117 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/2a635b973ea3796da4b1bb7292828d6b.mp3 aae7324e940e208c03b4140a39b559d9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-03-12 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Paul Gorman Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Paul Gorman is an environmentalist, educator, author, former radio host and congressional aide. A graduate of Yale and Oxford Universities, Gorman served as press secretary and speechwriter to Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign. He taught at the City University of New York, Sarah Lawrence College and Adelphi University, and hosted a public radio program for over 28 years. Gorman is founder and executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment since 1993. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:342787,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;inherit&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10,&quot;19&quot;:0,&quot;21&quot;:0}">Paul Gorman is an environmentalist, educator, author, former radio host, and a congressional aide. A graduate of Yale and Oxford Universities, Gorman served as press secretary and speechwriter to Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign. He taught at the City University of New York, Sarah Lawrence College, and Adelphi University, and hosted a public radio program for over 28 years. Gorman is the founder and executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment since 1993. </span> Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;John F. Kennedy; Eugene McCarthy; Corruption in government; Yippies; Woodstock; Religion in the Nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Influence of TV on society; Vietnam War; Nonviolent protests. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">John F. Kennedy; Eugene McCarthy; Corruption in government; Yippies; Woodstock; Religion in the Nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Influence of TV on society; Vietnam War; Nonviolent protests. </span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 174:09 Subject LCSH Environmentalists; Radio broadcasters; Press secretaries; Speechwriters; Authors, American--20th century; National Religious Partnership for the Environment; College teachers; Gorman, Paul--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Paul Gorman Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Gorman, Paul ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Environmentalists; Radio broadcasters; Press secretaries; Speechwriters; Authors, American--20th century; National Religious Partnership for the Environment; College teachers; Gorman, Paul--Interviews Description An account of the resource Paul Gorman is an environmentalist, educator, author, former radio host, and a congressional aide. A graduate of Yale and Oxford Universities, Gorman served as press secretary and speechwriter to Senator Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 presidential campaign. He taught at the City University of New York, Sarah Lawrence College, and Adelphi University, and hosted a public radio program for over 28 years. Gorman is the founder and executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment since 1993. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.194a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.194b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 174:09 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b9b33a4437579d44ddd3de902a02c143.jpg 9651133f94c1340296e38cb6c0b206e6 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/33413b0059b7833680088a92d291c9c9.mp3 16e02ac00b43aba5889a021d17925db5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-03-15 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Alice Kessler-Harris Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Alice Kessler-Harris is Professor Emerita of American History at Columbia University. She is also Professor Emerita in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Dr. Kessler-Harris specializes in the history of American labor and the comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13057,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Dr. Alice Kessler-Harris is Professor Emerita of American History at Columbia University. She is also Professor Emerita in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Dr. Kessler-Harris specializes in the history of American labor and the comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 89:14 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;ewish immigrants; Jewish labor movement; Women's equality; Sexism; feminism; Working women; G.I. Bill; Post-war period; Anti-Equal Rights Amendment; Women's Studies; Civil Rights Movement; Vietnam Memorial.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792}}">Jewish immigrants; Jewish labor movement; Women's equality; Sexism; feminism; Working women; G.I. Bill; Post-war period; Anti-Equal Rights Amendment; Women's Studies; Civil Rights Movement; Vietnam Memorial.</span> Subject LCSH College teachers; Columbia University; Kessler-Harris, Alice--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Alice Kessler-Harris Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Kiernan Sullivan Date of interview: 15 March 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM: 00:00 Testing one two [fumbling with mic] and again, you will see, uh, anything. I am going to ask you though about your early years. AH: 00:09 Okay. [laughs] SM: 00:09 Um, could you tell me a little bit about your upbringing? Um, uh-uh- where you were born, and, uh, maybe some professors and teachers that really inspired you. And how did you develop an interest in women's issues, and especially women in labor? AH: 00:34 Okay, those are a lot of questions, all in one. Um, I was born in England, um, in 1941, uh, of, uh, refugee parents who had, uh, just a year before, um, managed to make it out of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and, uh, to England. Uh, I grew up in Wales, in Cardiff, uh, and, uh, lived there until I was 14, when we started the immigration process to the US. Uh, so all of my early memories are, um, British, Welsh. Uh, I, uh, when we came to the States, uh, I spent two years at, uh, Trenton Central High School. SM: 01:30 Mhm. AH: 01:34 Uh, a typical immigration story. My father had a sister in Trenton. My mother was gone already. She died when I was a kid, and, uh, um, so Trenton was where we came and went to school. There was in Trenton, a o-or at Trenton High School, a, um, just a wonderful vice principal, uh, whose name was Sarah Christie, who took me and my brothers, actually two brothers, one older and one younger, on board, and in my case, um, selected the college that she thought would be good for me, and, um, took my father and me down there because I was still fairly young, and he was not comfortable letting his daughter go away- SM: 02:29 It was Goucher, right? AH: 02:30 -to school - right. So she actually drove us down to Goucher, made an appointment with the principal, oh sorry, with the dean of admissions for me and with the Dean of Students for my father. And, um, I ended up getting a scholarship there, and spent four very happy years at Goucher. And there I encountered another really super terrific woman whose name was Rhoda Dorsey, um, who was then a young assistant professor at Goucher, and who then went on to, um, become first dean and then president of the, uh, the college. She is still around, and I still see her, and I am very fond of her, but it was she who, um, probably more than anything else, um, uh, influenced, um, my decision to become a historian, and particularly an American historian, given the fact that that was a new arena for me, uh, and it was she actually who, in, in the end, after many steps in between, uh, suggested Rutgers to me as a place to go to school. And, um, a-and that is why I ended up going to Rutgers and ultimately getting my degree there. SM: 04:04 How did you pick? Uh, why did you care? Was there some experiences you had in college that, uh, turned you toward women's issues? AH: 04:14 No, I cannot say that I was particularly turned towards women's issues until the late 1960s, until the women's movement began. And, um, before that, I had been turned much more towards immigrant and labor issues, and I think that makes you know absolute sense in terms of my own immigrant background. So you know, I was an immigrant and I wanted to be an American [laughing], that was the sort of bottom line, and the best way to do that was to study American history, and particularly to study immigrant American history. So that is what I did. And even more specifically, I did a visitation on Jews in New York in the 1890s so I was particularly interested in Jewish immigrants. And to do that dissertation, I learned Yiddish because that was my family was Hungarian and German speaking, but not Yiddish speaking. So I learned Yiddish to recoup that piece of a past that I shared, and, um, the rest is history, I suppose. The Women's History piece came out of, uh, the women's movement is the honest answer, and, um, it came out of the fact that I finished the dissertation in 1968 I was already married and had a four-year-old child. I have a daughter who was born in 1964 at that point, and, uh, I had t-to get the degree done, as you can imagine. I had sort of buried myself in books and had not been particularly politically active, y-you know, a-a lot of sort of, um, you know, marches and demonstrations, but no leadership of any one kind in any of those things. And then I lifted my head up, as it were, after I finished the dissertation, and I noticed that there was a woman's movement all around me just beginning, but New York was the, uh, you might say, the epicenter of that. SM: 06:31 That is right. AH: 06:33 So I got my first job in September of 1968 started working at Hofstra, where I taught for about 20 years and, uh, joined a consciousness raising group. The same year, uh, met other women who were active in the women's movement, and began to get involved. And it was only after that that I noticed that this dissertation I had written, which was about, you know, the Jewish labor movement in New York in the 1890s had no women in it. You know, that I had systematically just discarded all the women because I was studying the labor movement. And the labor movement was, in those days- SM: 07:19 Male dominated. AH: 07:20 -male dominated. So it was at that point that I started to, um, to work on women. I mean, I, I-I went back to some of the Yiddish materials and so on, to recoup some of the women I had overlooked. And so the first things I ever published were, uh, pieces on women in the labor movement. And...um- SM: 07:48 Do you think, um, we are in the 1960s now, late (19)60s, that the women's movement really came about because of the sexism that took place within all the other movements? Uh, we know that in the civil rights movement, sexism was dominant. Uh, uh, when you leave, when you look at the anti-war movement, it was very dominant. And, um, in talking to some other people, even in the American Indian, American Indian movement, it was dominant. And even to- in the gay lesbian movement, it was very dominant. Um, do you think the women's movement would have happened if the-if they had been treated equal in these movements from the get go? Or, uh, because a lot of people believe it was an offshoot, even though we know civil rights was a, um, role model for the movement. But just your thoughts on the sexism that took place within just about all the other movements. AH: 08:41 I think that that is, um, certainly a chunk of the explanation for the women's movement, but I do not think it is, by any means, the entire explanation. SM: 08:51 Mhm. [mumbling] AH: 08:50 So, uh, you know, I-I would say that, uh, you know, and Sarah Evans first proposed this in personal politics, and I think she is completely right that the sexism within the, um, uh, civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and so on, was an issue, and alerted a lot of women to the, especially a lot of young women, a lot of college aged women, uh, to the fact that here they were fighting for equality for other people, and they themselves were being treated, not only unequally, but unfairly. So, I-I think that that is the case, but I think that after all, limited numbers of women were involved in those movements, and that there is another source of female discontent, if you like, or of the women's movement that should not be overlooked, and that comes out of the- and it is really a long history of, uh, discrimination in the workplace and of the stifling of opportunities for women in those places. So, by the early 1960s it was quite clear that women were going to be earning a living. Large numbers of women were going to be earning a living. And after 1963 after Betty Friedan, uh, the old argument that women were working for pin money, or that they did not really want to be in the labor force and so on, um, I-I think had very little purchase after that point, so that I have called it sometimes incremental changes so women enter the workforce. Uh, they enter the workforce to earn income for their family for the most part, and then they discover that their opportunities as workers are limited. Uh, they their wages are limited. Their wages are unequal, uh, their promotional possibilities are limited. Uh, their capacity to enter certain fields are not only limited, but sometimes denied altogether, and that those things by the mid and late (19)60s are creating - you might call them the fuel for the fire. You know so then perfectly ordinary women who had never marched, you know, had never gone south to, you know, join the civil rights movement. Uh, you know, the mothers of children are, uh, discovering that they are being treated unfairly. And I think that form of sexism, you know, the sort of cultural sexism of who was expected to work and who was expected to, uh, take care of the household just hit home, uh, in about the same period. Now there is a kind of synergy between them that I would certainly agree to. But I do think that there is a strand there that is if you dig deeply, you can find it in the (19)30s. You can find it in the women who were active in the labor movement and would not call themselves feminists. You can find it in the early 1960s in the President's Commission on the Status of Women, where the question of work and family is a major question, you know, unresolved in that, uh, commission, and which spawns, you know, a state commission in every state in the Union, which state commissions are ultimately responsible for creating the National Organization for Women. So, you see, there is another thread there that I think people have perhaps not paid sufficient attention to, and which parallels, um, you know, and energizes, perhaps the younger women, or that the younger women certainly align with. SM: 08:51 T-the, uh, 1950s to me, women, even though they may have been mothers at home raising children, they were still the teachers because, uh, just about my entire school, I did not see a male teacher in my entire school. It was all female in elementary school, obviously nursing professionals and certainly secretarial because my mom was a secretary. Uh, he raised the kids and then went back to work. AH: 08:50 Right. SM: 08:51 So-so [clearing throat] what we saw were people that were in some very responsible positions. Um, what was it about the, the middle-class women of that period in the (19)50s, where they realized, once their kids got a little bit older, that they wanted to go back to work to help raise because, um, my niece is going through this right now? Is it - with a, with a baby - but, uh, she has to do both things to survive, uh, to pay the mortgage. And was this the precursor of the two-income family? Uh, and once the two-income family was present - AH: 09:36 It was not the precursor; it was the two-income family. The two-income family begins, if you look at the data, it begins in the post war period. So-so again, I have written about this, but- SM: 14:18 Mhm. AH: 14:20 -if you look at the trend line, you see that women are entering the workforce at a fairly steady clip and the number but they are mostly single women into the 1930s the Depression period, women continue to enter the [car horn] workforce, and their proportion remains steady. It does not decline, even though there is discrimination against married women. The 1940s women enter at a huge rate, as you know- SM: 14:58 Right. AH: 14:58 -because of the war. And then they were pushed out after the war. But immediately after they have pushed out, if you follow that first trend line, it continues to go up. So if you see, the, the war as a blip, you can see the trend line just increasing slowly but steadily, until by 1952 1953 there are almost as many. The proportion of women in the workforce is almost as many as there were during the war. And the proportion of married women and married women with children is now beginning to increase dramatically. So then you have to say, Well, why do women go back to work in the (19)50s? Some people go back to work because they had a great time during the war. You know- SM: 15:46 Mhm. AH: 15:46 -they learned that they could be economically independent, and that work was very satisfying. So that is some of it. Uh, some of it is that, uh-uh, they, uh, like their husbands, who sometimes benefit from the GI Bill, uh, begin to go to college and to get an education, and then to want to use that education. And that is the group that moves into the teaching and the nursing this, what we sometimes call the semi professions, uh, social work and-and so on and-and it is the, uh, the desire to use the education that they have that pushes them into the workforce. And then there is a whole other group that, um, moves into the workforce because standards of living are changing in the post war period and the male income is simply insufficient to support, a, a middle-class standard of living for most working-class families, but two working class wage earners can live reasonably well. So, the idea that, uh, y-you know, the male does not have to support a family that the woman can go to work to pay college tuition, to provide ballet classes for the kids to, you know, get that second car, or to buy the new refrigerator, or the leather town house. You know, all those things which, you know, the consumer things which are, uh, and which become necessities in that period. That is, you know, houses do not exist anymore without electricity or with outdoor toilets, or, you know, those are and to maintain or sustain that kind of standard of living requires an extra income. Sometimes it requires half an income, and women become two thirds of the people who work part time, for example, or women leave the labor force while their children are small and then go back into the labor force. But whatever it is, however families work it out, people begin slowly the idea begins to break down that men alone support there, and- SM: 18:08 It is interesting, I interviewed Phyllis Schlafly about a month ago, and, uh, she has typified the woman, a woman of the (19)50s, because she would not do anything unless she asked her husband. AH: 18:20 Yes. SM: 18:21 And, uh, sh- he wanted, um, she wanted to run for the Senate or Congress or whatever, and she asked her husband, her husband said no. AH: 18:30 Right. SM: 18:30 So she did not run. AH: 18:31 Right. SM: 18:32 So, and she said she, um, she was interesting, because she said, I- she was against the women's movement, obviously, and she was one of the leaders of the anti-ERA effort. Uh, but she also believes that the troublemakers of the (19)60s are now running today's universities, and she p-pointed that out [inaudible] making comments about women's studies and everything. AH: 18:55 Well, I- SM: 18:55 Yeah. AH: 18:56 I am one of those people. SM: 18:58 [Laughing] AH: 18:58 So, I proudly declare myself to be a troublemaker- SM: 19:00 Right. AH: 19:00 -of the (19)60s- SM: 19:02 Right. AH: 19:02 -in that sense- SM: 19:04 Mhm. AH: 19:04 -because, uh, I mean, y-you know that that she chose to ask her husband, that her husband said no, and that she responded- SM: 19:15 [inaudible] sometimes, Yeah, we are doing fine. AH: 19:18 There was a there was a class issue there. A- that Phyllis Schlafly was of a class status and already involved with a husband who could, in fact, support her and the family, makes her not unique by any means, but relatively speaking, unusual. There were millions of women who, um, they did not even think about running for the Senate, but they did think about becoming school aides, or getting secretarial jobs, or using whatever education they-they had because they needed to. Did they ask their husbands for permission? Probably, but would a husband have said no if he understood that this money could bankroll a kid's education, that you could then send your kid to the State University, because, you know, you would have enough money in the bank to do that, or you could, you know, get that second car for the family, or take vacations every year. So there-there was a class issue that I think people like Phyllis Schlafly often do not, uh, understand. But-but there is another issue too, which is, um, the 1950s 1960s are CUSP years. They are years of transition and transformation. So, uh, you know, it is absolutely the case that many women, particularly many white, middle-class women, benefited from the single income male house holder. You know, they could, as a famous historian named Ivy Pinchbeck once said, uh, they could manage not to have two jobs. So if you consider housework and child rearing one job and going out to work a second job, which most people do, it was a, you know, a great joy and liberation to many women not to have two jobs that is, to be able to stay home with their children, to be able to, you know, make the choice of child rearing, uh, rather than, uh, you know, going out to work and rushing home and you know, so on and, and that is the other piece of this that happens in the (19)50s. So, there is, on the one hand, the pull of income, o-of the need for income, and th-then there on is, on the other hand, an ideology which still says women belong at home, femininity serving the male obedience and so on, are good values. Now I am a great example of that. I grew up in a generation where I firmly believed I would not go to work. I was going to go to college. In fact, I married a medical student in my third year of college, I was set to go. I never intended to spend my life earning a living, and it never occurred to me that that would be but then, uh, you know, I started grad school. Why did I start graduate school? Well, my husband was in medical school. He just finished medical school. He was fairly young. Uh, what was I going to do for a few years? I was going to teach. We were moving from Baltimore to New York. I knew that you could only get a job as a real teacher, not a probationary teacher, if you had a master's degree. So, my initial thought was, all right, I would go get a master's degree, and I would go to graduate school to do that, and then I teach a few years. I get to graduate school. I love graduate school. I do well in graduate school, I think it is, you know, it is just the place I want to be with the conversations I want to have. Now, by now, it is 1962 1963 you know, the word is in the air. You know, there is a civil rights movement. I belong to bits of it. There is an anti-war movement beginning. I am present at that moment at Rutgers where Eugene Genovese bangs the table and says, I do not fear a Viet Cong victory. Indeed, I would welcome one. SM: 23:44 Were you in the room when that happened? AH: 23:45 I was in the room when that happened. So, so you see, I am not a leader of any kind, but I am influenced by all these ideas that are in the air. And then I get pregnant, and I have a baby, I am not sure if the order of this is right, but it all happens around the same time. And once I have a baby, the husband says, “Hey, what is going on around here? Why are you continuing to work? What is- but I am committed by now, so I use my fellowship money. I get deprived of a fellowship because I have a baby, I begin to feel that sense of, you know, it is not the same for me as a, as a woman. And then suddenly, in 1968 I finish my degree, I get a job because there are jobs available then, and I discover that I can construct a life, that I am not dependent, that I want this job, I want to work. And at that point, the marriage freys, it is not his fault, it is my fault, because I am the one who changed. His expectations of a wife and a family were absolutely legitimate given the period- SM: 24:57 Yeah, the time, yeah, the times. AH: 25:04 -that we grew up in. But I am, you know, there is all this stuff going on around me. I am the one who changes. So, when Phyllis Schlafly says, um, you know, my husband told me not to do it, so I did not, you know, that is great, right? My husband told me not to do it too, but I did, right? And there are as many, there are as many people like me out there as there are like Phyllis, Schlafly, maybe more. And if you want to call us troublemakers, because- SM: 25:41 Well she used that term. AH: 25:42 -Right. No, no, I am not- SM: 25:43 Yeah-yeah. Yeah. AH: 25:43 I am not blaming you at all- SM: 25:44 Right, right. AH: 25:45 -for this. All I am saying is, is I see how she could use that term, because she is really talking about a generation of people just like me who, uh, who do not want to follow the traditional patterns and the traditional lines. SM: 26:06 See, that is, that is, you know, you are, you are a mover. I-uh-It is not, it is not really a year. It is an attitude. It is really about an attitude. Because, um, if you talk to a, a study of the Free Speech movement with Mario Savio, the very same thing there. Um, it wa- i-it is about the world of ideas. It was the concept of the world of ideas that was important in the free speech movement. And you are talking about 1962-63 that exactly was when Feminine Mystique was written, yeah, and it came out. And, um, I would have to check this thing to make sure this is doing fine. Um, and I noticed, um, in, in an interview that they had with Betty Friedan, before she passed away, talking about The Feminine Mystique, she said it was, um, about- it was all about equality. It was about equality. And then, uh, the person that followed up said, what about the, the radical women of the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, the ones that burned their bras or would not shave their legs, or, um, you know, those kinds of individuals. And she said, you know, they were radicals. That is not what I was into. That is not what I was into. She was kind of, kind of negative toward that kind of stuff. AH: 27:19 But she is not telling the truth about herself, of course. SM: 27:22 Yeah. AH: 27:23 I mean, if you if you read, um, Daniel Horowitz's biography of Betty Friedan, you discover that, uh, you know, she comes out of the left, she comes out of the labor movement. She herself was a radical for a long time in her life that, while she was writing this book- SM: 27:43 Right. AH: 27:43 -you know, from a, you know, a sort of middling perspective that really is not where she is coming from. And indeed, I think, uh, only a Betty Friedan that is somebody who came out of the left and the labor movement, those are the women, after all, who are also, at this point, creating groups like women strike for peace, you know, and the ban the bomb movement and so on, you know. And they, you know, many of them have a, you know, what you would call a radical background. So, I mean the, the thing, the thing is that what we understand as radical may not have really been so radical at all. I mean, I do not think I was so unusual in that period. Uh, a-and I certainly, you know, if you think about organizations like now, or the Women's Equity Action League and how quickly they took off. You have to believe that there are millions of women who are somehow dissatisfied. You know, they may not be dissatisfied in the way Betty Friedan describes, but they are dissatisfied with that traditional you know, I-I am just an appendage of my husband, um, and I can be happy if he makes a good living being an appendage. Um- SM: 29:07 Betty Friedan says, but part of the result of the women's movement, as I help conceptualize it, is to give it a vision and lead it is an end to such a no-win either-or choice. Women today have choices, and demand choices, choices to have kids or not, and the reproductive technology there too. And it is a fact that most women continue to choose to have children. They, they know it as a choice now, but they do not choose to have too many, and they do not choose it as either-or career or children. That is something that Betty Friedan says [inaudible]. AH: 29:44 Yeah, this says there is something true about that, but there is also something sort of oversimplified about that. I do not know when she actually said that, but if you look at the data now, lots of women are choosing not to get married. Lots of women are choosing to have children even though they have no partner. Lots of people are choosing to have same sex partners and to have children with those same sex partners. So, her sort of the underlying assumption there that marriage between a man and a woman is the basis for the choice to have a child is no longer valid. It is for professional women, for teenage black women, it is not legitimate to have a child. But for professional, 30-year-olds who do not have a husband, it is, you know, the numbers of those women who decide to get pregnant or to adopt children is Legion. I have not counted them, but- SM: 29:45 I know that David Kaiser, who, t-the historian that wrote 68, um, he knows you. I think he knows you. AH: 30:47 Yes. SM: 30:53 He knew about you, and when I interviewed him, he said, do not bring up Betty Friedan to me. She is homophobic and, uh, she is not, er, uh, one of the leaders of really, uh, she, and, uh, Gloria Steinem is another story. Yes, she is fantastic. And so is Bella but Betty Friedan is homophobic, so in the gay community, I guess there is some sensitivity toward her. But, um, Phyllis Schlafly, um, trying to think something else that she said, uh, um, oh my goodness, um, it will come back to me. She said a lot of things [chuckling] that you might well know. Um, what do you mean when you say the gendering of society? Because, uh, you, uh, that is I have read some of the things on the web. And, uh, what does that mean to you? AH: 31:36 I do not know that I ever said the gendering of society. I think I might have said the gendering of the labor force, and I think I have said a shift in the gendered, what I call the gendered imagination. But if I were going to talk about that whole concept of gendering, I would say the following: that we, um, and here I speak as a historian or a social scientist, I guess, uh, that we have often explained, uh, uh, transformation and change in society in terms of class and in terms of race differences. That is, you know, people say, um, uh, the, uh, you know, the industrialization altered people's expectations of work and of their place in society, and that changes how people think about democracy and politics and so on. And we have not often thought of gender as a sort of motivational force. And one of the things I think that we have learned over the last generation, and I think it has really taken 20 or 30 years to learn it, is that gender and gendered tensions might be as important as any other kind of tensions, not more important, but as important. So, you know, you could say, uh, the effort of men and women to, you know, sort of create different kinds of relationships within families, you know, the most intimate level, to create satisfying lives for both of them, then produces a whole bunch of other issues and demands. You know, it produces, well, the demand not only for, uh, equal work for men and women and equal pay for men and women, but also the demand for, um, a more egalitarian view of what work should be and how it should be structured. Uh, it produces a different sense of children and who's responsible for them. It produces a different, uh, perspective on social policy. You know, there is nobody left to take care of the aging parents anymore. We need social security and pensions, not just to be supplements, but to take care of them. It produces a different perspective on the role of the public school system in education. So we note now in New York City that virtually every public school at the elementary level has an afternoon school program which is free and available, and that is a response to shifts in the family. So what I am saying is that the, the gendered tension, uh, produces all kinds of other, uh, incremental kinds of changes that are not easy to deal with. You know, they are, they are very difficult, and sometimes they have backlash effects. And i-if you want me to keep talking, I can say, for example, the thing that comes very painfully to mind is the welfare reform issue. So it used to be that assumptions about women's gender roles meant that poor women who needed support would be supported to stay home with their small children so that they could take care of them and the children would not suffer. Now we have a gendering, a different kind of gendered balance in this society, in which we no longer assume that women with children will stay home. We assume that women with chil- with children will be out to work. And so instead of paying for women to stay home. We pay them to go out to work, but we have not figured out what to do with the children yet. In other words, you know, we have not provided appropriate day care. We have not provided it in appropriate places. We have not given these, you know, women reasonable transportation. We have not figured out what to do when the kids are sick. You know, we...do you see what I mean? So now that requires a whole another set of questions. They have not yet been resolved. SM: 36:14 You see another just came out. My niece told me this, and it was on CNS, uh, CN-NBC, or whatever is that breastfeeding a child in the first six to eight months, they go to work after the you know, they got to go. There is no privacy. AH: 36:28 Right. SM: 36:29 And so that is a big issue. Now, I believe in Obama's, uh, Bill w-was it was not for six months or trying to build something, so they have to build a room for a private area. It was just something there was they were not sensitive at all- AH: 36:39 Yes. SM: 36:40 -to women's, uh- AH: 36:40 Yes. SM: 36:41 -needs. AH: 36:42 Look 50 years ago when I got my first job. So 1961 to 62 I taught for a single year in a Baltimore High School, and I had to sign a contract that said, and that is exactly 50 years ago, right? I had to sign a contract that said that if I got pregnant, I would tell them and I would resign within four months of the beginning of the pregnancy. That was normal. I did not blink twice at signing that contract. It was perfectly normal. So nobody had to think about privacy or extra rooms, or it was assumed that it was not that everybody did resign when they had babies, but the expectation was that you would do so. So, you know, it is a half a century later, and look at the consequences of that. You know, whether it is about breastfeeding, or whether it is about on-site daycare, or whether it is about Chinese menu benefit options and employers finding that it is too expensive to provide healthcare anymore, and now maybe we can have national healthcare. In other words, nothing is isolated in a cocoon, and when you start shifting these what look like very intimate gender relationships, you produce huge consequences for the society as a whole. SM: 38:11 I-I just thought what Phyllis, uh, said, she said, in, uh, she said that one half of all babies born last year were born out of wedlock. That is what she, uh, she had the st-statistic, was a year ago, so, and she was I-I again, I am not sure, we talked about a lot of different things, what she was referencing into, but she put that in as a-a statement that, uh, unwed mothers, and I- AH: 38:33 I-I would like to check out that statistic, and I would, I would bet you dollars to donuts that included in that number, if the number is correct, and I think it is probably exaggerated, but if the number is incorrect, it probably counts as unwed women and men who live together as partners and men and men and women and women who live together. In other words, if out of wedlock means out of traditional marriage, having a marriage ceremony done, that might be correct, but if, but that, of course, that does not mean anything, because the children who are born under many of those circumstances have two parents, you know. SM: 39:15 One, one of the first questions I have asked everyone, uh, on the general questions, not specific ones, is that, um, in 1994 when Newt Gingrich came into power, he made some pretty strong statements against the, um, (19)60s and the (19)70s [mumbling]. He has, he has quoted, he talks about it all the time, in certain ways. He is a boomer himself, but, uh, and then, uh, notice, Mike Huckabee recently has said some things on his TV show about the (19)60s generation. He likes to throw these one liners out there and for church will in his writings over the years, always likes to throw a little jab here, jab there. Um, someone told me, uh, in, in response to his chapters, anybody ever really told you or told you that he worked for Jesse Helms, and that is how he got his start? I said, no, I did not know that well, I do not think he likes the world to know it either, so [laughing] s-so lo-, there is a lot of stuff out there, but basically, what I am saying is that it is, it is a general perception on those that do not like, the, the Liberals from that era, whether they be in the anti-war movement, civil rights, uh, women's movement, uh, the gay and lesbian, uh, the environmental movement, the Native American Chicano, um, is that they are just, um, the breakdown of our society really started then the lot of the issues of the divorce, the divorce rate, the lack of responsibility, lack of respect for authority, the, the beginning of the isms. Um, of course, the welfare state will always be thrown out there. That was an LBJ thing. Um, so I do not know, how do you respond to that? Because, uh, it is, it is, it is really, it is becoming very strong now. It is stronger than I have ever seen it the backlash against that era. I preface this by saying that Barney Frank, I mean, I think I am going to have to turn this, uh, no, I am still good. Barney Frank wrote a very good book in the (19)90s called Speaking Frankly, and he is Mr. Democratic and, uh, but he said that we have to as a party, the Democratic Party, we have to say goodbye to the anti-war people and those-those (19)60s people and the-the people that were around McGovern, because if we were going to survive as a party, people are not going to join us. They are going to think of the radi- radical aspects. Uh, and that is always stuck in my mind, and this is a politician saying it. And, uh, so Mike, the basic question is this, when you see blanket statements made, stating that that period, and we all know what they are talking about, the (19)60s and early (19)70s, um, that all our-uh, just about all our problems started, then, um, how do you respond to that? AH: 42:00 How I respond to that is by saying, some people would call that the breakdown of society, and other people like me would call it the transformation of society, uh, the transformation of society to a more democratic uh, um, uh, ground. In other words, I, I you can look at what happened in the (19)60s from various perspectives. From one perspective, you can see it as an enormous challenge to a variety of traditional value systems. Among them, the, uh, racial segregation, um, gender inequality, um, [car horns] or patriarchy, uh, if you want to put it that way, uh, you know elitist, uh, government, you know, uh, decision making made by political people and so on. So what the 1960s did, from that perspective, is to say, no, we were, uh, we have now moved far enough so that we want to transform the society on more democratic and egalitarian grounds. Uh, now you could say that that is a breakdown in the sense that our forefathers never envisioned such democracy. They did not envision racial equality, they did not envision gender equality, and so look at the terrible things you have done to our society. And that is one way of looking at it. [car horns] But another way of looking at it is to say, you know, this democratic experiment that this country is involved in is an evolving experiment. And the (19)60s and early part of the (19)70s, you know, there was a decade in there when we really tried to push the boundaries a little further. Uh, we got a good way doing that. We did not get as far as some people wanted us to, and we left some problems hanging. But by Jove, you know, we, we created a far greater access for African Americans, for people of color. SM: 44:33 [mumbling] I know it is at the end. [recording pauses] AH: 44:40 Okay, so, no, just the point is that we, we created, uh, access. We the- you know, the New Left view of democratic participation. [recording pauses] SM: 45:04 [inaudible] AH: 45:04 So, I was going to say the-the new left's, um, uh notion of, um, participatory democracy was in some ways, completely nuts. You know, it is, um, you know, in this in the sense that, uh, it is stymied activity. You know, we all spend hours day and night talking about things. But on the other hand, it also fostered the town hall meetings that you now see, where presidential candidates and so on actually think that upon occasion, they can actually go talk to ordinary people, and that ordinary people have things to say so. So that is what I think about that argument. I think that when, uh, Newt Gingrich should know better, because he was trained as a historian. SM: 45:58 Yes. AH: 45:59 You know, change does not come without, um, uh, pain, and, and people will disagree with it, and will, uh, you know, sort of pull in the other direction and try to pull us back in the other direction. But I do not believe that, uh, we-we can or that people will tolerate being moved back, uh, you know, to the sort of pre democratic or and we are certainly not as democratic as we could be, or as egalitarian as we could be, even now, SM: 46:40 I know that, um, his commentary the other day against, uh, President Obama was pretty strong. [mumbling] He is the farthest left president we have ever had. And what is interesting also that President Obama tries to distance himself from the (19)60s, I think, because of the Bill Ayers and the all the other stuff. But also, um, his critics oftentimes say he is the epitome of the (19)60s. He is the reincarnation of the (19)60s. So here we have a man who wants to distance himself from that period, and yet we have his critics saying that he is the, uh, epitome and the, uh, role model of that period. He is- AH: 47:21 But he has got critics on both sides. Right? SM: 47:23 Yeah. AH: 47:24 On the one hand, they say he is the epitome of the (19)60s and he is too far left, and he is a socialist and so on. On the other hand, people like me are saying, wait a minute, he is not far left enough. You know, what has he done? He has not stopped the war in Afghanistan. You know, he has settled for a health care bill, which is half of what we would like to have gotten. In other words, he is getting criticized from the left as well as from the right. And if you read magazines like the nation, what you get are articles saying, you know, hold off. Do not be too disappointed. He is doing as much as he can, you know, even though he is not doing, you know, enough so, so maybe he is doing something right, because [laughing] he is going right down the middle. SM: 48:12 You have taught s-since the middle (19)60s, I guess, on college campuses. So you saw the, uh, the boomers when they were coming. Uh, they are 64 so they, they were in the (19)60s and (19)70s, and then you had the Generation X ers that came in the, uh, (19)80s and, uh, (19)90s, and now you got the millennials. Uh, Generation Y is right around the corner. See, everybody has got these terms for them. But, uh, one of the things that people have written is that the gener- that the boomer generation, were the best educated kids that they had, the best teachers, they had the best school system. They were seen to be more knowledgeable about issues, uh, not only that, often, not all of them active on the, um, uh, issues, but as a teacher, as a professor, as someone, you had good students in all your classes and every year. But did you see, c-can you perceive that that period students may have been more inquisitive, more questioning? Even you as a teacher, uh, how they seem to they seem to have been different and I have had other professors who have told me this. AH: 49:17 I, uh, I think the answer that question is yes, but I think you have to remember that I was closer to their age than I am now, and students are always much more willing to engage and to push a professor who is young and, you know, seen as, uh, responsive, rather than somebody who's been around for, you know, 40 years and- SM: 49:20 Right. AH: 49:21 It is like their grandparents so, but that said, uh, I think it is probably true that the kids of the, of the, uh, late (19)60s, I started teaching in (19)68 and those first four or five years were of course, the heart of the anti-war movement. And so, uh, you know, the kids were active. They were engaged in the learning process. Uh, they, uh, you know, if they disagreed with the book, the challenge was not to get them to not disagree. We wanted them to disagree, but the challenge was to, uh, help them to defend their disagreement, to, um, you know, to articulate and to think about, you know, what the roots and the sources were of it. And so I think that that is true. Nowadays, students tend to be somewhat more passive, although I have to say that in my Women's Studies classes and my women's history classes, Phyllis Schlafly notwithstanding, um, those students tend to be, uh, much more challenging, uh, much less willing to accept authority, uh, you know. So they will repeatedly distinguish themselves, you know, from the second wave, you know, they will identify me almost immediately as a feminist and as a second wave feminist, and identify themselves as, uh, the third, or even now the fourth, fourth wave. And that is very rewarding. That is there. It generates very useful conversations about the differences, which, of course, reveals something to them- SM: 51:48 Mhm. AH: 51:48 -about, you know, what the past was like and what the present is like. Uh, those kinds of, uh, that kind of pushing, that kind of challenging I do not find in my other classes, but I would suspect that others might you know, others of a younger generation, others of different political persuasion might. SM: 52:15 In your opinion, um, when did the (19)60s begin? When did it end, and what was there a watershed moment, um, watershed happening? So, it is a three-part question. Uh, [mumbling]. AH: 52:31 Well, it began and ended - is it all right? SM: 52:35 Yep AH: 52:35 It began and ended at different points for different people. Um, So I do not think there is one answer to that question. For me, I would say, uh, it probably began in 1964 and it probably ended, well, it did not end, uh, because I remained involved actively in the women's movement. For me, perhaps it still continues, but, uh, the at least that piece of it, the women's movement, piece of it still continues. It is still an ongoing struggle. It is changed and transformed, but, uh, I-I would say it began in 1964 for me, because that is when I became active in the civil rights movement, and that is when the civil rights movement became a kind of living part of my life, although even in college, I had become aware of it, though not particularly active in it, um, I would say, um, that the (19)60s ends, uh, in some sort of grassroots way. Um, by the early part of the (19)70s, (19)73 the withdrawal from Vietnam, you might say was, the is a good day to end it. Now, what succeeds that, of course, is just a ton of legislation and policy changes around the issues I care about, including affirmative action, uh, for blacks and whites and for women and so on. SM: 54:20 Yeah, I have, I have a question here. Uh, I have a question here because during the period when boomers were growing up and young, um, we had the Brown versus Board of Education. And then we had the Civil Rights Act. We had the Voting Rights Act (19)64 and (19)65, um, so, and then, of course, Roe v Wade, which was a major, major happening. We actually have we had programs on that before I left school, about the threat that it may try to be changed back. Um, that is why the Stevens Point there, right? [chuckling] That is really big. Um, but getting back to the question, when you are talking about women. And of course, I am talking about the boomers, which are now. The oldest ones are 63 and the youngest ones are 46, um, what laws are the most important that you feel for all women? Uh, in and-and when I break it down here, it is hard to not only in terms of equality, but where, uh, discrimination was present, and where it has been improved, uh where, uh, uh, the whole business of the labor force, uh, equal pay for equal work, uh, the whole issue, I noticed there is so much here, so you cannot talk about all of it. But what would be the key points, the legal issues that you feel have really changed how we look at women today? AH: 55:48 For women? SM: 55:48 Yes. AH: 55:49 Um, I-I would say, uh, e-equal pay. Equal pay is not as important as, um, occupational segregation. Uh, it symbolically is important, but, uh, the bunches of studies now that have demonstrated that pay actually that that equal pay legislation is ineffective unless occupational segregation is simultaneously, uh, eliminated and the shifts in occupational segregation have been, uh, not insignificant, especially at the professional and financial levels, but not very, um, uh, I would say, marginal at the level of the trades and the, um, under crafts, uh, which isn't to say that they have not been there. So, the numbers of carpenters, of female carpenters, have doubled from two to 4 percent, you know, like that. But still the notion that, um, occupational segregation is, um, an invalid, inappropriate, um, uh, you know, claim, which was the claim that, um, both men and women agreed to for years that is gone, and it is gone not through a single law, but through a series of successive changes, starting with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, uh, with Title Seven of that act, and, uh, through the actions of the EEOC, uh, continuing through the, uh, Labor Department, new labor department regulations and so on. So I would say that is one big change. The second one has to do with reproductive rights, although I agree with you that that is now threatened. Well, I guess we will see how effective it will be, and where I think, uh, the beginning of the challenge to that, I would probably date to Griswold. So that is 1967 that is the Connecticut decision, which makes that illegal for states to limit the distribution of birth control only to married women. You know, women are entitled to birth control whether or not they are married. Uh, and that continues, of course, then through the abortion, uh, protests and demonstrations, and then Roe v Wade, but in there you have to sort of put things the cultural things like Title Nine, you know, women should be able to participate in sports. Um, I do not know quite where that belongs, but I think that was a big one. Uh, and in the reproductive rights thing, there are a whole series of things that sort of tentacles that that leads to including, um, the, uh, court decision on GE which, um, uh, said it was really okay for insurers not to insure pregnancy and childbirth. And then the 1979 government, um, uh, legislation which says nope, and people who provide health insurance for their workers have to include, if you provide any health insurance, then pregnancy has to be so the so-called Pregnancy Disability Act. So, so that whole sequence of things you know, who controls reproduction, who is responsible? How people deal with it, the Hyde Amendment. You know that there are a whole series of we could separate them out, if you like, but if you wanted to summarize it, I would say, uh, the thing that was important in this period was the recognition that, uh, reproductive issues were not were neither wholly private, that is that they were not within the control and purview of women and their husbands, and at the same time they-they were not wholly public either. You know that we, and I think that is what the big debate is about now, but I do not think it takes place just on the yes abortion, no abortion. I think it takes place on all these other fronts too. SM: 1:00:57 Do you, do you feel that when women have to leave work, they get six weeks no pay. Is what happens, is- AH: 1:01:05 12 weeks SM: 1:01:06 I-is it 12? AH: 1:01:06 [inaudible] family medical leave- SM: 1:01:09 My, uh, my niece just, uh, says, in New York State, she could only get, um, a month and a half, six weeks AH: 1:01:17 Family medical leave act. It is a federal act, says 12 weeks. It does not cover some people. Maybe she is in a non-covered job. SM: 1:01:25 They do not get paid either. AH: 1:01:26 But there is no pay- SM: 1:01:27 Yeah. AH: 1:01:27 -for it. SM: 1:01:27 Is that right? AH: 1:01:29 That is right, although many employers now provide, Columbia being one of them, now provide maternity leaves, which they did not. But the difference is, you know, there is a maternity leave and there is a parental leave, so that 12 weeks unpaid anybody can take the maternity leave. Or the, you know, the pregnancy leave is available, often out of sick pay, often for women, at the cost of giving out, you know, a vacation or something else. Not good. Not good. Much better in Europe. SM: 1:02:05 One of the questions I have been asking everyone centers on a question that we, um, asked Senator Evan Muskie (?) when we took a group of students to Washington in the mid (19)90s, before he passed away, he was not well. He had been in the hospital. And this was organized through, uh, arrangements with Senator Gaylord Nelson, who I got to know quite well, senator from Wisconsin. And the question that the students came up with, because they did not grow up in the (19)60s, and, and they had watched the film of 1968 and they saw the students and the police could club each other. They knew that the Kennedy and King had been killed, and, uh, that Johnson had resigned, and Tet and all the other things. So they knew all this. The question they asked is, do you feel that the boomer generation, the generation of 74 million, will go to its grave like the Civil War generation, not truly healing from the really strong divisions that tore the nation apart in that time? They want to know, number one, from Senator muskie, were we close to, uh, breaking apart as a nation because of the burnings in the cities and all the things that are happening, i.e. close to a second civil war? A-and secondly, uh, with all the divisions between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, uh, those who supported the troops, those who did not for the war, against the war and all these divisions, um, you know, the question was, are they going to go to their grave, like many in the Civil War did, uh, that had all these reunions, but they still never truly healed from the Civil War. What are your thoughts? AH: 1:03:48 I think the only people who go to their graves thinking that are people who do not know any history, because it does not take much history to recognize that every decade or so, every generation, uh, certainly has seen equally powerful divisions which have threatened to tear the nation apart, and which, as you know, in the case of the Civil War, sometimes did tear the nation apart. But you know, divisions, not only over the Civil War, but divisions over reconstruction, uh- SM: 1:04:24 Make sure, we are doing okay. Yep! Okay. AH: 1:04:27 Uh, divisions over reconstruction. Divisions over free silver tore the nation apart. Divisions over, um, uh, you know, World War One and whether we should go to war divisions over the New Deal and the Social Security Act of I mean, you could go on and on. And you know, the 1930s certainly saw its, uh, you know, its marches and people in the street and demonstrations and-and attacks. And you know, people thought the political consequences of that would never end, and not only did they end, but they are now some of the most popular programs that we have. So, I do not know how you-you know the divisions over the Vietnam War, to say nothing of the other divisions were powerful and deep. And, you know, we got beaten up by cops on horses. We did not understand why they were wielding clubs at us or-or, you know, pushing us around at the Pentagon, or arresting we, you know, we thought we were doing the right democratic thing. And 20 years later, do we even remember that? No, those are the stories that we tell our children. They are not, you know, sources of division. I do not know, huge divisions over the civil rights marches and-and would anybody say those tore, you know, Brown v Board of Education, Yeah, they tore the nation apart. But the rifts aren't permanent. I think that what we see now is a, um, is a very articulate, uh, right wing made more articulate by the kind of media and sources that are available to them. So when 200 Tea Party people meet in Boston, 200 is almost nothing, but when every television channel and Fox News Features them so that every household gets a sense that people are uncomfortable. They seem more powerful than in fact they are so no, I would say, um, if you know any history, you know that divisions are, are not unhealthy. I, I wish, I wish there were less racial division. I wish I were not seeing these attacks on Obama. You know, as a socialist, is that a euphemism for the N word? Is that a- you know, you, you really that that scares me a little bit. I wish we had a Supreme Court that, you know, would you know restrain the use of weapons or the handling of weapons. I think you know these recent decisions about, um, allowing weapons on the public streets of big cities without, you know, monitoring or checking or I think those are absurd. SM: 1:07:54 Do not know why that is doing it. Here we go. All right, uh, I want to mention that, um, Senator Muskie, when he responded he did not even mention 68 he said he did not even talk about it, um, because they thought he was there at the convention. He would, that is what they were asking. He said, um, I just saw the Ken Burns series in the Civil War, and we lost 430,000 men in that war and the South almost lost their entire generation. So, um, he said, we have not healed since the Civil War. And then he explained why when I am talking about it, uh, and he said, all you need to do is go to get his emergency (?). When you drive on one side, uh, the south just leaves flags. In the north, you do not, you do not see anything. [recording pauses] AH: 1:08:40 Do you have another tape? SM: 1:08:41 Yeah, I do have another tape. I do not know why it is stopping. There you go. Um, anyways, uh, one, one of the other things of during that particular period, um, in the (19)60s- [recording pauses]. Alright. When you think of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, um, three slogans come to mind w-when I think of period different types of people. Number one was the slogan that Malcolm X gave, which is by any means necessary, symbolic of a more radical, violent group. The second one was Bobby Kennedy speech when they are words, when he said, um, some men, some men, sees things as they are, and ask, why? I see things that never were and asked, why not? And that was a Henry David Thoreau quote, but it was more symbolic of the activist mentality, uh, wanting to, uh, do positive things, things for justice and equality, you name it. And then third one was more kind of a hippie mentality, which was, uh, from a peer Max poster, uh, you do your thing. I will do mine. If by chance, we should get together, it will be beautiful. Which was kind of a hippie mentality. Um, and I thought that kind of civilized the, um, boomers when they were young, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, uh, maybe some of the ideas they carried on even into the (19)80s. Are there any slogans or quotes that you feel are important? The only other one that came out from us other people was we shall overcome, which was the Civil Rights- AH: 1:10:13 I like that. SM: 1:10:14 -and the John Kennedy quote, wh-um, uh, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Do you have some quotes that you feel, uh, really are symbolic of the period? AH: 1:10:31 The woman's, uh, movement. Uh, the woman's movement line was the personal is political, and that was one that was very influential for me. Um, I have to say that, uh, you do your thing, I will do my thing. Uh, that was the Cultural Revolution. You left thing. And maybe that is what distinguishes me from really, the boomer generation. I could not bear that slogan [laughing]. I could not stand it, and I thought, you know, it is an anti-political slogan. It is, uh, you know, let us just drift apart. Leave me alone and I will, you know, so, so no, that that was not what I thought the (19)60s was about. I thought the (19)60s was about, um, uh, uh, a fairer and I like the word fair better than I like the word, uh, equal, but, but I would say a fairer and more equal society, creating one for everybody. So. And I think to do that, we needed, we need the Robert Kennedy slogan. You know, I think that that is the most. SM: 1:11:46 Uh, I-I have a whole mess of questions here. We are going to cut some of these because we only have 10 more minutes here. Um, uh, all right, uh, w-what were some of the books? Now, we have talked about the feminine mystique. And certainly there were other writers that were important, Betty Friedan and, um, I know Susan Brown Miller has written some major books, uh- AH: 1:12:09 The people we read before we read Susan Brown Miller and Kate Millett and so on. SM: 1:12:14 Right. AH: 1:12:15 We read, um, uh, Herbert Marcuse, Norman O. Brown [Norman Oliver Brown], uh, you know, they were the precursors of this so Marcuse, uh, eros and civilizations. Freud's civilization, and its discontents. Uh, Norman O. Brown, life against death. Those were the books that we, uh-uh Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. So, before we were reading the women's books, we were reading in the late (19)60s, these books, and those were the books I was sometimes teaching. You know, of-of the women's books, uh Shulamith Firestone's [Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Feuerstein], uh, Dialectic of Sex [The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution] , uh, was important. Uh, Juliet Mitchell, the Long Revolution or no, I think the book was called Woman's Estate, uh, and then the popular books were Kate Millett, um, Germaine Greer, uh, Betty Friedan was old hat by the late (19)60s. I mean, for people like me, it is probably not for younger people. And then fiction, Marilyn French's the Women's Room. Um, Kathy Davidson, I have forgotten the name of that book, something divisions, sexual divisions or something. Um, Alix Kates Shulman, uh Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen. Uh, there was a lot of that, a lot of fiction going on. And then the, uh, black fiction, the African American women's fiction, beginning to emerge in the mid, uh, (19)70s. So, Toni Cade Bambara, um, uh, Toni Morrison, of course, [SM coughing]. Um, Alice Walker, not till later. But that is what we were. SM: 1:14:23 Was Carol Oaks, one of those? Uh- AH: 1:14:25 No. SM: 1:14:25 No? AH: 1:14:26 Uh, I mean, she was there but she was not from- SM: 1:14:30 [Interrupting and overlapping speech] Simone de Beauvoir- AH: 1:14:32 Simone de Beauvoir was enormously influential. Yes, yes, yeah. We read her early on, in fact, now when I teach that period, I start with Simone de Beauvoir. SM: 1:14:45 In terms of magazines, we all think of Ms., but were there other magazines that were influential? Uh- AH: 1:14:50 There were. SM: 1:14:52 -either underground papers or- AH: 1:14:55 Yeah, there were several of the underground papers. There was a paper called New Directions for Women, which was, which lasted about 15 years, and which was, um, you know, widely read. There was, um, uh, uh, underground paper called red rag. There was another one. There were several underground papers. I cannot remember the names of them all, but, oh, you know, we would get them all and devour them. Is, is, I think there were no, uh, the thing about Ms. was that it was a mass circulation magazine, and that is what made it different. The others had smaller circulations within the feminist, you know, intellectual, but Ms., really, you know, sort of extended beyond that, and that is what made it so important. SM: 1:15:54 I would like, uh, these are some female um, uh, leaders that have been come to the forefront in the last 30 some years. Um, if you just give your thoughts, just quick thoughts, it does not have to be anything in depth. Some are popular, and some are maybe not so popular. AH: 1:16:12 This is a trap, [laughing] SM: 1:16:13 It is not a trap. AH: 1:16:14 This is a Rorschach. SM: 1:16:15 Uh- AH: 1:16:15 [Laughing] SM: 1:16:17 Lynn Cheney. AH: 1:16:17 Yuck. SM: 1:16:17 [chuckling] Okay. Is that - you do not have to go any further. Do you want to say anything more? AH: 1:16:25 Yeah. I mean, I-I think, um, a very conservative woman, uh, somewhat hypocritical, uh, in my judgment, as a as a, um, uh, the chair of the NEH, which was when she first really came to my attention. Uh, she was enormously destructive, uh, both because she, uh, supported and, well, I would say it this way, she limited NEH support to projects which she found politically acceptable and correct, and that seemed to me to be a violation of the NEHS mission she excluded from panels people of varieties of political and social backgrounds and opinions. Uh, so, uh, right. SM: 1:17:22 Eleanor Roosevelt, AH: 1:17:24 Eleanor Roosevelt, one can only have admiration for. I mean, even though you could make positive and negative judgments about her, but she, she was, um, a far sighted and, uh, often a very courageous leader of women, uh, who was limited by her own, you know, politics and class and so on, but, uh, she was a great lady. SM: 1:17:58 Uh, two, uh, do two at a time here, uh, Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, because they were the most well-known. Seemed to be. AH: 1:18:07 Well, Condoleezza Rice neither had much to say or do about women's issues, so I cannot really speak to that. I, uh, did not much like her as a secretary of state because she was too war like and, um, uh, too closely tied to Bush administration policies which she supported. And I dislike, uh, Hillary Clinton. Uh, I find, you know, I have a lot of admiration for Hillary Clinton, though I do not always agree with what she says and does, particularly, did not agree with her stance on the welfare issue or its renewal, but on the other hand, she was very smart, she was thoughtful, she was responsive. Uh, she you know when as senator, she took reasonable positions on many issues. So if I had to choose between them, I, you can tell which one I choose. SM: 1:19:10 Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug. AH: 1:19:13 Uh, birds of a different feather, although, uh, very closely tied, Bella Abzug comes out of her radical background, and though she was an impossible person by all accounts, she was a ,uh, political force, and one has to both respect and admire that force. Uh, I wish she was still alive. I would love to hear her voice out there. Uh, Gloria Steinem has been a different kind of leader of women, um, very active on the range of you know, of women's issues per se, uh, Bella was more interested in broader issues. As well as women's issues, issues of human rights, issues of, uh, well, all the issues that came before the Senate, issues of corporate- SM: 1:20:07 [inaudible] Yep. AH: 1:20:12 But, um, whereas Gloria Steinem has a sort of narrower mandate, uh, h-her greatest contributions, it seems to me, uh, were both in the founding of Ms., but then also in the um, uh, the effort to create a kind of inclusionary woman's movement, as opposed to one that was divided so... SM: 1:20:40 Um, Lindy Boggs- AH: 1:20:43 Yeah. SM: 1:20:43 -and Angela Davis [both laughing] Lindy- AH: 1:20:49 I am going to leave Lindy Boggs out, partly because I do not know enough about her to make quick judgments. About Angela Davis, uh, you know, what is there to say? You know, for her moment in time, uh, you know, she was, uh, uh, just an enormous inspiration to large numbers of young people. You know, black, beautiful, a woman, uh, concerned with feminist issues, a pioneer in trying to sort of, um, think about the relationship between race and gender in a constructive way, rather than in a divisive way. Uh, you know, uh...I do not know about the last 20 years. I mean, uh, you know, she seems to me now to have been sort of repeating what she said earlier, so, but that first decade or so, uh, in the (19)70s, early part of the (19)80s, um, she was terrific. SM: 1:22:13 Shirley Chisholm and Phyllis Schlafly. AH: 1:22:15 [laughing] There are two more birds of a very different feather. For, um, Shirley Chisholm, I have only, uh, admiration, um, you know, in all the ways that she broke new ground and did it, uh, um, not in A Bella absent way, not by, you know, pushing forcefully, but by gently opening doors, which opened partly because she was so, you know, she was insistent and yet not strident. I guess is the- I suppose some people would disagree with that, but I think that at the moment that she chose to run for president, for example, and to make a statement. Those were very brave things for a woman to do, and for a black woman to, you know, to take on, to step out, um, know that that is that took some courage. About Phyllis Schlafly, what can I say? I-I disagree with practically every word she has written. I do not know what she is like as a human being. Uh, people seem to like and respect her. Uh, I think, um, uh, she is rooted in an ideology that, um, uh, does not seem to me to be, uh, to work anymore. Uh, she adopts, uh, hypocritical positions with relationship to how she herself lives, you know, she is, she is, uh, you know, argues for particular kinds of lifestyles for women, and then lives a whole another lifestyle herself. Um, I just, I mean, I know she has been an important force and has persuaded a lot of people to move in her direction. But, but I cannot, um- SM: 1:24:23 At the CPAK conference boy, she is popular. AH: 1:24:26 Yeah-yeah. SM: 1:24:26 We are coming up - because she is historic. AH: 1:24:28 So is Sarah Palin. So ask me about Sarah- SM: 1:24:31 Yeah, exactly. Sarah, Sarah is on, Sarah is- AH: 1:24:32 She is on your next- SM: 1:24:34 Actually, I had a co - uh, Sarah Palin and Bernadine Dorn, because, uh, you have got, uh- AH: 1:24:39 Why would you pair them together? Bernie- SM: 1:24:41 Well I got [mumbling] Sarah just happened to be on top of each other. AH: 1:24:45 Oh okay. Um, one at a time [laugh] SM: 1:24:49 Yeah. AH: 1:24:51 Bernadine Dorn, uh, um, you know, she was one of our heroines of the 1970s SM: 1:24:49 [muffled] AH: 1:24:59 Oh I was going to say she was one of our heroines of the 1970s even though, uh, the, you know, the radicalism turned some people off, and uh, you know, the, the sense that she would resort to violence and so on, though both Ed Ayers and Bernadine have since said that they, they never, um, targeted people that they-they targeted buildings or, um, institutions, but not people, and that the damage that was done, and there was damage done was often inadvertent, but still, she was, uh, Bernadine. Bernadine Dorn had a kind of presence among people, a lot of them, like me, who never could have imagined ourselves, um, y-you know, actually committing a violent act, but who were angry enough that we, you know, might have wanted to or wished to. So, um, uh, About Sarah Palin, what can I say? She seems to me to be a sort of inversion of feminism, uh, a kind of person who, uh, would only have been, could only have been possible in the light of a feminist movement, and yet, who undermines everything that feminism has ever stood for. So, so I am, uh, you know? I mean, I-I am only not angry about it, because I do not think, at least, I hope it is that the campaign is not going to go anywhere, but in the sense that, um, you know, her, uh, capacity to be elected governor, her capacity to do that with, uh, several children, her, uh, uh, capacity to have a baby and go right back on the campaign trail and so on. All those freedoms were, uh, freedoms which were, um, produced by an active women's movement. But that active women's movement had a sense of solidarity with other women as women, uh, had a sense of, um, uh, commitment to children, not the, you know, the dragging around of a, of a baby just to demonstrate that she, you know, was big enough to handle this child who had been, you know, born damaged. Uh, of that I, I mean, I think contempt isn't too strong a word. I-I, um, I find it really troubling that, uh, women can, you know, sort of place her in the category of a feminist camp when- SM: 1:28:16 There is another female Twitter. Now, I forget her name. She was a congresswoman. AH: 1:28:19 Yes, from Michigan, Michelle Bachman. AH: 1:28:20 Yeah. SM: 1:28:20 Two peas in a pod. AH: 1:28:27 Yes, and she is another one like that, who you could not imagine getting where they were. And yet, once there, they want to deny other women whatever you know whether it is their reproductive you know they have made their own reproductive choices. Let other women make their- they have made their own marital choices, their own lifestyle choices. SM: 1:28:54 The, the only other names I had here, and we are I had mentioned is Susan Brown Miller, Kate Miller, Charmaine, Erin Helen. Helen Gurley Brown. I, I am actually, uh meeting two weeks the person [mumbling] AH: 1:29:06 She was my student. SM: 1:29:07 Oh she was? AH: 1:29:08 Jennifer Scanlon, yeah. AH: 1:29:09 Yeah. SM: 1:29:09 Yeah. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Alice Kessler Harris Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kessler-Harris, Alice ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; Columbia University; Kessler-Harris, Alice--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Alice Kessler-Harris is Professor Emerita of American History at Columbia University. She is also Professor Emerita in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Dr. Kessler-Harris specializes in the history of American labor and the comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.59 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 89:14 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/f904cd28f6fa6c08c389e0540fe5a0c3.jpg ca65acf60dc747a7d737dcdb774a156d https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a93884fd63c45cab873e3c6e6d3be1a5.mp3 ef38146f33475123de975a394f10f5b2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-03-16 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Michael Donnelly Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Biographical Text Michael Donnelly is an environmental activist, author, and one of the founders of Friends of Opal Creek. Donnelly has been writing on environmental issues and stories focused on Native American and indigenous peoples in the northwest. He is a member of the American Indian Movement. Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Martin Luther King Jr; Vietnam War; Kent State shootings; Cultural changes; Shift away from religion; Michigan anti-war march, Environmental Movement; Native American/ American Indian Movement; John Trudell; Yippies; Students for a Democratic Society; Weathermen; Peace Corps.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr; Vietnam War; Kent State shootings; Cultural changes; Shift away from religion; Michigan anti-war march, Environmental Movement; Native American/ American Indian Movement; John Trudell; Yippies; Students for a Democratic Society; Weathermen; Peace Corps.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 136:34 Subject LCSH Environmentalists; Authors, American--20th century; Indigenous peoples--United States; Donnelly, Michael--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Michael Donnelly Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 16 March 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two. Could you give me some background in terms of where you were born, your early influences in terms of the people who had the greatest impact on you, and any role models or heroes that inspired you when you were young? Because I know you are a very important activist on the environment. MD (00:00:27): Okay. I was born in Flint, Michigan, and I grew up in Flint, Michigan. And I guess the biggest important influence on me is the Catholic Church. From an Irish Catholic family, and went to Catholic schools through 12th grade, and I was in a Catholic seminary in Detroit, Michigan for 9th and 10th grade or seminary. And a lot of my early influences were people in the church. And I have the whole clan structure of our family. I had a lot of great influences, my grandparents and aunts and uncles and so on. And my dad was a huge influence on me. And he was a junior college English instructor and baseball coach who got his doctorate degree and eventually became president of the college and was pioneer of community colleges in the country. And he was, I guess you could call him a Roosevelt liberal type. SM (00:01:41): How did you end up going from Michigan to Oregon? MD (00:01:49): At Michigan State University I met my wife in grad school there. And she had gone to undergraduate school at Lewis and Clarke College in Portland. Before that though, when I was a junior in college in 1970, my dad was hired to set up the community college system for the whole state in Nevada. And so that was the first time. Yeah, he set up five colleges in seven years there. Now they have more students than the whole rest of the college system in the whole state. And so, the first time I ever saw the West was when I caught a plane, which was rare back in (19)70. I never caught any planes. But at Christmas break in a blizzard in Canton, Michigan... And then went off in Reno. The first time I had seen the West, and I loved it. So then when I met Nina, my wife, was [inaudible] college, she-she had grown up in Marin County, California, and we had come to Oregon. My God, Oregon. SM (00:02:53): Well, obviously this is the (19)60s and the (19)70s. MD (00:02:58): Yeah. SM (00:02:58): We are talking about here? And again, I got really a lot of specific questions, but there is also some broad ones too, and this is one of the broad ones. When you think of that time when you were in college, those experiences, I think you graduated from a community college and then you went off to Michigan State and then you were off to Oregon. Do you remember about those times? Was there something in those times that inspired you to become an activist or you just started seeing things with a bigger lens? MD (00:03:31): When I was young, I was growing up in inner city Flint, as it shifted from being white neighborhood to [inaudible], and that had a huge impact on me. And I got involved early on with the Urban Coalition, which was an attempt to bridge the racial divide in the area. I was one of the youngest people involved in it. When I was in the seminary, Dr. Martin Luther King came to Detroit and gave a speech, fabulous speech. SM (00:04:02): And you saw it? MD (00:04:03): Yeah, I saw it. SM (00:04:03): Oh, wow. You are live. Wow. MD (00:04:04): Yeah, so all of us seminarians, we made signs and we rolled out and joined all the neighbors and everybody, and we all walked downtown to see the speech. And that was pretty moving to me. I saw my first [inaudible]. SM (00:04:15): What year was that? MD (00:04:16): It was in (19)63. SM (00:04:17): Okay. MD (00:04:18): Three. Oh, no, it must have been (19)64. Because LBJ was president and Nicholas Katzenbach was the attorney general then. SM (00:04:29): Yes. MD (00:04:30): They were protesting though. And so that had a big impact on me. I grew up, part of my Catholic upbringing is being pushed into athletics. So athletics was really... For anything about athletics, the best thing about it was it broke down a lot of race barriers. [inaudible 00:04:52] A young guy, he wanted to play with the best athletes and did not matter to us what color you were. So I got involved that way. That was my first. SM (00:05:03): That you are the third only person of all the people I have interviewed outside the politicians who met him, but actually you saw him speak. How close were you to the stage or you were up in the audience someplace? How long did he speak? MD (00:05:20): He spoke I think at least an hour. And he was speaking from the steps of a church. And the crowd was just surrounding all the blocks all around there. I was probably a half a block away. I could barely see him, but they had speakers set up and you could hear. SM (00:05:40): Oh, so you heard the speakers then? MD (00:05:42): Yeah, I basically heard speakers. I could not really see any expressions. I could just see little tiny people up there. But it was incredible. SM (00:05:52): Yeah. I know about Flint because when I was at Ohio State, I went through Flint on the way to Oakland University. I think I had a friend there, that worked there, and I remember being in the bus station downtown Detroit and Flint, and I believe that is where, what's his name? Earvin, the great basketball player came from there. MD (00:06:17): Oh, Magic Johnson? SM (00:06:18): Yeah. Magic Johnson. Yeah. MD (00:06:21): He was from East Lansing. SM (00:06:22): Yeah, he was from the area. Okay. Now you are an athlete, you are in a Catholic school, now you are in a seminary. You saw the differences between black and white, which was one of the biggest issues of the day. And of course, Dr. King. As a young person, were you one of the youngest people that was as a white person involved in this? MD (00:06:42): Probably. Certainly when we set up the Urban Coalition in Flint, I was the youngest. I was certainly the youngest white person, and there were not that many white people at first you know. SM (00:06:53): What was the purpose of the Urban Coalition? MD (00:06:55): It was to try to try to just deal with the race disparity, calm things down. I mean, it was a rather dangerous time to be a teenager, whether you were black or white in a situation like that, because there was a lot of stuff going on. That is why I got involved in it, mostly cause of that. And then try to get local businesses to hire some of the young black guys in the neighborhood because there was just no jobs for most teenagers. And if you were black, you did not have a chance. SM (00:07:29): Right. We all know what happened when Dr. King was assassinated. All the things that happened in the cities was pretty sad. MD (00:07:40): We kept a [inaudible] on that. We had a huge memorial, and rally, and a march. And rioting did not break out in Flint. Then it did during the same time as Detroit Riot, though, so it got pretty scary then. But yeah, I think it worked out. SM (00:08:01): What were your thoughts at that time on the Vietnam War? Were you one of those individuals like I was? And the many that were subject to the draft? Or your number was high, or how did that work out? MD (00:08:14): Well first, when I first started hearing about Vietnam, it was actually, I was hearing about Laos because some of the older guys I know were going into the service and they were going to be sent to Laos. So, it was like, I did not know what Vietnam was at first. Then by the time I graduated high school in 1967, it was a pretty well-known thing. And then I went off to college and some of my friends enlisted, and a few of them came back wounded and had all kinds of stories. And then I was in the first draft lottery that year, 1970, and my number was number 32. SM (00:08:53): 32? MD (00:08:54): Yeah. SM (00:08:55): That is not good. MD (00:08:56): No. So I immediately got drafted, and so I applied for conscientious objector status at that time and still got drafted. And then I went through about, oh, from about mid-1970 to the end of (19)72, where I was just in the back and forth battle with the draft board. And I had to appear before the draft board. My argument [inaudible] any type to begin with. And then after about, I was, what did I call it? My draft status went to 1AO. 1AO. Objector. And they kept telling me that they were going to find a spot from me to where I could work alternative service, dealing with finding wounded guy's hospital facilities near their hometowns. And about two or three times that was getting it and started in the process, and that just never happened. And then all of a sudden out of the blue, they just discharged me. SM (00:10:10): Wow. MD (00:10:11): I guess it was they had enough of me. One of my uncles, my dad's brother, Dr. Bill Donley, he was a pediatrician in Pontiac, Michigan, and he was one of the people that, he was a role model to me because he was involved in the open housing movement in early days. [inaudible] suburban pediatrics practice. So he just opened up an inner city one. But he also, he was a World War II Navy officer, and he was totally opposed to the war, and he was involved with the people that put on the moratorium, and he was also involved with the bunch doctors that were helping people get medical deferment. SM (00:10:58): Oh, wow. And yeah, the moratorium, I think was (19)69, I think, if I remember. MD (00:10:58): Yeah. He had been involved helping on that. He was a great guy. And my dad too. My dad was one of the first college presidents that telegraphed LBJ to end the war. SM (00:11:14): Well, that is something I want to hear about. Because your dad was involved in the community college system in Colorado? MD (00:11:22): Nevada. SM (00:11:23): Nevada. And he was the president of what now? MD (00:11:26): Well, he worked his way up from being an English teacher and baseball coach. He is another World War II vet that used the GI bill to further his education. And then he became the president of Flint Junior College. And then that was at the point when community colleges were being invented. And he and Charles Stewart Mott. Know who he is? SM (00:11:52): Charles... No, I do not. MD (00:11:54): He was the top shareholder in General Motors. He has got foundations that have outlived him, and he was a very instrumental guy. He was a person that is a role model. He's one of the greatest philanthropists ever in my mind. And he was totally loyal to Flint. He served as mayor for seven years, and he had an instrumental role in getting the sit-down strike settled peacefully. And the union being recognized, and General Motors being the top corporation [inaudible] over 40 years. But he also, he and a friend of his, Frank Manley, are the guys that invented community schools. And it started in Flint. And so, when [inaudible] community colleges, [inaudible] called Mott Community College, donated the land for it, and shook down all of his industrial cronies for money to build the college. And he and my dad were partners on that. And then in 1970, Nevada wanted to get a college, [inaudible]. Howard Hughes knew CS Mott, so CS Mott recommended my dad. Howard Hughes gave a $250,000 donation. And that is how the community college system in Nevada got started. SM (00:13:07): Oh my gosh. That was around the time he was, was that when he was kind of hibernating? And the whole... MD (00:13:12): Oh, yeah. My dad never, ever met him. He went through intermediaries. But these industrial philanthropists saw the potential of community college. Then my dad, because of that... He was the President of the Association of Community College Presidents and helped get them accredited all over the country. He traveled the country getting community colleges set up. SM (00:13:40): Wow. That is a very important phenomenon during the time when boomers were young. Because I actually went to a community college for two years, Broome Community College in Binghamton. And then I went to Binghamton University to get my history degree, and then I went off to Ohio State. But I know how important community colleges were because it was an excellent education for less money. MD (00:14:06): Oh, yeah. SM (00:14:07): Now your dad sent a letter off to the president. Did he ever get a response? MD (00:14:14): I do not think he did. He sent a couple different tele... the only reason I know that, is there is this famous incident when students took over his office, the president's office about the war. And my dad just opened up his door and he said, "Hey, look, I have already sent the telegrams. Here you go." But he was ahead of them. SM (00:14:38): Now, obviously you are an activist today. We are going to get into that about the environment and the forests and everything. But now you are not an activist yet. You are a very involved person. You are working together, bringing people together, and then going off to college and everything. What did you think of the anti-war people that you saw on your college campuses? MD (00:15:04): At the community college there was not a whole lot of activity, though the Chicago Convention, sure amped that up. The (19)68 convention. And quite a few of the people that were active in the anti-war movement were people that I'd gone to Catholic school with. And so I liked them and they were able to reach me pretty easily. But when I went off to Michigan State, it really got amped up. Because Kent State happened during that time and all sorts of stuff. The invasion of Cambodia. I should say, that also was a very interesting event in Flint that I went to. The SDS, the Weathermen, when the Weathermen broke off from the SDS, they held a thing called the War Council in Flint, right before they went underground. And they rented this place in the inner city, one of the black clubs, and they had this event. So I and a few of my friends went down to it. And that was an eyeopener. That was something totally different than any of us had ever thought about. SM (00:16:08): Explain what happened there. MD (00:16:11): They basically ranted and raved and ranted and raved and called for armed insurrection. That is, it basically. And I do not know, I am way too much of a pacifist for that. I was completely shocked by that. SM (00:16:30): That was Bernardine Dohrn was not it? She was the president, I think. MD (00:16:34): Yeah, she was there. I think Mark Rudd [inaudible]. SM (00:16:37): Yeah, and Mark Rudd. And there were... MD (00:16:40): Quite a few people there. SM (00:16:41): Her husband too, I think was in that group. Bernardine Dohrn. MD (00:16:45): Yeah. It was very strange. And I remember that one of the more radical inner city churches, Sacred Heart Church, allowed all these people to sleep in their gym and this and that. Anyway, so that was the way more radical fringe as an anti-war movement. And then I went off to Michigan State. There was a very big movement, but there was a lot of infighting going on because of the, you know, you had your Marxist wing, you had your pacifist wing. I had gone to a few organizing meetings for demonstrations, and I just could not deal with it. I do not know what it was. It was just too much of an intellectual exercise and a lot of people making points and self-aggrandizing and so on. I went to these major anti-war rallies that were going on during that time. And then the student strike in 1970 took place there, and there were thousands of students out the street. Took over the main thoroughfares and cut off traffic, and fought it out with the cops there too. The people did. And there was a lot of tear gas craziness. But by that time, things were getting pretty polarized. It carved out strong positions on the war. And of course that was before I got drafted. But by the time I was drafted, I was thoroughly opposed to the war. SM (00:18:20): Now you were there through (19)71? MD (00:18:23): Yes. SM (00:18:24): It is interesting because I was at Ohio State in (19)71, (19)72, and I remember one of my friends at Ohio State's best friend was in grad school at Michigan State. And we drove there, and as we were coming into the campus, we were asked to get out of the car. They thought we were infiltrators, right? MD (00:18:41): [inaudible] SM (00:18:42): And that was in the (19)71, so it was still happening there, and the students were on the streets protesting and everything. MD (00:18:50): Yeah, it was a big deal because Michigan State University has a huge police science academy there, and they were training [inaudible] for the South Vietnamese for a while. And so people really wanted to shut that down. So, I think it was pretty polarized. SM (00:19:08): These interviews are all about you and all the people I interview because I get into the basic questions that I ask everybody, but it is the personal stuff that is most important to me. During your years there at Michigan State, whether it was two years or whatever, you obviously saw the protests and went to the protests, but were there any great speakers who came in to address the campus that you saw? Any programs that you went to that had really an impact on your life? MD (00:19:38): Yeah. Senator Wayne Morse came to the Michigan State. SM (00:19:41): Big time. MD (00:19:42): And he was one of the only two people to vote against the war. So we made all these signs, Wayne Morse for president, and we went. He was... That was highly impressive to me. SM (00:19:54): He is from Oregon. MD (00:19:55): I know. Maybe one reason I came here, I do not know. That and Ken Kesey. SM (00:20:01): Right. MD (00:20:01): And my wife, of course. So, I think Wayne Morse was probably the greatest speaker I saw at address the war. SM (00:20:12): Did he speak in a gym, or in a room? MD (00:20:18): It was a, like a theater kind of performing arts hall, probably 3000 people. SM (00:20:26): Was it an evening or daytime program? MD (00:20:27): An evening, yeah. SM (00:20:29): Was it tense? MD (00:20:29): It was right by my dorm, so it was pretty easy. SM (00:20:32): So it was packed? Was he the only speaker? Did he have a Q&A too after he spoke? MD (00:20:42): No, he did not. But another time I saw Dick Gregory speak, he did have a Q&A after. SM (00:20:47): Oh, he is another big one. MD (00:20:48): And he was another really good one that influenced me. I was really impressed by him. SM (00:20:54): And what was, if you can remember, it has been a while, but I remember all my speakers too in college. What was the main thrusts of Senator Morse's speech? MD (00:21:06): Basically that the war was illegal and needed to end immediately, and it violated all American principles and democratic principles. And he just laid it out simply that I think he's the first person I heard ever say that, that Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese had used our constitution as their model. SM (00:21:33): Which is true. MD (00:21:35): Yeah, I believe that is true. I have always been told it was true, because I heard Senator Wayne Morse say it was true. SM (00:21:41): And also he admired Thomas Jefferson. He was a big Jefferson fan. MD (00:21:46): Oh, yeah. SM (00:21:47): Truman missed an opportunity there. MD (00:21:52): Yeah. SM (00:21:53): How about, were there any bands or performers that you saw during those years at Michigan State that were? MD (00:22:00): Oh, yeah, there was. I saw all kinds of musicians and performers that were in that time. But I think the ones that were the most political were, I saw the Jefferson Airplane and John Sebastian. Along with a number of other groups in an outdoor concert. And they hammered away at it. They had a decided anti-war platform they were putting out. SM (00:22:30): When Kent State happened, your school was still in session, correct? MD (00:22:34): Yes. SM (00:22:35): How did you guys find out about it? MD (00:22:38): Oh, it spread like wildfire through the dorms and to the college. Lots of misinformation too. I mean, the misinformation had police getting killed and all sorts of stuff. So it took a little while to figure it all out. First we all went and hit the TV to find out what was going on. And I think it was almost just immediately there was a huge protest. Calls for [inaudible] strike. SM (00:23:07): And did your school shut down early because of it? MD (00:23:12): The school kept going. The student’s kind of forced the strike. SM (00:23:16): Okay. MD (00:23:17): Students took over the administration building. The police came. It was a wild time. I think it was more of a voluntary, it was voluntary. Whether you abided by the strike or not, the school kept going. SM (00:23:32): Who was the president of Michigan State then? Do you remember? MD (00:23:35): I cannot remember. SM (00:23:37): Because that person [inaudible] MD (00:23:40): Right. I cannot believe I cannot remember his name. He was the first black president, you know? I could undoubtedly look it up. SM (00:23:51): Yeah. But those were sometimes, I will tell you. What do you think when you think of the (19)60s? And again, I say the (19)60s went right until about (19)73, (19)74, because... What do you think were the watershed moments that, in your opinion? When did the (19)60s begin in your eyes? MD (00:24:18): I think they probably began with the assassination of President Kennedy. That opened up a lot of peoples' eyes to hey, things are not quite what they seem. SM (00:24:29): And when did you feel personally in your life that the (19)60s had ended? MD (00:24:40): I do not think they have, in the sense that, I think the major contribution of the (19)60s was a rise in consciousness. A willingness of people to challenge the dominant paradigm, and to figure it out on their own without some authorities interpreting. And being the middle man and what reality is, and I think that was blasted out forever by the (19)60s. That was a big peak. SM (00:25:12): Is there one, you have already mentioned quite a few that could have had an impact on you. Is there one event that had the greatest impact on you personally when you were young? MD (00:25:33): Yeah. The funny thing is, I think it is LBJ's resignation. SM (00:25:38): Explain your reasoning for that. MD (00:25:41): Because I felt it was the first time that the government was held accountable. That [inaudible] the government was acting badly, and the person behind it all was going to take the fall for it. It was something that all of us really wanted to see, and it actually happened. SM (00:26:03): What do you think, when we are talking about boomers, at least one third of the people I have interviewed are not boomers? They were born before (19)46. But when you think of the 1950s, we are talking now about the (19)60s, but in the (19)50s, the boomers were really in elementary school. Well, they were in... Post-war, of course, they were in diapers in the first five years. And then because in the (19)50s, they were in elementary school or beginnings of junior high. Your thoughts on, what was it about the (19)50s that created the (19)60s in your view? MD (00:26:49): Oh, maybe rock and roll. I mean, things were starting to shift. There was rise of... The cultural stuff was changing. Rhythm and blues was happening. Black culture was getting more play. It existed. The big part of it, I think, I think there was a cultural shift that was starting in the (19)50s. So I was kind of completely ensconced in the Catholic Church. I still feel that the reverberations going on around that things are starting to change. SM (00:27:33): Well, you're talking about going to the Catholic Church. You know, the (19)50s, one of the observations we find is that many of the boomer children are going to church, synagogue. They were going every Sunday. And then as we got to the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, that was not happening anymore. Many were not going. They went inside themselves more. Like the spirituality changed. And that was part of the communal movement too. But your thoughts on just, if you're devout Catholic, just what happened to the attendance and why it all of a sudden, fewer were going to church as they got older? MD (00:28:19): Well, I think the Catholic Church got on the wrong side of the two greatest moral issues of the day. And one was population, and the other is the war. I think they were on the wrong side of it, and I think they lost a lot of credibility. I do not think they ever recovered. I was taught, when I was applying for my conscientious objector status, I met with Monsignor Sheridan, who had been my pastor all my life. He pushed me into the seminary and everything. And while he agreed with me that I was a conscientious objector, he was going on and on about, "But do not you realize we're over there in Vietnam defending the Catholics from the north?" And then he closed with a rant about abortion. It was like... I mean, it was clearly, there was a shift that took place that the church was on the wrong side of. When I went into the seminary in the early (19)60s, John Kennedy was President, a Catholic president. John Paul the 23rd was Pope, a very popular Pope. Church was in a heyday. And there were 242 guys in my freshman class. And four years later, only 14 graduated. And a big shift took place right there in the middle of the (19)60s. And I think that the church was not very forceful on civil rights either. They should have taken a much bigger lead than that, I think. SM (00:29:45): Yeah. I can remember my grandfather was a Methodist minister, so we went every Sunday. And then I went off to school and it was more logistics than anything else for me. But there was something about the messages also within the church. This is just my thoughts on your thoughts. The messages in the (19)50s within the churches was... They were just moral messages or they were more simple messages. They were not worldwide messages. And Dr. King was such a rare breed because he was talking about, the black ministers were talking about justice in their churches. And I am not sure if the white churches were, or the synagogues. I do not know what they were doing. And so, the social conscience became part of the message of many of the religious leaders as we go into the (19)60s. And at the same time that was happening, more and more young people were not going to church or synagogue or... I find it ironic that that was actually happening. Just your thoughts on that? Is my observation, right? MD (00:30:59): Yeah, but I think the individual ministers and priests and rabbis were... there was the Berrigan wing of the Catholic Church. But then you have your right-wing wing too, that was sporting the status quo. And social justice did not really matter, even across the radar. And it became, to me, it just seemed like it was exclusionary and elitist that the church became. That all this stuff was going on that had a huge real-world impact. There were very moral issues and the church was not addressing them, or if it was, it was getting on the wrong side. And that is what blew me out of it. SM (00:31:47): The one minister that seems to have been a constant through all this was Billy Graham. He seemed to be an important voice no matter when, throughout the last 50 years. So, he is one of the rare constants. The boomers have been thought of as also the TV generation. Were you influenced by TV? It certainly brought the Vietnam War home in the (19)60s, but what were your thoughts on the TV of the (19)50s? The black and white television shows? MD (00:32:17): I was not so much into TV, and I think it might have been because of the sports. And I did not watch a whole lot of TV. I cannot remember. I'd watch Soupy Sales when I was a kid, and the cartoon shows, and the Three Stooges, things like that. SM (00:32:33): You were not a Musketeer fan? MD (00:32:36): Nah, not really. Did not watch much of that. I do not know. My parents were, they were fairly strict around that stuff. I could not watch stuff like Gunsmoke or anything like that. SM (00:32:48): Oh, okay. Yeah. All the westerns. MD (00:32:50): Yeah, they would not allow that. And so I never watched much on TV other than sports. And then I really started getting into watching the news. Walter Cronkite I really liked to watch. [inaudible] SM (00:33:04): Yeah. Was that back, you mentioned that important event where Johnson decided not to run as being the probably the most important events in your life. Well, Walter Cronkite, he made a comment about Walter Cronkite. "Well, if Walter Cronkite's against the war, so that is all over for me." Or something like that. MD (00:33:26): In fact, I watched that. Johnson's basic resignation speech with my dad. And my dad, it really bothered him because Johnson had been so good for community colleges. He was so good on so many things, the great society programs and everything. And the war just undid him. SM (00:33:46): I am asking, where were you when you first heard John Kennedy was killed? MD (00:33:51): I was in the seminary. I was in class. All of a sudden, we got told that we had to go to assembly in the main assembly hall. They did not tell us why. And then everybody went over there and they began with a prayer. And then one of the priests came up and said that the president had been shot and he was in the hospital and we were going to pray for him and so on. And then even before that assembly got over, we were told that he was dead and that they were arranging, calling our parents to come and us take us home for a few days. SM (00:34:21): All right. Do you remember where you were when you heard about Martin Luther King's death? MD (00:34:31): Yes. Yeah, I was in Flint. I was at home at the time. That is when I was in, yeah. SM (00:34:41): Did they break into the TV or just radio or? MD (00:34:45): Yeah, I heard, yeah, it was all TV. It just came out all over the TV. SM (00:34:52): And how about the Bobby Kennedy assassination two months later to the day? MD (00:34:57): I was watching TV when that happened. I was watching it. Yeah, I was... MD (00:35:03): I was watching it. Yeah, 1968 probably was the most influential year in my life. I have to say that. There's so many things happened. I mean, you had Dr. King, Robert Kenned, you had the Chicago convention and just everything just blew up. SM (00:35:23): Ted was that year, too. MD (00:35:29): That is what happened. It was mind boggling. I mean, it was such a shift from the quiet 50 and growing up in Flint. SM (00:35:37): Did you ever think, some people have said that outside of the Civil War, this was the most conflicted period in American history, that we were close to a second civil war. Some people made those comments. Do you believe that? MD (00:35:54): Yes, I do believe that. And I mean, there was the racial tinder box that going on, and there was just, like I said, you had these radicals on the anti-war side that were willing to blow stuff up, had people on the other side who were awful, and there were movies that were glorifying the people who were pro-war and opposed all the poor hippies and stuff. And then of course, we had Merle Haggard song, Muskogee, even though that was the satire, some people took it seriously. So it was polarizing things. There was intentional polarization going on. And one of the things I witnessed that really had an impact on me is when I was at Michigan State, and I think it was 1969, there was a big anti-war march down to the state capitol in Lansing. And some guy driving, they had three lanes blocked off with the marches, and they were trying to get the traffic on the other lanes. And some guy just went crazy. And he just drove his car right into the crowd, even hit a motorcycle cop that I just was talking to, right by me. And I know I was just in shock. I was broken down in tears on the side of the road. I did not believe that. SM (00:37:17): Were any students really hurt? MD (00:37:19): A number of people got hurt, nobody got killed. The cop had a couple broken legs and a few other things. And then of course, some people just went crazy and started pounding and beating on the guy's car. And the police came and dragged him off. SM (00:37:33): Was he drunk or was he just did not like the protestors? MD (00:37:36): Did not like the protest. He just lost it. He snapped. And so, I could see where it has been real close, the people being pushed to start a civil war. There was always people that were, "We got to get guns, we got to get weapons, we got to be prepared and that." There was that whole faction always, but most people did not take that seriously. Yeah, I do not know. But I do think that people intentionally polarized the situation. SM (00:38:10): This question oftentimes is difficult to answer, but we are talking about 78 million people here who are the Boomer generation in which you are one. One of the criticisms, there's actually been a couple, but one of the criticisms of the generation is that, well, only 15 percent were ever involved in any kind of activism. 85 percent, just like anybody else, they did not do anything, just went on with their lives. But when you look at the 15 percent, that is a pretty big number out of 78 million. But just your thoughts on the Boomer generation, and maybe I am commenting on the 15 percent of the activist because it's hard to generalize on everybody. What do you think were some of the strengths and weaknesses of your generation? MD (00:38:58): Well, I think the greatest strength was the willingness to challenge the dominant paradigm, the accepted definitions of reality. And I think that goes on through today. Willingness to step outside of the status quo and take some risks that way. That I think that is probably the greatest strength of the whole Boomer generation. I think we had a more collective view, a collectivist view of the world that we are all in it together, it is not just me against the world or you and me against the world, and we are all in this together. I think that came about. I think the boundaries of community went from the local neighborhood to the state, to the country to encompass the whole world. And I think that brought about in our generation. That was a big strength, actually. SM (00:40:05): I know that politicians like Newt Gingrich and commentators like George Will, oftentimes when they get a chance, they take a shot at the (19)60s generation or that era in the (19)60s and (19)70s is the reason why we have a lot of problems in our society today. I know Newt Gingrich talked about this when he came into power in (19)94. He may run for president again, by the way. There is rumors that he may run against Obama. MD (00:40:32): Well, there is one of the problems with our generation. There is a lot of self-absorbed self-promoters. And I see that as undermining a lot of the good our generation has done. SM (00:40:46): Can you give some more examples of that? MD (00:40:49): Oh yeah. The whole nonprofit sector is just filled with people who are self-promoters. They attach themselves to a cause and it is not necessarily that it is their deep-seated beliefs in the cause of the matter. It is just a way for them to rise their star. And I have noticed that dramatically in the environmental movement. I have written about that a lot. And I think it kind of permeates non-profit culture, which is something that pretty much is a child of our generation too. Did not really exist until this much. And I do not know I what you do, I have been fighting that forever in the environmental movement with a lot of people, is how do you keep the issue being the main focus and not people's personalities and their need to lead or at least pretend that they are leading some movement and this and that. And that was going on in the peace movement too. And I just do not know. I think that may be our greatest weakness as a generation is we have not figured out how to deal with the self-promoters that undermine us. SM (00:41:58): You raised a good point here because obviously when you think about the environmental... I see that in other issues beyond the environment and also about politicians who latch onto an issue. And that is why Senator McCarthy is always in question. He was obviously deserving of what happened in 1968, but then all of a sudden he just dropped out. I know Bobby Kennedy was killed. But your thoughts on in Earth Day, which was a monumental happening on the 22nd of April in 1970, were you at the first Earth Day? MD (00:42:32): Yeah, I went to something at Michigan State University. There was some kind of tree planting ceremony and people playing Frisbee and flying kites and so on, and talking about the environment. SM (00:42:43): Well, I know the Earth Day in Washington it was just unbelievable. I know Dennis Hayes, who I have interviewed for this book, and of course Gaylord Nelson, he's passed away, but he was the former senator of Wisconsin. They were the two leaders of Earth Day. I think it was actually Gaylord Nelson's idea. And of course, he sat down with the anti-war movement to make sure that we are not challenging your anti-war movement, so there was a working there. But your thoughts on people like Dennis Hayes, who has been involved in this for his whole life, and certainly Gaylord Nelson, who was the senator who is the father of Earth Day, and he has done unbelievable things in Wisconsin. I went to his funeral and I cannot believe what he did there for the environment in Wisconsin. He seemed like the real deal. MD (00:43:36): Yeah, I really liked Earth Day. I wish we would get more in tune with the rest of the world. But the UN on the spring equinox is coming up this weekend, northern hemisphere, and the fall equinox in the southern hemisphere. I wish we were more in tune with the rest of the world on that. But obviously Earth Day is a great event and overdue. And of course it needs to be Earth Day every day. But I personally have some bad feelings toward [inaudible] so I do not know if it should go into that. SM (00:44:08): Me, I got to turn my tape here too. Can you hold on one sec? Individuals. I respect everybody's views. And of course I know Rachel Carson was another one, even though she's passed on. She was kind of a God. And I read her book and I do not think she was into self-promotion. She was just a great writer. MD (00:44:32): No, Rachel Carson was one of my all-time hero. Without a doubt. Her book influenced me a lot. My thing with Hayes, back in 1993 after Clinton was elected, and I was one of the people that was instrumental in starting the ancient forest protection movement. And Clinton was coming out here to hold a forest summit, as he called it. And so obviously there was going to be only a few people that had been on the summit. If there were thousands and thousands of actors that we had actually mobilized in order to get that issue made into a national issue. Which is one of my piece with institutional environmentalism today, they think that mailing lists and sign on letters constitutes activism. To me, it is mobilizing people. So it came to me. We had a big meeting of activists down the national park that when this happened, Portland, we need to throw a free concert and rally and get people there. And so, I drew up a plan for that. I started to shop. I was the vice president of the Oregon Natural Resources Council at the time, which was the statewide coalition. And so I drew up the plan, the proposal, and started shopping around everybody work, get the money to do this. And then I know some musicians, Baby Boomer musicians. So we contacted Carol King and Kenny Loggins and Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Brown. And I said, "Okay, are you guys into this? You are willing to help, da-da-da-da-da." Okay. And finally, Dennis Hayes, through the Bullet Foundation, got involved. And I got pitched overboard as well as most of the activists. And when the final day came, 70,000 people showed up. It was the biggest political rally in the history of Oregon. They surpassed this recently when Barack Obama came during the campaign. And it was incredible. And Neil Young, all sorts, David Crosby. SM (00:46:39): Oh, wow. You got them. I know how difficult they are to get anywhere. MD (00:46:43): Oh, I know. They were on our side. And so, then I have a friend who is, he is now the editor of Autobahn Magazine. At the time, he was one of the editors at Time Magazine, David Seidman. He had written a book about our efforts at Opal Creek called Showdown at Opal Creek. And so he came out to the rally and got to interview Neil Young and everybody. But Dennis Hayes went up and spoke to the people about the issue, which he was not really involved in. And then he actually had one of his minions tell David Seidman that the whole idea for the concert had come to him in a green dream that he had. And I am telling you, there is a paper trail as to where the idea came from. And so, David, of course, told me that, could not believe it either. So, part of me wonders what poor hippie Dennis Hayes stole the Earth Day idea from. SM (00:47:43): Well, I think it was Gaylord Nelson. MD (00:47:44): I know. SM (00:47:45): Yeah. Because Gaylord was the one that really came up with the idea. But he was also big anti-war. And he knew it could cost him his senatorial position, and he lost his senatorial position. MD (00:47:58): Well, anyway, that that is the sour taste in my mouth. And the fact that Clinton came out here and he restarted ancient forest logging, we had it stopped with an injunction and he got it be going now was the upshot of his. Well, the whole thing is in the history of our activist context, it is not that great. SM (00:48:18): But you are, when you hear the Gingrich's and the Wills make those comments about the Boomer generation, because he is referring to the increase in the divorce rate, the drug culture, all these negative things that he thinks had been gone into society. And even Barney Frank wrote a book called Speaking Frankly, and he was Mr. Democrat, who said that the Democratic party and McGovern had to get away from those kinds of people if they wanted to survive as a party. And he wrote that in the early (19)90s. Just your thoughts on those kinds of comments. They happen all the time. MD (00:48:56): Well, like I say, there are a lot of self-promoters that have had fairly free reign. There does not seem to be any way to check and balance them. So, I can see where there is a legitimate criticism there. The things that you were talking about specifically, Will bringing up the rise in the divorce rate. Well, I would say the dominant paradigm around relationships has totally shifted in my lifetime. It used to be that people got together and they stayed together even if they hated each other. SM (00:49:29): That is the (19)50s. MD (00:49:31): And then now you have this serial monogamy thing where people are with someone until death do your part. But that means the death of the relationship. And I do not know. I see a lot of people are not satisfied that either. So, I think we are still working on that one. SM (00:49:49): What are your thoughts? A lot of the Boomers thought they were the most unique generation in American history. When you hear people say that, what are your thoughts? MD (00:49:59): Oh, I just think that... SM (00:50:04): Because they were going to change the world, they were going to end racism, sexism, homophobia, bring peace to the world. That was the communal, the community feeling back. MD (00:50:15): Yeah. I feel like we had great ideals. Often, we were not very practical or pragmatic in carrying them out. And then a lot of times I think that we're up against such an established order that it is pretty hard to carry any of that out. I think that any of the positive changes that have happened have happened because of pressure. I do not think that power changes without pressure and cultural things do not change either without pressure. I always thought that it is a conceit that we are somehow the most unique generation. I mean I look at what my parents and my in-laws, that generation, the World War II generation was phenomenal. You look back, how about the people of the time of the Civil War. I mean, some it is apples and oranges things too. Each generation has to react to the challenges that happen during their lifetime. And some of them have. SM (00:51:24): What are the things that we have to admit though about this era? The times that Boomers, when I say they are young, I am talking about really the (19)50s, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, and the (19)80s. I mean, I am talking about people in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s, because people are still young then. When you look at the period of all the movements, because obviously the civil rights movement was ongoing from the (19)50s. And the other movements learned from that movement, including the anti-war movement. And I have talked to people in the gay and lesbian movement, the Chicano movement, the Native American movement, Blacks movement, Black power movement, and certainly the environmental movement. These are all very important. And there seem to be a sense of community within these groups so that if, for example, an environmental protest was happening, these other groups were there. The winds movement too. And I do not know if there is a camaraderie anymore between these groups. They all still exist in some way. But what has happened to the movement? MD (00:52:34): There has been more fragmentation there. And some of that I attribute to identity politics where people were so tied to their own identity thing that they cannot jump out of it enough and keep the connection with people in other things. And sometimes that just gets stirred. I have been involved with the American Indian movement too all along. I forgot to mention that. And so that is a huge part of the environmental movement still. SM (00:53:12): Did you go into that relationship, because I talked to Paul Chaat Smith on Washington. He wrote a book on the American Indian movement. And the American Indian movement heyday was (19)69 to (19)73. Those are four very powerful years. But I think it is very important, just what you said, the linkage between the Native American movement and the environmental movement. Expound on that, please. MD (00:53:34): Okay. Well obviously, there is some romanticism toward Native Americans and they live in harmony with the land and everything else. But in reality, most Native American cultures have a spiritual and social viewpoint that you do treat the earth as primary. So that fit right in. Some of my friends in the American Indian movement, John Trudel and Calvin Akaka and others clearly have an environmental views and have always been there and been on the side of the environment. It is always there. It is still there. The Native American movement, of course, that had a heyday and it kind is not officially any movement anymore. But people were there. And a lot of the people, some Boomers too, we are all same. And I think that is always been there. The threat of the land based on Native lands that Native people will control. And sacred lands that are now public lands that are being... So there's this natural symbiosis. There's an environmental law conference called the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference at the University of Oregon. It is the oldest one in the world, was out of Europe. And always there is a huge contingent of Native Americans that come and speak and are welcome. And I heard a whole gathering of Native elders talking about all the problems on the reservations and what's going on. And they are actually using the term extinction now to describe what's happened to their culture. I have never heard that used that before. SM (00:55:22): This is in the last couple years? MD (00:55:24): Just in the last couple years. SM (00:55:25): That is sad. MD (00:55:29): Yeah, I know. So that bond is there, that connection is there. It is tough because it is a different culture. And my grandfather's half [inaudible], and so was his mother and his father. And even though I was not raised in that culture at all, and my great-grandmother got forced to move to Oklahoma when she was a kid, but I did get to know her because she lived to 99. And so, I have an interest in it that way, but I am not from that culture. But maybe it's because I grew up being a minority in the minor neighborhood. I do not have that much of a problem. I can understand the various different cultures, but there is a lot of ways where white people just despite being just unconscious and insensitive, are awfully to Native people, even when they are on the same side. So, there is that friction, but the movement is there. The other movements involved, that I see the connections with, the radical environmental movement has been fragmented by the identity politics stuff. People who, for them being transgendered or the bisexual, gay, lesbian or even some other identity, whatever they got, hardcore women's movement, this and that. And they want to bring all the social justice issues to the forefront of the environmental issue. And it hamstrings the movement when you bring the movements together. And then the one movement only will participate if their cause is primary. SM (00:57:16): Yeah. You mentioned too, and I read something on the web that even groups like the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club are who are, well, for the environment, obviously but they're afraid of non-violent protest. MD (00:57:32): Yes. SM (00:57:33): Even if the goal is nature. now, that is amazing because Gaylord Nelson was a lawyer for the Wilderness Society for many, many years until he passed. Could you say a little bit, why is it that these I guess the main line or mainstream environmental groups have issues with this? I think they would be praising. MD (00:57:57): I think it boils right down to the fact that they are preachers of the Democratic party and of the foundations that kill their coffers. And those entities are status quo entities. And so, they do not want to risk their access as they call it. Whether meaningful or not, they want to have access to politicians. And they also, of course do not want to risk their bottom line of their grant portfolios. So, it is one of those things follow the money, follow the power. It has been going on a long time. There's numerous books written it. There was an article in the Nation just last week about it. Jonathan Hari, H-A-R-I. SM (00:58:38): Oh, I subscribe to the Nation now. I think I have the issue. I have not read it yet. MD (00:58:42): Okay. It is called The Wrong Kind of Green. And Counterpunch has been writing about it for years. Jeffrey St. Clair wrote a book called Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green To Me. SM (00:58:57): Oh wow. It was interesting because Gaylord Nelson was a lawyer at Wilderness for golly, God in a long time. But I took students to see him and all he talked about was the environment with the students, all the other issues... He kept saying, "Okay, we got problems between different cultures and different races, okay, but none of us would be here if we do not have an environment." Now, Gaylord Nelson to me was such a rare breed. And when he came to our campus twice, he talked about the fact of overpopulation. He kept saying this overpopulation is a big issue. And I am not sure if a lot of people were listening to him. He was kind of a guy out there... MD (00:59:43): Oh, you cannot get the big environmental groups to touch overpopulation with a 10-foot fall now. SM (00:59:49): That was one of the central pieces of his life. MD (00:59:53): Yeah. Yeah. I think what happens is these organizations, once they get, as a friend of mine once said, once an organization gains a life of its own, it will go down hard just like any other life form. And they become ossified. They have to maintain their empire, an empire building. The interest of the institution become primary over the cause. SM (01:00:20): Right. MD (01:00:22): And then that is the drawback in [inaudible]. SM (01:00:23): Did you have a generation gap between you and your parents? MD (01:00:28): I had a little bit of one. SM (01:00:30): What were the main issues between... The main issues? MD (01:00:34): Oh, mine were probably around the Catholic church. And I mean we were pretty much in agreement on the war. We were definitely in agreement on race. We were one of the last white families in the neighborhood. Everybody just disappeared. And my parents were not about to do that. So I guess the gap was more social stuff. Of course I was into experimenting with pot. After I was done with my athletic stuff. I was one of those classic your body is your temple. I did not even drink anything until I was 21. SM (01:01:16): Did you see amongst your friends that they were having issues with their parents? MD (01:01:20): Oh yeah. A lot of them were just totally at odds with their parents. SM (01:01:29): Yeah, obviously that was one of the main characteristics of that period. What are your thoughts, I know you cannot talk about 78 million people, but the Boomers that you have known in your life, do you think they have been good parents and good grandparents? And I say this, number one, have they shared the experiences of when they were young and do you think their kids were listening to them? And number two, have they kept their idealism or have majority of them you think moved on like all other generations? They go raised families, make money and survival and security's number one over ideals. MD (01:02:11): I think we may have been a more indulgent generation as parents in that we hover around kids more, are more protective. When I was a kid, I was outside all the time, running up and down the streets doing whatever, carrying on. And then I see my generation being way more protective of, was the other kid. Of course now with their grandkids. And I do not know, I think there was more of that kind of my generation, people who get a kid and they treated was the first child born in the Western world. There was too much of that in our generation, I think. And that can lead to self-absorbed people. SM (01:03:03): It is a term that I love and that is the word activism, but it is just me. I have this perception that universities did not learn from the activism of the students from the (19)60s and (19)70s, just like maybe they did not learn from the students of the 1930s that were very active on college campuses. As someone said to me, no matter what era, they are always going to be afraid of activists. But do you feel that the universities are afraid of student activism today on university campuses for fear that it may be similar to what transpired in the (19)60s and early (19)70s or where there was disruption? And of course, in this day and age, there's so many things wrong with our society that money's the bottom line that they cannot have activism because it could threaten the money flow. MD (01:04:03): I definitely think that is part of it. I was talking about that public interest environmental law conference at the University of Oregon. It used to be way more activist oriented and now it is more about collaboration with industry. And a lot of that is tied to big donors and corporations in the state leaning on the president of the university to tone it down. And they did. So, I have seen that work. It's hard to know. I know quite a few young people in their 20s that have come out of the university system that are activists. So, I think it is still happening, educating people and people making the right choices and trying to make change on the world look better and trying to keep having a collective view of the planet. But I do think that university has got scared off a bit. And I know I go to the universities now and it is all about building the buildings and it is all that kind of stuff. SM (01:05:14): But see, volunteerism is very important. I would be one to say that probably over 90 percent of college students are involved in volunteer of some sort. Some has required within fraternities and sororities and certain organizations. But then a lot of them do it on their own. MD (01:05:33): Well, I think that is key. SM (01:05:35): But see, that is volunteerism. But I have always been a believer that activism is the step beyond volunteerism, which is activism is more 24/7 or as volunteerism might be two to four hours a week or something like that. Your thoughts on that thought? MD (01:05:51): Well, I think that real successful activism is carried out by volunteers, people that are volunteering to do something because it is something really special to them. And it may be 24/7, and it involves a lot more organizing with people. It is one thing to be a volunteer, or be an activist that shows up at a rally. It is another thing to plan that rally and get other people out. And so that kind of activism... And I feel that this goes back to the whole thing of the big bean groups getting ossified stuff. Because I think they lose track of the fact that... David Brower had the statement that he felt you had to have at least 1000 members to justify one paid staff. And when he was strict this year, and I think that people gotten away from that. And the way I think it needs to work is you have to have a mass base of volunteer citizens who are active to jump and then you have to have a paid staff to carry out the will of the mass base. But that is been turned on its head. And now you have people who, because they have a paid job, they feel entitled to make decisions top down for the movement. And that does not work. I just see it never gets the good. Whereas volunteer citizen activism, maybe even involving non-violent direct action will get the good occasionally. But I have really seen that. So I think that volunteer citizen activism is the key. It is great that there is volunteerism going on and people are getting the taste of it. But yeah, you are right. It needs to be if you are going to be an activist it is 24/7. SM (01:07:38): Yeah. Yeah, I reflect a lot on my university experiences because the people that run the universities today are Boomers and generation Xers, the young generation. And what's interesting is that the Boomers experience the (19)60s and they know what it's all about in the universities and the generation Xers overall never really liked the Boomers. And so this is like, well, we're going to do it our way kind of mentality. So, I see a little bit of both. I have a question here too. And this is on healing. I took a group of students to Washington, DC quite a few years ago to see Senator Muskie. Of course, he was the vice-presidential running mate for Humphrey in (19)8. And the reason why we asked this question was similar to the one we were asking you about whether we were headed toward a civil war. And he responded to kind of unique way. But here is the question. Do you feel that Boomers are still having problems with healing due to the extreme divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth, divisions between black and white, between men and women, division between those who support authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not? Do you feel the Boomer generation will go to its grave, like the civil war generation not truly healing? Are we wrong in thinking this? Or has 35 or 40 years made the following statement true? Time heals all wounds. And then of course then we ask, has the Vietnam Memorial played any role in the healing process, not only for veterans, but the nation as a whole? Your thoughts on whether the Boomer generation, whether we are talking the 15 percent that were really activists, the people who served their country, Vietnam veterans, anti- war, all these movements we are talking about, even the conservatives that were young Americans for freedom, that we have a problem with healing as we head into old age. MD (01:09:44): Yes. I think there is a problem with the healing. But I think it is more of an institutional thing that there is people that have a stake in keeping the divisions going and sowing fear. Personally, I am very good friends with people that. SM (01:10:03): I am very good friends with people that are Vietnam veterans, and they do not hold anything against me for being a conscientious objector. I do not hold anything against them. In fact, I am saddened and angered about what happened to my brothers and sisters that had to go over there. I feel that, I think it is tragic. I do think the Vietnam Memorial has helped a lot for all of us. It is an incredibly moving place. I have been there. I have a brother who works for the Pentagon. I have good friends that are in the military. My father-in-law was a retired Air Force colonel. My father, my aunt, all my uncles are Vietnam, I mean, World War II vet. I do not have any problem with it, but I think there's an institutional thing [inaudible] keep us polarized that way in order to maintain power. It is the same people that are sowing fear all the time, maintaining power. I think there's, got a lot stacked against us as far as being able to pull that off. MD (01:11:17): Could you, you said, yeah, we have not healed. Could you be a little more specific on what are the areas where we have not healed? SM (01:11:27): Oh, I think it is incredibly hard still for people with different races just to be with one another, just to be. Just to be themselves and not have that be an issue. And politically. Whether you are a pacifist or whether you support the government, it is hard to get beyond that. I mean, I have, even within our families, [inaudible] and I think it is going to be very difficult and maybe to heal all that. There is a lot of acrimony that went on too. MD (01:12:10): I find it is interesting that even though President Obama, he tries to make a point that he is not a member of the Boomer generation. Yet he was born in, I think, (19)62, so he was only two years old. But a lot of people criticize him as being, well, this is the return of the (19)60s generation. They look at him as the return, and of course he denies that he has anything to do with it. So, you got to, denial, and then you have got people saying that he is carbon copy. SM (01:12:45): Well, I know if it was not for the (19)60s generation and the changes that happened, he had have never been elected. MD (01:12:50): Right. SM (01:12:51): Well, I just see him as another Ivy League elitist myself. MD (01:12:59): Well, I got to give him more time, but he cannot keep giving in. That is the only thing. If it means his election, then that is the way it is. The politicians, if they believe in something that they fight to the end, and if the vote voters throw them out, then they throw them out. But one of the, Senator Muskie said something interesting. His response to that question, because he was not well, he just gotten out of the hospital and he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War." He did not even comment about the (19)60s. And he went on to mention that over 400,000 men died in the war. Almost an entire generation passed away during that war. So, he talked about that the Civil War generation had not healed. So that is how he responded. And I think there's, what are your thoughts on that? You still have-have not healed since the Civil War? SM (01:13:57): I do not know. I think things were pretty unified after World War II. People were, it is pretty unified, and the center in American politics in an American culture was, it is certainly not where it is now. There was a lot more civility, and people, they had a shared, they just had a shared destiny that went on. And I think it got exacerbated during the (19)60s. I think the rise of the US as a global empire and all that that meant really kind of blew that out. MD (01:14:37): Did the college students play an important role in the war in Vietnam? And why did the war finally end, in your view? SM (01:14:45): I think college students played a huge role in ending the war. And I think it ended because it became obviously untenable. The internal contradictions just came to the surface, and it was bankrupting the country. And I think that it certainly had a huge role in ending the draft, which may have had consequences, too. I mean, now that college students do not have their lives on the line, they are less likely to speak out against the war. But I think what went on in the college campus was highly instrumental. I think all the demonstrations collectively helped lead to ending the war. And ultimately, and part of it was just a pure financial decision by the government. They just could not maintain it anymore. MD (01:15:47): It is interesting that the protests going on right now in California. I kind of admire the students because this is a pocketbook issue, just like the draft was an issue. And when they see something directly linked to them, and actually they are willing to pay a heavy price for their protests. So, I do not believe in the violence aspect, but I do, I admire them for speaking up and fighting 17 percent increases in tuition. One of the other issues that is very important is the issue of trust. I feel, my perception is that the Boomer generation is a generation that does not trust and did not trust for a lot of reasons, because so many of the leaders lied to them, whether it be Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin, whether it be Watergate with Richard Nixon. I remember even when Gerald Ford was going to pardon Richard Nixon, no one trusted him. They thought it was behind the scenes deal. Even Eisenhower lied on the U-2 incident. And even President Kennedy, they questioned whether he was involved in the coup to overthrow a Diem, even though he gave the order to do so. But he was really upset when he found out they were killed. Your thoughts on, you know being a student of that period that the Boomers did not trust university presidents, they did not trust governors, they did not trust politicians- SM (01:17:08): [inaudible]- MD (01:17:08): They did not trust anybody in the positions of leadership, no matter who they were. You think? This is a very negative quality for the generation, and have they passed this on to their kids and grandkids? And I preface this by saying that any good person who majors in political science is taught in political science 101 that not trusting your government is healthy because it is a sign that dissent is alive. SM (01:17:37): Yes. There is certain costs. When our basic trust was taken away from us by all those incidents over and over and over again, being lied to and misled, at one point, it is healthy because at least you are not naive. It gets you out of your naivete and gets you thinking more in the larger scale of things actually going on. I mean, that is how it worked with me. It was quite an eyeopener. And all of a sudden, I realized, wow, that does not make sense. That is not true, and that is not what ought to be happening. So, there is a positive aspect to it, but deep down, I would like to be able to trust more. But I think that wounded me. Probably I will go to my grave having doubts and distrust of people in positions of authority. And when I myself am put in position of authority, I am really-really-really careful. And that is another good part. I take those real seriously. MD (01:18:46): Were you influenced at all by the Beat generation, those writers in the late (19)50s, like Kerouac and Ginsburg? Because they were the precursors to the anti-establishment attitude of the (19)60s. Were they an influential at all on you? Did you read it or any of your friends read them? SM (01:19:03): Yeah, I did. Ginsburg, Kerouac, yeah, they were instrumental in my [inaudible]. There was kind of a, I do not know, as I got into my late teens, there was just a required reading list that you ended up reading, and they were part of that. But then I actually met and got to know a few of them, like Hugh Romney, Wavy Gravy. MD (01:19:30): Oh, you did? And you also knew Ken Kesey, did not you? SM (01:19:33): Yeah. I barely knew Ken, but I know Wavy from, I helped plan Rainbow Gathering. MD (01:19:39): Explain what that is. SM (01:19:41): Well, from about (19)71 to about (19)81, and Wavy was always involved in that. And so was Ram Dass. Ram Dass was another- MD (01:19:51): Yes. SM (01:19:52): ... good guy. He was an influence on me. And then of course, Ken is a friend of theirs. And... MD (01:20:00): Now what was, you helped organize this for 10 years? SM (01:20:03): Yeah, there is a whole crew of people that would get together and be the planning council and plan it for the year in advance and make sure everything worked. And then- MD (01:20:11): Where did it take place? SM (01:20:13): Well, they take place on National Forest Land every year on the 4th of July for a week. Called the Rain [inaudible]. A huge counterculture event. And still goes on. It's gotten huge, tens of thousands of people now. MD (01:20:32): Does it never come east? SM (01:20:33): Yeah, it has been in Michigan a couple times. MD (01:20:36): Oh, shoot. July 4th... When is the next one? SM (01:20:40): It will be this 4th of July. MD (01:20:42): I mean, where? Do you know where? SM (01:20:45): I am not sure where. You can go online, even have a website on it now. MD (01:20:48): And some of the people you worked with again were Wavy Gravy and Ram Dass? SM (01:20:53): Yeah, they were involved in the Rainbow Gathering. Wavy was the emcee for many years. MD (01:21:03): Oh my gosh. And Ram Dass, my God, his writings are so [inaudible]. SM (01:21:06): Yeah. And Ram Dass I got to note through that, plus Breitenbush Hot Springs out here in Oregon is an old hot springs resort that a group of friends of mine and I restored and run as a, it is an intentional community that Oregon allows you to have a worker-owner cooperative corporation. That and about 30,000 people a year coming at the- MD (01:21:31): Wow. SM (01:21:32): Kind of a conscious thing. You have everything from navel gazing exercises to workshops on massage and yoga. MD (01:21:39): Are they mostly Boomers or young? SM (01:21:42): Getting a lot younger, but- MD (01:21:47): Well, that is good. SM (01:21:47): Started out mostly boomers. It has a website too. Breitenbush, B-R-E-I-T-E-N-B-U-S-H. MD (01:21:53): Okay. I have got to check that out. SM (01:21:54): Yeah, you can check that out. Ram Dass is very good to us all along. He would come and hold big events there. 200 people would show up and they go on for a week. So yeah, I got the, basically, it is on the new age [inaudible] that I got to meet everybody. MD (01:22:16): Wow. SM (01:22:16): [inaudible]. MD (01:22:16): I have read quite a few of your articles. How did you get involved with Counterpunch? Because, and Alexander Cockburn, is he the kind of guy, I'd love to interview him. Would he be available for an interview, do you think? SM (01:22:28): He might, yeah. MD (01:22:28): How do you get ahold of him? SM (01:22:28): I will send you his email. MD (01:22:37): Okay. Yeah, because now I am reading those all the time. SM (01:22:39): Okay. MD (01:22:39): Because I find you are a very good writer, in my opinion. And I like the one you did on Carrie, and I like this one I just read recently where you talked about criminalizing dissent. SM (01:22:53): Yes. MD (01:22:54): Where you talked just briefly about, well, you had mentioned about the Wilderness Society of Sierra Club, but then you talked about the rat inflation. You compare COINTELPRO to what happened in the (19)60s to what is happening now with the environmental groups with Operation Backfire. SM (01:23:11): Yes. MD (01:23:12): And please explain that. Please, people that are reading this do not know a lot. So, you will be reading these interviews. First off, explain what COINTELPRO is in the (19)60s, and of course I know what it is. And then how you see the link between the environmental activists of today. SM (01:23:34): Okay. So COINTELPRO in the (19)60s was an FBI undercover operation where they were planting operatives in all the progressive movements of the day. And famously doing stuff like writing letters between the Black Panthers and other groups disparaging each other, phony letters. One of them led to a famous shootout at the UCLA campus, even. And they did stuff like that. They would plant this information, they would plant people who had snitched on people, and they would also plant agent provocateur. I know that some of the famous incidents were ROTC buildings were burned during the (19)60s, that those were actually agent provocateurs of the government that set those up and did those. MD (01:24:23): Think that was Kent State, too? SM (01:24:25): I do not know about Kent State, but I am pretty sure the University ROTC and the Michigan State University ROTC were agent provocateur led. MD (01:24:35): Okay. SM (01:24:35): There were always people that were trying to get people to be more radical, more violent, more this and that in order to dispute [inaudible] movement. And a lot of that came from within the government itself. And then now in honor days, we have an active radical environmental movement where people are willing to go out themselves with bulldozers, blockade roads, do whatever, to try to stop degradation of the environment. And then all of a sudden it took a little bit more of a violent wing and people started burning stuff down. And then when it came out, finally, and who was behind all this? There were agent provocateurs from the government involved. There were undercover officers from the government involved, egging people on, breaking them to do more violent stuff. And it just smacks with COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO also infiltrated the American Indian movement and famously planted the false information that Anna Mae Aquash was an informant, which got her killed, American Indian movement. So, I see a real similarity there that anytime anybody's advocating radical change that challenges the status quo and the financial interest of the government, the government is going to put undercover operatives in, and one of the things they do is to try to get people to, people are upset and they are angry and try to get them to do something crazy and more violent. MD (01:26:08): Well, I know they were involved in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, and I think in some respects, even the women's movement. SM (01:26:17): Yeah, it is a way to sow dissent and bring movement down and get people, everybody looking over their shoulder and being suspicious of their comrades and other allies. MD (01:26:30): I was really, in reading some of the literature that the two most investigated people with the FBI files, well, actually there is three, but Martin Luther King- SM (01:26:44): I know one of them. MD (01:26:44): Huh? SM (01:26:44): I know one of them. MD (01:26:44): Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of them. Eleanor Roosevelt had the second largest FBI file. Can you believe that? SM (01:26:51): I can believe it. MD (01:26:53): And John Lennon. John Lennon had a big file. Those three I know are man of files. SM (01:26:59): My friend John Trudell has a 17,000 page [inaudible]. MD (01:27:03): He has a what? SM (01:27:04): 17,000 page FBI file. John Trudell. He was the chairman of the American Indian Movement. MD (01:27:10): Oh my God. SM (01:27:11): And he was involved when they took over Alcatraz. MD (01:27:13): Yeah. Let me change my tape here. Hold on one second. Yeah. One of the questions I have here, too, is the music of the period. Obviously, the music of the (19)60s and (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s was very influential because of the messages within the music. What was the most important music to you? And when you talk about the environmental movement of today, are they using music? Because music seems to be very important in sending messages. Just so I am talking about music from the (19)60s' influence on you, and then whether the movement is using music today. SM (01:28:06): Oh, huge influence on me. And of course, I still listen to the same music. I get accused by my younger friends never changing it. But yeah, Stevie Van Zandt gave a great speech last night at the inducting the Hollies into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. And he totally touched on that, the power of the music of the (19)60s. MD (01:28:28): That was in Cleveland, was not it? SM (01:28:36): I do not know where the- MD (01:28:36): Yeah, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland. SM (01:28:36): Yeah. I do not know where they hold the ceremony, but- MD (01:28:38): The Hollies- SM (01:28:39): ... I saw Jackson, Jackson was there. He was inducting David Geffen in, and then Iggy Pop got inducted, which is great. MD (01:28:49): Oh, that is great. SM (01:28:50): But yeah, the (19)60s movement music was... Growing up a kid in Flint, of course, Motown was the type of music I listened to growing up. And then all of a sudden, the stuff that, the song that shifted my perspective on music was For What It's Worth by Buffalo Springfield. And that really impacted me. MD (01:29:18): What was that song? The words? SM (01:29:20): Oh, the one. There is something happening here- MD (01:29:23): Oh- SM (01:29:23): ... exactly clear. MD (01:29:24): There is a man with a gun over here? SM (01:29:25): Yeah. MD (01:29:26): Yeah. That, okay. SM (01:29:26): Yeah, it was about protest down in LA that took place. So yeah, those guys impacted me immensely. And then Woodstock. It was a cultural, spiritual, and political event. I passed up on a ticket to go, I could have gone, but I never did. But it was an incredibly moving event. And so there was this cultural just flashpoint that took place, even though things were, it seemed like the darkest hour with leaders being assassinated and the war going on, there was this music that was speaking to a larger perspective, a commonality of humanity and how we could get through it all together and how we are all in it together. And it was a huge shift. It was not just a, oh, boy, girl, boy, girl, love you till the end. Oh, broke up, the stuff of... Marvin Gaye put out the album What's Going On. MD (01:30:30): Oh, yes. SM (01:30:30): It was staggering to me. Occasions of that. MD (01:30:34): 1971. SM (01:30:36): Yeah. And I mean, things were really shifting. Questions were being asked, and they were being asked by the best musicians of the day, too. So they were getting the airplay. Joni Mitchell, and there were some incredible musicians that were addressing the stuff that mattered to me. They were speaking the stuff that mattered to my generation and to me. MD (01:31:05): When you think of the period, there are often quotes or famous lines that were used that signified a period. I want you to react to something that I have been asking about the last 20 people. I did not do with some of the early ones. And that is that there are three, and then someone told me a fourth, there are three well lines that I think kind of exemplified the Boomers. The first one is Malcolm X, when he says, "by any means necessary," which kind of defines the militant activism, the black power, possibly the onset of violence. Then you got Bobby Kennedy's 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." And that symbolizes the activist mentality, the questioning act that you talk about in the environment movement and elsewhere, that activists taking a stand on issues from justice and what they thought was right in our society or wrong in our society. And the third one was a Peter Max painting that most people had not heard this quote, but it was very popular on college campuses in 1971 when I was at Ohio State. And on the poster it said, "You do your thing. I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful," with symbolized a more kind of a hippie counterculture mentality. And the fourth one that was brought up to me was the civil rights, "we shall overcome." And then someone mentioned, John Kennedy's "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Those are the kind of four, three, four five, that kind of symbolize the Boomer generation. Are there others that might have had an influence on you? Other quotes? SM (01:32:51): Oh, I like those quotes. John Kennedy had one that I really like, first. And that is that "War will be with us until the day when the conscientious objector has the same status as the hero," or something to that effect. And of course, he had some thereafter, but that was a great- MD (01:33:11): That was Robert Kennedy, right? SM (01:33:12): No, it was John Kennedy. MD (01:33:13): Oh, John Kennedy. SM (01:33:15): Yeah. MD (01:33:15): Okay, I did not know that one. SM (01:33:17): I will look that up and email that to you, too. MD (01:33:18): Okay. SM (01:33:19): Great quote. But yeah, I like all those quotes. By any means necessary one is a little threatening to me because I think people can justify all kinds of being- MD (01:33:30): Right. Then of course, Eisenhower had the military industrial complex, which was- SM (01:33:35): Right, that one. MD (01:33:36): That was right on too. There are pictures. Pictures are often say a thousand words. There is three that came to mind with me, but I am not going to mention them. When you see the pictures of the first say, 40 years of the Boomers' lives, what are the pictures that come to your mind that really, if someone were to look at them, they would say, yep, that was that era. SM (01:34:00): Oh, photos? MD (01:34:02): Yep. Pictures that were in the news. SM (01:34:05): Oh, I would probably say a real big one was pictures of the atomic bomb test in Bikini Atoll. There is the picture where the South Vietnamese officer executed the guy on the street. That really had a huge impact. And then, I do not know, for me, almost any of the pictures of Woodstock, especially the ones that of just people holding themselves together and going through that. Those are pictures that impacted me. MD (01:34:42): The three pictures that I had picked was the girl running down in Vietnam with a burn. SM (01:34:50): Oh, right. Yeah. MD (01:34:50): And then the girl over the dead body at Kent State. SM (01:34:53): Yeah, that is another one. MD (01:34:54): And then the three athletes in with the black power fist, Tommie Smith and John Carlos. SM (01:35:00): John Carlos, those guys are heroes. That really impacted me. MD (01:35:08): I have got some other things here. I am just trying to make sure, before I go into a section where I just ask your opinions on names and personalities. Make sure I got all my questions here. Robert Reagan, in 1980, when he came into power, he said, "We are back." And I think he was making a reference to, we are beyond the (19)60s and the (19)70s now and all that stuff. And the breakdown of the military. We're back. And then George Bush in 1989 when he became president, he said, "The Vietnam syndrome is over." And those were two Republican presidents back to back. Your thoughts on Reagan and Bush and their thoughts on, because now the Boomers are in their (19)40s, and just your thoughts on those two and what they said. SM (01:35:58): Well, I think that the Imperial presidency in the US's Empire was fully under underway when Reagan got elected. And so I just see them as basically the emperors that were Imperial policy. And so I think they felt the need that they needed to put to rest a lot of the issues that were raised by Vietnam. But I do not know, the Vietnam syndrome to me seems contrived. And I think the same stuff is still going on. Same Imperial overreach is going on, the same corporate takeover of the government. All that is happening. And I think they were trying to diffuse that, trying to push that aside and become more ascendant with the corporate Imperial stuff. MD (01:36:55): If you are a Boomer and you are in a conversation and we get involved in a confrontation in any part of the world, when you bring up the word Vietnam or the word quagmire, it seems to always get a reaction. And I get a feeling like, please shut up. We're living, the reaction I feel when I bring it up or others is, come on, this is the year 2010. Quit talking about something that happened back in 1975, Vietnam and the quagmire, that is past history. So I feel guilty, and I wonder how many other Boomers feel the same way. It is like we do not learn history's lessons, so if we bring up history, they do not want to be reminded of it. I do not... SM (01:37:40): Oh, I can understand why they would not want to be reminded of it. But to me, that is all the more reason why you need to bring it up more so that it is not lost and the lessons are not lost because the same mistakes are being made over and over again. So if you can, one good way not to learn from history is to suppress the history. And so, I think there is institutions that have a stake in suppressing it, so they have conditioned people that way. No, but I can understand why younger people might want to say, "Oh, I am tired of that. That happened way back then, and let us deal with what is going on now." But I also run into a lot of younger people that really want to know, they want to know more of the history. MD (01:38:25): Well, the millennial students are the ones in college now, and we did programs on bringing Boomers and Generation X together at my university in the (19)90s, and Generation Xers, I cannot speak for them all, obviously there are good ones. But they had problems with the Boomers in many ways. And of the two panels that we had made up of university and regional faculty members and the college students of Westchester is that they responded in two ways. Either I am sick and tired of hearing about what it was like then and quit talking about it and move on with your life. And the other ones would say, geez, I wish I had causes like you had. We do not have any causes or issues today. And that was the kind of reaction that Generation Xers had. And Generation Xers did not seem to get along too well with Boomers. I do not know if you have noticed that in your life. SM (01:39:24): Well, I think it might be that 15 percent, 85 percent lifting again, and basically in all generations there is going to be 15 percent that really do have an altruistic view and want to do something outside of self. And I find them, I have got a number of friends in their twenties now, close friends, partly through my association with Breitenbush, and I really like them. And they are, by and large, are the ones that are trying to expand their conscious and reach out and have a larger worldview. And so we have very much in common. I do not even feel like the age difference matters. MD (01:40:05): That is good. Could you talk- SM (01:40:06): I think it is just going to, there is going to be a percentage of every generation. It is just like I was honored in my life to know some people who were part of the original Red Scare that were called before the House on American Activities Committee. There was a certain percentage of people in that generation. So, I think every generation has, and then a lot of people are just, they do not want to rock the boat. The whole idea of rocking the boat and challenging the dominant paradigm is scary to them. So, they just assume not hear it. MD (01:40:41): Your- SM (01:40:42): One more thing, I can understand some of the antipathy toward the Baby Boomers because the Baby Boomers are now the bosses. They are the people that own, they're in charge of your job. So the younger people have to deal with that. And so that is always going to be a friction. And I do not think it relates specifically to Baby Boomer generation. It is just whenever you have an older generation and those kind of [inaudible] power, I think that that kind of disparity will always cause a little friction. MD (01:41:14): I think what has happened is that sometimes when the Generation Xers and who are now also in power, just like Boomers, they are also bosses now, too. If they are going to blame Boomers on things, they need to blame themselves, too, because they are now in leadership as well. Yeah, before I finish up here with these names, could you talk to how important it is for the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, and to get a better understanding for people that read this, how important these activist groups are? I admire you for the comments that you have made, that you do not like terrorism and violence, and you have already brought that up into your articles because that often sends wrong messages, just like Black Panther Party and the Weathermen did in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. Your thoughts on how important those two movements are today? SM (01:42:11): I think those movements are important in the fact that they are kind of like the gateway movement for getting more younger people involved. If there is a lot of passion in those movement, so a lot of younger people get involved. At the same time, I am appalled that there is some glorification of violence that goes on, and partly because I do not like violence, plus I challenge the efficacy of doing that, do not see how that ever works. But at the same time, they are important parts of the activist movement, certainly in the environmental movement. I understand the frustration of people in both those movements. I know some of the people, I know people that are in prison right now because they acted upon their beliefs there. They did not make the right choices. But I understand their position, and I think they are right. I think we have to get away from our anthropomorphic, anthropocentric viewpoint, I guess you would have to call it, yeah, anthropocentric viewpoint and look on the world as being one part of a larger hole. I think those are the people that are onto that. So yeah, I think it is a way for, I do not know, there is a lot of young people that are angry about looking at the future, the future of the Earth that is going to be here as they get older. MD (01:43:49): What are your thoughts of Al Gore and the Inconvenient Truth? SM (01:43:52): Well, part of me thinks that Al Gore's a profiteer profiteering on the corpse as it goes down with all his carbon cap and trade and carbon credits. I mean, buying carbon offsets to me is like the church in the Middle Ages selling indulgences. So, I do not particularly like that, and Al Gore is making a lot of money off of it, but I am completely in agreement that the level of carbon in the atmosphere is at a dangerously toxic level. And it is going to really change things if we do not get our act together and do something about it. So, I guess I like the message more than I like the messenger. MD (01:44:37): Yeah, because somebody says he flies in a private plane. I do not know. SM (01:44:41): Oh yeah, I know, he's cut to Utah. I mean, my friends Jeff St. Clair and Al Cockburn wrote a book called Al Gore: A User Manual back in 1998, and I think they nailed it. MD (01:44:55): I like his story, though, because as a Boomer, as a young man in Harvard, he was influenced by a professor. That is a very good start. SM (01:45:01): Yeah. MD (01:45:03): And I- MD (01:45:03): That is a very good story. And I also liked, from reading one of the books, about how he challenged President Clinton in a meeting after the second year. It was monumental, first time they had ever had friction, and where he told him, "You are doing absolutely nothing on the environment." And boy, he got mad. And of course, I do not think there is any love lost between those two now. SM (01:45:27): Yeah, I just kind of wish that he was not such a cartoon figure, because it allows the other side to discredit the message. And that he was not also making so much money off of it. In each case, it allows them to discredit the message. MD (01:45:45): Good points. SM (01:45:45): But yeah, I think he is right on. Level of carbon in the atmosphere is a huge, huge threat. It is a fact, existential threat. MD (01:45:52): I am at the part, which is the last part of the interview, which is just to respond to either terms, events, or personalities of a period. You do not have to go in any in depth. SM (01:46:03): Okay. MD (01:46:04): What do these mean to you? What does, again, the Vietnam Memorial mean to you? SM (01:46:14): It means to me, oh, I cannot even think about it without even crying. And I think it cost our generation enormous, Vietnam did. And the memorial is a huge step in trying to heal that. But... MD (01:46:32): What does Kent- SM (01:46:33): We lost a lot of really, really fine people, Vietnam. MD (01:46:38): Yes. We did, 58,000. And one of the things we learned from that war, too, is we must care about those on the other side, 3 million dead. SM (01:46:48): I know it. MD (01:46:48): That is very sad. What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? SM (01:46:53): Well, it means an end of innocence for me. That really shocked me out of my college jacket, intellectual, innocence, those events. MD (01:47:09): What does Watergate mean to you? SM (01:47:20): Oh, it means that it just shows how corrupt the government was. But at the same time, I think it was overplayed. I think Nixon committed far more crimes than that, far worse ones. That seemed to be the way that they could get him. MD (01:47:31): What does Woodstock and the Summer of Love, two different events, one in (19)67, one in (19)69. SM (01:47:37): Right, the Summer of Love. I had no idea that it even was going on, because I was in such a cocoon, back in school in Flint. MD (01:47:42): Right? SM (01:47:44): But when I look back on it, I see that that is a remarkable awakening in our culture. And I think Woodstock as well. I think those are incredible cultural events. Hopefully there is a future in a hundreds of years from now, people will be studying them. MD (01:48:00): What does the term counterculture mean to you? SM (01:48:05): Oh, it is a grab bag term that describes people that wanted to see something else other than the work working for the establishment as being your future. 2.3 kids, and a dog, in a house in the suburbs, there was an opportunity to do something else. MD (01:48:26): What do the hippies and yippies mean to you? SM (01:48:30): I think the hippies to me were less political than the yippies. The hippies were more the cultural wing of the movement, and the yippies were more of the political wing of the counterculture. I like both entities a lot. Hippies and the yippies. MD (01:48:58): What does SDS and The Weathermen, two separate things, even though they became one? SM (01:49:04): Right. Well, I think SDS was a remarkable organization. The founding principles were fabulous, and I think it really did shift the politics on the campuses around the country. I think The Weathermen was going a bit too far. I think The Weatherman, people just got so frustrated, and angry, and they went over the line. And I think that The Weathermen was a reason for the government to use the backlash against the counterculture. MD (01:49:40): How about the Vietnam veterans against the war? SM (01:49:44): Oh, one of the great organizations ever founded. Yeah. MD (01:49:51): How about the Young Americans for Freedom? I do not know if you knew that group. SM (01:49:54): Yeah, I know who they are. I actually caught a couple of their lectures at college. I knew, Rockwell, was that his name? MD (01:50:01): Yeah. SM (01:50:03): Yeah, he came to college when I was there, at the junior college, the community college. I thought they were rather racist, and elitist, and did not have much of a collective consciousness, that is for sure. Or a democratic consciousness. MD (01:50:24): How about the Black Panthers and Black Power? SM (01:50:29): I thought the whole Black Power Movement and the Black Panthers, they certainly had a point. But at the same time, once again, I think they went overboard. And being someone myself who was highly involved in Civil Rights Movement stuff, I think one of the out growths of the Black Panther, the militancy of it, was that people like myself who had the wrong color of skin were kind of driven out. And it became unsafe for me to be as involved as I had been. MD (01:51:03): What did you think of the enemy's list? SM (01:51:07): Oh, Nixon's enemies list? MD (01:51:07): Mm-hmm. SM (01:51:09): Oh, I figure that they always existed. I think they probably still do. And I think that it was an incredible evidence of the amount of paranoia that occurs in an empire. MD (01:51:28): How about My Lai? SM (01:51:28): My Lai? MD (01:51:28): Mm-hmm. SM (01:51:28): Oh, just awful. I do not know, one greatest injustices of all time. MD (01:51:37): Tet? SM (01:51:37): Ted? MD (01:51:40): Tet, T-E-T. SM (01:51:41): Oh, Tet. MD (01:51:42): That really began (19)68. SM (01:51:44): Right. Tet is very amazing to me, because it was a case where the National Liberation Front lost the battle and won the war. And it just showed me that all the other rules of wealth warfare did not apply anymore. MD (01:52:09): 1968, I think you already made comments on this. SM (01:52:12): Yeah, I think 1968 was, certainly in my lifetime, is the watershed year. MD (01:52:20): Okay. Now these are personalities, and again, just quick responses. Tom Hayden? SM (01:52:28): Are you hearing a buzz on the phone? MD (01:52:28): Yeah, I am. It could be the FBI. SM (01:52:30): Let me check. Let me try this other phone. (01:52:37): Hello? MD (01:52:38): Yeah, it is happening here too. SM (01:52:41): Oh, okay. It is in both phones. MD (01:52:42): It must be my phone. SM (01:52:43): Yeah, right? MD (01:52:44): Well, I am on the FBI's... I am not on their list. Tom Hayden? Still there? SM (01:52:54): Well, I just see him as a kind of a political gas line. MD (01:52:58): Jane Fonda? SM (01:53:00): Same thing. Yeah, I think that Jane Fonda had a lot of good things to say. And I think she has been unfairly excoriated. MD (01:53:13): John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy? SM (01:53:17): I think they were our last hope. Last great hope. They were, what are the Gracchi Brothers of America. MD (01:53:26): Eugene McCarthy? SM (01:53:29): Oh, I like Eugene McCarthy a lot. I think he had a lot of courage, and I kind of wish he would have stuck it out more. MD (01:53:36): George McGovern? SM (01:53:38): Same thing. I do not know what happened. They stood up for all the right principles and then disappeared. MD (01:53:44): Sargent Shriver and the Peace Corps. SM (01:53:47): Oh, I think the Peace Corps and other great society programs are one of the greatest contributions we have ever made. It is unfortunate it only head start in the Peace Corps and the Job Corps bill exist, but I think all of them collectively were one of the great social justice experiments ever. MD (01:54:03): Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X? SM (01:54:08): Both great leaders. Martin Luther King, Jr. might be the greatest leader in my lifetime that I have known or heard about. Malcolm X, again, I had problems with his religious bent and his militant bent. Other than that, I think he was a great leader as well. Incredible points. I read his autobiography and I was very moved by it. MD (01:54:38): Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford? SM (01:54:43): Oh, Ronald Reagan, I see him as kind of the solidifier of the end of the US being a democratic republic and moving on to being a corporate empire. So, I do not have a lot good for Ronald Reagan. Though even some of his stuff. One of the greatest quotes of all time, I think is his quote, "Trust, but verify." MD (01:55:06): Oh yeah. SM (01:55:07): I totally buy that. I think it is of the great quotes. But Gerald Ford, I have softened a lot on Gerald Ford over time. I actually think Gerald Ford was a good guy. MD (01:55:19): How about Jimmy Carter and Dwight Eisenhower? SM (01:55:27): I like Jimmy Carter. And I like him a lot more as an Ex-president than I did as President. I think he is a great role model. Dwight Eisenhower, another one. The guy was a hero, and he also was willing to take on some of the powers to be. And at the same time, he was part of the whole power structure. But I think Eisenhower was okay. MD (01:55:54): Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew? SM (01:55:57): Oh, okay. Well, Spiro Agnew, I have hardly anything good to say about. I think the guy was a crackpot. But Richard Nixon, mixed bag. I think he is the greatest environmental President. He basically saved more land than any other President. Cast far more environmental laws than any other President. I signed them. At the same time, he was a war criminal and a paranoid war criminal at that. MD (01:56:25): Then of course, LBJ and Hubert Humphrey? SM (01:56:29): Okay. LBJ, socially maybe certainly the greatest President of my lifetime, as far as comes the social causes and getting that part right. At the same time, undone by the war in his inability to control the Pentagon. Hubert Humphrey, part of me sees him as a political hack. Was it Hunter Thompson said he had the greatest case of blue balls for the presidency ever? MD (01:57:04): Yeah. SM (01:57:04): I think he would have done anything just to get elected. I worked for him when he was running. Because while he was the only one running. By that time, in (19)68. And I was just real disappointed when he lost. MD (01:57:16): If he had gone another week, he probably would have won. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the yippies? SM (01:57:24): Oh, a mixed bag. I like them bringing a lot of stuff to the forefront, but I think they were pretty relentless self-promoters. And that eventually detracted from the message. MD (01:57:38): Chicago Eight or Chicago Seven? SM (01:57:41): Yeah, Chicago Eight, that had a big impact on my life. I think all those people were incredibly well-meaning, incredibly good people. They were on the right side. They did everything right, and the government trying to destroy them the way they did was, it focused our generation, or at least the activist part of it. MD (01:58:04): How about the women leaders, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, that group. Shirley Chisholm was in there too. SM (01:58:12): Yeah, there were a lot of great women leaders at that time. Same, has kind of a checkered little history there, being lovers with all these rich, wealthy men, and possibly some ties with the CIA. But the rest of them, I really liked. Betty Friedan was great. Germaine Greer, there were a number of women leaders that, I read their stuff and I really agree with it. Still do. MD (01:58:37): How about the Black Panther individuals, because there unique? There's Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, David Hilliard, and the one that was killed in Chicago, I think it was Norman? SM (01:58:55): Fred Hampton. MD (01:58:55): Fred Hampton. All different and unique. SM (01:58:58): Yeah, some of the Panthers were tireless, self-promoters. And some of them never could get out of the street, like Huey Newton and Cleaver. They kind of became cartoons. But a lot of them were real well-intentioned people, and set up some really good programs, and really helped out. MD (01:59:18): How about- SM (01:59:21): Same bag. You had your mix of self-promoters and people that were really solid on the issues. MD (01:59:27): Communes? SM (01:59:29): Oh, I think the commune movement is one of our better experiments. I was part of the whole Back to the Land movement. Of course, Breitenbush Hot Springs was an intentional community and still going strong. MD (01:59:43): How do you relate to people who say it was a bunch of dropouts, that they went from being we to nothing but me? So that is a criticism of the communal movement. SM (01:59:59): Yeah, I would say there is a certain amount of self-absorption and me first stuff that goes on in the communal movement. But to me, just the fact that people are willing to take the challenge, and take the risks, and try to find something that might work better, is just the experiment itself has value. Whether people stick it out or do not stick it out, I think it is a huge part of the landscape and a huge part of what happened. And I am glad it happened, glad it is still going on. Certainly, it is less than it was. And at Breitenbush Hot Springs, in the (19)80s, we used to have communities conferences, where once a year we would get people from all the various communes in the northwest together, and come and make it... It was a great event. MD (02:00:43): The male liberation movement came out of that too, did not it? SM (02:00:46): The what? MD (02:00:47): The male liberation movement came out of that in the early (19)70s. SM (02:00:50): Oh, the male? MD (02:00:51): Yeah, where men would start taking care of the kids more as a shared. SM (02:00:56): Yeah. Yeah, that is true. In our early days, we required all parents to do a childcare shift a week with all the kids. We did all that, yeah. MD (02:01:05): Yeah. Dr. Benjamin Spock. SM (02:01:09): Oh, Dr. Spock was a great hero. And then, I do not know so much about his childcare rearing books and techniques, but just the fact that he was so forceful on the war, and social justice causes, to me, makes him one of the all-time heroes. MD (02:01:25): How about Daniel and Philip Berrigan? SM (02:01:29): Oh, two of the heroes for me, for sure. MD (02:01:31): I met them both and knew them both. SM (02:01:33): Wow. Way to Go. Being a Catholic boy and stuff, it was always great to have that wing of the church represented. And they did it more eloquently, and they were willing to put their own selves on the line more than almost anybody ever saw. Just a great model of passivism. MD (02:01:52): Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers? SM (02:01:55): Oh, that was one of the most heroic acts of all time. MD (02:02:02): Woodward and Bernstein? SM (02:02:07): I like what they did. I am not so sure over time that they themselves stand the test of time. MD (02:02:14): Does not seem like we have the investigative journalists anymore. SM (02:02:17): Yeah. MD (02:02:18): The original seven astronauts? SM (02:02:20): Well, I do not know, I never quite got into that much. Obviously, they were pretty heroic. And right there, and some of them use the opportunity to speak about the earth and then the fragility of the planet. And I really like that about them. MD (02:02:42): Robert McNamara and John Dean, two different people. SM (02:02:47): Oh, I think John Dean is the hero. And I think he still is. Robert McNamara, I think he is one of the great war criminals and economic criminals in history. MD (02:03:00): Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali? SM (02:03:05): Oh, two of the great towards and social people of all time. Muhammad Ali might be one of the greatest people of our generation. Certainly you go around the world and everybody knows who he is. And he is highly respected. Probably he and Bob Marley are the only two people like that. MD (02:03:24): How about Bill Clinton and George Bush II? SM (02:03:33): I think both of them collectively brought an enormous amount of disrepute on the Baby Boomer Generation. I am embarrassed that they're the first two Baby Boomer Presidents. MD (02:03:43): Explain that. SM (02:03:47): I feel that both of them are examples of what the worst of what we were talking about, the first aspects of the Baby Boomer Generation. They were in it for personal gain and expediency, and they just did not share the deep-seated values of the generation. MD (02:04:11): How about Angela Davis and Timothy Leary? SM (02:04:20): I got mixed feelings on both of them. I think Angela Davis did a lot of stuff, but I think she flirted too much with the violence that was going on, and bought into that. Leary, some of Leary's stuff is brilliant. I think he might be one of the smartest people in his generation. I read stuff that he wrote that was absolutely brilliant. And at the same times I have got all sorts of problems with the way he died and all the things around that. I think that was out of line. MD (02:04:50): How about Attica and certainly George Jackson who was linked to Angela Davis in the prison reform movement? Prison rights. SM (02:05:00): Yeah, I think that prison rights needed to happen, and it is a tragedy that the way it happened with Attica. And I think that the government incredibly overreacted and a lot of people died, both guard and prisoners, that did not need to happen. But it did focus on the whole thing on the prison movement. I think that issue has been put on a back burner and it is nowhere near resolved. MD (02:05:25): A lot of people think George Jackson was set up. SM (02:05:29): Yeah. MD (02:05:30): And he was murdered right there, or killed right there in the prison. John Lennon and the Beatles? I separate John Lennon from the rest of the Beatles, but John Lennon himself, and then the Beatles? SM (02:05:46): Well, I think John Lennon is a hero. The guy never backed down in his quest for promoting peace on the planet. Yeah, peace and love, and a lot of good things that came about because of John Lennon, the music and the way he lived his life. The Beatles themselves, obviously phenomenal, great musicians. And they were some of the first that took it from the boy meets girl, the love forever, into actually speaking about social causes that mattered. And I will always respect them for that. MD (02:06:28): How about Barry Goldwater and William Buckley? SM (02:06:33): Oh, they are two of the conservatives that I would actually listen to. I think they had a lot of integrity, and they could speak intelligently, and they were not just out there fanning the flames of fear, which is what I see the conservative movement has evolved into. MD (02:06:51): The Little Rock Nine? SM (02:06:55): Oh, you mean the students that were? MD (02:06:58): Yeah, the high school. SM (02:07:01): Oh yeah, they are great heroes. Without a doubt. No doubt about it, that took an enormous amount of courage. MD (02:07:08): How about the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in the (19)60s? SM (02:07:15): I am glad it happened. I do not know a whole lot about it. I think it jump started the whole questioning of authority and challenging things. MD (02:07:25): And then of course, the Port Heron Statement, which was the... SM (02:07:28): Right. That is, when I was talking about, yes-yes. If you read that, there is some brilliant stuff in there. That was a brilliant manifesto. MD (02:07:37): And we were talking about the American Indian Movement, and I have not said this to too many people, but when they took over Alcatraz and the Wounded Knee Incident, those were two major events in that (19)69 to (19)73 period. Just your thoughts on that? SM (02:07:54): Well, I think their taking over Alcatraz was a brilliant move. And at the time they did it, it was because they were basically delisting tribes. They were taking away their status, did not exist anymore. And they were able, because of the taking over Alcatraz, got so much attention. And then they did the Longest March, where the American RCC took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters. And they were able to roll back all of that. And tribes were re-certified. And there was a number of anti-native pieces of legislation that were going on. And all of them got defeated after Alcatraz. The Wounded Knee Incident, I think it was a mistake. I think that when people left the BIA headquarters in DC and went to Wounded Knee, I agree with John Trudel, that it was not a surprise move because it was out in the hinterlands, and the media was not there, and they were not able to control the media, and it was just a disaster waiting to happen. At the same time, it brought massive attention to the inequities on the reservation. But it really did not stop the killings of natives there. That is why they started it. In a way, it was not effective in what it set out to do. MD (02:09:16): When the best history books are written, or the sociology books, or once long after the last Boomer has passed away, what do you think historians and writers will say about this period? Because they did not live it. They study it, but they did not live it. SM (02:09:40): Right. I would say that it will be seen as a shift in consciousness, that it was clearly an attempt to take on a more expanded global consciousness among all cultures on the planet. Planetary consciousness shift. I think they will see it as that. And that well-meaning people really tried to roll back the negative impact of our society. And I guess by definition that means they will have succeeded some, if there is a future with historians. MD (02:10:14): Well, one of the great pictures of this period was the picture of Planet Earth. SM (02:10:20): Yes. MD (02:10:21): From the space capsule. And when college students, say a hundred years from now, when we are all gone, look at that picture as one of the pictures from the (19)60s, and they read all this stuff about coming together, and fighting for people's rights, and the sense of community. And then all they hear about are the divisions, will they look at that picture and say... Because the astronauts said that if you look at Planet Earth, we are all in this together. That the Boomer Generation did not understand that in the end. Do you think people will be that critical? SM (02:11:01): Well, I think that if there is people a hundred years from now and they can look at that picture, that will mean that we did succeed. MD (02:11:05): Very good. Very, very good. Is there any question that I did not ask you that you thought I might ask you? SM (02:11:16): No, you covered a lot pretty well. Yeah. I guess the one question is writers, you talked about the people. MD (02:11:26): Oh, yeah. Well, I did not... Yeah, the writers, but also the books. SM (02:11:32): Yeah. MD (02:11:32): Most influential writers. I got so many questions here. Who are the most influential writers and books that you read when you were young? SM (02:11:41): Oh. MD (02:11:41): And throughout your life? SM (02:11:45): And throughout my life. Yeah. MD (02:11:48): And let me change the side of my- Okay. SM (02:12:01): Well, Ken Kesey was a real instrumental writer, and my influential writer. Rom Dass, influencer writer, we talked about them. MD (02:12:09): What did Rom Dass say that was so important? And what did Kesey say that was important to you? SM (02:12:15): Kesey, in his book, Sometimes a Great Notion, basically, he shows how all these tragedies befall this family because they put their individual family above the common good. And that had a big message to me. His other famous book, Cuckoo's Nest, really took apart the thing of the benign institution, where this may hurt, but it's for your own good. How there's a certain maliciousness in that. And brought that out. And I like that about his books a lot. Rom Dass, in his book Be Here, Now was able to show me the connection between what all various spiritual traditions of the past, the connections between what they were saying and how they actually met the same things here and there. And that really helped. MD (02:13:23): What was the name of that book? SM (02:13:24): Be Here Now. MD (02:13:25): Be Here Now. SM (02:13:26): Yeah. MD (02:13:27): Okay. SM (02:13:29): That had a huge impact on me when I was in college. Other books that I read that mattered. There's the classic, On the Road, by Kerouac. There's various books like that, that mattered. And I like a lot of fiction too, with the Kesey books and various other pieces of fiction. Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy gave me a real political perspective on what's going on. Arthur Clarke, he had Childhood's End. MD (02:14:06): Oh yeah. SM (02:14:07): Another great book that really impacted me. Yeah, things like that. Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail's, one of the best political books I have ever read. MD (02:14:22): Did you ever read Greening of America by Charles Reich? SM (02:14:24): Yes. MD (02:14:25): That was a great book, yeah? SM (02:14:26): That was a really good, that was an excellent book. MD (02:14:28): And then The Making of a Counterculture by Theodore Roszak. That was another good one. SM (02:14:33): Yes. MD (02:14:34): And I think another one that was very popular was that Love Story by Eric Siegel. SM (02:14:42): I did not like that book. MD (02:14:42): Yeah, he just passed away recently. SM (02:14:44): Yeah. MD (02:14:45): Any other books? Any other writers? Any poets? Any... SM (02:14:49): Oh God, I cannot even off the top of my head. I cannot remember. There is a lot of them. MD (02:14:55): Of all the environmental people that you have been connected to in your life, you already said that Rachel Carson was. SM (02:15:03): Yeah. MD (02:15:05): But who are the environmental people that you just truly admire? SM (02:15:12): Well, David Brower. I cannot say enough about David Brower. MD (02:15:16): And what is his position and title? SM (02:15:18): Well, he was the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club. MD (02:15:22): Okay. SM (02:15:22): He got drummed out of the Sierra Club for being too radical. And then he founded the Friends of the Earth. And then he founded the Earth Island Institute. He was just an uncompromising, amazing character. He was a World War II hero, because he invented all these types of mountain climbing, trained all these troops on how to do it. Climbed most of the western mountains first in the United States. And he died about 10 years ago. He was about 90 when he died. Phenomenal guy. And then I actually had, a guy who is not that well-known home, Homer Roberts, who was the founder of the Michigan Audubon Society, and who was involved in the efforts to save the bald eagle, and the Kirtland's warbler, and so on. And he was the guy that first taught me about ecosystems before I ever even heard of the word. I wonder what is going on with my phone. MD (02:16:21): Ah, yeah, there you go. SM (02:16:23): Anyway. MD (02:16:25): All right. SM (02:16:26): Those are the early environmentalists that really impacted me. MD (02:16:30): Well, that is my last question. I will turn my tape- (End of Interview) Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. 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Title A name given to the resource Interview with Michael Donnelly Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Donnelly, Michael ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Environmentalists; Authors, American--20th century; Indigenous peoples--United States; Donnelly, Michael--Interviews Description An account of the resource Michael Donnelly is an environmental activist, author, and one of the founders of Friends of Opal Creek. Donnelly has been writing on environmental issues and stories focused on Native American and indigenous peoples in the northwest. He is a member of the American Indian Movement. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.184a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.184b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. 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Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-03-17 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Charles Kaiser Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Charles Kaiser is an American author, journalist and academic administrator. He was the Associate Director at the LGBT Social Science and Public Policy Center at Hunter College in NYC, a leader of the Grove Fellowship Program, and a weekend nonfiction book critic at The Guardian US. Kaiser has won the grand prize at the Paris Book Festival and his book The Cost of Courage received great reviews from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor along with some other publications. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:5039,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:1},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Charles Kaiser is an American author, journalist and academic administrator. He was the Associate Director at the LGBT Social Science and Public Policy Center at Hunter College in NYC, a leader of the Grove Fellowship Program, and a weekend nonfiction book critic at <em>The Guardian US</em>. Kaiser has won the grand prize at the Paris Book Festival, and his book <em>The Cost of Courage</em> received great reviews from the <em>Washington Post</em>, the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>, and the <em>Christian Science Monitor</em> along with some other publications. </span> Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Marijuana; Rock and Roll; George Orwell; John Lennon; Greed; Materialism; Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; Non-violence; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-war movement; De-segregation; Homophobia; Ronald Reagan; Kent State; Diversity; Edmund Muskie; Gay bar; NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt; Harvey Milk; Movies. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:5041,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Marijuana; Rock and Roll; George Orwell; John Lennon; Greed; Materialism; Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; Non-violence; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-war movement; De-segregation; Homophobia; Ronald Reagan; Kent State; Diversity; Edmund Muskie; Gay bar; NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt; Harvey Milk; Movies. </span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 118:10 Subject LCSH Authors, American; Journalists; Hunter College; Kaiser, Charles--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Charles Kaiser Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 17 March 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two, testing. I guess we will start again. CK (00:00:17): By the way, I had lunch with two people today who you should strongly consider for your list. One of them in particular is Peter Goldman, who was the heart and soul of Newsweek Magazine from about 1962 to 1980 and he pretty much wrote all of the major cover stories about the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. And he also wrote a biography of Malcolm X, which I believe is still in print in Houston colleges. And I think he would be a terrific person for you. SM (00:00:48): I think I have that book. I have so many books, I have to check that. CK (00:00:52): I do. It is one of the serious autobiographies. SM (00:00:56): Who was the second person? CK (00:00:58): The other one is Henrik Hertzberg, who was the chief political writer for the New Yorker, who was at Newsweek in Francisco in 1965. He wrote the first file about the [inaudible] and then he was Jimmy Carter's principal speech for the last two years of Carter's presidency. And he was twice the editor of the New Republic, and he was an extremely intelligent and particular fellow. SM (00:01:25): Wow. Did you mention I was doing this book? CK (00:01:28): I did. I mentioned that I had to get home so I could talk to you. SM (00:01:31): Okay. CK (00:01:33): But I will send you their emails and you can take it from there, do as you like. SM (00:01:37): Super. Actually, I read yesterday your fantastic piece on Walter Cronkite. CK (00:01:44): Oh, thank you very much. SM (00:01:45): Yeah, I had not seen that. I was going into the computer again and checking on some of your most recent last year, year and a half pieces, and I thought that was very well written and it really hit at home because he was the man I look to for the news. He was so different. CK (00:02:04): He was the glue for the whole country for a long time or he was certainly the glue for, well, for more than just the liberal part. He was the glue for the same part of the country throughout all of that insanity. SM (00:02:18): And I think you hit it right on target when you said when they hired Dan Rather. CK (00:02:23): It was the beginning of the end. SM (00:02:24): Yeah. I mean, his whole persona was so totally different, and Roger Mudd would have kind of continued. CK (00:02:34): Oh, Roger was completely in the same, and he had been Walter Cronkite for three months every summer for years before that and he just was not a good in-house politician. It was nothing more complicated than that. SM (00:02:45): Yep. All right. Well, we are going to start off here and I am going to start a little differently than I did when I was in New York because I have done a little more reading and I read (19)68, but I was kind of pinpointing some points here that you made in the book. You said that you thought the election of President Kennedy taught the students about the power of the individual, how an individual person could change the way the whole country felt about itself. And I know you put that in your introduction. Could you explain that in more detail in your thoughts? CK (00:03:25): Well, I think for anybody between the ages of, well, I was only 10, but I was pretty precautious 10 year old. But for anybody who was a teenager through his twenties living in America, that the contrast between this aged and maybe even a little senile President Eisenhower, who I agree looks better and better in fresh respect, but did not look so great at the time. The contrast between having this very old person and this extremely young and vigorous person with two young children in the White House and a glamorous wife, it was a breath of fresh air and it was also... Mean, his whole message was let us move the country forward, let us move into the modern world. And how better to move into the modern world than with a 40, I think he was 43-year-old president when he was in office. SM (00:04:21): Yes. Do you think that when boomers were very young though, they looked at Eisenhower as that grandfather figure and it made him feel comfortable when they were very young because he was like a grandfather to them. CK (00:04:34): I do not know about that. SM (00:04:35): No? CK (00:04:36): I do not really buy that, no. SM (00:04:39): You also talk early on in your book in the introduction, and we talked about this, about the Beatles and how important message of these four kids coming out of nowhere, but they had a talent that they could be involved in changing the world. And you also talked a lot about Bob Dylan. You kind of bring Kennedy, the Beatles and Dylan all together as the major forces that merged the culture and the politics. Could you briefly summarize your thoughts on that? CK (00:05:11): Well, the Beatles were important partly because they basically take the inspiration of Black American music and transform it into something which is accessible to everybody and they are important, as Allen Ginsburg put it, because they taught people that men could be friends and they really transformed, I think, they began the transformation of what the ideal of masculinity was. And it was certainly something with these long-haired, very attractive, very cute boys being the main cultural figures on the planet. It certainly softened the ideal of masculinity for an entire generation. Dylan, especially in the first four years of his recording career is the person who most successfully puts the ideals of an era to music. I mean, when he writes The Times They Are A-Changin', which, as he said to me, I wanted to write a big song in a simple way. He was very explicitly trying to, I think, galvanize a generation. Now, he quite soon decides that being explicitly political is going to limit him as an artist and he kind of abandons that around 1965. But for four years there-there was nobody who was more important in supporting the ideals of the civil rights movement through music than he. And Kennedy, Kennedy is intelligent and glamour and modernity. I do not know. Kennedy's the person who gets men to stop wearing hats. Kennedy stopped wearing a hat, the world stopped wearing hats. He had huge cultural influence way beyond whatever his political stance was. SM (00:07:20): I have ordered Gay Metropolis. I ordered it on Amazon because I wanted to get a first edition, so I got one on the way. But I have read a few things since I met you about two weeks ago, and that that you brought up the fact that there were four basic elements that kind of led to the Gay Liberation Movement. Obviously the Civil Rights Movement is an example of- CK (00:07:46): The civil rights movement is by far the most important thing of all because it is the example of Black people that really provides the entire blueprint for the gay liberation movement in terms of standing up to the power structure of straight white men in America. Nothing's more important than the civil rights movement as a model, but go on. SM (00:08:10): The other three. You have already talked about the Beatles. And the pill and the psychedelic revolution. CK (00:08:18): Yeah. Well, the pill, I think I said to you before, the reason the pill is so important is that it becomes the sort of public acknowledgement that sex can have a value which is not attached to appropriation. The straight sexual revolution is a necessary prerequisite to the gay sexual revolution because sex is no longer viewed as something which should only take place given marriage and for the purpose of creating a child. And until sex is given a value which is not connected to procreation, it is very hard to make an argument for gay liberation. SM (00:08:58): And then the psychedelic revolution. CK (00:09:00): Well, the psychedelic revolution is just part of... I mean, it is that and really the Vietnam War. It is everything which throws the established order into question. It is everything which makes it possible to question the way things are right now, and that includes the antiwar movement, taking LSD, you name it. SM (00:09:24): Well, you were at Columbia University, I believe, from (19)68 to (19)72. CK (00:09:28): Well, yeah, but I got there in the fall of (19)68, keep in mind. So I actually missed the biggest upheaval. I get there in the fall after the biggest upheaval, which is of course, the spring of (19)68. SM (00:09:46): Right. What was it like to be a college student in 1968? I know you got involved in the McCarthy campaign as a volunteer. CK (00:09:51): It was really more when I was at prep school because that was in the spring. So I was working out of the storefront in Windsor, Connecticut the fall of (19)68. Well, I do not know. Partly being a Columbia you had this sense that you were at the center of the world because even though there was not any particular disruption in the fall of (19)68, you still had enormous media attention. I mean, I can remember there was, I believe, a cover story about Newsweek probably with Mark Ru on the cover like a week or two after I got there. So you did feel like you were sort of under the microscope. I would say the main social thing going on was that everybody was smoking marijuana, except me. I was one of two people in my entire graduating class from prep school out of a hundred. I think I was one of two people who had not tried marijuana while I was in high school. And I did not until the spring of my freshman year at Columbia initially. I think movies were very important in the (19)60s. I think movies really were more important than books as a cultural driving force. And of course, most important of all was music. I think what connected us all more than anything else during that period was the music that we were listening to. SM (00:11:27): Now, you obviously talk a lot in your book about Bob Dylan, the Beatles music and particular songs that shaped the generation and may have even been a theme for the Generation. But besides the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, who are your top three, so to speak? What other musicians did you really look up to in the songs that had a meaning in your life? CK (00:11:52): Well, I would say everybody in Motown, all of the Motown stars and both the composers like Holland-Dozier-Holland and The Supremes, the Four Tops, all of those people. I think the success of Black Rock and Roll stars, the huge success, the mainstream success of Black rock and roll stars. Of course, there had been successful Black musicians before that, but I do not think there had ever been as many at the same time who had complete crossover appeal. And I think the fact that people in Birmingham, Alabama were as enthusiastic about The Supremes as the people in Philadelphia and Detroit was very important in a subliminal way to making the move towards Black equality possible. Because these were show business stars who were on the Ed Sullivan Show and everywhere else and it meant that there was, at least at the top, there was suddenly real equality between Black and white at least at the top of the music business. SM (00:13:08): Now, one of the albums in 1971, I can remember in the summer, I had to walk almost 10 blocks in Philadelphia to get it because I heard it came out, and that is What's Going On with Marvin Gaye. CK (00:13:20): Right, for example- SM (00:13:22): What an album. And then even a simple song, but it was one of the songs that the OJs did, Backstabbers. I thought that was... It had a message too. I listened to that over and over again and a lot of people liked the tune, but I always listened to the words itself. I know we asked this when I was in New York, but again, briefly describe your background. I know about your parents, your growing up years. And I am very curious again for you to talk about your relationship with Teddy White and the influence and inspired you to become a writer. Could you just give me a little bit about your background before you arrived at Columbia? CK (00:14:09): Well, before I was at Columbia I lived in Senegal from the age of 10 to 13. And I lived in London from the age of 13 to 16. And my father, one way or another, seemed to know most of the most successful writers and journalists of his generation and that very much included Teddy White who would come to our house occasionally from time to time. I remember he visited us once from the suburbs of Washington where we were living before we went to Senegal. And since he wrote really the most important book about John Kennedy's election and John Kennedy was the most important political figure in my life and everybody in my family fell in love with Teddy's book. And I think that at that point sort of subliminally implanted the idea in me of how exciting it could be to write a great non-fiction book. I always said that that book and the kingdom and the power about the New York Times were probably one of the two most important inspirations for me. SM (00:15:20): Well, one of the things I also learned since I was in New York is how important George Orwell is. You considered him the greatest writer ever. CK (00:15:30): Greatest journalist ever. SM (00:15:31): Yeah, greatest journalist ever. How were you introduced to him? CK (00:15:37): I was introduced to him because my brother, David, was at Harvard, was a senior, I think. Was he a senior? Yeah, he was probably the class of (19)69. And he decided to write his senior thesis about Orwell. And coincidentally it was in 1968 or... I do not know if it was considered or if this was White decided to do it, but the collected letters, essays and journalism, all of it came out in four volumes in 1968. So for the first time all of this nonfiction and work was available in one place. And I think I was infected by my brother's enthusiasm, who when you came across a particularly exciting passage in any of these volumes, he would read it aloud at the dinner table. SM (00:16:33): Was 1984 a major influence on you? CK (00:16:39): I certainly remember it as one of the scariest books I have ever read. I remember it that way. Really what Orwell did was he had all of these ideas. He wrote about all the ideas in 1984 and in Animal Farm first in the non-fiction form and then he took the same ideas and use them again to write novels. And I think for me probably cumulatively the non-fiction stuff is more important. But I admire him because he is the cleanest most effective writer I know and he was utterly courageous, perfectly willing to infuriate all the communists by writing a very balanced book about the Civil War in Spain after fighting on the Republican side. But he wrote a book which showed that there were no obvious heroes on either side of that war. And it is just his lifelong iconic of his class. And the fact that most of the time, but I think probably overall if you look at everything he wrote, that he had a be better record of predicting what was going to happen than anybody else. So there were certainly exceptions. He thought that there would be inevitably be fascism in wartime Britain, which never happened. But that was one of his rare mistakes, right? SM (00:18:11): When you think of the (19)60s, what was the watershed moment that you thought the (19)60s began and when you thought it ended from your personal perspective? CK (00:18:23): I think surely they begin for me with the election of John F. Kennedy. And there is so many arbitrary ways to say when they ended, but I think they began to end when Richard Nixon resigned from office and I would say the absolute final nail on the coffin was when John Lennon was murdered in 1980. SM (00:18:52): 1980, yeah. When you look at that period, from your own perspective as a person who lived it, who was a college student in those crucial years, (19)68 to (19)72, I am not sure if you really said this in your book, what is the biggest disappointment that you feel when you look at that whole era and when you look at your generation, the boomers? What is your biggest disappointment in them and what is your thing you are most proud of within that group from that period? CK (00:19:35): I am proudest of the fact that I think we did more than any other generation to do what Molly Ivins describes. She says that the whole history of the United States can be viewed as steadily extending the principles of the Constitution to everyone. I mean, I am proudest of the fact that life for the average woman, the average African American, the average gay person could not hardly be more dramatic, different in 2010 than it was in 1958. I think all of that stuff is unbelievably important. And of course, I am most disgusted by the fact that what was briefly an anti-materialistic generation has become the most materialistic generation in the history of the world probably. SM (00:20:34): Give some examples of that because I have gotten that feedback from others too. CK (00:20:41): Examples of greed? What are you looking for? What do you mean? SM (00:20:44): Just some examples that you say you are disappointed in them because of their love for materialism. Is there specific instances you can explain, individuals? CK (00:20:56): Well, it is just a general. I mean, it seems like the general... Nothing was more looked down upon in my family than conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption was considered one of the venal sins and I would say this generation has become as famous for conspicuous consumption as it is for anything else. SM (00:21:24): One of the most important things of, who said, the expansion of higher education, more students going to college in the (19)60s and (19)70s with the State universities and the community colleges, and of course you had your Ivy League schools, Clark Kerr in his book, The Uses of the University talks about the multiversity, about the links between what is going on in the university and what is going on in the corporate world. And supposedly during the time that you and I were both in college, the concept within local parentis where the college is acting like a parent, which was very big in the (19)50s, in early (19)60s, was not happening and the students did not want it in the (19)60s. It seems like it has come back. The question I am trying to get at here are your thoughts on the universities from that period, not just the Ivy league Columbia, but universities all over the country and how they responded to the student protest movement and whether the criticism that was sent their way by students was correct, that we were linked too closely with the corporate world. Charles, I want to mention, I interviewed Arthur Chickering last week, one of the great educators in higher education who wrote Education and Identity. And he said to me, one of the most revealing things he said, I never thought I would live to see again the corporations taking over the university. He has written a major piece, I think it is going to come out next month in one of the major magazines, that it is the same way it was when the students were criticizing it in the (19)60s. CK (00:23:04): That sounds right. Interesting. Well, in the short term, at least at Columbia, basically all of the.... I mean, the short term for the next 20 years or so, most of the goals of the protestors were fulfilled by the university administration. They democratized things by having a student senate or a university senate, which included student representation. They certainly did much less expansion into the community for a long time of the kind like going to gym in a public park, which is one of the things that is popular in 1968. But probably the thing that we were most excited about was in the fall of 1968, and which was a very explicitly done to dampen political activity, was the fact that they lifted all of this restrictions on the hours when women could visit men in their dormitory rooms. SM (00:24:11): Well, that was important. CK (00:24:12): That was important. SM (00:24:15): Yeah. I remember when my mom went to college back in the forties, my dad used to visit her in the residence hall and they had the woman, I forget the name of the person who ran the residence hall, the house mother or whatever, they had to walk by the room, they had to make sure the legs were on the floor at all times. CK (00:24:32): Said that was one limb on the floor. SM (00:24:36): Yeah. She told me about that. Some of the, I put down here, what do you think the overall impact is of the boomer generation on society? Do you think they have then good parents and or good grandparents in terms of sharing what it was like in the (19)60s and carrying some of the values into the future generations? Have they done a good job with that? CK (00:25:07): Yeah, I think certainly the parents of my social class and my generation I would say are more self-consciously parental than our parents were and partly because... I think that one of the really good things of the women's liberation movement was that it meant that men did become far more involved in the emotional lives of their children than the men of our parents' generation who were... It was a really a large part, a feeling that... Elise and I may be extrapolating too much from my own family, but I think everywhere that it was the woman's job to take care of the emotional development of the children and it was the man's job to bring home the bacon basically. SM (00:25:59): If you were to- CK (00:26:00): And I think now there is much more equality in the division of responsibilities. SM (00:26:07): If you were to place some adjectives on the boomer generation, particularly this 15 percent of the activist that seemed to participate in some sort of protest, what were some of their strengths and what were some of their weaknesses in your point of view? CK (00:26:29): Well, I think the main strengths of the activist was the perception of the white activist was the perception that the Vietnam War was an evil and wasteful enterprise and that almost anything that you could do to call attention to that was a worthy thing to do, an important thing to do. Certainly when people veered off into violence of making bombs, I would say I certainly parted company with them there. But I think all of the nonviolent stuff I think is very important and very useful. SM (00:27:17): How do you respond when you hear critics of that era, that timeframe say that most of the problems we have in America today go directly back to that period when, again, the increasing in the divorce rate, the drug culture, the no respect for authority, a sense of irresponsibility on the critics part? CK (00:27:43): I think all of our current problems can date from really primarily from the Reagan era, whose main philosophical message was be as greedy as you want to be and do not feel that you have to do anything for people who are less fortunate then you are and that that is far more important to our current catastrophic situation than any of the things that you just mentioned. SM (00:28:10): Yeah, that gets me into it because you remember when we spoke the last time we broke down the decades, on how the decades kind of influenced the boomers. And why do not we talk about the (19)80s? When you talk about the (19)80s, you really think of Ronald Reagan. And of course toward the end you think of George Bush who became president, but Iran Contra, those kinds of things. Of course, the economy was not very good. Jobs or lack of jobs in the early (19)80s, of course, the assassination attempt. What does the (19)80s mean to the boomers who had just been through the (19)60s and the (19)70s? CK (00:28:57): Well, the (19)80s is the decade that validates and encourages their pre-occupation with materialism. I think it is the absolute end of... For many people it kills off whatever remnants or the idealism of the (19)60s and the idea that you really should devote part of your life to improving the lives of people less fortunate than yourself. SM (00:29:36): When you think, of course, boomers being born between (19)46 and (19)64, when you think about the end of World War II, certainly the GI Bill, the baby boom started right around that timeframe. The greatest number of babies were born in 1957. Saw that in a statistic. But what was it about the late forties and (19)50s- [inaudible]. But what was it about the late (19)40s and (19)50s, what was it like at that time to be a young child growing up in that period? CK (00:30:13): Well, I think the most important thing was the explosion in the middle class, and the huge number of people who did not have to worry about providing the basic necessities of life, the huge number of people who were relatively prosperous, a larger proportion of the pot probably than at any other time up till that time. And that in turn, by the time the Boomers... Having grown up with this comparative lack of financial anxiety, if you were lucky enough to be part of that middle class, I think that it is the reason that 1968 to about 1971 were the years when college students spent the least amount of time worrying about how they were going to make a living for the rest of their lives and the largest amount of time thinking about how they could recreate the world and themselves. I think that amount of affluence was very liberating. SM (00:31:30): Well, I wrote down just off the top of my head some things. When you think of the (19)50s, this is just good old Steve McKiernan, and I would like your response to see if there is something missing here, I think of a GI Bill, I think Levittown, I think of Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare. Of course, you think of President Truman and Eisenhower, the nuclear threat, black and white TV. Parents giving everything to their kids. Church attendance seemed to be up. Parents were- CK (00:32:01): In the (19)50s was church attendance... Is that true? Is church attendants up in the (19)50s? I would be doubtful about that one. SM (00:32:06): Church attendance, well, some of them, things I have been reading was at least larger than it was in the (19)60s. CK (00:32:12): Than in the (19)60s, yeah. But I think the decline... I am guessing here, I do not know the numbers, but I would think the go decline begins after World War II and just accelerates in the (19)60s. SM (00:32:27): Is that because of their parents failed in World War ii or the nuclear threat and everything? CK (00:32:36): I think, well, certainly for my own parents, people of my own parents' intellectual class, I think that the creation or the invention of the atomic bomb contributed to a decline in the belief of an almighty God. SM (00:32:52): The other things were that the parents were proud that they defeated Germany and Japan- CK (00:33:01): Well, we talked about that. Yeah. I mean, I think that people of our age grew up as the beneficiaries of this kind of huge surge of confidence and self-esteem that our parents had, having participated in the greatest and most black and white triumph of good over evil over the last 100 years, for sure. I mean, the fact that the world was confronted with this absolute pure evil of Adolf Hitler and belatedly and that this gigantic cause overcame it, but at least it did come out the right way, I think that was extremely important. SM (00:33:47): And of course, the other things would be the civil rights movement was happening at that time with the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Little Rock Nine, and a lot of the things were happening there. The Beats were around, and Jackie Robinson was in baseball, and so it is really good things. CK (00:34:05): The Black people were giving a moral sample to the rest of the country. SM (00:34:14): Of course, I got a long list here, but the (19)60s, you could talk for five hours on the (19)60s. But what was it about the (19)60s that influenced the Boomer generation? CK (00:34:26): Everything. Drugs, the greatest probably access to the sex of any generation up to that time, at least in the United States. The idealism of the civil rights movement, the example of Martin Luther King. And the idealism of the anti-war movement, surely. SM (00:34:59): Yeah, and of course then we- CK (00:35:02): All the... I mean, it is just very hard to describe how the music and the politics and the culture and the drugs all did work together, but they did all work together very much to give us for a brief shining moment- SM (00:35:22): Still there? CK (00:35:23): Hold on. You there? Sorry, the phone fell. SM (00:35:27): Yep, that is okay. CK (00:35:29): ...gave us very much a sense of ourselves as a generation apart, a generation that was new and different and in a way that I think more so than many other generations have had. SM (00:35:43): Well, you have written this great book, 1968, which I know is used in a couple universities here in this region. West Chester does not use it, I do not know why, but- CK (00:35:53): Well, you would better do something about that. SM (00:35:55): Well, I have got to talk to Dr. Kodosky because I know it is used at Villanova and I know it is used at other schools, so I have got to find out, he is- CK (00:36:06): At Duke, I know it is used at Duke. SM (00:36:06): Yeah. Well, it is a great book. And you wrote on a year that will forever be imprinted in the minds of every single Boomer, whether they were an activist or not. The question I am trying to ask is, were we close to a second civil war in 1968 in terms of all the terrible divisions that were happening? It came out, of course, at the convention, we had the assassinations. America really started getting divided really over the war with Tet experience early in the year. Of course, the riots in the cities, the burnings. Just were we close to a second civil war? CK (00:36:53): I am not sure we were closer to a second civil war, but we were closer to a sense of the world falling apart where all of the established order being in jeopardy, at least from April through November, which, I mean, the peak would really begin with the riots everywhere after Martin Luther King was killed. I would think it was that. Apart from the blunt, gigantic shock of the various assassinations, I think that surely the scariest time was that period immediately after Martin Luther King was killed when Washington looked like a scarier place than Saigon was, [inaudible] from all over the place and machine guns mounted on the parapet in front of the Capitol and the White House worrying whether they were literally going to run out of enough federal troops to pacify all the riots that were going on all over the country. And then there was that, and then I think to the part of the country which had escaped those riots, which was not very much except for the rural part, I think the scene of the disarray on the streets of Chicago was extremely unsettling thing to see, something to watch and to see not only poorer Black people or poorer black people revolting, but also middle-class white men. It just seemed like everything was a little bit kind of cruel. But I think certainly those images from the street of Chicago were as helpful that Richard Nixon getting elected as anything else that happened that year. SM (00:38:57): I think in your book, you say some three really important points that I did not know. First one, I knew about the National Student Association and because I knew people that were part of that group, but I did not know it had really started way back and in (19)47. And so when we talk about the anti-war movement and students involved in protests and caring about social concerns, well, the National Student Association had been involved and they cared about concerns kind of all the way through, did not they, from its outset? And you talk about how the CIA infiltrated it right before Loewenstein became, I guess, the president of it or-or after. But how important was that organization in the (19)50s? CK (00:39:43): Well, I think it was important to an idealistic vanguard, but I do not think it was important in a mass way. I do not think must people more all that aware of it. SM (00:39:55): You mentioned you made a point that a lot of the people that went down South maybe did Freedom Summer, who went down to voter registration, got involved in some of the non-violent protests, they were students from that period and they ended up many of them becoming the leaders of the anti-war movement. CK (00:40:12): Yeah, yeah. Well, certainly there was a great overlap, the leaders of this civil rights movement and the first leaders of the anti-war movement, yeah. SM (00:40:27): Could you also talk about the irony that the man who became, who you volunteered for in 1968 was the only man really political figure that challenged Joe McCarthy? CK (00:40:41): Right-right. Right, yes. Well, so that he did, he had two sterling moments of courage in his career: debating Joe McCarthy on the radio, and challenging Lyndon Johnson for re-nomination when every other Democratic senator was too scared to do so. SM (00:41:01): Now, were you able to hear that debate? Do you- CK (00:41:05): No, I do not know if it exists on tape, but I do not think I ever found it. No. SM (00:41:11): Was there ever a transcript of it? CK (00:41:14): I do not remember. I do not think I ever saw one. I think the closest I came was reading contemporary news stories about it. SM (00:41:26): Boy, he must have been fearless because that McCarthy, the other McCarthy, you went against him, you were in trouble. CK (00:41:33): Yeah. Although I did would be important to know, and I do not know whether that debate was before or after Ed Murrow had taken him on. Because that certainly I would say from the time that Ed Murrow does his first show attacking McCarthy, that is the beginning of the decline of his influence. SM (00:41:53): Could you also talk about the fact that maybe we would have had more people with a white Caucasian background who may have been against the war or spoke up sooner on civil rights issues, but they admired the African American community for their stand on what was happening in the South? They were kind of role models to many of the white people who wanted to speak up and did not out of fear. CK (00:42:23): I am not quite sure what you are saying. SM (00:42:25): You mentioned in your book that a lot of white people who may have spoken up earlier about the injustices toward African Americans in America, but were afraid to do so because of McCarthy. CK (00:42:40): Oh, because of Joe McCarthy. SM (00:42:41): Yeah, Joe McCarthy, and the fact that you know it... And of course- CK (00:42:47): I do not think there is any single individual who had a more negative impact in every way than Joe McCarthy did in the 1950s. I mean, in terms of making people unnecessarily fearful, anybody who had ever had the remotest connection to a Left-wing organization in the 1930s, regardless of whether they still had any of those views or not. I mean, he was a massively destructive figure. SM (00:43:15): There is a brand-new book out, I think by M. Stanton Evans saying that McCarthy got a raw deal. I do not know if you have seen that book. CK (00:43:23): I have not, but I do not need to read it to know that he is full of shit. SM (00:43:29): Charles, let me change my tape here. All right. I guess we are heading into the (19)70s here. What was it about the (19)70s that... And again, part of the (19)60s really goes to about 1973, but what was it about the (19)70s that was so different than the (19)60s in terms of its impact on Boomers? CK (00:43:55): Well, the (19)70s is really the era in which what had been the (19)60s in places like New York and Los Angeles and all the big cities, it is really when that sort of ethos, I think spreads out throughout the country into the smaller places and the more rural places. And everybody has long hair by 1973, whereas only people in big cities probably had long hair in 1968. But it is also the period where, well, I think for the main activists in the (19)60s, the fact of Richard Nixon's election was kind of a symbol of the fundamental failure of the movement to bring about real change, at least in the government. I think it was a very depressing event for people who were in the streets in (19)60s, the fact that all of that activism in some sense culminated in... I had an exchange with... When I published 1968, Arthur Crim, who was another dear friend of my father's and was a big fundraiser for Lyndon Johnson at a ranch named for Lyndon Johnson, he read the book and obviously lauded, celebratory tone but he said, "But God, did not we pay this huge price in the reaction the country went through to all that disruption." And obviously we did pay a huge price because it had been so upsetting to so many people that it in some sense enabled the rise of the Conservative movement for the next 40 years. So, there is that. But we have never... Even though, well, you can argue with the Supreme Court we have gone certainly backwards somewhat on school desegregation. But there has never been an attempt really, except [inaudible], to paint Black people is inferior to white people, and there is nobody who questions any, the capacity of women to be competent chief executive officers of major corporations. And I cannot say it often enough that the transformation of the way gay people are treated and what they are allowed to become, what professions they are allowed to be in openly, could not be more dramatic. I do not know if you saw what I wrote most recently about the New York Times with Ted Olson and David Boies were at the New York Times last week talking about gay marriage? SM (00:47:03): No, I did not see that. CK (00:47:04): And in the audience were Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who was the publisher of the paper, and Andrew Rosenthal, who was the editorial page editor who's probably written more pro-equal rights editorials about gay people than anybody else. And 30 years ago, their fathers ran the paper, Punch Sulzberger and Abe Rosenthal, and both of them were extremely homophobic, and every gay employee of the newspaper assumed that their career depended on keeping their sexual orientation a secret. And basically, this current publisher single-handedly, really, transformed it from one of the most homophobic institutions in the world to one of the most gay-friendly institutions in the world. SM (00:47:56): That is in the... Was that in... I will look it up. CK (00:47:59): That was in the blog I posted last week. SM (00:48:03): Okay. I will have to check that out. Was that the one, the Columbia Journalism blog? CK (00:48:08): No, it is now hosted by the Hillman Foundation. SM (00:48:10): Oh, okay. Yeah, that is where I saw some of yours, too. Okay. CK (00:48:13): Yeah. It was originally hosted by Radar Magazine when there was a Radar Magazine, and then I moved to the Columbia Journalism Review, and then I moved to the Hillman Foundation when they offered me more money than the Columbia Journalism Review. SM (00:48:26): A couple of things within the (19)70s that stand out. Of course, Kent State and Jackson State, Watergate, Nixon resigning and Ford becoming president, the Pentagon Papers. And the only other thing kind of disco music, the music changes drastically. Your thoughts on any of those events? And then oftentimes, and I would like your thoughts on this, when we talk about the sexual revolution, we talk about more of the (19)70s and the (19)60s sometimes. And the critics of the (19)70s will say that because of the sexual revolution, there was a direct link to the AIDS crisis of the (19)80s. And of course, when you think about the (19)80s, again, you have got to think of Reagan. I interviewed Mark Thompson a couple weeks ago, and Mark Thompson almost, he actually started crying on the phone. That is the only time he did it, he said, when he starts thinking of Ronald Reagan. CK (00:49:20): Who is Mark Thompson? SM (00:49:21): He wrote Advocate Days. He is Malcolm Boyd's lifelong partner, and he was one of the leaders of the Advocate for many years. He said when he talks about Ronald Reagan and about how Ronald Reagan treated gay and lesbians in America, as if they did not even exist, he gets real emotional. But- CK (00:49:48): You know what he said about his son though, Ronald Junior, when he first took the office? He said, "He is all man, we have made sure." SM (00:49:57): Oh, wow. CK (00:49:59): I have always wanted to know what the test had been. SM (00:50:02): Yeah. His son does not seem to be all that bad. I think his son is a little liberal, is not he or something? CK (00:50:07): His son is very liberal, yeah. SM (00:50:08): He has got his own radio show, I think, out in the West someplace. Your thoughts on those major events of the (19)70s, Kent State, and their impact and either something- CK (00:50:18): Well, there was still a huge... I mean, the (19)70s is when I witnessed all this. The second biggest disruption of Columbia University was in 1972 when there was, again, buildings occupied, and anti-war protests and police came on the campus, and it was really kind of a mini version of what had happened in 1968, and it was a period... There was still a period when there was a lot of middle-class protests in the streets going against the war, which was after all, dragging on and on thanks to Henry Kissinger. But there was also the music was less interesting, except for Stevie Wonder and a couple of other people. But the amount of diversity, which was really the hallmark in the music of the (19)60s, was that someone with almost any conceivable musical style had a shot at being a star. Whereas my mid (19)70s I would say, disco was the main form of a popular musical entertainment in America. And certainly there is a huge amount of sexual promiscuity in the 1970s, that is undeniable. I mean, it is the really the time in our time when you felt like the biggest danger, physical danger, to you of being promiscuous was getting something which could have gotten rid of with a couple of shots of antibiotics. So, there would never be quite that same libertine spirit again because of the AIDS virus. SM (00:52:05): Yeah. When you think of all the movements that really evolved from the civil rights movement and used the civil rights as their role model... I have been asking this question to a lot of my guests, too. There seem to be a lot of unity within these movements. That is, the women's movement would come out strong, they would be at any gay lesbian protest and vice versa. CK (00:52:30): Well, no, not at all. On the contrary, the women's movement, especially at the beginning, Betty Friedan was obsessed with not letting lesbians take over the women's movement. That was a big leitmotif. SM (00:52:41): What year was that though? CK (00:52:44): Oh, as late as 1968 or so. If you really want the right women's movement person, you should interview Susan Brownmiller, who wrote Against Our Will, which was the groundbreaking book which changed the law on rape. Because up until then in most states, the victim could barely testify in her own trial. It was a very important book. Then she did a big look about the women's movement about 10 years ago. But she would be the person to get the blow-by-blow on that. I can give you her email, too. SM (00:53:17): Yeah, that would be good. CK (00:53:17): Three emails I owe you: Susan, [inaudible], and Peter Goldman. SM (00:53:21): Yeah, and Susan, I believe I could tried to contact her, but it was her book company, and something Susan Brownmiller books or something. CK (00:53:30): She is in the phone book on Jane Street in Manhattan. SM (00:53:33): Okay. You corrected me on that, but what I am getting at is that the (19)60s seemed to be a period when movements evolved for individual rights for so many different groups, whether it be the Native American group and the American Indian Movement, which was in its heyday from (19)69 to (19)73. Then obviously, you have got Stonewall, which was a historic event for gay and lesbians. You have got the Chicano movement. I just spoke to Dr. Franklin last week about that group out in San Francisco. And certainly, the environmental movement in 1970. What are your thoughts on all these movements? Are you pleased with the direction they have gone as years have progressed? Are they still strong or do you think they have become so singular in their... they do not work with other groups? CK (00:54:32): Well, I certainly think that the Conservatives are much better at uniting their movement than the Left has been, with the exception of the election of Barack Obama. But generally speaking, I would say there has not been. Of course, part of the problem is the complete withering of the labor union movement in America, which was extremely important as a source of self-financed progressivism, and it has gotten so much smaller than it was in the heyday. Your question is really too broad for me to answer, is what do I think of all these movements? I mean, that is just too... I cannot get a handle on that. SM (00:55:17): Yeah. I think what I am getting at is, do they work with other groups or are they just concentrate on their own issues and become isolated? CK (00:55:27): There is some [inaudible] but not as much as I would like there to be, probably. SM (00:55:32): How about Boomers that say they feel they were the most unique generation in the history of the United States because they were going to change the world in every way? They were going to end Racism, sexism, homophobia. That was an attitude that a lot of the Boomers had back in the (19)60s, and some still have it. CK (00:55:51): Well, I mean, there was more progress made for women and gays and Blacks when we were young than at any other period in America since at least the Emancipation Proclamation, I would say so. I mean, to say we were the most unique generation? Well, that is not a statement that I would want to defend. But we were, briefly, one of the most successfully activists generations, is the way I would put it. SM (00:56:31): You will remember this question, and I have the whole issue of healing. Do you feel the Boomers are still having a problem with healing from the extreme divisions that tore them apart when they were young, divisions between Black and white, and obviously those who supported the war and those who did not, and the troops as well? Do you think the generation will go to its grave like the Civil War generation not truly healing? Or is there truth to the statement time heals all wounds? Do you think that the Boomers are a generation- CK (00:57:00): Wounds all heals, is the other way to put it. SM (00:57:02): Yeah. Do you think- CK (00:57:06): I do not know the answer to that question, that is another one of those. But I mean, I think there will always be fundamental disagreements. I would say one of the fundamental disagreements now is between the people who realized that the war was a pointless and wasteful exercise, which could not have been won under any circumstances, and the counter movement, which says if only we would just hung in there a little longer, we could have defeated the Viet Cong, which I think is completely ridiculous. But I do not know. The rest of the questions, I do not think I really want to answer. SM (00:57:47): I know that when we took our students to meet Ed Muskie, he answered it in this way, "We have not healed since the Civil War." That is- CK (00:57:55): Yeah. You told me that. Yeah. SM (00:57:57): Yeah, and he did not even comment on 1968, which is what I was- CK (00:58:01): He is probably still too traumatized by 1968 to comment on that. SM (00:58:05): Yeah, you may be right. The other question is dealing with the issue of trust. One of the qualities that the Boomers have always been looked upon as having is this business of not trusting anybody in positions of responsibility and whether they pass that on to their children or their grandchildren. But would you say that this generation, more than any other, was just not a very trusting generation because of all the leaders that lied to them and assassinations and all the things, that dreams- CK (00:58:40): [inaudible] different point of view towards figures of authority than the generation that proceeded us, certainly, I would say that. And a lot of that had to do specifically with Lyndon Johnson, who after all, did run on an anti- war platform in 1964 and then proceeded to escalate the war in ways that I thought only Barry Goldwater could have done. SM (00:59:12): I would like your comments, you had mentioned that Walter Cronkite was so unique amongst all the journalists from that period when Boomers were young or even into their twenties watching television in thirties and forties. What do you remember about the media from the (19)50s and (19)60s and (19)70s that stands out, beyond just Cronkite? I want to mention these names here because these are names that I remember as being kind of important. These are the people we watched when there were only three channels. Huntley-Brinkley, John Cameron Swayze, Dave Garaway, Frank Reynolds, Douglas Edwards, Don McNeill and the Breakfast Club, Arthur Godfrey, Frank McGee, Hugh Downs, Dan Rather- Arthur Godfrey, Frank McGee, Hugh Downs, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, and I guess Nancy Dickerson was the first female that I think was on TV all the time, along with Sander Vanocur. Were they kind of special? Were they different than the ones we see today? CK (01:00:24): Well, I mean, Huntley-Brinkley are the inventors, really, of the modern evening news broadcast, as we know it. Although, twice as long as it was when they started, still basically the format, they were the first ones who made it a kind of mass cultural phenomenon. The main difference was that the big newspapers and the big networks really did have a monopoly on the distribution of information, which is unimaginable in the internet age, but probably, in the coverage of black people by southern newspapers in that era, with some honorable exceptions like the Atlantic Constitution, was largely awful, and the coverage of gay people was uniformly awful by all publications everywhere, pretty much without exception, in the 1950s and the early 1960s. On the other hand, we did not have cable news, and I am convinced that cable news has done more to denigrate or to degrade the national conversation than anything else in the history of the modern mass media because they do so much to focus on the trivial and things that are not important, and they also put on the air all kinds of people who are supposed experts who never would have had any public outlet back in the day when there were only three networks. So I do not know if that [inaudible] or not. SM (01:02:22): Well, I wish I had had a chance to totally read your book, Gay Metropolis, but after talking to Mark Thompson for almost two hours a couple weeks ago about The Advocate and everything, we talked a lot about the AIDS crisis and the loss of life within the gay community. He mentioned that he went to as many as a hundred funerals of friends, and the fact that when you talk about gay and lesbian boomers, so many of them have passed on, some of the most talented ones. He talked a little bit about Paul Monette, the great writer, and some of his friends that were at The Advocate as well. Could you explain in your own words what it was like to be a gay person, say in the (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s, and where we are today, just briefly? CK (01:03:25): Well, my knowledge of the (19)50s is obviously from people older than myself. To be gay in the 1950s was to be invisible or was to make the large proportion of your energy to making sure that your sexuality was invisible to everybody else. It was a time when you never saw any positive depiction of gay people anywhere in the public media, and the only openly gay people in the world practically were Ginsburg, James Baldwin, and Gore Vidal, sort of, kind of, but not exactly. Things are not all that different in the (19)60s, we have accepted, until the Stonewall Riot in 1969, and then you have immediately, this kind of organizational energy that you had never had before. The (19)70s is the great flowering of open gay life, and huge matter of fact, obviously, but it is still a time when in the (19)70s there were no openly gay reporters at any major newspapers, anywhere. There were two gay reporters that I know of at the Washington Post in the (19)70s, Roy Aarons, and I am going to forget the name of the other one again, who ran into each other in a gay bar, and they were both so embarrassed, even though they were both gay, they were both so embarrassed to see each other in a gay bar, that instead of saying hello to each other, they ran in the opposite direction, never talked about it again. In 1980, there was a total of two openly gay reporters in San Francisco and New York City, Randy Schultz in San Francisco, and a guy named Joe Nicholson who was at the New York Post. Well, what I say in the Gay Metropolis, is really that the AIDS crisis was, well, first of all, you have to say, as you were saying before, the AIDS crisis wiped out half of my generation of urban gay men. I think the most likely number is 50 percent, and I think that had a really devastating effect on the culture. I think that is really an important reason, why the culture in the (19)90s was relatively arid and vapid. So many of the most creative people, I mean, were dead. But age is the best and the worst thing that happens to us; the worst for that reason, because half of us were wiped out, and the best because it finally stimulated us to do something like the kind of mass organization that we should have done 10 years earlier, and it resulted in everybody, millions of people, being forced out of the closet, and America realizing that people like Roy Cohn, and Brock Hudson, and so many others were in fact gay, which is something most people did not realize before the AIDS epidemic. So, it created all this organizational energy and it made it clear to people for the first time, just how many people really were gay. SM (01:07:09): Has the AIDS quilt done to the gay and lesbian population and their families what the Vietnam Memorial has done to veterans? CK (01:07:20): I think it certainly did at the beginning. It certainly did in its heyday. I mean, I can remember very vividly, I cannot give you the year, it might be (19)88, I am not sure, but the first year that it was displayed in Washington during one of the gay marches on Washington, it was an unbelievably traumatic event for many of us. I mean, you literally walked around the quilt and discovered that the people that you did not know were dead were dead for the first time, but because it does not have a permanent display anywhere, I do not think you can say that it has quite the same effect as the Vietnam Memorial, just because it is not somewhere to be seen at any time. SM (01:08:09): I know I have been trying to get an interview with Cleve Jones. It is kind of hard. CK (01:08:14): What has happened? What happened? SM (01:08:16): Well, I contacted his assistant, but I think he let his assistant go. I got to get back to him again, because there is different people. I think they might have interns in there, wherever he works, and so they are not very good at getting word to him, so I got to get to him directly. You mentioned, I want to also know your thoughts on what happened in 1978 in San Francisco, because here it is, to some people who may not live in the Bay Area, it is not big to them, but certainly the assassination of George Moscone and Harvey Milk were major events. It is almost like, they are not like Dr. King, and Bobby Kennedy, and John Kennedy, but here we are again, somebody murdered, who was so visible, who was fighting for somebody's rights and the answer, even whether this guy was on Twinkies or whatever, they ended up dead. Your thoughts on that particular day in San Francisco in November? I lived out in the West Coast. I know the impact it had on that city, and I know the impact it had on the state is sad. Just your thoughts on 1978 and what happened in San Francisco with the Harvey Milk and George Moscone? CK (01:09:40): It was a terrifying event, a devastating event, I mean, you could see it as an extreme reaction by one deranged individual to all the progress that gay people had made up to that point. Harvey Milk was extremely important, as the recent movie captured so well. He was an extremely important, early, charismatic gay leader in a period where we had had very, very few, if any, charismatic gay leaders. So it was both a tremendous shock, tremendously depressing, and on an individual basis, it was just a tremendous loss for the movement, just to lose somebody who had been so effective in that way. SM (01:10:39): You mentioned that movie, and that leads me in back to something you mentioned much earlier about the counterculture of the (19)60s and (19)70s and how important the music was, certainly the art was, and the movies. In your view again, or for the first time, I know you mentioned this in our interview before, what were the movies that you felt really explained the culture of the (19)60s? That really talked about the (19)60s? CK (01:11:07): Explained or captured? SM (01:11:09): Yeah, I would say captured the (19)60s and the (19)70s. CK (01:11:17): Medium pool; have you ever seen Medium Pool? SM (01:11:18): Yes, I have. CK (01:11:21): Bonnie and Clyde, in a funny way, has a real 60s sensibility, and I cannot exactly explain why, but partly because it is a very violent movie, and partly because that was a very violent era, so I think it has something to do with that. Ell, my favorite movie in the world is A Thousand Clowns with Jason Robards, which is really the first celebration of someone who is questioning authority, so it is, in a way, in it is way, it is kind of the first movie about the (19)60s, in New York City at least. I do not know. I mean, movies were very important in the (19)60s, but not so much because they captured the era, because I think most of the important movies of that era were mostly set in other time periods. SM (01:12:25): Where would you place the Vietnam films Apocalypse Now, Deer Hunter, Taxi Driver? CK (01:12:35): Deer Hunter, I thought it was a big [inaudible]; Apocalypse. Now, I thought it was kind of a mess; Taxi, I did not see until this year on an airplane; Platoon is very important, but that is much later, right? SM (01:12:52): Yes. CK (01:12:52): Is that the (19)80s or something? SM (01:12:52): Tom Cruise, yes. CK (01:12:54): Coming Home, that is a very important movie. That is about, I think late (19)70s, is not it? SM (01:13:01): Yes. CK (01:13:01): With Jane Fonda and John Voight? SM (01:13:10): Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Yep. Then the other ones are, The Graduate. CK (01:13:11): Well, The Graduate is the key movie, in terms of, I mean, no other movie ever captured the division [inaudible] generation. SM (01:13:26): Another one in that period was The Sterile Cuckoo. I do not know if you saw that with Liza Minelli. CK (01:13:31): Yeah, correct. SM (01:13:32): Of course, she followed it up with Cabaret, which was... CK (01:13:34): Well, that is the (19)70s. I mean, I write about that in the Gay Metropolis, that really, although it is set in the 1930s Germany because of the bisexual theme of it, and also the kind of sense of forces beyond your control taking over. That was, I mean, I really felt when Cabaret came out was when I was in my twenties, that this was as much a portrait of the life I was leading in Manhattan, in terms of social interactions, as it was a portrait of 1930s Berlin. SM (01:14:18): Another one is Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which was about the sexual revolution of the time. CK (01:14:24): Yeah, I saw it and I do not really have enough to recollect. SM (01:14:29): Then there were the black films like Shaft and all those other, they were fairly big as well. CK (01:14:37): Yeah, well, they were mostly about making money. SM (01:14:40): Now, I mentioned this, I keep saying it, I am going to cut this out of the editing, but the three slogans that I felt really defined the period were Malcolm X's "By any means necessary"; Bobby Kennedy, when he talked a Henry David Thoreau quote, "Some men see things as they are and why, I see things that never were and ask why not," which is kind of symbolic of all the activists of the era fighting for different causes; and then of course you had the Peter Max poster, but not too many people remember seeing these words, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful," symbolic of the hippie kind of mentality. Your thoughts on.... CK (01:15:24): You have left out, "black is beautiful and gay is good." SM (01:15:27): Well see, I am asking yours. I am asking what quote you would... CK (01:15:32): "Black is beautiful," which I believe is Stokely Carmichael's creation, and "gay is good," which was Frank Kameny's creation in direct response to "black is beautiful." He saw Stokely Carmichael say that on TV, and he said to himself, we need something like that for the gay movement, and there upon invented "gay is good." SM (01:15:51): Well, David Michener said something about the, you probably know him? CK (01:15:56): I do not really know him. no. SM (01:15:57): Yeah, well, he said something about the gay community because he says, I have been working for years trying to get them to include music in their protests or music linked to their causes, and he says it has been a fruitless battle. He said there was no music, and all the other movements had music, so that was just a... CK (01:16:20): [inaudible] music was the disco music. SM (01:16:22): Right, you may be right. I know the Bee Gees came to be well known at that particular time. Again, the other thing is the pictures that really stand out in your mind, because pictures say more than a thousand words. The pictures that you feel define the (19)60s and the (19)70s, or when Boomers were young? CK (01:16:42): Which pictures we... SM (01:16:44): We are talking about photography. CK (01:16:47): Yeah, well, the Vietnamese girl, and the picture of the girl at Kent State, and the picture of the three athletes at the Olympics in 1968, and certainly at the time, although I do not think it has the resonance down through the years, but the gigantic picture of the funeral procession for Martin Luther King on the front page of the New York Times the day that he was buried. SM (01:17:26): I have got only two more questions. One of them is, when you talk about the (19)60s and look at that period, you saw the Civil Rights Movement and you saw that Stokely Carmichael challenging Dr. King saying, your time has passed. Byard Rustin, another person who was well known for being a gay person, right here from Westchester, in this debate with Malcolm X, where he also told Rustin that your time has passed because Black Power is here now, and non-violent protests is a thing of the past. What I am getting at here is, whether it be the Black Panthers, or Black Power Weathermen taking over for Students for Democratic Society, the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee, what sent them down was the violence there, and even I was talking to someone yesterday about the environmental movement and some of the violence that has really hurt their cause. Even in San Francisco, the area where I lived in 1978, the violence that took place after Harvey Milk, violence seems to hurt every cause. Just your thoughts on the whole concept of fighting for certain issues, and beliefs, and justice, and rights, and then this violent segment comes in, by any means necessary, and it seems to really hurt a cause; your thoughts on that? CK (01:19:00): Well, I guess there is something to the idea that some of the people who remained active in these causes the longest probably had a frustration over the lack of progress, or whatever specific thing they were interested in, did turn to violence and in no case was this the decision which actually contributed to any real social progress. SM (01:19:30): Who are your mentors and role models that you look up to today, whether historic or people that you have known in your life? CK (01:19:47): Frank Cleins, of the New York Times, because he was the most honest and the most... Cleins, c-l-i-n-e-s, the most honest and the most elegant journalist I know. George Orwell still, even though he is dead, he certainly is saying, George Orwell reminds me every day of the obligations of a writer to be fearless and accurate, as accurate as you can be. Everybody says Nelson Mandela, but I will say Nelson Mandela too. I mean, he is the extraordinary, modern figure of our time, modern political figure of our times, for sure. SM (01:20:37): What do you think the history books will say after all the boomers have passed on? What will be their legacy, when people write about them who were not alive, when they were alive? CK (01:20:53): I suspect what they will write about the most is the music, because that will be the part that they can actually experience in almost the same way that we did. I mean, that is the big difference between the 20th century and all the centuries before it, is that all of the people in exceeding generations are all going to be able to experience all the popular music that was around. Whereas before the phonograph, only a tiny proportion of the popular music of any era survived into the next one. Also, I think the music was the most was lasting artistic thing that we created in that time. So I would say it will be the music and it will be the perception that this was the generation which exploded centuries of prejudice against people who were not white, male, or straight. SM (01:22:03): The one slogan that came out in your book, and I have heard it before, please define what you mean by this; I know what it means, but for people that are reading it, "just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not after you." CK (01:22:21): Well, we discovered as decades went on, that there had been an awful lot of surveillance by the FBI, and by the CIA, [inaudible] by the CIA being completely illegal at the time. It means that paranoia was often grounded in reality, even then when you did not know it for a fact at the time. SM (01:22:48): COINTELPRO was pretty scary. It was almost like McCarthy all over again. CK (01:22:52): Yeah, on a broader scale, I think. SM (01:22:55): Yeah, lives were ruined there too. Charles, is there any question I did not ask that you thought I was going to this time? CK (01:23:04): I do not think so. SM (01:23:06): All right, well, that is it. I got it. That is exactly an hour and a half. CK (01:23:09): Okay. SM (01:23:17): John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. CK (01:23:24): Well, John Kennedy was the first great love affair of my life, and I was a big Kennedy supporter at the age of 10, and we had a debate in fifth grade in Mrs. Green's class, and I debated Steve Lane, who took the Nixon position, and I had the Democratic National Committee Handbook, which had a whole series of questions for the Republicans, which seemed to be completely unanswerable at the time. I think it is important to remember that at this point in his presidency, or certainly two years into his presidency, that people did not feel markedly different about him than Obama's supporters feel about Obama. That he was seen as very ineffective; he had had this disaster of the Bay of Pigs, he had had one big success in the missile crisis, but the Civil Rights legislation was stalled, and nobody quite saw how it was ever going to get passed, and there was a, I think, big perception that this was a great speaker and a pretty boy, and not someone who could get a lot done. I think we will never know, but the odds are that my brother David is correct in believing that he would have resisted the quagmire that Lyndon Johnson took us into because he had the balls to stand up to his own advisors, and Lyndon Johnson did not have the balls to stand up to the Kennedy advisors who he inherited. I think in particular that there is a pretty good chance that Dean Russ would have only lasted one term, and that alone would have made a huge difference. I shook Bobby Kennedy's hand once. I never shook Jack's; I saw Jack and the inaugural... SM (01:25:46): Well, I shook his. CK (01:25:47): Yeah? SM (01:25:48): Yeah, that is on the bottom of my letter; at Hyde Park. CK (01:25:52): Oh, yes, I remember. SM (01:25:53): Yeah, I was 11? I do not know. CK (01:26:00): Anyway, I met Bobby, who came to my father's swearing in when he became Ambassador to Senegal. Then he was supposed to come visit us in Senegal, and I spent a week experimenting in front of the mirror trying to get my hair flip the way his did, and then his plans changed and he never came to visit us in Senegal. In 1968, I was exactly like Murray Kempton and many, many others, and I hated Bobby Kennedy because I was a hundred percent for Gene McCarthy... SM (01:26:31): That was my next guy, McCarthy. CK (01:26:33): And Bobby was the coward who would come down from the hills to shoot the wounded, as Murray Kempton put it, after McCarthy almost wins in New Hampshire, and he comes in to steal all the fire, and then when he was shot, it was the end of everything. It was the most horrible [inaudible] of all. Especially because of the cumulative effect of it, you know? SM (01:27:05): Yeah, Eugene McCarthy, because he was the first person I interviewed. CK (01:27:11): Oh, good. I am glad you got him. SM (01:27:12): I got him, and we got along real well. I am Irish, he is Irish. I spent two and a half hours, and I got a long interview with him, but I had met him twice before, but he would not answer two questions. He said, when I asked him about Bobby Kennedy, he said, read the book, just read my book. Got a little emotional, but he said, just read the book. I did not ever have the guts to ask him a question. I would have asked it to him now, why did not you continue? Because I still... CK (01:27:48): He had a breakdown. He had a complete break. He never recovered. He, more than anybody else except Ethel, never recovered from Bobby Kennedy's assassination. That was it. He was never, he never functioned after that. That was it. He blamed himself. I am convinced he blamed himself as everybody kind of blamed themselves for contributing, and it was irrational, of course, but we all felt that we had contributed to this climate of hatred and viciousness, and especially hatred of Bobby. He had been as nasty and vicious to Bobby, in print, and in public, as anybody else was in 1968. But, he is the crucial figure of the year because he is the only person with the balls to run for President against Lyndon Johnson, even though I do not think he had the slightest interest. I mean, he pretty much admitted when I interviewed him that he never really intended, he never intended to be President. What his goal, his ambition, his intention, was to force Lyndon Johnson to change his position on the war, but certainly not to force Johnson out of office. SM (01:29:03): How about Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, because they were the yippies. CK (01:29:10): Yeah, I never took either of them very seriously at the time. They were both too radical and too theatrical for my taste. I was much more of a, I was not very radical, except that I was gay, but that did not really make me radical politically. I was a real old-fashioned Democratic Liberal; Gene McCarthy liberal. Gene McCarthy was also pretty radical in what he said about the CIA and what he said about America being the arms merchants of the world. SM (01:29:52): Right. CK (01:29:52): He said a lot of things that no modern progressive candidate would say. SM (01:29:59): I just found him to be brilliant. CK (01:30:01): Oh, he was brilliant. He was brilliant, but he was not... SM (01:30:03): Wanted to be brilliant. CK (01:30:03): Oh, he was brilliant was brilliant, but he was not a serious person. He was brilliant, but he was unbelievably, and he fails us terribly from June to August of 1968 in ways which are... I mean, from June through the rest of the year, he is just a complete catastrophe. A, because he never reaches out to Bobby's people B, because he does not function as a candidate from June until August and C, because he does everything he can really to undermine Hubert. He hates Hubert and- SM (01:30:41): Yeah. Well, Hubert Humphrey and Spiro Agnew were the next two, because Spiro was the hatchet man, he was going all over the college campuses with all this highfalutin language. Your thoughts on... CK (01:30:56): Hubert is the tragic figure. I think it would have been a different world if he had been elected in 1968, but he really was genuinely emasculated by Lyndon Johnson. When Johnson said, "Do not worry about Hubert, I have got his pecker in my pocket." He was not exaggerating. Spiro Agnew inaugurated the most successful right-wing propaganda campaign ever. He really changed the way the press was perceived, and he was the beginning of this obsession with balance, and the beginning of really moving the whole debate in Washington 25 degrees further to the right than it had been before. I think the seeds of those speeches have grown into giant trees of Fox News and Pat Buchanan being a major... Just all kinds of terrible things came out of him. SM (01:32:28): Benjamin Spock and Daniel and Philip Berrigan. CK (01:32:34): Well, we did all think we were Spock's children there for a minute. And he was very good about the war, and the Berrigans were two of the most courageous and honorable people of their time, I think, probably. SM (01:32:51): And then the women, which is Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, your thoughts on so-called leaders. I got Phyllis Schlafly's thoughts in person, but... CK (01:33:03): I admired Gloria enormously as a journalist. She wrote great stuff for New York Magazine. My favorite will always be her profile of Pat Nixon in the 68 campaign. And she asked Pat who she most wanted to emulate, and Pat naturally said, "Mamie Eisenhower." And Gloria said, why Mamie Eisenhower? And Pat said, "Because she captured the imagination of America's youth." SM (01:33:44): Wow. CK (01:33:44): And then she lost it, which Pat never did. But she lost it and she got pissed off, and she said, "We have not had it easy like other people, we have had to fight for everything we got. We have not had time to sit around and think about things like who we wanted to emulate." And Bella was... Well Bella, introduced the first gay civil rights law in Congress, so I guess I am grateful to her for that. And I think I probably voted for her against Pat Moynihan in the Senate primary, because I had not forgiven Pat for working for Richard Nixon. And I never read Betty for Dan's book, but I went to college with her son who I liked very much. Sean Friedan. SM (01:34:32): That is the one Phyllis Schlafly kept commenting on was her. She is the one that started it all with her books about the... Well, the attack on motherhood... CK (01:34:44): Betty was... SM (01:34:44): All that other stuff. CK (01:34:44): No, but she was very important in living a greater imagination about what possibilities of life were for them. SM (01:34:54): I know I mentioned the Black Panthers, but there is unique personalities within them. You have got Eldridge Cleaver, you have got Huey Newton, you have got Bobby Seale, you have got HRF Brown, you have got Stokely Carmichael, you have got Kathleen Cleaver. And of course you, Dave Hilliard is not as well known, and Elaine Brown, but Newton was pretty big. Seale was big too, but Newton was like, and Eldridge Cleaver who ended up becoming a conservative at the end. But just your thoughts on their personalities. Angela Davis was not one of them. She was just an activist. She was not a Black Panther. CK (01:35:30): I do not know enough about their personalities to have a useful opinion. SM (01:35:35): But overall, you just were afraid of them? CK (01:35:39): I thought they were pretty scary at the time, yeah. SM (01:35:42): How about George Wallace and Ronald Reagan? CK (01:35:55): George Wallace perfected what really became the strategy of the Republican Party for the next 40 years after he ran for president, not obviously as a Republican. But he really was the genius at focusing the fear of poor, dumb white men on everything that was different from them. And that is really pretty much been the essence of most Republican campaigns since then. And Ronald Reagan's campaign was successful for, among other reasons, a TV campaign run in all of the Southern states three weeks before the election, whose theme was the gaze of taking over San Francisco, and now they want to take over the White House. And Jimmy Carter's approval rating among evangelicals was, these are not real numbers, but something like 65 percent before this campaign and 35 percent after that campaign. And the Republicans under understood how to use and exploit the fear of black people and then gay people more effectively than any other major party. And they owe a lot of it to the path making of George Wallace. SM (01:37:50): Only about three or four more here, and then we are almost done with one final question. And that is Daniel, not Daniel Berrigan, Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers number one. And Robert McNamara himself, the man himself. CK (01:38:13): McNamara did a lot to try to redeem himself during all the years after he was Secretary of Defense. He did actually understand by the time Johnson pushed him out, that the war had been a disaster, but he also probably had as much as any other single person had to do with getting us in there. And he was terribly two-faced throughout the time that he was in the administration. My favorite story, which I think I tell in 1968, which is when Kosygin was in London on one of the 18 failed peace missions, and there was a bombing halt in place, and they were about to resume the bombing while Kosygin was there. And David Bruce, my father's [inaudible] ambassador in England, wrote a telegram, marked it please pass to the President. This would be a catastrophe if you resumed the bombing while Kosygin is here. It will set a terrible message throughout the world. Cannot do this. And they did delay it for three more days. And the day after, or a couple of days after, Bruce sent his telegram, McNamara called him up and said, "David, thank you so much for that telegram, it arrived at just the right time. It was just enough to turn the tide and cannot tell you how useful it was." SM (01:39:55): Wow. CK (01:39:57): And then my father learned from somebody else who had been in the same room that when Bruce's telegram arrived, McNamara said, "Who the fuck is David Bruce to tell us when we should bomb and not bomb? What does he know about bombing?" So there was that. SM (01:40:16): Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater? CK (01:40:21): Well, Richard Nixon was, when I was growing up, Richard Nixon was... My family had exactly the same shoot of Richard Nixon as Herblock did, that this was a man who hopped up out of sewers all across America when he was campaigning. And his role in the McCarthy period, and in all the red baiting and all of that stuff made him as bad a person as there was. Now, it is true that Ronald Reagan and the second George Bush have managed to make him look like a relative moderate, but this was not a great president. He went to China. He was the only person who could go to China and do that because he had spent all of his life up in that time taking the wine that would have made it impossible for any Democratic president to do that. So yes, it is great that he went to China. It is not great that he contributed to the isolation of the Chinese from the rest of the world for the previous 20 years. And without question, he prolonged that fucking war for five years longer than it should... SM (01:41:50): Can I use that word in the... CK (01:41:51): Absolutely. I mean, that is... SM (01:41:54): Everybody is going to see the transcription. CK (01:41:59): They were terrible. SM (01:42:00): And Barry Goldwater? CK (01:42:06): Well, my brother, David's favorite Art Buchwald column was the 180 wrote, I think in the spring of 1965, saying, "Thank God we defeated Barry Goldwater. If we had not, we would now have a hundred thousand more troops on the way to Vietnam and we would be bombing the hell out of the North Vietnamese, and it would all be a catastrophe." So I do not think the conservative movement has done America any real good in the last 50 years. And to the extent that Barry was the father of the modern conservative movement, I am not an admirer. On the other hand, he did have the balls to have the right position on gays in the military, I think long before Colin Powell did. SM (01:43:05): What is your thoughts on Buckley? Because Buckley was very important in the... CK (01:43:11): I think Buckley is also the father of many terrible ideas which have worked their way into the mainstream and done grave damage to America. SM (01:43:21): Sargent Shriver and the Peace Corps, and then Harvey Milk. I want your thoughts on... CK (01:43:28): The Peace Corps was an entirely good thing. And whatever Sarge did to make it a success was a wonderful thing. And when we lived in Senegal, we had the first class of Peace Corps people who were in Senegal and all over the world as well, but they were a very impressive group of young idealists who were responding to the call of the Kennedy administration to give two years of their life to make the world a better place. And that was genuinely impressive. SM (01:44:11): What was the second person? CK (01:44:13): Harvey Mill. SM (01:44:14): Yes. CK (01:44:18): I had a good friend named Jeff Katzoff who worked in gay democratic politics in San Francisco, so I used to hear a lot about Harvey through him. And I mean, he was very courageous and effective guy and a trailblazer. He was not the first openly gay person elected, that was really the state legislator in Minnesota. But he was certainly one of the first, and he was very important. And his assassination was an extremely disturbing event. And the second most disturbing thing was the pathetic sentence that his murderer received for this. And the movie, what is the name? Who plays the... SM (01:45:22): Sean Penn. CK (01:45:22): Sean Penn does one of the performances of a lifetime. The movie does something really important by capturing the political and emotional power of this person. SM (01:45:36): I am trying to interview Cleve Jones, but he is kind of... CK (01:45:39): Oh, you must be able to get to Cleve. SM (01:45:41): I ended up, I am going through this Tanner, they delayed it and delayed it. So I do not know what the delay is. Two more. Your thoughts on Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, which may be the predominant black personalities of the period. CK (01:46:03): Well, Jackie Robinson was a miracle. Both because he was so unbelievably talented and he seemed to have exactly the constitution and the demeanor that was necessary to play this unbelievably difficult trailblazing role. And who were the other two? King and... SM (01:46:32): King and Malcolm X. CK (01:46:39): I lived in Bethesda when King spoke on the march on Washington. And my Unitarian uncle minister Roger Greeley came to Washington for it. And everybody went into Washington, and there was an official, I think an official request by the organizers of the march not to have children there because they were so obsessed with having it to be a controlled event. So I stayed home and watched it on TV, and I have a vivid memory of one of the neighbors running into one of the kids my age in the neighborhood the next day saying, "We heard you cheering for Martin Luther King yesterday." He is not the most important American of the 20th century, which is probably Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He is certainly one of the five most important Americans in the 20th century because of his courage, intelligence, breadth of vision and charisma. He is, of all those great public speakers, he is probably the best of all those great public speakers. And most admirable for being so right so early about the Vietnam War, and being willing to do that, knowing exactly what the cost to him would be and still doing it. My favorite quote is at the beginning of that chapter of [inaudible 01:48:49], " One has to conquer the fear of death if he is going to do anything constructive in life and take a stand against evil." 1965. He was fearless. I think he was genuinely fearless. SM (01:49:20): Yep, I agree. And Malcolm. CK (01:49:22): Malcolm X, I was mesmerized by his autobiography that was ghost- written by, what is his name? SM (01:49:32): Alex Haley. CK (01:49:33): Alex Haley, yeah. That was one of the most powerful and exciting reading experiences of my adolescence just because I guess it described a life that I did not know anything about, and it was written with energy and passion. And certainly he is someone who I admire a great deal more afterwards than I did when he was alive. He also was somebody who I probably thought was a fairly threatening and scary figure, but he got less scary as he got it along. He went along, I think, and certainly his death was a terrible, terrible loss. SM (01:50:28): One of the important things, then we are done. We are done. Is the issue of religion too, and spirituality. The Beatles are very important part of this, how the Beatles split up, and George Harrison in particular. Well, all of them kind of... CK (01:50:43): That is the first end of the Beatles. How the (19)60s when the Beatles split up. That is certainly the first. SM (01:50:48): But also there is the fact that people went to church a lot, or synagogue in the (19)50s and they did not do it as much in the (19)60s. So there is a lot happening here. Billy Graham stands out to me as the number one evangelical of this whole period, and he has been pretty solid throughout. I think there was one president he did not like, and that was, Carter I think. He was not invited to the White House with him. But can you explain, when you talk about going off to make money, is the whole issue of religion and spirituality important? As the end of the Vietnam War happens, there is no more draft. So people will say, "Well, they go into themselves now they become, it is not we, it is about me." Is that really an important part of it there? CK (01:51:35): What the absence of religion? SM (01:51:37): Yeah, the absence of religion. The fact that I do not, more of fact I believe in the power above, but I do not necessarily believe in God. It was almost like an agnostic dogma. CK (01:51:48): Right. It probably, of course, parts of the church are very materialistic too, but I suppose it is broad absence made the wholesale embrace of crass materialism even easier. SM (01:52:10): Then the communal movement. Communes was that whole thing of getting away from it all. And so when the best history books are written about the (19)60s when we are all gone, I always say that when all the boomers have passed on, what do you think they will be saying about the boomer generation, historians, sociologists? CK (01:52:26): We made the best music. SM (01:52:29): Made the best music. CK (01:52:31): And we did transform. We transformed America. We transformed what was possible for black people and for women and for gay people. And all for the better. We did contribute a lot to America living up to the principles of the Constitution, of the Declaration of Independence in dramatic and important ways. It really was, before the (19)60s it really was a country defined by prejudice, and in which most of the most important positions of power were reserved or of avowedly heterosexual Protestant white men. And that has changed, and we deserve all the credit for that. SM (01:53:51): This is the absolute last question, and I swear. You already told about the fact that when you were a senior, you wrote that piece in your college paper. If you had... CK (01:54:02): In the New York Times about... SM (01:54:04): Yeah, in the New York Times. If you look at your (19)68 to (19)72 time in college, is there one specific event, either a speaker who came to your school or... CK (01:54:15): Saul Alinsky came to my... SM (01:54:17): Or a professor. CK (01:54:18): Saul Alinsky came to my prep school in about (19)67. That was very important. And the only good thing that happened to me in my entire prep school experience, I would say. The only public performance that I remember actually at Columbia, which was in (19)72 or three, was Don McLean coming and performing American Pie. SM (01:54:48): Wow. CK (01:54:48): And it was the only time I ever used my press card to talk my way into a performance at Columbia. No, I do not remember any other... SM (01:55:03): Any speakers you went to see at college? No? CK (01:55:04): I remember going to see Arthur Schlesinger speak at the University of Connecticut also during prep school. No. SM (01:55:20): Okay. CK (01:55:21): First thing I did politically was hand out stuff for John Lindsay at the polls in fall of (19)69 when he lost the Republican primary and he got reelected as an independent. SM (01:55:34): When you debated as a 10-year-old that other student where you had the platform, did you know going in into your opponent was not going to be as prepared as you were because you had the platform and he did not? CK (01:55:47): I think I as probably pretty confident as the son of Philip Kaiser that I would be more prepared than any opponent could be, yeah. I saw Steve again five years ago, and he apologized for taking the part of Richard Nixon. Steve Lane, L A N E. SM (01:56:05): Oh, wow. Is there any question I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask? Because I have had some... CK (01:56:12): We did not really talk about Bob Dylan, who is as important a cultural figure as there is. SM (01:56:16): You can say a few things. I know I have to be 2:45. What time is it now? CK (01:56:22): 10 after two. SM (01:56:22): Yeah. I got to be over at his place at 2:45. CK (01:56:25): I have to be at the dentist at three, which is downtown. SM (01:56:29): Just on Bob Dylan. CK (01:56:33): Well, I would say the most religious, public religious experience I have ever had was listening to Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965, when the uniform feeling within the audience was worship. Because he figured out a way to put our hopes and ideals to music in the most powerful way imaginable. And he demonstrated that one middle class Jewish kid from Minnesota could completely reinvent his life, and with nothing but a guitar and a harmonica transformed the way the entire vanguard of a generation around the world thought about itself and thought about its time. I think that as good as I will do, I think we can end there. SM (01:58:06): Yep. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Charles Kaiser Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaiser, Charles ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors, American; Journalists; Hunter College; Kaiser, Charles--Interviews Description An account of the resource Charles Kaiser is an American author, journalist and academic administrator. He was the Associate Director at the LGBT Social Science and Public Policy Center at Hunter College in NYC, a leader of the Grove Fellowship Program, and a weekend nonfiction book critic at <em>The Guardian US</em>. Kaiser has won the grand prize at the Paris Book Festival and his book <em>The Cost of Courage</em> received great reviews from the <em>Washington Post</em>, the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>, and the <em>Christian Science Monitor</em> along with some other publications. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-17 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.133a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.133b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 118:10 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/bac1fef74b323b349e80a680e127c990.jpg dfc6695046460981748ce05b4e4cdd58 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b268cfb34e5134e1d6285f64c254ebd3.mp3 993d90b7b9efe4d9510ea5c7155160c5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-03-18 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed William L. O'Neill Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. William O'Neill (1935-2016) was a historian, scholar, author and professor of history emeritus at Rutgers University. Dr. O'Neill was the author of more than a dozen books on subjects related to the twentieth century of American social and political history. He has a Bachelor's degree form the University of Michagan and earned his Master's and Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Berkeley.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Dr. William O'Neill (1935-2016) was a historian, scholar, author, and professor of history emeritus at Rutgers University. Dr. O'Neill was the author of more than a dozen books on subjects related to the twentieth century of American social and political history. He has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and earned his Master's and Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. O'Neill is the recipient of&nbsp;the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who in America.&nbsp;</span> Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;AFDC; Welfare; Baby boom generation; Eugene McCarthy; communism; Red Scare; Women's Liberation Movement; Hippies.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">AFDC; Welfare; Baby boom generation; Eugene McCarthy; communism; Red Scare; Women's Liberation Movement; Hippies.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 199:22 Subject LCSH Historians; Scholars; Authors, American; College teachers; Rutgers University; United States—History—20th century; O'Neill, William L.--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: William O’Neill Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 18 March 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two. Here we go. Again, speak up. I remember I said that a couple of times and, oh, all right, here we go. What was America like from 1946 to (19)60 in the following areas, just your perceptions? I know when you wrote American High, you talked about that you looked at it more from a functional perspective as opposed to an idealistic perspective than a lot of the boomers may have thought. Because they were fairly critical, but when you think of the 19 from this (19)46 to 1960, I have got five categories here that I like. Just your thoughts on what was it like to be an African American during that timeframe? A female. What was family life like? Religion? Because I know people went to church a lot. My grandfather was a minister. The leaders that you thought were the most inspirational during that timeframe, there is a lot here, but these particular groups, because this is when boomers were born and right up to the time they went to junior high school. WO (00:01:27): Well, of course, I do not know much about what it was like to be an African American. Segregation was of course, universal in the north too, as well as the south. In the south, it was a matter of law, and they had savage punishments if you violated it, they were still lynching people. In the north was intensely segregated too, but in a non-violent way. It was not a matter of law, it was a matter of custom. Realtors would not sell or rent to Black people except in Black neighborhoods. Of course, their income compared to whites was extremely low. Their opportunities were very limited compared to what they later became. The big compensation, I think, for them, was that their family life was so much better than it is now. The divorce rate was slow, the illegitimate rate was low. This was an era of two parent Black families who generally stayed together for life and raised their children and under very difficult circumstances, but what has happened since that is the opportunities for blacks who have improved and enormously, but the Black family has disintegrated. Over 70 percent of Black children are born out of wedlock now. Most Black children do not have fathers. Well, they have them, but they do not know where they are kind of thing. I never know what if I were Black, how I would look at that because ... SM (00:03:02): Do you blame- WO (00:03:04): ... Have been great, but the losses have been big too. SM (00:03:06): Do you blame Lyndon Johnson for part of that? Because a lot of people criticize him for the welfare state, and even though the Great Society was, is praised over what he did in Vietnam, a lot of people are critical that really hurt the African American family, because that is the 1960s, '63 after Kennedy died, right, till (19)68. WO (00:03:34): Well, what enabled Black women to raise all these illegitimate children was welfare or aid to families with dependent children. That was the actual title aid to families with dependent children. That was eliminated under Bill Clinton in I think 1965 or 1995 or (19)96, so that program does not exist anymore. Women, again, in most states, three to five years of that kind of support, and then it is over. If welfare had been the cause of the Black families' disintegration, then it should be recreated by now, but of course it has not been. It clearly could not have been the principal factor. SM (00:04:21): Mm-hmm. How about women? What was it like? You have written about it to be a female in (19)46 to (19)60 in the (19)50s and late (19)40s. WO (00:04:32): Well, it was a tradeoff. Women were discriminated against but of course, until Betty Friedan came along with the Feminine Mystique, there was not a strong perception of that among anybody, including, I mean, I knew lots of women. I married one and they did not feel oppressed or discriminated against, although in fact they were not necessarily oppressed, but they were certainly discriminated against. It was difficult for, for example, when I was a student at the University of Michigan, and we all took this for granted in the 1950s, the ratio of men to women was two to one. That was not because the women had inferior qualifications. It was because the admission system was rigged so that a woman had to have superior qualifications to the average male who was admitted in order to get in. Of course, when it came to graduate school, medical school, law school, the discrimination's far worse there. When I- something I have never forgotten, when I entered graduate school at the University of California in Berkeley in 1957, they had an orientation meeting and there were maybe, I do not know, 100 students who had just been admitted. One of the senior faculty, a full professor addressed us and he said, this is a literal quote. He said, "If you are married or female, get out of this program. We only have room for serious scholars." If you were married or a woman, by definition, you could not be a serious scholar. There were women who got PhDs then and they had a terrifically difficult time finding jobs. Now, the plus side is, in those days, men earned, including working class men, but particularly working-class men and middle-class men, they earned enough money to support a family by themselves. A male's wages or salary were sufficient for him to support a wife and three children, I guess was the average at the time. The divorce rate was quite low compared to what it is now, about half what it is today. The tradeoff was yes, women were discriminated against, but more than we were all conscious of. In retrospect, you can see this much more clearly. I did not see it at all at the time and not [inaudible] and then when I started thinking about these things, I am sure it was an eye opener for lots of people, but the plus side was that although women were discriminated against, for the most part, for most of them, they were able to marry, have children, be supported by their husband and stay married to their husband. It was a lifelong deal, and many of them did not think it was that bad a deal. SM (00:07:48): Some of the feminists, and I have interviewed a couple of them, one in particular actually is Dr. Lash, she mentioned that she fell, women were never asked how they felt in the 1950s. In reality, if you were to talk to them as they got older, they stayed together for the kids, but they really did not want to get divorced. Secondly, and then unhappy marriages and whatever that effect that had on the children, but they also, if she felt that if you asked a lot of the women of that period, they would say, "Yes, I was totally unfulfilled," because a lot of them had secretarial training and so forth, and they met their husband. They married young, had kids, but they were not able to use their skills until later on. Some others had exceptions of the rule. There were women that were working, but overall, they were housewives. Your thoughts of that kind of, that is- WO (00:08:49): That anecdotal evidence is really hard to deal with. Most of the women I know my age, more or less my age, have been happy with their lives. My wife, for example, this is just an anecdote, does not mean anything necessarily, but when we got married, I was still in graduate school and she got a job teaching at a public school in Berkeley, and she taught there for three years. She hated every minute of it. It was there, she was the new girl in school, and so she got the worst classes. She threw up every morning before she went to school for about six months, I think. She never got to like it. I mean, it was always rough. The minute I got my PhD at a full-time job, she quit and was thrilled to quit. She then spent several years because I was always at universities, taking courses in areas of interest in her and developing. She is in fact an artist. She was never able to make a living at it, but art is her biggest interest. She was able to take art classes and produce work, and then she was very highly motivated to have children. After a couple of years of taking courses, she then had two children. Are you a father? SM (00:10:19): No, I am lucky. I have been married to my job my whole life. WO (00:10:22): Okay. SM (00:10:23): My career. Thousands of students. WO (00:10:24): Well, it changes your life and it is not always an unmixed blessing, but she had never regretted that she was very highly motivated. She really wanted to be a mother. I have never asked her if she felt that she had a fulfilling life, but it seemed to me that she has had the tradeoffs that she had to make were ones that she made consciously and was not forced into. In fact, I did not want to have children. I was married to my work in those days, a young man and just getting started and had no money. Well, I had a salary, but it just barely covered our requirements. When she had wanted to have a ... And she just [inaudible]. She was very highly motivated. She was determined to have children. I went along with it. It is not like men do not make sacrifices too or did not. It is still true. We all do whatever the balance of power or whatever it is, men have to make compromises and sacrifices too. I went along with it. Our first child was so horrible. She grew up to be a very fine woman, but as an infant, she was just awful. Even she was defiant and a runaway by the age of two. SM (00:11:56): Oh my God. WO (00:11:56): It just made our lives so difficult. And then my wife said, "Well, it is time to have another child," and I said, "Are you insane? We could barely cope with the one we have." Well, we did it. We went and had Kate. SM (00:12:10): Right. You talked a little bit about the family life of the boomer family life. I am trying to make sure that when I talk about boomers, people had mentioned that they thought boomers were white men or white women, but I want to make sure boomers are everybody that lived from all ethnic backgrounds, gender orientation, you name it. Just your thoughts on what it was like to grow up as a kid in the 1950s, because I have not had too many people that I have interviewed that really have concentrated on that period. They like to talk about the (19)60s and the (19)70s, but they do not like to talk about the (19)50s. I need more information because I felt religion was very important in the (19)50s. My grandfather was a minister at the Peekskill Church in New York for, he died in (19)56, I was a little boy, but we went to church, and I know that his church was packed. My dad would come back in the late (19)50s when [inaudible] took his place and it was packed. Something happened in the (19)60s, attendance went down, but just the concept of what it was like to be a family life was like and religion in the 1950s. WO (00:13:22): Well, Chris, again, you have to remember that America was overwhelmingly white in that period. The Hispanic minority, practically non-existent. Immigration from Asia and Africa and South America was just impossible. The only immigrants who got in were whites from Europe. The country was about 89 percent white, something like that. Within that context, a lot of class and regional and income differences. What is striking about the family life in that period, first of all, is this is the era of the baby boom. Birth rates had been falling for as long as there had been censuses, and particularly since 1860 when the census really got professional and good. Every generation had fewer children than the one before it. The parents of the baby boomers were, of course, children of depression and war. They have been through a lot and made many sacrifices. With the case of the war generation, they have been separated for long periods of time and they were determined to make up for lost time. Veterans served in military on the average of three years at the time. They all regarded this as three lost years. I mean, not that they rejected the call to service. There were very few conscientious objectors in World War II. They accepted their duty. It was their responsibility to defend the country, but nonetheless, they hated the military, almost all of them, and regarded this is three lost years when they could have finished school and gotten married and had children. When they got out, they decided to do everything at once. It just baffled older people, social critics and the like. Here is a generation they know sooner get out of the army then they get married, have children go to college, all at the same time. You are supposed to do those in sequence, decent intervals between them and so on. It led to this very false school of social criticism about the lonely crowd and the corporation ... SM (00:15:37): David Riesman. WO (00:15:38): ... And all that. I am about 10 years older than the war generation, so I did not participate in their experience. Initially, when all this social criticism came about, again, the lonely crowd, the conformity and mindlessness and tacky houses in the suburbs and all that stuff, and without giving much thought to it, I went along with it. In later years, when I went back to study this, this period from many different demographic standpoints looked better and better, that the birth rate was high, higher than it had been in several generations, and higher than it would ever be again, at least up until this point. The marriage rate was higher too. The divorce rate was lowered. Family incomes grew steadily. The houses in the suburbs were, what is the alternative to a nice house in a suburb like Levittown? Well, a tenement, some crappy apartment in New York that you are paying. For most veterans who bought houses in Levittown, their housing costs fell. They were paying more in rent for overcrowded, under ventilated apartments in New York than for a nice two-bedroom expandable cape, with grass and a driveway and this kind thing. They were family-oriented to a degree unprecedented in American history before that time. The wives too, of course, were similarly motivated because they had had the same deprivation. They had been separated from their boyfriends, their husbands, their future husbands, whatever, and had worked in difficult conditions in war plants and things like that. They felt they had lost three years of their life too. As I look back on them now, I mean, I think they were a wonderful generation and we call them today, they never used that phrase at the time, and you talk about all the complaints that were made about the generation, now, we call them the greatest generation. They were great at peace time too. SM (00:18:05): Yeah. It is interesting because I want to get into the leaders here, but you say in your book in American High that when Eisenhower came to power, the country was infused with confidence. It is created expectations, and there was unity. Isn't that what happened when Kennedy came in too, that many of the critics of the (19)50s looked at Kennedy and said, "Whew, what a breath of fresh air, new ideas, somebody who's young," some fairly critical of the (19)50s overall, and as it says here, very complacent, as you said in your book, complacent, unremarkable, marked by intolerance, conformed to materialism. Of course, African Americans were treated poorly. You talked about lynching. Dr. King became nationally known. There were some really bad things happening, but it was kind of hidden. We knew about the Cold War, we knew about the threat of the nuclear bomb, but what was happening in America within our own borders was kind of hidden from boomer children, so to speak. That is why I think a lot of people are critical of the (19)50s because not only were these things happening, but we allowed them to happen and we did not make any effort to change. You talk about the fact also, in your book that after World War II, it was a kind of reconstruction period. It was everybody had been deprived. I know my mom, I know the stories my mom told me about they did not have any butter. I mean, there was no rubber. I mean, they could not drive very far in cars. There was all kinds of restrictions, but the social critics do not look at that. They look at the bad things and the status quo and the lack of being individual thought and your thoughts again. WO (00:20:08): The period looks ... Now, of course, the (19)50s did suffer from racism, sexism, and homophobia. Every previous era in American history had suffered from these things too. The (19)50s is not unique in that way. What makes the (19)50s unique is the progress that was made. This was the beginning of the period of the fight against racism. Now, that with around supportive education and then Montgomery Bus Boycott, and in the (19)60s, it would lead to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, so race ... The greatest scandal of American life, which had been a scandal before there was a United States of America, that is the (19)50s is the era when the fight against it really takes off. The worst thing in American life is being seriously addressed for the first time. Well, since the Civil War, I mean, that was many, many hundreds of thousands of union men died to destroy slavery, but then that was it, and discrimination and lynching and all these other things just went unaddressed until really the 1950s. In that area, you get the start really important social progress. In other areas, I have become, I think more I have come to admire Eisenhower more than I did. For one thing, I was as a lifelong Democrat, I voted for Adlai Stevenson, but I have come to appreciate Eisenhower, despite his style, which in public, he was this homuncular, grandfather-like figure. Spoke in long, boring sentences and never seemed to say anything. Of course, we now know that was an act, that he really was not like that at all, but that was the public persona that he represented, which could hardly have been more tedious or bland. While he was putting out this facade of mediocrity, he was ending the Korean War, cutting back the military, drastically paying down the national debt, starting the interstate highway system. I know lots of people think this country pays too much attention to cars, that we are too car-centered and we should have more railroads and stuff. I think that is true also, but the interstate highway system was a tremendous stimulus to the American economy, not only in the jobs that were created in building it, but in the time that was cut from transporting goods from place to place. It was the greatest public works project in the history of the world. One of the big reasons why the American economy grew so rapidly during the (19)50s and (19)60s when it was of course, still rebuilding, built the St. Lawrence Seaway ... SM (00:23:04): Yeah, the [inaudible]. WO (00:23:06): ... He kept income tax up. The Republicans, even in the 1950s were gung-ho on tax cuts. He refused to do it, because his feeling was, and he said this publicly, that a strong economy is more important than a strong military because you can always build up a military, but if your economy is shot, you are screwed. Well, he did not put it in that way, of course, but that was his argument, and he said that repeatedly. He refused to cut taxes in order, to pay for the interstate highway system to pay down the national debt, to pay for the St. Lawrence Seaway. This is also a period, he was the first to provide federal funding to schools, public schools, and higher education. The country, during this period, the college population expanded between 1955 and 1960 by about 150 percent. Never been anything like it in the history of this country. Thanks to the fact that the economy is blooming, and the states are doing well, and the federal government is supplying some kind of money, this huge increase in enrollment was met by building new colleges and universities and expanding the old ones and hiring full-time faculty members with PhDs. That is almost all the hiring was done during this period. Now, when I look at us today, of course, this is parochial of me Because I have spent my life in higher education, but higher education has been decaying for such a long time now. So much of the teaching is done by exploited graduate students. The full-time, tenured PhD faculty keep shrinking everywhere, not just at Rutgers. That is happening everywhere. The university's trying to make up the difference by admitting unqualified students and charging a lot of money in tuition. In the 1950s and (19)60s, tuition was essentially free. I mean, there was a tuition, but it would be like $100 a semester or something of that sort. Today at state universities like Rutgers, it is $12,000 a year. That the whole concept that public higher education should be free is just gone. Nobody seems to care. Increasingly what you could get the education [inaudible]. That was not how we did it in the (19)50s and (19)60s or even before that. SM (00:25:28): I know Eisenhower, even you criticize him for not being very good in the area of civil rights, although he ... WO (00:25:35): He was very blunt. SM (00:25:36): ... Yeah, although we know what happened at Little Rock, but what is interesting is oftentimes pressure has to be put on leaders to get things done. Harry Truman, of course, integrated the military in the late forties, and I can remember the story of A. Philip Randolph threatening a march on Washington and ... WO (00:25:55): During the war. SM (00:25:56): ... Yeah, during the war, and Truman did not want that. He eventually integrated the army, which meant that I think (19)57 was when King was there for, I think, at the Lincoln Memorial. WO (00:26:14): Truman integrated the army in theory in 1948, but it took quite a long time to ... The services really dragged their feet that when they ended formal segregation, oh, in five to 10 years, something like that. Even into the (19)60s, although segregation had officially been ended, you barely saw a black officer. Black soldiers were mostly in construction battalions and riflemen. In fact, in the (19)60s, one of the problems of the Vietnam War is that in (19)65, (19)66 when the fighting really became intensive, Black casualties in relation to the number of blacks in the military were extremely high. Well, the reason was that they were all in the combat arms. Everybody who scored high on Army qualification tests, who would normally be white, got into intelligence and signals and things like that, and Blacks all got to be gunners and rifleman. SM (00:27:26): Yeah, McCarthy was an important figure. I can remember as a very young boy sitting on the floor in my home in Courtland before I went to school and seeing this man on television yelling to answer questions. I remember Roy Cohen, I remember that young lawyer to his left, but I remember he was scary to me as a little boy within that black and white TV. I was [inaudible] and even as a four-year-old that this is a guy that even a four-year-old was afraid of. David Kaiser's written in his book, 1968, that he sees Kennedy and McCarthy linked all over the place when you talk about the boom generation. He links three things that really affected the Vietnam War, and he thinks McCarthy, Kennedy and an attitude of appeasement, kind of like what happened in Munich that happened. When he talks about McCarthy, he is talking about all the links with the Kennedy’s, and they were friends and McCarthy- WO (00:28:33): Joan Kennedy in particular ... SM (00:28:35): McCarthy was challenged them- WO (00:28:37): ... [inaudible] supporter of McCarthy. SM (00:28:41): Right. Well, and of course you talk about in your book about the Hollywood ten. To me that was a precursor of the enemy's list that Nixon did and the COINTELPRO program. I know that M. Stanton Evans has written a book recently kind of saying some good things about Senator McCarthy, but yet- WO (00:29:06): Gee, what good is this? SM (00:29:08): Yeah. It is actually a revisionist look at the man. You have to get the book. M. Stanton Evans, he is a conservative, but your thoughts on McCarthy and how important he was during that timeframe in terms of shaping about fearing about speaking up. David Kaiser also talks about the fact that many white men in that period looked up to African Americans like Dr. King because they were not threatened by McCarthy. They spoke up against injustice, Dr. King in (19)57, Montgomery Bus Boycott, and they did not worry about him, but many white men who may have spoken up did not because of what was going on in America, soft on communism type of a mentality. WO (00:30:00): I am missing your question. SM (00:30:01): The question is, McCarthy, how important was he? WO (00:30:05): Well, of course he was about five years, he was tremendously important, but he was important primarily as a weapon used by the Republicans to get back in power into the meeting. Well, he had a sort of primitive shrewdness about him, but the man was completely incompetent, and so was his staff except for Roy Cole. Roy Cole was smart, but otherwise, he had a terrible staff. He would go around saying, "There are 185 communists in the State Department," and he would wave papers that presumably prove this. The next time he would ask, "Well, there is 65 communists in the State Department," and he would be president. Finally, he got down to Owen Lattimore, who was not even in the State Department. He was an East Asian scholar who had been serving as a consultant to McCarthy. Well, so where is the fire there? There was not. It was a damp squid. Owen Lattimore was a fellow traveler, but he was not in the State Department and had no influence on public policy and did not matter at all in terms of the life of the country. McCarthy's success was owning to the fact that the Republicans supported him strongly, including even Robert Taft, who was widely admired for his integrity, but did not hesitate to urge McCarthy to get down in the gutter and throw mud at everyone else and did some mud throwing in of itself. The proof of that is that when Eisenhower became president in 1953, McCarthy's days were numbered because he did not realize that he was just a tool, was a means by which the Republicans were going to get back into power. Now that they were in power, there could not be a 21st year of treason and all these other ridiculous charges that he made, and he did not get it. Part of it, I think, was because he was so alcoholic. When you look at the films that have been made of him, the documentaries like Point of Order, which is surely the best known one, you can see that he is visibly drunk when he is speaking. He slurs his words, and he gets things wrong. Here is this drunken fool who becomes a national figure and a real threat to civil liberties, solely as a mechanism by which the Republicans came back into power. Once they are back into power in 1954, they cut him off [inaudible]. SM (00:32:40): Do you think Nixon learned from McCarthy? He was not like McCarthy, but he saw- WO (00:32:48): No, he was so much smarter than McCarthy. SM (00:32:48): But he saw that he could threaten people with his enemies list and the COINTELPRO Program. WO (00:32:54): Yes, he did not hesitate to use McCarthy methods, but he was so much smarter than McCarthy and so much really more careful about who he went after and how he phrased it. He would usually leave himself an out some sort, so he could red bait and get away with it, but McCarthy was just so crude, and as I say, incompetent. He destroyed himself. SM (00:33:23): When you look at your three books that I brought with me today, could you describe what it means to what American High means, what coming apart means and what a bubble in time means? WO (00:33:40): Mm-hmm. Well, I have a general theory about modern American history, which these books fit into. I have been trying to think of a way to possibly write another book that would integrate this thing, but it seems to be the arc that the United States has followed, is in the 1930s ... As follow is in the 1930s, of course, it was the Great Depression and a good deal of national despair, which fortunately Franklin Roosevelt came along. And after that, people did not despair so much, but there was a long period of hardships experienced by a large part of the public. And then there was this awful era of appeasement. On the part of France and Britain, which the United States fully supported. Roosevelt was always sending encouraging messages, keep up the good work of surrendering handler, not with so many words, of course. And then when France fell, and Britain was all alone, the last beacon of democracy in a continent that had been completely taken over by the Nazis, the American people, as unfortunately polls pretty reliable by this time. But also, the American still did not want to get into the war. They wanted to wait until New Jersey was invaded and that would be the right point at which to start defending ourselves. And Roosevelt kept trying to explain it would be better to start defending ourselves using Great Britain while it was still independent as a phase. So that was kind of the nature of American life in the 20th century, I think. But once forced into the war, against the will, of course, the American people made a fabulous effort. And in saving much of the free world, they also rejuvenated the United States. And the self-confidence and the economy blossomed. And in the post-war period, we got this long run of success with the economy. The economy. Average incomes between 1947 and 1973 doubled. That is in real terms, that is adjusted for inflation. That is real terms. Since 1973, family incomes have only gone up by about 10 percent. And that is mostly because everybody is working more. Husbands are moonlighting, wives who never would have worked previously are now working part-time when men who worked part-time previously are now working full-time. We put in more hours. American families put in more hours of work than anybody else in the developed world. And that, plus borrowing, is the only reason why family standards of living have improved, or did improve up until what, 2000. But before that, in the year that ended in 1973, the American standard of living doubled because incomes doubled. Real incomes doubled. And as I said before, it is a period of tremendous reconstruction. In 1945, there is a huge housing shortage. In 1950, the housing shortage is over. And then you get the highway and all the other things, the huge expansion of education. It was gigantic on all levels because the baby boomers are here, this huge generation, bigger than the country had ever seen before. Which we did not have an infrastructure to support at the time they started coming. The infrastructure was created, the schools, the churches, which also boomed during this period. So, it is America. The racism, the worst feature of American life, is seriously attacked for the first time since the Civil War in the 1950s. So, this is a period of enormous national self-confidence, which is fully justified by the results. Then as you get into the 1960s, of course the picture becomes somewhat more ambiguous. The growth continues. It goes right on; the economic growth goes right on into the 1970s. Well, as you know, I am not a big admirer of President Kennedy, and he was a cold warrior from the beginning. He was determined to escalate the arms race. He campaigned on nonexistent missile gap between the United States and the Soviets. There was a missile gap, but it was in our favor by a big margin. The first generation of Soviet ICBMs had failed. And Eisenhower, Nixon could not say that because the information was derived from these illegal sky flights over the Soviet Union. And so, Nixon could not say, well, in fact, we were way ahead of the Soviets in ICBMs because owing to our secret and illegal overflights... SM (00:38:50): Gary Powers. WO (00:38:52): But I am not a big sympathizer with Nixon, but there is a certain irony in his hands being tied in this way. And then when Kennedy became president and Secretary McNamara finally gets the figures and he announces, well, there is no missile gap actually, we are way ahead. And Kennedy made him take that back and insisted on greatly increasing expenditure on missiles despite the fact that we already had this huge lead. The Soviets, of course, then had no choice but to reply in kind. And so, we ended up with something like 40, 000 thermal nuclear warheads on each side, enough to destroy the world many times over. And that all starts with Kennedy. It could have been avoided, it seems to me, with better leadership. He was extremely capable of certain ways, but he was such a hawk where the Cold War was concerned. He never thought about the long-term consequences of what he did. And then we get Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society, which is the biggest outburst of progressive social legislation since the New Deal and has never been matched since. Remotely. Nobody remotely has come close to the Great Society. And then he also gives us the Vietnam War. And that enables the war, is unwinnable and unpopular. And it gives us Richard Nixon as a president. And it also is the beginning of the inflation that become so marked in the 1970s, because since the war was so unpopular, Johnson did not want to pay for it. Or that was he wanted to borrow rather than the tax to pay for it. The country was rich at the time; you could afford it to raise taxes. If people were saying in polls, which they did up until 1968, that they favored the war, well want them to pay for it. But Johnson was afraid to push it because the polls showed there was a majority of Americans supported it. But he believed, I think correctly, that the support was rather thin and would not stand up. And if serious sacrifices were required, that support would wither away. So he avoided the tax increases that might have forced all the, I am not an economist, but all the economic histories that I have seen see the beginning of inflation in his trying to fight the war around borrowing money, at a time when we could afford to actually tax. But he was right about the support being thin because once the huge casualties started to come in and the Tet Offensive proved that all these optimistic projections are wrong, support really eroded very rapidly. And so, Nixon was able to come in and that is the end, actually, it was not the end of reform. Nixon was surprisingly open-minded. Currently there's a lot of discussion about the fact that Ted Kennedy, before his death said the worst thing, he ever did was to refuse Nixon's offer of universal health insurance in 1970. Nixon offered a more generous plan than Obama's trying to get now. And in his memoir, Kennedy says, that is the great mistake of his life. Because he thought he could get a better one. SM (00:42:23): Yeah, I read that memoir, I thought it was pretty good. Pretty good memoir. WO (00:42:32): So then, the economy is kind of shaky because the war's expenses are vaulting high, and the tax increases are not paying for it. In the end, Johnson did put through some tax increases, but they were not enough. So, when Nixon becomes president, inflation is starting to creep up. It is not a monster yet, but it is starting to creep up. And although Nixon, as I say, turned out to be surprisingly open-minded on a lot of social issues, he signed on to the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and expanded funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities and a variety of other things. Not because he was a great hearted liberal or anything, because he was a smart politician dealing with a Democratic Congress. But the one thing that nobody was willing to do was to address the inflation issue. And then in 1973, you get the first oil shock. The young people are at war and the Arab oil boycott, which did not actually deprive the country of all that much oil, but it created hysteria and energy prices started to shoot through the roof. And Nixon did not deal with that, and Ford did not deal with it, and Carter did not deal with it either, although he wanted to, I think. And he did give speeches about energy conservation, all of that. But the inflation just kept getting worse and worse and worse. SM (00:44:13): Let me change this. WO (00:44:13): So, by the time Paul Volker, who bless his heart Has reemerged- SM (00:44:29): Oh yeah, he is always behind the presidents here. WO (00:44:32): Paul Volker, whom Carter had appointed as chairman of the Federal Reserve, finally decided to end the inflation because Congress would not do it. There are a number of tools for dealing with inflation, but what they basically involve is some combination of cutting government expenditures and raising taxes. But you got there is too much money, you have got to break the money supply down. And neither Carter nor Congressman would take any of these steps because they are unpopular. Nobody wants their taxes to go up and nobody wants their government services to be decline. And so that left only Paul Volker and he broke the back of inflation, as you I am sure remember, by jacking up interest rates. Labor at its prime was at 21 percent at one point, precipitating, of course, a recession, a big one. But with the Congress and the President having failed to act responsibly, he did not have any choice of the matter. In fact, Carter campaigned against him in 1980. His own appointee. Blamed him for the hard times that were coming. Well, my theory is, and it is not just mine, a lot of economists think this too, the economy never recovered from this experience. The rate of economic growth not only declined somewhat afterwards, but the whole way in which income was distributed changed as well. So that while there has been economic growth since 1981, when Ronald Reagan became president, the increase in growth has been funneled almost entirely to rich people. That was not true earlier. In the 1950s and (19)60s, if the economy grew by 3 percent the workers would get a 3 percent raise and the president of the corporation would get a 3 percent raise. And of course, he was making a lot more money than the workers. So, his 3 percent would be a lot more than theirs. But still, the ratio between what the CEO got and the workers got would be 50 to one, something of that sort. Since that time, and Ronald Reagan had a lot to do with this, but he was also the expression of a kind of national impulse in a way was to cut taxes. And people really wanted to have their taxes put out because of course, owing to the inflation of the 1970s, most people's income had fallen. If you were on a salary, as I was, we got raises, but they were never equal to the rate of inflation. And so, the real worth of my salary fell by a third, something like that, during this period. So, one of the easiest ways to deal with that from politicians’ point of view was to cut taxes, which Reagan did. But of course, he cut them particularly for the rich. Then he got the lion share of the taxes. But that began the era in which people came to see that the solution in every problem was tax cuts. And he restored some of them. It was a curious kind of dance. By the end of his presidency about half the tax reduction had been restored. But that still left tax cuts as the mantra on the table that the Republicans rallied both ceaselessly and as a solution for every problem. And with incomes failing to rise as they had done before, older Americans were had gotten used to having their real income go up 5 percent every year or two. And now suddenly it is not going up at all. Or by tiny infinitesimal amounts. SM (00:48:34): And pensions are not going up either. WO (00:48:36): And pensions are not going up. And if you get a tax cut, well that puts a few dollars in your pocket and it is only a few dollars, but it is better than nothing. And so, we got into the cycle, which we are still pursuing today. President Clinton was never really strong enough to be able to deal with this. He helped around the edges. He did increase taxes a bit on rich people. Did not restore the things to what they had been, but he did increase them a little. And we had the short period of budget surpluses. But that was due to the stalemate between the Republican Congress and the Democratic president. Clinton wanted to spend more, Congress wanted to cut taxes more, and they canceled each other out. So, of course, as soon as George Bush got into office, the Republicans fell on that tax surplus like the old son, the proverbial fold and what had been surpluses became huge deficits. So, anyway, so this is the arc of modern American history. We start from a low point in the 1930s in World War II. The country really redeems its failings and its slowness in recognizing the danger. Well, it never did recognize the danger. The danger was forced upon us. And at that point you could not deny reality anymore. But nonetheless, tremendous effort on the part of the whole population something. Everybody contributed to it one way or another. Victory over the forces of fascism and Japanese imperialism. And then this long, wonderful surge of growth, which benefited everybody, not just rich people. It benefited everybody. And this huge expansion of our infrastructure, and housing, and education, and just everything got better. Since 1973, most things have been getting worse. And the infrastructure is deteriorating. The free college concept, it is just gone. College is expensive now. Even public colleges are expensive. So, it seems to be that in most areas, the Civil Rights movement really matured. That progress did not stop. And of course, women relative to men are in a much stronger position than they used to be. The horrible immigration laws that kept everyone except white people from immigrating to the country, they are gone too. And I think as a nation, we are much better off now that we get immigrants from all over the world, and it is really a national asset. So, there are some pluses. But on the whole, it seems to me that in so many important areas of life, standard of living, quality of education, the state of the infrastructure. Country has been going downhill since the (19)70s. And I am hoping Obama can, I think expanding healthcare will help. That will certainly improve the standard of living, not just, I think of the people who are going to be added, the 30 million or so uninsured. But if the bill will go through with something like their present form, it's going to help everybody by slowing the growth of costs in health insurance, by preventing insurance companies from canceling people because they're too sick. And from denying coverage to people because they are already sick, that is going to help a very large part of the population. And one of the things that keeps this country from achieving its potential, I think, is that healthcare costs have been escalating at a rate towards sucking up everything else. And in the past 10 years, the cost of health insurance has doubled to the point where healthcare now takes up 1/6th of the gross domestic product. If this continues in 10 years, it will take up 1/3rd of the gross domestic product. We will be doing nothing but supporting healthcare. All this has just got to change. And if it does change, then I think there is some hope for the future. But I do not think the last 30 years has gone at all well. SM (00:53:00): Phyllis Schlafly, who I interviewed along with David Horowitz, say that the troublemakers of the (19)60s are now running the universities and teaching within the universities. Is that going overboard? WO (00:53:15): Not a lot. Not a lot. One of the peculiar features of universities is, whereas the left failed everywhere in American life, except universities. They had, the last was pretty successful in universities. And a lot of the faculty and many administrators are either former leftist who finally got a chance to put their abstract ideas into abstract practice, because it does not affect anything outside the university. It is inside our little world. Yeah, I would say that. And also, another curious thing is that the new left outside of the university has no heirs, but in the university, new left professors trained graduate students and imbued them with their views. Undergraduates are really hard to brainwash on. Conservative used to say, well, students are being brainwashed. It is very hard to brainwash students. I do not know why that is, but it is very difficult. And my efforts at this have been very largely failure. But graduate students, whom you work with much more closely and over a long period of time, are more susceptible to influence. And to fashion. Academic disciplines have fashions, it is just like everything else. And the undergrads do not recognize them because they cannot tell what is new from what is old. But graduate students like to be on the cutting edge, as they say, and latest fashions. And so, the only place in the country where the left has any real influence is in universities. SM (00:55:02): Yeah. Harry Eders, even in his books of Black students that he wrote around 1970, (19)71, where he defined the difference between revolutionaries, militants, activists, and anomic activists, talked about the fact that militants were the graduate students who were the leaders of the anti-war movement on college campuses. And many of them were the pre-Boomers that were born between (19)41 and say (19)46. Some of them. And because people like Tom Hayden and that particular group. What are your thoughts on the various academic studies programs that are an offshoot of the (19)60s and early (19)70s? Particularly talking about, I know you bring up in your new book, but about the women's studies programs, Asian studies, gay and lesbian studies, Native American studies, popular out west. Chicano studies on the West Coast, Black studies, and now even environmental studies. So, you have got all these different studies. Your thoughts on these are all the movements, the people of the late (19)60s, early (19)70s, these were all movements that looked to the Civil Rights movement as their role model and their teacher. Just your thoughts on all these various studies programs in university campuses. WO (00:56:26): Up to a point, I do not have any objection. In fact, I wrote the first critical history of the old feminist movement ever to be done by a professional historian. And I did that because I felt that women's history, which we did not even call women's history then, the book came out in 1969 and women's studies and women's history were not really defined at that point. They were a few years later. So, I was writing women's history in a sense without even knowing that I was writing women's history. But it was clear that women were clearly being underserved by historians, because here was this rich history and all these fascinating people involved in it who never got into the textbooks except a brief obligatory mention on note 27 or something. And so, I was really pleased to see student women's liberation of course, that movement really galvanized women in graduate schools. And young women, faculty members who could transition pretty easily from... One of the first women to teach women's history at Rutgers, for example, was a French historian. She got her PhD in French history. But having all that scholarly training, it was easy for her to switch from, I do not know what her dissertation, some conventional 18th century French stuff. She was able to transition very easily to women's history. And others did that as well. One of the ironies of the situation for me is that I regarded myself as a founding father of women's history, but all the men got frozen out. There were in, the 1960s, there were 10 or 12 historians who were writing on women's subjects, about half men and half women. Almost all the women went on to become presidents of the OAHA and the American Historical Association in the organization of American historians, things like that. The men all got forced out. Oh, I got insulted in meetings and it just, I never got invited to anything. So, we were all ostracized in that way and it kind of hurt my feelings a little bit on the end, until we're playing by things to write about. Anyway, a long way around by saying that in the case of women's history, I really did welcome it and I think it is a real field and I am glad to see it. I think some of the others too, some of these seem so small or have so little in the way of historical material to work with that I really wonder about them. But some of the Hispanic studies, Haitian studies, things like these are perfectly legitimate fields. They were taught in the past, not on a scale or the orientation that they are now. But what I think is wrong with the current education is that all this has been done at the expense of the basics. We get students, I get students, whose reading and writing skills are so primitive, they can barely write, they cannot write a grammatical paragraph, many of them. Their knowledge of almost anything is nonexistent. They do not know anything about the past. They do not know anything about the rest of the world. So, it seems to me that yes, it's good to have academic life open up in this way and to place emphasis on previously neglected areas, but at the same time it would still be good if students had the basic skills they did 30 years ago. 30 years ago, students were so much better qualified than they are now. They all could read and write. They had high levels, they had some knowledge of history, and they had good work ethics. Almost all of them. I did not know it was a golden age, but it was a golden age of teaching. I did not have to discipline them, or force them to come to class, or bludgeon them into reading the assigned books. They just did all these things. That was accepted. SM (01:01:00): Do you think there is any link between, again, I can remember back at Binghamton University students to get out of the draft went in teaching, but they had no interest in being teachers. They did it to get out of the draft and they planned to quit as soon as the war was over. Of course, we are talking 1970 now. And so, they would be influencing students in the mid (19)70s and then beyond, in high school. Do you see any link there between the poor-quality education, that these people were not committed to teaching? WO (01:01:36): I do not know enough about the secondary school system in this country. The one I went through was completely different than what exists today. All I know is that, again, 30 years ago, the students I got were just much better prepared for college work than they are now. Lot of them are just not prepared. And what the universities have done is dumbed down the courses. In order to meet their lowered abilities, we have lowered expectations at great inflation. And you can get away with a lot if you give students As and Bs, even if you are not teaching anything. And even if they are not learning anything. SM (01:02:18): That is so different, when I was at Binghamton, because Dr. Donnelley hardly gave one A in each of his classes, he taught Russian history. You really had to earn it. One A, and we are talking great students here. And I took three courses from him, and I got an A once, and I got a B once, and I got a C once. I was furious that I got a C. But in that day, you knew you were in a great professor, you knew he made you study. You had to work hard for everything, and you did not go off and, as I have seen today, students go into their advisors and say, I am a straight A student and this is wrong that you are giving me that thing. So, I think you, you are onto something here. One of the things you bring up in your new book too, because I have been perusing through, I got to read it full force like the other two. But I picked and choose some of the things that I read. About when George Bush was president in particular, George Bush Senior. I want to ask you; do you believe in political correctness? What did the universities learn in the (19)60s with respect to student activism? Our universities, as Clark Kerr said, beholden to the corporations, businesses, and applied research. And even Ohio State University now, if you look on their website, their biggest thing is they talk about their research. It is a research university. The question I am really asking here is, I interviewed Arthur Chicory, the great educator, about a week ago, and he's written a 20-page piece and it is going to come out in a major magazine, basically very upset with the universities today. He says the corporations are again running the universities. And then that, and he was referring back to the (19)60s and the Clark Kerrs and the uses of the multiversity kind of an idea. Are you seeing again that universities are beholden to the corporations? WO (01:04:27): Well, yeah, but I think in a different way. When Clark Kerr wrote his book, he saw the university service role in a very broad way. He was not just helping corporations make money, it was just strengthening society as a whole and provide it with this sealed, well-trained, well-educated people that are needed in various walks of life. But it did include corporations as among those who would benefit and took the perhaps naive view that benefiting corporations, which employ some millions of people, would benefit a large part of the population as well. Today it is a much more crass kind of arrangement in which universities support health, science, and engineering departments. I do not think humanities get any money from corporations. They support them to encourage the kind of research that will benefit their own company and complement their own research efforts. And often I think it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. So yes. And the reason for that is because universities are in big financial trouble. Have been increasing for quite a long time, but over the past 10 years, it has gotten awful. And so, the departments like the humanities department said they cannot do that. I do not know who would sell out to corporations. They do not walk for bias. So, we never have the opportunity to discover the extent of our... But when the state keeps cutting your funding all the time, and it's not just New Jersey, of course, it is every state has this. Universities like Michigan, California gets less than 10 percent of their operating budget from their states. They are almost entirely self-supporting. And you cannot do it on tuition, and you cannot do it on federal grants. You have got to have more money. And corporations, if it serves their purposes, will supply it. So, I do not see if there is any choice in this area. Yeah, corporations' influence is considerably greater than it used to be. I do not think it is because anybody likes it, but it is because universities are increasingly desperate. SM (01:06:39): Yeah, you have probably hit it right on the button here because the university I just came from, everything is linked to some sort of raising some sort of scholarship or fundraising. We had a basketball coach that refused to go out and do fundraising. He was a great basketball coach. He said, I am not here to be a fundraiser. I am here to be a coach. And he quit. And he was a historic basketball coach. He just said, I am not here for that. And they give a lot of scholarships out. And now it is almost like every program you do has got to be linked to, has a value to raising some sort of funds. George Bush, you really bring this out in a bubble in time. I think this particular section of your book needs to be read by everyone. In fact, I am emailing several people that I have interviewed to get your book and to read this section on George Bush. This is the section where the serious text on freedom of speech, President Bush's speech at Michigan, where he talks about the spirit, the speech, and the enterprise. And Marine Dow responded by saying that political correctness is a broad range of generally liberal attitudes, especially in support of the rights of women, ethnic minorities, homosexuals, or conservatives and traditionalists. Look at people who espouse these views to the exclusion of others' rights... These views to the exclusion of others' rights and free speech. Conservatives and traditionalists were the ones that are basically making these attacks. I find it interesting because the free speech movement in 1964, and I remember Sam Brown who was in the Carter administration. When he first got involved in activism, he was talking about that he could not bring a communist in to speak. So, what is the difference between what happened in Berkeley in 1964, where they were not allowed to hand out literature and thus it became a free speech issue, and Sam Brown's experience, I forget what college went to where they could not bring in communists to speak? And what is happening here about political correctness? Just your thoughts. Free speech, basically. WO (01:08:56): There is a big difference between political correctness and McCarthyism. McCarthyism was presented by most of the faculty. It was to the degree that university professors did not lose their trials. Three at Rutgers. You never stopped hearing about that here. Three professors in the 1950s lost their jobs for taking the Fifth Amendment before some investigating. But the great hope of the American faculty even developed from the conservative professors who were opposed to McCarthyism, were opposed to loyalty tests on the part of the faculty. Political correctness, on the other hand, has a very broad base of support among the faculty. Lots of it, which is why you could get those things through. Why you could get speech codes and these absurd regulations about what could be said and not said, and what kind of posters you could put up and this kind of thing. Political correctness is... McCarthyism was external. It was forced on colleges and universities. Political correctness is internal. It is the faculty that has come to believe that. There is a real irony in the reversal here obviously because in the (19)50s, faculty were always demanding free speech as an essential, universal freedom of course, particularly freedom among academics. How can you teach if you are not free to say what you believe is true? Now, you get faculty members who say, "No, you cannot say what you believe is true if it is going to offend women, Blacks, gays, transgenders, you name it." SM (01:10:43): You say that is a real negative on the boomers? The boomers have laid this on society, and because they are the teachers and the administrators, that is a very negative thing. I want to ask you about you, your personal background. Because I know you went to Berkeley. I believe you got your undergraduate degree, was it at Michigan? WO (01:11:09): Michigan, yeah. SM (01:11:10): Michigan. Tell me a little bit about yourself. In other words, when you were young in high school growing up, who were the people that you looked up to? Whether it be family members, people in your local community, people that you read about in history books, or people you saw on television or heard on the radio. Who were the people that really inspired you when you were young, and what did they have that you liked about them? WO (01:11:38): Well, I grew up in a small town in western Michigan, about 5,000 people. It was then this, well still is, it is the economy seat. It was basically a rural agricultural area, so it served farmers. A little bit of manufacturing. Tiny Paris Institute today at a quite large state college, but then just little tiny private institution. There was no real intellectual stimulation there. My family are Irish Catholic Democrats in a Protestant Republican town. 90 percent of the people were Protestant Republicans, so we were very much an isolated minority. I was bookish even as a child. That is not unusual among academic people. So, apart from Franklin Roosevelt, who was second only, or possibly even superior to the pope as a revered figure. He was superior, actually. The Pope [inaudible]. And Winston Churchill. My father, for some reason, although as I say as an Irish Catholic family, my father just adored Winston Churchill and did not chair the... Many Irishmen were still sore about British oppression and things like that, but my family then, even though they were poorly educated and had been in this country a long time, the founding O'Neill came over during the famine in the 1830s. By the time I was born, my family only been here for 100 years. So, the anti-British sentiment had faded over that time. Anyway, so it became a host of the big inspirational figures in my family. And there were some people I had, some teachers that I liked and thought were good. SM (01:13:52): Who were they? WO (01:13:52): I had an English teacher in high school, who was awfully good at... In many ways, I appreciated her more after I left than when I was there because she was one of those who made you learn and diagram sentences, and do stuff that seemed beneath you. Because you do that in grammar school and you should not have to do it in high school again. But she was absolutely right. She made us do it in our senior year and she said, "You are going to go to college now. The work is going to be a lot harder," which in those days it was. "It is going to be a lot harder than what you have here, so you really need to brush up on your basics." We were therefore learning the parts of speech and diagram sentences. We all felt this was kind of demeaning because here we were seniors and all that. But of course, it was the best thing she could have done for us. I really did appreciate it when I got to school. I did not have any idols, people that I looked up to. I read a great deal of history of biographies. And of course, being a young boy, I was not reading about Aristotle. I was reading about Napoleon, Caesar and figures like that. It was very much a part of the great man period history. It really appealed to me. SM (01:15:10): Your college years as an undergraduate and graduate student, were there any speakers that you saw when you were a graduate student, programs you went to in the out of classroom experience that influenced you? WO (01:15:21): Yes. Nobody in my family on either side had ever graduated from college or even really gone to college. My mother had what was called business school, but it was typing and that kind of stuff. So, there was nobody in my family with any experience at all in this. But being Catholics, of course, they adored Notre Dame and thought it was just the greatest university in the world. Since I had knew nothing and had no idea what I wanted to do, so I agreed to go to Notre Dame and I spent my first year there. It was really unpleasant. It was a boys' school at the time and I never had a date the whole year, and neither did anybody I knew. There was a small girls' college, St. Mary's, adjoining the campus, but you had to be an athlete in order to date a girl at St. Mary's, so that was really out. Otherwise, the campus was so stark. They did not have any of the things campuses listen to today. There was no student center, no athletic facilities except for athletes. They turned off the power in the dorms at 10 o'clock so you would not be studying. SM (01:16:42): Oh my God. WO (01:16:44): And then a priest would come around with flashlights to see if you were masturbating or studying. Either one would be [inaudible]. And you did, you had to check in for mass three days a week. You did not have to actually go to mass, but you had to get fully dressed to go down to the chapel and sign in, at which point you might as well go in. So, I told my parents that I just was not going to go back. They were paying my way and I said, "If you do not want pay my way, I will join the Army or something. I will find some way, but I am not going back." That was bad. So, I transferred to the University of Michigan, and I was short some credits because I had taken courses in theology or religion at Notre Dame. Did not transfer. So, I went to summer school and took Western Civ. I cannot remember the name of the professor. He was a senior faculty member at Michigan in those days. The senior faculty taught the introductory courses. That guy was a wizard. For one thing, the education of Notre Dame was very poor, but I did not know that because I did not have anything to measure it by. I would gone to a mediocre high school with a couple of good teachers, but no real [inaudible]. I took this Western Civ course, it was like the heavens had opened. A world I never dreamed of, even though I would read a lot of history and biography on my own. Focusing on military history and having no context, really. I was kind of an autodidact in that way. Then suddenly, here is this guy who is going over the whole sweep of western civilization to about 1000. I think that was the first half of the course, up to the year 1000 in a sweep of civilizations and incredible concepts. SM (01:18:42): Mesopotamia. WO (01:18:45): It transformed my life. It was just such a revelation. I never knew that anything like this existed. So, of course, I then majored in history. And he was not the only one. Almost every instructor that I had there, I can only think of one I did not like. Almost every instructor I had taught at such a high level. You really had to work your ass off of course because they were... Unlike today, where I assume my students knew nothing, they assumed we knew a lot. What they were providing us was material in addition to the vast body of knowledge we hope you possess. SM (01:19:27): I think Phil Donahue was at Notre Dame around the time that you were there. WO (01:19:32): I think he was, yeah. [inaudible]. SM (01:19:33): And I know Regis Philbin was the group before Phil Donahue, because he is another graduate of Notre Dame. He talks about that a little bit. WO (01:19:40): I can assure you, although I know Regis Philbin still loves Notre Dame, but he probably loves it for the football comradery. The university just sucked. It was terrible. I was going to say, going to mission was like ascending in heaven. So, bad. Wow. Eventually, of course, my father wanted me to go to law school. He had this belief that he would have been more successful in business if he had been a lawyer. I think he was quite mistaken. He did not have any of the qualities it takes to be successful in business, and he was one of these people who could not work for anybody else because he had such a bad temper. But he was such poor manager, he could not work for himself successfully. He was doing all right. He did [inaudible] away through school because he was doing all right then. But he eventually went pro. He had this false idea that a lawyer would have been more successful, and having no notion. But of course, once I entered into academic heaven here, I was getting these magnificent courses. Well, then I wanted to be a historian, too. And I would already been accepted in law school because I was programmed to do that. But in my senior year, Michigan offered an honors program. We offer much like the one that we offer here. It was very common. The payoff in that senior honors course was to write a very long research paper, 9800 pages, which I did. Then, I realized that if I could do that, I could probably write a dissertation, which meant that I could be any historian and I would never have to leave this life. I could dwell in the realm of ideas and narrative in a great box. SM (01:21:32): I think it is great that a teacher inspired you, though. That is the same thing with me. Probably that teacher had faith in you, too, did not he? WO (01:21:42): It was a real big course. SM (01:21:44): Yeah, but there had to be someone along the line that said, hey, you are not only a good student, but I have an interest in you in terms of your future. So, that was important sometimes, the faculty- WO (01:21:55): I do not think I really talked to a faculty member about that until I took this senior honors course. When there were two faculty members to like 18 students. Michigan, even then, was a very large university and most of the courses I took were very larger courses. It was not until that point that I actually talked to faculty members about this. Yes, I was encouraged. They told me, yeah, you could do it. SM (01:22:17): I have just some general questions and then we will finish up here. This might go a little bit over. One of the criticisms of the boomer generation is, and actually I do not think it's a criticism, but where they say that 15 percent were activists. That could be conservative or liberal. People that were activists for various causes in the (19)60s and (19)70s. WO (01:22:38): [inaudible]. SM (01:22:39): Some people say five to 15. WO (01:22:40): Or these activists as being difficult, very loosely. SM (01:22:40): People involved in- WO (01:22:44): I knew some student activists in the history department. The graduate students in history of this class had a very high percentage of activism. It was remarkable. But among the undergraduates, they might show up for a rally or a riot once in a while, but I would not call them activists. SM (01:23:01): Well, the question I am trying to get at here is that the people that criticize the boomer generation oftentimes say that only 15 percent were ever involved, whether it be five or 15. WO (01:23:16): That is fine, that is fine. SM (01:23:18): But my question is, can you agree that the larger portion, which is 85 to 95, was subconsciously still affected by this period? Because if you believe in student development theory, because that is what I am. I am a student of Arthur Chickering, Alexander Aston, Eric Erickson, Rogers. When you talk about you cannot pinpoint the effect that some experience is going to have on a student right away. It could be five, 10 years down the road. So, maybe there were fewer at that time, but then others stood up and spoke up, and later on in life, late 20s, 30s. Do you believe that this whole generation of 78 million was subconsciously affected by what happened in the (19)60s and (19)70s, and it is really affected their lives in some way? WO (01:24:10): Yes, I do. Yes, I do believe that. Well, the increase in divorce shot up. The divorce rate doubled in the years after the 1960s, is a reflection of the self-indulgence and self-absorption of the activists, the doing your own thing. Taking drugs and free love, live for the moment and suspect authority and do not trust anyone over 30. And of course, eventually became over 30 themselves. But the whole emphasis on the boomer generation, not everybody, I do not want to stigmatize them all, but the boomer generation to a degree unprecedented previously is self-indulgent, self-absorbed, and materialistic. Not anti-social exactly, but has a lessened sense of social obligation and responsibility. I think it all comes out of the (19)60s. Not the create a socialist revolution, which actually almost nobody believed. The SDFs and a few others were doing that, but the real message of that was personal freedom and self-indulgence. That really sold. SM (01:25:31): Yeah, it is interesting you say that because C. Wright Mills, who wrote white collar and we all read about him when I was in sociology class, Dr. Lehman, who actually was fired from Bingham for leading a protest in downtown. She was only there a year. But C. Wright Mills said that the goal of the university education is not to need the university. The individualism and think on their own, the concept of in loco parentis kind of ended during this timeframe. That the universities were not supposed to be parents and were not activists doing this in the (19)60s and (19)70s. So, the question I am asking here is that there is the individual right there. Some of the things that students are reading and being educated about, some of the writers we have looked up to, says that the individual is important. Carl Davidson has written a great book on the multiversity in a series on the 60s, and he brings this up about the importance of the individual. Because if the individual is not there, then you do not have freedom. And if you do not have freedom, you do not have power. And students wanted power. Or at least to be looked upon for their thoughts. Is what I am saying really true, what C. Wright Mills said? When you talk about that this is one of the goals of the boomers was to really be an individual as opposed to be a part of a collaborative group? WO (01:27:07): Well, I do not know how. They were just as conformist as young people always are. Young people are pretty much by definition, is- SM (01:27:14): Let me change... (01:27:14): Okay. WO (01:27:24): My impression of students in the (19)60s, and of course I was, which is derived largely from Wisconsin where I was a faculty member. It was not my self-esteem anymore. But my impression was that the students in the (19)60s were just as anxious and concerned about their identity and wanting to be a part of the group, and to conform to group norms and all that. Very few students want to be fearless individuals and completely unlike everybody else. They want to be popular and well- liked, and succeed in the areas that students think are important. But what developed among students was a feeling that this generation of students was too well-educated and sophisticated to be treated like previous generation of students, who had had all these regulations governing personal conduct. The girls had to live in, and boys had to live in segregated dormitories and there had to be hours. Well, they did not have lights out except at Notre Dame. At Michigan, for example, the girls had to be in their dorms at 10 o'clock at night on a school night. They could stay up until 12 on weekends. Well, with the beginnings of the sexual revolution and all that, students rebelled against these restrictions, against in loco parentis. But it was sort of collectively. It was not fearless assertions of individualism. It was they believed as a class that they deserved rights that their predecessors had been denied. The universities of course fell all over themselves in branding them, because you're also now getting the protests over civil rights and segregation in the south, and the war in Vietnam. Universities could not do anything about the treatment of Blacks in the south or the war in Vietnam, but they could integrate the dormitories and eliminate the in loco parentis restrictions. That was easy to do. They also did other things, too. The students in Wisconsin and other universities, students went beyond that to an end to the language requirement. Students had always hated the language requirement, but they have never been sufficiently impressive as a pressure group to be able to get university administrations to listen to them. Again, in the (19)50s, students had tried to organize a protest and said do away with the foreign language requirement. They probably would have been expelled, right? No, the university took a very hard line. The dean of women at Michigan was an ex-WAG colonel and the girls were terrified of her. So, the universities really started caving in. In loco parentis, sure that had to go. In the age of sexual revolution and self-expression and doing your own thing, you could not hold the line on that stuff and what was even the point? But when they gave away the language requirement, some of these other things, boy, that is when I think the downhill slide began through universities. Because now you are in the business of pleasing the customers, and that had never been the attitude before. Michigan took the view you were damn lucky to be here, and most of you will not graduate anyway. Michigan was one of those schools where it was terribly difficult to get in, but the senior graduating class was about one-third the size of the freshman class. And they bragged about it. They did not succeed, this is bootcamp. It is not bootcamp, but this is a task. It is going to be very difficult. Most of you are not going to make it. And they would see that right off. SM (01:31:20): Yeah, you probably looked to your left, looked to your right. WO (01:31:22): Yeah. Yep. SM (01:31:22): Yeah, they did that at Binghamton, and just everybody stayed. WO (01:31:24): Yeah, they did that at the university. Rutgers operated somewhat differently. Their admission standards were more stringent so that you did not have to fail. In fact, in my early years here, I hardly failed anyone. But they were actually students very well-prepared, hardworking. Even the kids got Cs, those were good, solid Cs. They made an effort to get there. Now, you get a C in many courses just for signing up. SM (01:31:51): I thought boomers many times, especially those that were activists, said I want to be around people who think like me, who have the same interests that I do. In other words, I want to be around people who are against the war in Vietnam. I want to be around people who went down south for civil rights issues. I want to be around any of these movements. People who think like I do. Well, isn't the goal of a university is to bring people together who do not agree? I have been thinking about this because that seems if you are just an individual and you are not part of a group where you listen to opposing points of view, that is not a university either. It is a lot of things that come up here, the contradictions of this whole era seem to really make you think. What do you feel led to the AIDS crisis? I have had many people, because when we talk about the (19)80s, and we think of Ronald Reagan. Of course, he said, "We are back," because he's going to bring the military back. During the (19)60s, all the society had gone downhill. But the AIDS crisis is something that he did not really deal with. He could not even say gay and lesbian, as a person. I have had scholars who were gay and lesbian scholars that I have interviewed said that they almost come to tears when they talk about Ronald Reagan. And then, of course, the AIDS crisis is one of the biggest crises of the time. For gay lesbian boomers, it wiped out maybe one out of every two men, who were living within the inner cities. A lot of them were scholars, a lot of them were great writers. The loss of talent. WO (01:33:37): I had a friend I remember in the history department, who died of AIDS. I liked him very well. He was gay, but he was... I do not want to make a pun here. He was just a great company. I loved him very much. But he was in the first generation who died. He was extremely promiscuous. They did not take any precautions. SM (01:34:04): You think that part of what the (19)70s was about, because a lot of people when they talk about the sexual revolution, they really talk the (19)70s, not the (19)60s. We still had- WO (01:34:15): I think it was more pronouncements. SM (01:34:16): Yeah, but that kind of led to the AIDS crisis, and then it is what happened after it was found out that people were dying from this, where Ronald Reagan is really dislike by many people, even bringing them to tears. WO (01:34:33): I do not know enough about it. SM (01:34:37): Right. Of all the presidents from 1946 to 2010, which is the time the boomers have lived, we have made a reference just about all of them in our conversation here. Is there anyone that you think had the greatest impact on the boomer generation, from Truman to Obama? WO (01:35:03): No. Not being a boomer, it is hard for me to say. I guess it would be John Kennedy, but not the actual John Kennedy. The myth of Kennedy was. Even today when people are polled and say, who was the greatest president? Well, they normally cannot think beyond the presidents they knew of their lifetime, the ones that they saw on TV or whatever. But Kennedy still comes up a great deal, and on the part of people who cannot possibly have remembered him. My gosh, he was elected 50 years ago. So, you go any younger than that, oh, you would have to be 60 at least to have any faintest personal recollection of his presidency. So, it is the myth of the candidate. The falsehoods, essentially. They have had a great effect. SM (01:36:01): What do you think if you were to, you are writing a book and you are writing two chapters, and chapter one is you are writing on one specific quality, that this was the best of the boomer generation and I am going to write about this and break it down? And what's the worst about the... What were the single worst and the single best, and how would you illuminate within the chapter? WO (01:36:30): Well, again, up until Bill Clinton, there were no boomer presidents. He was the first one. So, there have only been two. SM (01:36:41): Two. Yeah. WO (01:36:41): And I was too young. So, there is not a lot of choice there. SM (01:36:49): Right. In terms of maybe influencing their lives, some people will say that Lyndon Johnson, what a great person in the area of social issues, the domestic policy. But he was a dismal failure in Vietnam and some did not like his personality, and others did. You still get back to those two that are the boomers? Yeah. WO (01:37:18): And as different as Clinton and Bush were, they did share the negative stereotypes that people associate with the boomer generation. They were self-indulgent. Clinton of course, in gross and obvious ways, but Bush was, too. You had this dissipated youth that went on and on. Which typical boomers, not that they are always dissipated, but they hang on to their youth. They are more afraid of maturity and more reluctant to enter into it. I think those are real fair characterizations. Then once he became president, God, he vacationed more than any other president. More than Reagan, more than Eisenhower. Nobody spent as much time vacationing as Bush did, and as little time governing, and as much time working out. That is another boomer thing, working out. Previous presidents did not. Well, Theodore Roosevelt did. It is hard to think of previous president who were focused on exercise. SM (01:38:22): Harry did. Harry Truman, he liked to walk. WO (01:38:24): He took his walks. Yes, yes. SM (01:38:26): Yes, and I think that kept him alive a lot longer than most people because of all the tensions he went through. WO (01:38:32): It is a very good health habit. SM (01:38:35): Just a couple more things here. I know we talked a little bit about this, but I am not going to talk about very much of these things. You say that in some of your writings here, that the new left or the activist group within the boomer generation, really it was a short period in the end because they burned out. The draft ended, which was the main cause that united them. WO (01:39:09): Yes, I think by the end of the draft, collapsed. SM (01:39:11): The violence of groups getting frustrated that they had to go, whether it be the American Indian Movement, the Black Panthers or Weathermen, all three of them, they went to violence. Even the environmental groups today are dealing with this particular issue, which is really hurting their cause. That they get frustrated and they go the violent way. Is that the reason why? When people talk about the (19)60s, they talk about all these groups and all these people and Woodstock and the counterculture and the activism and protests on college campuses. You got the split between the white students and the Black students in the late (19)70s because one was protesting against the Vietnam War, the other was against working the area of civil rights. WO (01:40:10): I may say that I am happy that the left has collapsed, and I am sorry that it still lingers on in the university. Although, I have to say it never did me any harm, I do not think. I just did not like it. Was that they never developed an adult pace and they were overly dependent on the draft. Once the draft had Nixon, Nixon believed that he could get rid of the draft, that would be end of the student movement because he thought it was basically self-centered. And to a large extent, I think he was right. Take the draft away. The war in Vietnam is an on-campus issue as long as you have a draft. When the draft is gone, the issue is gone, too. SM (01:40:56): Do you see a link right now between what is happening on college campuses in California and across the country, that students are seeing the issue of their pocketbook and they are not going to take it anymore? Just like people said, I am not going to take the draft anymore? Because it is their self-interest. The middle class may not be able to go on to college because tuition is going up 17 percent. I know in Pennsylvania, they are talking about raising it $1500. WO (01:41:25): Students at Rutgers paid 12,000 a year in tuition and fees, but that is absolutely outrageous. It should be essentially free. It used to be essentially free. We're talking about 20, 25 years ago. SM (01:41:40): Do you think this issue could be something that unites the students around the country? And again- WO (01:41:44): Well, it is certainly something they all have in common. SM (01:41:46): Graduate students are taking a lead at Berkeley on this. And actually, I never thought I would- WO (01:41:52): Of course, they do not pay tuition in the world. SM (01:41:53): Yeah, but what is interesting is that these students are saying for the first time, I do not care if my career is threatened by this. It is wrong and I am out here and I am going to speak my mind. They are threatened by this. It is wrong, and I am out here, and I am going to speak my mind. That is what has been critical of the students of the (19)80s and the (19)90s and even the (19)10s. Is they fear, oftentimes, that by speaking up, they will lose a job, their career could be hurt. A lot of students in the (19)60s never thought that. Just your thoughts on- WO (01:42:22): No, they did not. SM (01:42:24): Just your thoughts on that, that this could be something that universities are very concerned about. WO (01:42:30): Well, they ought to be. Now, I completely understand why universities are doing this. When your state aid collapses, what are you supposed to... You have only got a few options here. And raising tuition, and many more students, which Rutgers does too, crank up the tuition and admit more students, and shrink the faculty. SM (01:42:49): Mm-hmm. WO (01:42:50): So, your student-generated income goes larger. There is a fewer faculty members you have to spread around, but Jesus, there is got to be a limit to that, and it seems to be a backlash too. SM (01:43:02): Yeah. And of course, faculty oftentimes say administrators need to be cut back, because after all- WO (01:43:08): They have actually expanded a lot. I mean, the percentage of employees who are administrators has gone up a lot over the last 20 years, and at a time when faculties generally shrunk. SM (01:43:23): My last little section here deals back again with political correctness. I want to get your thoughts on the quotes that you put in your book, which I am going to encourage my friends to read, because I think it is great. You have the quote from Barbara Ehrenreich, who I would met twice, that, "Political correctness is the enforcement arm of multiculturalism or feminism." Then you have got Leon Botstein, who I have brought to campus, who really challenged our secondary ed teachers. Oh, they are not were prepared for this. Because he is an advocate that he does not believe we need a senior year in high school. He thinks the senior year is a waste. But the quote here is, "In practice, the call for diversity now prevented any real exchange of opinions on campus." And then Dr. Asante, who responds, "Racists are hiding behind the First Amendment." This is an interesting thing on college campuses. First of all, I am surprised Dr. Botstein had said that, because he's very liberal, but this is oftentimes what people are afraid to say, and what they believe, for fear that they're going to be hurt, that their careers could be threatened. A faculty member may believe this, but I cannot do it because my department chairs, it could have an effect on me. And then students... Just your thoughts on Ehrenreich, Botstein, and Asante's commentary on the dialogue of today, and whether all that took place from the Free Speech Movement of (19)64, and all that happened in the (19)60s, through the mid (19)70s, about freedom of speech on college campuses. Different points of view. Everybody's equal. The concept that all voices count. And then you have these discussions here, where people are afraid to speak their mind again. This happened throughout the (19)90s, and obviously today, and you have seen it on a college campus throughout your career. WO (01:45:27): Yeah. I love that by Barbara Ehrenreich. I think, of course, it is actually true. The academic leftist, of course, have backed off considerably. The early (19)90s was the flood tide of these speech codes, and prosecutions of faculty members for making somebody feel uncomfortable. That was a serious charge, "So-and-so feels uncomfortable in your class." I guess your job as a teacher is to raise the comfort zone of everyone. I never thought that was my job. So, they had backed off, because the publicity was so terrible, and justly so. I mean, you claim on the one hand academic freedom, and then you are denying it to your colleagues over silly stuff. You're like that poor man of New Hampshire, with the Jell-O and the vibrator. SM (01:46:17): Mm-hmm. WO (01:46:17): And those things clearly well-meaning, and not attempting to be salacious. So, they have backed off from the deal. You do not see that stuff in the public area as much as you used to. Otherwise, where did you want to go from here? SM (01:46:37): Who is more correct? Is Ehrenreich correct? Is Botstein correct? I find Botstein is commentary something that should be put into a book. I know that [inaudible] wrote a liberal education. We all read that. I have seen him debate a couple times, he is very good at what he does. He debates the other person, that other person is very good too. It is a pretty civil debate. But to hear this from Leon Botstein, this young, I think of him from the (19)60s, because I think he was the youngest college president ever at Bard College, and he was a liberal, and I think he was 27 years old. And for him to say this, to me, sends a clear message that we need to be doing a better job within the university environment, and that tolerance, and beyond tolerance. We went through those phases of tolerance and beyond tolerance. Are we back to tolerance again? WO (01:47:39): It is hard to say. One of the annoying things is the, which I do talk about some of the book, is the tremendous overemphasis on identity, on sexual identity, particularly racial and sub-racial identities. Ruckers, for example, the current president is terrifically proud of the fact that the student body contains more racial minorities than it does whites. Well, this is a white majority state still, which means the whites are being discriminated against in order to achieve higher numbers of people in other racial groups. And such as the climate of opinion and politically correct universities is this is seen as a good thing; discriminate against whites, and usually Asians too. He never says that. SM (01:48:34): Well, my alma mater, they have gone through a terrible situation with the basketball team, which you have probably have heard. They won the division last year, because Dr. DeFleur, the chancellor, wanted to bring in strong athletic programs, and linkage with our strong academics there. She is a great president, I am not going to question her, but she has been under their heat because they had to fire the coach. They actually paid him, and because of the fact that they brought in mostly African American basketball players from New York City and elsewhere, and they were unbelievably players. And that put a lot of pressure on the other state universities, that they not only have to bring in quality athletes in linkage with the academics, but they found out now, through the last year, that there was agreements made between the admissions office. The admissions' person never would have admitted these people, but was pressured to do so. The coach was in direct linkage with this, who they hired. This is some coach in Georgetown. WO (01:49:36): I did read that. SM (01:49:37): And it has become such a serious issue. Dr. DeFleur is retiring, but I think she's retiring because I think there is a lot of pressure going on there. And there is a plan that has to go into places so this will not happen again, and sends all the wrong messages. And alumni are furious. Alumni are furious, and they want the administration all gone. And Dr. DeFleur has committed 19 years of her life to making that a great institution. But unfortunately, in this one instance, it is marring her, and it goes right back to this thing here. This is an issue that universities have to face. In conclusion, the violence that took place within the time that boomers were young and growing up, I mean obviously there has been violence. The holocaust happened for the World War II generation. Violence has always been part of what it is like to be a human being. I am very lucky that in July I am going to have two hours of the Robert Jay Lifton, and I am going to Boston, and we are going to talk about the psychology of the Vietnam veteran, but I have asked him to talk about the psychology of the anti-war protestor. And from his perspective, in terms of with veterans, it is post-traumatic stress disorder. But I want to get a better grasp of people that were on the other side, and he has agreed to do so. But the violence, it had to have shaped boomers, because they grew up with being in maybe 8th grade, 9th grade, 10th grade, with respect to the assassination of John Kennedy. (19)68 saw a United States senator and candidate murdered along with the greatest civil rights leader of all time. The unbelievable violence that took place, not only in Chicago, but the riots that took all... You know. The deaths in many major cities throughout the '60s. Then, obviously, you had the violence and the killings at Kent State University and Jackson State. And actually, I did not know this, but if you study it, there was a student killed at Berkeley, in 1969, at the People's Park incident. And we do not ever talk about him, and he has lost in history, and he should be discussed because he had nothing to do with the protest. He was just standing at the top of a building, and he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Do you think this did to the psyche? Forget the fact that they are the new left. They were part of the violence too. What happened in Chicago, with the Black Panthers that were killed, and the COINTELPRO, and all the bad things that happened. But the violence, I am talking about the violence. What did this do to the psyche of this 78 million, as they moved into the (19)80s, and (19)90s, and beyond? Any thoughts? WO (01:52:40): Well, it certainly upset me. The (19)60s were terrible. The (19)60s were terrible in that way. This is a violent country, since World War II, at any rate. Compared to most other developed countries, we have had far more violence than almost any of the Britain has. Its soccer hooligans, I guess. That is a highly specialized subgroup. But this is just normally a violent country. We have got a big homicide rate. We had lynchings, well, if you could count the murders of civil rights workers, right into the 1960s, were far more heavily armed than anybody in the first world. And getting more so by the day. So, we have a certain amount of background violence, that just, we hardly notice it all. It's there all the time. But the race riots, and the violent demonstrations of the (19)60s, went beyond anything that we have seen in peace time. As you consider a little bit the Vietnam War, it's hard to know what peacetime is. We always seem to be engaged, and we are shooting somewhere. SM (01:54:07): I- WO (01:54:09): I do not know. I really do not know. And certainly, was extremely upsetting to me. How could it not have been upsetting to him? SM (01:54:19): See, I know that there was a book that came out around mid (19)70s, by Oba Demery. I do not know, I think that is how you pronounce his name. It's called Violence in America. And of course, this is talking about what happened in the (19)60s, but it goes way back to the wild, wild west, and how we have been killing, God knows... Native American's wounded knee. So, it is part of what we are as a country, and as a race. As he said, we have been always been a violent nation. And with Howard Zinn passing away recently, whether he like his politics or not, he made a commentary when his last speech. They had it on YouTube. And in that speech, it was pretty powerful. He said, "I was a World War II pilot, and I came back, and I thought when the war ended we had ended war as we knew it. We were not going to have war anymore, because we just defeated the Japanese and the Germans." And he said, "You know, since I came back, and used the GI Bill to get my PhD, he says, we have had nothing but war. War, after war, after war." And as you bring up, the only time we had the break in here was the Clinton period for four years, but even he got involved and skirmishes, Blackhawk down, and those kinds of things. WO (01:55:40): It required other statements of other decades. There was really nothing. SM (01:55:45): Yeah. So anyways, I am done. Are there any questions that you thought I was going to ask that I did not? Any final thoughts on the boomer generation, that you would like to mention? WO (01:56:04): Well, I personally like many of them. But it is true that I am somewhat against them as a group. I am somewhat prejudiced. And what I think one of the paradoxes, that I have never been able to resolve, is that the war generation, which is now officially the Greatest Generation, produces the boomers, who are the most in self-indulgent generation. And maybe they were over-shielded by their parents. SM (01:56:34): But you see, the boomers also attacked the consumption, the materialism, yet you are right- WO (01:56:40): Very few. Oh, very few. SM (01:56:42): Well, they did not, and that is what the multi diversity, the students in the universities attacked them. That was the generation gap. That was a lot of the issues that were happening within that definition. WO (01:56:54): That was just this tiny group of leftists, who were not all representative, the students as the whole. Even in the (19)60s, students consumed as much as they could, and they were more affluent. The parents were more affluent than previous generations had been, so they consumed more. And of course, now it is unbelievable. It seems like every other student has a car. And of course, they have all got cell phones, and laptops, and every electronic device known to man. SM (01:57:28): I know that the 40th anniversary of Kent State is coming up in about six weeks. I am going. Been there three of the last four years. And Mark Rudd's going to be there, former SDS. They are having an SDS reunion there, because Kent State had one of the strongest SDS chapters in the country. And well, Allen [inaudible] and the group, they were some of the ones that were actually killed. Allison Krause and Jeff Miller were SDSers. The other two were innocent. But they got Mark Rudd, Bernardine Dohrn is coming back from, she was the Weathermen, but she was SDS. So, they are having a [inaudible]. They were having a revival of the SDS group. I was not SDS. But then they're going to have a lot of speakers. And of course, the representative from Jackson State is always there too, because two were killed. WO (01:58:19): I read lot ago that Mark Rudd had in effect apologized for the Columbia takeover. SM (01:58:25): I interviewed him for my book. And he wrote his, it is a very good book. It is called Underground. And he admits that they were... I mean, it was totally wrong, going into violence, and he says it is the greatest mistake he ever made. They were involved in a group of people that were, even if you did not like them, they were committed. They were generally committed to ending the war, and they had no violence in their aspects. It was all protest, non-violent protests. You could be arrested, you can take over, and you can disrupt. But I have interviewed a couple Columbia University students, who were there at the time, and when they went the violent direction, that ended SDS. WO (01:59:06): But others like, Bernardine Dohrn, specifically, are unrepentant, who claim everything they did was already justified. How were they going to get along to you out here? SM (01:59:16): Well, I wanted to interview her too. I did not want to interview her husband. But she did not respond. She is at the University of Chicago Law. She did professor there. She did not respond. Mark did. I really enjoyed my conversation with him. You really understand. He opens it all up. He tells the whole story. And if you know the whole history at the very end, Mark Rudd and Vernon Dorn did not like each other. And there was some friction within the... And then Mark went off in his own direction. He is now a grandfather. And the day I interviewed him, he was at the beach in California with his grandson. And he is proud of what he did within the SDS, but he is not proud at all about the violence. He is just- WO (02:00:04): So what profession did he go into? SM (02:00:07): Well, he is a teacher now. He has been teaching in a community college for quite a few years. He is really a mathematician. He is very strong in math. He has always been good in math. Of course, he was hidden. He was underground for a long time. And what is interesting... I got this still on. But what is interesting is that they all lived out in the Sausalito area in California. When they were hidden, it was the boats. WO (02:00:29): What a great place to hide out. SM (02:00:32): Yeah. And actually, my sister is going out to visit friends, who has a boat right there in Sausalito. And no one knew them, because there were a lot of hippies, and that whole group there. And so no, that is why they were stay underground for so long. But then he finally let himself- Loud if you can. Are you ready? WO (02:00:59): Yes. SM (02:01:00): Okay. When did the (19)60s begin, in your opinion? And why did it begin, and what was the watershed moment? WO (02:01:16): Well, I would say the (19)60s began in 1964. That was the year of the free movement at Berkeley. SM (02:01:25): Mm-hmm. WO (02:01:26): It was the year of the Civil Rights Act. Well, first Birmingham, then the Civil Rights Act. So, it was really, and of course [inaudible]. But there were a series of big events, and really things... SM (02:01:44): Mm-hmm. When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what comes to your mind? Was there a specific event, or a series of events, that continued to shape the boomers, not only in when they were young, but also in their adult years? WO (02:02:00): The (19)60s really did not last very long. I mean, it could take (19)64 as the starting point, which for purposes of my book I had, you have to do these things by decades. So, I started in my book in 1960, but in fact, the events that things lost started in 1964. And by 1971, they were essentially over. So, a very lot happened in a very short period too. SM (02:02:35): But when you look at the term rebellious incident, well that is an adjective that is often used to define boomers when they were young. And we're talking about a generation of probably 70 to 75 million. Some people have written that a lot of them were rebellious because we had the draft at that time, and maybe they would not have been as rebellious otherwise. What is your response to that? WO (02:03:00): Oh, I certainly agree. The political activity had everything to do with the draft. And once Richard Nixon essentially eliminated the risk, even before... Nixon believed that- I hate to agree with Nixon. Nixon believed this was true. And so, he reshaped the draft to eliminate the risk to almost everybody. And the first thing he did was, you were only liable at the age of 19. So, if you were over 19, you did not have to worry about it. And if you were 19, there was a lottery that told you, to win, how high your risk of being drafted was. And he was reducing the brute strength in Vietnam very rapidly. Very few people were at risk. And so again, by 1971 chances of being drafted were negligible. SM (02:04:02): But when you look at all the different types of movements that came about in that era, which not only included the anti-war movement, and the civil rights movement was ongoing. And then you had the development of all the other movements; the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, Native American movement, Chicano movement, Earth Day, the environmental movement. There was a spirit happening out there, that they were tired of the status quo, that many of these young people were tired of that status quo. And of course, the question that ultimately asked is there truth to that? And secondly, have they carried these ideas into their adulthood? WO (02:04:43): Well, of course the environmental movement, it is still moving. SM (02:04:49): Dr. Neil, could you speak a little louder too? WO (02:04:53): I guess. I do not think I can turn up the volume here. SM (02:04:57): Okay, that is all right. WO (02:05:00): Well, the environmental movement became permanent, and it was not just a matter of young people. The [inaudible] came out at the beginning of the decade, and there were a number of others as well, so it was never... A new leftist was a young people's wisdom. Environmentalism was not, feminism was not either. That started relatively early, with Betty Friedan. SM (02:05:28): Mm-hmm. WO (02:05:30): And that is become, essentially, it is not the picturesque phase of feminist, the women's liberation movement, and that sort of thing. That died out in the (19)70s, but the more permanent of termination, to secure equal rights, never did die out. What are the others? We do not hear much about Chicano rights. A right for [inaudible]- SM (02:06:00): Mm-hmm. WO (02:06:01): Who is very much alive. But again, with the kickoff with the riots, at the bar in New York City, name that I cannot remember, that was relatively young people, but it became institutionalized. SM (02:06:20): Mm-hmm. WO (02:06:20): And you noticed, when you see today, for gay married and the like, it is remarkable. Many of them are middle-aged people. SM (02:06:31): Is there, when you look at that whole era of boomers, that are defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, some people have had a hard time looking at generations that are confined to years. And I have had that in my interviews. But is there one specific event that you feel had the greatest impact, an event, a happening, that affected this generation? WO (02:07:02): No, I do agree that it is a very specific generation. I mean, I do not even think it is a matter of opinion, really. The demographic had a population explosion in the (19)50s, and by 1964 or so, that explosion was over in the first [inaudible]. So, I mean, I do not see how you can deny the boomers are an actual generation has seen, still, the largest single movement in American history. But I do not see it as defined by a single event. For example, the things that are most common in my book, and in most books about the (19)60s, we are talking about the sort of tip of the iceberg. But the movement, like the work we have discussed, and famous individuals, when you are talking about 75 million people, a very small fraction of that total was involved in the things that we talk about. SM (02:08:06): Right. WO (02:08:06): The real change, the thing that distinguished the boomers, I think, from previous generations at any rate, more than anything else, the self-indulgence, and the pleasure consumed. [inaudible] rate goes way up. SM (02:08:22): Mm-hmm. WO (02:08:22): Drug use goes way up. The rebellion is not so much a form of political one as it is throwing off traditional American values. And that- SM (02:08:33): Yeah, that goes right into my next question. Please list some positive characteristics of this generation, and some negative ones. WO (02:08:53): I mean, at the time, in the (19)60s, and when I was writing my book, I had been impressed by the Civil Rights Movement, which was fabulous. And for a time, by the new left, but those movements burned out so quickly. I mean, civil rights reaches its peak, probably in 1965, with the voting right back, and the events [inaudible]. And then, by the end of the decade, we have got Black Power, which absolutely destroyed the integrated Civil Rights Movement. And you still have civil rights advocate today, but it is a kind of lobby, not a movement. SM (02:09:38): Mm-hmm. WO (02:09:40): So, the movement period did not last very long. And most of the things, the boomers, the public once again, to politicize the ones you read about at the time, most of them did not last very long. They burned out pretty quickly. And it is hard for me to think of the long-term positive attributes. And I think quite a lot of negative ones, again, in terms of self-indulgence, and the drugs, and the enormous increase in divorce rates, and the like. My favorite- SM (02:10:24): You bring up what George Will and Newt Gingrich have said, "Oh, for a long time, whenever they get a chance to take a shot at the (19)60s generation, or the Boomers, is that all the reasons for the breakdown of American society falls into that particular group." And George Will has actually written on it in his books. And when Newt Gingrich came to power in 1994, there were often times when he would say it, even though he was a boomer. And the divisions in our society, the breakdown of American society, the drugs, the families, the lack of trust in positions of leadership... Are George Will and Newt Gingrich right? WO (02:11:07): Well, they are half right. I mean, I do agree with them, with what Trooper said- SM (02:11:12): What is that? WO (02:11:14): But what they never said, that the other half of what's been damaging to America in the last 40 years or so, has been the rise of right-wing extremists, and the Evangelical Christians, and the politicalization of schools, the effort to prevent abortion, and to stop speaking of evolution in the schools, and the denial of gay rights. I mean, the right-wing has a great deal of influence, and they never mentioned that the problem with this country isn't the notion of mere self-indulges. SM (02:11:46): Right. WO (02:11:47): It is the calculated exploitation of people's fears, right when you are [inaudible]. SM (02:11:53): One of the interesting points, too, on the criticisms of the boomer generation, is they will always point out that only 15 percent of 70 to 75 million were involved in any sort of activism. And they use it as a negative, but that is still a pretty large number, isn't it? When you consider 70 million people. WO (02:12:13): I mean, the movement, can you think of that kind of participation? SM (02:12:20): That is a lot. Could you comment on how important the boomer youth were, in college students in particular, in ending the war in to Vietnam? WO (02:12:36): I think they were most influential in since of their parents. A lot of people in Congress, and in important... I am reading right now the new biography of Paul Nitze. SM (02:12:52): Oh, yes. WO (02:12:54): And- SM (02:12:54): Yes, I have it. WO (02:12:56): Nitze's children were part of the movement. They were opposed to the Vietnam War. So, there he was in the Pentagon, [inaudible]. He was trying to defend it. No, I think they had a lot of influence to their parents, and I think that was more important than marching on the Pentagon, or think. Huh. SM (02:13:18): One of the things, and this is getting into modern day universities, is I have had a sense for several years, and you as a professor, probably unlike your comments on this, that people in positions of leadership and universities today, i.e. administrators, are afraid of the term activism, for the main reason is that it brings back all the memories of what happened in the (19)60s and (19)70s. And to them, it means the disruption of classes, the break... there is a real worry that volunteerism is popular, but activism is not, they do not like the term, am I right in assuming this? WO (02:13:59): That is my impression. One positive thing I wanted, I omitted, but I think the boomers began, and that was the tradition of local activists. Not great sweeping, let us say the end of the world or whatever, but the fact that ordinary people in neighborhoods started mobilizing the developed freeway from going through the middle town, or waste plant being built in their neighborhood, or whatever. I mean, on this local level, which is an ideological. It is really based on trying to preserve their immediate environment. There is a tremendous amount of this grant activism that is not political, but that the date from, and certainly was inspired by the exit of the (19)60s, that is become a permanent piece of American legacy. SM (02:14:50): Mm-hmm. WO (02:14:54): But then, what you were saying about administrators, the access of the (19)60s began the process undermining the university. I am absolutely convinced for that. It started with [inaudible] credits. SM (02:15:06): Yes. WO (02:15:07): And I thought that was typically reasonable. I mean, by the 1960's in the effort, they usually did it through the female student. The dormitory in Michigan, where I was an undergrad student, women had to be in their dorms by 10 o'clock on weeknights, and 12 o'clock on weekends. And theory believes that boys were very little opportunities for mischief. I mean, that was such an outmoded thing. So, I thought the getting rid of the local [inaudible] was perfectly fine. Then we started educating against requirements like foreign language, with very considerable success. Most universities came in on that one. And so, we have not had required foreign language, but in a great many universities for a very long time. And then they went after other aspects of the curriculum... memory. Then they went after other aspects of the curriculum that they did not like? Like science requirements- SM (02:16:05): Mm-hmm. WO (02:16:06): ... and that sort of thing. And, it is very true Rutgers is where been I have spent most of my career and I know it is good, do not [inaudible] prestige as well, but there was a cutting of the curriculum and newspapers were putting in the word "Vietnam" or "abolish racism". They would get rid of the foreign language requirements, and things like that. And the curriculum, it never recovered from that. SM (02:16:32): Well, what's interesting is that the people that run the universities today are the Boomers that were on campus and they witnessed what was happening at that particular period. And I do not know if the people that are running universities are those that were more conservative as opposed to the more liberal students that were doing the anti-war movement and other movements. WO (02:16:53): Basically, I think it was the more liberal students because the administrators that I am familiar with fell all over themselves to introduce Black studies, race studies, and Ebonics studies. And I do not mean that these things should not be introduced, but they were done for political reasons not for academic reasons at a time when there was so few experts. I was in Wisconsin, I thought it was dumb when the Black studies program was introduced because some students were marching into classes and disrupting them and taking the microphone away from a person. And it would usually be like 50 white students and one black, and they were demanding a Black studies program along with honestly cobbled ones together, which included a nurse, a geographer. I mean, there were not any experts at the time. It was just placating the students. It was always, administrators [inaudible]. And it makes it relatively easy to blackmail them. SM (02:17:54): Well, what was interesting as you well know then, and of course I was a student at that time, is that you give into my demands and we will just demand more demands. WO (02:18:04): Right. SM (02:18:05): That happened an awful lot. A lot of the Boomers, at least when I was... I went to Binghamton University and I know there was sense there, as well as when I went to grad school in Ohio State, that we are the most unique generation in American history. WO (02:18:20): Oh, absolutely, [inaudible]. SM (02:18:21): Yeah, and I know a lot of people still believe that, that are in their early (19)60s, now. Your thoughts on that kind of an attitude? WO (02:18:31): Oh, they were very full of themselves. I have an anecdote, today, [inaudible] word. They will probably block that out, but it was really illuminating to me. One of the things... again, I thought it was constant from (19)66 to (19)71 and those were absolutely the worst years of student activism. And one of the things those graduate students demanded, the graduate students at the University of Wisconsin lead the whole campus-wide to left. And they demanded that the [inaudible] department meetings be open to all students who wanted to come. And so, the department caved in on that. There was a lot of caving going on at the time. And so, the radical graduate students started coming and the result was that regular faculty would not say anything. So, the meetings became meaningless because nobody would have an opinion that might inflame the graduate students or whoever. Oh, after about six months of this, everything had to be done by committees and behind closed doors not at the actual meetings. The department finally decided to rescind that rule and during the (19)60s everything controversial was all an elaborate parliamentary of protocols. [inaudible] school's order was dragged out at every occasion. So, before we got the vote to ban these sorts of departmental meetings, there were a series of preliminary votes and it finally got to the penultimate vote, which was if you voted "yes" on this it meant that you were going to vote yes with students because they were with the radical students sitting right next to me in school, but I put my hand up that I was going to vote. One of these students, he turned to me and he said, " O'Neil, you prick, we will get you for this." SM (02:20:34): Oh, my gosh. WO (02:20:34): I actually laughed because it was such an inflated opinion on their influence. I knew they were not going to get me. SM (02:20:43): My gosh. Yeah, this brings up a question of you personally. When you were a professor in the (19)60s and (19)70s, how did these students differ from other students from other generations? Say the Generation Xers, and the current Millennials. How did these students different? Were they more inquisitive? Were they more well-read? Did they have a better knowledge of history? Just your thoughts. WO (02:21:14): The actual (19)60s students and I was [inaudible] over the decade, essentially. On the one hand they were still extremely well-prepared for college work, the deterioration of the general educational system had not set in yet. So, they were extremely well-prepared. They were capable of doing high level academic work and because they had been so politicized by the war and race movement and things like that, that they asked... this is all apart from the demonstration movement... any regular classroom work, you had to be prepared and I always tried to anticipate before I gave a lecture, but, it might be interrupted as imperialistic. And if a student accused me of that, how would I respond to it? And it would not be just a matter of name-calling, they do not, for instance, they will say, "well, how can you defend the policy that entailed using the Philippines, whatever the issue." So, they were smart and well-prepared and well-read in subjects they were interested. It was the most exciting teaching I have ever had. I had not really signed up for exciting teaching but it turned out to be a more of a challenge than I had anticipated. All though, in later years I came to miss some of the manners of them and the one thing they all agreed on was it was important and you needed to get it right. Starting in the (19)70s, things started to go downhill and by the (19)80s it was very marked. Oh, they were poorly prepared, they were not interested... great inflation- SM (02:22:55): Yep. WO (02:22:56): ... a lot of students just were for teaching. So, teaching today is not remotely as much fun as it used to be. SM (02:23:07): Wow. I know when we had Tom Hadden on our campus and he met with, several years back, some of our students, student government leaders, they talked about the power that they had to be able to deal with budgets and everything. And Tom shook his head and he said, "I am talking about, do you have real empowerment, not power?" And they did not even understand the term empowerment. And I think that is another term that is referred back to that period of the '60s because of their desire to be involved in all committees and know how the money is being spent. Today's students do not seem to even care how the money is being spent. WO (02:23:43): No, they do not. SM (02:23:46): So, do you think that the students of that era, the Boomers, really understood empowerment, whereas today students cannot even define the word? WO (02:23:58): Well, we were all winging it, including them. It was not like they had a master plan. They tended to be moved by events. And then the faculty and the administration would respond to their reaction to the events, or they would raise up the bans periodically, usually [inaudible] watering down the curriculum or something of that sort. So, it was all very ad hoc. No, I do not know if they [inaudible]. SM (02:24:36): Could you describe a little bit about the generation gap? The differences that the Boomers had with their parents and... because today, college students and millennials seem to be closer to their parents then at any other time. Their parents are so involved in everything and there does not seem to be any generation gap. And the 2nd part of this question is, why did the generation Xers that followed the Boomers dislike Boomers so much? We actually have programs in this at the university in the early (19)90s and a lot of them just looked at Boomers and said, "you are too tight, we're sick of hearing about your youth, we are sick of hearing about the time that you were young." And they just had problems with it all together. Just your thoughts. WO (02:25:30): Well, the Boomers' parents, remember, were the war generation. Both of their parents born through at least part of the depression, and pretty much all of the war. They had endured hardship and [inaudible]. During World War 2, all eligible men went into the services and most men served for years. That was the average, the armed service, most of them received as a rule. So, their generation had gone through hardship and the women had worked in defense plants or they were single mothers and children were raised even by themselves. And then after the war, they became... they were even criticized for this, but they became really eager to make up for lost time and so they got married and everyone had children, all at the same time in a sequence. And they did this by working hard, by self-discipline, by practicing all these traditional virtues. And apparently, they spoiled their children in the process, because they had had it hard, they wanted their children to have it easier and the result was the overconfident, over privileged, self-indulgent Boomers. SM (02:27:00): The generations that followed, I want to clarify that, I think I said it wrong. They disliked them or liked them for two reasons: number one, those that disliked them were tired of hearing about the nostalgia of that particular era; and those that liked them were those that wished they had the same issues and causes that would unite their generation that they had. Your thoughts on just this complexity of responses to following generations toward this group. WO (02:27:32): I think that was true of college students. I do not know how it was in the general population because they are grad students, majority of people in any generation are not college graduates. And they are preoccupied with making enough money to live on and paying the mortgage and getting the kids through school and maybe they do not have time for that. I think it's strictly a phenomenon of some of the college... but it is true, I noticed that. SM (02:28:08): Okay, I want to read this and get your response to this: "do you feel that the boomer generation, or Boomers, are still having problems with healing due to the extreme divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? And this could be linked to division between black and white. Between those who supported authority and those criticized it. Between those who supported the troops and those who were against it. And also, the Vietnam memorial has tried to play a part in the healing within the veterans’ generation and I do not know if it is done much to the general population. Do you feel the boomer generation will go to it is grave like the civil war generation, not truly healed? Am I wrong in thinking this way or has 35 to 40 years made the following statement true: time heals all wounds?" Is there truth to this statement? WO (02:29:11): [inaudible]. Look, as an academic I have a limited perspective. I deal with students and faculty, who are not necessarily representative of any generation in particular. But, my sense of the Boomers is that they are not wracked with post-traumatic stress disorders, anything of that... [inaudible] season in the (19)60s. They seemed to me to have remained so. SM (02:29:48): Hmm. How about the healing, do you think that is an issue? And I want to follow this up with something, I took students to see Senator Edmond Muskie before he died several years back and we asked that very same question to him, in a room with 14 students, and I had this actually videotaped. And he did not respond right away because we were trying to get at what happened in 1968 and the tremendous divisions of the Democratic Convention and the lack of healing. And his response said, "we have not healed since the civil war." And then he went on to talk for 10 minutes on the Ken Burns series that he had just witnessed while he was in the hospital and so, his answer to, we had any healing since the (19)60s, he said, "we have not had any healing since the civil war." Just your thoughts on that. WO (02:30:44): Well, I think that is true of the south. I think it is striking. The south has been forced to improve course through the voting rights act and the enforcement of it, and these things. But it is utterly remarkable to me how the south has [inaudible] very worst attributes. I saw the other day, just for example, in the last election only 15 percent of white males in Louisiana, compared to a number of other states, voted for Obama. These people they still have slavery because- SM (02:31:21): Oh my gosh. WO (02:31:23): So, I think where the south is concerned then that is certainly true. But the rest of the nation, though more in the North and [inaudible]. SM (02:31:33): So, you think the divisions are still here and that is just part of our history and we have no shot at healing, like many in the civil war when they went to their graves they still had not healed? WO (02:31:50): Maybe in another hundred years the South will fully [inaudible]. But I really feel this is outside of the national framework, pretty much for the rest of the country. SM (02:32:02): How about the Vietnam memorial? Obviously, you have been there and when I first moved back from California in 1983, the first thing I had to do was get down to the Vietnam memorial, and I go down there quite a few times every year. What kind of a job has that done with respect to trying to heal the nation, even beyond the veterans? WO (02:32:27): Well, at the very core of the memorial park, it means to heal. But then I still read about members of congress who are still blaming the democrats for losing the Vietnam War and the Boomers for being responsible for that wound that we just cannot let go. And there are the Vietnam veterans themselves who are still tormented by their experiences which should not be surprising because it was full of World War Two veterans. 50 years after the fact. I know World War Two veterans 50 years after the fact who still has nightmares, that kind of thing. The war is quite different- SM (02:33:18): Right. What do you think the lasting legacy will be of the boomer generation once the best history books are written? Obviously, you have already written best history books, but a lot of people think the best history books are often written 25 to 50 years after a specific era or time. What do you think will be the overall analysis? WO (02:33:45): And when I wrote my book, I was trying to represent what I felt was... what I thought was maybe some kind of ultimate verdict. You cannot make an ultimate verdict. The book came out in 1971- SM (02:34:00): Right. WO (02:34:00): ... so, giving the ultimate verdict. But, yeah, it is often true. Some of the best civil war writing history has been done in the last 20 years. SM (02:34:12): Do you think there will be more criticism or more praise? Or is it just impossible to say? WO (02:34:27): People even in the (19)60s, there was a cycle of opinion among educated and successful professional Americans, in which the first sentencing was mired, the Boomers because of their participation in the civil rights movement and the movement in particular. By the end of the decade, many of those same people who turned against because of the rise of violence and seeing the Black Power and the weather movement, those sorts of things. Well, the reputation of the Boomers in the (19)60s rose like a rocket and fell just [inaudible]. Have not changed my mind, yet. SM (02:35:24): Do you think the Boomers as parents and now as grandparents have really taught their kids about activism or have shared it or have been quiet or? Sometimes I make an analogy, I have talked to so many people, that it is like people come back from war and they do not like to talk about it- WO (02:35:47): Yep. SM (02:35:48): ... and the question is: do Boomer parents and grandparents talk about it to their kids? Do they share? Do they just go on and live their lives? I do not know if you can answer that but. WO (02:36:01): Now, seeing it in academia twice, I know a lot of former new-leftists, they are just rampant, still. And my impression is that all though they still cherish their youth philosophies, and indeed, we all hear stories about and still have the same values to the extent that they are compatible with professional success. But in the abstract. So, it is again, getting tenure and getting promoted and- SM (02:36:37): Right. WO (02:36:37): ... pulling your [inaudible]. But in the abstract, they are still in favor of [inaudible], usually [inaudible] and all that. SM (02:36:53): Quick- WO (02:36:53): There is so many impressions of their children but it's only getting passed on. SM (02:36:54): Yeah, but what is interesting is that people will look at Boomer leadership and they look to Clinton and Bush. WO (02:37:01): Yeah. SM (02:37:02): Because they actually are the Boomers and some will say they both have characteristics within them that really define them as Boomers, both of them. And actually, President Obama is a Boomer, too, he is a very late-stage Boomer at 48, now. But- WO (02:37:22): I really do not- SM (02:37:23): Yeah, he is a late-stage Boomer himself so he still has that little- WO (02:37:26): Oh, wait, does he? SM (02:37:28): He has a little bit of an influence. WO (02:37:35): Well, I do not see an influence. [inaudible], I feel like. I do see it in Bush. What is it about Bush? SM (02:37:40): Well, I do not know, people were all commenting based on qualities, "doing it my way or the highway" kind of an attitude or something like that. WO (02:37:52): I still see him as an old-fashioned reactionary. SM (02:37:57): Do you think this Peter Max slogan from one of his posters really defines the Boomers? Here is a quote: "you do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we come together it will be beautiful." Now that was a very important statement on Peter Max posters in 1972 when I at Ohio State because I had it hanging in my room. And I wish I kept it because that poster's probably worth money now. Does that really define them? WO (02:38:26): No, I do not agree with that at all. SM (02:38:28): Okay. WO (02:38:28): Many leftists that I knew, and at Wisconsin I knew a lot, because the graduate students were radicalized. No, they were completely intolerant. They did not have room for anybody else's opinion. You were either radical or a fascist, in [inaudible]. SM (02:38:47): Could you talk a little about the music of the era and how important it was in the lives of Boomers. Secondly, who were the artists you feel shaped the generation more than others? And maybe some of the songs. WO (02:39:01): That buffoon [inaudible] to me, I grew up in the big band era, my eras were the one by [inaudible] Frank Sinatra. That was my youth. When rock and all that came along as part of a culling. SM (02:39:22): Do you feel that part of the activism that was part of this generation, music played in important part? WO (02:39:41): I do not know, it was kind of like their sacramental music. others incited fervor. There was a boom but... yeah, to the degree that you were inspiring sort of religious type emotion and the sacramental music would enhance that. SM (02:39:53): I am going to seize a couple more questions here and then I have a section where I just mention some names. You have already mentioned, what does the- I am going to repeat myself- what does the wall... just say a few sentences here, what does the wall mean to you? WO (02:40:10): The Berlin wall? SM (02:40:10): Yeah, no, the-the Vietnam memorial. WO (02:40:13): Oh, well, it just think it is beautiful and moving. SM (02:40:20): What does Ken State and Jackson State mean to you? WO (02:40:22): Oh, well, those were bloodbaths. 196-[inaudible] SM (02:40:37): That was 1970. WO (02:40:39): Right. SM (02:40:40): Where were you when 1970 when you heard about that? WO (02:40:44): I was a visiting professor at New York from Pennsylvania and the semester had just ended. It ended several [inaudible] early. And so, the students who were at campus by the time that happened, there were not any real reactions. SM (02:40:57): Wow. WO (02:40:58): So, unlike at other universities where they had to [inaudible]. SM (02:41:02): Yep. What does Watergate mean to you? WO (02:41:09): Oh, the greatest [inaudible] reveled in Watergate. And I never thought the public really knew about all the scandalous parts within the institution and all of the fall-out all over the nation. No, I thought it was Nixon [inaudible] for weeks, then he got [inaudible]. He was just delightful. I wish I known now longer what I realized then, he would get acquitted at some point. SM (02:41:41): Do you think that had an effect on the Boomer generation? WO (02:41:49): No. That is in 1975, it is pretty well-formed at that point. (19)74, (19)70. SM (02:42:02): Okay, what does Woodstock mean to you? WO (02:42:05): Oh, it did not mean anything to me, I thought, as I said- SM (02:42:09): At least to the generation? WO (02:42:13): Well, I guess those at Woodstock had a great time, I know, I had some younger friends who went there but I do not see it as a great seminal world-changing event. SM (02:42:26): How about the term "counter-culture"? WO (02:42:30): Oh, that was a definite [inaudible] piece that took place in propaganda in the (19)60s. A lot of it has become cliched, 30 years later it is pretty difficult recap the origin. But at the time, I thought it was dangerous and quite remarkable. SM (02:42:57): I am going to change my tape here, hold on a second. Okay, and if you just speak at just a little bit louder, I know we cannot put the volume up, but. Okay, another one: the hippies and the yippies? Just your thoughts on them. WO (02:43:21): Well, the hippies started out at least as being pretty charming. I remember the first time I saw one [inaudible] was in Washington, D.C. I was working at the Library of Congress. And I was walking, got off the bus, and I was crossing DuPont Circle, and a guy with long hair came up and gave me a flower. That was, I think, the first hippie I ever saw. It must have been about (19)63 or (196)4, something like that. So, they were charming at first, but as you know they descended into gross and vanity. And there have been many similar children of hippies who were really kind of abused, mostly from neglect more than. But, [inaudible]. I got a big bang out of the yippies. I thought a lot of the stuff they did, the throwing dollars in the New York Stock Exchange and big demonstration... democratic demonstration, [inaudible] it was really about, this is Eddie Hoffman and some of the others, were really kind of geniuses when it came to turning the establishment on its head and creating a no-win situation but Chicago was [inaudible]. If the authorities had allowed the yippies to go ahead with their demonstration it would have been embarrassing to the democratic party and- SM (02:45:03): Right. WO (02:45:04): ... in the city of Chicago, to no end. But, in attempting to suppress them, they embarrassed themselves even more, so. But like all these things, the yippies ran out of steam. Eddie Hoffman [inaudible] in the later years [inaudible] caricature of themselves. SM (02:45:21): How about the Students for Democratic Society and certainly the Vietnam Veterans Against the War? WO (02:45:28): Well, SDC is a big different [inaudible] to me. I taught at University of Colorado before I went, and I was asked to be a student for faculty advice... and they had to have a faculty advisor in order to have a [inaudible]. So, I was the faculty advisor to SDS for a couple of years and this was still the era of non-violent activism. They were very much inspired by Martin Luther and so they would have non-violent demonstrations. But I liked them a lot, they were wonderful people. Well, I got to Wisconsin and the tide was already changing and the SDS, I dealt with there had abandoned non-violence and they were having street fights with the police. SM (02:46:20): It is the weathermen, yeah. WO (02:46:23): These were not actually weathermen, they were just regular SDC [inaudible]. SM (02:46:25): Right. WO (02:46:27): But they were having [inaudible] war from the history department windows pitched down on between the SDC and [inaudible] police. The police teargassed them... and the police would throw the tear gas back at them and then they would have [inaudible]. So, that was a healthy disillusioning. SM (02:46:51): How about Vietnam Veterans Against the War? WO (02:46:52): Well, the ones that I knew I admired very much and I think some their [inaudible] is really, well, in a better position he really represented some of the fears of the war. They were very thoughtful and well-informed. Very just kind of people. SM (02:47:15): How about the Young Americans for Freedom? WO (02:47:23): Oh, over-privileged Nazis. SM (02:47:23): How about the Black Panthers and Black Power? WO (02:47:26): Oh, I thought they were a terrible movement. Again, they destroyed the old civil rights movement, the non-violent civil rights movement which had accomplished everything we got in the civil rights act and the voting rights act and everything of value. And then these nincompoops came along and that old "power comes from the barrel of a gun" and other bullish cliches. And they ruined the civil rights movement, it was just appalling. The Black Panthers, I did not know this at the time, but there has been a lot of work done on them, were more of a criminal organization than anything else. SM (02:48:00): Because Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver. Remember, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis, Hutton, they were all part of that group. WO (02:48:12): Oh, it was founded by ex-convicts. That should have been a clue. SM (02:48:18): Yeah, Huey Newton had that poster that was on a lot of campuses. Also, the term that Nixon used, "the enemies list", when you hear that what did that... how did you respond? WO (02:48:32): I thought it was hysterical because it included the president from Harvard and other universities. [inaudible], some football stars. It was virtually a mark of honor to be on the list. We used to go around lying about it, saying that they were on the enemies list. SM (02:48:55): Mỹ Lai? WO (02:48:56): Oh, that was horrible, that was terrible. And kind of summed up sort of "everyone's about the Vietnam war, actually." SM (02:49:07): 1968. The year. WO (02:49:09): Oh, well, that was the year that was... a lot books, I think, focus on that one year. SM (02:49:14): Yes. Wow. WO (02:49:17): Well, I thought the war was going to start... well, I saw fighting outside of my door. SM (02:49:24): Do you buy what some people said, that we were close to a second civil war? WO (02:49:29): No. That is the kind of overreaction you get when you are in the middle of things. SM (02:49:29): Okay. WO (02:49:43): I knew in the abstract that we would get [inaudible]. At the time I was writing my book but I did not still see myself sort of [inaudible]. SM (02:49:44): Right, and tech? WO (02:49:44): Well, that was what changed the world of war, that was the point... and it probably... over the world. And at this point, the public opinion polls supported [inaudible] up until then. And Ian [inaudible], and those other liars, they write [inaudible], blah, blah, blah. And they were all really [inaudible]. And it convinced Richard Nixon, I am sure of it, convinced Richard Nixon that could not facilitate policy [inaudible] to get reelected. SM (02:50:34): This is another question I would like to read. This deals with the issue of trust. And that is, the boomers experienced many leaders who lied to them and were dishonest in many ways. The result is that many, if not most, did not trust any leaders, no matter their role in society, whether they be a president, a congressman, a senator, corporate leader or religious leader, or leader in any role. What effect did this have on their trust both then and now? If boomers distrust do their children distrust? Psychologists often say that if you cannot trust someone then life has little meaning. Your thought on the issue of trust within the boomer generation. WO (02:51:16): Oh, I think they got over it. I mean, the public. One of the slogans at the time was do not trust anyone over 30. SM (02:51:24): Yep. WO (02:51:31): Well, they all [inaudible] over 30. The ones that I know retain a certain residual distrust of the federal government. But that does not [inaudible] seems to be [inaudible] the other institution is equally evolved. SM (02:51:56): All right. Why did the Vietnam War end? WO (02:52:00): Because Richard Nixon recognized that it was an absolute no-win situation politically, and that he had to wrap it up, one way or another. And of course, the way he chose was not [inaudible] by any means. And I do not know how else he could have done it. SM (02:52:18): When did the (19)60s end? WO (02:52:21): Well, I am thinking (19)71, thereabouts. SM (02:52:29): Is there a specific event that you knew, and when you saw it, it is over? WO (02:52:36): Well, the election of Richard Nixon. And then within, I do not know, six or eight months of taking office, he started pulling troops out of Vietnam. Very, very, soon and very rapid. The draw down was crazy. It was [inaudible] over bombing raids, but that was deliberate on his part, because he wanted the right wing [inaudible] that he was [inaudible] along, but in fact, he [inaudible] rapid rate that by the end of 1971 the offensive action [inaudible] Vietnam. The draft was over basically by then. And that was end of the (19)60s. SM (02:53:21): Mm-hmm. Please describe how important race, economics, and culture is in understanding the boomer generation and era they lived. WO (02:53:33): Well, race alone for [inaudible] was the first great cause. There were chapters, particularly on campus, the creation of [inaudible] and students and my own coordinating studies in 1960. That sit-in movement spawned a support group, I guess, in major universities all over the country. It was the first movement that the boomers [inaudible]. And in most cases, it was lifelong. I mean, even after white people got kicked out of the [inaudible] the Congress of Racial Equality and organizations like that, it did not change their views. Oh, I think that was terrific. SM (02:54:26): And I know Kennedy was very... President Kennedy and actually Teddy Kennedy, in his new book talks it about it too, about Michael Harrington talking about poverty and economics, and certainly that played a part too. It is not just about race, it's about how much money people make and poverty and so forth. That is certainly a part of this generation. WO (02:54:50): [inaudible] very interested in the problems of poor white people. SM (02:54:54): Right. Right. Couple more, then I am going to ask you some individual names, and then we will be done. What were the most important books that you felt were written at the time that may have influenced boomers when they were young? Authors. Books. WO (02:55:19): Boy, that is hard to say. I mean, I know the books that influenced me. SM (02:55:21): What books influenced you? WO (02:55:27): Well, Michael Harrington's book was a tremendous eye-opener. SM (02:55:32): Mm-hmm. WO (02:55:32): And Rachel Carson's book too. Of course, those were books that had tremendous impact. My views on Vietnam were shaped by Bernard Fall, who was [inaudible]. Did you read any of his? SM (02:55:52): What is his last name? WO (02:55:52): Bernard Fall. SM (02:55:53): Oh yeah, Bernie Fall. Yes. WO (02:55:57): One of my few successful prophecies was when I knew the Vietnam War was going to turn out badly, because I would read Fall. And the United States was making [inaudible]. So [inaudible]. SM (02:56:12): Yep. How about your personal story? How did you personally decide to become a history teacher? WO (02:56:25): Well, I was in a program when my father, who was not at college. In fact, he only went [inaudible]. And so, he ended up in the oil business, as a wildcatter of all things. And he felt that he was politically handicapped by not being a lawyer. He was always [inaudible] other people. [inaudible] career and I took it for granted too. I was the first person in my family to go to college, so [inaudible] knew anything about it. And I majored in [inaudible]. And in my senior year, I wrote... A lot of people think of it as a serious [inaudible]. You write a senior’s honors thesis to do with [inaudible] very long. And I realized... I think it was probably 100 pages. And I realized suddenly, just like a revelation, you're [inaudible]. Then I realized if I could do [inaudible] that way I could probably write a good thesis. SM (02:57:28): Wow. WO (02:57:37): Granted I could [inaudible] and I would not have to go to law school. By that time, I had moved... I had roomed with some law students, so I knew what a grind and how horrible it was, and [inaudible] and soul destroying. Then suddenly I realized I can make my living doing what I most like. SM (02:57:51): Discouraged? WO (02:57:52): It was [inaudible]. SM (02:57:53): You went to Berkeley too, did not you? WO (02:57:56): Graduate. SM (02:57:57): Were you there during the free speech movement, or... WO (02:58:00): I left a year before. SM (02:58:01): Okay. WO (02:58:01): Knew some of the students that were involved in it, because free speech movement just did not come out of nowhere. SM (02:58:06): I know. WO (02:58:06): And [inaudible] in Berkeley in [inaudible] between 1968 [inaudible]. And of course, in 1960 there had been the big demonstration against [inaudible] in San Francisco, and a lot of Berkeley students participated in that. Oh, I knew some of the students at the sit-in. [inaudible] But I left in [inaudible]. SM (02:58:37): When you wrote your book, American High and Coming Apart, and obviously you have written other books, and now your new one, what kind of feedback did you get from people when you wrote those books? Obviously, it is a sense of accomplishment to have written the first two that I mentioned, what I consider great books. WO (02:58:57): But you would be surprised, apart from reviews, but you would be surprised at the little mail books like that get. I once wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times on Solzhenitsyn, and this was in, I do not know, (19)78, something like that. And it made it because the Harvard Review was critical narrative. [inaudible] I did not know why me. I mean, I know nothing really about Russia. Anyway, I did write an op-ed piece on him. I got more mail from that single op-ed piece than I have from all my books put together. SM (02:59:39): Unbelievable. Wow. WO (02:59:42): I mean, if I get 10 letters in response to a book, that is huge. SM (02:59:49): That American High book is a classic book. WO (02:59:53): Now, over the years, I have gotten [inaudible] letters. But I mean, I still get them. SM (03:00:00): Mm-hmm. WO (03:00:00): That is because [inaudible]. SM (03:00:03): In all of your experiences as a professor in the classroom with boomer students, are there one or two specific experiences you will never forget, that stand out? WO (03:00:19): Well, of course, the one I just told you about, the graduate students, that certainly- SM (03:00:20): Right. WO (03:00:20): ... stuck in my mind [inaudible] this absurdity. No, in class, I think [inaudible]. In class I had a lot of really thought-provoking periods [inaudible], but not since. SM (03:00:51): Mm-hmm. Before I ask the first questions on individual persons, are there any questions I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask? WO (03:01:04): No, I think I had a lot [inaudible]. SM (03:01:04): All right. This is the last part of the interview, and this is for just your immediate thoughts. You do not have to go into any depth, but just your thoughts on some of these individuals from the period, and terms of the era. Tom Hayden. WO (03:01:24): Oh, I admired him at the beginning, the Port Huron Statement and [inaudible] sort of thing, but by the time he became... By the end of the period, I felt sorry for him more than anything else. Living in this restrictive fear. SM (03:01:38): Jane Fonda. WO (03:01:45): I never hated... I do not hate her. I never hated her, or... I felt sorry for her too, I suppose. She did not have anybody to tell her who to... Well, and she's apologized. SM (03:01:58): Right. Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. WO (03:02:07): I admired them both in their early yippie phases. I thought they were funny and smart, and manipulated the establishment too. Abbie became kind of pathetic in later life. And Jerry Rubin was never able to find his bearings afterwards. SM (03:02:28): How about the participants in the Chicago Eight trial? The Eight. WO (03:02:33): Oh, yes. That was [inaudible]. I did not really have any opinion, other than they joined [inaudible]. SM (03:02:42): I am interviewing Rennie Davis in 10 days. WO (03:02:46): Oh, he was one of the ones. Oh. SM (03:02:48): Yeah, he has become a very successful entrepreneur. I think he is a millionaire. WO (03:02:53): Really? SM (03:02:53): Yes. If you go onto the web, you will see he is involved in the environment and he's still an activist doing unbelievable things. He does not talk about the (19)60s anymore. That is the past. But he is going to be... He has got his own life now, totally different. WO (03:03:12): Remarkable. SM (03:03:14): John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. WO (03:03:18): I never liked John Kennedy [inaudible]. He was basically a very conservative Democrat. I liked Adlai Stevenson. I did not care for him. I did not like Robert Kennedy either until 1968, when he really seemed to have... At which time he really seemed to have gone through a change and become [inaudible] about being ruthless. But he really seemed to have become less ruthless and more deeply concerned with the social problems, so I came to admire him [inaudible] being assassinated. SM (03:03:57): How about Teddy Kennedy, since he just passed, and has got a big book out right now? WO (03:04:02): Yes. Well, I think like almost everyone, I thought Chappaquiddick was so despicable. For years bear the thought of it, but still he outlived it, and he paid his dues and became a great senator. And by the time he died I admired him a lot. SM (03:04:21): Lyndon Johnson. WO (03:04:23): Oh, he was so disappointing. I thought Johnson in (19)64 was just great, and the campaign was great. And he stood for peace and justice and civil rights and everything desirable, and then he sacrificed everything to the war in Vietnam. I was just crushed. SM (03:04:45): Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. WO (03:04:46): Well, Spiro Agnew was definitely successful. I do not know if he is still alive or not. SM (03:04:53): No, he passed away. WO (03:04:54): I never changed my opinion about him. Richard, I spent a large part of my adult life hating Richard Nixon. I hated him from about the time of the [inaudible] case on, I would say. And I got to vote against him repeatedly, because I voted against him in (19)56 and then in 1960, and then in (19)62 I was in California, so I got to vote for him again, against him again. And then in (19)68 and then in (19)72. So, I had a long record there. And there was nobody I hated more in public life. But years later, like, oh, starting in the end of the Vietnam War, I began to develop a grudging respect, because he did get us out of the war in the face of great [inaudible]. I have mixed feelings about him. He was an evil man who did open up China. Who ended the war in Vietnam. Who expanded the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Arts, and signed off on clean air and clean water legislation. [inaudible] I am ambivalent toward Nixon. SM (03:06:08): How about Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern? WO (03:06:12): Oh, I loved Eugene McCarthy. I worked for his campaign. [inaudible] But he was disappointing too because he frittered away the reputation that he had built up in 1968. He did not run again for quite some time. And then when he did start putting himself up as a presidential candidate it was under hopeless circumstances. He just threw his following away. It was one of the really... [inaudible] I never understood. McGovern. I liked McGovern, but I thought even at the time that he was going to ruin the Democratic Party. SM (03:06:57): The buses. WO (03:06:59): He was the captain of every little... SM (03:07:03): Sargent Shriver. WO (03:07:06): Oh, there is somebody, you know, solid life of service. Have to admire him. SM (03:07:11): Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. WO (03:07:15): Well, Martin Luther King is the greatest of all my political heroes. He changed the country. I did not know anything about Malcolm X until after... I used to see him occasionally on television when he was still a Muslim or a Black Panther. SM (03:07:34): Uh-huh. WO (03:07:35): And I thought he was kind of dangerous, because he was so smart and so clever, and pursued a Black racist agenda. It was only after his death I learned that he was a... through the autobiography, that I learned he was actually a more complicated person. SM (03:07:55): Right. Yeah-yeah, yeah. He said all white people were not devils. WO (03:07:57): Mm-hmm. SM (03:08:00): Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford. WO (03:08:05): Well, I know people who hated Ronald Reagan, and I never could because I grew up on his movies. My feeling now, while he was president of the States I always voted against him and I was really unhappy with his presidency in many ways. Since his death, there have been some books that came out that have explained in great detail what was never explained at the time which was how he and Gorbachev negotiated an end to the Cold War. And so now, while I still think his domestic program could hardly have been worse, I have come to respect his role in ending the Cold War, which it turns out was really an important one. SM (03:08:54): Gerald Ford. WO (03:08:55): Oh, he is just nobody. Through pure accident got to the presidency. SM (03:09:03): How about Dwight Eisenhower and Hubert Humphrey? WO (03:09:09): Well, Eisenhower, I have been a lifelong Democrat so [inaudible] heart is not in these the way... And one of my great political heroes, probably second only to Martin Luther King, was Adlai Stevenson. I thought Eisenhower was a peaceful president. And I thought that until I started writing Coming Apart and then I had to write a chapter on Eisenhower. 1960 was Eisenhower's last year. And then I had to start Googling up his record. He ended the Korean War. He did not start any others. He held the line on the [inaudible] anyone could. He nearly balanced the budget. He balanced the budget three times and he came pretty close the fourth time. [inaudible] Started the Interstate Highway System. He was actually a pretty good president, something I did not understand while he was president. SM (03:10:00): How about Hubert Humphrey? WO (03:10:06): Oh, Hubert Humphrey. Oh, I always liked him. He was such a great liberal. But he really sullied his name by becoming a cheerleader for the Vietnam War. SM (03:10:16): Yeah, I agree. How about Edmund Muskie, his running mate in (19)68? WO (03:10:21): Well, I admired him, and I am sorry he did not win. I think he was... In all the dirty tricks that people did, I think the one that was most [inaudible] the only ones that were really effective were the ones that [inaudible] Muskie. SM (03:10:37): Right. How about the women leaders like Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug? WO (03:10:42): Oh, I like them all. SM (03:10:48): What kind of an influence have they had on boomers? WO (03:10:54): You know, it is hard for me to tell, not being [inaudible]. SM (03:11:03): Right. How about U-2? WO (03:11:07): Oh, the band? SM (03:11:09): No, not the band, the Gary Powers. WO (03:11:11): Oh, oh, oh, the U-2 incident. SM (03:11:15): That seems to be the first time when boomers saw a person who lied to them, which was Eisenhower. WO (03:11:21): Yes. That was probably the worst thing Eisenhower did. In a sense, the big summit with Khrushchev in Paris was coming up and he allowed U-2 over-flights to be made right up until the wire. If he canceled them like two months before the meeting... And of course, he knew the Soviets knew all about them, they just were not saying anything because it was so embarrassing. Yep, it was a major blunder. [inaudible] SM (03:11:55): Robert McNamara. WO (03:11:58): Oh, did I ever [inaudible] him. I mean, bringing all that brilliance to bear in order to stop a war. And I [inaudible] for waiting 25 years to [inaudible]. SM (03:12:12): Right. He just passed away. How about Dr. Benjamin Spock and the Berrigan Brothers? WO (03:12:19): Oh, I liked Spock. I mean, [inaudible] influenced on [inaudible] book. As an antiwar protestor I thought he was pretty dignified and effective. SM (03:12:33): Mm-hmm. WO (03:12:44): Because the Berrigan Brothers could be rather [inaudible] appreciate that they alienate more people than they persuade beyond a certain point. SM (03:12:52): Jackie Robinson. WO (03:12:55): I am not a sports fan. SM (03:13:00): Okay. WO (03:13:00): Of any kind. SM (03:13:00): All right. WO (03:13:00): [inaudible] SM (03:13:01): The original seven astronauts. WO (03:13:03): I thought the manned space program was a [inaudible] in the beginning. And I think it has been proven [inaudible] it is incredibly [inaudible]. All the successes have been in the unmanned [inaudible]. SM (03:13:24): Just a couple more here. I think I may have already mentioned Huey Newton. WO (03:13:31): Oh, I thought he was a scoundrel. Yeah. SM (03:13:33): Yeah. WO (03:13:33): [inaudible] SM (03:13:35): Walter Cronkite? WO (03:13:40): I appreciated him. SM (03:13:43): Daniel Ellsberg? WO (03:13:45): Oh, I thought what he did with the Pentagon Papers was just great and took a lot of courage. [inaudible] go to jail. SM (03:13:53): And some of the simple things that influenced boomers when they were really young, Walt Disney and Howdy Doody. WO (03:14:01): Oh, I miss Howdy Doody. Yeah. Yeah, I did grow up on Walt Disney. SM (03:14:09): Yeah, Walt Disney, I am learning more about him after he died. Whoa. Things that I did not even realize. WO (03:14:18): He was pretty conservative. SM (03:14:20): Yes, he was. But his movies really had an influence. And John Dean. WO (03:14:28): Oh, I was [inaudible] very impressed with his performance at the time. Like everybody, I was glued to the TV during the hearings. And since then, as more and more revelations have come up, I have been staggered by the accuracy of his memory. Most people, including me... memory's kind of a fragile thing. And he had practically total recall that has been proven out for the most part. SM (03:15:02): He has written some pretty good books recently. WO (03:15:06): I bought his book Blind Ambition. [inaudible] SM (03:15:09): Oh yeah, that was very, very good. I think that is about it. Trying to think if there is any other names here. I cannot think of any. Finally, I just want to thank you for taking the time here. I wish I could take your picture. I take pictures of everybody. Somehow, I got to get a picture of you. But I will figure it out. WO (03:15:31): [inaudible] have pictures on my dust jackets. SM (03:15:35): Yeah, maybe if you could send me a picture on the computer or something like that. But all the pictures I have taken are ones like... You are the first person I would not have taken their picture. I have even interviewed people then I actually went to their place and just passing through took their picture. So, we might have plenty of time to do that. And I guess my last question is this, again, I want to get back, because you are probably a great professor. I have read all about you for years. You are not only a great writer but you are a professor with unbelievable academic backgrounds. When you think of all your years in the classroom, and again, I am going back to the boomer generation here, were there specific events where the students themselves walked into the class and said to you, "Today, can we discuss what is happening in the world as opposed to your lesson?" Because that happened a lot when I was a college student. Did you ever have that? WO (03:16:34): No. No. The way it worked... I came to Rutgers in 1971, and Rutgers is in a much more [inaudible] campus [inaudible] by a whole lot, and so the students I had were not political at all. Now, what would happen to me is that I would be talking about some historical event in the past and then the students would compare that to what had just happened. And then we would end up, through that door, talking about current events. I do not remember specific occasions [inaudible] when they would lead with it. SM (03:17:21): Okay. Very good. I am looking through my list at names here, see if I missed anybody. I think I did not mention... Did I mention the communal movement? That is the one thing I... Your thought on communes? WO (03:17:35): Oh, they always baffled me. SM (03:17:39): There is only three in existence today, as my understanding. WO (03:17:46): Really? Out of over 100. SM (03:17:46): Yep. And the thing, they were young people in the (19)60s, and they still live in these three communes, and they are now in their (19)60s. I do not know how they did it, but... They're in different parts of the country. Again, finally, are there any questions that I did not ask that you would... Any final thoughts on the boomers? WO (03:18:07): No. No. SM (03:18:07): All right. Well, that is it. Want to thank you very much for the interview. I will certainly send a transcript once we get the transcripts done, for you to give the final okay. WO (03:18:17): Okay. [inaudible] Edit out the ums and ahs. SM (03:18:24): Yeah. And again, I got a lot of transcripts to do here. I am doing this myself. I am transcribing it all myself, so it takes a little while. But got great interviews. And it has been an honor to talk to you. Just hope you continue to keep writing. I cannot wait to read your new book. WO (03:18:43): Well, I hope you like it. SM (03:18:46): Yeah. Have you gotten any reviews? What is the feedback? WO (03:18:49): The pub date was 10 days ago, and so I have not gotten any reviews yet. SM (03:18:56): Right. And you are still teaching part time though? WO (03:18:59): Yes, I teach one course a semester. SM (03:19:01): Yeah, please do, because you are good at what you do. And thanks again for writing Coming Apart and American High. They are unbelievable books. WO (03:19:09): Well, thank you very much. SM (03:19:12): Well, you have a great day. And it was an honor to talk to you. WO (03:19:15): Same thing to you. SM (03:19:16): Bye now. WO (03:19:16): Bye. (End of Interview) Description 3 microcassettes Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. William O'Neill Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource O'Neill, William L. ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Historians; Scholars; Authors, American; College teachers; Rutgers University; United States—History—20th century; O'Neill, William L.--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. William O'Neill (1935-2016) was a historian, scholar, author, and professor of history emeritus at Rutgers University. Dr. O'Neill was the author of more than a dozen books on subjects related to the twentieth century of American social and political history. He has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan and earned his Master's and Ph.D. in History at the University of California, Berkeley. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.204a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.204b; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.204c Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 199:22 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4232f363b93a4ebc6079c399092cb850.pdf 401388ac933473371ed4166ef940eb30 PDF Text Text BINGHAMTON U  N  I  V  E  R  S  I  T  Y S T A T E  U N I V E R S I T Y  O F  N E W  Y O R K 2LdeC D E P A R T M E N T THURSDAY Mfg—04 Y 001175557  1 Thursday, Mama Id: 2 0 1 0 1 : 20 p m . Casadasus Ream! Hal! �PROGRAM Voi che sapete..  from Le  n ozze di Figaro  .Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756­1791) .Samuel Barber (1910­1981) Must the Winter Come so Soon  from Vanessa  Jacques Offenbach La Griserie.  (1819­1880) from La  Périchole  Cabiria Jacobsen, mezzo­soprano Margaret Reitz, piano Alvin Etler (1913­1973) Sonata for Bassoon.  Movement IV  Daniel Bessel, bassoon Margaret Reitz, piano Thea Musgrave (b. 1928) Timothy Perry, clarinet Margaret Reitz, piano Concertino para Marimba y Orquesta Il – Movimento Canzone India I – Allegro .Jorge Sannientos Marc Silvagni, marimba Margaret Reitz, piano Liebst du um Schonheit  Fruhlingsmorgen  Erinnerung Scheiden und Meiden . Gustav Mahler (1860­1911) Jennifer Lee Groves, soprano Margaret Reitz, piano Sergey Prokefiev (1891­1953) Sonata No. 3, Op. 28..  Allegro tempestoso  Jieun Jang, piano �TRANSLATIONS Voi, che sagete LaG   riserie You, who know what love is Ladies, look and see if I have it in my heart. Ah! What a dinner I’ve just come from having. And what an extraordinary wine! The things I’m trying, I will tell you again It’s new for me! I don’t understand it. I drank so much of it, And so, so much, That I do believe that now... I feel a stirring, full of desire, One moment it‘s delightful, I am a little bit tipsy, But shhhh! I freeze and feel my soul on fire, If my words are a little bit vague, I f  I zigzag when I walk, And if my eye is a little bit crossed, You musn’t worry, because... The next, it’s torture. And in a moment, I turn to ice. I search for beauty outside of myself, I don’t know what it holds, I don‘t know what it is. I sigh and groan, without wanting to; I quiver and tremble without knowing it, I find no peace, night or day, And yet, how it pleases me to languish like this... You who know what love is, Ladies, look and see if I have it in my heart. Must the Winter Come s o  S oon You musn’t tell. I am a little bit tipsy, But shhhh! You musn’t tell. Llebst du um Schénheit If you love for beauty, Oh, do not love me! Love the sun, She has golden hair! If you love for youth, Oh, do not love me! Love the spring; It is young every year! If you love for treasure, Oh, do not love me! Must the winter come so soon? Night after night, I hear the hungry deer Love the mermaid; She has many clear pearls! If you love for love, Oh yes, do love me! Love me ever, I’ll love you evennore! And from his house of brittle bark hoots the frozen owl Frtlhllngsmorgen wander weeping in the woods. Must the winter come so soon? Here in this forest, neither dawn nor sunset  marks the passing of the days.  It is a long winter here.  Must the winter come so soon? The linden tree taps at the window Branches heavy with blooms; Get up! Get up! Why do you lie dreaming? The sun is overhead! Get up! Get up! The lark is up, the bushes blow! The bees buzz, and the beetles! Get up! Get up! And I’ve already seen your jolly lover Get up, sleepyhead! Sleepyhead, get up! Get up! Get up! �Sweet fllbion Erinnerung My love wakens the songs ever anew! My songs waken my love ever anew! My lips which dream of your fervent kisses, 6 \ " : § “A  _ ’ / ­ / o r i‘ n g z l i E  y  &  pianist Margarel R eitz In song and melody they have to chant of you! And if m y thoughts would like to dismiss love, Then my songs come to me with love’s lament! Thus I am held a captive by these two forever! The song will waken love! icmcd bg soprano [udu Berry Y d pril 1 0 at  p m And love wakens the songs! Scheiden und Meiden Three horsemen ride out through the gate! Farewell! Farewell! A beloved looks out of the window! Farewell! Farewell! And if we must be parted, Then give me your little golden ring! Farewell! Farewell! Yes, parting and separation bring woe, bring woe! Yes, parting and separation bring woe, bring woe! Farewell! Farewell! with clerinatisi Timothg Pong tindzracrn Center Chamber Ilull Call (800) “fir­1112151, for tekgts. BI NGHAMTON n u n ­ u r n , UDCOMING C ONCERTS?! 7”  s o n s U J   The child is left in the cradle! Farewell! Farewell! When will my beloved be mine? Farewell! Farewell! And if it were not tomorrow, that it would be today! It would bring us both such greatjoy! Farewell! Farewell! Yes, parting and separation bring woe, bring woe! Yes, parting and separation bring woe, bring woe! Farewell! Farewell! ENSEMPI] ! . < , < I 1 1 ’ 1 1 4 WHth  11111131 1111151. =   H7 :  MIKE DAVIS ­  Till..E,FJIJ’11EE‘(1!JIT!“11![I’ll 11V!!!) \ \ ,   APRIL smug­m FE ’i w  ­”_"  M a j   C  ­  Fortrckets caiiraonrrmtms n s o r a d  by  th e  Depar tment o f  M u s i c  and th e  H a r u r  J  Proje �Binghamton University M usic D epartment’s MPOOMl/VC,‘ E V E N T S aGSeDeasd Thursday, March 1 8 ”  Harpur Chorale and Women’s Chorus, 8:00 PM, Anderson Center Chamber Hall, FREE Satu rd ay,  M a r c h  20"' Senior Honors Recital: Briana Sakamoto, soprano, 8:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE S u n day,  M a r c h  2 1 ”  Senior Honors Redtal: Marc Silvagnr, percussio 3:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE Thursday, March 25°” Mid­Day Concert, 1:20 PM ­ FREE, Casadesus Rectal Hall Thursday, A p r i l  8 ” '  Jazz Mid­Day Concert, 1:20 PM – FREE Osterhout Concert Theater Jazz Ensemble Concert (co­sponsored by the   Thursday, A p r i l  8 ” Harpur  Harpur Jazz Project and the Binghamton University Department of Mus’c), 8:00 PM, Osterhout Concert Theater; $$ (FREE for students) Satu rd ay,  A p r i l 1  0th Junior Recital: Jieun Jang, piano, 3:00 PM, Casadesus Rectal Hall, FREE Satu rd ay,  A p r i l 1  0 m  Sweet Albion: The English Clarinet with clarinetist Timothy Perry and pianist Margaret Reitz, 8:00 PM, Anderson Center Chamber Hall, $$ Thursday, A p r i l 1  5th Mid­Day Concert, 1:20 PM – FREE, FA 21   aster’s Redtal: Stephen Brooks, double bass, Friday, A p r i l 1  6 ” M 8:00 PM, Casadesus Recital Hall, FREE For ticket information, please call the Anderson Center Box O ffice a t 7 77­AR TS To see all events, please visit music.binghamton.edu Become a fan on Facebook by visiting Binghamton University Music D epartment � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960's - present Title A name given to the resource Binghamton University Music Department Tape Recordings Subject The topic of the resource Concerts ; Instrumental music ; Live sound recordings Description An account of the resource Binghamton University Music Department recordings is an audio collection of concerts and recitals given on campus by students, faculty, and outside musical groups. The physical collection consists of reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes, and compact discs. The recordings <a href="https://suny-bin.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Binghamton%20University%20Music%20Department%20tape%20recordings&amp;tab=LibraryCatalog&amp;search_scope=MyInstitution&amp;vid=01SUNY_BIN:01SUNY_BIN&amp;mode=basic&amp;offset=0&amp;conVoc=false">have been catalogued</a> and are located in <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/special-collections/">Special Collections</a>. In addition, the collection includes copies of programmes. <br /><br />The Libraries have begun making some of the collections available digitally on campus. These recordings are restricted to the Binghamton University Community. Please contact Special Collections for questions regarding access off campus.<br />Email:&nbsp;<a href="mailto:speccoll@binghamton.edu">speccoll@binghamton.edu</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: PDF / Rosetta PDF with Rosetta audio/video link Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 audio disc Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 50:34:00 Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE145172">https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE145172</a> Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. PDF Layout This field specifies how the pages of the PDF will be laid out. Enter only the CASE SENSITIVE keyword without quotation marks. [default: 'FacingContinuous'] Options: 'Single' - Only the entire current page will be visible and Zoom will be set to page width. 'Continuous' - All pages are visible in one scrollable column and Zoom will be set to page width. 'Facing' - Up to two full pages will be visible and Zoom will be set to page height. 'FacingContinuous' - All pages visible in two scrollable columns and Zoom will be set to page height. 'FacingCover' - All pages visible as whole pages, with an even numbered page rendered first. (i.e. The first page of the document is rendered by itself on the right side of the viewer to simulate a book cover.) 'FacingCoverContinuous' - All pages visible in two scrollable columns, with an even numbered page rendered first. (i.e. The first page of the document is rendered by itself on the right side of the viewer to simulate a book cover.) Single Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mid-day concert, March 18, 2010 Recital Tape 2010-3-18 Description An account of the resource Works by Ford, Engelman, Cahn, Firth, Sarmientos, Abe, Mohlenoff, Houliff, Rundgren. Held at 1:20 p.m., March 18, 2010, Casadesus Recital Hall. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jacobsen, Cabiria Bessel, Daniel Perry, Timothy B Silvagni, Marc Groves, Jennifer Lee Reitz, Margaret A Jang, Jieun Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource sound https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/f42946497b4ccd14e4f3f3cdf303d1d0.jpeg f0db2db354631aa8008da3ccdd0cb2ae https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ba464a1b2da686cd2cdb84d0a10e2aeb.mp3 e51ac5c9396f824557fb64615dd72540 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-03-19 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rex Weiner Language English Biographical Text <span>Rex Weiner, a native of Brooklyn, New York, is a writer, editor, publisher, and journalist based in Los Angeles and Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, MX. Weiner began his journalism career in the underground press of the late 1960s and is a co-founding editor of <em>High Times</em> magazine.&nbsp;His articles have appeared in <em>Vanity Fair</em>, <em>The New Yorker</em>, <em>Los Angeles Review of Books</em>, <em>The Paris Review</em>, <em>LA Magazine</em> and <em>Capital &amp; Main</em>. He is Executive Director and co-founder of the Todos Santos Writers Workshop, where he teaches creative writing. With Deanne Stillman, he is co-author of <em>The Woodstock Census: Nationwide Survey of the Sixties Generation</em> (Viking Press).</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 171:44 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Paul Robeson; New York University(NYU); Students for a Democratic Society; Communism; White Panthers; Jerry Rubin; Abbie Hoffman; underground press movement of the Nineteen sixties; Radicals; Yippies.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Paul Robeson; New York University (NYU); Students for a Democratic Society; Communism; White Panthers; Jerry Rubin; Abbie Hoffman; underground press movement of the Nineteen sixties; Radicals; Yippies.</span> Subject LCSH Authors; Editors; Publishers; Journalists; Weiner, Rex--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Rex Weiner Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 19 March 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing. 1-2-3 testing. Very good. And again, some of this is basic information. I got a whole lot of questions. The interview itself is some general questions, but a lot of them are questions that I never ask anybody but you, based on your experiences. Rex, the first question I would like to ask is about your upbringing. I read your book, but the only thing I know about you is the great career you have had beyond the Woodstock Census. Could you give me a little update or upbringing? What was your upbringing in New York City? What was your was your life like when you were in elementary school or high school, and your college years before you ever got out to California? Just a little bit about yourself. RW (00:00:52): Okay. Born in Brooklyn, East New York, Brownsville. Parents, first and third generation, Russian-Hungarian Jewish. My father was a decorated war hero, Air Force guy who grew up poor in Brooklyn, was in the CCCs, the Civilian Conservation Corps, cutting timber in Idaho in the dark days of the (19)30s. Never finished college. My mom went to Brooklyn College, got a degree, became a teacher. My dad went on to become a journalist, a business journalist. And I have a younger brother, five years younger, who grew up to be an artist, an illustrator, lives in Minneapolis. We lived in Brooklyn up until the 1955. I am a mid-century man, born in 1950, so. We moved upstate about 50 miles north to the farthest reach of the suburbs in a rural area of northern Westchester near Peekskill. SM (00:02:34): That is where my grandfather was a minister. RW (00:02:36): All right. SM (00:02:37): Yeah. My grandfather was a minister in Peekskill from 1936 to 1954. RW (00:02:44): So was he around when they threw rocks at the- SM (00:02:49): He must have been because he died in 1956. And I was very young. I only remember going there to the church to see my grandmother and grandfather. My dad grew up there. Then he went off to college in World War II. So my dad was not around. He was married and raising kids at that time in Ithaca. So. RW (00:03:10): Do you know the story of- SM (00:03:13): Bayard Rustin. Not Bayard Rustin, Paul Robeson. RW (00:03:16): When Paul Robeson came up and they threw stones at the buses and called them communists and so on. So it was the Hudson River Valley. And from (19)55 to the early (19)60s, that is where I grew up. But went back to the city as soon as I could. I graduated from high school in three years, gained entrance to NYU. And let us see, I guess that is when I got back to the city in 1967. The area where I grew up was just crazy (19)60s suburbs, cars, girls. And before even marijuana made its entrance, for some reason speed and heroin came to town. So I had a friend working in the local pharmacy who got us bottles of all kinds of pills. And so I grew up in a crazy teenage scene doing lots of drugs. And when I went down to the city, I continued doing that. SM (00:04:37): At NYU were you an activist student there at the college? RW (00:04:42): Yes. I majored in striking and chanting. SM (00:04:46): A lot of us did. RW (00:04:52): And I sort of hung out with a group of SDS street gang organizers who called themselves Up Against The Wall Motherfucker. And this was in the days when Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were doing the Yippies, and there were the Diggers and all of that stuff. Up Against The Wall Motherfucker was a much tougher brand of things, combining street smarts with the leftist ideology. And so I joined up with them. I mean, there was no joining. You just went and hung out at the forefront. SM (00:05:31): What year was that? RW (00:05:33): That was 1968. SM (00:05:40): Yeah. After what happened at Columbia. Yeah. RW (00:05:43): Yeah. And yeah, these guys were out of Columbia. And so we did things like took over the Fillmore East. I think that was the night that Bill Graham got cheese whipped up on stage. SM (00:05:59): Oh God. RW (00:06:00): We did some crazy stuff. And these were heavy times (19)68, (19)69, (19)70. In (19)70, one of my best friends from my hometown was killed in Vietnam. And I just decided having a student deferment was cowardly. Either you stand up for principal, and become a conscientious objector, or you fight against the war, do something. So I dropped out of NYU after three semesters, much to my parents dismay. I had a professor of Marxism, one of the few classes where I did really well. And I went to him, I said, "So what do I do? Give me my assignment. Oh, communist master." And he said, "Well, there is a group of kids out in Brooklyn who need your help. They are putting out an underground newspaper called the New York Herald Tribune." And basically that paper, that official paper had gone out of business a few years earlier, and these guys just took the title and thought it would be funny to put out a paper called the New York Herald Tribune. It was a high school radical paper, and these were high school kids in their last year at the top high schools in the city, Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant. And they were all militant and intellectual and interesting. And I was the oldest guy there, and there were a lot of cute young girls there. So I sort of became their mentor. I took over a storefront on St. Mark's Place, made it headquarters for the group, and then we became somehow affiliated with the White Panthers in Ann Arbor, and John Sinclair became a good friend. And so it was the White Panther headquarters, New York, and we were armed. I grew up with guns and have no hesitation about them. Knives, all this stuff. We had stuff in there. We had tons of dope. I mean, it was just a crazy scene out of high school, kids floating through there. And it was a fun time. We stopped putting out the New York Herald Tribune and joined up, a few of us with the East Village Other, which at that time was the oldest underground newspaper in the city. And I realized, you know, I am a writer. I have always been a writer, and journalism has been in my family for a couple of generations. So we went to the East Village Other and became part of that scene. And I wrote some of my first articles. Actually, my first journalism experience was in the press room of a county newspaper in Mount Kisco called The Patent Trader. I worked in the press room there and watched as the technology went from hot type, that is linotype machines, hot lead slugs, to what they called cold type or offset printing, computerized type setting. And I witnessed a change in technology that has always impressed me. Because when the technology changed from very expensive forms of printing to a technology that anyone could afford, offset printing, that made the underground press possible in this country. And A.J. Liebling famously said, "Freedom of the press belongs only to those who own one." Today with the internet, we all own one. That is terrific. But in the late (19)60s, offset printing was the new technology. It was the internet of its day, and that is what made the so-called Underground Press possible, which started as a political counter-cultural movement. And that is where I found my home. The East Village Other was in its last days, and it folded. These papers were never meant to be a business, but they had served their purpose. And we went on. We took the staff, myself and a colleague named Bob Singer, who's known as on as Honest Bob, and we created a new paper called The New York Ace, and this was the first of what would come to be called the alternative papers. So we were still radical in outlook, embracing the counterculture, but we were also all about the editing and the writing, the design, the layout. So we were among the first to publish writers such as P.J. O'Rourke. And we had great illustrations by some of the great underground cartoonists. We always had a brilliant cover page, sort of an LSD version of the New Yorker perhaps. And in fact, we did a year's worth of issues. Somehow we cajoled John and Yoko, John Lennon and Yoko Ono to underwrite the cost of the paper. They gave us simple page ads, and I guess Apple Records footed the bill. And really, we made our mark. The New York Magazine article that they did on us helped a lot. SM (00:12:42): You were really into not only design, but obviously you sound like you were into substance too, combining the quality of the writing with the quality of the look, and the combination of the two brought substance. RW (00:12:56): I would not be surprised if we were the only paper of its kind where a copy of Fowler's English Usage and Strunk and White were prominently on every desk. SM (00:13:07): Do you have copies of all of them? Did you keep copies of every one? RW (00:13:12): Well, yes, we have copies of those. And they are also included in the Bell and Howell microfilm collection, the underground newspaper collection that was really initiated by a friend of mine, Tom Forcade, Thomas King Forcade, who was administrator of the Underground Press Syndicate, which was an organization, a loose organization, of all of the underground paper at the time. It essentially dissolved the copyright between the members so that anybody could reprint from any other member paper. And each paper sent two copies to our office. I also helped administrate the UPS office. And those copies were sent to Bell and Howell. They were microfilmed and put into a collection, which exists to this day. SM (00:14:15): When I was at Ohio State University. There was an excellent underground paper there too. I was there in (19)71, (19)72 to (19)76. RW (00:14:24): All right. SM (00:14:26): They were in the Ohio Union, and I went to Binghamton University. Did your underground papers ever get to any of the state universities in New York state? RW (00:14:36): Well, I would not be surprised if people, students passing through New York City picked up a few. We did have subscribers, but whether they got the papers or not. SM (00:14:51): I remember... In fact, there is a historic scene in Woodstock where Abbie Hoffman comes on stage, and I think he says, "Free John Sinclair," was not that? And Pete Townshend said, "Get off the stage, or I will club you with my guitar," or something like that. Made him really mad. RW (00:15:06): Well, he did hit him. SM (00:15:07): Oh, he did hit him. I know he was threatening to do it. RW (00:15:10): Now, Abbie was on LSD at the time and suffering from delusions of grandeur. A lot of us at that time, much to our chagrin today, were very almost Calvinistic about the entertainment aspects of our culture. If it was not about politics, if it was not for the benefit of the Black Panthers or some imprisoned colleague, comrade, then it was not really important. I think we would laugh at our... As Dylan said, "I was so much older then, I am younger than that now." But that is how things were. So Abbie at that time at Woodstock decided that this is bullshit. People here are not talking about the issues of the day. And he got up there and got himself hit. SM (00:16:14): It is interesting about Abbie too. From what I read about Woodstock for four days is the fact that he was also in charge of the medical area? Somehow he had been given responsibility for people who were sick or had OD'ed on drugs or whatever, that he was very good at that. That he was the man in charge. RW (00:16:34): No, he was not in charge of anything. Nobody was in charge of anything. SM (00:16:40): But were you there? RW (00:16:43): No, I was not there. SM (00:16:44): Well, a question I want to ask you is how did you get from New York to California? Because I know in your book, I reread the last couple weeks, Woodstock Census. I read it years ago, but I reread it. But how did you get to California and then what led you to write this book? But most importantly, how did you get to California? And maybe I do not want this to be, as you said in our first conversation, all the stories about and making it all look great. But what are three anecdotes or experiences that you had in California that you would like to share that people might have interest in? RW (00:17:25): Okay, so it was the summer before I was due to enter college at NYU. It was the Summer of Love, and I was not going to miss that. 1967 in August, I headed west to San Francisco. I had a beatnik uncle who was living there just off Golden Gate Park. That was my destination. And so I hitchhiked across. I have hitchhiked, I have been back and forth across this country, not lately, but in the old days, in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s, I crisscrossed the country many times. But the first time was in 1967 in August where I headed west and got to San Francisco. My uncle lived just off the Haight. And there I was for the latter half of the Summer of Love when things sort of turned bad, as they say. And yeah, the streets were heavy and there was a lot of speed and a lot of weird shit going up. But I had a good time. But here is an anecdote. So as I am coming into San Francisco, I took a train from Chicago. The train is going slowly across a road crossing, and all the cars were backed up, and we were coming into California. And I saw a long-haired biker waiting for the train to pass. So I shoot him the peace sign, and he shot me back the one-fingered salute. And I realized, "Hey, it ain't all Summer of Love." There I was being a hippie, and he was being a Hell's Angel or whatever he was. In the Haight at that time, there were people handing out free food, the Hare Krishnas. You could go there and get rice and some kind of vegetable stew. The Diggers were handing out kind of spoiled rotten vegetables and fruit and whatever they could scavenge from supermarkets. But I remember eating brown rice for the first time and thinking that this was very exotic. And let us see, went to the Avalon Ballroom, heard the Electric Flag. Prior to that though, I have to say that I had experienced LSD, mushrooms, peyote even. And one of the ways I got to do that was my high school girlfriend and I would skip class, hop in my car and head north to Millbrook, where Tim Leary had his League of Spiritual Discovery ensconced in a huge mansion. And as we pulled in there, this was in (19)66, the sight of this glorious Hudson River Victorian mansion, the facade painted with a sort of Hindu God face. When they say, "It blew my mind," yes, that blew my mind that you could fuck up a house like this in such a glorious manner. And I had a friend of a friend who was living there at Tim Leary's place and sort of allowed us entree. So we did some mushrooms there, my girlfriend and I. Got to know some people there. We went there a few times, and that is where I first met Dr. Timothy Leary. I had read a lot about him. Who had not? Heard a lot about him. But then there he was when I first saw him outside the house, fixing a lawnmower, trying to get it going, and trying to get his son to cut the lawn, just like my old man tried to get me to cut the damn lawn. I thought, "No, this is real life here behind the fame of (19)60s radical." So coming into Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love, I had already had some experience with that kind of mind-expanding stuff and some vaguely semi-criminal activities, scoring dope, and bringing and entering and crap like that. Stealing cars, I knew how to do that. SM (00:22:55): Obviously. When you mentioned you had met Abbie, you knew Abbie, and you knew and you met Dr. Leary. Are there any other personalities of that period that you actually got to know? RW (00:23:06): Well, yeah. I met Abbie when I was at the East Village Other. He would come into the office every now and then. I met Jerry at that time as well. At that point, Tim Leary was in Algiers. He had escaped from prison with the aid of the Weatherman. And I would sometimes pick up the phone and there would be Tim Leary calling from long distance from Algiers collect. And of course, I would accept the charges and hand it over to the editor, Yakov Cohen, who was sort of an advisor to Tim. So Tim and I were to cross paths many times, and I will catch up with that too. But yes, Jerry, I got to know Jerry Rubin. I got to know Abbie. And my association with Tom Forcade brought me closer into all of this. Because Tom, have you heard of him before? SM (00:24:13): How do you spell his last name? RW (00:24:15): It is F-O-R-C-A-D-E. Thomas King Forcade. SM (00:24:22): No. I do not know him. RW (00:24:23): Key figure of that time. He went on to become the founder of High Times Magazine, and I was one of the co-founding editors. SM (00:24:31): Okay, yes. Because I read that about you. RW (00:24:35): But he was instrumental in the whole underground press movement. And he was an antagonist to Abbie and Jerry. He had a much tougher attitude. He was an ex-Air Force guy. He was not afraid of guns either. And he was basically a disruptive element within the counterculture, someone who was not about peace and love, not afraid to get into a fist fight with somebody if he felt strongly about something. And so he and I kind of fell together. And when it was time to create High Times Magazine, he called together a sort of inner circle. I was part of that and was a contributor to High Times up until the time of Tom's death, which was a suicide. Tom was a controversial figure, and I was helping. He had helped Abbie create the publishing structure for Steal This Book. And then they had a dispute, over money of course, and Tom was threatening to sue Abbie. So I was friends with both of them, and I said, "Why go to the establishment legal system where they will both look at you like you are mutants? Why not create our own little arbitration system and work this out?" So you will find an article in the New York Times in 1970, (19)71, something like that, (19)72, where we created a counterculture court. I constituted a jury of their peers, and I served as bailiff handling the evidence and procedures. SM (00:26:34): I think I saw this on a YouTube. RW (00:26:39): Oh, yes. SM (00:26:40): Yeah, I think I saw this. And you were on YouTube talking about this. Yes. RW (00:26:47): Yeah, yeah, I am talking about it. Yeah. You saw that there. And there was a New York Times piece, an editorial actually criticizing us for going outside the established legal system, which we were very proud of that criticism. Because actually I had modeled it on the ancient Jewish courts of the Middle Ages of the Sanhedrin. But in any case, at that time, I got to know people like [inaudible] of The Thugs. I played a little music at that time too, had a little sideline. So the recently deceased, Alex Chilton was a good friend of mine. He had nothing to do with the counterculture, but this is the guy who sang biggest hit of Summer of Love. "Give me a ticket for an airplane." SM (00:27:41): Oh yes. RW (00:27:42): The Box Tops. Alex was a neighbor of mine at that time. I got to know a wide variety of people. Let me see who else? John Sinclair, Abbie, Jerry. I would attend meetings of people at which people like Dave Dellinger would be there, Rennie Davis, people like Leslie Bacon, who was charged with bombing the Capitol, various members of underground organizations who today would be termed domestic terrorists. It was a heady mix of people. At one point, we took over a rock concert that was staged on Randall's Island, just off Manhattan. It was the Young Lords, the White Panthers, Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers, Yippies, a whole coalition of radical groups. And during that concert, yeah, I said hello to Jimi Hendrix, but whether he was enough out of his heroin days to say hello to me, I cannot remember. There he was. SM (00:29:21): When I interviewed Richie Havens about two months ago, Richie gave me almost two hours. And Richie said, he said what was unique about Woodstock. Well, we do not know all the story about how he had to keep playing and playing, and he was not scheduled to be the first act. But he said, "What made it so special is that they finally recognized us." And that is what he said. I said, "Please explain that, Richie. They finally." Yeah. Because he said, "I was in the village in the early (19)60s when Bob Dylan was there, and Mary Travers was there, and even little Jimi Hendrix kind of kind of walked in. He had been in the military." But he said, "Finally the country and people were recognizing that the students and the young people of the (19)60s, they were finally being recognized." So that is why he said he thought the (19)60s, I mean, Woodstock was very important. Because the musicians were getting the recognition that they deserved. RW (00:30:20): Oh yes, the musicians as well as the audience that followed that music. And there were many kinds of music at Woodstock. I would say that the music is the most important portal through which you can see the movements of those times coming together. And just to diverge a bit into my theoretical stance, but the (19)60s did not spring full-formed from the head of Zeus there. The (19)60s are part of what I call the ongoing-but-interrupted revolution that is essentially what America is all about. And you see that the business of human rights and women's rights and the business of desegregation, African American integration into society, all of these things, you can find their trace elements in the documents of the Founding Fathers who, because of circumstances were not able to instantly create the society that they visioned under the influence of the Enlightenment. But they created a structure... loose, spunky, unruly, chaotic... that would have enough structure, but enough looseness to evolve, but sort of institutionalize these movements. And so over the years, you see the women's suffrage movement. You see the abolitionists. You see even the sort of psychedelic culture, the spiritual elements in William James. All of these things are threads in our society from the beginning, including the communalism. That was the way this country survived its earliest days on the frontier. SM (00:32:58): I looked a lot of articles up that you have written, and you have a paragraph in one from a year ago that I think is beautiful. One of the questions that I have been asking all the guests is when Newt Gingrich came into power in (19)94, he always loves to attack the (19)60s generation or the period when boomers were young as a lot of the reasons why we had the problems in our society. And George Will, through his writing throughout the years, will always take shots at that period for breakdown of society, whether it be the divorce rate, or the drug culture, or lack of respect for authority or the beginnings of these different studies programs at universities, political correctness. They blame all this stuff back on then. But then you write, and these are your words, but this was the article you wrote in a year ago talking about Woodstock Consensus. And I would like to expand on this after I just read this: "The truly aberrant behavior belonged to their tormentors, those flag-waving ranks of ideologues, staunch segregationists, rabid commie hunters, and free-speech smothering censors bent on preserving their own quaint period of privilege, even if it meant radical measures. They were the un-Americans, the subversives undermining the principles that make America great, refusing to rise to the challenges set forth by our elite, longhaired founding fathers who created an imperfect union knowing it would be a struggle, but also knowing a day of reckoning must come. And come it did. It was called the (19)60s. And now even Newt is cool with it, speaking out on environmental issues and pushing green conservatism. Welcome to Yasgur's farm, Newty. See you at the hemp store." That is in a nutshell, you wrote. That is beautiful writing. RW (00:34:56): Well, thank you very much. SM (00:34:57): And really. I mean, I really am into this kind of stuff, and I thought it was so well-written in so few words. SM (00:35:03): I really am into this kind of stuff. And I thought it was so well-written in so few words that you hit it right on the target there, because he does make things. I tried to interview him for my book, and I have tried to do it twice, but he was always too busy. And then I hear rumors he may run for president. So. RW (00:35:16): Yeah. The thing is, and by the way, I want to give credit to my longtime colleague and co-conspirator Deanne Stillman. She actually looked over the piece, and added that last line about duty. SM (00:35:30): Well, I am interviewing her on Monday. RW (00:35:32): Correct. So make sure you tell her I give her credit for that. SM (00:35:35): Okay. Will do. RW (00:35:37): That very witty way to end my essay. But again, to expand on that, I tend to see American history as a continuum. And anyone who says feminism started in the (19)60s does not remember the women's suffrage movement. And even Abigail Adams saying, "Remember the women," all of the feminist occurrence from the earliest days of the Republic. Anyone who says environmentalism and tree-huggers were a product of the (19)60s, does not remember Teddy Roosevelt. SM (00:36:14): Oh yeah. RW (00:36:15): Remember John Muir. Does not remember all of the great efforts from the beginning to preserve this country instead of the spoil it. Anyone who thinks that the move for spiritual discovery, self-awareness is something born in the (19)60s does not remember that this country was founded by very self-centered people looking for religious freedom and organized as cults, called pilgrims or Quakers or Shakers who lived communally. And certainly the major theme of liberation in our country has belonged to African Americans who have been here longer than most people, have a longer history in this country than most recent immigrants. And their music is what ultimately, from West African chants, to blues, work songs, folk music, eventually rock and roll. This is the music that really, along with blue jeans and Bugs Bunny, this is what really brought down the Berlin Wall and dissolved the Cold War because these are things that everyone responds to. The idea of self-liberation, of joining with others, of the big embrace, and everybody in the world wanted to be part of that. SM (00:38:35): Where would you [inaudible]? RW (00:38:36): So that is why the music is so important. So when Richie Haven says they recognize this, yes, they certainly did, but it is even bigger than that. Our music, our call to action, to self-liberation, which requires the liberation of others. That was a cry that was heard from Prague during the Velvet Revolution, to Moscow, to Beijing and continues to be the liberating force in the world. SM (00:39:15): Where would you place the Native American movement, although it was kind of a (19)69 to (19)73 happening at its strength. And then the gay and lesbian movement, which oftentimes looks to the Civil Rights Movement as its guide and then the Latino Chicano movement because some people will say that movement is fairly new because of the fact that they are fairly recent immigrants. So it is kind of a phenomenon in the second half of the 20th century. RW (00:39:44): Yeah, if you look at the styles of the (19)60s, you will see that the trappings of the Native Americans was symbolic of the sort of spiritual, close to the land sensibility that people were cultivating at that time. I think that the biggest influence of the Native American movement has been on the environmental side and on the spiritual side. It is the one true native religion that Americans can look at for inspiration. The other movements have all been rooted in long in history. I live in a Mexican city called Los Angeles, which now also has elements of Central America and South America. Somebody who does not speak Spanish here does not know how to even pronounce the city's name or the names of streets and the Chicano movement and all of the Latin American movements from the Southwest are now spreading throughout the country. So there is not a restaurant in America that does not have a Mexican in the kitchen. Even Italian restaurants. So the thing is that the city, this country's cultural heritage, is one of its treasures. And as this plays through this out is it is we are coming into our own. Those who resisted and keep talking about, we want this country to be what we had when we were kids or our parents had, they are against the current of history. They are on the wrong side. The young people of the (19)60s who really came into their own in the (19)70s are the inheritors of the melting pot, but they were not intent on melting it and creating a sludge. They were interested in really finding and defining what was special about everybody and everybody's heritage. And I think so all of those movements come together. SM (00:42:36): I wanted to ask you, I have read the book, and I know that there is lines in there as your ultimate goals and why you did it, but why did you, first off, I do not know how you met Deanne. RW (00:42:49): Deanne, she will tell you, she read about me in New York Magazine. She was out in Cleveland or something and said, "Oh, here is a guy saying New York is like Paris in the thirties. I want to go get some of that." So she came and... SM (00:43:06): Well- RW (00:43:07): Publicity works, man. SM (00:43:08): Yeah, I guess it does. RW (00:43:09): You [inaudible] man. SM (00:43:12): Yeah. You met her and you decided to write this book. I would like to know what your ultimate goal was in this book. You state yourself that you only wanted activists in your survey. RW (00:43:23): Well, no-no-no-no. What we wanted was anyone who... In order to do this survey, to find out what the (19)60s meant to people who experienced them, you had to find people who defined themselves as (19)60s people, not necessarily activists, but people who say, "Yeah, that was my time. I experienced it. Let me tell you what it was about." So it was a self-selected audience on purpose. Deanne and I decided to do this book because after the underground press kind of puttered away, we both became journalists at the time of the new journalism, and we were writing for various magazines. I wrote for Penthouse, and I do not know, a lot of magazines. And we were paying attention to the media at that time and noticing that there was a backlash in the media against the (19)60s. People were saying, "Ah, look at Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman. They have put on suits and now they are corporate." Or they seem to be saying that because people got older and took on jobs and cut their hair, that somehow the (19)60s had failed. And that was the first wave of conservative undermining of the (19)60s message. They were trying to say that activism cannot succeed, that anyone who tries to push for progress is doomed to failure and using the (19)60s as some sort of example, or the (19)70s. And we thought that that was a very dangerous message. And so we sought to quantify exactly what it was people were talking about when they talked about the "(19)60s." SM (00:45:41): Rex [inaudible]. All right, go ahead. RW (00:45:48): Yeah, what were the (19)60s? So let us define the terms and then we can debate. So that was what we tried to do with the book to create an entertaining study of what exactly the (19)60s meant to the people who experienced it. So for instance, we had to define what people meant by the 1960s in terms of years. And so according to our survey where we asked in one of the questions in the questionnaires, when did the (19)60s begin for you personally, and when did they end for you personally? And again, we emphasize personal, not the popular idea, but the personal idea. And we also asked for anecdotes describing what it was that made that defined the beginning or the end of the (19)60s. And so the personal, very personal answers added up to really, for most people, the (19)60s did not begin until the late latter half of the decade, (19)67, (19)68, (19)69. And the (19)60s did not end for most people until really well into the (19)70s. So you have these popular media definitions of the (19)60s as being a cut and dry decade from 1960 to 1970, or the media saying, yes, the (19)60s ended without Altamont, that terrible concept. These were media constructs. But for people personally, the (19)60s really opened up late in the time, late in the calendar-defined decade, and continued well past the point that the popular definition of the (19)60s. So we kept coming up with answers like that are reasonable. It is rational, but that is the way it should work. Cause the way the word spread about popular culture in those days was much slower than it is today. [inaudible]. SM (00:48:19): Interesting about what I am trying to do is I am trying to work on the people that were born between (19)46 and (19)64. Yet during this whole process, the people that lived during that first 10 years are so different than the people that lived in the second 10 years. RW (00:48:34): Yeah. SM (00:48:34): It is a difference between night and day. Some people do not like labels of generations. I have been finding that out. They do not like boomers, generation X or any of this stuff. So I found a lot of that. And then one of the things too, because one of the criticisms of the boomer generation or the (19)60s generation or Woodstock generation is that really only five to 15 percent of the young people were ever involved in any kind of activism or maybe [inaudible]. RW (00:49:03): That is one of the things our survey tried to measure. And in terms of what we mean by the (19)60s, a lot of different things are meant. But in terms of the experiential nature of it, it is true that for the most part, the (19)60s meant nothing more than long hair, bell-bottoms, and a certain preference for rock and roll music. And beyond that, a lot of people had never marched in a protest, never participated in drugs or things like that. So the vast majority of people, I would say, in the country, let alone people who define themselves as (19)60s people, really experience the (19)60s by watching TV or reading a newspaper or something. And then later it seemed to them that the country was in turmoil, but they had never been in any sort of tumultuous situation. You see what I mean? SM (00:50:23): Yeah. RW (00:50:24): And in terms of the actual activist quotient, a very small percentage really organized or hand-lettered a protest sign or physically participated in the activist movement. If they saw a peace march going by and joined in, forever afterwards, well into their (19)50s and (19)60s today, they will say, "Oh yeah, the (19)60s, I was there. I remember that." But maybe they just walked a few blocks with a protest, but that is okay. That is fine. They were part of it. If they actually were part of the Freedom Riders, for instance, that is a very small number of white people, but the influence that they had was tremendous. So a person sitting in some small town in the Midwest who could never hope to participate in these things, but watching those protests on TV could not help but feel part of it somehow, either pro or against it. And so the decade really, it involved people emotionally, but whether it actually involved them physically and personally is a question. And how much, if you were in sympathy with the anti-war movement, but never carried a protest sign, never went on a march, does that still qualify you to be a... Well, I would say it does, if you lived your life in a way that contributed to peace, maybe voting for McGovern, maybe taking a pro-peace stance in an argument with a coworker at the factory. Whatever happened to you in that time sharply defined your identification with it. But what was troubling to Deanne and to me and to a lot of our friends in the late (19)70s was what they call a trope now, a repeated notion in the media that somehow the (19)60s, older, sadder, and wiser, the people of the (19)60s have now joined the "establishment." And everything that they did before was just a youthful whim, which isolates the activism of that time and the real gains of that time from the continuum of American history. And in fact, today, it is a widely held belief that the environment is worth saving. It is a widely held belief that it is not right to discriminate for reasons of race, creed, color, sexual orientation. It is a widely held belief that you can wear whatever you want to wear and not feel like you are ostracized. Many of the widely held beliefs of today that probably young people just think always were there, were hard fought for in the (19)60s and part of a continuum of struggles from the very beginning of this country. SM (00:54:32): When you look at, you talk about the late (19)70s, then you are talking about the (19)80s with Ronald Reagan and his very strong stand, we are back, which was really an explanation in his mind that we are going to go back to the way it was in the (19)50s, or respect for authority, spending more money on the military, that kind of an attitude. And then we get into George Bush at the end of the (19)80s. George Bush Senior, says the Vietnam syndrome is over. So there is all these little thoughts, again into Bill Clinton in the (19)90s, and then we have George Bush in the tens. Throughout this period, I think there is still that feeling that some people that are traditionalists and conservatives or have problems with that period, no matter what time in history, will deny exactly what you are just telling me. RW (00:55:28): Exactly. The word conservative means to conserve, to preserve something, and radical means something divergent. And so as you pointed out in my essay about the Woodstock Consensus, the consensus in this country is for certain underlying American principles of inclusion. And those who propagate the notion of exclusion are outside the current of American history. They are the true radicals diverging from the ideals that this country was founded upon. So how you can... There is no going back in history. We will not have restricted whites only country clubs anymore. We will not exclude women from the mainstream of American life, whether it be social, cultural, or commercial. These are things that have been ongoing since the beginning and will continue. And you cannot roll that back. SM (00:56:56): You say in that same article, I broke it down into sections here, because every single paragraph had something I thought was very important. RW (00:57:03): Thank you. SM (00:57:06): You say that I, well, second, you say that your respondents were motivated less by ideology than by finding a common cause with like-minded folks, the feeling of not being alone. There was a common spirit. That seems to be a quality found in human nature. And the thing is, and we always tell college students that they join clubs because they have similar interests and people join the Black Student Union because they are African American first. Their issues. I put a but here, because I have interviewed a lot of conservatives too in this process. Were the boomers that identified with the (19)60s weakened by not having more young people who disagreed with them. Since both individualism and community seem at odds, because there was the period in the (19)50s where segregation went to integration. And now on university campuses, we have seen to be going back to self-segregation. It was only through crises that we have seen to bring people together, whether it be 9/11, the Rodney King crisis in the (19)90s, or tragedy of Virginia Tech. These things bring people together because of their common humanity, but then they go back to their small groups. Do you think, and as some of the concerns have told me, these same people who were identified with the (19)60s who may have been activists and maybe not activists, but they identified with that period always talked about tolerance, but it was in effect, they were showing intolerance because as Phyllis Schlafly said to me, you know Phyllis Schlafly, she called them, "The troublemakers of the (19)60s are now running today's universities, and they have no tolerance for established points of view from the past, only their points of view." RW (00:58:59): Well, so we should have tolerance for people promoting bigotry. We should have tolerance for people saying society should be segregated. We should have tolerance for people who deny individuals their rights, merely because they happen to see the world a certain way. That is what people like Phyllis Schlafly are doing. And today's Tea Partyers are turning the ideals of the (19)60s upside down in order to impale the promoters of American ideals on their own [inaudible], which is ridiculous. You cannot say... Our society does allow Nazis to march in the street. All right? This is our tolerance, but you cannot restrict the club to exclude black people. If it's a public club. We will not include exclusionist. That is not what America is about. They can stand up on any street corner and say what they want. They can publish their own books, they can have their website, they can do whatever the hell they want, but they cannot exclude the inclusionists and inclusionists exclude. You know what I am saying? I am getting mixed up here, but basically they are saying, "I know I am, but what about you? So are you." It is a high school trick that they are using and they are using it to rewrite history, like Karl Rove in his book. These people are shameless, and basically everything they say is a coded message or exclusionist politics and cultural proclivities. These people hate the fact that America now has a big population of Hispanics who insist on speaking their own language, hate the fact that even though a woman like Phyllis Schlafly is out there as a powerful woman, she would put down a feminist saying, I am not a feminist, but she would not be here if it was not for feminists who fought for the right women to participate in the political process to vote. These are shameless hypocrites who want to deny that America is about inclusion and they just want to preserve their own white skin privilege. SM (01:02:10): We have people like David Horowitz and Peter Collier who have written a book called The Destructive Generation. You probably are aware of them. And he was one of the leading writers, both of them, of Ramparts Magazine. RW (01:02:24): I know. They did not write that book about the 1920s when there was another great surge of so-called radical movements. These were actually unionists and multiculturalists, Bohemians, they were called in the twenties and in the thirties, the IWW. This country has a long history of troublemakers and troublemaking generations, including the famous Boston Tea Party, which was really... They dressed up like Indians just like the hippies did to protest an authoritarian structure. Today's Tea Partyers, they pretend to adhere to the teachings of Saul Valinski. He would disavow them instantly. Every generation in this country has been a troublemaking generation. It is just that those in power have sought, more or less successfully, to suppress them. And in the (19)60s, you will see the stirrings of it in the (19)50s. You will see the people who... The reason why people long hair for the first time in this country's history was out of style was because if you had a crew cut in the early (19)50s, it proved that you had done military service. And it had been 10 years since anyone had let their hair grow. A crew cut was the common haircut. That was the style. And it seemed to be, at some point people forget the way things used to be. SM (01:04:19): Crew cuts and flat tops. RW (01:04:21): Yes. Well, flat tops. And anyone with long hair in the (19)50s was looked at as a weirdo or sexual pervert. But they forget that when you see a picture of General Custer, for instance, one of the great heroes, so-called, but he had long hair right down to his shoulders. Most of American history men had long hair. So why was there such a big fuss about long hair? Well, that is what it was. SM (01:04:54): In your opinion, because you asked the question to over a thousand people back in (19)77, (19)78, (19)79. When did the (19)60s begin in your opinion? And when did the (19)60s end in your opinion? RW (01:05:10): Well, again, if you are asking when did it begin for me personally, that is one thing. SM (01:05:15): Yeah, That is what I am after. You personally. RW (01:05:24): In 1959, when I was nine years old, I went to California for the first time with my parents. Went to Disneyland a year after it had opened and went surfing. It was a summer vacation, but my beatnik uncle was already out here having a good time. He picked us up at the airport in a Cadillac convertible with the top down and took us to our hotel. And then at some point during our time in LA, he took us to go visit a friend of his up in Topanga Canyon. Have you ever heard of Topanga Canyon? SM (01:06:08): Nope. I lived in the Bay Area. I did not live in the... RW (01:06:12): All right. Well, Topanga Canyon is just before Malibu. It is a- SM (01:06:16): Well, I know where Malibu is. RW (01:06:21): [inaudible] of the city where a lot of Bohemians went to live, and it is a beautiful area. But he had a friend there named Bob Dewitt, and Bob Dewitt, he lived... You had to cross a bridge over a creek. You parked up the road, and you crossed this bridge. And he had this shack, a sort of rambling shack. And he had three or four daughters running around barefoot, kind of ragged and dirty. And he had a beard and he was a potter. He made ceramics, pottery, and he was a hippie before there was the word hippie. He was a beatnik without calling himself that. He just lived a sort of free lifestyle. And I was just blown. I thought, this is how, I thought this was fun. I saw the young girls running around barefoot, not caring about anything, and that is a cool way to live. I said, "I want to live like that." And so I would say that would be the beginning of it. But the other part of that beginning was that after we left there, my dad made some cutting remark about Bob Dewitt-less. SM (01:07:43): Yeah. RW (01:07:47): Bob Dewitt-less, he says, putting him down. Well, as it turns out, years later, I found out that Bob Dewitt-less was not so weightless. He actually slowly acquired much of the land in Topanga Canyon, which grew in value immensely over the years. And he was able to sell off that land and buy himself a nice spread in Hawaii and lived a very nice life. But the point is, I experienced both a counterculture that was apart from the nine to five commuter life that my dad had constructed for himself and for us, as well as the backlash against it, which was a kind of envy, a kind of jealousy, a kind of bitterness that here was a life that my father and others like him had fought for during the war. And it seemed that people like this beatnik in Topanga Canyon were throwing that away or somehow casting doubt upon its values. And really in this country, that is where the (19)60s begins and ends. The people who wish they could live a life that is freer and hate, the ones who are able to do that, because it really undermines the value of their spiritual and cultural real estate. Their belief system is cast into doubt. So someone who says, "Your country club life is not for me. It is worthless. And it is even wrong because you do not admit certain kinds of people." People who believed in that strongly, who fought. RW (01:10:02): Believed in that strongly who fought during the war to attain that measure of success. Sure, they felt threatened, they felt offended, and they felt angry because somewhere deep down they knew that they had lost something. That the promise of the good life that they had fought for and believed in, and maybe on that island in the Pacific, or the Battle of the Bulge, or on the beaches of Normandy, that promise never was fulfilled, and never could be fulfilled personally unless all of society's promise was fulfilled. So how could you be a happy person in the suburbs watching TV in 1956 or (19)60 and watching black Americans being hosed down and bitten by these dogs? How could you feel secure in your own life if you knew that a part of society was not able to enjoy the freedoms that you yourself... There was a hypocrisy. People knew it. And how they reacted to it marked by the beginning of the (19)60s or the end of the (19)60s for them personally. Because either they got involved and did something about it or they did not or they fought against it. At the end of the (19)60s, they either realized some measure of self-liberation, but they did not. SM (01:11:54): That is a great answer by the way. And I know this has been a very difficult question for others because we were talking 78 million boomers here that were born between (19)46 and 1964. And I just read this recently, that there are now more millennials than there ever were boomers. There is almost 81 million millennials. So the boomer generation is no longer the largest generation in history, and that is a little shocking to some boomers. But is there any weight from the people that you know, and it is only based on your experiences now, because like I mentioned, there were 78 million, might all have different stories, of what you would consider positive qualities or negative qualities within the people that you knew that were defined by the (19)60s? RW (01:12:49): Can you rephrase that? SM (01:12:51): Yeah, if there are some negative qualities that you saw in some of your fellow boomers and some of the positive qualities you saw in the boomers. RW (01:13:03): I do not think any of the positives or the negatives are specific to the generation. If you want to talk about self-destructiveness, certainly we can talk about the drugs and suicidal behavior that many people in the (19)60s fell to. But then you would have to look at the same thing in any generation, drinking themselves to death, driving too fast, or behaving in an unhealthy manner. Even smoking cigarettes, which was so common in this country in the thirties, (19)40s, and (19)50s. That is pretty self-destructive, we know now. And the millennials too have their own self-destructive bent, beginning with Kurt Cobain, who was not a (19)60s person, would not identify I think with anything hippy. There are enough rock stars, and actors, celebrities of today's generation who are falling prey to self-destruct behavior. SM (01:14:34): Some of the people that really stand out from the (19)60s or for the boomer generation. I remember when Phil Oaks committed suicide and I was just shocked by it because he wrote those great songs. He was very committed to the end of the war, and then he did himself in. RW (01:14:54): Well, today we know more about bipolar conditions. Abbie Hoffman. SM (01:15:00): Yes, and that was sad. RW (01:15:02): Was very much prey to that. And my friend Tom Forcade was heavily bipolar and he also fell prey to that. But then you get somebody like Heath Ledger. SM (01:15:13): Yes. RW (01:15:14): And there are several musical stars who in the past few years have been self-destructive as well. So I do not see it quite that way. In terms of positives, those two are attributes. There was a certain... Because there was a prevailing notion of a party going on, if you will, there is more of us. We were all linked. And whenever there was the idea of let us do something together to improve the world, you were more likely to be joined in that effort than ever before. In the (19)50s, the theme of the (19)50s was alienation. You read J D Salinger. That is the way it was before the (19)60s. Angry, alone, weird. You thought you were the only one who thought like that. You thought you were the only one who felt like that. In the (19)60s, people felt freer to share their emotions and feelings and to join together in those. And that continues to this day. Saw the outpouring of expression and the money for Haiti, for We Are The World. All of these things were born in the show of numbers, the show of hands at Woodstock. So when Richie Havens says they recognize us, yes, they recognize, we all recognize one another. And what had once been a lonely identity, and it was the rage in the (19)50s to... What was it? The Lonely Society? SM (01:17:19): Yeah. It was The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman. RW (01:17:22): Yes, The Lonely Crowd. The theme of alienation gave way to a theme of a celebration of like interests. And that continues to this day. Today, no one will tell you that they were part of the crowd in high school. Today everybody says, "Oh, I was a weirdo in high school." Right? SM (01:17:48): Yeah. RW (01:17:51): Everybody is a non-conformist today and that is a good thing. We recognize our individuality, but at the same time, we recognize our unity as individuals and we are not afraid to join together as weirdos and idiosyncratic beings in common cause for something that is obviously important. So I can tell you that my mom, when she organized a cooperative kindergarten in our small town in upstate New York, she was labeled a communist and her car vandalized, including with anti-Semitic expressions. That would never happen today. Everything is cooperative. Everything is collaborative. SM (01:18:47): And I know that Phyllis Schlafly, when I interviewed her, we were talking. Somehow, we got under the environmental movement and she said, "Yes, they are all former communists." RW (01:19:01): The United States is a former communist country because it was started by communalists. So these labels are so meaningless. People like her, they would rather divide people into categories than to find what unites us. And if there is anything that unites the United States of America, it is our national parks are the first. There were never national parks in the entire world until we created them. And our recognition that the environment is a sacred treasure and a national heritage. Does she want to say that that is a communist idea? SM (01:19:52): It was just a quick response to a different movement. She did not go into any detail. I spoke to her, she was very nice. She has always been nice and she gave me the time. RW (01:20:00): Well, they are all very nice. But they do not realize the toxic nature of what they say. So in other words, Theodore Roosevelt was a communist for starting our national park system. These are deeply dividing, divisive terms. There has never been a left in this country in the same way that there has been a communist movement in Europe, a socialist movement. There has never been a right in this country in the same way that there has been a fascist movement in Germany and other places. SM (01:20:40): I can remember reading some place that critics... I like Teddy Roosevelt, I learned a lot from him, great quotes on leadership. But he was heavily criticized for killing animals in Africa. And until you found out more in-depth information as to why he was killing those animals, because we did not have zoos then and museums. And he was sending the bodies back to be used in museums. So he was not just killing them for the mere fact of killing them. He was killing them for educational reasons. People love animals. I can understand where they are coming from, but they do not tell the whole story about why he was doing it. RW (01:21:23): Yes, and the thing of it is those were different times. But certainly he was thinking in a direction that has benefited the country. And I think we need to abandon these notions of left and right, think in more five-dimensional. There are people who are following major themes in American history as described, as posed in the original founding father's documents, and those who are trying, digging in their heels and trying to slow that sort of thing. I think if you view current issues like healthcare and education and even taxes within the context of all of American history, I think it is quite clear that anything that embraces people and their welfare is where we need to go one way or the other. There are people in this country who say that taxes are an invasion of privacy and a violation of individual freedom. And I would hope that they never use a highway, never turn on a water faucet using the public water system, never use electricity, never use a telephone, never use anything that requires the cooperation of large numbers of people across state lines. Because if they do not want to pay for that stuff, call an ambulance, a cop, check into a hospital, if they do not want to use that stuff, that is fine. But do not deny others the right to. Taxes, you might say that is a socialist idea, but it is an idea that everyone contributes according to their... People are not debating these things within the context of America. They are debating it in terms of what is left and what is right, and that is not an accurate construct for debates to take place. SM (01:24:06): Did you have a generation gap with your parents? You already told me about that experience with the beat in California when you were very young. But did you have a real strong gap with your mom and dad during that time? And secondly, this is a general question, but obviously you are a dad and you are a boomer dad and you are raising kids. Have boomers been very good parents or even grandparents with respect to sharing what it was like then? The learning lessons that were important for the boomers, have they shared them with their kids? Because the question I ask as a person who has been in higher ed for over 30 years, obviously I do not see the activism we saw back then and- RW (01:24:54): That is a mistake. Again, that is one of the things. We never got to put that in our book, but we did want to. One of the themes of the end of the (19)70s about the (19)60s was that activism is over. Activism is more widespread today than ever in the (19)60s. And it has to do with not just the narrow definition of radical activism, but activism of all kinds, whether it is protesting campus budget cutbacks, or bunch of moms uniting to get a streetlight at a dangerous intersection, or collecting money for any particular cause, or volunteering to help nonprofits. This is much more widespread today and nobody thinks a moment about it. In the (19)50s, in the post-war period, anyone carrying a picket sign was automatically labeled a subversive because of the McCarthyistic nature of those times. People, they do not think twice about protesting or organizing to accomplish something, whatever it might be. So activism is one of those principles of the (19)60s that was anchored in all the previous years of American history that was dormant in the (19)50s and now is part of the fabric of our society. In any case, my son who is 21 and a college student and a rock and roll drummer and a very smart kid with his own idiosyncratic way, who knows what he and his crowd are going to be up to? But he recognizes, he has taken the time to go through my record collection so that he understands that the music of today is rooted in the music of previous generation. He is not like us. I thought the Rolling Stones, all that music, that that was theirs, they invented that. And then when I got down to it, I realized, "Oh my god, they are doing songs by Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf." And then where do they get their music? We had to discover it because that history had been suppressed. Today that is commonly acknowledged and much more accessible. SM (01:27:56): One of the things you mentioned early on here is the words. When you define the (19)60s generation, we use the words us and we, feeling a [inaudible], a camaraderie, a sense of community and ideas, ideals, shared experiences. But in later years, and Christopher Lasch wrote The Culture Of Narcissism, which was a very popular book in the (19)80s, actually it was the late-(19)70s. He said that us and we went into me. And so what was we became so into themselves, it was like the religious experiences of the (19)60s, what happened after the war ended, and then with the increase in violence, and that people burned out, they went into an inner spirituality where they believed in not necessarily a god but someone. RW (01:28:57): I will tell you, there are these generalities of burnouts and what a generation is doing at any one time. Let me change my- Very good. People make these statements, these generalities about what any particular generation is doing at any one time. One thing that you can say for sure is that people are born, they are young, they grow older, and they die. And along the way, people tend to follow certain paths. And statistically across a large population of people, you could say that a generation tends to act in one way or another. Certainly when you are young and in college and have no family obligations or job obligations, you can take the time to be an activist and protest and be somewhat reckless in your life. Certainly as you grow older and have to get a job, you will be more restricted in your activities. And as you grow even older, you will cut down on even more reckless behavior. And you may even start to look askance at such behavior in younger people. These are common human traits and behavioral tendencies. And it is not uncommon for people as they grow older to start questioning things and to seek spiritual answers. And America is nothing if not a religious country, or a spiritual country rather. And so naturally, as they entered their thirties, the generation that was most populous during the (19)60s tended to question and look for spiritual answers, which is part and parcel of the spiritual search that was part of the (19)60s counterculture, the Harry Krishnas. Look at The Beatles going to India, transcendental meditation. These are mainstream currents of every human life and very much part of American life. Spiritualism, the quest for spiritual answers, you can read that all through the literature, beginning all the way back to Nathaniel Hawthorne questioning the religious principles of his time. There was a huge spiritual movement in this country, spiritualist in the late-1880s and early-1900s with Madame Blavatsky and a lot of hucksters trying to contact the spirit mediums and so on. This has always been an American trait. So to narrow, to take the telescope and turn it around and focus so narrowly is at once a mistake, but it is also very correct. Yes, people tend to become more spiritually inclined as they grow older. So what? So what does that mean? They are selfish? Does it mean that the (19)60s never happened? That activism not only was a failure but was wrong? No. These things continue along with the spiritual quest. And it is not as if what is happening today invalidates what happened yesterday. What it does do is provide people like Christopher Lasch with a book topic that they can sell and go on talk shows and do interviews about. The (19)60s provided a lot of fuel for the popular definers of the age. Everyone wanted to define the age in which we live. Meanwhile, people live normal lives. They go through phases. And nobody says that because they are the way they are in their (19)50s, that somehow that makes their lives when they were 20 and 30 somehow invalid. SM (01:34:00): You make good points. And one of the things too is the kids of the boomers, because the first kids were the generation Xers. They were born after (19)65. And they overall did not get along very well with boomers in many ways. But they were the ones being attacked as being the yuppies. Remember? They were trying to make lots of money before they turned 30 on Wall Street. So what kind of parents were the boomers if they raised these kids who became yuppies? RW (01:34:31): These are easy terms to throw around and easy ideas, flap upside somebody's head. But in fact, because we enjoyed the affluence of the post-war period, what does that mean about our parents who struggled through the thirties and the warriors of the (19)40s? Did it invalidate who they were or what they did? They fought so that we could enjoy peace and comfort. And why hold it against us that we did? In fact, the notion that somehow we took for granted what had been hard fought, hard won is contrary to what actually happened, which is that the young people in the (19)60s were not satisfied with the situation. And they did try to extend their peace and prosperity to other people. And that should make people sit up and take notice. Yes, the greatest generation to call fought for our freedom, but is not it equally as great that the next generation was not content to sit and be satisfied with that wealth and prosperity and that peace, that instead be agitated? We became troublemakers in order to share what we had with everyone because it was not... There was a saying, "None of us are free unless all of us are free." And certainly as a young person traveling in the South in 1966, as I did with a friend of mine. We stole a car and headed south to go visit a guy I had met the previous summer who said he lived in New Orleans. He had some good pot. So me and my friend, we skipped school one day, stole a car, took his brother-in-law's credit card, and headed for New Orleans. Go visit our friend Pino and get some good dope. So we head down there to New Orleans, driving through the South in 1966. In about this time, springtime, when the red earth of Georgia was just breaking open and you could smell the Mississippi delta. We arrived in New Orleans, we go to the address that Pino had given me, and it is this little shotgun shack down in the Lower Ninth Ward. Woman answers the front door, sees these two white kids. And she was kind of coffee-colored. We said, "Hey, is Pino home?" And she said, "Oh, sorry. Pino is in the parish county jail." So we said, "Oh, we will go visit him." And we went and bought a carton of cigarettes because that is what prisoners like. And we went to the parish county jail and there was a sign outside that said white visiting hours so-and-so, colored visiting hours so-and-so. Well, I had never thought of this guy Pino as white or colored or what. I could not tell what she was. I know now she was Creole. But we were so ashamed and embarrassed to have to ask somebody if our friend was white or colored and which visiting hours that... My friend and I, we went over to the banks of the Mississippi, sat there, smoked a few cigarettes. And without a word, we got up, jumped into our stolen car and headed back north, defeated by a situation that we had no knowledge of, no part in. And no way to do anything about it because we were 16 years old in a stolen car and wondering what this was all about. And of course, in ensuing years we learned very quickly. And some of us tried to do something about it. But the point is that we witnessed a time in this country that was very different from now. And the way things are now are directly a result of people who were not satisfied with the way things were in 1960s and did something about it. Whether I did it or somebody else did, it does not matter. Somebody did something about it. And I am so proud to have been born at that time. I can sit here now and say I wept openly when an African American was elected president. Said to myself, like so many others, "I never thought I would live to see this day." And quite frankly, if a lightning bolt had come down and struck me dead at that time, I would have died with a smile on my face because I have lived to see the realization of much that was only distantly promised and so difficult to imagine becoming a reality. And today, my son and his friends enjoy this stuff and so they should. And if they want to continue to struggle with all of the issues that are remaining, and there are quite a few, then that is fine. SM (01:40:54): Yeah, it is interesting that we have African American- RW (01:40:56): That is my favorite story of the (19)60s by the way. SM (01:40:59): You see, that is a magic moment, Rex. That is what I mean, these things that come out in an interview. I am not saying I am going to use it for the book. It will be in the interview, but on the book title. But see, that is what I meant. Things that I did not expect that may have come out in interviews. I cannot believe some of the things that have come out in my interviews. And I have only had one person in 100, you are my 142nd person, and only one person said, "You better not put that in print." And that was a person who is very close to the Kennedy Family. And he admitted that he could not stand Bobby. And he says, "I cannot have Ethel know that." RW (01:41:47): My dad wrote speeches for Bobby Kennedy. And he could not stand him either because he finally met him and thought he was a jerk. Put that in the book. SM (01:41:56): Yeah, he changed that. The last couple of years, he was different than he was early on. You are a boomer. And as a boomer, just looking at a decade, you do not have to give me any in depth explanation, but boomers are now into their (19)60s. And they have lived through the (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, (19)80s, (19)90s, and what we call the tens, the Bush, and now Obama. If you were to go from the (19)50s and for each of these decades, just a few words as a boomer, what do you think of these decades? You do not have to go into any depth of what they mean. But if you were just coming in from outer space or something like that and you wanted to tell someone in a few words what the (19)50s was, what the (19)60s was, what the (19)70s was, what would they be? RW (01:42:51): Well, I would say that the (19)50s, the country was locked in a post-traumatic stress syndrome after the war, struggling to emerge. The (19)60s, we emerged and realized we needed more therapy and treated ourselves to a good time and a worthy time. (19)70s, we matured, paid attention to the demands of maturity. The (19)80s, we indulged ourselves in our success at every level. (19)90s, we got a little tired. And we continue to lapse into senility. But in everyone's life cycle, there are predictable phases. And all of them have been very predictable considering the circumstances. And looking at the times that we have been through, through the lens of knowledge that we have now about what happens after wars to people, what happens to people who are oppressed, what happens to people who emerge from difficult situations and are allowed to indulge themselves, what happens then. These are all predictable phases for most people. But within that, there are times, extraordinary times when. RW (01:45:02): ...times, extraordinary times when people show great courage and are emboldened to acts of bravery because they see everyone around them being supportive or there is a necessity for it. And I think the (19)60s were a time when all of the previous currents of American history came together at the same time that we enjoyed enough comfort and security to be able to turn ourselves to the task of the unfinished revolution that America started with. SM (01:45:59): In your book, you talk about in a section there about the heroes. Some of the people that are certainly defined who they are by their time in the (19)60s with names of people from the (19)60s and the (19)70s. I found as a college administrator since probably around the late (19)80s before I left a year ago, is that many of the Generation X students and Millennial students do not pick well known personalities, politicians, musicians, they pick their family members, they picked their father, their mother, their uncle, their aunt, a teacher, a minister. Have you found this to be true? RW (01:46:47): Well, yes. SM (01:46:47): Somehow heroes have changed from those that were in the news to people who are not known. RW (01:46:54): That is an interesting aspect. I do not know who my son's heroes are. And certainly they do not hold them up to such a high degree as we did. But I think in the (19)60s, the personality posters, having a poster of Che Guevara or Malcolm X on your dorm room wall, a poster of Bob Dylan, it was a way we had to sort of overcompensate for a lack of definition of who we were and what was going on. The (19)50s tended to enforce conformity and reduce the individual's profile in society. Perhaps as a reaction to the grotesque hero worship of the warriors. When having a picture of Hitler on the wall was compulsory or picture of Mussolini. So in the (19)60s, we sought to define ourselves by personalities like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez music and JFK as well, Bobby. Right now, I think people have won the right to be their own heroes, to not have such iconic beacons of selfhood. I mean, it would be embarrassing today to have a picture of Bob Dylan on your wall or Kurt Cobain, or God knows. I mean, my son would never do anything like that. He and his friends, they are their own heroes. They are heroic every day of their lives. We won the right for them to do that. So now they can be non-conformists like everybody else, and they define themselves. SM (01:49:15): What term do you feel best defines the Boomer generation? Because you use Woodstock census, and then you have Woodstock consensus. And of course there is many terms for this generation, Vietnam generation, the Woodstock generation, the protest generation, the love generation, the movement generation. The list goes on and on. RW (01:49:37): Yeah. I would- SM (01:49:37): Which one do you feel most comfortable with? RW (01:49:39): Yeah. Well, let us start with what I would reject. I would reject the protest generation because there was more protest in this country going on in the twenties and thirties than any other time. And certainly if you go back to civil war days, there were anti-draft protests, riots. This country has a tradition of protest and it did not start in the (19)60s. So I would reject that. I am happy with Woodstock generation because it is true that it was emblematic of our unity, our counter-cultural sensibility. The music was extremely important as a unifying factor and as a way of recognizing the contribution of African-American culture to our society. I think the Woodstock generation is apropos, but Boomer is slightly derogatory, baby boom. Yes. We were all a product of the peace and prosperity and therefore the fertile activities of our parents following the war. It is a common occurrence after war for a society of experience of a wide increased birth incidents because, hey, the soldiers are home. So was there a boom boomer generation after the First World War? Probably. So it does pay tribute to our accomplishments or activities. Because really the number of people who participated in the (19)60s as opposed to those who identify with it, those are two different things. I would say that I would hate to really define it literally. I am much more interested in those who identify with the American... Those who identify the (19)60s with American mainstream currents, historical currents. I am much more interested in them. And I am also interested in those who resisted those currents then and continue dangerously to resist them now. SM (01:52:30): So you would not have a problem with the Vietnam generation then? RW (01:52:34): Well, that is difficult because then you are calling into question your participation as either someone who served in the military during that time or somehow served in the anti-war movement at that time. That is a much more controversial and divisive way to define our generation. Certainly in Vietnam, there is a Vietnam generation and people seem to forget that. SM (01:53:18): Yeah, I am actually interviewing the top scholar in America at Harvard, June 10th. She teaches Vietnamese history and I am getting it from her side. RW (01:53:30): But what I want to know is what about the people who spit on the little black kids who tried to integrate schools in Mississippi and Alabama? What about the people who beat up the freedom rider? What about the people who excluded blacks from their country clubs? What about the people who sought to exclude hippies with long hair from what about the principals and teachers who threw kids out of school for having a Beatle haircut? Where are those people today? Are they listening to a muzak version of the times they are changing as they go up the elevator? Are they confessing to the fact that they really, during the (19)60s resisted and hated hippies and long hairs? [inaudible] confess to that today because they are the traitors. They are the ones who betrayed this country by not following the ideals and principles that the country is founded on. SM (01:54:45): This leads right into the... There is two big issues here that I have tried to do with each interview. One is whether we as a nation have a problem with healing. And I have gotten many, many different responses to this. Let me preface this by saying that I took a group of students to Washington DC about maybe 12 years ago. Senator Edmund Muskie was retirement and he was not feeling very well. He was working in some sort of law firm. And I got this meeting due to Gaylord Nelson, a friend of his former senator from Wisconsin. In fact, I am interviewing his daughter tomorrow on the phone. But the question was that our students asked him is, do you think that we are having a problem with healing from all the divisions that took place in the (19)60s, the division between black and white, between those who supported the war, those were against the war and all the other divisions that we saw throughout that timeframe, or as some people say, "Time heals all wounds," that we really do not have a problem with healing in this nation. And Muskie responded in this way. Everybody thought he was going to talk about 1968 and all the clubbing of the students and the police and the brutality in the divisions of the country and the assassinations and everything else. He did not even mention it. His response was simple. He said, "I just got out of the hospital. I saw the Ken Burns Civil War series," and he said, "We have not healed as a nation since the Civil War." And then he went on for 10 minutes to talk about why. RW (01:56:23): Yes, I was going to give the same answer. It has taken 100 years to recover from that. And we still find people who say the South should have won the war, and they fly the old Dixie and sing the song. And they are unrepentant and refuse to see the reality of what happened then. And we may not ever outlive that, but it is true. And then you also think, I think if you see things from the African-American point of view, people tell them, "Get over it. Slavery is over. The civil rights movement is over. Get over it." And then you realize that the Jewish people have been talking about their time in slavery in Egypt for over 3000 years and have not forgotten that. These are deeply traumatic wounds that take a long time to heal. SM (01:57:38): Yeah. Well, I bring up... The Vietnam memorial's done a pretty good job of trying to heal the veterans and their families. Although I go to the wall and boy, they still have a lot of healing. And then I have often... Some person asks, "Are you just basically talking about those who were against the war and those who fought in the war? Because I can answer that question." Some would say. And I have often wondered, when boomers who did, were in the end anti-war movement, go to the wall and the young kids ask them, "Dad, what did you do in the war?" And whether they say anything or they were against the war. I think about these kinds of things. And you just made a very important statement with all those people who kicked students out of classes, who the Bull Connors of the world who put hoses on African Americans and beat them up. Like John Lewis to me, is one of the heroes of America because he took it and never fought back. He just got beat up. Your thoughts? Do we have a problem as a nation with healing? RW (01:58:45): Well, yes. And this goes to another theme of mine that I will expand on in some other venue. But I do believe that we are a nation that lives comfortably under illusions and delusions of who we are and our denial of the great sin of the genocide of Native Americans. Our denial of these things, of the crimes that we have committed does not allow us to heal. No one wants to talk about the roots of 9/11 in the overthrow of Mosaddegh in Iran in the (19)50s, the first democratically elected government in that part of the world. Our CIA overthrew him. And no wonder they hate our guts. Our overthrow of democratically elected governments in South America because our corporations needed to maintain their share of profits from those places. We have committed huge crimes as a nation meanwhile denying that these things are crimes. And even today, people were telling Obama not to go around the world apologizing. Well, it would do us good if we did, but it would do us more good if we admitted to the truths of our history and repented. Now I am a badass motherfucker and I would love to see a truth and reconciliation committee set up. It will never happen and probably divide the country even worse. But I am really pissed off at those people and I do not think they are ever repent, and I do not think they will ever be sorry. And I think the Phyllis Schlafly's of the world continued to lie to themselves and everyone else about who we are as a people and who they are as people. Phyllis Schlafly, does not she have a gay son? SM (02:00:57): I think she does. RW (02:00:58): Yeah. I mean this miserable cunt, I would slap her upside the head physically if I saw her. That is who I am. But it is probably a bad thing to do, the wrong thing to do. But people have committed crimes in this country that have gone unpunished and they walk around today and I just wonder what is inside their heads. SM (02:01:27): Rex, you are really bringing something up here and maybe you ought to pursue it because I would certainly support you on it about the... Because we have seen in the last maybe 10, 15 years, some of those people that were let off Scott free for the atrocities they committed in the South are now being brought to justice and being put in prison even if they are 75, 85 years old. RW (02:01:50): Well, yeah. SM (02:01:51): Part of it is happening, particularly the ones that killed Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney. I think they have been brought to justice, and I am not sure if they ever found the ones that blew up the church. I do not think they ever found them. But you raise a good point. But I am a firm believer that they are going to... If you believe in the power above, they are going to pay a heavy price in the power above. RW (02:02:17): Well, that is good to know. And I am with you on that. But I am thinking even the quieter crimes, the people who in their everyday behavior denied justice to somebody or some people or participated in the mobs that harassed or blocked civil rights or just behaved in a way that restricted someone else's freedom and liberty that was in a way, traumatic for that other person. So the principal of the school who threw a student out because he insisted on having long hair or had a poster of Bob Dylan on his wall or something. SM (02:03:03): I am a firm believer as a nation we have a lot of soul searching to do because things have come out since World War II regarding the Nazis and how some of the... We are not talking about the leadership, but we are talking about the underlings who committed some of the most worse atrocities in the world, worse than Eichman were brought into the United States and went on to live comfortable lives. And the government knew they were here and there were their information for whatever. There is a lot of hypocrisy going on here, and it is very disturbing. Another question is the issue of trust. The boomers have often, and the (19)60s generation, the boomers is not a very trusting generation for obvious reasons, because they saw leaders lie constantly, whether it be LBJ and the Gulf of Tonkin or Watergate with Richard Nixon. Certainly nobody trusted Ford at the point that he was going to pardon Richard Nixon, even though they said he healed a nation by doing so. And then you had issues with the U-2, with Eisenhower lying on black and white TV and a lot of experience, the lies that McNamara gave to the American people about the escalating numbers, all the things. And I can see why many boomers did not trust their leaders, but you experienced it as I did. Boomers did not seem to trust anybody in a position of leadership, whether it be a rabbi, a priest, a minister, a university president, a corporate leader, anyone who was a leader. Just your response on that. And as a political science person, I was a history political science major, and we were taught early on that not having trust is actually a good quality to have because it means dissent is alive and well. So just your thoughts on the boomers or the (19)60s generation just did not trust people? RW (02:05:10): Well, yes. I think there had been a tremendous betrayal of trust in the years leading up to the (19)60s. And there was the reality of what we were experiencing diverged from what the leaders were saying. And the famous credibility gap of the Johnson years epitomized what was going on. But this is not to say that JFK did not lie to us or that he was not similarly under some illusion or in the control of powers that continued to manipulate our history to their benefit while mouthing patriotic platitudes. I do believe that there is a secret history of the country that has yet to be acknowledged. Our victimization of not only our own citizens at home, but of other countries, other people's economies. And this may never be acknowledged. And given that circumstance, I continue to define myself... How should I say it? It is what I identify with about the (19)60s is the willingness to resort to methods, unconventional methods, shall we say, to either protest or force a change. And I reserve my right and my resources and my experience to take that with me to the grave if necessary, but certainly to impart that to the rest of the world and say, as we said back then, if it comes to it, let us pick up the gun. And I am not afraid of that. It would be a terrible thing. But there are forces still alive in this country, part of the secret history of the country that want to turn the clock back, but they cannot do it. And that is what makes them so dangerous. SM (02:08:16): So as someone who may be different from you, I mean, your stand is correct in what you believe, but the fact that Students for Democratic Society went downhill after they started committing violence, even Mark Rudd said it is the greatest mistake he ever made in his life. Bernadine Dohrn has not made that admission. And then the American Indian Movement, they even realized when they started going violent at Wounded Knee, that was a big, big mistake. The gay and lesbian movement, when the Harvey Milk was murdered in (19)78, they committed violence. They regret the violence that happened two or three days later. The protest was okay, but the violence never went any... And of course, the Black Panthers and the Black Power- RW (02:09:05): It is all very regrettable and it is a terrible thing and people do get hurt, and when it is happening all around you, it is terrifying. I just happen to be in San Francisco during the protests when the sentence came down in the Harvey Milk. SM (02:09:28): Yeah, I lived out there. I lived in Burlingame. RW (02:09:30): All right. Well, I was there with my friend Paul Krasner and a bunch of- SM (02:09:34): Oh, I have read... He is a good writer. RW (02:09:37): You should be in touch with Paul. He would be a good interview for [inaudible]. SM (02:09:40): I do not even know how to get ahold of him. RW (02:09:43): I set one of the police cars on fire during that time, just because I could. And I will admit it now. Come and get me motherfuckers. SM (02:09:50): Oh my golly, I know the chief. No, only kidding. RW (02:09:55): You know what I mean? I just think that one of the things about America that is very American is it is violent nature and that is something we cannot deny. And I was never a peace and love hippie. I was a... What can I tell you? But in any case, I think that just as the NRA says, we all have a right to go around armed. I say, yeah, and I want to be armed against you guys because you are the ones who are the craziest with your crazy ideas. I mean, you never really hear of left-wingers shooting places up. It is always people with strange, strange sort of... I do not know. SM (02:10:57): What other things here? We only got about 10 more... You have gone way overboard with me and I want to thank you. RW (02:11:02): All right. SM (02:11:03): Time wise. Trauma is something.... I am very lucky. I am going to have an interview with Robert J. Lifton in July. He has written a lot of books on trauma, certainly amongst the Vietnam veterans. I am going to ask him about trauma regarding the boomer generation and a lot of the people on the other side as well. But you have already talked about all generations in American history have gone through trauma. Certainly when Lincoln was killed back in the Civil War as the North was getting so close to winning that war, and they won the war, but we went through so much with Kennedy and the other Kennedy and King and the riots, and then the Vietnam. (19)68 looked like the country's going apart, Kent State and Jackson State. Then in the (19)80s, we had the AIDS crisis where the president did not even care as probably half of the male population that were gay may have passed away. Certainly what happened with Harvey Milk and Moscone in (19)78 and John Monon in 1980? The only reason I bring these up is that whenever there seems to be some sort of hope or people who lead, who conspire, people that hope reigns eternal, that good things can come through persistence and hard work and believing in justice and equality and no man or woman is better than anybody else. And then there is murder or there is something. And of course, I always live by the philosophy like Dr. King is, you may kill dreamer, but you cannot kill the dream. That is the way I have lived my life. And I think if you asked any of these people that died, they would say the same thing. But I have often wondered, and maybe you and I are on the same wavelength as boomers. I have wondered what my fellow generation, I think about these things, what this trauma has done to them personally in their lives. And it is thinking beyond yourself kind of mentality. It is trauma, just your comments on trauma. RW (02:13:16): Yes. Well, there was the trauma of the Second World War that was inflicted upon our parents after the trauma of the Depression. And so we came into a world of traumatized Americans. They tried to shield us from that in the hopes that we would never experience anything like it. But the greatest generation created the Vietnam War. So there we had to go through it again and in a worse manner because some went and some did not. And it was just a completely traumatic time. The war alone just overshadowed everything. And I could not have the education that my parents struggled to provide for me because my own conscience would not allow it. So think about that kind of trauma. All of society was afflicted by matters of conscience there. The Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War, or so many of the issues of the time, we were traumatized by having our conscience provoked. We were forced to feel, forced to think instead of sinking into comfort and peace and comfort. Let me... All right, go right ahead. SM (02:15:26): So I think being forced to act as a matter of conscious being forced to feel and think these things felt traumatic because it was our right not to be afflicted by these things, I think. RW (02:15:45): The pictures often say of a million words. When you think of, I would say the first 30 years of boomers lives, (19)50s, (19)60s, and (19)70s, maybe the early (19)80s, what are the pictures, the photographs that were either on fronts of magazines or within magazines or may have been shown on TV that really, if someone had never read a history book of this period, but looked at these pictures, they would understand? SM (02:16:14): They do not understand? RW (02:16:16): No, they would understand. SM (02:16:18): The pictures give meaning to the period. RW (02:16:21): Well, the photo from Kent State of the young woman kneeling, that shows the extent to which white people went to protest the war. Any of the photos from My Lai or any of the war photos of the terror, of the young men of fighting for what they believed in or thought they believed in. Certainly the photos from the Civil Rights movement, certainly the photo of the Great Mall during the Civil Rights... When Martin Luther King gathered everybody together in Washington. The photo of John F. Kennedy and his kids, which epitomized the ideal, the glamour to which we aspired, to be graceful under pressure, to have a great vision, to believe in ideals. These were things that he sort of epitomized. And never for a moment did you look at JFK's family and think that these were uninvolved people. He was the essence of activism and the essence of the interrupted revolution. SM (02:18:16): Two other pictures that I think stood out were the athletes at the (19)68 Olympics, which is Carlos and Tommy Smith with their Black Power fists. RW (02:18:26): Yes, there is certainly that. SM (02:18:28): And then the Vietnamese girl in running down who had just been burned, Kim Phuc, that was another one too. RW (02:18:35): Sure. And we forget that that (19)68 was a time all over the world where youth politics and culture were united. And in Paris, I had friends who participated in the street demonstrations there, and the great slogan in French to translate this, "The more I make revolution, the more I want to make love." To me, that was a very French interpretation of what we were all very much about. And certainly the photo of Woodstock and so many people gathered together there, naked smoking dope, sharing bottles of wine. These are all- SM (02:19:28): Yeah, that one picture of the two hugging each other with a blanket around them when it was raining, that was a classic one. And certainly the pictures of planet Earth by the astronauts. That was another one that is- RW (02:19:41): Right. And there is a photo that was on the cover of Life Magazine of a couple ecstatically dancing. The guy in that photo was a guy named Bantusi, who I have known for since probably 1970. SM (02:20:00): Wow. RW (02:20:01): And we continued to meet- SM (02:20:03): Wow. RW (02:20:03): We continued to meet up from time to time, but I was privileged to get to know people like Abbie Hoffman and to participate in events that were in the sort of electric current of the moment, riots and demonstrations. I played my own very small role in these things. I felt it was the least I could do considering others of my generation- SM (02:20:42): The- RW (02:20:43): ...Were risking their lives in some far-off jungle. But I never wanted to get to the age that I am in now and not be able to say, "Yes, I took part in that and I believed in what I was doing." SM (02:21:00): You stood for something. RW (02:21:01): I am pretty happy With all of it. SM (02:21:02): Yeah. You stood for something. RW (02:21:03): Yeah. SM (02:21:04): Yeah. The slogans from that period, and I have mentioned this, I did not mention it in the first half of my interviews, but I have since, particularly since I left the university. I felt there were three personal slogans that really defined the Boomer generation. Then a couple of people led me on to maybe two or three more. I felt that Malcolm X saying, "By any means necessary," symbolized the more radical elements within that period. Then you had Bobby Kennedy taking the Henry David Thoreau quote, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not," which symbolizes an activist, the more questioning role that people had in all those different movements. Then you had a Peter Max statement from his posters that were very popular on college campuses in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. This was actually hanging on my door at Ohio State. It said, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful." Which symbolizes a hippie mentality. RW (02:22:11): Yeah. SM (02:22:11): Someone said to me, "We cannot forget, we shall overcome," because that symbolized the civil rights movement and what was going on. And then the only other two that have been mentioned are John Kennedy's, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." And then of course the Leary's, "Tune in, turn on and drop out." RW (02:22:29): Yeah. SM (02:22:30): Are there any that you have that I did not mention that really inspired you that I am missing here? RW (02:22:38): Well, I just want to say that the Peter Max thing sucks because there were people doing their thing that did not allow me or other people to do their thing. So hippie ethics was a bunch of bullshit. I would have to think about that one. SM (02:23:06): Okay. That is pretty inclusive I would say. I only have- RW (02:23:11): I do kind of like Che Guevara's thing about, "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, I would like to say that every true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love." I like that. It is sentimental and tough at the same time. That is how I like to see that time. SM (02:23:47): By you saying that, I want to recommend a book to you. I do not know if you are ever into Bertrand Russell. RW (02:23:52): Oh yeah. SM (02:23:53): Okay. Well, his biography, when I interviewed David Mixner, I asked him, "What was your legacy? What would you like your legacy to be?" He said, "Read the opening paragraph in Bertrand Russell's book, his biography, and that is all I have to say." Try to get it. It is great because when that man old age lived a life where I wanted to make a difference, and what he said about, and he brought in the concept of love is one of the three things that he wanted to be remembered for. One of the things that we are getting down toward the end here, and thanks again for going overboard. The sexual revolution, your section on it, I thought it was great. RW (02:24:41): Thanks. SM (02:24:44): One question I wanted to ask you, have you kept in touch with any of these 1000 and so people? RW (02:24:49): No, not really. We keep all of the original questionnaires somewhere and we are holding onto this stuff. SM (02:24:56): I wonder how many of these people are still alive? RW (02:24:59): Well, I wonder, I am still alive, but.. SM (02:25:04): The question I am asking, dealing with sexual revolution of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, particularly in the (19)70s, that even though a lot of the things happened in the late (19)60s, a lot of people look at the sexual revolution as that early (19)70s period. I have always felt that the (19)60s ended in (19)73. I think, because when the war ended and everything, I cannot see much of a difference between 1967 and (19)72. But the question is the AIDS crisis, which was the biggest crisis of the (19)80s and the loss of so many people, and certainly in the San Francisco area, in New York. I have made sure in the book process that I have interviewed gay and lesbians, I have interviewed African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, the only group I feel guilty on is Asian-Americans, but they really did not... It is the boat people, I am trying to get to interview some of them. But do you think that the sexual revolution led to the AIDS crisis? RW (02:26:06): Well, in our book Woodstock Census, we came to the conclusion that the sexual revolution was a lot of noise, but no real substance. It was not that people were fucking more or climbing into bed with strangers any more than in any other time. What was really at the root of the seeming wildness of it was that women were coming into their own and people were having the very unusual and sort of wild experience, guys mainly, of having a woman call the shots, having women controlling the sexual situation and being more frank and honest about their bodies and themselves to quote a book title. The women themselves becoming empowered to the point that it altered forever the relationship that men have traditionally had with women in this country from the beginning. That affects everything from the way women dress at work to their earning power, to their role in the home and to their roles in bed. That is what the sexual revolution was really about. Your question goes to the left or the right or above or below the real substance of what it was. It was not an increased licentiousness that made the (19)60s seem so sexually free. It was really the empowerment of women through the women's movement that made everything seem so radically new and sometimes pretty wild. SM (02:28:20): Very good. I got a quick question here about your career because I- RW (02:28:26): I have got a question about my career too, God damn it. SM (02:28:29): Well, your writing career is amazing, your work with Variety and of course High Times, and I did not even know about the underground newspapers. How did your writing career lead you into writing movie and TV scripts? The key question I have here is do your books and your plays and your scripts, are they linked to a sort... I cannot read my writing here. Is there some sort of a message or meaning that is some way connected to the times when you were young? Do you try to put messages in all of your work? RW (02:29:09): I really wish that that were true. If it is, I may not know it. I think I work to keep working is basically... I write to keep writing. That is my personal motivation. The piece of writing that took me from New York to California, to Los Angeles is an exercise in fiction called The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, which is purely a literary exercise in sort of detective noir writing. It seems to have no relationship to my activism or my (19)60s sensibility whatsoever. That has led me, at the time I wrote it, I was sort of at odds. I did not know what direction I was going in, what I was doing. I wrote that and became editor of Swank, the magazine for men, for a year. SM (02:30:29): Wow. RW (02:30:30): Got a call from Hollywood saying, "Let us make a movie based on these big stories." They did not make the movie for about 10 years, but in the meantime, I did a stint writing for Miami Vice, writing a few other things. The one movie that does contain political activism is one I did called Forgotten Prisoners, the Amnesty Files, which is based on the true stories from the files of Amnesty International and had their official imprimatur. SM (02:31:04): Ron Silver was in that, right? RW (02:31:06): Yeah. SM (02:31:07): And he passed away this last year, I believe. RW (02:31:09): Yeah, and Hector Elizondo, but the director is Robert Greenwald, who continues to be an activist director. That is the one piece of movie business work. The Miami Vice episode I did is related to my expertise developed during the High Times days of the underworld of marijuana smuggling. There is that. I would say, on the one hand, I regret not having a constant politically involved writing career. On the other hand, that could be very restrictive, and I am very pleased that I have been able to do widely divergent pieces that I have done, even if it does not have the sort of consistency that I would prefer my career to be defined by. SM (02:32:14): When you think of the (19)60s and the Boomers, throughout your life, what were the best movies that really defined the times when Boomers were young, and also any books that you read that really influenced you during that time, and any artist or artwork, because most people really are limited in terms of art and what they know about the era, even if they grew up in it. They know about Andy Warhol and they know about Peter Max and Lichtenstein, but they do not know a whole lot others. RW (02:32:47): [inaudible] SM (02:32:47): [inaudible] the ones that had the most meaning to you? RW (02:32:53): Yes. Well, I would use the literature of the (19)50s and early (19)60s, the beat literature, Kerouac, Ginsburg, going back even further to Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. These were the true literary lights of our time of the (19)60s. I mean, certainly Philip Roth captures beautifully the sensibility of the (19)50s and (19)60s. Norman Mailer, who I was very pleased to meet and hang around with, and Mailer's son, John Buffalo is a good friend of mine now, so I am very happy about that. The iconic writers, such as, what is his name? Tom Wolf, Pynchon and so on. Everyone has their favorites. Even cowgirls Get the Blues. That writer. These books inspired people and freed them from the restraints that they thought that they were alone and thinking that way. So those were all good things. SM (02:34:19): Did you read The Greening of America by Charles Reich? RW (02:34:22): No. Those are the books that I would flip through it and say, "Oh my God, how tedious." You would get the idea just from the review what his point was. At that time, you did not really need his examples. He had a point, and these were all pointing in the same direction that America was trying to free itself of past strictures. In terms of movies, the great movies of the (19)60s really came about in the (19)70s. You had Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I did meet Kesey as well. There was a great outpouring of popular literature in the (19)60s that I do not see today, which is regrettable, but it is all happening on the internet now. To discover an author and to pass that dogeared paperback copy of Salinger to somebody was a way of turning somebody. It was like handing them a joint. It literally changed people's lives to read some of those books or to see some of those movies. The usual pantheon of literature and art, I do believe that the most radical artists of the times were in music like Bob Dylan, for instance, was true. Even though he evolved from so many familiar sources, he really did change the paradigm of what it meant to be a popular artist and to go through phases and to have an impact on people's lives. But also, Andy Warhol, I would say, was one of the most radical artists of that period. He really had an impact on the way people did everything and many these are commonly accepted themes and methods, but in their time, they were so truly, truly radical in the sense that they diverged completely from any tradition, turned things on their heads in a way that made us see differently. I think he was probably the iconic artist, the visual artist of the time. SM (02:37:16): Where would you put movies like The Graduate, Bob & Carroll & Ted &Alice? The Sterile Cuckoo was another one. RW (02:37:26): Well, here is the thing. Since I have come to Hollywood and gotten to know the movie business inside and out, I know how Hollywood works, and I know that the people who made those movies and who allowed studios to finance them and distribute and market them, were all seizing upon what they saw as an audience for these ideas that were in the media, in the news, on TV. They were really looking to sensationalize or capitalize on these. They were looking to sell tickets, and there were ways that people could participate in the (19)60s without actually being in an orgy or actually being alienated or feeling only a little alienated. They could identify with Dustin Hoffman in the Graduate and yet not have to go through what that character- SM (02:38:35): Yeah, I think I learned a lot about post-traumatic stress disorder and a lot of things that happened in Vietnam vets through Taxi Driver. RW (02:38:44): Yeah. SM (02:38:44): Then of course you have criticisms of Apocalypse Now and... RW (02:38:49): Yes, well, you notice that these movies came about in the early to mid (19)70s, and that is the time lag. If you decide that something that happened in the news today is worth making a movie about, that movie will not come out for at least two years. It takes a long time for a movie to get made and for everybody who's there to say no to finally say yes. The (19)60s in cinema did not happen until the mid (19)70s. That is just the way Hollywood works. People forget that in the (19)60s, you had the Rock Hudson, Doris Day movies and a lot of crap out there that did not really reflect what was going on, just an attempt to capitalize on the surface material. SM (02:39:50): I got three more questions. I am not going to ask this section, because we have gone really long here. That is all the names and personalities and terms. I am not going to go into that. I only wanted you to respond to two, and that is, what does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you personally? Secondly, what did the tragedy at Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? Those two. RW (02:40:17): Okay, well, I will take the latter. Kent State and Jackson State, I was in the streets at that time and they tore the cover off and allowed me to engage in the closest thing I could say to domestic terrorism. I mean, I was out there in the streets battling cops hand to hand and throwing the tear gas canisters back at them and breaking windows and setting things on fire. Those things meant that the array of official violence facing us required more than just peaceful protests. And that is what it meant to me, rightly or wrongly, and sorry if I heard anybody, but fuck it. And then the first one, what was the first one again? SM (02:41:14): Vietnam Memorial. RW (02:41:16): Okay. Well, to tell you the truth, I have not been to Washington DC since the protest days. SM (02:41:23): Okay. RW (02:41:24): I just have no reason to go. I never liked Washington DC. I cannot bring myself yet to go see the memorial, but I will probably one of these days. At the same time, my son, when he was in middle school, he and his class went to Washington DC on a class trip and I sat him down and told him the story of my high school best friend and gave him the name. I said, look at it, when you go to the wall, look it up and do a rubbing and bring it back. He took it seriously and went there and he brought back my friend's name from the wall. SM (02:42:13): What is your friend's name? RW (02:42:15): His name was Cuall K Lawrence. SM (02:42:18): Okay. RW (02:42:19): C-U-A-L-L K Lawrence. SM (02:42:22): How did he die? RW (02:42:24): Well, let us keep talking a bit, because I will tell you. SM (02:42:39): Yeah. RW (02:42:41): But there is a phrase that they use. SM (02:42:44): What year did he die? RW (02:42:46): What is that? SM (02:42:47): What year did he die? RW (02:42:48): I will tell you in a minute. But- SM (02:42:52): He was your best friend in high school? RW (02:42:54): Yes. SM (02:42:55): Did he go right into the army after school or the Marines? RW (02:43:00): Yeah. Well, there was a period of time when we all just went off into different directions and he ended up... Let us see here, wait a minute, here we go. Hang on. Private First Class, 8th Cavalry, 1st Cav Division. November, 1970. SM (02:43:45): Wow. RW (02:43:47): And he was said to have died from... Let us see. Non-hostile, died of other causes, ground casualty. The casual detail was accidental self-destruction. SM (02:44:10): So like, yeah, maybe bomb went off or, yeah. Or else it could have been friendly fire. Well, no, who knows? There is a lot of terms they use. RW (02:44:23): Accidental self-destruction was often used for people who shot up too much dope, or God knows what he did. Just maybe. SM (02:44:34): Did you go to his funeral? RW (02:44:37): No, I did not. As soon as I heard this, I went down to the city and just, that is when pretty much everything started falling in place as far as my activism. SM (02:44:53): When the best history books are written about the Boomer generation, the (19)60s generation, the Vietnam generation, that is those individuals born after the war and through the period I mentioned. After the boomers have passed on, the 78 million are no longer on this planet, what do you think the historians and sociologists are going to say about them? Because they obviously did not live during the time, but what do you think they will say about that period and about that generation? RW (02:45:29): Well, what do we say about the generation that fought the Civil War? What do we say about the 1920s? Oh, the roaring (19)20s. These things get simplified over time, boiled down into a phrase or an idea. I think the (19)60s will always be known as a time of turmoil and a time of testing and a time of triumph when it comes to the basic movements, the basic goals that we went for at that time. So civil rights, did we win on that? Yes. Women's rights? Yes. We won on that. Ending the war. Well, the war did finally end, whether we ended it or not, but a lot of effort went into ending it, not as a successful ending, but an ending that had to be brought about. I think that the simplification is those troubles, the term tumultuous (19)60s and the subhead is a time of protest, and hopefully they will conclude that the victories were won more than were lost. SM (02:47:01): That is really amazing that when you think about young people today in college, how little history they know, not only about the time that we live, but in any time. Let us hope that the quality of teaching changes, so that is not the case after the Boomer generation is gone. My very last question here is, what is the one thing you want to do in your life that you have not done yet that could be linked to your time, to the Woodstock generation, or just because you want to do something different? Is there something you want to do that you have not done? RW (02:47:53): Well, there are a couple of girlfriends I would like to see again, but only if they look the same. I think that I have been very lucky in being able to travel the world, and I have been to all kinds of places and done so many things and been witness to more history than anyone could ever want. SM (02:48:28): Is there one question that you thought I was going to ask that I did not? RW (02:48:32): That is the one question I was wondering if you would ask. SM (02:48:35): What is that? RW (02:48:37): "Is there one question?" SM (02:48:39): Oh, okay. RW (02:48:39): That blew your mind, man. SM (02:48:43): Yeah. Well, Rex, thank you very much. I will be interviewing Deanne. I think it is Monday. RW (02:48:52): Good. SM (02:48:52): I am calling her in the afternoon. And if there is anybody that you think of that you would think would be good for this project, you mentioned Paul Krassner, but I think he is almost impossible to get ahold of. RW (02:49:05): I call him all the time. I will send you his email. You can talk to him. SM (02:49:09): Yeah. If there is anybody else, you mentioned one other name, I forget what it was. You mentioned another name here. You have known, you said for years, and he was in that picture. RW (02:49:19): Oh yeah. Well, he will just give you a bunch of hippie bullshit. SM (02:49:23): Is there anybody else? Well, you think about it. RW (02:49:27): Did you interview Rennie Davis, by the way? SM (02:49:29): Oh, yeah. I interviewed him. RW (02:49:30): What's he got say, is he still with the 13-year-old guru? SM (02:49:34): Oh, no, was he with a 13-year-old girl? RW (02:49:38): That never came up? SM (02:49:39): No. RW (02:49:41): Are you fucking kidding me? You better, you better. Yeah. You are not doing your homework here. He- SM (02:49:44): No, he is with an older woman now that writes. He was very successful in the corporate world or technology, and he made a lot of money that way. He is into spirituality and he is very good at that. RW (02:50:01): Well, at the height of the sort of- SM (02:50:06): This should be off the record, I should not be taping this, should I? RW (02:50:09): No, you can. SM (02:50:09): Okay. RW (02:50:11): He very famously became a spokesman for the guru, Maharaji. SM (02:50:15): I remember that. Yep. RW (02:50:16): Known in our circles as the 13-year-old fat bastard. He totally left the activist world, sort of renounced it and became part of this cult. SM (02:50:35): Well, I knew that. RW (02:50:36): Oh, okay. Well, so that is- SM (02:50:38): I thought he was having an affair with a 13-year-old or something like that. RW (02:50:41): No-no. SM (02:50:41): Okay. RW (02:50:44): Guru Maharaji, who lives in Malibu now, has a helicopter and a private jet and is a pain in the ass to his neighbor. SM (02:50:51): Yeah, Rennie, even the person he lives with, I do not know the whole story. I know she is also a very good speaker. I forget her name. He was traveling around the country giving speaking engagements on spirituality. He is really good at it. He is in demand everywhere. So he is driving all over campus with her and they do presentations together and individually. He was very successful in technology for a while, I guess. Then he sold his company, and I guess he is fairly well-to-do. RW (02:51:29): Oh, good for him. But one of the few survivors of the Chicago trial. SM (02:51:38): Yeah. He and Tom Hayden. RW (02:51:41): Right. SM (02:51:41): And I tried. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rex Weiner Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Weiner, Rex ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Editors; Publishers; Journalists; Weiner, Rex--Interviews Description An account of the resource <span>Rex Weiner, a native of Brooklyn, New York, is a writer, editor, publisher, and journalist based in Los Angeles and Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, MX. Weiner began his journalism career in the underground press of the late 1960s and is a co-founding editor of <em>High Times</em> magazine.&nbsp;His articles have appeared in <em>Vanity Fair</em>, <em>The New Yorker</em>, <em>Los Angeles Review of Books</em>, <em>The Paris Review</em>, <em>LA Magazine</em> and <em>Capital &amp; Main</em>. He is Executive Director and co-founder of the Todos Santos Writers Workshop, where he teaches creative writing. With Deanne Stillman, he is co-author of <em>The Woodstock Census: Nationwide Survey of the Sixties Generation</em> (Viking Press).</span> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-19 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.120a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.120b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 171:44 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/2bd7c1e1ae48d6a50d78534cbf81c50f.pdf 5227e5d933350ff97431d81b5ceb5dc0 PDF Text Text BINGHAMTON U  N  I  V  E  R  S  l  T  Y S T A T E   U N I V E R S I T Y  O F   NE W  Y O R K E S   ”4/50 D E P A R T M E N T B r i a n a  Salcamolo, s o p ra n o S e n i o r  HOHOI‘S Decital with William James Lawson, planlsl Salunlag, March 20, 2010 at 8 pm Casadesus H a l l �P rog r a m rm  Earyl ltalian Slug. and  Airs, VJ!  o Selections f L  l  Rontani)  1. Se bel rio (Raffaeo 2. Selve, wi che le speranze (attributed to Salvator Rosa) m Honda. a revrrsens h (1860­1932) 4. Apra il ma  verde lean (Paolo Quagliati) i ns lrom Myrthen [Myetles), Op. 25  l cto IL. See reesrrmmsrssmonsoness Robert Schumann 1. Widmung, nix­l  (1810­1856) 2 .  Jemand, no. 4   ie  Lotosblume, na. 7 3.D 4 .  N iemand, no. 2 2 l en Rosen . no .25 n oscith e 5 . Aus d 6. Zum Schluss, an. 26 .  eis . old td me III. Selce al (Trois Pocmes de Louise de Vilmorin, no . }2 1 . Au­de 9. Cimetiere ( (Ging Poemes de Max Jacob, no. 2) elnc .. Francis Pou (1899­1963) 3. Hotel ( Banalités, no. 2) e  l’amour i s d 4. Les chemn trmsisoin Ine m...    alaried longs .  .  iv. S 1. Slugging a Vampire  2. Canon l Clinics Ives (1874­1954) 3 .  Serenilg   wo Little Flowers (and dedicated lb them) 4.T 5. A4  Parting rl) v  Free Wod te Peopels’ Ne tig lo: h r (Fgihn r  Thee 6 .lug Ae V. Salaried songs    m — _ – ~ — _ m _ — _ — _ S h p l l m FMl’zr 1.  A L! May the red rose live alway!  2 .Gonna  urn  al ngiht (or Ill: Campolwn Races) (1826– 1864) �About the Music Around the turn o f  the 20th century, Pietro Floridia realized the figured  bass accompaniments a t several 17% century Early Italian Art Songs and Airs.  Flocidia felt that these songs exemplified “the fluidity and harmonious character of the Italian language,” but suffered from “melodic decadence” and outmoded accompaniments.  He took grmt creative license with several arrangements, shedding a romantic light upon the original melodies.  Flosidia revered the original composers, though he felt they fell victim to the conventions of their times.  He hoped for his versions of their songs to be seen as collaborations, not appropriations.  Some latcr musicologists and critics called Floridia’s work extreme and florid, even “licentious.”  Presently, most o f  Floridia’s music has fallen by the wayside, due in large part  to the disdain o f  current editors and scholars.  But Floridia said that he strove to please his own sensibilities, unconcemed with “musical erudition.”  Though his songs are perhaps musicologically  “incorrect,”  we  find  them  very  winning.  Tonight’s  selections  progress  from Floridia’s simpler style to his more infamous expansiveness.  Se bel rio, with its broad melodic line, playful  meter  changes  and  quirky  rhythmic  energy,  shows  the  “modem  sense”  o f   melodic expressivity,  “bold...rlaring spirit” with  “a  touch of humor”  that  Floridia  admired  in  Rontani’s compositions.  This song dedares that the world “smiles” by making beautiful things in  nature, and yet the beauty o f  all the smiling world cannot compare with the most gracious smile o f  the speaker’s beloved.  In Selve, voi c h e  le speranze, the poet seeks solace in the woods, as though they are “rooms” full o f  h ope.  The melancholy yet hopeful melody is supported by a simple accompaniment that evokes both the quiet comfort o t  “blessed hours” in the woods, and the speaker’s pensiveness. The speaker ol’A morire is Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Brought up in France. where her artistic and academic talents flourished, Mary developed little political savvy.  Her first husband died, and her  second  and  third  betrayed  her.  Many  Catholics  believed  Mary  was  the  true  sovereign  of Elizabeth I’s throne.  Mary became part of three plots to assassinate Elizabeth 1, her cousin, who in turn, put Mary in captivity for nearly twenty years until  finally having her beheaded  for treason. Reportedly, Mary made the most a t  her unpnsosuncnt, and faced her excruciating death with great dignity.  Here she laments that her crown can no longer protrct her, but she takes consolation in the fact that she lived for her ideals, despite her mistakes.  Carissimi’s original cantata has a much longer text, and  showcases  florid vocalism over sparse  sccosuparnmcut.  Floridia expands upon a small excerpt of the original cantata. With a considerably slower tempo, and a weightier, more complex accompaniment, he delves deeper into this particular dramatic moment.  Aprn il nun verde s e n o celebrates  dawn, spring,  and  the  hyacinth  flower  (a  symbol  of both  playfulness  and  sorrowful nostalgia).  Floridia’s accompaniment creates musical tableaus to conjure the images of each verse: The first tall chiming chords evoke the freshness o f  spring fields and n ew  flowers, like the emerging rose.  The second verse’s undulating arpeggios emulate the fl ow  o f  water and breezes.  The trllls and rolled chords of the third verse mimic birds singing and fluttering.  In the spirit o f  the arranger, l have taken liberty in my interpretation o f  these songs, imagining Mary Smart as the speaker of each piece – first, as a young girl studying arts and letters, falling in love, then in captivity, wishing for freedom and hope, then facing death, and finally, unnsfigured after life into a spirit of the spring. Many of Robert Schumann’s songs were inspired by the love of his life, Clara Wieck Schumatul, a musiml genius in her own light.  Her father, Friedrich Wieck, was Robert’s teacher, and though fond of his pupil, obiected strongly to Clara and Robert’s relationship.  Wieck made their courtship as difficult as possible and, in a lengthy legal battle, tried to prevent their marriage.  Robert’s Opus 25, Mjyrthen,  was  a  wedding gift  for Clara,  much  o f  it  written  while  the  couple awaited  the  court’s permission tor the marriage.  The eponymous myrtles are bunches of star shaped flowers that srgntu love and peace.  Indeed, the songs are like a bouquet tor the bride, some dark, some light, some grand, some simple, all given with devotion.  Some seem to be directly written from Robert to Clara, while others depict scenes ot‘ imagined characters singing of their beloveds.  Probably Schumann’s facility for creating characters, as in his famous “Davidsbund” (a group o f  imaginary music critics, all representative  of different  sides  of Schumann’s  own  opinions),  his  ability  to  envision  himself partitioned into  many different people contributed  to his  creativity and  to his  madness.  Yet  in Myrthen  it  only helps  to show the many colors of his great  love  for his wife.  Our group is  a microcosm of the cycle, following the order a t  the opus.  The first and last pieces of the opus, the “Lieder der Braut” (“bride’s songs"), are the first and last o f  rhis group, beginning with Widmung, a “Dedication” t o  the speakers love, his everything, “soul... heart... ecstasy... pant,” etc. A n  example o f Schumann’s masterful ability to marry musical and textual poetry: when the speaker calls his love “a grave” for his “sorrows,” the music alliannonically transforms into a lower key, ready for the text that describes  the beloved as “rest” and “peace.” At the very moment  the speaker says  that his beloved raises him above himself, the music rises back to the original key.  Jemand is based on a Scots dialect Robert Burns poem.! It is the sort of song an ebullient young girl would sing about her secret “crush.”  (Perhaps the character for this song was modeled after young Clara, who was sixteen when her romance with  Robert began.)  Her heart is, as Burns wrote, “sair,” o r  sore as though wounded by cupid’s arrow:  Gerhardt’s choice o f  the German word “betriibt,” for “sair,” cmmotes cloudiness, storminess in  the heart.  The speaker declares her love for “someone” she cannot name, and revels in her secret.  The erratic nature of the love­struck heart manifests in quick changes in key, meter and tempo.  Suddenly serious, the speaker sends good wishes to her love from afar, then, inst as suddenly, returns t o  gleeful celebration o f  h er secret.  T h e  sensual D i e  L otosblume descnhes the lotus tlower and the moon as lovers who meet when night falls.  The tender unfolding of the text mirrors the unfolding of the lotus in her lover’s light.  The speaker o f  Nier’nartdz (the companion to “Jemand”) is a gruff and “jolly card” who defies the world, not to be bothered, es  ‘  y in his marriage.  One imagines that Schumann felt especially close to the speaker of Aus den ballichcn Rosen, who sends good wishes to his love from afar, greetings like the “fragrance of roses” and “spring’s caress.”  This poem, like “Jemand,” speaks of the heart’s storms, but those of a “joyless man” who hopes the darkness in his heart will not “touch” his beloved “ungainly.”  Z u m  schluss dislills the same basic chord structure and melodic ideas of “Widmuug.”  If the opening of the opus is an ecstatic declaration of love, the conclusion is a solemn vow of love, the quiet devotion that lay a t  the root o f  all  o f  love’s other expressions.  The speaker says that in this flawed world he has “woven an imperfect wreath” for his bride, the best he can do, and promises that when he and she are  received  in  heaven, love  itself  will  weave  them a  “perfect  wreath,” a sentiment made  more poignant in retrospect, as Robert died forty years before Clara.  Schumann wrote to his bride, “While 1 was composing [these songs] I was quite lost in thoughts o f  you. If  I were not engaged t o  such a girl I could not write such music.” At an eady age, Francis Pmllenc was struck by the beauty o f  German lieder, a genre that would have a profound influence upon his hundreds of mélodies.  H e  knew from his early teens that he was a composer,  but  his  father discouraged  him  from  pursuing a  music  career, insisting he  focus o n academics.  l’oulenc developed his musical talents o n  his ow n  until later i n  his life, when he received formal  training in  conlposifioth  The “rough edges” (such as  “wrong­note” dissonances)  of his ‘ “My heart is sa i”   2“Naebody™ My  heart is sair, 1 daurna tell, 1 hae a wife o’ m y  a m. For the sake o’ somebody. I’l gie Cuckold to naebody. ­ My heart ts saic for somebody, I could wake a wmtsr’r night, O h ,  h on!  for somebody! 1 could range the world around For the sake o’ somebody. Ye powers that smile o n  victuous love,  Oh! sweetly smile on somebody; Ftsr ilka danger keep him free, And send me safe my somebody. Oh, hon!  for somebody! l wad dae what wad l no? For the sake o’ s omebody. I’ll partake wi’ mebody; ru tak Cuckold fae nane, I hae a penay to spend, There, thanks to nacbody; 1 hac nacthing to lend, I’ll borrow frae naebody. ­ l am nacbody’s lord, I ’ ll  be slsrr to nacbody; 1 hae a gude braid sword, I’ll  take dunts frac nacbody. ­ I’l be merry and free, I’ll b e  sad for nacbody; Naebody cates for me, l cate for usebody. ­ �music, perhaps attributable in part to his self­taught style, brought criticism and admiration.  Eady on, some critics suggested that Poulenc’s accessible, even catchy, music did not befit  a “serious composer,” as though accessibility and sophistication are mutually exclusive qualities!  It seems, on the  contrary,  that  some  o f  Poulenc’s  greatest  genius  lay  in  his  ability  to  mix  complexity  and intelligence with a vernacular, popular flair.  The content of Poulenc’s music was informed by a lite full o f  contradictions.  Poulenc was openly homosexual from his early twenties, yet he remained a pious Catholic, had romantic relationships with several women, and had a daughter.  He spent much of his life touring, living in hotels.  He greatly enioyed his work, especially his collaborations with singers, yet he was so lonely in this vagabond existence.  All his life he suffered manic­depressive cycles.  Appropnately, Poulenc’s music takes o n  dramatically different characters and atmospheres, portraying  extreme  moods,  ranging  between  grave  seriousness  and  terrific  flights  of whimsy. Tonight’ s group samples some of the many sides of this composer.  Most of Poulenc’s songs, and all those on tonight’s program, were dedicated to singers and friends with whom he worked, written with particular voices and personalities in mind.  The enigmatic text o f  Au­dela concerns the act of “choosing in the hour of pleasure,” and says that, “to choose is not to betray,” in a romantic game so fragile it could be destroyed by “a breath.”  These things considered, it is easy to think of Poulenc’s own sexual  ambiguity,  yet  the  piece  approaches  the  topic  in  a saucy,  lighthearted  manner.  A constant, speedy pulsation underlies a melody that runs into and out of the home key, evoking the lusty fluctuations of the game described.  The text suggests the vitalness of play, which we might surmise was especially immediate tor Poulenc, considering the intensity of his inner lite.  The song was written to Marie­Blanche de Polignac, who premiered many of Poulenc’s songs in her home, and in whom Poulenc confided his difficulty coping with soliulde and anxiety. Cimetiére (dedicated to Madeleine  Vhita)  is  full  of wistful  romance.  It  speaks  o f  innocence,  yet  laments  the  loss  of innocence.  It is hopeful yet foreboding, slipping between major and minor keys.  The first motive the piano plays on its own is a hopeful, major, ascending phrase.  This is restated at the end of the piece, in a strange minor, as if questioning its earlier optimism, with the added troubling presence of two dry staccato tones near the lowest end of the keyboard.  Hétel (dedicated to Marthe Bosredon) contains similar contradictions.  The first line compares the hotel room to “a cage,” reiniu  '  one of  Poulenc’s  depression.  Yet,  the  song  is  to  be  sung “lazily,”  and  passes  as  fleetingly  and nonclnalanlly as a puff of smoke from the speaker’s cigarette.  The opening chords, radiant, vastly­ spaced  blocks  of tone, evoke the sun’s “arms” stretching through  the window panes.  The last chords, suddenly settled, suggest the pleasure of taking a much­desired mouthful o f  s moke to escape dreary mundanity and work.  Perhaps the song allows us to glimpse a t private moment in the life of the composer.  Les Chemins tie I’ A mour was written for Yvonne Printemps, a glamorous stadet o f operetta  and  film, named  for her  perennially bright disposition.  Printetups  performed  into  her sixties, and lived a lavish, sexually adventurous life.  The song is fittingly optimistic despite some of its text, full of longing for the past, as in “Cimitiére.”  It finds icy in nostalgia, even in sorrow, and celebrates the experience of love, even love that has “flown.”  Poulenc took special care to consider the intrinsic music of texts.  H e  would pore over a poem before setting it, and o n  November 7, 1939, wrote “ I f I  were a singing teacher I would insist on my pupils reading the poems attentively before working at songs.”  Yet, “Above all,” he said, “d o  not analyze my music­ Love it!” Charles E. Ives grew up in a middle­class Connecticut town.  His father, George Ives, was Chades’ first music teacher and mentor in composition, encouraging and inspiring Ives’ remarkably modem ear and sonic experimentalism, though he discouraged his son fi'orn attempting to support himself solely with a  career  in  music.  In addition  t o  composing  prolifically,  Ives  became a  successful insurance salesman.  Though he produced revolutionary and now highly revered music, Ives gained no fame as a composer until after his death.  He grew up loving the music o f  ordinary  people in church or in town hands, “They didn’t always play right and together and it was as good either way.” His music is sometimes deliberately unpolished. For a short time, Ives took singing lessons with a teacher who had him practice speaking the lyrics of songs, and then sing them according to spoken inflection.  This greatly  informed  Ives’ voml writing, illuminating  the  ties  between  speech  and melody.  Ives’ songs incorporate modernism (on par with that of Stravinsky’s ilk) with the influence o f  traditional American music (like that o f  Stephen Foster).  Ives merges the fiercely intellectual with the spontaneous and visceral, the sublime with the everyday.  Slugging a Vampire is an abstruse iab at yellow iout’nalism, a great example o f  Ives’ intensity and sense of humor.  Its odd intervals and rhythms capture the raucous fisttight it describes.  Ives wrote that it should be performed “as fast and hard as possible.”  Canon I is, indeed, a canon between voice and  piano, with  the melody starting in the voice. and echoed in the piano.  The sprightly triple time, animated melody, and sharp contrasts of legato and staccato articulation show the speaker’s effusive, effulgent admiration for his beloved.  The “unison  chant,”  Serenity, harkens  back  to some of Ives’ earliest  compositional experiments,  church  music  with  untraditional  accompaniments  and  voice  leadings.  Switching between meters and divisions o f  the beat into twos and threes, the voice seems to float freely over the steady piano part.  The accompaniment rocks back and forth between two mysteriously serene tall tertiau chords, and on the final phrases ofllie chant’s two sections becomes suddenly traditional, quoting a Samuel Sebastian Wesley hymn setting, until the last word of each section, where it returns to the two­chord alternation.  The vocal part of Tw o  Little Flowers floats in a similarway.  The text is  set in  four, while  the phrases o f  the piano drift in and out of the meter, achieving a dreamy interplay between singer and accompanist.  The “two little flowers” that surpass all the others are Ives’ daughter, Edith, and her friend Susanna.  The poem is by Ives himself and his wife, Hammny, who wrote many song texts for her husband.  The folksy verse of At Parting frames a more urgent, operatic middle section.  In valedirtion, the speaker confides that the rose shegives to her beloved represents all herlove, that the toseis not iust a msqbutherveryhurl.  ThcyAreTheteisaprime example of Ives’ rough, text­driven style.  It is a wild patchwork quilt o f  quotations from patriotic songs such as “Tenting Tonight” and “The Bartle Cry of Freedom,” that parodies patriotism while espousing a radically patriotic ideal oft’reedom.  Ives said, it “is not a song for pretty voices—ifthe words are  yelled out, regardless—so much the better.”  He recorded himself singing  the  song, accompanying himself o n  piano, indeed, yelling out the words, disregarding many notes and rhythms he so specifically notated, intrriecting extemporaneous exclamations. Forty­eight years betore Ives came into the world, Stephen Foster was born to another middle­class American  family, in  Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania  (now  part  of Pittsburgh).  Though  Foster was always  musically  inclined,  his  father  pressured  him  to go into  a  more  financially stable  career. Stephen attended, detested, and dropped out of several schools before entering the family business. He eventually received formal training in composition.  Ultimately deciding to devote his life entirely to music, he composed over 200 published songs over the course of about 20 years, many of which are now mistaken for folk songs.  Foster’s idiom, so quintessentially American, brilliantly simple and earnest, had a  profound influence o n  later  American  composers like  Ives, Copland  and Rorem. Foster also paved the way for the likes of the Guthsies, Dylan and Baez, with socially conscious, folk­style songs like, “Hard Times Come Again N o  More,”  Perhaps a subtler example o f  the same category, Ahl May the Red Rose Live Alwayl meditates upon beauty and innocence, lamenting their ephemerality and vulnerability, and wishing they could endure.  It seems an especially poignant piece considering the cotltposer’s short, tragic life:  Foster had a tumultuous, unhappy marriage and became an alcoholic (like his father), falling deep into debt, his success waning, though he continued composing all his life.  He died in a New York City boarding house, possessing less than forty cents, and a scrap o f  paper on which he had written, “Dear friends and gentle hearts” and nothing more. We’ll end in happier commemoration o f  Foster’s great spirit with The Camptown Races, one of many songs he wrote for minstrel singers.  Though one might never guess it, Fosters lofty aim in such  songs  was  to gain  sympathy  for  slaves,  endeavoring  to give  them  less  crass  lyrics  than traditionally written for them, and music that would move the audience to compassion, even through humor.  While “The Camptown Races” was originally written in a minstrel dialect (as printed in the Texts and Translations section), we’ll perform it i n  standard contemporary English. As I  studied the music  o f  tonight’s program, I  was struck  by the different  forms o f  subversion contained in each group:  Floridia’s assumption of the right to collaborate with dead composers, Schumann’s ode to his forbidden love, Poulenc’s defiance against categorization, Ives’ simultaneous homage to and upending o f  established musical forms and associations, Foster’s hope to transcend societal  “givens”  through  the  use  of popular  music.  I  also  became interested  in  the  rose  as  a  gni at  least  once  in  each  group,  signifying  similar  ideas  throughout  the recurrent  motif,  aj  program, especially cycles of love, hope, loss and rebirth.  As I selected this repertory it seemed to emerge as the emblem of the evening.  I also like the idea of giving songs, like roses, to an audience as a simple yet deeply felt gesture of love.  So.  l hope you like it!  Peace! �Texts and Translalions L 1 .  Se bel rio Text: Anonymous   be l rio, she/MM. Iml’rrhrta S e Salmfinmmnmnderw Sedifiorinpmtllelhtifi bello, i  n i r fi n h m n ’ r k h l m Srgibmmfmumfigflflfiug‘ gfi l’mel’aflu un  aureo velo, Emnkfiqyfimminsim, Noitfidaudenfltildrh If a fair brook I i a  fair brook, iia t’airbteeze. Should murmur this morning; It’a meadow adorns itself in flowers, Then we say: the earth is laughing. If ever upon scarlet flowers, if upon lilies The dawn places golden veils, And whirls on her wheel ot’sappltixey Then we say that the sky is laughing. Fa r t ­ 1 1 1 m m . l e, voi, che le speranze 2. Sev Forests, you who hold Selve, voi, live le speranzy Al gioir liete serbate Bil/timer siete le stanze, The hope of rejoicing gladly, You are rooms of pleasure Text: Anonymous Oleparmrdeg‘ia I’m! beate. Forests, you who hold Where I must g o  t o  pass blessed hours. 3. A morire Terr. Anonymous Todie A nor­ire. n morire! Per Mbarg’mfiqa ¢ fede, pis non valgon [e corone T o d  ie, to die! To preserve justice and faith, crowns have no more value, Yet, even though I remain powerless my constancy pours out elixir Over my heart! To  die, to die! Che sebbene in resto esangue tnza al moi cor l consa a mesce elisire! .4 morire, a morire! 4. Apna il suo Verde seno Tex  Anonymous April il suo verde seno Ogni brlpmm ameno, Lieta ¢ vexzosa Esce la rosa, Spiri ogm'fiar! Aure d’amore, A salutare accinto Nova Ninfa di­lnor, Nam Giacinto. l in: raghi 1pm“ augelli, You, pretty little dappled birds, Nel verde prato I age ed adorno, In the green meadow With winged song You awaken the beautiful day And adonl it, Novella Aumm. The new nymph of love The new dawn. Ae urodoraet, Orv’amwdak It’s really true; when it is happy, the world laughs, Heaven laughs when it is joyous; It’s really true: but they don’t  know, as you do, How to smile so dearly. Benénnqmbigimudaridr i/mdo. Mildrlqwnda ? gioioso; Befllmr mawflwpoimmwi. NmXiqbdb­lmr Etadall’n­dt. From the highest mountains Flow clear and crystal fountains, Fragrant breezes, Now join With the munnuring Of the clear waters, Now that, mid flowers and willows A new nymph of love Rises from the waves. Cam­dvgfiuln’mfi Cbhinimlfitfonfi. Open your green heart Open your green heart Every pretty, serene meadow, Happy and charming The rose emerges, Every flower exhales Breezes of love, To send welcome around A new nymph ot’love, The new hyacinth flower. Col  mormorare Drll’atqurbiar, r che  trufim’tfimdr  O Amorosetti ¢ snells, C a l c anto alato Destate il goirno Ordrgid spam/mm NORA  Ninfa 414mm Amorously charming and agile, NOW  that already springs forth �ll. 1. Widmung Text: Friedrich Rficken Dedication DHmcineSetle,dlt~ailHfl§ D in ­ r i m  W m l a m n e i n j m Du meine Welt, inlet/kt“! N i k k i ­ [ M I A M M M OhmebJ­vdutb'nab m u m m y You my soul, you my heart, You my ecstasy, oh you my pain, You my wodd, in which I live, My heaven you, through which 1 soar, Oh you my grave, down into which I have forever buried my sorrows! Dnbifldl’eRflbldrbfitdtrFfidu. Dnl’irfml'finuluirbacbkdm. You are rest, you are peace, You have been granted to me from heaven; anB/ itkbatuidmruiru’flfif, Dfihbdm’dfiebfldflbrrnicb, illdnmrcebh m’nbwmkb! Your gaze has transfigured me  in my  own eyes, Dnudnfnlc. J a m i ­ [ m  (etc) You my soul, yoru my heart, (etc.) 2. Jemand Adapted text: Wilhelm Gerhard Someone Mein Herz, ist BETRIIBT, ich sq’m NCI HT,   Jemand; m Mein Her, ist behfilli u [lb keimnte wachen dei lingste Nacht,   U r i e l / m m ” wnjzmnd O Wonne wajmmi’ o Himmel  mnjmmnd’ Durchstreifen kinnt’ id) dei ganze Welt, Aus Lilie zu Jemand. Tbr Michte, die ilmier Lid» hold,  uf Jemand, 0 lichelt  rfeundcilh a That you love me, gives me self­worth, You have, by loving, raised me above myself, My good spidt, my better sell! My heart is distressed, I dare not say why. My heart is distressed over someone; 1 could stay awake the longest night, And ever dream o f  someone. Oh ecstasy o f  someone! Oh heaven of someone! I could roam the whole world, Out of love for someone, You powers, you who protect love, Oh smile friendily on someone, Protect him, where danger threatens him, Give safe passage to someone; Oh ecstasy for someone, oh heaven for someone, 4. Niemand Adapted text: Wilhelm Gerhardt Ich hab’ meni W’n’b allein, Und teil es, traun, mit niemand; f  sein, b NICHT Habnre wil o Zum  Habnrei mach’ id; niemand. Ein Sackehen Goldi'flnm’n. obody I have my wife, I alone, And swear it, share with nobody; No  cuckold will I be, And I will make a cuckold of nobody. thtwab’kbamh‘bu. A little sack OI’GDld is mine, But for it 1 thank nobody; I have both] lg to lend, l i t h ' nd c b l m de e m [ fl / " W M “ And subservient to nobody; w m m ’ n m m U nd b r ‘ g n n l I – i r l ‘ m a nd And  I borrow from nobody. I a m  n o t  anyone’s master, MM–kbnrm’e–ud But my blade stabs sharply, 1 fear nobody. Kauz, bin  id. IH  mti niemand: RC ANGES KEOiPnFHl ust’ger  Mopy  whti nobody; So scher’ ich mich um niemand. So, then, 1 care about nobody. 5 . Aus den 8stlichen Rosen From the easterly rose MuduKli­gemlbl‘ Schiert  niemand sich um  mich, Tex: Friedrich Riicken Ich sende einen Gnu: wei  Duft  der  Rosen, lab send’ ibn an  ein  Rosenangesicht. Ich sende einen Gruss wti  Friiblingskosen, Ich send’ [bu an ein Aug’ voll Friiblingslicht. A iolly card am I, If nobody cares about me, I send a greeting like the scent o f  t he rose, I send it to a msy face. I send a greeting like spring’s caress, I send it to an eye full of spu’ng’s light. Am  Schmerzenstirmen, dei meni  Hug durchtosen, Out of the painful longing storming through my heart, Sud‘kb den Hauch, dich unsanft mbr’ern‘ttd Wenn  daydukal an  den  Freudelosen, J a M h H M m N W I M I send this breath, may it not touch you ungently! W’henyoudtinltupondmisioylessmnn, It makes the heavens light u p  my night. Iwould,lmxld,wlutwouldlnotdo 6. Zum Schluss In conclusion 3. Die Lotosblume Text: Heinrich Heine The Lotus Blossom Hier i n d iesen erdbelelommmen Liz/Pu. Here in  this earth­oppressed air, Dkumbhumgm‘gr Sich m der I o u m t b r The lotus flower is anxious Before the sun’s splendor Hflb’irb dirdu u nvolllommnen Kmq‘gg/bd’m. Schwester Braut! For you I have woven an imperfect E m m l r i l fl fl u m d d ie N a t b l . She dreamingly awaits the night. Beschirmet Eb».  no Gefabren drub’n; G a m m a “Je mand.   O I r m a – f w d . oHi­pmldmjmnd Teh  wale), id: wolte, was  wal’ ich ncih? Fir meinen Jemand! uunitgmuka­Innpn Er  weckt  sie mit seinem Licht, For my someone! And with lowered head The moon, who is her lover, H e  wakes her with his light, Uud ibu entschlesert xitfizmdficb lmengesciht, r rofmmes  Bu b  T And to him she sweetly unveils Her devoted flower face, Sie HAW und glibt und leuchtet She blooms and glows and shines And gazes silently upward; Und starret stumm in  die HJII'; Sit duftet und weinet und  zittert 1 ‘w Deb: und  Liebesweb. She emits fragrance and weeps and trembles For love and love’s pain Text: Friedrich Ruckert   die Webmuth thud. o w fenommen, rben aug Wenn uns, do tegen schant, Gottes Sonn’  eng Win! die Liebe, den rolllommnen Kranz, uns  flechten, Schwester Braut! where melancholy drops like dew, garland, sister bride! When we are welcomed above, God‘s sun shining upon us, Love will weave a perfect garland for us, sister bride! �IIL 1. Au­dela To beyond I i i – d r u i d  Au­dela! Water of life! T o  beyond! Ala­"am Choisir [ubatircdmlfl jeaboirirmlm­b’ grandam/am rire, D’tm doigt  de­<i, de­la, Canmujiu’tpwritfim QMm/w’lpaun’rfin, IImpar­aLM­fi. quflj'ouldidiu: j’m’flbknujmfi jammy­«u a’u  derni su Juq Qfl'lr’mfi'fdhfifl'fl Jflqflhww At the hour of pleasure, To  choose is not to betray, I choose that one. 1 choose that one, Who knows how to make me laugh, W’tth a finger here and there, As one does to write. Asonedoestowrite, Hegoes daismy, that way, Widaommeduingto u y t o  him: Ireallylikelhisgame. I really like this game, That but a breath could end, Up until the last breath 1 choose this g a me . Eau de  vie!  Au­dela! (et.) Water of  lite!  To  beyond! (etc.) 2. Cimetiére Cemetery Simmdflwulwbamz wdmtiénmumm mnblandxanw rouge. If you chase away my sailor, in the cemetery you will put me, white rose and red rose. m u n / w i t h ,  m agenbhm‘x. ltdbluwblmirrg, like a garden, red and white, On Sundays you will go, 34a tombe, elle es t comme  un  jardin, V a n i s h ­ { m u m My grave, it is like a garden, Yo u  will g o a  nd take walks, 3. Hotel Hotel Aladmfihtflhfivmd’mnmy My room has the shape of a cage The sun reaches his arm through the window but I who want to smoke   L a w / m m bmparhjmim muqumfim M f u i nd u – i l q u j h l l n m n a fi nd u fi fl r m t g m m jimmvpnflmi/lfrjtmmfnm To make mirages, 1 light my cigarette on the sun’s fire I d o n’t  wa n t  t o  w o rk  – I wa n t  t o  s moke. 4. Les chemins de l’amour The paths of love L a rb f n i u q d w n rd h m The padts that go to the sea Have kept from our passage Defoliated flowers and the echo under their trees ot’our two clear laughs. Alas! O f  the days ol’happiness, Ont‘gmic’dtmpam‘p Dnflumqfilallfir diMm/wfia’l’m dcwdmrrimdairr Hi h d t k t j on nd f b w b e u jfm’unummm­r Immdan­tmrwlr. Chemins de mon amour Je  vous dmrbl toujours C b m u p n d u  vous 1 Warp/w sont sounds   E t vos echos  The radiant joy­s stolen, 1 go without finding any trace [ot’tl­iem] in m y h m Paths o f  my love I search for you always Lost paths, you are no more And your echoes are deaf Chemins du  désespoir Chemins du  souvenir nis du  premier/oar Chem Divins chemins d’amour. Paths of mentiory Paths of the first day Divine paths of love. Si]: dealt/bublkrmjbur   gr­gunned» Lam jimdammmr If I must forget it one day Life caning everything I want in my heart q n’ m v m l l i r n p u : Paths of despair fo r  o n e  memor y t o  remain white rose and white lily, Aunt Yvonne at All­Saints” Day a wreath of painted iron she brings from her garden ofpainttd iron with pends of satin. Ois tremblante ” M W Un fi n r j ‘d m l i m i n i lmilnmmiu . stronger than that other love The memory ot’the path Where trembling and totally lost, One d ay I felt upon me burning, your hands. Jimmmrmum’kr I f  G od wants to resurrect me Chemins de mon amour (etc) Paths of my love (etc.) Si mon marin revenait, rose rouge ef rose blanche, I f  m y sailor should come back, wblauhdblawm Tank Y m a ‘ h T ­ « u n b r t m m m u fi r p d n t zflqapomdrmjmlin mferpeinlamdupahdlmlifir   PARADIS  monterai, A U se  blanche, ninl’tdm’, rorwtbhfldvdblammgml.   tombe il vient anpris, a sur m rose blanche e t blanc muguet. ruse  balnche, Jaukumidtmeq‘m, qmduupkfiurnrbqni mnbbndndbhntm to paradise 1 u‘fll rise, white rose, with a golden halo, white rose and white lily. red rose and white rose, t o  my g rave he will come near white rose and white lily. Remember our childlwod, white rose, when we used to play on the docks, white rose and white lily. Ph i / N i gh t  l’autre amour bmnirdurhnin �IV. 6. They Are There (Fighting tor the People’s New Free World) Text: Charles E . I ves I. Slugging a Vampire Text: Chades Ives 1 closed and drew but not a gun, the refuge of the weak, I swung on the left and I swung on the fight then I landed on his beak; He started to pull the same old stuff, But I closed in hard and called his bluff, Yet his face is still a­sliclrin‘ in the yellow sheet And on the billboard adown the street. 4. Two  Little Flowers (and dedicated to them) Text: Chades Ives, Harmony Twitchell On sunny days in our backyard, Two little flowers are seen,   rightest pink One dressed, at times, in b and one in green. The marigold is radiant, the rose passing fair; Not only in my lady’s eyes The violet is ever dear, the orchid ever rare; Theres loveliness in wild flow’rs o f  field or wide savannah, But fairest, rarest of them all are Edith and Susanna. All the lore that poets prize Is garnered in her mind. 5. At Parting Text: Frederic Peterson She is the soul ornu I sing, For though to me belong The pipe, the shell, the string, Aud she h e r s el f  the song. The sweetest flow’r that blows, 1 give you as we pat’t‘ For you it is a rose, tor me it is my heart, 2. Canon Text: Unknown author D o  I her beauty tind, There is no wisdom in my word, N o  m usic in my lay, Save what I’ve sweetly heard My lady sing or say. 3. Serenity Text: john Greenleaf Whittier O ,  Sabbath rest of Galilee! O ,  calm of h ills above, Where jesus knelt to share with Thee, the silence of eternity Interpreted by  love. Drop thy still dews ot’quietness. Till all our strivings cease: Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess, The beauty of thy peace. To  you it is a rose, t o  m e  it is my  heart. The tragrance it exhales, Ah! If you but only knew, where but in dying fails it is my love for you. T h e  sweetest flow’s that blows, I give you as we part, You think it but a rose, Ah! me it is my heart, You think it but a rose, Ah! me n is my heart. When we’re through this cursed war, All started by a sneaking gouger, Making slaves of men, Then let all the people rise and stand together in brave, Kind Humanity There’s admeinnnnyalife, Most wars are made by small Wlit’sdothoughfacingdeadlandoutsoldier stupid selfish bossing groups boyswilldo tlteirparlthal peoplecanlive while the people have no say lnawoddwhereallllrillhaveasayl But there’ll come a day Hip hip Hooray They’re conscious always of their country’s aim when they’ll smash all dictators to the wall. wlnch is liberty for all. Hip hip hooray you’ll hear them say as they g o  t o  the fighting front. Then it’s build a people’s world nation, Hooray Ev’ry honest country free to live its own native lite T‘lleyll’illslandrbrdlerigllgbmifitcomestomigbt, Theyarethere, theymthue‘ dleyalelllere, Then diePCOPlfimtiuttpoliMns, Brave boysarenowinarlion leyaredxere,dteywillhelptofieethewodd Theyarefig’hting tor the right willnlletheirowulandsmdlives, Butwbeuitcomesmmigl‘ll. Then you’llhflnhewholeunivelse Theyaretllete,tlteyarethere,dleyarel:here, sboufingdlebsrtlecryofFreedom, As rlleAlliet bmtupnlltllevsrllogs. TmfingmancwumpgtomflTe­lfingtouight, Tbelloys’llbetllaefighlinglnrdandthen tmdngonanewcampgtound. the woddwillshoutdtebatdeu'yomealonL Fotit’l mllymundtlle flag Tenting on a new camp ground. oflhepeople’s new free world Shouting the battle cry of Freedom. v. 1. Ah!  May the red rose live alway! Ah! may the red rose live alway, T o s mile upon earth and sky! Why should the beautiful ever weep? Why should the beautiful die? Lending a charm t o  ev’ry ray That falls on her cheeks ol’light, Giving the zephyr kiss for kiss, And nursing the dew drop bright. Long may the daisies dance the field, Froliclting far and near! Why should the innocent hide their heads? Why should the innocent fear? Spreading their petals in mute delight When mom in its radiance breaks, Keeping a floral festival Til night­loving primrose wakes. Lulled be the dirge in the cypress bough, That tells of deparled flowers! Ah!  that the butterfly’s gilded wing 2. Camptown Races De Camptown ladies sing dis song Doo dah!  doo dah! De Camptown race track five miles long Oh! doo dah day! 1 come down dah wid my hat caved in Doo dah!  doo dah! lgobackhomewidapodnetfillloffin Oh! doo dah day! Gwine to run all night! Gwine to run all day! I’ll bet my money on de bobtail nag Somebody bet on de bay. De long tail filly and de big black hoss Dey fly de track and dey both cut across D e  blind hoss sticken in a big mud hole Can’t touch bottom wid a ten foot pole Oldmuleynowoomeontodetrark Debobtailllingheroberhisbzck Fluttered in evergreen bowels! Sad is my heart for the blighted plants Dentlyalonglikearailmadcar They bloom at the young year’s joyful call, And fade with the autumn leaf, Seedemllyinonalenmileheat Rmndder xemrhdenrepeat Ill­in my moneyondebub tail nag Ikeepmy money in an old tow bag Its pleasures are aye as brief Rllrlninalacewidashootin’star �Ahoul the P erformers Briana Sa k a m oto  has been a frequent recitalist i n Binghamton and Westcheste r over the past few years.  She is a member of the Tri­Cities Opera chorus, and recently covered the role o f  Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro.  She has also sung with BU’s Harpur Chorale, the Binghamton University Chorus and the Taconic Opera Company.  Performing in forums and fundraisers at BU, Briana has lent her voice to such causes as “Voices Against Violence,” and the fight against the genocide in Darfur.  She is  pursuing a Bachelor of Music  degree in  Vocal  Performance  at SUNY Binghamton  under  the direction o f  P rofessor Mary Burgess.  She also studies with T C O  artistic director Peyton Hibbitt, a nd in  Manhattan with soprano Carol Yahr.  A  proud member of AEA and SAG, Briana  has a long background in dramatic performance and musical theatre, and studies acting between semesters at the Larry Singer Studios in Manhattan. William J a m e s  Lawson coaches and accompanies singers at Binghamton University.  As a coach, he specializes in English diction for the American and English art song, sacred music, and classical theater repertoires.  He studied at Binghamton University (B.A. 1980), where his teachers included Seymour  Fink  and  Patricia  Hanson in piano, M. Searle  Wright  in church  music, and Stevenson Barrett in vocal coaching.  He holds an M.A. from New York University (1984) and was one of the first  graduates  o f   New  York  University’s  innovative  Department  of  Performance  Studies,  an intetrlisciplinary program in the  performing arts. Binghamlon University Music Department Upcoming Evenls Sundng.Mnmh?l.Scnlor Recital: Mm Silvagni, percussion 3mensodemsRedl¢lHnle££ Bach Birthday Bash Sunday , Macrh 21 .Organist Jonathan Bgigers ,A  4 pan. Firs! Presbyterian Church, Binghamton, s s Thursday. March 25, Mid­Day Concert 1:20 pm. Casadesus Radial Hall, FREE i ­Day Concert with guest artist ll :  rsdag, April8  , Jazz Md 1:20 pl... Osterhout Concert lltealer. FREE Thursday. April 8. Harpur Juz Ensemble Concert with guest artist 8 p.m. Otherhonl Concerl Thacher. SS l TT­ARTS  T For ticket information, please uflldc Anderson Center Box Office A Io see allevenb. please rid! music.binghamton.edu   a n  o n F a c e b o o k  Ag visiting B in g h a m t on  Un i v e u fl y  M u s i c  D e p a r t me n t B e c o m e a [ � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960's - present Title A name given to the resource Binghamton University Music Department Tape Recordings Subject The topic of the resource Concerts ; Instrumental music ; Live sound recordings Description An account of the resource Binghamton University Music Department recordings is an audio collection of concerts and recitals given on campus by students, faculty, and outside musical groups. The physical collection consists of reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes, and compact discs. The recordings <a href="https://suny-bin.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Binghamton%20University%20Music%20Department%20tape%20recordings&amp;tab=LibraryCatalog&amp;search_scope=MyInstitution&amp;vid=01SUNY_BIN:01SUNY_BIN&amp;mode=basic&amp;offset=0&amp;conVoc=false">have been catalogued</a> and are located in <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/special-collections/">Special Collections</a>. In addition, the collection includes copies of programmes. <br /><br />The Libraries have begun making some of the collections available digitally on campus. These recordings are restricted to the Binghamton University Community. Please contact Special Collections for questions regarding access off campus.<br />Email:&nbsp;<a href="mailto:speccoll@binghamton.edu">speccoll@binghamton.edu</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: PDF / Rosetta PDF with Rosetta audio/video link Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 sound disc Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 31:23:00 Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE145178">https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE145178</a> Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. PDF Layout This field specifies how the pages of the PDF will be laid out. Enter only the CASE SENSITIVE keyword without quotation marks. [default: 'FacingContinuous'] Options: 'Single' - Only the entire current page will be visible and Zoom will be set to page width. 'Continuous' - All pages are visible in one scrollable column and Zoom will be set to page width. 'Facing' - Up to two full pages will be visible and Zoom will be set to page height. 'FacingContinuous' - All pages visible in two scrollable columns and Zoom will be set to page height. 'FacingCover' - All pages visible as whole pages, with an even numbered page rendered first. (i.e. The first page of the document is rendered by itself on the right side of the viewer to simulate a book cover.) 'FacingCoverContinuous' - All pages visible in two scrollable columns, with an even numbered page rendered first. (i.e. The first page of the document is rendered by itself on the right side of the viewer to simulate a book cover.) Single Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Briana Sakamoto, senior honors recital, March 3, 2010 Recital Tape 2010-3-20 Description An account of the resource Works by Floridia, Schumann, Poulenc, Ives, Foster. Held at 8:00 p.m., March 20, 2010, Casadesus Recital Hall. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sakamoto, Briana Lawson, William James Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-20 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource sound https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/9d974e34a8e63a510140cd197c1beea4.jpg e56b04883cc878cb567f9e330846838e https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/2778e84926d7bb7309d45b8f3cc02ff1.mp3 075b42f8e2d439ab8dcb229880f590ec Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Tia Nelson Date of Interview 2010-03-21 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 105:02 Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Tia Nelson a conservationist, environmental activist, and politician. As a Democrat, she served as Executive Secretary of the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands. Nelson received the Climate Protection Award, The Environmental Lifetime Achievement Award, David Engelson Award, and the Environmental Leader Award. She was co‐chair of Wisconsin’s Task Force on Global Warming and was Executive Secretary to the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands. Nelson is also a graduate of UW-Madison&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13311,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:1},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,4884200],&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;9&quot;:0,&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Tia Nelson is a conservationist, environmental activist, and politician. She spent 17 years with The Nature Conservancy in government relations, as a policy advisor for Latin America, and later as the first director of the Global Climate Change Initiative. For this work, she received the EPA’s Climate Protection Award in 2000. Tia returned home to Wisconsin to serve as Executive Secretary to the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, which included a gubernatorial appointment as co‐chair of Wisconsin’s Task Force on Global Warming. She directs Outrider Foundation’s climate program. Nelson is also a graduate of UW-Madison Nelson is also a graduate of UW-Madison.<br /><br /><br /></span> Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Robert F. Kennedy; Vietnam War; Environmental problems; Global warming; Earth Day; Denis Haynes; Senator Gaylord Nelson; Westchester University; Senator J. William Fulbright; Activism.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Robert F. Kennedy; Vietnam War; Environmental problems; Global warming; Earth Day; Denis Haynes; Senator Gaylord Nelson; Westchester University; Senator J. William Fulbright; Activism.</span> Subject LCSH Conservationists; Politicians--United States--Wisconsin; Nelson, Tia--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Tia Nelson Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Nelson, Tia ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Conservationists; Politicians--United States--Wisconsin; Nelson, Tia--Interviews Description An account of the resource Tia Nelson is a conservationist, environmental activist, and politician. She spent 17 years with The Nature Conservancy in government relations, as a policy advisor for Latin America, and later as the first director of the Global Climate Change Initiative. For this work, she received the EPA’s Climate Protection Award in 2000. Tia returned home to Wisconsin to serve as Executive Secretary to the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, which included a gubernatorial appointment as co‐chair of Wisconsin’s Task Force on Global Warming. She directs Outrider Foundation’s climate program. Nelson is also a graduate of UW-Madison Nelson is also a graduate of UW-Madison. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.141a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.141b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 105:02 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/390e22186feda6338593ba30d7ddeb6d.jpg 7f1ed828f33159b9f4ba67df87cc06f6 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/43219a78fde44011d65d82098672dfae.mp3 f2ea0c59b5507f4b50118fe109dde3dc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Deanne Stillman Date of Interview 2010-03-21 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 83:45 Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Deanne Stillman is a critically acclaimed author. She writes the “Letter from the West” column for the Los Angeles Review of Books and is a member of the core faculty at the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Low Residency Creative Writing Program. She authored several books and her work appears in many publications, including Los Angeles Review of Books, New York Times, and and Tin House. Stillman is a member of the core faculty at the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Low Residency Creative Writing Program.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13311,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:1},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,4884200],&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;9&quot;:0,&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Deanne Stillman is a critically acclaimed author. She writes the “Letter from the West” column for the <em>Los Angeles Review of Books</em> and is a member of the core faculty at the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Low Residency Creative Writing Program. She authored several books and her work appears in many publications, including <em>Los Angeles Review of Books</em>, the <em>New York Times</em>, and <em>Tin House</em>. Stillman is a member of the core faculty at the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Low Residency Creative Writing Program.</span> Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Timothy Leary; Rex Weiner; Woodstock; Anti-War Movement; Muslim; Socialist; Generation X; Native American; Battle of the Little Bighorn; Baby boom generation; Photographs; Kent State.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Timothy Leary; Rex Weiner; Woodstock; Anti-War Movement; Muslim; Socialist; Generation X; Native American; Battle of the Little Bighorn; Baby boom generation; Photographs; Kent State.</span> Subject LCSH Authors, American--20th century; Stillman, Deanne--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Deanne Stillman Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Stillman, Deanne ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors, American--20th century; Stillman, Deanne--Interviews Description An account of the resource Deanne Stillman is a critically acclaimed author. She writes the “Letter from the West” column for the <em>Los Angeles Review of Books</em> and is a member of the core faculty at the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Low Residency Creative Writing Program. She authored several books and her work appears in many publications, including <em>Los Angeles Review of Books</em>, the <em>New York Times</em>, and <em>Tin House</em>. Stillman is a member of the core faculty at the UC Riverside-Palm Desert MFA Low Residency Creative Writing Program. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.162 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 83:45