museum, which took too long to build. [inaudible] wrote a book called To Heal a Nation. He felt that this wall was supposed to be non-political, and basically heal the veterans and the families and those who served. It may have done a halfway decent job with that group, but he also thought it was going to heal the nation and play an important role. Do you think that walls played an important role in healing the nation from this war?

PC (01:20:07):
No, I do not think so. I wish I could be more specific. Basically, the wars, one of the things I learned in studying war memorials and how and why they are built and why they look the way they do, is that war memorials are built for the people or for the generation who suffered from the war. They speak to that generation. You in 200 years from now, it is going to be an interesting piece of artwork. That is, it. As far as healing the nation, a wall cannot heal a nation, even a statue cannot heal a nation. I do not think that any piece of material, anything could heal a nation. Possibly a film could, although I cannot think of a good enough film that would have done that.

SM (01:21:01):
So, what is interesting about the World War II Memorial is World War II vets who fought in Europe are upset with it because it reminds them of Hitler. Hitler had these columns and things like this memorial, and he felt some of them were pretty upset with it. So, it is interesting.

PC (01:21:18):
So, all triumphant, again, you are talking to somebody who's like, this is the bee in my bonnet. Basically, all triumphant civilizations go back to a classical style. That classical style in this case is the Roman. This is a very Roman kind of memorial. Hitler did it because of the glorification of the Third Reich. But also, if you go back to any... World War II was a triumphant war. I mean, we clearly won, there were clear objectives that were clearly obtained. So, they are going to celebrate that with a triumphant style. We do World War I, that is not at all what those four memorials look like, because it was a very disillusioning war. So, I think for them to say, it is like Hitler. Well, Hitler was like the Romans, and that same sense of Roman triumph is behind this particular memorial.

SM (01:22:27):
What do you think of Kent State and Jackson State?

PC (01:22:32):
Kent State was devastating. I remember coming home, I do not remember where I was at the time, but I came home and I was looking at the news on the TV not paying any attention. I see these guys shooting these students, and for some reason it did not register. I said, "What are they playing that old Nazi war footage from?" Suddenly, I realized, this is today. These kids are being shot by American soldiers or by National Guard, and this is happening in our streets. How can this happen? I was shocked, afraid, devastated in talking about losing any shred of trust you might have in the government. That was the final nail in the coffin.

SM (01:23:20):
What does Watergate mean to you?

PC (01:23:24):
Watergate Gate was just, I just saw it as same old, same old in terms of, yes, these people are corrupt. Yes, these terrible things did happen. But yeah, it has been going on for years and it is going to go on for years more.

SM (01:23:39):
What did Woodstock in the summer of love mean to you?

PC (01:23:46):
Woodstock I thought was exciting. As a matter of fact, I had tickets to go and then changed my mind because of the weather. But I liked that whole thing. It was all a big experiment. It was all something. It was all about music and just relaxing and enjoying yourself. So that is what that meant to me. You said Jackson State? You mean Ole Miss and...

SM (01:24:12):
Yeah. Jackson State also. Two students were killed three weeks later at Jackson State right after Kent State. So, it was...

PC (01:24:19):
Oh, I did not, you know what? I tell you the honest truth, I guess I did not pay any attention to that.

SM (01:24:24):
They try to make sure Ken State that they include both at the remembrance ceremony. So yeah, Woodstock. Yeah. Do you still have your tickets for Woodstock?

PC (01:24:35):
No. I bet they would be worth a fortune now.

SM (01:24:38):
They would be worth a lot. Of course, the next one here is, what does 1968 mean to you? I think we have gone over...

PC (01:24:44):
Yeah, I think we did go over...

SM (01:24:46):
What does the counterculture mean to you?

PC (01:24:48):
The counterculture now or then?

SM (01:24:50):
Then. Because Theodore Rozak wrote that great book, the Making of a Counterculture. It was a big popular book.

PC (01:24:58):
Theodore Roosevelt?

SM (01:24:59):
Rozak, Theodore Rozak.

PC (01:25:01):
Oh, okay. I was going, "I do not know about a counterculture in 1900." Well, the counterculture was the whole network. Everything from SDS to hippies and hate Ashbury. That is what it means to me. Basically, anybody who was questioning and living a different... Questioning the way things were and living a different way than they were taught was the norm when we were growing up in the (19)50s. So that sort of was...

SM (01:25:33):
Yeah. My next one was just the hippies and the yippies.

PC (01:25:38):
Yeah, they were fun. They were just absurd. I mean, the hippies were honestly just trying to be left alone and express themselves in whatever way they chose to express themselves. The yippies were just absurd. They were [inaudible] all over again. I remember I went to a talk with Abby Hoffman before he went underground just talking about the yippies. It was all about fun. It was all about the absurd way of driving your point home. It was just another way to do get to do the work.

SM (01:26:16):
So you saw Abby. I saw Jerry at Ohio State and...

PC (01:26:19):
Okay, I saw him too later on.

SM (01:26:21):
Yeah, he had the bandana and the thing on his face there, the lines. But they were two unique and different people in the end.

PC (01:26:32):
Oh, extremely.

SM (01:26:33):
Abby was the real deal. I think Jerry was just an imposter in many respects. Even Abby says this later on, even though they were friends to the end. But can you talk about that experience to seeing Abby Hoffman? Because I have not talked to too many that saw him. I never saw him. What kind of, supposedly he had a charisma that was just unbelievable and he made people laugh.

PC (01:26:58):
He did.

SM (01:26:59):
But he was also very serious.

PC (01:27:01):
Well, but see, that was when I was just telling you that I saw Abby Hoffman. It was all about fun. That is where that came from. He was just so, at the time that I saw him, he was actually talking at [inaudible] at the State University of New York at Albany later. But it was before he went underground. He was just talking about, I cannot remember a single word that he said, except that you just had this feeling of joyous, absurd. Let us just have a good time with this. Do not take anything too seriously. Just do this for the hell of it, kind of. That was the impression that I got from him. Just as you said, he was funny. It was laughing. It may have been serious, but you were laughing and taking it all in that.

SM (01:27:59):
I heard stories from other people that said he made, even the policeman who arrested him, laugh. When he was in jail, he made them laugh. He was just a, well, he was different.

PC (01:28:13):
Well, he knew that basically life is a joke. I mean, nothing is going to last forever.

SM (01:28:20):
Your thoughts on Students for Democratic Society and the Weatherman?

PC (01:28:25):
I thought they were very romantic figures. Now, I think they are appalling. But at that time, even though I did not want to be them, because I could not quite go that extra sort of violent mile, I still thought they were very romantic figures fighting against the establishment and actually using the weapons of the established. Then I just thought, "Great, these guys are romance."

SM (01:28:57):
Well, but in the Port Huron statement, no one knew that they would end up becoming the Weatherman. So that is what really split SDS is when they became the Weatherman and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Your thoughts on them?

PC (01:29:15):
I was thrilled to see that they were speaking out for something that they thought was wrong, and they just did not say, "Okay, so we fought. So, everybody has got a fight." That they said, "There is something essentially wrong here, and we are going to speak out whether we were part of the war or not, right is right," and so I have huge admiration for them for that.

SM (01:29:42):
They kind of took over the anti-war movement when SDS died right to the very end. The other one is the Young Americas for Freedom, which is a conservative group, but they were also against the war, and they are still very popular. Just came back from a conference down in Washington. The new students are still there. You do not see them a lot on college campuses. Did you ever see them at all, or?

PC (01:30:04):
No, I never did.

SM (01:30:05):
That was Bill Buckley's group. Then of course, the Enemies List. We all know about the Nixon's enemies list.

PC (01:30:12):
Yeah, I think we are all convinced we were on Nixon's enemies list.

SM (01:30:17):
What are your thoughts also on the Black Panther? [inaudible]. But this is great. A couple things, the Black Panthers, of course, had so many unique personalities from Bobby Seale to Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, H Rat Brown, Dave Hilliard, Elaine Brown, Stokely Carmichael. The list goes on and on here. They, of course, were the symbol of Black Power. They challenged Dr. King and the other civil rights leaders. Then of course, you had Malcolm X, who died in 1965. But even he challenged the civil rights leaders like Byard Rustin. There is two historic scenes that I know your husband was well aware of when I talked to him. Anybody who knows the (19)60s remembers when Stokely Carmichael was next to Martin Luther King in that historic picture. He was telling King, "Your time has passed." Then the other one is the debate that Malcolm X had Byard Rustin, where he told Byard, "You, like Dr. King, your time has passed on. Nonviolence is not the way anymore. It is by any means necessary." Those kinds of things. Your thoughts on Black Power and the Black Panther Party. It has challenged to the established civil rights group, which really challenged America in the (19)50s and early (19)60s.

PC (01:31:52):
As far as my personal experience with the Black Power guys, I was always a little scared of them because I grew up in a white suburb, and we did not know any Black people. Even my high school did not have any Black students or anything. So then I went to college and there were a lot of Black kids, mostly from New York City. I got to know a few of them, but in general, I was scared of them, just not the [inaudible] point on it. So as far as Black Power, when I thought, "Yeah, I understand why they are doing that, but I am still frightened of them." Interesting because I was not frightened of the SDS. As far as time has gone on, I think the great tragedy of the Civil Rights movement is when they moved from [inaudible] and the demonstrations of the (19)50s and (19)60s to the [inaudible], the violence of the Black Panthers and stuff. That was too bad because the original guys who were working non-violently to get where they were going, had the ideals had, it was not slogans to them. They were literally willing to put their lives on the line. I never got that feeling from the Black Power guys. They were willing to put my life on the line.

SM (01:33:29):
I know that David Horowitz, who used to be the editor of Ramparts, you know David? He went from being extreme left to being a conservative speaker, and he attacks the new left, the old left, the Black Panthers in particular, because someone he worked closely with was killed. He blamed one of the Black Panthers of doing it. He changed immediately and he attacks them constantly. But there were a lot of good things that the Black Panther Party did, the food programs. So there was a lot of really good things. So we tend to concentrate more on the radical aspects than some of the good things they did. But there is truth to it. One of the historic points is at Kent State University, you will not see an African American student at that protest. They were instructed by their...

PC (01:34:18):
Kent State?

SM (01:34:19):
Yeah, at Kent State, back in 1970, when the killings took place, there were no Black students, because Black students were not supposed to be at anti-war protests around 1970. They were together. In the late (19)60s, white and Black students were working together against the war. But then there was a split and Black students concentrated on what was going on in America. White students continued to fight for what was going on in Vietnam. So there was a big split there. You saw that even in the early (19)70s at Ohio State with the Afros and kind of more of a separation kind of aspect. So, everybody has different feelings about that period.

PC (01:35:01):
Yeah.

SM (01:35:02):
How important were the college students in ending the Vietnam War? We're talking about, and why did the Vietnam War end in your opinion?

PC (01:35:11):
I think college students were very important in bringing the whole issue to the forefront. They were not just going to let it sit back there and simmer. So I think that the way it was done with teachings, with closing down the schools, with the demonstrations, constant demonstrations and constant organizations, I think they were very, very important. Why did Vietnam stop? I think that there was a lot of truth to the fact that it stopped because there was not popular support at home. I think that the government, the people who were serving in government saw that this was not going to get them reelected. I was in a demonstration in DC I think it might have been the last one, and we were marching toward the White House, like a zillion people were marching toward the White House, and suddenly from the opposite direction came all these kind of thoroughly steamfitter, pipe fitter Union 109 kind of guys. I thought, "Oh, this is it. This is where we get our heads bashed." In fact, they carried these signs saying, "[inaudible] 109 Against the War in Vietnam." I went, "That is the end, guys." When those guys are joining forces with the students, there is no way they can keep this war going that much longer. So, I think that the reason it stopped is because finally enough people said, "There is no point here."

SM (01:36:51):
I know there was that historic scene in New York City where the hard hats wanted to beat the crap out of the anti-war people. Remember that? That was in the late...

PC (01:36:59):
[inaudible] I thought were-were...

SM (01:37:00):
Yeah.

PC (01:37:01):
That is when I saw those guys. So by that time, they had all come around like, "Why is my kid dying in Vietnam? What's the point here?"

SM (01:37:10):
You were in college from (19)64 to (19)68?

PC (01:37:13):
Yeah. Then I sort of dropped out ish, sort of, the end of (19)67, I dropped out.

SM (01:37:23):
Where did you get your degree?
PC (01:37:24):
I got my degree at... Well, I went to the University of Arizona when I moved there and took some credits there, plus combined them with the credits from the State University of New York and then a community college. I had picked up a few credits there that were applicable. By that time, the State University of New York had a program called the Regents College in which allowed you to take all your credits, acceptable credits from whatever colleges or universities you have gone to. Because of the way, I guess because of the mobility of so many people, you could get your degree finally from there. So that is what I did. My degree is from the Regent College from the university. I think it's called the University of New York State College.

SM (01:38:11):
Yeah. I went to SUNY Binghamton. You probably know that.

PC (01:38:13):
You did?

SM (01:38:14):
Yeah. So that is my school, undergrad that is. I went to Ohio State to grad school. The question I want to ask you, and this is very important to me. I am one of those guys that never missed a lecture, debate, forum, or whatever. I went to everything at SUNY Binghamton in Ohio State, everything. But do you remember, you already talked about that you saw Abby Hoffman, that Allen Ginsburg was one of your teachers. Was there a professor in any of your classes that truly inspired you and why? Secondly, who were some of the other speakers or programs that you went to when you were in college that really had an impact on you or that you remember?

PC (01:38:57):
Oh God. Well, as far as speakers, there was, remember I was always an artsy fartsy kind of a gal. But they had a week with three, it is funny, they had a week with John Cage, Merc Cunningham, and Robert Creeley, the three heavy hitters of basically, they were all beatniks too of the art scene in New York. I spent the whole week going to workshops and discussions with them. So that was huge.

SM (01:39:31):
Wow.

PC (01:39:34):
I am sorry, what was the first part of the question?

SM (01:39:37):
It was about the people that if, was there a professor that really inspired you in your undergraduate years? Just the way you taught the messages that were delivered that inspired your sense of learning?

PC (01:39:51):
That really, really inspired me. There was a history teacher whose name I do not remember, but you can see I [inaudible] they inspired me. But he did ask the question. I mean, he did open my brain to ask questions I had not thought of before. But my Shakespeare teacher was the one that opened my head to Shakespeare, and suddenly I realized he was not so boring anymore. Aside... Oh, I had a teacher, he was a speech, what was it? Speech interpretation, kind of performance art kind of guy. His name was Kevin Quinn. He was a friend of Andy Warhol's, and I do not know how he ended up in Sunny, but we all hung out together. As a matter of fact, Warhol or whoever, you know how Warhol always had look-alikes impersonate him?

SM (01:40:48):
Yes.

PC (01:40:48):
So either Warhol or one of his crew was at one party, but they used to hang out together. The reason this guy really influenced me was because he would crack your brain open in terms of the people, the writers. He would open you up to the questions he would ask, the basically cultural and art stuff that you would just see and understand and less of that. His apartment was always open to everybody. So he was very influential in saying, "How does the world work? What is art all about?" That sort of thing. The fact that he hung out with that whole factory crowd.

SM (01:41:38):
Yeah, yeah. Of course we all know about Edi. I read the book on Edi, which was...

PC (01:41:44):
What a tragic figure.

SM (01:41:45):
Yeah, what a tragic figure. She is beautiful too. She did not live very long. But the question, you are the first person I really talked to outside of David Lance Goins out of Berkeley, who is an artist from the Free Speech Movement. What was it about the arts from the (19)60s that were different than anything else? What was it about... From the (19)60s that were different than anything else. What was it about the art that was comparable to what was really happening? We all know about Andy Warhol, and we all know about Peter Max because Peter Max had all those posters on college campuses. I do not know if many people think of anybody beyond Warhol and Max.

PC (01:42:19):
The poet... I mean, there was a whole lot of poetry stuff going on and then there were of course happenings and all kinds of performance, but film started opening up. And that is one of the things also that completely changed my life. In the 1960s, they started things called film studies. This is when they started to actually study film on campus as a legitimate form, just like literature or art or sculpture, architecture, whatever. Film was another thing that you could study. And right from the very first classes, I went and said, "What is all this about?" You get to see movies. Well, that is nice, but you found out how to look at movies. How do movies influence you? Why do you feel the way you do when this happens? What about this camera angle? And it was completely, to me, that is when they legitimized film. Film was a legitimate medium before that. But when they started taking it seriously so that you could actually say, "Here is a whole new medium for us to work in." And I think film is the medium of the Boomer generation. It is more, music is now, film has become... Video and film has become very basic for the generation. But at that time, it was almost the same kind of explosion that happened in Russia when the beginning of film happened. When they started taking their cameras around, when Vertov took... Man with a camera, the saying, going on... All that excitement that happened in France when film was starting. And then of course, in the (19)60s, you had the New Wave in France, "And here is something else you can do with film and here and here and here." So, I think as far as the arts go, in the (19)60s and (19)70s, it was all about film. To me. I mean, there was a lot going on in poetry. There were a lot of experiments like Pynchon's the Crying of Lot 49, and some seminal books like that. But it was all about film.

SM (01:44:31):
Of course, when you think of the (19)60s, we have got to also think about what is going on around the world. Because we all know what was going on in France and Paris, and exactly what was going on in Hungary or what was going on in Poland and when Dubcek was overthrown in 1968 too. And of course, what was going on in Spain and England and all over the... Italy. I mean, there were protests, even in Japan. There were protests and a lot of them were against the war. But when you look at the film... Because I am only... Not too many people talked about the film. What were the films that really defined the Boomer Generation that you feel... It does not always have to be the (19)60s and (19)70s, but what are the films that you feel truly defined the generation?

PC (01:45:15):
Well, Easy Rider was giant. I think that as far as... If we are starting from the (19)60s, I think Easy Rider was giant. I think that Bonnie and Clyde was giant because it changed the language of film. This is going to sound bizarre, but Rocky and Bullwinkle.

SM (01:45:42):
On TV? Oh, yeah, I remember they were on TV when we came home from school.

PC (01:45:47):
Right. And the thing about Rocky and Bullwinkle was these were adult cartoons, masked as kids cartoons. And people started watching them. But that is a different thing. That is not... We are not talking about films here. I am trying to think of some of the other huge films that would have made an impact across the board people would see... I saw stuff like It, from England, the English school, so I do not know how many people saw that. A lot of people saw the Secaucus Seven, and they were involved in that kind of thing. I am trying to... Forgive my senility. I know that after we get off the phone I will-

SM (01:46:31):
I have a lot of movies that I remember had influence on me, but-

PC (01:46:34):
Oh, can you say some because-

SM (01:46:35):
Yeah, well, The Graduate was one.

PC (01:46:37):
Oh, yeah, of course.

SM (01:46:39):
And Zabriskie Point. That was a real (19)70s kind of thing. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a real big film. I remember when that came out with Paul Newman. And some of the other ones, of course, Taxi Driver and Coming Home.

PC (01:46:59):
Okay. I never did see Coming Home.

SM (01:47:01):
Those are Vietnam films. In terms of African American films, I thought Shaft was unbelievable. And in some of those kinds of movies that were out in the early (19)70s, Black film. Let us see. Well, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces. Anything Jack Nicholson was in. Also the movie where he played the... Later on, the person who was mentally disabled.

PC (01:47:36):
Jack Nicholson played him?

SM (01:47:38):
Yeah. He was in the sanitarium.

PC (01:47:42):
Oh, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

SM (01:47:42):
Yeah. That was a major film because no one had talked about this issue ever. And it was in a film. So those kinds of films... And then when I think of the (19)60s, I think of Love Story.

PC (01:47:57):
Oh, yeah. I remember that one.

SM (01:47:59):
Goodbye Columbus. Anything Ali McGraw was in because she was miss (19)60s.

PC (01:48:09):
Then the Way We Were.

SM (01:48:11):
Yeah, The Way We Were with Barbara Streisand, because that remember... Even though that was about the 1930s, and it was in early (19)70s, it made me... Brought tears to my eyes, because I knew then that I would be doing the same thinking 30, 40 years from now about the (19)60s. So yeah, there were a lot of them.

PC (01:48:30):
That is when we really started talking to each other through film. I mean, film had always been around, there would always been film aficionados. But it was, I think in the (19)60s that it exploded. And that was partly because of the fact that film studies programs opened up, but also partly the fact that cameras started getting smaller and you started being able to take... Oh, that was another one. Do not Look Back. Bob Dylan's thing, which I thought it was never going to end.

SM (01:48:59):
There was the Beatles films too, which were very interesting.

PC (01:49:02):
Exactly.

SM (01:49:03):
And Apocalypse Now, which was a classic film.

PC (01:49:06):
And West Side Story.

SM (01:49:07):
Yeah. West Side Story. And-

PC (01:49:09):
I saw that a hundred times.

SM (01:49:10):
Sound of Music, which is... You can go on and on here some were...

PC (01:49:15):
Exactly.

SM (01:49:15):
Yeah. The Pink Panther film-

PC (01:49:17):
Was important to the Boomers. As far as Boomers in the Arts, I think that that is where their energy started going.

SM (01:49:24):
Right. And then in the course in the (19)50s, well, there were major films that I saw. A lot of the westerns. So anyways. A couple other questions here, and then I will end up with some questions on individual people. I got so many questions to ask you here. I have different questions for you, and I had them for David. What were, again, I just wondered, what were the books that you were reading when you were in high school and college, and what were your friends reading? Does not necessarily have to be the beatnik books.

PC (01:50:00):
Yikes. Well, of course there was... Why did my brain just go blank, please? I read a lot of Herman Hesse, I am trying to think how far back that was. I think that was later. I read Catcher in the Rye. Well, I do not know why my brain-

SM (01:50:20):
He just died. Salinger.

PC (01:50:22):
I know.

SM (01:50:23):
That is the only book he ever wrote.

PC (01:50:25):
Well, no, I read everything he wrote. He wrote Franny and Zoe.

SM (01:50:29):
He did not write very many novels though, I do not think.

PC (01:50:32):
Well, Franny and Zoe was sort of... It was a little episodic, but so, definitely everything he wrote, which was not that much. What did I write? You mean of that time?

SM (01:50:48):
Yeah. Books that may have been... That people were reading.

PC (01:50:52):
I am trying to think. Pynchon, as I mentioned. And what was the one about the guy? Oh damn. Well, Leonard Cohen wrote a lot of poetry. That, and of course there were a lot... Again, there was a lot of poetry that I was reading. People like Bob Kaufman, Carolyn Getty. Again, these are sort of going back to the beats, but that is what I was reading in early college, late high school. I am trying to think what else because I read constantly.

SM (01:51:39):
I am from a little later, and I know Greening of America was a big book by Charles Reich.

PC (01:51:45):
Right. I remember that coming out.

SM (01:51:48):
And Making of a Counterculture. They came out the same time.

PC (01:51:50):
And None There Call it Treason. As I mentioned, being a good Goldwater girl.

SM (01:51:57):
Now, the musicians, I love it. In Charles's book where he does in the introduction about all those musicians. He has got a whole page of them. I do not know if you-

PC (01:52:07):
Musicians?

SM (01:52:08):
The musicians of the era that had the greatest influence on Boomers. And then he, you turn the page and there is about 150 of them. But I mean-

PC (01:52:16):
Yeah, that is because we had the radios.

SM (01:52:18):
He forgot an important person. He did not put Phil Oaks down, but-

PC (01:52:22):
I know, I like Phil Oaks a lot.

SM (01:52:25):
Well, I am going to bring it up on Thursday that... I was trying to think. He missed seven people and groups that I thought should have been in there. But I will mention that to him. Maybe he can add it in an updated edition.

PC (01:52:36):
There you go.

(01:52:37):
Another, I always liked the Michener books.

SM (01:52:42):
The what?

PC (01:52:42):
Michener. James Michener, like Hawaii.

SM (01:52:45):
Oh, yes. He wrote Kent State too. 1970.

PC (01:52:50):
Exactly. And To Kill A Mockingbird. Yes. I like that one. And Winnie Ille Pu. Remember that?

SM (01:53:00):
Yes.

PC (01:53:01):
Winnie the Pooh in Latin.

(01:53:04):
I liked that a lot.

SM (01:53:07):
The musicians that were your favorites. I know you can... You know after those 150.

PC (01:53:09):
The entire British Invasion. You can start with the British Invasion, but Motown also. I think it is easier to do categories than it is individual-

SM (01:53:21):
Yes.

PC (01:53:22):
But Janice Joplin certainly was my hero. Jimmy Hendrix not so much, I liked a lot of the stuff he did, but more Janice Joplin. More Big Brother and the Holding company. I like Peter Paul and Mary.

SM (01:53:42):
Yep.

PC (01:53:42):
A lot. I like The Limeliters a lot. So I mean, basically that goes across folk and... I like folk, but I did not like people like Pete Seeger, who actually the real folk-

SM (01:53:52):
Is not it amazing that in... And you can see the division right here. When the Beatles came in (19)64, I can remember (19)65, (19)66, (19)67. Then around the Invasion came in six... But you had, before that you had Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass. That was very popular. And then you had Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons and Frankie Valley, and you had those kinds of groups. Little Anthony and the Imperials, Sam Cook in the early (19)60s, and then all of a sudden it all changed.

PC (01:54:25):
Exactly.

SM (01:54:26):
And they were still very important. But you saw the change, but they were still a very important... Beach Boys were earlier, too. You saw that they were all important except in different stages of your life.

PC (01:54:37):
Exactly. Well, I was never a huge Beach Boys fan. I had friends who were. Who really liked the California kind of sound. But I was more, what I call into minor key stuff. Although I did not like jazz as much. Now I do. I like jazz a whole lot. It depended on the jazz. I love Dave Brubeck, but did not like Thelonious Monk. But in general, I would say the British Invasion, Motown were the two biggest influences. And I also liked classical music.

SM (01:55:20):
Right.

PC (01:55:21):
Too, and a little bit... And I loved the blues. Every once in a while, we would go to a blues club.

SM (01:55:27):
San Francisco, I used to live out there. They used to have great blues festivals at Golden Gate Park. I want to... Here the presidents now. These are the presidents that were part of the life of all Boomers from the time they were born from (19)46 on.

PC (01:55:43):
Okay.

SM (01:55:45):
Harry Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama. Now, Obama makes a claim that he's not a Boomer, but he really is. He was two years old in (19)62, but I guess you really cannot call him a Boomer, but he was in that era.

PC (01:56:06):
[inaudible] prejudice.

SM (01:56:07):
But of all those presidents, you have already talked a lot about Kennedy in terms of his assassination, but when you look at the influence that all these presidents may have had on the Boomers, is there some presidents that stick out more than others?

PC (01:56:22):
Oh, I wish you had just asked me who my favorite was.

SM (01:56:24):
Yeah, who is your favorite?

PC (01:56:26):
Carter.

SM (01:56:27):
Carter?

PC (01:56:28):
Yeah. I was so surprised that he actually won, because I did not think he had a chance, and I felt like here is finally an honorable man after his predecessors. And so I was thrilled to death that Carter had won. But as far as who was the most influential, well, you would have to say Reagan, whether you agreed with him or not. Certainly a huge influence on everybody's life. Johnson was a man everybody hated. But when you look back at what he actually accomplished, it was amazing. It was really good for this country. I grew up thinking Eisenhower was a president. I mean that... If the word president and Eisenhower were [inaudible] for each other. Nixon of course, again, was the ultimate bad guy to me. So, I do not know as far as who was the most influential, probably Nixon and Reagan, in terms of direct impact on people's lives.

SM (01:57:49):
I always bring Truman up and people say, "They were only 2, 3, 4 years old." But even though I was a young kid, I remember him because-

PC (01:57:58):
Do not really remember Truman.

SM (01:57:59):
The Buck stops here. And he did not like, and he did not like McCarthy. And it was well known that he did not like him.

PC (01:58:07):
MacArthur.

SM (01:58:08):
Or, yeah, no McCarthy. Well, he did not like MacArthur either, but during the McCarthy hearings-

PC (01:58:15):
Oh, I see. Okay.

SM (01:58:15):
He thought he was a nutcase. And of course, Eisenhower was always the old smiling guy. You felt good that you had a grandfather in office. Then you had a young guy coming in. Then you had Johnson, who should not have been president, but he was because of assassination. Nixon coming back from... Unbelievable how he won after losing in 1960. Then you have Ford, who many people say, was not the smartest guy in the world, but he tried to heal the country.

PC (01:58:43):
I certainly, I always gave him credit for that.

SM (01:58:46):
Then you had Reagan, and then Bush I during the Gulf War, and Clinton and Bush were the... But Clinton and Bush II were the only two Boomer presidents. Some people in my interviews have said that you can tell that Bill Clinton and George Bush, number two are Boomers. What do you think they are saying by that?

PC (01:59:04):
Because they're so... Well, certainly Bush too was a Boomer. He just happened to be from the [inaudible] point of view that I was of this sort of absolute belief that he was correct and that his way was the only way. And that he would... you know, "Screw whatever you guys think. I am doing things my way." So, I think that is true. As far as Clinton goes... I think he is Boomer-esque.

SM (01:59:37):
When you look at the eras again, when I kind of defined the Boomers into five eras, their elementary school years, their high school and college years, then their beginning of their careers and their twenties, and then... So, I break it down into the (19)40s, (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, (19)80s, and then the (19)90s and beyond. Can... In just a few words, how have the late (19)40s and the (19)50s influenced Boomers?

PC (02:00:10):
I think that the way they influenced the Boomers with the groundwork for a really stable... I mean you... For really stable life. I mean, you can count on things. You feel safe. You know your place in the world. So, the late (19)40s and the (19)50s did that. They gave you sort of the box to work in.

SM (02:00:35):
Explain the (19)60s.

PC (02:00:37):
Is there any explaining the (19)60s? The (19)60s, basically everything blew up. All of our basic assumptions blew up. All the new... From 1964 from The Beatles on... All the experiments in popular culture completely exploded. What are we going to do? All the possibilities were there. First we were shattered through Kennedy's death. And then... Oh, you know what I am leaving out is the entire civil rights movement, which was hugely important, I think.

SM (02:01:20):
Right.

PC (02:01:21):
In terms of fighting the bad guys, righting the wrongs. Doing something that would help the world, that people could individually do things that help the world. So that could go back in the (19)40s and (19)50s, I guess, but also in the (19)60s. So basically, I would say (19)60s were the time when the world blew up.

SM (02:01:43):
How about the (19)70s?

PC (02:01:44):
The (19)70s were the time when we went... I think that we went from changing the world to changing ourselves and became very inward. It kind of... And at that point started this whole self, self, self-thing.

SM (02:02:03):
You think we went from being a we to a me?

PC (02:02:07):
Yeah. I think so.

SM (02:02:09):
What did you think of disco? You cannot talk (19)70s without it.

PC (02:02:11):
You know what? I like that music. It is a terrible thing to say. I am sure I am politically incorrect, but I really like disco music, and I like the whole Saturday Night Fever kind of...

SM (02:02:22):
Yeah. I am a big Barry White fan, so... I think Barry White will go down in history is one of the greatest musicians of all time. And it is a little early to talk about it, but when you look at all the things he wrote and produced, oh my. And we only think about his records. I did not know he was producing concerts at major facilities all over the country. I did not know this.

PC (02:02:45):
No, I did not know that either.

SM (02:02:47):
No-no. He is much more than what we saw. He was a true musical writer. He was a kind of a genius. He knew how to play music, but he knew how to write it. And even a lot of the greats from the (19)60s could sing music, but they did not know how to write it, so they kind of experimented. How about the (19)80s? What did the (19)80s mean?

PC (02:03:07):
The (19)80s was when I was homesteading, so I was kind of completely out of it. I mean, we did not have a TV and we did not have radio. We were up in the mountains and raising our farm animals. So that is kind of hard for me. Although I was staying politically active. I was part of the sanctuary movement in Tucson. I do not know if you remember that.

SM (02:03:29):
What's that mean?

PC (02:03:30):
Hmm?

SM (02:03:31):
What is that mean?

PC (02:03:32):
Oh, there was a movement called the Sanctuary Movement that helped... Was like an underground railway kind of thing that helped people who were escaping from Guatemala and Central American countries get to safe havens in the United States. And they were illegal actually. They were being run through a Presbyterian church in Tucson. And churches... Well actually, they were pretty much church based. So I volunteered to help out with them when I could. But being up in the mountains, there was not that much I could do.

SM (02:04:11):
Explain the (19)90s to today.

PC (02:04:14):
Depressing.

SM (02:04:16):
That is all I need to hear. Okay. I can say depressing in what way? But then the... Okay.

(02:04:29):
Let me... There is something here, before we get into the individuals. When you think of the Civil Rights movement, we have not talked a lot about it. Dr. King was obviously crucial. The big four, which was James Farmer and Whitney Young, Wilkins and King, certainly Malcolm X and what he did in the (19)60s. And then we talked about Black Power and some of the changes there. And some of the people, the followed King have been the leaders of the last 20, 30 years, like Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson, and the list goes on. But the Civil Rights Movement was a great role model for the other movements that came in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. The women's movement, the environmental movement, the gay and lesbian movement, to Chicano Native American. You all kind of looked at the Civil Rights movement as a model on how to do protest and non-violent protest, those kinds of things. What are your thoughts on the lengths between these movements and the Civil Rights movements. And secondly, during that period, if you saw Earth Day in 1970, you seem to see all these groups together. All caring about the environment, but as time goes on, you do not see them together as much. They have kind of gone their separate ways, but still involved in the serious issues. So just your thoughts on the movements and their links to the Civil Rights movement.

PC (02:05:56):
I think you are right when you say that the Civil Rights movement basically gave people a background to know how to organize. Know what worked and what did not. It was kind of an empowering kind of thing. And so, I think you are right when you say that that had a tremendous effect on the other movements, if for no other reason, and that taught them logistics. As far as the environmental movement and the way it brings people together, I really... Because I was totally involved in well, being a homesteader, being alternative energy, all of that stuff, I believed in it, but I really do not feel qualified to say anything about how it worked with other movements.

SM (02:06:49):
All right. One of the things... When you look at pictures, pictures often say in a thousand words, photography is very important to you-

PC (02:07:02):
Right.

SM (02:07:02):
Your career. When you look at the times that Boomers were alive, particularly when they were young, (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, and (19)80s, what are the pictures that may define the generation? In fact, I remember four of them, four pictures that stand out as four of the top hundreds of the 20th century. But when you think of that period, what are the pictures that stand out in your mind?

PC (02:07:25):
Well, the little girl running in Vietnam that she had just been napalmed.

SM (02:07:30):
Yep.

PC (02:07:31):
Remember that little girl?

SM (02:07:31):
Yep. Kim Phuc.

PC (02:07:33):
The Kent State. The pictures that came out of Kent State. Wait, I am getting stuck in the (19)60s. Germany. They need to go.

SM (02:07:40):
But those are two important ones.

PC (02:07:42):
They are. I am just trying to... God, there is so many. I am just trying to pinpoint… Some of the Avedon things, just the way he handled his pictures. True, they were mostly like fashion shoots, but they were also portraits. And so, the portraits that Avedon did, particularly of Yoko and John, you remember that one-

SM (02:08:15):
Oh, yes.

PC (02:08:16):
Kind of partially curled up. So that was just from an artistic point of view. Politically... There were some from Nicaragua that are just kind of hazy in my head now. Oh, I am trying to think. I do not know. It will come to me. But those two pictures, the first two that I mentioned I think-

SM (02:08:44):
Well, one of the picture... Well, the third one I was thinking of that is really there, is that the athletes were their raised fists at the (19)68 Olympics.

PC (02:08:49):
Oh yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah.

SM (02:08:51):
John Carlos, and then Eli, that historic picture of all... Before they were murdered. The group-

PC (02:08:59):
Oh, and there is that guy kneeling in the street of Vietnam too.

SM (02:09:02):
Yes.

PC (02:09:03):
That is getting... he is being shot in the head.

SM (02:09:05):
Yep.

PC (02:09:06):
Yeah.

SM (02:09:06):
That one was there as well. And of course... So, you, you have got quite a few of the classic ones. Also, when you think of phrases that define the generation. I came up with three phrases that I felt define the generation, I want your response. One person... Well, several people gave me a fourth, which I will mention. The three are Malcolm X, number one, where he said, "by any means necessary," which is the more militant, some might say, violent aspect of the period. Bobby Kennedy, using Henry David Thoreau's quote, "some men see things as they are and ask why I see things that never were and ask why not." Symbolic of the activism and the questioning of the era, wanting to make a difference. And then the Peter Max poster that was hanging in my Ohio State graduate school room, which was very popular in 1971, which stated, "you do your thing. I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." Which was kind of the hippie kind of mentality. And then not the other people gave me a fourth one, which was, "We Shall Overcome," which is symbolic of the Civil Rights Movement and the coming together. Is there any slogans that...

PC (02:10:24):
Well, the ones that instantly popped mine were "Burn, Baby, Burn."

SM (02:10:28):
Oh, yeah.

PC (02:10:29):
Which is very indicative of the whole... About what was going on. And then there was Corretta King's "War is not good for children and other living things." And there was a third one that also... Oh yeah, "Tune in, turn on and drop out."

SM (02:10:48):
Good.

PC (02:10:48):
I think that that was a really important one that people thought about.

SM (02:10:54):
Timothy Leary.

PC (02:10:55):
Exactly.

SM (02:10:56):
Yeah.

(02:10:57):
One of the things when we talk about the Civil Rights movement is the sexism that took place within that movement. And that is oftentimes the reason why the women's movement was stronger than it may have been as kind of a shoot off. Were you well aware when you were in college and in your twenties about the sexism that took place and most of the movements that men were in charge and women were kind of second class?

PC (02:11:22):
I think we did not even think about it that much. I mean, this is the way it was. And later on, when we really started thinking about, "Oh, I am a woman. I can have a say too, other than whispering in my honey's ear at night, and maybe he will take the idea to the rest of the guys." I think we... I was not aware of the sexism because I just did not think in terms of that. It was like, oh, the movement and the guys leading it, and this is the way it is. And that is why one reason for me, Angela Davis was really important because you have this really strong Black woman who was like a leader. That was different.

SM (02:12:10):
And she was not... A lot of people think she was part of Black Power... I mean, Black Panthers, she was not a Black Panther. She-

PC (02:12:14):
[inaudible].

SM (02:12:17):
She was involved in the prison system with George Jackson and to Black Power, but she was not into the Black Panther party.

PC (02:12:27):
But she was a real spokesperson.

SM (02:12:29):
And she still is. She is still writing good books. Why do you feel the term Vietnam and Quagmire, just to bring that those two words up in any conversation today, bring so much tension.

PC (02:12:42):
Oh, does it?

SM (02:12:45):
During the Iraq War, and certainly Afghanistan, when we were going over there and people were making comparisons, people said, it is another quagmire in Vietnam. Here go the Boomers again.

PC (02:12:57):
That interesting because that... It never occurred to me that it would make any... Because it is so obviously true. I guess I never ran into that reaction.

SM (02:13:07):
Well, it happens on university campuses, particularly amongst Boomers. And so, it is almost like if you even bring up Vietnam and Quagmire, it is like, well, here is the new left again, or here's the bringing back everything that happened back then again to what is happening today.

PC (02:13:26):
Oh, interesting. No, I had not run into it.

SM (02:13:28):
And that happened during the Gulf War, too, back in the (19)90s.

PC (02:13:31):
Yeah.

SM (02:13:31):
Some of the Vietnam vets talked about it. Let us see. I am almost done here.

(02:13:42):
One of the things about activism... And you obviously, I think you have been an activist during your life. Activism is different than volunteerism. Today on college campuses, volunteerism is at an all-time high. I would probably say over 90 percent of students are involved in volunteer work of some kind.

PC (02:13:58):
Wow.

SM (02:13:59):
Some of it has required and some they just do it on their own. And that is been happening since the (19)80s. So, you cannot be critical of the last two generations of students for volunteerism. But I have always felt that that is not activism, as you define it. Define activism as a 24-7 feeling and living a seven days a week and 365 days a year. And I feel that universities today are afraid of that term "activism" and they do not like to use it. Do you have any sense or feeling that that is a word that people are afraid of today? The term "activism?"

PC (02:14:38):
I think people have always been afraid of the word "activism" because I think that basically people have said, "Oh, she is an activist. That means that she is strident, she is judgmental, she is angry at the world." So, I do not think people have at any time really felt comfortable with that word. And so, I am not surprised that campuses which do not strike me as bastions of left wing... They are no longer hot beds of left-wing activity. I do not think that they would be comfortable with that word anymore.

SM (02:15:19):
Of course, the critics-

PC (02:15:20):
Because nobody is because everybody is kind of threatened by the word. The minute we say activism, they start thinking about closing down college buildings and basically marching of the street’s kind of...

SM (02:15:32):
Course the David Horowitz is in Phyllis [inaudible] of the world say that the universities are nothing but liberal.

PC (02:15:40):
I know.

SM (02:15:40):
And education is the worst it has ever been according to their point of view.

PC (02:15:45):
Yeah. Well, what can I say? I just...

SM (02:15:49):
The last question before I just ask the names of people for you to respond, then we are done. Why did the Equal Rights Amendment fail in your opinion?

PC (02:15:58):
As I mentioned, I just read a book about it, and so basically my opinions are pretty much-

PC (02:16:03):
And so basically, my opinions are pretty much the same as the book. Between the time they actually passed the amendment and put out to the states to ratify, and the time that they were supposed to be ratified, a lot of states had done what they needed to do to correct the situation in legislation for women. And so it was no longer such a strong issue. For one thing, it took forever to get through. But it was no longer such a strong issue, but then when it came time to vote for the amendment, people would say, "Well look, we have already got the law, they already addressed this situation. So, I think that is why it failed in the end.

SM (02:16:47):
When Reagan came into power, he made a speech, first speech he said, "We are back" and the place went crazy in a room where he spoke. And then when President Bush one said, "The Vietnam Syndrome is over," he said, "The Vietnam Syndrome is over," and everybody stood up and clapped their hands. It is not only how they said it, but what they said that still implies division in the country. What do you think Reagan meant when he said, "We are back," in 1981 when he became president? And what did President Bush mean in 1989 when he said the Vietnam Syndrome is over?

PC (02:17:30):
Well I think Reagan really meant the conservatives are back, "You have had your revolution, now it is over. We are back and we are going to take charge." As far as Bush one, I really was not familiar with that speech but I would suspect that his definition for the Vietnam Syndrome might be that, "We are going to have a war and you're not going to protest it to death." I do not know, that is just my hunch.

SM (02:18:00):
And in 2004 when John Kerry was running for president, the Vietnam veterans that came out against him, remember?

PC (02:18:10):
The Swift Boat guys?

SM (02:18:10):
Yeah, and the Vietnam veterans against the war, the divisions were still there. It was amazing some of the terrible things that were said about him. It is indicating that the battle is still continuing. What were your thoughts when you saw that?

PC (02:18:24):
Well I kept thinking, "The conservatives have the media," period. And so they're going to pick up stories like that. I do not know that that was an everyday kind of thing. I think that the divisions that are in this country are definitely far huger than any other seen in my lifetime, far more divisive, far more profound than at any time and uglier.

SM (02:18:47):
Could you explain that because this is still the lives of Boomers?

PC (02:18:52):
It is still the lives of Boomers, but basically the divisions have happened during the last, what, 20 years?

SM (02:19:03):
Mm-hmm.

PC (02:19:04):
Wait, but this is 2010. During the last 20 years a lot of it is from the media. Do we take responsibility for the entire division of the country? No, I do not think so. I think that X'ers who are now in their, what, their forties?

SM (02:19:21):
Mm-hmm.

PC (02:19:22):
And more, they are certainly a huge part of this. Things have just gotten uglier and uglier and I do not think that you can blame the boomers for all of that. I think it is about time that the X'ers stand up and start taking responsibility about some of their responsibilities in all of this.

SM (02:19:48):
And actually, some of the millennials because they are now of age to work.

PC (02:19:49):
They are now of age to work but they have not had the chance-

SM (02:19:52):
Right-

PC (02:19:53):
... to basically really influence the culture the way the X'ers have. And yet the X'ers will influence the culture and say, "Look, it is all the Boomers, it is all the Boomers." I am sick of it.

SM (02:20:04):
Yeah. Okay, now we are finally down to the names and the terms, and then we will end it. Just very quick thoughts, very quick thoughts. Your thoughts on Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

PC (02:20:15):
Two different people. Abbie Hoffman, iconoclast. Do you just want words?

SM (02:20:20):
Yep.

PC (02:20:21):
Okay. Abbie Hoffman, iconoclastic, had a great point. Okay, and that is all I will say. And Jerry Rubin was very serious and turned very sold-out.

SM (02:20:42):
Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.

PC (02:20:45):
Tom Hayden, I think, was a sincere guy who stuck to his beliefs or has stuck to his beliefs. Jane Fonda is a child of her century or a child of her generation. She has explored all the different areas and become a lot of different things and in a lot of different ways.

SM (02:21:06):
Talking about movies, she did Klute and then she also did the one with her dad. Which was...

PC (02:21:12):
On Golden Pond.

SM (02:21:13):
That is another classic film, coming to terms there. Timothy Leary.

PC (02:21:19):
Tim Leary was a very smart guy who basically saw absurdity for what it was and decided to bring drugs to the masses.

SM (02:21:27):
Smothers Brothers.

PC (02:21:29):
I loved them, just really amusing and smart in the way that they presented their politics.

SM (02:21:36):
Laugh-In.

PC (02:21:38):
Again, very smart in the way it presented what it had to say. And it was just a good time.

SM (02:21:49):
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

PC (02:21:53):
I think they were sincere radicals who live what they believed.

SM (02:21:59):
Benjamin Spock and Norman Mailer.

PC (02:22:03):
Benjamin Spock was a very interesting guy in terms of being a doctor and influencing the way that Boomers were brought up in the first place. And then, continued to delve into what his beliefs really were. I am sorry, who was the other one?

SM (02:22:20):
Norman Mailer.

PC (02:22:22):
I do not really know enough about Norman Mailer to make a good statement.

SM (02:22:27):
William Buckley and Barry Goldwater.

PC (02:22:30):
Good old Barry Goldwater was an idealist from the right. I think he was a straight shooter and I think that he really did do what he believed. I am sorry, who was the other one?

SM (02:22:47):
William Buckley.

PC (02:22:48):
Buckley. Okay, I never agreed much with what Buckley had to say, and yet I really felt that he thought things through. He was funny, he was smart and he actually said what he believed in an articulate way.

SM (02:23:06):
Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.

PC (02:23:10):
Spiro Agnew was a clown and dispensable. Richard Nixon was cracked I believe, but a very smart guy. And he was just insane.

SM (02:23:29):
Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford.

PC (02:23:32):
Dwight Eisenhower was like grandpa. He was the definition of the presidency. When I grew up I felt that he was benign. I still feel he was benign. Gerald Ford did his best, as I said earlier, to heal the nation. I think he was a sincere guy who did the best he could under an amazing set of circumstances.

SM (02:23:59):
Joseph McCarthy and Eugene McCarthy.

PC (02:24:02):
Joe McCarthy was an ideologue. If he could have been Hitler he would have been. He was a manipulator. I think that Eugene McCarthy was a very sincere guy. Well he certainly was not as politically savvy as he needed to be to get his stuff done.

SM (02:24:24):
George McGovern and Robert McNamara.

PC (02:24:28):
Robert McNamara was a liar and he was an opportunist. Eugene McGovern-

SM (02:24:39):
George.

PC (02:24:41):
Oh, George McGovern, sorry.

SM (02:24:42):
Yep.

PC (02:24:45):
I do not really know enough to say. He was an idealist and he tried his best, but he was ineffective, I thought.

SM (02:24:52):
How about Sargent Shriver and the Peace Corps?

PC (02:24:57):
With both of those, great idealism and an effective way to actually put your idealism to work. I think that it actually mobilized a generation.

SM (02:25:09):
John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.

PC (02:25:12):
John Kennedy, I used to think a lot more of him than I do now. But he was articulate, he knew how to mobilize the idealism of the people under him and the idealism of the nation. He had a lot of good things that he did. He had a lot of really terrible things that he did. Robert Kennedy was a sly dog. He was obsessed by certain ideas that he followed.

SM (02:25:48):
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

PC (02:25:52):
Martin Luther King, Jr., I think really, he had his finger on what I believe in, which is non-violence as much as possible. I think that he was an amazing organizer. He did not have too much respect for women but that is his issue. And so I think he was effective. As far as Malcolm X goes, I can certainly understand why he felt the way he did, and yet it is very hard for me to accept somebody who advocates violence the way he did.

SM (02:26:25):
Lyndon Johnson and George Wallace.

PC (02:26:29):
Oh, interesting combo. Lyndon Johnson was the ultimate politician who was the smart guy in terms of knowing how to manipulate people and manipulate the system, the situation. And I used to think a lot less of him than I do now. But at least he used his power to get social programs through and to do a lot for this nation. George Wallace, I do not know what to think of George Wallace. He is certainly, obviously not flavor-of-the-month with me because I do not believe in any of the things he believed in. But aside from that I have no...

SM (02:27:15):
Okay, Ronald Reagan and Hubert Humphrey.

PC (02:27:19):
Hubert Humphrey was ineffective, and that is why he did not get to be president. And Ronald Reagan used all of his abilities as an actor to get to where he wanted to go. He believed in what he said he believed in. I think he was honest that way but I also cannot agree with his policies at all.

SM (02:27:46):
Okay, Daniel Ellsberg and Daniel and Phillip Berrigan.

PC (02:27:51):
The Ellsbergs and Berrigans were friends of my sisters, so I believed in what they did. I believed that they did what they believe to bring the issues to the American people. And if you had to do that by dramatically pouring blood on some draft files then that is what you did. But I am not aware of how much they did after that, besides writing.

SM (02:28:21):
How about the women leaders, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Betty Freidan, that group.

PC (02:28:28):
Three different people. Gloria Steinem, I liked the way she's handled her involvement with the women's movement. Everything from her essay on being a Playboy Bunny so that people could see what it was actually like being the glamour girl of the movement. Bella Abzug and Betty Freidan, very serious women, very driven by their vision. And flexible, certainly, on Freidan's part. So, they do not leave a huge impression beyond that.

SM (02:29:16):
Tet, which was very important in (19)68 and John Dean.

PC (02:29:23):
John Dean, I will do John Dean first. John Dean, I hated him because I thought that he was so whiny, just like the whole rest of the Watergate guys and arrogant. He thought he could get away with anything and then, whammo, he was off to the slammer. And so I had no sorrow for that piece of information. The Tet Offensive was appalling and I think it was hard for anybody to trust after that [inaudible].

SM (02:30:03):
Muhammad Ali and William Kunstler.

PC (02:30:06):
Muhammad Ali, I liked from the minute he hit the world was his Cassius Clay-dom. I liked the way he made poems. Even though he would say appalling, "I am the best," that kind of stuff, I never really felt that he took himself all that seriously. He promoted himself, to be taken so seriously, I do not think so. So he was amusing and he was valuable because he was amusing, but he also made the statement that he needed to make about the Vietnam War and the other thing. And then William Kunstler, I never had a huge since of anything was real clean. He was there. He was partaking of history, but I had no strong...

SM (02:30:52):
How about the AIDS crisis and Harvey Milk.

PC (02:30:58):
Oh, the AIDS crisis. I am sorry, I thought you said the age crisis. The AIDS crisis was so badly handled. And so many more people died because of screw up than had to. It's been really sad. And then Harvey Milk, I do not really know that much about him. I know he was a good guy. I know, essentially, what he did, particularly for gay rights. And I think it was horrible that he was murdered. But I do not have any strong feeling. I do not know much.

SM (02:31:35):
How about the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in (19)64, and Stonewall?

PC (02:31:41):
Free Speech Movement, I loved the idea but I thought they got silly about it. Because free speech is not about being able to say fuck. Free speech is about being able to say, "This guy is a crook," or "There is something wrong here." So as far as the actual use of the naughty word, I thought it got too silly. [inaudible] said it was [inaudible]?

SM (02:32:09):
Stonewall.

PC (02:32:10):
Stonewall. Stonewall was just heartbreaking, serious.

SM (02:32:20):
And Earth Day.

PC (02:32:22):
Earth Day is, it is a nice little celebration.

SM (02:32:29):
When the best history books are written on the Boomer generation, whether that be 50 years after a particular era or after they pass, what do you think sociologists and historians will say about the Boomer generation, their legacy?

PC (02:32:50):
It depends on who is writing it.

SM (02:32:52):
Good point.

PC (02:32:52):
If it's Generation X they will do nothing but cream them. If it is, say, an unknown generation many years down the road, basically it will depend on their point of view. Whether they're the kind of people that like to tear things apart and rebuild it. How do people look at the French Revolution? I think that is what it is now. Basically, the terror that happened after the French Revolution, some people say it was a good thing. Some people say it was horrible. So I think that will be the same, the same way of viewing it. It depends on your need for structure and your need for stability as to how you will view the Boomers.

SM (02:33:42):
What do you hope your legacy will be once you are gone? And I know you have said a lot of things already, but how did you become who you are?

PC (02:33:54):
What I would hope my legacy would be is that I inspired people to do something greater than they thought they could do, or to see things, to see the world around them. That is what I do in my movies. What made me who I am, a number of things. I grew up Catholic. That was extremely influential. I was taught to always go for the ideal, to never be happy with the status quo, to work for the poor, blah, blah, the poor, the underprivileged, that kind of stuff. So I think that had a huge influence. And then of course, my family was very staunch Catholic, too, so they did, as well.

SM (02:34:55):
Yeah, it is interesting that Charles, in his book, talks about the difference between John Kenney and Eugene McCarthy. And their Catholicism is pretty interesting.

PC (02:35:06):
Oh, really?

SM (02:35:06):
Yeah, if you read the introduction. I had not seen it before, because I knew that Senator McCarthy did not like Bobby, and we all knew that.

PC (02:35:14):
Right.

SM (02:35:14):
But I thought he liked John more. Actually, he did like John more as time went on. But there were problems in the (19)60s and Charles did a very good job in his introduction of explaining the differences. McCarthy thought he was a better Catholic than Kennedy. And a lot of it had to do with when he made the comments about whether he could be president of the United States and that the Catholic Church would influence his decisions because he was a man of conscience. Well McCarthy took offense to that and said, "I do not think Kennedy has a conscience." But he did not attack him for his Catholic faith, but John Kennedy looked at that as attack. And so, they were not very good friends for a while, but when he died McCarthy gave a great speech showing a lot of emotion.

PC (02:36:02):
Yeah.

SM (02:36:04):
Yeah. So, anyways, the last thing I want to ask you is here, because on your [inaudible], what does stone pilgrim mean?

PC (02:36:14):
Oh, as I mentioned, I am a person who hunts down public sculptures. And so therefore, I am a pilgrim of stone or bronze.

SM (02:36:23):
Have you been to Gettysburg?

PC (02:36:25):
I have not. That is always been on my to-do list, but it is not a place I have gone.

SM (02:36:30):
I go there four times. You have got to come because what is really interesting about Gettysburg, you drive on the southern side and you see all these little confederate flags left. You never see anything left on the north side.

PC (02:36:40):
Really?

SM (02:36:42):
No, nothing. It is always the South. Yet when I interviewed Phyllis Schlafly last week, she said that the South has healed much better than the North, that the North has never healed from the war and the South has. And so we even got differences of opinion as to who has healed from the Civil War. But one of the things that you mentioned, which is very interesting, you said in your frequent journeys to Europe you provided scope. Her occasional jaunts to South America and Asia have jolted her. Your perceptions and assumptions about the world, what are those?

PC (02:37:17):
Okay, I am sorry, what did I say?

SM (02:37:19):
"Her frequent journeys to Europe provide scope to her views. And occasional jaunts to South America and Asia have jolted her perceptions and assumptions about the world."

PC (02:37:30):
Are you talking in terms of just South America and Asia?

SM (02:37:33):
Yeah, yeah, because it is on your website.

PC (02:37:36):
Okay, well, specifically I have gone to Taiwan, which is where my nephew lives. And I assumed, basically, that they would be very concerned about their relationship with China. And also, as far as talking to people who have been to Vietnam, I assume the same thing. It turns out that the generations now could care less. And that really jolted me. I thought the people who lived there would be completely political. They are not political, certainly not in Taiwan, not terribly political people. They just want to get on with their lives, and in Vietnam the same way. From the people I have talked to in Vietnam they do not even know the war, they do not want to know the war. They just want to get on with life. So that was a real jolt. As far as South America goes, we have been to Bogota, which is where David's son lives. At first, I was terrified because I thought, "Oh, my God, we are going to be kidnapped." But the thing that jolted my assumption there is you get so used to it, it's just like walking around the corner, "Now I am in Newport, Now I am in Bogota." It is the sameness, the ordinariness. Not the sameness, but the ordinariness of life there. And the same thing in Taiwan. You expect everything to be so exotic, but in fact, it is really very ordinary, but with different trappings. And so that, I think, is what shapes my assumptions.

SM (02:39:16):
Why?

PC (02:39:17):
Why you think it is exotic is because it is not here.

SM (02:39:21):
This is the last question, so believe me. I have been saying that. But why do you feel that religion seemed to be so important in the (19)50s? Bringing up in a Catholic Church, I am sure there was a lot of people coming to church. I went to the Methodist Church, my grandfather was a minister.

PC (02:39:36):
Oh.

SM (02:39:38):
And he was actually raised a Catholic but he rebelled because his father abandoned him and his brother, so he rebelled against the Catholic church and became a Methodist minister. It is a long story. He was the minister of the first Methodist church in Peeksgill, New York from 1936 to 1954-

PC (02:39:57):
Wow-

SM (02:39:58):
... when he retired. And then went and moved to Manhattan and passed away two years later, he was very young. But then it seemed like something in the (19)60s. Just, people were not going to church, synagogue or anything. There seemed to be a lessening of numbers. And I was wondering, was that part of everything that was happening, that people were challenging the church, too?

PC (02:40:22):
Do you think that those numbers dropped in the (19)60s or after the (19)60s?

SM (02:40:25):
They were dropping in the (19)60s, in the (19)60s and (19)70s.

PC (02:40:27):
Okay, well among the young people there was certainly a lot of questioning going on.

SM (02:40:34):
Right.

PC (02:40:38):
I think it is because the breaking apart of the basic assumptions of society, that this is what you do, this is how you do it. And then once you open that can of worms, you cannot hold it together anymore.

SM (02:40:56):
Right.

PC (02:40:56):
Basically, people are not going to only question, " Well, is this political party, right?" But they are also going to say, "Do I really have to go to church every week? What is the point of this?" That whole breaking apart and saying, "What is the point here?" Basic assumptions, what are the basic assumptions here?

SM (02:41:17):
Yeah. I was knocking my brain to remember when I first remembered a minister giving a social message. I remember they were always dealing with what was happening in the world. Because I went to church in Cortland, New York when I was a kid growing up. Dr. Nason gave great sermons. And I went to my grandfather's church and he gave great sermons. They were always dealing with religion and God. And I was wondering when the church started making political commentary about what was happening in the world. I know Dr. King did it all the time at his church.

PC (02:41:51):
Right.

SM (02:41:52):
And I know probably, Dr. Nason. And they were all doing it, but they were doing it in much more subtler ways than Dr. King. Then everything seemed to change. In the (19)60s ministers and rabbis, they were just about like anybody else. They were starting to give political commentary in church. So, I was wondering if that may have turned people off.

PC (02:42:13):
Well I went to Catholic grade schools and Catholic high school. And we were taught a lot about questioning and [inaudible] there. And so, we would be more likely to get a priest talking about the rightness or wrongness of a war, or whatever.

SM (02:42:36):
That is good.

PC (02:42:38):
But I think you are right. I think in general it did not happen very often until the (19)60s. And then you had that whole brouhaha over liberation theology. The Vatican came out against it.

SM (02:42:56):
And then, obviously, seeing the Berrigan Brothers and Malcolm Boyd and-

PC (02:43:03):
Exactly-

SM (02:43:03):
...others that is out there on the front lines, Rabbi Heschel. They were not-

PC (02:43:10):
You have got the Quakers, always-

SM (02:43:11):
They were not the norm. But then they ended up trying to become the norm, though. Was there any question that you thought I was going to ask that I did not ask?

PC (02:43:21):
I think you covered everything. I was very interested to find out whether you were going to cover birth control. That was my big thing, I suppose. I said, "Well if he is going to talk to a woman he is probably going to want to talk about birth control." But aside from that, no, I think that you have covered everything I can possibly think of.

SM (02:43:36):
I know I expect to talk to David. Somehow and some way I have got to get your pictures. Normally, I take pictures in person. Then I am going to put them at the top of each of the interviews. So, at some juncture in the next month, would it be possible for you to send me a couple pictures, and David, a couple pictures of both of you individually?

PC (02:43:53):
Yeah, sure, no problem, I will [inaudible]-

SM (02:43:56):
And I do not know if you have my mailing address.

PC (02:43:59):
I have got your email address.

SM (02:44:00):
Let me give you my mailing address. It is-

PC (02:44:03):
Okay, wait a minute. Wait-wait-wait-wait.

SM (02:44:05):
Certainly. I am going to take Charles' picture in person this Thursday.

PC (02:44:09):
Oh, good. Love that.

SM (02:44:11):
My address is 3323-

PC (02:44:15):
Wait, I cannot find my pen.

SM (02:44:17):
That was like me, I am always short on pens.

PC (02:44:20):
All right, I am just going to open a Word document. Okay, I am sorry, 3320-

SM (02:44:26):
3323 Valley Drive, V-A-L-L-E-Y Drive.

PC (02:44:29):
Okay.

SM (02:44:30):
In West Chester, and West Chester is two words, Pennsylvania, 19382. And I am, of course, Steven R. McKiernan.

PC (02:44:40):
Okay, great. But you want the pictures via email, right?

SM (02:44:44):
Yep. Or email, or mail them in person. If you can send them in person I would prefer it through the mail.

PC (02:44:55):
Okay, I will see if I can...

SM (02:44:56):
Yeah, two different ones of each of you. And if David has a picture of him in front of his book case or you have a picture of you in front of a bunch of art, I would even love that. I would love to have a close-up, if possible, of both of you. But then, David's a scholar. And I have gotten a lot of pictures of scholars in front of their book shelves or at their desk where they write. And then, you are an artist and a writer. So, if you have a background, too, that will be great.

PC (02:45:21):
Okay, great.

SM (02:45:22):
And, well, I am glad I talked to you Patti.

PC (02:45:25):
Well thank you so much for calling.

SM (02:45:26):
You and David are a great couple. Have a great day.

PC (02:45:30):
You, too.

SM (02:45:30):
Bye.

PC (02:45:31):
Bye-bye.

(End of interview)

2010-02-22

Stephen McKiernan

Patti Cassidy

Patti Cassidy is a playwright and producer. She wrote her first play on a dare in a Mexican border town in southern Arizona. From then on her work has been produced from LA to Paris. Cassidy currently is co-producing a series of readings of plays in the greater Boston area. She has a Bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature from SUNY Albany.

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Binghamton University Libraries

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Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Political activists--United States; Cassidy, Patti--Interviews

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